A Few Quick Things
I used to love this man, a local old guy with some talent for ventriloquism. Mr. Bobby, and the dummy was called Bartolo. They played birthday parties, school assemblies, that kind of thing. Mr. Bobby would pop his eyes wide and smile huge and the dummy would shout, “Who loves you?” and all the kids would shout back, “Bartolo!” Like: BAR! TOW! LOW! Once, I saw him perform in the big gazebo in the park. The next day, I slid one of my father’s tube socks over my hand and practiced my own act in front of the bathroom mirror. ‘Hello.’ I spoke for the sock. ‘I’m Timmy the Sock. Hello, I’m Timmy. Hello, I’m Timmy. ‘After an hour, I got pretty good. The secret lay in completely relaxing the jaw. “I’m Timmy,” the sock said and I responded, “Hello, Timmy. I’m the little kid with his hand up your butt.” We died laughing.
But Dad knocked once and opened the door before I could say, “Just a second.” Which is the only way he ever dealt with a closed door that I was behind. I don’t know if he heard me laughing or if he thought I’d been in the bathroom way too long for a #2.
“What the hell are you doing?” His jaw barely moved. His eyebrows, fat caterpillars, stayed right where they were atop his eyes.
“Nothing, Dad.”
He leaned half-way in, his thick, perpetually greased mechanic’s hand choking the doorknob. “Is that my sock?”
“Well. It’s Timmy.” I spread my fingers wide inside the sock and waved.
“Timmy.” He stared at my socked hand. Then, “I don’t want you to get any wrong-headed ideas. Someday you’ll have to get a job so you can put food on your own kid’s plate.”
“I know.” I didn’t know. I was in fourth grade, maybe fifth.
“Tools. Pneumatics.” He took his hand off the doorknob and made a fist with it. We stared at each other for what felt like forever and when I shoehorn the me of now into that little kid version of me in my memory, I get a sense of what we were both thinking: ‘Who the hell are you supposed to be?’
“He’s probably a perv.”
“A what?” I tugged the sock off my hand.
“He’s pervy, I bet, that Mr. Bobby.” He gestured to the bathroom window, like Mr. Bobby had been lurking, sneaking glimpses. The sun was coming in through the crabapple tree.
“Anyway, I have to run to Dave’s. You coming with me?”
I said yes automatically, mechanically and he added, “Maybe we’ll find you some baseball cards.”
Dave’s, the convenience store in the neighborhood, just far enough away that to walk would’ve been inconvenient. I followed Dad to his Regal in the driveway, watched him swing the door open, plop into the driver’s seat. The big car wobbled on its suspension. I ran around to the passenger’s side, heaved back the enormous door, and climbed in. Vinyl seats, and they would skin you on a hot day if you were wearing shorts.
It was a three-minute drive. “Well,” Dad said and drummed the steering wheel. At the stop sign at the end of our street, he said, “We just need a few quick things.” When Dave’s came into view, he said, “I might cook out tonight. Maybe you and me can throw the ball around while we wait on the burgers, huh?”
I nodded.
In Dave’s, Dad hello’d the kid behind the register and we turned down the first aisle and almost ran over Mr. Bobby. Dad put his hand on my shoulder. Mr. Bobby looked older than how he looked on stage, a lot older. He was stooped, for one thing, one shoulder lower than the other. His thin gray hair sprouted all over. He was wearing a yellow tank top with a big Nike swoosh and his skinny arms hung down like ape arms. In each hand, he was toting a case of Coors Light.
“Mr. Bobby,” I breathed.
“Hey, yeah, yessir.” Mr. Bobby popped an instant smile, the big stage smile, which he aimed at me first, then shined on Dad.
“Excuse us.” Dad’s voice was low.
“I’m going to be a ventriloquist too and I’ve been working on my act and my dummy is Timmy and right now he’s a sock but I’m saving up for a real one and I’m going to move to Las Vegas.”
“Is that right, little man? Well. Showbiz, well, it’s nothing easy, but it always needs more of us. People like you who’d dare to get up there. Brave kiddos with something to say.” He lifted one of the cases of beer halfway, gesturing toward a universal stage, one close by, perfectly lit, just outside somewhere.
“We’re here for charcoal.” Dad squeezed my shoulder and steered me around and past Mr. Bobby. “We’re cooking out tonight.”
“Well, that sounds very nice. It was very nice to see you. Keep it up, now. And Bartolo says hello,” Mr. Bobby said, but I barely heard it. Dad had shoved me to the end of the aisle and around to the next.
He hefted a big blue and white Kingsford bag up to his shoulder. A little rain of black coal dust fell down his back. Then he marched to the beer cooler and grabbed a case of Blatz and handed it to me. “Hold this.” He reached in and grabbed another and said, “Let’s go.” By the register, by the gum and candy, sat the display of baseball cards. Dad grabbed a pack and threw it onto the counter. The kid checked us out and we went out to the car and dad sat the charcoal and beer in the back seat and handed me the cards.
“Open it up,” he said, and I obeyed. The little wax packs were sealed with barely any glue. I slid a finger under the flap and popped it open.
“Who do you have?”
I held up the first card. “Don Mattingly.”
“Donnie Baseball.” Dad said and leaned forward on the steering wheel. “Who else?”
I took out the next card, held it up, turned it in my fingers. “Ozzie Smith.”
“The Wizard of Oz.” Dad looked at me. “That’s a good one. Let me see. Who else?”
Paul Luikart is the author of the short story collections Animal Heart (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016), Brief Instructions (Ghostbird Press, 2017), Metropolia (Ghostbird Press, 2021), The Museum of Heartache (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2021), The Realm of the Dog (J. New Books, 2024), Cult Life (Tenpenny Books, 2024), and Mercy (Walnut Street Publishing, 2025.) He serves as an adjunct professor of fiction writing at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He and his family live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
