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A Mechanical Emergency

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Lucas is crumpled in the shade of a large live oak tree. It’s almost impossible to see him huddled against the tree’s trunk, but easy enough to hear him sobbing. His face is streaked with mud where he’s swiped at his eyes.

He holds his new toy truck like it’s a wounded bird. “Ohhhhhhh, Mister Two Horses,” he sobs, “mah-mah-my new truck. I feh-fell, and now thuh-huh-huh wheeeeel came off and it’s broh-oh-oh-oken.” He stares at the severed wheel with eyes that are spilling tears.

“Well, now we know how much ya really like it, but ya know, I wasn’t in any doubt ’bout that before,” Hal says. “Not one bit.” He stands a moment. “Mind if I sit with ya a spell, maybe have a look at it?”

Lucas gives that weird bubbling noise that happens when you’re trying to suck in air and stop crying at the same time. “Please– can you-ou fix it?”

“Ya trust me ta take a look at it, when it’s kinda hurt from being busted?” Hal says.

Lucas gives a quick nod, holding it up. He sucks in another breath, steadies himself.

“Okay, okay, ya got all the parts safe?” Hal says, holding it up, squinting. “Well, a’course you know Penelope could wind some string on dis in five seconds and it’s gonna hold forever and a day extra, but it’ll still look like it’s got string tied on it. Black marker’d take care of that, mostly. Hmm. It’s the metal parts I’m cogitating about the most. Hmm. Might have to talk to Steve ’bout getting a new axle rod on dis bad boy. Now dese plastic parts, I’m sure she’s got some kinda glue that’d work on this kind of plastic, she does love her box of glues. Mebbe you ain’t seen that yet? Awesome, man. I think she could glue her head ta the wind and fly away with dat!”

Lucas sniffs once, loudly, tries to smile. “It’s– I only have two toys. I feel stupid that I broke one.” He looks at Hal, squints. “I had lots of toys at home, but Mom– Mom says we’re never going back home.”

“Well, you know, depends where I am, what I call home, speakin’ strictly fer myself,” Hal says, leaning back against the tree, and avoiding the little trail of ants trooping up the bark. “See, when I’m at Pen’s place a spell, and I’m givin’ directions to some new person, I might say, ‘Oh then you turn right and when you smell bacon, you’re home.’ But if I’m havin’ fried fish at Aunt Frog’s place, then I’ll tell your mom, ‘Hey, come on home, we got cracklins and biscuits and gravy and dah best damn catfish you ever had!’ And it will be, right? All places you call home. Now, where you used to live all the time, that sounds like a lot of fun, all those toys–”

Lucas frowns. “It wasn’t…fun. It was a lot of work. But I liked having all my stuff.”

“And you’re not workin’ now? Aren’t you learnin’ things in dah woods, and helpin’ fix things with me and your mom and helpin’ Aunt Frog, and doin’ your homework? Learnin’ that music Mister Dance gives you every week? I mean, come on, I see you get done and you’re sweatin’, man, like you run a good lap ’round the house or three. Dat ain’t work?”

“No, that’s fun.” He nods, quite serious about it all. “Well, not the homework part.”

“So would it be more fun ta have the stuff you used ta have?”

“Well… yeah.” He thinks. “Maybe.” Maybe some of that stuff is for babies, now that he thinks about it. Then it comes out, without him even thinking about it. “Do you think Uncle Russ misses us?”

“Oh, prolly he does, man, from all you and your mom said. But it wasn’t safe stayin’ either. It really wasn’t. Your mom was one smart lady, getting both of you out of dere.”

“Why did we have to leave? Mom just said we had to. And then she started to cry, but not like she does when she’s sad. She cried like she does when she’s mad.”

Hal looks at him for a bit. “You know how grownups don’t say things sometimes and it drives you crazy?”

Lucas nods until he feels like his head is going to come right off. But then he gets worried. “Yeahhhh….”

“Let’s just say grownups know a lot of scary stuff, really scary stuff, Lucas–and I don’t like scarin’ myself, either! Some of that nasty stuff scares me–” he takes a deep breath, and blows it out, and swipes his hair out of his face like he does when he’s puzzling out what to do, and it’s not easy. “We’re gonna be brave, Lucas, okay? I don’t have your mom’s consent to talk about it to you, so it ain’t my right ta tell ya, even if I knew about the whole thing. I’m not even sure your mom knows everything dat was going on, but your mom’s got real good instincts about dis stuff. So I’m gonna talk to her, and then we’ll sit down and talk about it together, all three of us, because you’re smart and we can use all the help we can get, right? I know it’s frustrating, but we gotta think about this the right way. We should talk to the Aunties about it, too, once we figure out what’s safe to tell people. And you know a lot about computers, you could learn a lot more than we know about it right now, but you gotta be careful, too. It’d be like calling bugs down on you by yelling out right where you are.”

Bugs were scary and smelled funny. Lucas knows that they could kill him, if he ever let them catch him. “Mister Two Horses, why do some zoothingies like me and some want to hurt me? What makes the bugs different from… you or Miss Estelle? Well, besides the smell.”

“Well, dah bugs were regular people first, and some very bad things happened to dem, and now dey don’t have any choice, dey got to do what dey’re told by dah things stuck in deir heads. Dey hurt a lot, they’re angry all the time, boy, it is no fun at all, and it hurts them if ya take the bug parts away again. Miss Estelle, and me, we were born dah way we are. Mebbe it’s an accident dat we’re like this, but we grew up like dis. Now, ya know dere’s some folks, dey grow up okay for a while, but then things change and suddenly dey have ears or a tail or whathaveyou, and then dey aren’t used to it. Dey gotta figure things out. Dey can be happy about it and find some people who like dem the way dey are, and den figure how they can use it to help people–like Aunt Penelope does. Or Mister Dance. Or they can decide they’re really mad and unhappy with how people treat them, and nobody will ever love dem anyway, and why don’t dey just run away and hide, and hurt anybody who tries to make dem do things? Boy, do I know how dat feels, too. No fun! So you can see how you’d treat people really differently, right?”

“Yeah, I don’t act the same when I’m mad, either. So were you ever mad about being like you are and wanting to hurt people?”

“Oh man, was I ever,” says Hal. “I did some truly dumb stuff, got myself in all kinda trouble, got dah attitude adjustment of my life, believe me. And I got lucky. Aunt Frog, she just kept looking till she found me again. I am so lucky, I can’t tell you. Any time I start feeling fretted, I think about the day I saw her come ta get me back, and I am okay with all kinds of stuff. I am all right. Lots of folks ain’t so lucky.”

“Where were your mom and dad?”

“Nobody knows,” Hal says. “Aunt Frog adopted me when I was about, oh, three or four, I think. She thought I was just a colt got loose, come in the stable next morning and found me curled up human-shape in the hay. Nice and warm and dry, oh man, I was happy. Man, Aunt Frog always keeps a nice clean stable, too.”

“So Auntie Frog isn’t your real aunt just like Uncle Russ isn’t my real uncle? Sometimes you look kinda the same, and talk kinda the same.”

“Auntie Frog is about as real an aunt as ya’ll ever see, trust me. Especially with dah talking, yeah! You mean blood relative, in the genetics, right?”

Lucas is confused for a second. Then he remembers what relative means. “Yeah, I think.”

“We don’t even know dat. I might be related to her, somewhere. Dere’s a couple of folks who left town, never came back, real sudden, and the two of dem might have been my parents. We don’t know. We just don’t know. And that’s different from somebody like Estelle, or like Mister Dance, where somebody took bits and bobs and stirred them like stew, and here’s a person with feathers. Who was their momma? Well, you know what I say? I say that person’s real momma and poppa were the folks who raised ’em. The folks who took care of dem when dey were sick, or when dey were all mad, or when dey weren’t being so smart about things, or when dey were havin’ a tough time in school. That’s their parents, the folks who loved ’em. I know dere’s folks where it bothers dem a lot, not knowing, but the folks who cared for dem, dat’s who shaped dem the most, for good or ill.”

Lucas suddenly feels like he’s gonna cry again. He doesn’t want to, but he might. He asks, very quietly, “Do you ever wish that you had a mom and dad, even though you have Aunt Frog?”

“Oh hell yeah,” Hal says comfortably, leaning into the tree. “I just knew dey were gonna drive up in a big shiny car in cool clothes and take me to my real home, outta all this muddy damn poverty and mess. Yup. Irony is, Auntie Frog is more royalty in our tribe than most of this swamp has ever known. And she don’t give a damn about shiny cars. She got bigger things on her mind than that. Which, now I’m older and had my attitude adjusted a coupla times, I do understand she’s right a lot better. You can change your mind as you get older. It’s okay.”

So Mister Two Horses had wished that stuff, too. Now Lucas does start to cry, big gulping sobs that kinda make him ashamed to be such a big baby. He would trade all the toys he ever had just to have a mom and a dad like most of his friends back in Philadelphia. He misses his friends, too. Mom made him promise he wouldn’t try to talk them online, he must use all new names and never go back even to look, it was too dangerous, and he might endanger them. And she said it all quiet and scary, meaning it was really important. Get away from bugs and run important.

Mister Two Horses looks at him. He doesn’t offer to hug him or hold him like Mom would. Uncle Russ would be lecturing him right now to control himself. But Mister Two Horses’s not doing that, either. He just looks at Lucas, not blinking. Slowly, very slowly, something about his head changes shape and he’s got big old dog ears pricked up on the top of his head, and he’s got a snout, and he’s leaning his nose on Lucas’s shoulder, looking at him. Mister Two Horses is not a small dog; and he’s not entirely a dog right now, he’s something in between. It’s a little odd-sounding, but he says, “I hear ya, man.”

Lucas blinks at him, surprised, then reaches out and scratches his neck. “I thought you never changed where people could see–”

Astonishment has stemmed the tears completely, and he doesn’t even notice.

“Yeah,” Hal says, and his ears start moving back down onto the sides of his head, slowly. The long snout retreats. “Don’t want ta scare people.”

“That’s so cool. I always wanted a dog,” Lucas sighs, “but Uncle Russ said that they were dirty.”

“Oh no,” Hal says. “Only when people don’t let them keep clean. Horses and pigs and dogs, they want their fur clean and their feet nice and dry, just like people. And they like a nice bath sometimes too.”

“Does that mean I can get a dog?”

“It isn’t my house to say so, it’s Aunt Frog’s, and your mom would have ta clean up after it a lot, too,” Hal says. “I am not about to give two women like dat more work to do. I am also a very large dog who smells weird, and it really confuses dogs who aren’t bright. Scares ’em. Finding a dog smart enough to handle me, and then keeping it from getting bored? Dere’s a chore. But you ask your mom, and if she says okay, then you can ask Frog.”

“You– you don’t… like to play fetch, do you?”

Mister Two Horses laughs that huge laugh of his. “Well, sure I do.”

“Will you play with me some time?”

“‘Course I will. Maybe tonight after dinner, even.” He raises an eyebrow. “If you help your mom do dishes.”

Lucas nods some more, feeling more excited than he has in a while. Then he remembers another question, and asks, “Mom doesn’t cry any more. Is she going to be happy now, or is she going to get sad again?”

“Buddy of mine,” Hal says, “If I have my way, she’ll never cry like dat again.” Lucas looks over at his newest friend. He looks kinda serious, and kinda laughing, and that’s the way Mister Two Horses looks a lot of the time. “But sometimes stuff happens, and we can’t stop it, so I can’t make you no promises. I’ll just try my very best.”

“That’s kind of a promise, isn’t it?”

“It’s the kind I can keep, too,” Hal says. Then he snorts and waves one hand, and pats the toy truck gently. “Well, you know what we should do with your broken-legged truck here? We should get one of your mom’s plastic bags and put all the parts with it, and ask Steve nicely if she’s got a little rod she can cut to size for that axle, and ask her and Penelope to glue the plastic wheel and the gears back together there. You should sit and watch her do it, too, so you know how it goes back together.”

“Okay.” Lucas looks up. “Can I ask you another question, or am I bugging you?” This is kinda the most important question, and Lucas watches him carefully. Is this guy gonna be somebody to keep Mom safe and happy, or can Lucas depend on him, too? Could they be a family some day?

“You’re not bugging me.” Mister Two Horses looks at him like he has all the time in the world for his questions. “Go ahead and ask.”

“How did you get so smart?” He answered all of Lucas’s questions, and he wasn’t even sweating. Uncle Russ would have been.

Mister Two Horses looks terribly astonished for a second, like Lucas has blown a big bubble-gum bubble out his nose or something, and then he starts to laugh. He just ruffled Lucas’s hair, laughing. Together they scoop up the broken toy parts and go to find Auntie Steve to ask about that axle.

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