Imaginary Playmate

by Brett Rutherford

It was my secret place
away from bath-time and spanking,
away from Grandfather’s grizzled hugs,
from the cries of the baby brother,
away from heat and brambles,
blackberry barb and poison ivy —
a cool-air haven
where the acrid fumes
of coke-oven smoke
never intruded:
the “spring-house,”
a covered well, actually,
a cobwebbed shed
of cool-sweated pump and pipes.

Here I could sit
behind its plank door,
imagining another door,
flat on the concrete,
that opened downward
to a treasure cave,
a city of runaways,
a subterranean launch-pad
for moon rockets.

One day a man was there,
crouching inside
beneath a straw hat,
a shoulder pack,
more frightened of me,
it seemed, than I of him.

I sat beside him
on the cold stone lip
of the gurgling well.
His whispered words
were barely louder
than the distant coal trucks,
the chirring cicadas.
His name was Eric, 

a young man, yet
bigger than my father.
He asked about my mother,
my teacher, the friends
I would see again
in second grade in the fall.
“Too bad your mother is married,”
he said. “She’s pretty.
I watched her from the road.”

Two weeks he hid there,
sleeping all morning.
I brought him cookies.
He taught me games.
Once, I touched
the soft blond beard
that glazed his cheekbones.
I could tell him anything.

Soap opera organ
rose to a frenzy
on the oval-windowed
new television
as someone yelled:
“Kidnapped!
Our son has been kidnapped!”

What’s kidnap? I ask my mother.
She, ironing, from the other room:
That’s when they steal a child
and then ask for money.

I thought it might be fun
to be kidnapped.
I might even get to keep
some of the money.

Just watch out for strange cars,
my mother warned.

One day I mentioned Eric
at the dinner table.
“That’s all he talks about,”
my mother explained.
“That’s his friend,
his imaginary playmate.”
My father grew angry.
They shouted
as I read comics in my bedroom.

One day, my father took me
to a roadside tavern.
He sat in the back
with his band leader,
played an illegal
slot machine.
They worked on “Stardust”
together, his clarinet
and Tony’s trumpet.

A strange man came in,
saw me alone,
gave me a nickel
to buy potato chips.

As my father returned,
I asked my new friend,
“Can I have another nickel?”
My father exploded,
shouted at the stranger:
“No one gives my kid money!”

The stranger left hurriedly.

Why did he go? Strangers seemed

kinder to me than parents.
I thought about kidnapped children,
sweets and sodas everywhere,
fresh bread from the oven,
mountains of comic books,

a long wait for the ransom,
maybe never.

At home, the spring-house was locked.
My mother doled out dinner:
government surplus beef
and slices of cheese
off a long square loaf.
Some nights we ate bread
and gravy and radishes.

I stayed indoors all summer.
Sometimes at night
I thought I saw someone
cross from the poplars,
to the spring-house, then back again,
a lanky form darting
from shadow to shadow.

I sleepwalked many nights,
awaking against the locked
front door. On other nights
I dreamt my own door
at the back of the closet.
I opened it, to another door,
and yet another, until sleep
vacuumed me to darkness.

I never mentioned Eric again.

Years later I heard
of the men who slept
in the nearby foothills,
setting up camp
in the abandoned ovens —
draft dodgers avoiding
the Korean War call-up.

Years after that I suddenly
remembered him again —
his soft tenor voice in the shadow,
the friend to whom I said,

“Would you kidnap me someday?
I’ll never tell . . . I promise.”