Chapter the 8th
Dragons chased Michael uphill and down, through forests, in and out of caves, and through the air. Just when he thought he had shaken them off, several more popped out of nowhere and chased him until Michael could run no more and he collapsed. The dragons pounced on him and clawed at the golden fruit in his body, but no matter how much they tore Michael up, they could not reach the fruit.
Thinking he had been torn to pieces, Michael awoke and found himself in his own room. He surveyed his body and found that both arms and both legs were still attached to his trunk and his belly was back in one piece. He couldn’t see his head, but when he put a hand up to it, he felt something that could be his head. Even then, Michael felt that his body was scattered over any number of worlds and that dragons were carrying the fragments of himself away to even greater distances before he could recover even the smallest part of himself.
Michael turned about in his bed, still on the lookout for attacking dragons. All there was to see was his R.E.M. poster and a week's worth of clothes strewn about the floor. He felt so drowsy, he could have taken every narcotic in the book. Michael shook himself all over to get back into command of himself. His stomach hurt. It wasn't hunger, and it probably wasn't indigestion. It just hurt. But the pain seemed to give Michael energy. He looked at his alarm clock. It read three o'clock. Sunlight pierced through the crack between the shade and the window sill. That meant it was three in the afternoon and not three in the morning. Time to deliver the papers. Not even sure which day it was, Michael jumped out of bed and picked up his newspaper bag. Something weighted it down. Michael sat back on the bed and looked into the bag. It was the book on dragons he had bought in Carelin.
Michael pulled out the book and lay it on his lap. It had dried out but clumps of pages were stuck together and water marks stained what pages were left for him to look at. He turned to a page at random and saw a picture of a dragon which could have been the model for Uncle Martin's drawing in the letter. Beneath the picture, Michael read the opening sentences:
Golden dragons are the cause of great fear among humans, yet they are the most beneficent of creatures. Their fiery breath and their sharp claws are capable of inflicting untold physical harm, but dragons always act with immense restraint. The full capabilities of dragons are not known to humans, and perhaps not to dragons themselves. What golden dragons know of their own capabilities they keep secret until such time as they choose to reveal them. This secrecy is another cause for fear. Many times, dragons have appeared to act violently and with evil intent. The truth is, however, that no recorded act of any golden dragon has failed to result in a goodness beyond human understanding.
The next half dozen leaves were stuck and Michael read no further. Besides, he had no time to lose. He was due at the paper station in just a few minutes.
"Dragon turds!" Michael muttered to himself as he closed the book and tossed it back into his sack..
Michael escaped the house without being noticed. He wondered, without caring, if anybody even knew he was missing. On the way out, he heard the drone of the television draining what was left in his father's mind. His mother was out of the house and the little siblings with her. Once outside, he began humming one of the tunes he remembered from the music played by Uncle Martin’s family the night before.
Michael’s supervisor at the paper station was on had to greet Michael.
“So! You’re on time today!” the supervisor barked. “Even a touch early!”
“Any objections?” Michael asked.
“Listen Michael Bullinger! It so happens that the entire circulation department has an objection to a whole set of customers not getting their newspapers!”
“Then they get a double treat today,” Michael replied as he stuffed the newspapers in his sack.
“Look! People want the paper right when it comes out. Newspapers are no good if their news is old.”
“If yesterday’s news is so worthless today, then it was worthless yesterday, so nobody missed anything.”
“THEY MISSED THEIR PAPERS!”
“I thought Scott was going to cover for me.”
“Never saw a sign of him.”
“How come you didn’t deliver the papers yourself?”
“Would you like a blow-by-blow account of how I spent last evening thanks to you?”
“The details would bore me.”
“They bored me last night, too. Everybody yelling the same thing as I went from door to door. I hope you understand that one more stunt like yesterday’s and you’re fired.”
“If I don’t see fit to deliver the papers one more time,” said Michael, “I’ll quit.”
The sack weighed more heavily on Michael’s shoulders than usual so that they were aching by the time he reached the first house on his route. That made Michael wonder what could have happened while he was away to swell the papers with so much extra news. Then he remembered that his book was in there among the newspapers. He wondered why Scott had failed him. He knew he was away and he knew Michael needed him to cover for him.
Michael got into the rhythm of tossing papers every-which-way on front lawns and on driveways. His mind soon wandered to his strange day in Carelin. He wondered what had paraded down the street and so enthralled the dwarf. Perhaps they were dragons and unicorns. And mastodons. Some children were chatting afterwards about how wonderful the mastodons were. When Michael saw a group of pigeons pecking at the ground, Michael stopped to look at them. His pigeon was not among them. Each time he saw a robin, he first took it for the red bird who had grown out of his cigarette package. His imagination was starting to get out of hand. Time to forget what had happened, if only he could. But if nothing else, he still had his stomach ache and its burning sense of power growing in him to remind him of where he had been.
At the next house on his route, a slender elderly woman stuck her neck out of the door right when Michael was ready to toss the paper on the lawn.
“Can you tell me why it was necessary for me to call your supervisor before I got my paper yesterday?” she asked him sharply.
“Sure. I was busy climbing a dragon tree yesterday afternoon where dragon eggs were growing. I had such a good time, I forgot about the time and I didn’t remember the time again until just now.”
Michael tossed the newspaper in the bushes and turned his back on the woman as she continued to yell at him. Four houses later, an elderly man pounced on him.
“Why didn’t you deliver my paper yesterday?”
Michael was already appreciating how boring these customers must have been for his supervisor the night before.
“I delivered all my papers yesterday," Michael retorted. He was not lying. He just knew of a reality beyond this man's knowledge.
"Then why didn't I get one?"
The power that was hurting Michael’s stomach began to surge.
"You did. Just concentrate hard on yesterday's paper. What do you see in your mind?"
The anger in the man's face faded, and a slightly hypnotized look took its place. Michael's power was working. "I see—yes, of course—just a little late—but it came all right. Sorry to give you grief about it."
Michael nodded politely and went on his way. He couldn’t help but think how much nicer the customers were in Carelin than they were in Milton. And that in spite of the fact that his Milton customers didn’t get blank, soggy newspapers yesterday. When he approached the rectory of Father Clement’s church, Michael racked his brain for new ideas as to how to package the priest’s newspaper. All his scheming dissolved, however when he found Fr. Clement waddling between the church and the rectory.
"You forgot to deliver my caterpillars yesterday," said the priest in his deep voice.
Michael looked up at Fr. Clement's large round face that made him look like an innocent cherub. The priest kept a straight face and showed no sign of anger.
"I'm sorry, father,” Michael replied with an equally straight face, “I looked all over for the best caterpillars but they all went on vacation, so I had to go on vacation, too."
"Well, maybe I can read about their vacation in the travel section of today's paper," said the priest.
Michael nodded, and moved on as quickly as he gracefully could. The priest was always killing him with kindness. Michael wondered how Fr. Clement's wife and son could stand it.
Michael's quickened steps took him to Mrs. Lear's house. He took a moment to look at the stone lions on her front porch. The fierce look in their eyes fueled the strength growing inside of him, making him feel like wrestling one or the other of them for sport. He would need that strength if ever Mrs. Lear was at home. He quickly placed her paper inside the storm door and hastened across the lawn to the next house.
On the way, something caught the corner of his eye. Against his better judgment, Michael stopped to look. There was Mrs. Lear, on her hands and knees, planting bulbs in her garden in the back yard. More alarming still to Michael, a girl was squatting on the ground, working with the old woman. What alarmed him about seeing that girl was that she was the girl Michael had pushed on the swing in Carelin. Michael could hardly believe the brightness of Mrs. Lear's face as she chatted with the girl. It was almost enough to make Michael suspect that the old woman was nice after all. Before Michael could escape from the scene, the girl saw him and waved to him.
“Thanks for pushing me!” she called out.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Thanks for not pushing my brother!” she added.
“Don’t mention that either.”
“Into which lion’s mouth did you deposit my paper?” asked Mrs. Lear, her good humor still showing.
“I placed you paper in the teeth of your front door.”
“Thank you very much. Yesterday’s blank paper was much appreciated. I can hardly wait for the news to occur.”
“Hope it’s not long,” said Michael.
“It’s up to you!”
Michael gulped and hurried away as quickly as he decently could. He trotted down the hill towards Main Street and then tried to decide what he should do next. All of the usual options were highly distasteful. What he wanted to do was go straight to Uncle Martin’s house and sink into a chair in their living room.
"Michael!"
It was Scott Simpson, limping towards him.
"That's my name. Why didn’t you sub for me on the paper route? I almost lost my job.”
Scott’s face crumbled.
“I’m sorry. I—I couldn’t walk very well. Still can’t.”
“So I see. What happened?”
“I—I fell, trying to get on a bus.”
“Tough tarantulas in Toronto.”
Scott lowered his head as if expecting a blow to the head. Michael drew back a hand to oblige but the burning life inside him seemed to restrain him this time.
“Did you have a good time in Carelin?” asked Scott.
“I suppose you could say that. How come you know where I was?”
“I got a strange invitation from an uncle I’d never heard of,” said Scott. “An Uncle Martin.”
“What right do you have to get an invitation like that?” Michael asked, his anger rising.
“None, I guess.”
Michael waited for Scott to add that he didn’t have any right to such an invitation either, but Scott didn’t say it. Michael shook his head in disgust. Scott was just too easy to browbeat. The two boys continued walking aimlessly along the street.
“What was it like?" asked Scott.
Michael grimaced. His experience was not the sort of thing he felt ready to talk about to anybody in Milton, especially not Scott.
“Oh, it’s like any small town, except you never know what the streets are going to do next and you never know what things you can’t see might be parading down the street.”
"Like what?"
"IF I KNEW WHAT THEY WERE I WOULD HAVE SEEN THEM AND THEY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN INVISIBLE TO ME!"
"Sorry I'm living," Scott replied glumly once he had recovered from the blast of Michael’s anger.
Michael quickened his steps just to make it harder for Scott to keep up with him. But Scott made the extra effort even though it made him wince with pain. Michael found himself slowing down for Scott's sake in spite of himself.
"Make a pile on the dope?" asked Michael.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I never got to Lacy's house that night."
"How come?"
"'Cause I—I saw the bus you took."
"What of it?"
"I'd never seen a bus like that before."
"So?"
"I think I saw a unicorn riding that bus."
"Maybe unicorns ride buses all the time when they're tired of galloping down city streets."
Scott looked over at the street as if he hoped a unicorn would be coming instead of a stream of cars. It reminded Michael of the dwarf's rapture over nothing.
“Why didn’t you want me along?” asked Scott.
“Why should I want you?”
“I don’t know.”
That was all Michael could take. He decided to use the power within him to make Scott shut up and go away. He concentrated on choking Scott's words and was rewarded for his efforts when Scott opened his mouth to say something, but his lips quivered and closed again. Even then, a longing look in his eyes expressed what was on his mind. Michael gave Scott a silent order to turn around and walk away. Scott lifted an arm to wave good-bye, but his arm fell back to his side before he finished the gesture. Then he turned to go, just as Michael had ordered him to. Michael looked away. It was painful enough to hear the shuffle of Scott's feet as he limped away. No need to make it worse by watching him. Michael had his own thoughts to occupy him without worrying about Scott.