All Fall Down (2 page)

His gum didn't taste so good anymore.

"I don't think my mom's back here," Daniel
said. She wouldn't have gone this far away, not without telling
him.

"I'm sure I saw her come this way," Uncle
Charlie said. "Wasn't she wearing a dark blue coat?"

For a fleeting moment Daniel saw something
dark at the end of the aisle, but then it was gone around the
corner. It could have been his mom. Uncle Charlie seemed to think
so, and Daniel trusted Uncle Charlie. He looked at the G.I. Joe
that Uncle Charlie still had tucked under his arm. G.I. Joe
wouldn't let some silly monkey scare him.

As Daniel continued to walk with Uncle
Charlie, the store itself started to change. He had never paid much
attention to the walls or the ceiling before other than he knew
they were white like the walls at home. But back here in the part
of the store Daniel had never seen before the walls were dingy and
gray. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and tiny cracks ran down the
walls. The floor gave a little when he walked. Even the air smelled
musty and damp.

And the strangest thing of all—the store
seemed to be shrinking.

The shelves in Uncle Charlie's had always
towered over Daniel. If he wanted a toy from the top two shelves,
he needed his mom to reach it for him. But now Daniel thought if he
stood on his tip-toes he could reach the very top shelf all by
himself.

And not only were the shelves getting
smaller, the ceiling seemed to be getting closer. Daniel could see
the cobwebs and cracks clearly, and they looked close enough to
touch.

Daniel wasn't a little baby anymore. He was
five. He could tell what was real and what were the games he made
up in his head. This was real. Something bad was happening. He
didn't want to be here anymore.

He tried to pull his hand out of Uncle
Charlie's grip, but Uncle Charlie wouldn't let go. Now even Uncle
Charlie was getting smaller. Daniel kept trying to pull away. His
heart was thudding in his chest as he watched Uncle Charlie's hand
keep getting smaller and smaller. Even though Daniel pulled as hard
as he could, Uncle Charlie kept a tight hold on Daniel.

"Ah, we're here," said Uncle Charlie.

By now Uncle Charlie was now the same size
as Daniel. His overalls and shirt had shrunk with him, and he still
had the Uncle Charlie beard and the Uncle Charlie smile, but his
eyes weren't Uncle Charlie's eyes, not anymore.

Daniel got so scared when Uncle Charlie
looked at him with those mean little doll eyes that he almost
didn't realize they'd stopped walking and were standing in front of
a door. The door was metal and not much taller than Daniel. It had
been painted white at one time like the rest of the store, but the
paint had cracked and peeled, and rust coated the hinges. Brown and
black stains and evil-looking green drips and streaks marred the
surface. Water seeped in under the door. The water smelled worse
than anything Daniel had ever smelled, worse even than the time
Daniel had gone with his father to the city dump in the middle of
summer.

More than anything, Daniel didn't want to go
through that door.

"That's where your mom went," the thing that
wasn't really Uncle Charlie said.

Daniel knew it lied. His mom couldn't fit
through this door.

"Let me go!" Daniel said. "I want my
mom."

The Uncle Charlie-thing grinned at him. It
was an awful grin, a grin that stretched its mouth further back
than any real person could. Daniel saw rows of sharp monkey teeth
behind that awful grin.

"Then let's go get her," the thing said, and
it opened the door.

The door screeched and groaned on its rusted
hinges. Damp, yucky-smelling air flowed out the door. Daniel wanted
to throw up. Bad things lived on the other side of that door.

The Uncle Charlie-thing pulled him through
the opening.

Nothing was right in the place on the other
side. The sky was dark red, like the blood from his finger when he
cut it on the page of a book. Daniel was standing on the rocky
shore of a river, but the rocks were made of glass, and when he
looked down he could see things squirming and slithering far below
where he stood. He heard wailing and shrieks and cries of pain that
hurt his ears, but the worst wrong thing of all was the river.

Daniel knew what the river that ran through
town looked like. His dad took him on walks by the river, and once
his dad had taken Daniel with him when he went fishing from the
riverbank.

This was not the same kind of river.

The water in this river was black and it
hardly seemed to flow at all. It looked thick, and it reminded
Daniel of the chocolate syrup he put in his milk, only the river
smelled sour, like milk that had gone bad.

Things floated in this river, too. Things
that maybe once had been people. That maybe once had been kids like
Daniel.

The Uncle Charlie-thing pulled Daniel toward
a boat moored on the riverbank. The boat looked like a canoe Daniel
had seen one time on Bonanza. The Uncle Charlie-thing put Daniel's
G.I. Joe in the boat.

"Get in," it said. "Can't you see your
mother's waiting for you on the other side?"

Daniel looked to where it pointed. On the
far shore Daniel saw something that could have been his mom. She
was calling to him, but Daniel couldn't hear her. She held her arms
out to him, smiling, but there was something wrong with her. It was
almost like she couldn't hold her shape, like she was only
pretending to be his mom, just like the Uncle Charlie-thing only
pretended to be a real person.

Daniel looked at G.I.Joe, and he knew what
he had to do.

The Uncle Charlie-thing tugged at him again.
Daniel pretended to slip on the glassy rocks and started to fall.
He yanked his arm back hard, and the Uncle Charlie-thing let go of
his hand so it wouldn't fall, too.

Daniel rolled and kicked out with his feet,
kicking the Uncle Charlie-thing in the knees. This time it did
fall. It hit the glass rocks hard. It yelled at him, screamed at
him, but Daniel had already rolled over and was on his feet running
for his first trench—the door—just like G.I. Joe would.

It wasn't like a door in a wall, not on this
side. It was just a little square of air that looked like a toy
store. Daniel ran for it. His feet slipped on the glass rocks and
he almost fell more than once, but he made it through the door.

He could hear the Uncle Charlie-thing
scrabbling over the rocks right behind him.

The door didn't want to close. Daniel put
all his weight against it, grunting with the effort. Just when he
thought it was too late and the Uncle Charlie-thing was going to
get him, the door finally moved on its rusted hinges, and Daniel
slammed it shut.

He wasn't safe yet. The toys were in the
aisles, and they looked mad.

All the dark and scary toys Daniel had seen
while he walked with the Uncle Charlie-thing had left their spots
on the shelves and were waiting for him. The teddy bears clacked
their sharp claws, and the monkey bared its pointed teeth and
chittered at him. The dolls with their mean little eyes all stared
at him, and worst of all was a clown with the kind of grin that
made Daniel think the clown wanted to eat him. All the toys marched
toward him, backing him up against the door.

Daniel didn't know how far it was to the
front of the store—he'd walked for a long time—but right now it
seemed like forever away. He didn't think he could make it. He'd
left G.I. Joe behind in that terrible place, and when he slammed
the door shut, he felt like he'd left the only brave part of
himself behind with Joe.

The bear closest to Daniel swiped at his leg
with its claws. Daniel kicked it, and it felt just like one of his
sister's teddy bears.

They were just toys.

No matter how scary they looked, they were
just toys.

Hoss wouldn't let a few toys stop him.

Daniel pushed himself away from the door and
ran right at the toys. He kicked them and punched them and threw
them out of his way. After they fell, they got to their feet and
came at him again, but Daniel's legs were longer and he was scared
enough that he ran faster than he'd ever run in his life.

He ran and ran and ran. Past the empty,
grimy shelves. Past the cracked walls and cobwebbed ceiling. He
heard the toys chasing him, growling and snarling and making that
terrible monkey chittering noise. Something jumped on his shoulder
and he threw it off without looking at it. It felt soft, like a
stuffed toy, but its fur was rotten and it stank of the place on
the other side of the door.

As Daniel ran, the store began to expand
around him. The walls grew taller and the ceiling lifted, and the
top shelves were no longer in Daniel's reach.

Daniel thought the toys had all stopped
chasing him by the time the store was at last back to its proper
size, but he didn't slow down to look.

Daniel found his mom near the front of the
store. All his bravery was gone. He yanked on her hand and yelled
at her that they had to go, had to leave, had to go
right
now
.

His mom was so shocked at Daniel's behavior
that she forgot to ask him if he wanted a toy, and she let him pull
her out the front door. He held his mom's hand for the entire bus
ride back home, and he didn't care if anyone saw him doing it. At
least he managed not to cry.

Daniel never went back to Uncle Charlie's
Toy Store. He still wanted a G.I. Joe of his own, but he felt too
sad about the G.I. Joe he'd left on the other side of the door.
Real soldiers didn't leave their buddies behind.

He wished he was brave enough to go back for
Joe. Sometimes during the day, when the sun was shining bright and
Daniel's mom had been baking chocolate chip cookies, he almost felt
brave enough to go back and get Joe.

Almost.

When he'd gotten home from Uncle Charlie's
that day, there'd been a ragged hole in the back of his jacket with
a teddy bear claw stuck inside. All Daniel had to do was look at
his jacket, and he knew he'd never go back for Joe.

As Daniel got older, his memory of Uncle
Charlie's grew dim as thoughts of football and girls and college
crowded his mind. Uncle Charlie's closed after Toys 'R Us opened
and took away Uncle Charlie's business. The building where Uncle
Charlie had his store stood vacant until it was eventually torn
down to make room for a new movie theater.

Daniel took his family to a movie there only
once. On the way back to the car after the movie, Daniel's son
found a small plastic gun in a patch of dead grass by the side of
the theater in about the same spot where Uncle Charlie's front door
used to be. Daniel recognized the gun; it was a G.I. Joe gun.

Even though his son cried, Daniel took the
gun away. Late that night, after his wife had gone to sleep, Daniel
took a box down from his closet shelf and put the gun inside with
the coat he'd had as a boy.

"Goodbye, Joe," Daniel said.

He smoothed the collar of his old jacket and
fingered the ragged hole in the shoulder, then he closed the box
and put it back on the shelf.

Harley and the Alien

Harley was named after the motorcycle her
momma won from her daddy in a game of chicken.

Until she was ten, Harley always thought
that meant her momma and her daddy shuffle-danced around each
other, flapping their arms like they were wings and making
bwack-bwa-bwa-bwack!
sounds at each other, until her daddy
fell down and her momma got to crow out a victory caw. Harley got
somewhat disillusioned—and a little terrified, to be honest—when I
told her playing chicken meant her momma rode a borrowed motorcycle
straight at her daddy while each of them pointed ten foot hollow
pipes they'd scavenged from a junk yard at each other, like they
were knights riding on horses or something.

Well, the story goes that Harley's momma
knocked her daddy clean off his hog, like to put that metal pipe
right through his shoulder, and then muscled his motorcycle up off
the pavement and rode on out of town before his boys could catch
her.

By then it was too late to undo the lovin'
that would eventually become Harley. Even for a woman as tough as
Harley's momma, being alone with a baby on the way wasn't easy in
those days, so Harley's momma—Maxine was her name—went home to live
with her daddy, Big George.

That's me. Big George Wannamaker, and I'm an
alien.

Oh, you can relax right now. I'm as human as
the next fella, probably more than the next fella. I just don't
belong here, precisely.

That don't mean I belong on the other side
of that imaginary line that separates the good old U.S. of A. from
its neighbors to the north or south, neither. See, I'm just not
from this particular time zone, would be a good way putting it. I
got stuck here a long time ago, and I learned to make the most of
it.

Here
is the little plot of land in
the middle of a great big dusty, dirty desert my great, great,
great grandpappy bought after he got home from World War II. He
passed it on to his son, who nearly lost it in a poker game down in
Reno, who passed it on to his son, who got killed by some damn fool
idiot high on meth when the damn fool high on meth knocked on the
wrong trailer door late one night.

Lucky for me, the family line didn't die out
with him. Unlucky for my great, great grandmamma, she lost the land
to the bank, but it turned out all right in the end. The bank lost
the land to the government when the bank went belly up. Since the
government lost me, in a manner of speaking, I figured reclaiming
my ancestors' land as my own makes a kind of karmic sense.

So there I was, prepared to live out my days
all by my lonesome in the land of my ancestors. I didn't intend to
start up the Wannamaker line all over again, but I fell in love
with Maxine's momma, a pretty woman who didn't mind sleeping with a
man who muttered to his wrist using words she didn't understand.
See, I've got a communications whatsamajig under the skin of my
left wrist, but the damn thing malfunctioned. That's what stranded
me here. Every now and then I checked it, just to make sure, but in
the forty or so years I've been in this time zone, nobody ever
answered me.