Fiction Honorable Mention, 2021 Doro Böhme Memorial Contest
McDonald’s toy collection: estimated value= $1975 or $2300 (depending on condition)
Commemorative King Kong action figure= $750 or ____? ($4000 or more if mint!)
Fisher Price’s “Pushcart Pete”= typically $3000 – $3750 (Facebook collector page)
Atari “Karate,” Ultravision= $2000 or ____ ($3000 or more if still sealed in box!)
Original “Furby”= $900 – $1250 (www.oocities.org fan club references)
Gameboy Light= $1400 or ____? (might want to let appreciate more)
Wally catalogued each entry in his little black notebook, slowly doing the math as he let out a sigh and leaned back in a chair in his father’s kitchen. Hours before, there had hardly been space to sit down. But, after a lot of work, with the help of a hired crew, he had begun to slowly make room here and there, clear things out one item or one wheelbarrow load at a time, leaving scattered, empty spaces throughout the dilapidated home.
Most of it was what he had always assumed it had been: garbage. Piles of cereal boxes. Molded quilts. Cartoon-themed towels. Countless, worthless toys. But as Wally dug into all of the piles that had long overtaken his father’s old house, he had begun to notice anomalies. The occasional action figure still sealed in its original packaging. A spotless doll, set high on some shelf in a spare room. Curiosity began to nag at him. He wondered if, maybe, something in the vast clutter might actually be worth something.
And so, he had done some research, and he had happened upon a pair of men from the city who specialized in situations like this one, in estate sales and auctions and the like, with a particular specialization in rare, sought-after toys. They would come over to your house with a team, wade through everything, and eventually take a cut from the sales of whatever was most valuable. They even had a cleaning crew who dispensed with the leftover junk: they handled it all. They called themselves Vendor Vultures, but their real names were Vince and Vance.
“I know for certain that this Beanie Baby, for example,” Vince had mused while Vance peered over his shoulder, “is worth at least a few thousand.”
“At least!” Vance licked his lips.
“The toy trains are also very interesting,” Vince added.
Trains = ____________?
“Huh,” Wally said, still in disbelief at some of the numbers they’d been tossing about. He’d suspected that he might get a few hundred dollars—maybe, in his dreams, a thousand—when all was said and done. Then again, it didn’t seem as if people like Vince and Vance got involved in the first place without seeing significant potential.
“Most of it’s junk,” Vance clarified.
Wally nodded.
“Still . . .” Vince glanced about, quietly cataloging the numerous heaps of everything from plastic cars to Lego boxes to puzzles that they had gone through by then.
Peter had been prattling with the antique shop owner when his son, Wally, appeared behind him like ____________
a guardian angel.
a police officer.
a babysitter.
“Dad.” Wally grabbed his father’s arm.
“Son, this is Mike. He’s owned this place—how long did you say?”
“Thirty-seven years.” Mike wheezed. He was paunchy, wrinkled, and holding himself upright with a cane. He grinned. “Thirty-seven.”
“Hear that?” Peter slid over, blocking Wally’s view of the countertop.
There was no sense hiding it; Wally already knew.
“You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Mike, this is my son, Wally. Tell my son what you told me about Garbage Pail Kids.”
“Oh, sure.”
Peter let go of his father’s arm, preparing himself for the story that he did not know and yet knew better in essence than any other story he had ever heard in his life. His father had told him this story and others, weaving every iteration with precise details and elaborate enthusiasm. There was this item. It didn’t look like much now, but some day this item would be worth more than ____________
a bespoke suit.
a brand-new car.
a goddamn house.
“And so these cards,” Peter cut in, “any fool could see that this is a valuable investment!”
Garbage Pail Kids were a series of eccentric trading cards that loosely parodied Cabbage Patch Kids. Each card had a character, each character a clever, usually alliterative name denoting a less-than-ideal existence. Adam Bomb was the boy who had a nuclear explosion for a head. Jay Decay was the zombie that rose out of his grave. Junky Jeff was the one consumed with garbage, coated by scraps, dented cans, and dirty utensils, with a feral, Garbage Pail Feline for a sidekick.
Mike’s eyebrows rose and fell, rose and fell as Peter added his trademark flourishes.
“They’re going to be bigger than baseball cards. My favorite for a future 1952 Mickey Mantle of the bunch is Nasty Nick and Evil Eddie. But that’s two cards, you say! Not entirely true. Mike, tell him about . . .”
“Dad!” Wally grabbed his father’s arm again. He wondered if it would require handcuffs to get him to leave this shop. He wondered what it would take this time, how much of a scene he would make.
“I know we’re late for lunch, so I’ll just . . .” Peter reached into his pocket for his wallet.
“Sir? . . . Mike?” Wally reached behind his father, discovering on the countertop not only a stack of those unusual cards, but several toy cars, misfit dolls, and a wooden piggy bank shaped like a coffin. “Thank you very much for your time. We’re not purchasing anything today. Time to leave, Dad.”
“Mike, would you mind setting these aside for . . .”
Then Wally was tugging him out the front door.
When they reached the curb, Wally’s stomach turned at the sight of his father’s car. He could barely see into it. Newspapers and stuffed animals, clothing and dolls and cups with odd cartoons painted on them consuming every visible space of the interior. There was barely room for anyone to even sit in the driver’s seat, and the passenger seat was stacked so high with junk that it leaned precariously, all but promising that a future quick turn or sudden stop would send detritus tumbling over the wheel, across the windshield, and behind the pedals. How something catastrophic had not already happened was ____________
a glitch.
a blessing.
a mystery.
“This car isn’t safe to drive, Dad. Let me take you home.”
“You know,” Peter peered at him as he opened the door to his car, “sometimes it’s like you’re the father and I’m the son.”
Peter had passed away two weeks prior. He’d managed to call 911 in the midst of a stroke but had tripped over something in his kitchen and hit his head on a table on his way to the stained linoleum floor. The paramedics later told Wally that his neck had been broken from the fall, long before they arrived, and that if the fall hadn’t done him in, the stroke likely would have—and so, Wally could at least take a little solace in thinking that maybe nothing could’ve been done about what happened, that maybe there was nothing to feel so guilty about in his utter inability to ever help his hoarding, hermit father. Maybe his death had been nothing but ____________
a complete accident.
a genetic probability.
a blameless departure.
Wally spent the first week, afterward, arranging a funeral for almost no guests apart from himself; and then, the following week, after his father had been buried, he immediately began to wonder what to do with the house, and the car, and the seemingly insurmountable mountains of refuse that he knew had been left, everywhere, behind.
It had taken losing his father for Wally to finally accept that he had never really known his father, that his father had always been a distant presence in his life. The hoarding had never been as bad when Wally was a child as it eventually became when he was an adult, but the signs had long been there. The subtle clutter. The buying two or three or four of any given item when he needed one. The piles that would one day become peaks had been forming for years, decades; and now, Wally had to accept that he’d never taken the time to understand the why of it all, that he’d only ever devoted his energy to trying to make it stop—to herding his father out of antique shops when he would notice his car slumped outside; to showing up with garbage bags over weekends to empty out an inaccessible spare room or an unnavigable entryway, much to his father’s indignation. This had never been easy. Some moments had been harder than others.
Outside that shop all those years ago, Peter had said something else before he drove away, something that Wally had been turning over in his head ever since. Before he ducked inside the car, he hesitated, and then he said, “It’s safer this way for me. Ever consider that?”
Wally hadn’t known what to say. All these years later, he still didn’t.
“I’m thinking,” Vance did the math, “you’ll net something like $20,000.”
“Sounds about right,” Vince agreed. “After our fees, the crew, et cetera.”
Wally wrote the number in his little black notebook, filling in what had been only a blank line and a few rough estimations before. The Vendor Vultures had been at it all day long—it was beginning to grow late, and the crew were filling one final truck with debris, and hitching up the car, now emptied, to be towed away.
“We know some great realtors if you decide to put the house on the market.”
“Thank you.” Wally shook their hands and walked them to the door.
As they stepped outside, the last member of their crew finally trotted downstairs with a curious tin container in his hands. He showed it to Vince and Vance, who opened it, shrugged, and then handed it to Wally.
“Doesn’t look valuable, though maybe you’ll want to look through it. We’ll be in touch.”
Wally shut the door and drifted back through the house, seeing everywhere the discolored impressions on the floor where towers had once teetered, the numerous blank spaces where there had not so long before been compulsive excess. He knew so little about who his father was when the house was consumed with his clutter. He knew perhaps even less about him, now, since his clutter had gone.
Wally sat at the kitchen table and opened the container, which was a plain brown tin that was coated in dust and cobweb particles. Inside, he found three old photographs. One of a stark house that leaned to its left. Another of a gaunt old woman arching over a stove. Finally, one of what looked to be a very young Peter: face stained with dirt; eyes blank and joyless; gripping to his chest the frayed head of a stuffed animal.
Wally was hesitant as he opened the door to Adler Antiques. And as he approached the counter, he became only more so when he saw a young man rather than the old one that he remembered.
“Help you?”
“Mike here?”
The young man squinted. “He retired. I’m his son, Adam Adler.”
“Adam,” Wally shuffled his feet, “do you carry those Garbage Pail Kids trading cards?”
Wally waited as Adam dug around in the shop, finally returning, in a storm of coughing, with a single card. The name of this character was Junky Jeff. The rest of them had been bought.
“Did you know my father?” Adam asked as Wally looked the card over, continuing well before he had time to answer. “I should tell you that he passed, not retired. Not sure why I lied.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“He fell asleep in the shop, sitting at his desk after closing time, and he never woke up.”
Wally stared at the card. He began to wonder what he’d call his father’s character, that little boy hidden in the tin who became little more than a silhouette of a man: ____________
Problematic Parent.
Poverty’s Progeny.
Puzzling Peter.
“Dad always felt at home here.” Adam wiped some dust from the cash register.
Stephen Haines is an MFA graduate of Western Washington University and the former managing editor of Bellingham Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at Epoch Press, Rathalla Review, Sidereal, Olit, Thin Air, Adelaide, Creative Colloquy, and Bright Flash.
SPOT IMAGE CREATED BY WARINGA HUNJA
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