Chapter 20

Sean returned home and heard the noise of a power saw ripping through wood coming from the garage. Curious, he headed over to find out what was happening. He found his father cutting a large sheet of plywood. He waited until his father finished the cut and turned off the saw to ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m building something for your mother,” his father answered stepping back. He put the saw down on the floor.

“What are you building?” Sean asked trying to make sense out of the pile of wood on the floor.

It looked like a bunch of scrap wood strewn about the garage at random.

“I don’t know,” his father answered putting his hands on his hips.

“You don’t know what you’re building,” Sean said.

“That’s right.” His father stepped back and looked at the wood scattered around the garage. He pursed his lips while looking over his work and said, “It is going to be really nice when I get it done.”

“Will you know when it is done?” Sean asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course I will. Your mother will tell me,” his father answered.

Talk of his mother reminded Sean of her behavior ever since getting released from jail. He said,

“Mom has been kind of quiet the past few days.”

“You know your mother,” his father said looking over at him.

“She only gets quiet when she’s plotting something,” Sean said watching his father for a reaction. His father only shrugged his shoulders.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any paint left over from your job painting the Dairy King, would you?” his father asked.

Sean crossed his arms and stared at the pile of lumber. The pieces finally came together in his head and he said, “You’re building a billboard. Mom is going to put it up across the street from the theater with some kind of weird protest message written on it.”

“Now that you mention it, it does look like a billboard,” his father said rubbing his chin.

“It is one,” Sean said. He could see his mother sneaking out there in the middle of the night to erect the billboard. She would wear a black leotard with lampblack on her face. Knowing her, she would have a tail attached to the leotard so that it would be a cat suit. Come to think of it, she would probably wear cat ears, too.

“Maybe, maybe not,” his father said with a smile. He was having similar images of his wife.

Rather than imagining her wearing a leotard; he was seeing her in a latex cat suit.

Sean said, “What is she going to write on the billboard?”

“She promised me that she wasn’t going to do that,” his father said.

“You believed her?” Sean asked incredulous.

“Of course,” his father said.

“I think someone just fell off the turnip truck,” Sean said.

“Did you have any paint left?”

“I put a half a can of white and a quarter can of green by the dumpster,” Sean answered.

“Perfect. Go get them,” his father said.

Rather than try to talk his dad out of making the billboard, Sean turned and headed down the path to fetch the paint. He walked along the path thinking of how many times he had traveled it over the past few years. As had become habit, he moved little stones onto the path using his magic gift.

It didn’t take him long to reach the Dairy King. He paused to examine the paintjob thinking that he had actually done a pretty good job of it. Feeling a rather nice sense of satisfaction, he went over to the dumpster where the cans of paint were stacked. Most of the cans were empty, but two held some paint and those had been set aside from the rest. He ordered the metal handles to lift the cans from the ground. Once they were high enough, he grabbed the handles. The magic carried the weight of the cans while he directed their motion.

Carrying the two cans of paint effortlessly, Sean walked along the path to return home. Nothing caught his attention until he noticed some movement at the spot where the path from Max’s house joined the main path. He snuck over to see what was moving around. He was surprised to see Max hiding in the bushes. He said, “Hello, Max.”

Max jumped five feet in the air and spun around to face Sean. He landed and promptly fell on his ass. He then scuttled back until he hit the tree behind him. He squawked, “Sean!”

“What are you doing?” Sean asked.

“I was trying to spot the midgets,” Max answered looking around wildly. He figured if Sean was here, that the midgets weren’t too far away.

“There aren’t any midgets,” Sean said.

Max stared at Sean unable to believe that he was denying what had happened that horrible morning weeks ago. He said, “You know I’m not crazy. You were there and saw what the midgets did to me.”

“They weren’t midgets,” Sean said patiently.

“Yes, there were. There were three of them,” Max said getting angry.

“They weren’t midgets; they were Dwarves,” Sean said.

“What are you talking about?” Max asked thinking that Sean was making fun of him.

Sean let go of the paint cans and moved over to Max. The cans floated in the air. Max stared at the cans and said, “I’m going crazy.”

“No, you aren’t,” Sean said patiently.

“I’m seeing things,” Max said nearly on the verge of tears. The entire time he had been in the hospital, he had been convinced that he had seen midgets and they had thrown him into the woods. Seeing two paint cans floating around destroyed his confidence in his sanity.

Glancing in the direction Max was staring, Sean realized that he had forgotten to set the cans down. He said, “I’m sorry Max. You aren’t going crazy. Those cans are floating.”

“That’s not possible,” Max said. His arms started shaking uncontrollably. All of the charges of weird behavior his father was saying he was doing suddenly seemed possible.

“Max, look at me,” Sean said moving so that he blocked Max’s view of the paint cans.

“I don’t want to be crazy,” Max said feeling like he wanted to curl into a little ball and die. He covered his eyes with his hands.

Sean looked over his shoulder and ordered the paint cans to settle on the ground. He turned back to look at Max and could see that the young man was completely shattered. The guilt he felt was almost overwhelming. He sat down and said, “You don’t really know what happened that morning. You might think you do, but you don’t.”

Max slowly looked up at Sean and, wiping the tears from his eyes, said, “I know what happened to me.”

“Yes, but that isn’t the whole story,” Sean said. Seeing that Max wasn’t going to cooperate and listen, he decided that it would be best if Max told his side of the story first. He said, “Tell me what you think happened that morning.”

Max said, “I got up that morning and decided to go for an early jog. I sometimes jog down the path to the road and then follow the road back up to the house. It is about a mile.”

“I didn’t realize it was that far,” Sean said.

“It is,” Max said. He usually made a round trip in the morning for a nice two mile run.

“So what happened when you went out for your jog?” Sean asked trying to get Max back on topic.

“I got here and started doing my warm up exercises. The next thing I know is there’s a midget dude wearing a dress stepping out of the woods. At least, that’s what I thought at first,” Max said shaking his head. He added, “Midgets have always kind of creeped me out, but a transvestite midget is too much. It just isn’t right for guy with a beard to have breasts and walk around wearing a dress.”

“So what did you do?” Sean asked.

“When the midget kept insisting that it was a woman, I picked it up to prove that it was a guy,”

Max said. This was the first time in telling the story that he had mentioned that part.

“That’s very rude,” Sean said. He figured that was about the time he had come across the scene.

“It was a midget and I was sure that it was a transvestite. A transvestite midget has got to expect those kinds of things,” Max said defending his actions. In hindsight, it did seem kind of indefensible.

“That doesn’t matter. It is still a person,” Sean said. He shook his head and said, “You can’t go around treating people like that.”

“I guess. I sure was surprised to discover that it weren’t no guy,” Max said with a puzzled expression on his face. Of all the things that happened that morning, he still wasn’t sure that he’d seen what he’d seen. He looked over at Sean and added, “I was trying to figure out if it was the result of some weird sex change operation.”

“You could have asked,” Sean said.

Max said, “That’s when you came charging at me.”

“I thought you were holding up a little girl,” Sean said.

“I guess from where you were that it kind of looked like that,” Max said. The idea that someone would think that he would do something like that to a little girl made him feel very uncomfortable.

“It did,” Sean said.

“After you hit me, I was really out of it. You got me right in the balls,” Max said glaring over at Sean. He didn’t think that was a fair thing to do in a fight.

“It was an accident. I tripped,” Sean said.

“I was just recovering a bit when that midget picked me up and threw me into the woods,” Max said. It didn’t seem possible to him that someone that small could toss him that far.

“I’ve got to admit, that took me by surprise,” Sean said.

“I crawled out and another midget threw me back in the woods. I landed against a tree. That really hurt and it took me a long time to get up. I crawled back here, but you were gone and so were the midgets,” Max said. He had returned home and tried to explain what happened, but it had all come out confused.

Sean said, “You see, they weren’t little people. They are Dwarves like out of a fairy tale. She wasn’t a transvestite midget, Clea is a female Dwarf. Female Dwarves have beards.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Max said confident that Sean was the one telling the crazy story that should have gotten him locked up.

Sean shook his head and said, “No, I’m not. They really are Dwarves like out of a fairy tale.”

“I think that is a little weirder than midgets,” Max said.

“Suzie says that midgets prefer to be called little people,” Sean said.

“Whatever,” Max said.

Sean said, “After Clea threw you in the woods, they offered me a gift of magic.”

He looked at Sean for a moment thinking that the story was getting less believable by the minute. Skeptically, he said, “So you say that they gave you magical powers.”

“Well, they offered me a gift of magic. I had to come back at noon to actually receive it,” Sean explained.

“So what can you do?” Max asked.

“I can order lightweight objects to do things,” Sean answered. Saying it aloud didn’t make it sound too impressive, but he knew otherwise. With a little creativity, he had been able to do a lot with that gift of magic.

“Lightweight objects?”

Sean looked around and ordered a rock to fly to his hand. Max jumped when he saw the rock fly through the air. Sean held up the rock between his thumb and forefinger. He said, “Stay.”

Removing his hand, the rock floated in the air exactly where it had been. Seeing the rock floating in midair caused Max reassess the whole story. Speechless, he said, “Oh.”