Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas

Author:Jeffrey Thomas [Thomas, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: DarkFuse
Published: 2012-01-26T19:00:00+00:00

* * *

Ian died three weeks before Christmas.

The mall had not been lax in putting up its decorations, so Ian had seen them on one final excursion before he became too frail to leave the hospital. Now, Declan surveyed them again. Red and gold garlands were interwoven with pipes and sheathed cables. Silver globes hung from the concave ceiling like sparkling tumors. Over the intercom, carols were played. Burl Ives sang “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Declan sat abruptly and heavily on a bench, and set his bag down so quickly that it tipped over. It was one of the songs his son had sung most often.

A young woman leaned down to look into his face. It was not Rebecca; she was at church, where she was more and more often these days, as if to make up for his own total absence. With Christmas coming she had much to help them with, much to focus almost feverishly upon.

“Are you all right?” this other woman asked. She had seen him almost fall to the bench. But Declan wondered if she wasn’t as drawn to his appearance as to his obvious anguish. He was an extremely attractive man. Rebecca herself had been immediately attracted to him. The women at work flirted with him shamelessly. Even though he hadn’t shaved in two days, and had let his usually neatly cut hair grow out a bit, he was still striking.

“I’m fine,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I’m fine, thanks.” He reached down to right his shopping bag.

“You sure?”

“Yes—thanks,” he said, not looking up. Peripherally, he saw her reluctantly withdraw. But his gaze remained on the contents of his bag. There was a bright box containing a large Randy Atlas doll in there. On Christmas eve he would put it under the tree. On Christmas morning he would unwrap it and set it on Ian’s bed with its Randy Atlas sheets.

Why hadn’t he bought it that day? Why hadn’t he bought it when his son could have held it in his hands, even if it might be heaped the next day with the many other toys he neglected? They had eaten lunch in the mall that day: twenty munits. Shit it out the next day. Why hadn’t he bought the doll sooner? He’d forgotten it after that; he supposed now that it hadn’t been in stock again for a while. He should have looked elsewhere for it; ordered it. He might have brought it to Ian in the hospital. They had, in fact, brought him other gifts. But they had forgotten this particular doll, which Declan had only seen again today, when sleep-walking through the toy store.

He got up from the bench, walked again. He seemed to float along without the weight of his wife at his side, and without the weight of his son in his cart. He felt like a ghost that haunted a former home, without knowing why it did so. But he imagined Ian at his side. He even spoke to him in his mind.

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