Yard Sale of Thoughts

Rotting wood and dog shit: I’ve been smelling both for half a century. When the box finally opens, I’m blinded. My bulgy eyes won’t let me blink. Hands are roughing me up, but I lay completely still on top of the pile of slaughtered toys I’d killed to secure the top position.

Then the lid closes, and I shout, “Don’t leave me here in darkness. In this coffin. I can’t take it.” But then the light reappears. And the string that’s been shoved down my nose since my factory days in Hong Kong starts to tingle. I’m hoisted like a fat catfish on a line and laid to rest on planks of the Foretell family attic.

Fifty years of solitude. Okay, twenty years of solitude. I spent the first thirty killing off the other rejects trapped in the box in order to secure my solitude.  

My horizontal stripes alienated me from the start. Alternating light and dark green with a few teeth marks cut into woody flesh. Several of the Foretell children had bitten into my melon, only to be disappointed with the outcome. I wondered if they knew I’d been lacquered with lead-based paint?

But it was the damn porcelain dame, Amelia, who duped me in the end. Kicked me right as I was strangling her fragile neck with my pull cord. I caught a riding boot square on the back wheel. Thanks to that pale bimbo, I was now a limping watermelon pull toy.

Face-to-face with my liberator, I almost squirted myself. The kid looked so much like his grandfather, Rupert. Dark brown hair which fell to the same direction, covering a fraction of his right eye, And he had that grin, too big for a child’s face. Sure, we had that in common, but I prayed he didn’t have his grandfather’s brutal love of rough play and toy negligent. Old Rupert was the reason I had ended up in the toy slammer in the first place with the foul smell of animal feces surrounding me.

“Wow, you’re wacky. I’ve never seen a pull toy melon before.”

And you are not going to see one again, kid, I wanted to say, but the string shoved down my nose tingled, and I had to fight back a sneeze. I would a done anything to get that brat to take me down even one flight of stairs. One flight of stairs, kid, that’s all I need.

The boy put me down and took the string laced through my nose. I grimaced, expecting the worst, but he tugged gently, testing its durability, looking back over his shoulder to see if I moved, he made a circle around the attic, a slow enough pace that I could keep my back wheel from wobbling. Best not give away my defect.

As I passed my former coffin, I remembered those first few decades in the box.

Look at me now, suckers. I asked you to shut your mouths, give me my peace for a few hours. You made me do it. Each and every one of you.

The kid tugged me a few more times, then let go of the string. I must have passed some sort of test because the next thing I knew, he hoisted me in the air and carried down the attic ladder.

The Foretell family nursery remain unchanged. Yellow sunflower wallpaper beside a slanted ceiling. I think back to the weeks I spent hiding under the bed, afraid that monster would want to tug me around in one of his sadistic games.

But today, we didn’t stay in the nursery. The kid placed me on the railing, gripping both sides of my melon, and I braced myself for a guided rollercoaster ride down the house’s three-story winding railing.   

The Foretell mansion was a happy, light-filled home, generously decorated with family heirlooms. A proud sort of house, and one that I observed the Foretell’s had meticulously maintained.

When the boy sat me on a side table to use the facilities, he left me staring up at a painting of old Mr. Foretell, the devil himself. Arching eyebrows, a serious smile. “For the love of god!” I screamed. “How could you leave me in a live coffin for fifty years?”

The master’s initials were etched on the bottom of the portrait: R.E.F. Rupert Edmund Foretell. I only wished my melon had a real bladder so I could piss all over it.  

I closed my eyes after that. Afraid of what other ghosts I might see in the landing. No sooner had my wheels hit gravel than the string through my nose tugged until I tipped to the side. After righting me on my leash, the imbecile boy picked me up for closer inspection.

His frowning face an inch from my features, but I was used to this reaction. I’m freakish, up close with eyes that bobble and bulge but never shut, and two pink antennae which seem out of place on a melon. I mean, am I a melon or an alien insect?

My crazed face isn’t the reason I can’t stay upright, though. The boy pulls out my retractable melon slices. I suppose they’re meant to look like wings, but in the box, they served me more like expert arms, surprising the other toys with karate chops.

That’s when he notices it. The defect. My back right axel is bent. I could make the rest of the lap around the yard, but it would be at a crippling pace if the boy wanted to keep me upright.

“Rupie, my word. Where on earth did you find that wacky thing? A white-haired woman startled me when she appeared from behind one of the rectangular hedges that lined the walk.

She paused her pruning to inspect me, a few beads of sweat slipping from her forehead onto her gardening gloves.

“I found him in the attic, Nana. It was the only toy that wasn’t broken in the old toy box. Well, I thought it wasn’t broken. The back wheel’s bent. Can we fix it? Please?”

“That’s probably not the only thing wrong with it, Rupie. Did you check it for mold?” She pointed the shears at me as she spoke. “Take it around the shed and put it in the woodpile. I told your grandfather to get rid of those toys, and instead he stuffed them up there in the attic. I suppose I’ll have to go up there one of these days and see what other monsters are lurking in that box.”

“But I want to keep it, Nana.” The boy did the unthinkable and hugged me to his chest.

The grandmother turned to face her grandson. “Bring him here,” she sighed and put down her shears. “You said yourself it was broken, Rupie.” She pulled on my string and then satisfied that it was secure, spun each of my four wheels. “Nope. Can’t fix it. Besides… it’s a baby toy.”

I did my best to turn my smile into some sort of scowl. Rupie looked me over again, as if considering his grandmother’s words.

“Kindling’s about all it’s good for now, Rupie. Do be a good boy and put that thing on the woodpile.” She ruffled her grandson’s hair the same way you would a beloved pet. “How about this? When we go to town tomorrow, I’ll get you a proper toy to play with. Maybe one of those gliders, even?” But before Rupie could respond, she had disappeared back behind the hedge, leaving me and Danny alone in the garden dirt.

I noticed the boy took the long way to the woodpile, walking me past the veranda and the flower rose bushes. Dead man walking, I thought to no one in particular because I knew I deserved it.  This final parade through the garden where so little had changed since my arrival fifty-five years ago.

Rupie knelt to give me one last hug. “You were plucked too soon, melon. Your stem’s still attached.”

He pulled out my slices and fanned them like wings. “And what’s worse, someone cut you open.” 

I couldn’t be sure, but in that moment, I think I felt a tear or two slide down my melon, but, it could have been a light rain.

“Goodbye, melon.” Rupie said leaving me on the top of the woodpile as his Nana had told him to do.

Alone outdoors.  I had a freedom I’d never imagined. The warmth of the sun. The joy of being King of the Hill again. Only this time, there were no limits.

Some of the other toy’s in the bin gossiped about night sky, telling wild tales of tiny lights that shone down in the deepest darkness. I waited as the blue darkened to indigo and then to a blackness that seemed impenetrable. But that was only for a second. Tiny lights poked through. Sort of like the headlights on Trainee, the Choo-Choo. I had choked his engine out after a few years of enduring his random whistling. Sure he had light, but he was giving everyone in the box a headache.  

“This one’s for you, Choo-Choo!” I shouted, as I angled myself off the side of the sloped woodpile, prepared for the downward ski, praying my wings would guide me down the woodpile and land me safely on the grass. It was mid-air that I spotted the glint of Nana’s shears left sitting on an overturned flowerpot for falling onto my back in the damp grass.

©2023 | K.F. Hartless

To Be Continued…

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