The Toy Collector, Chapter One: The Greatest Toy in the World

1.    WE ACQUIRE THE TOY 

His real name was Trevor Forrester, but the kids in the subdivision called him Monster, because he was mean and he was ugly and he was retarded.  “You ought to be able to make that brat’s head spin in circles, smart as you are,” my father would say to my brother and me.  But IQs didn’t help much when Monster pushed down on your chest and squeezed your scrotum until you screamed.  At night, we’d put ice packs between our legs to stop the swelling.  We wouldn’t tell our mom, didn’t want her poking around our private stuff.  The old man we didn’t tell much of any­thing.

 A good thing about Monster was he was choosy.  His father was a proctologist, he made a lot of money, and every year at Christmas he’d buy his kid too many gifts.  Monster would pick one or two toys of which he was fond and ignore the rest.  He loved the Six Million Dollar Man action figure, whom he called Steve and treated as a sort of friend.  There was a funny story about how one day Mr. Forrester was drunk on the couch and Monster was running Steve over his sleeping body and Mr. Forrester woke up, fed up, and smashed Steve to bits on an ebony statuette of the Virgin Mary.  Monster stood by yelling, “Steve, no!  No, Steve!  Steve!”

     When his mother had garage sales, Monster’s choosiness worked to my brother’s and my advantage.  She was a lonely lady, had a lot of them.

 The women shifted about the garage and ignored each other.  They circled long ta­bles that ran side by side, covered in old cookware and afghan rugs.  Those that did talk often had funny voices; the people who lived in the boons outside Saint Louis County always sounded like that.  Many of these women smelled bad from driving long distances in cars that weren’t air-conditioned.  “Can I get this blouse any cheaper?” they’d ask Mrs. Forrester.  “No,” Mrs. Forrester would say.  “Priced as marked.”  She didn’t like the women from the boons.

     Tar walked carefully.  He was afraid Monster was going to show up and do stuff to us.

     “He’s not gonna be here,” I told my brother.  “His mom doesn’t want him around, disgusting people.”

     Tar made the whew! face, puffing up his cheeks and blowing out air.  He’d collect faces from watching television.  He was three.

     Discounting the dust, most of the toys on the toy table looked brand new.

     “A pterodactyl,” Tar said.  He pointed to a box between Stratego and Chutes and Ladders.  Volcanoes and prehistoric animals were on the box, and a name: Scrunch ‘Em, Grow ‘Em Dinosaurs.  I yanked the box from between the others.  Tar placed his fingers on the edge.  $1.50 was scrawled in magic marker beneath his thumb.  My mother had given both of us a dollar, which, I was sure, added up to a lot more than a dollar fifty.

Put the cubes in the Energizer Machine and WATCH ‘em transform into DINOSAURS!  Then scrunch ‘em up again in the DINOSAUR PIT!  Endless Fun!!!

Diagrams showed a dinosaur being squashed in a machine and growing back to life in a clear electric dome.

     Tar and I loved three things: Dinosaurs, metamorphoses and machines.  Holding this toy now was like holding a toy designed especially for the two of us by God.  We had never seen it before in any store or on any commercial (we later learned the FDA had banned the machine shortly after its release).  This was the toy that we wanted, no need to look further.  We moved toward Mrs. Forrester, who was sorting pennies into neat rows on her money table. 

     An old woman’s hand came down upon the box, almost knocking it from my grip.  The hand had a marble-sized diamond ring.  Thick veins curled around its bones.

     “I’m sorry, boys, but I just bought that,” said the old woman attached to the hand.  She had a bright orange hairdo that swooped in a Hawaii Five-O wave.  The skin around her mouth was pleated.  Her perfume surrounded me in a thick swamp.  “I’m sorry but it’s mine,” she said.  “I just paid for it now and now, here I was, coming over to get it.”

     “Nuh uh,” Tar said.

     “We just got it,” I told her.

     “Yes, but it’s mine.  I’ve already paid for it.  It’s common in garage sales to pay for the item first.”  She gave a little laugh.  I wondered what the inside of her head looked like.

     “Nuh uh,” Tar said.

     “This is a toy we want very much,” I told her.  “And we have more than a dollar and fifty cents.”

     The woman grabbed the box with both hands.

     I whispered to my brother: “Cry.”

     Tar burst into tears.  He was famous for being able to do this on command.  The women in the garage looked at him.

     “My brother wants this toy very much.  He’s crying.  Look.”

     “I like pterodactyls!” Tar cried.

     “Let go of the box, please, son.”

     “Uh uh!” I said.  I grabbed more tightly to the sides, but the woman was too strong and her perfume had weakened me.  She yanked the toy up and away.  She embraced it beneath her breasts.  She breathed heavily.

     “Now there’s heaps of other toys here.  Go pick one out.”  She turned and walked out of the garage.

     I stared at the concrete floor, panicked.  I jerked my head up to see her waddling down the driveway with our toy.  I chased after her.  Tar followed me.  He contin­ued to cry; his sadness was becoming more real as he continued.

     “We had that toy first, lady,” I said.

     “Don’t lady me, young man.  I saw it first.”

     “You’re too old to have a toy.”

     “It’s for my grandson.”

     We followed her to an olive Buick parked in front of the house.  She put the box in the back seat and locked the car door.  She didn’t look at us as she walked back up the driveway and into the garage.  Tar and I mushed our faces against the driver’s side window.  The toy was upside down.  It was bursting with brontosau­ruses, pterodactyls, woolly mammoths, et cetera

     Dinosaurs.  Metamorphosis.  Machine.

     “I hate that bitch,” Tar whispered.  It was one of the phrases we had learned from our father.  They were all fun to use.  There were some, though, such as the C word, that didn’t get even a hint of a smile from Mom.

     “Yeah.”

     The driver’s side was locked.  But I could see the stem sticking up on the pas-senger side.  I eyed the mouth of the garage.  One woman looked over a plaid shirt for rips or stains.  Another was smelling a pair of ballerina slippers.  The old woman was spinning the wheel of a bicycle on the wall, one that wasn’t even for sale.

     “Come on,” I said to Tar.  We crept, silent and careful, around to the other side of the Buick.  I propped one hand on the hot metal of the car and pulled on the passen­ger handle with the other.  The door snapped open.  The victorious sound of “eeg!” leapt from my brother’s throat.  I reached in.  Tar gripped hard onto my T-shirt.  My hands were on the box.

     Let’s teach that cunt a lesson she’ll never forget: that was the song in my soul. 

We barreled down the hill toward home.  The air whistled in our ears.  We gig-gled in random bursts, prompted by fear and its thrill.  The box grew heavy in my arms.  I pulled it against my chest, and we ran faster down Taylor Drive.  The sun was bright; its tendrils sank fast into our skin.  We turned left.  Now we moved up Arblay.  Wipe the sweat from my cheek with my shoulder.  Then turn right on our street, Troll Court.  Our two story yellow house stood at the top of the hill and we flung ourselves toward it.  My heart raced. 

We collapsed against the wood of the front door and Tar threw it open.  He shrieked as we plunged into air-conditioned space.  We hunched over, gathering our energies, the breath being torn from our lungs in heaves, when our mother’s voice dropped from upstairs:  “Did you buy anything?”

     “No, there was nothing good,” I yelled.

     What a lie that was!  We had to put our hands over our mouths to stop the laughter.

     We opened the basement door.  We tumbled down the stairs.  The rocking horse with the sad face, a face that wished it was real instead of plastic, stood at the bot­tom.  I slapped it on the nose as we passed by.  It bobbed.

     I dropped the box on the floor.  Tar peeled back the lid.  Inside, a machine, di­nosaurs, directions, cubes: A shred of paradise stolen. 

The policeman had a pear-shaped body.  He had a mouth that looked as if he was stretching his cheeks back with the palms of his hands to make a funny face.  His partner, who wasn’t wearing a hat, was older.  They stood at the end of our hall, framed by the doorway.  The hall was separated from the family room by beams; the pear-shaped cop was half covered by one.  Tar and I were sitting on the floor in the family room.  The best, Ultraman, was on TV.

     The police had a conversation with my mother we couldn’t hear, but we could see they were being polite.  They usually would be; my father was a lawyer and most of them knew him.

     Tar looked at me, his mouth cracked open a little.  “Lie,” I whispered.  On the TV Ultraman knocked over a guy in a giant bug costume and a couple cardboard build­ings were squashed behind him.

     “A lizard game?” my mother said.

     The policemen nodded.  They went on, only some things audible to my brother and me: the word complaint, the word argument, and something about the old woman’s car.

     My mother offered a blank stare.  Some mothers get defensive, but ours knew the two of us were a special case.  Something had been wrong with her ovaries.  We were bad seeds.  My mother told the police she’d go downstairs and root around to see if there was a lizard game somewhere.  She slit her eyes at us on the way downstairs.  We were her enemies.

     I played with the string tie on my shorts as I stood in the doorway.  The younger policeman crouched in front of me.  He balanced an open notebook on his knee.  The other one, who looked pissed, continued to stand.  Behind them two squirrels fought on a tree limb.  The darker squirrel had something brown in its mouth.

     “Jimmy.  We just have a couple of questions for you.  First question: Did you take the lizard game from Mrs. Tolkenstein’s car?”

     “No.”

     “You did, though, argue with her about the lizard game?”

     I nodded.  “We had it first.”  I stared at him.  “It’s not a game.”

     “And it’s not lizards,” Tar said.  “Dinosaurs.”

     The cop wrote something in his notebook.  I looked down.  Dinosaurs.  He dotted it with a hard period and clicked his pen shut.

     “She put it in her car,” I told them.

     The cop clicked his pen open again.

     “We know you took it,” the standing policeman said.  He sighed.  We were trying his patience.  “People saw you take it.”

     Years later I would learn about the good cop/bad cop routine in more depth.

     “We didn’t.  I swear on my dead mother’s grave.”

     “How old are you, Jimmy?” the younger policeman said.  “Or is it Jim?  Do you like being called Jim?”

     “No.  I’m four.”

     The policeman turned to my brother.

     “Tar, a question for you.  How old?”

     “Three years old.”

     “Did you or did your brother take the box of dinosaurs from the car?  You’re re­quired to tell the truth.”

     “Monster did it.”

     The policemen smiled.  My brother had blown the game, they thought.

     “A monster took the dinosaurs, did it?  Describe this monster’s appearance.”

     My mother’s footsteps grew louder behind us.

     “Monster is what the kids call Trevor Forrester,” she said.  “He goes to Special School.  He picks on the other children.”

     The crouching policeman’s smile faded slightly.  He exchanged a glance with his partner.

     “And there was no trace of a lizard game downstairs,” my mother said.

     “Monster opened the car,” Tar said.  “He took it.  Monster took it.  He ran fast.”

     Tar would be in the accelerated classes all through school.  At the age of three he already knew there was no better scapegoat than a retarded bully. 

     Behind the policemen the two squirrels continued to do battle.  One knocked the other from the tree limb.  It fell on our front lawn.  Later my brother and I went out to see if it was dead.

 Our basement had a paneled corkboard ceiling.  You could climb a ladder, push up the panels, and hide things in the space above them.  Through the years the space housed chewing gum (my father despised the cracking sound), fireworks, smoke bombs, cigarettes, love letters from Angie Pinkerton, magazines with naked people, witchcraft tracts, porno videos, anarchist news­letters, condoms, a pair of handcuffs, alcohol of various grains and proofs, pills, grass, coke, a Graphix bong, a foam vagina, a thirty eight revolver, and many other useful items not sanctioned by the Gunn family government.  The space’s longest resident, though, was Scrunch ‘Em, Grow ‘Em Dinosaurs, known to the authorities only as The Lizard Game.  Back in the early seventies my mother would probably have turned us in had we not outwitted her by hiding our contraband in the base­ment ceiling.  She seemed all right, but after you had lived with her for four years you knew she’d turn rat if the circumstances were right.  Due to renovation the space is now gone.  Neither my brother nor I know what happened to the toy.

 2.    RULES OF THE TOY

 Scrunch ‘Em, Grow ‘Em Dinosaurs has two basic components:

     1) A boxy machine made of a sturdy red metal, and 2) Small, brightly colored square blocks.  These blocks look identical to Starburst candies.  Do not eat them.

     A mesh circle, four and a half inches in diameter, covers much of the red ma­chine; this circle is the heart and soul of Scrunch ‘Em, Grow ‘Em Dinosaurs.  It is, essentially, a small oven.  Plug the machine into a wall socket and watch it heat up, turning first a dim gray, then a soft pink, and, finally, a bright red.   It is not neces­sary to wait until the mesh is red to transform the blocks.  It will, however, work faster that way.  A clear plastic dome with a sliding door encloses the oven.  This is simply a precaution and does not facilitate the transformation process.  Although an adult can only fit a few fingers through the sliding portal, a child can insert his hand with little difficulty.  As an added benefit, the plastic dome is readily detachable.

     When a block is placed within the dome, and the red machine is turned on, the block will slowly unfurl, one limb springing out and then another until it has changed into an entire dinosaur!  Like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a but­terfly or a bud to a blooming rose, this is a beautiful thing to see.

     When the dinosaur is complete, the general rule is to turn off the machine and wait for it to cool before removing it from the dome.  Without patience, blisters will occur.

     A variety of creatures are included in the box, not limited to a brontosaurus, an ankylosaurus, a triceratops, a woolly mammoth, and the ever-popular pterodactyl.  After a while you will be able to tell which block is which dinosaur by memorizing each animal’s specific color.  DO NOT put the blocks in a conventional oven; this will simply result in destroying that particular dinosaur forever.

     The small bin and knob on the right side of the machine are commonly (and collectively) called a masher.  Once a dinosaur is heated to the properly mushy consistency, place it in the bin, slide the top of the bin shut, and screw the knob.  The knob will push in the metal mashing device, squashing the dinosaur back into a block shape.  The masher is where Scrunch ‘Em, Grow ‘Em Dinosaurs has one up on all other metamorphoses.  For can even nature, in all its splendor, transform the butterfly back into the caterpillar or the blooming rose back into the bud?

 3. BOB AND OSCAR

 Bob wasn’t really a cowboy, he was a gunfighter and a former deputy, but he be­longed to the cowboy’s ilk.  He was always on the ready with his pistol pointing straight.  His face was harsh.  It was weathered with deep grooves, trenches for tears running down his cheeks.  Maybe those trenches hadn’t been there before the Indi­ans and their accomplices, the army guys, had murdered his wife and his baby daughter.

     Bob was mine.

     Oscar was Tar’s.  Oscar perpetually swung a lasso over his head.  His face was similar to Bob’s – in fact, many people thought they were brothers.  Oscar had never been married and had never lost his family, but he had been very attached to his horse, Ernie.  That psycho Bazooka Man had shot him down like a dog.  Ernie knew how to fight if the fight was fair, but even he was susceptible to a smile and a carrot and a bazooka slipped suddenly beneath his muzzle.

 The crunch of gravel under moccasins warned Bob.  He turned in his sleeping bag and spotted the tip of an arrow between the leaves of a plant.  To the right of that, a hand with a grenade rose above the beanbag chair.  The Indians had surrounded their camp of snoring cowboys.  Bob had that one moment of awareness before the explosion that killed half their party.  Then arrows came slinging.

     The battle was long.  It was bloody.  Bob and Oscar survived in their typical fashion – Bob picked the bastards off like flies; Oscar snapped a hundred necks with his lasso.  Most the other boys were killed.  The obituary column would read like a guest list to a cocktail party thrown by Bob and Oscar:  Linus, Pete, Bert, Mojo, Sylvester, Handsome Dan, Gordon, Batman Jr., Willie...  One sometimes wondered if it was worth it, this triumph, living, when surrounded by so much death.

     Most of the red faces were taken alive.  Bob and Oscar tied their hands behind their backs and lined them up along the Tonka tractor.  Bazooka Man stuck his ugly green mug in Oscar’s face.

     “I’m glad I killed your horse, cowboy scum.”

     Bob had to hold Oscar back from killing Bazooka Man right there.

     The bowlegged cowboy without the horse was placed in charge of the prison­ers.

     “Okay, y’all, follow me,” he said.  He led the procession of Indians and army men through the woods.  They complained about the ants crawling up their legs and the chill of the night air against their bare chests.  “Y’all shoulda thought of that ‘fore y’all murdered my amigos.”

They marched across the great ex­panse of carpet as owls and crickets cheered their passing.  The cowboy ushered them up the length of Hot Wheel track and into the clear dome of the red machine.  With a loud clang, the bowlegged cowboy slid the door shut behind them.

     “You have no right!” the Chief shouted.

     “We have all the rights we need, fucker,” Bob said.  He wrapped his hands around the thick length of cord and stuffed the giant plug into the wall. 

     “They’re burning us alive!” Bazooka Man screamed, and soon they all screamed in the worst of possible agonies.  Bob’s eyes spilled tears.  He remembered the way he cradled his dear sweet baby daughter in his arms and hoped she now peered down from heaven with joy.

 Bazooka Man futilely tried to pry his leg away from the Indian Chief’s back as the two of them melted together.  Orange and green merged into a sick colored brown.  Soon enough they were all melting into one huge creature of horror (which was later brought back to life by a mad scientist and attacked Bob and Oscar in revenge).  The stench of his confreres’ burning flesh overcame Bazooka Man and he gagged and vomited until the very moment he went to Hell. 

The pipe organ blared down upon the cowboys.  The little church had been con­verted from the old farmhouse; it still had the farmer’s name, Fisher Price, painted across the top.  Bob and Oscar knelt in the pews and thanked God that they had been victorious over their enemies, that their loved ones had been avenged, and that the red machine was still in working order.

     ”Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,” the priest recited on the altar.  He held the Holy Eucharist over his head.  “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.  Grant us peace.”

     Bob tapped Oscar on the thigh.

     “Hey.  I think that priest is an Indian in disguise.  He just made the secret Indian symbol.”

     “The Indians have a secret symbol?” Oscar asked.

     The two cowboys knocked over the chalice full of wine as they pinned the priest to the altar.  They dragged the old man to the clear plastic dome, where they burnt away his face.  Gradually, more Indians in disguise exposed themselves through secret symbols and innuendoes.  The cowboys melted all of them, or turned them into freaks, or made them amputees.

 Tar and I darted up the stairs.  Although it was a cold fall we opened all the doors and windows in the house.  The wind swept in around us, washing away the smell of burnt plastic before our mother got back home.

 4. WE SHARE THE SECRET OF THE TOY

 I once measured Gary’s head from behind with a ruler.  It was, in fact, quite large, just as it appeared to be.  My mother had told me it was just the way he held him-self. 

     “Mom, Gary’s head is two inches and eight lines bigger than mine.  And I’m taller.”

     “Well, I guess Gary just needs space to fit all those novel ideas.”

     Gary Bauer had a lot of those.  One of his main ideas was about washing his hands, which he did as much as possible.  This in tandem with his constipation problem meant he was usually in the bathroom.  Also, he spoke a language he said was French.

     “Abriga!” he said, as Tar and I met him at the bottom of Troll Court.

     We stared at him.  He was our best friend, which often led us to believe there was something wrong with our own lives.

     “That means, Hello, James and Tar!  In French.”

     “Bull roar,” Tar said.

     “A translation for bull roar is blik naba.”  Gary was wearing a pirate hat he had folded from a newspaper.  It was too large for his head.  The brim rested atop his black horn rimmed glasses.  He was the only preschooler in the neighborhood with glasses, and we were all a little jealous of him for needing a prescription.

     “Gary, there’s something we want to show you,” I said.

     “What?”

     Tar grabbed Gary’s hand.  He pulled him behind him, up Troll Court and to­ward our house.

 “Nancy!” Gary said.  “Jimmy and Tar have a very important thing.”

     Nancy Zoomis was preoccupied with trying to make GI Joe fit in Barbie’s Mansion.  Her straight brown hair hung in her face.  The ends were shredded from her chewing.  She was Gary Bauer’s other best friend, though she had just move in.

We were behind the Delgesse’s shrubs.  This was where Nancy and I would later come to play house.  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, one of us would say.  From there it would be a race to unzip.

     “I don’t want to go,” she said.  “I’m playing here.”

     “All right,” I told her.  “Then you’ll miss out.”

     I put my hands in my pockets and walked up the street.  Tar and Gary followed.

     “She’ll be sorry!” Gary said.  “Or, as we say in France, Ordbökon!”

     We passed the Benningtons’ house.  We passed the Smith’s.  By the time we got to the Fitzgerald’s, the sounds of Nancy’s sneakers were scraping the street behind us.

 Nancy was laughing.  “It’s weird!” she shouted at Steve and Corey, the twins.  Gary was picking at a scab on his arm.  Steve and Corey looked at Gary.

     “What’d they get?” Corey asked.

     “You have to promise not to tell,” Gary said.

 Robert and his little brother Brendan found out about it too.  At first we didn’t want them to know:  Brendan had a big mouth.  But he’s kept quiet thus far.

 In secret meetings the children of the subdivision gathered:  Gary, Nancy, Robert, Steve, Corey, Brendan, Tar and me.  I’d stand at the top of the ladder and push up the ceiling panel.  I’d hand down the Greatest Toy in the World and it would pass from the hands of one child to the next.  Tar would set it down in the center of the floor.  We’d pull ourselves in around it.  Blades of grass brushed against the rectan­gular windows at the top of the basement walls.  My mother’s sandaled footsteps crossed the kitchen overhead.

     We’d lean in, getting closer to the machine.  We’d run our fingers over the de­tails of the tiny beasts.  I would slide open the door to the clear plastic dome.  Steve would place a green block inside.  In closer, Nancy’s bare knee would graze against mine.  Brendan’s head would be nuzzled between Corey and Steve.  Gary would stand, always moving.  He’d beat a rhythm on the basement’s hollow metal beam with a spoon.  Robert would hum made up songs.  Tar’s brown eyes would flood with magic.  A long neck and a head would pop up from the green block.  And all of us would be joined beneath the skin as we created, destroyed, created, destroyed, created.

     And that is why, twenty years later, I began collecting toys.

 

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