Today was the second meeting of a small group of writers who are working on their craft writing short stories to random prompts. I didn't get to the end in the 12 minutes we were given but afterwards, I was compelled to finish it. I hope you enjoy it.
“Handle with care.” She said, “Make sure it doesn’t break” she tells me. The only person who trusts a klutzy kid with those words is Murphy. But says them she did, right before she handed me this oddly shaped box wrapped in brown paper. “Take it to the shop on main street and tell Joseph It’s the drum he was looking for.
Seemed like an easy task, yet life has a way. When I walked out the door a cat came running from around the alley, cursing as it chased a rat. So intent upon its prey it ran right between my legs. causing me to trip. The box flew and I dove after it. It landed on my outstretched hands and I heard a tinkling of glass. “Oh shoot.” I thought. I shook the box, I could still hear the tinkling, but it didn’t seem like a loud tinkling. Maybe it had tinkled all along and I didn’t know it would tinkle because I was being so careful.
I swallowed the fear that I just broke the world and moved forward. Just as I stepped into the road, an old bug came honking by. “Watch where you’re going, are you trying to kill yourself?” yelled the driver.
I looked down at my feet where the package had fallen. This wasn’t good. I was afraid to pick it up. Maybe I could kick it and it can actually get run over and I can blame it on a car? Unfortunately, if I didn’t own up to it now, I’d have to in confession, and that would just delay my punishment.
I picked up the box. It tinkled louder. But wait… I shook it a little bit harder, what is that noise? Is that metal? It was like the tiny little “ting” you hear when a music box bump pushed the little metal rod. I shook it again and the note sounded again.
Well, I thought, there’s nothing to it. I have to deliver this package no matter. Off I go.
I was only 2 stores away from my Dad’s shop when I heard the scream. “Watch out!”
I looked up only to see something big and brown heading straight at me. In my heart, I felt the anvil crashing upon my head. In reality, the empty cardboard box barely grazed me. But it was enough. It was enough to make me drop my box on the ground and throw up my hands to protect myself from impending death. Woe always me, I thought. But I survived.
I sadly looked down at my box. It had landed in a puddle and the water was slowly seeping into the cardboard, much like the dye creeps in the water when you want to dye eggs at Easter. I picked it up by the dry corner.
I shook it again. Yep, there was still tinkling and tinging. I half expected a third sound to appear. With a sigh and drooping shoulders, I carted the box the rest of the way to my Dad’s shop.
I walked through the door accompanied by the ding-a-ling of a small bell and the electronic buzz of the alarm announcing that a customer was here.
“Dad” I yelled.
“Back here son.” He said.
I walked through the center isle of the store, the only one that wasn’t full of old wooden clocks, brass lamps with crazy carved shapes, and other assorted old things that have been pushed aside by the digital age. Behind a red curtain, my Dad sat at his work table. He had one of those flashlights mounted on a strap that you wrap around your head. He turned to look at me. I threw up my hands to block the light.
“Oh sorry.” He said as he turned off the light. Do you have the box that sister sent?”
I looked at the box in my hands. The debate in my head was this: Do I tell him before I give him the box or wait for him to see it then tell him what happened? I silently handed over the box.
Dad took the box. His eyebrows rose quizzically but he put it down on the table and started opening it. His eyes grew large and his demeanor bright. A smile stretched across his face making the valleys of age disappear.
“I can’t believe it!” he said.
“Is it okay?” I carefully asked.
“It’s beautiful.” He said.
I looked into the box. All I saw was a bunch of crystal like ovals with holes in one end and an old rusty looking music box roller that had most of its metal finger things broken, except for one.
Dad got up and took something off a shelf. He placed it on his workbench. It was a porcelain carousel about the size of a small toaster. It had 5 colorful, running horses caught in different parts of flight. Each horse was mounted to a pole that held up a towering roof, like an upside down ice cream cone with crevices like the cone was made from waffles. The tower had five sides and at each corner where the sides met, were little metal hooks.
Dad gently lifted the carousel and placed it on its side. There was a trap door on the bottom. He opened it and pulled out a music box. The metal contraption was missing the roller. He then proceeded to remove the roller from the music box that I had brought and put it into this one. Then he carefully attached it to the key.
The light went on in my brain, “Ah, Dad, is that the drum Aunt Mary was talking about?”
“Yes, son, it’s the drum. It’s what’s been missing from this music carousel for a long time.”
Dad then took the crystals, added a gold loop through the circles then hung them from the hooks on the corners of sides of the roof.
He wound the key and we both waited.
Nothing happened.
Dad nudged it a bit and the horses and roof started turning to the most beautiful tinging tune I ever heard.
“What’s that song?” “It’s called ‘Button and Bows’, it was our mama’s favorite song.”
“Was that her music box?”
“No but your aunt Mary found it at as sale once and we’ve been searching for the right size replacement drums for a long time.”
“So I didn’t break anything?”
“Why would you ask that?“
“Oh, no reason. Just that I met Murphy on the way over.”
I smiled and asked Dad to wind it up again.
