(...it is funny what crosses your mind randomly. sometimes..)
I think it was a Murray.
I should know this.
It may have been red. Or orange and yellow.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't green,
but it could have been.
After years...details
about unimportant minutia tend to fade. But I can summon up the feel
of being wrapped in his arms in seconds. Light a cigarette and "taste" his kiss, even though our last was years ago.
It was my buddy's childhood toy. He remembered how excited his sister and he were when his dad brought it home. How they played with it together. He talked excitedly about his Mom, after all those years, who finally gave it back to him.
He mused that it used to have a small wagon it towed that you could ride in.
That the wagon was long gone.
Lost through the years.
Like so many things.
Innocence. Trust. Love.
These losses I could relate to.
When he talked about he and his sister playing, you could see him regress right before your very eyes. It was beautiful.
The regression...not the tractor.
The tractor was rust-flaked and well worn.
He was going to restore it.
I can't remember if he ever did.
He recalled pedalling and his sister's laughter, along with the all important fact that his Dad had brought it home to them. A tangible bit of fatherly love from a Dad who had a great deal of difficulty expressing that emotion. Something that had only worsened through his stormy teens and early twenties.
His wife was an ersatz friend of mine, back then.
When I got the call it shouldn't have surprised me.
Still, it did.
"Face it...it just doesn't fit into my decor."
(To be honest, neither he or I ever did, either.
And she hadn't discarded us.)
Yet.
She put the toy pedal tractor on eBay. Tucked it back in a spare room for the interim. I went to the listing several times. Contemplated buying the damned thing so he wouldn't lose it forever. Even asked a mutual friend if I could use his account and mailing address should I actually do it.
I was born in the morning, but it wasn't yesterday. Okay?
In the end, I waited too long to decide. And the tractor was gone. Through the years we had known each other, it was a reoccurring failure of mine when it came to him. Even the year he died. Now he is gone, too. Timing, it seems, is everything after all.
Always a cat on the wrong side of the door.
She sold the offensive metal toy for under a hundred dollars. A fraction of what it was actually worth, and the "household decor" was saved. It was far less than the amount it took from my buddy. He called. Met me to rant. Angry at first. Then resigned.
"I just don't care any more", he said.
I wish I could have believed he was just talking about the tractor. It would have made our lives much less complicated. I held him in my arms because his eyes showed the pain. The disappointment. Then the beautiful, curly-headed boy disappeared.
I realized suddenly that I didn't care any more, either.
About her.
Maybe I hadn't for a long time.
Some people's treasures are just another person's trash.
Whether they are childhood toys...or they are married to them.
I think it was a Murray.
It may have been red and yellow.
I've forgotten.
It was never my Childhood Toy, or Memory, you see.
It is only a Memory of a Memory now.
The tractor long since gone. My buddy, dead and buried.
A copy of a copy of a copy that gets progressively lighter every year.
I think it was a Murray.
Or maybe a Case
or perhaps Farmall...
