This story is taken from James Arthur’s Different Brilliant Colors, published by 96th of October Editions.
Ellie’s toy dinosaur came to life the first time at her father’s funeral. She was sitting in a chapel pew during the service, beside her mother, when Horace—her purple T-Rex—started to cry. Something squirmed in her lap, and when Ellie glanced down she saw Horace twisting about, as though caught up in a nightmare; she stared at his violet flank and saw it expanding and contracting like a bellows. He breathed, he was alive. Then she noticed tears slipping from beneath closed eyelids, even as she realized her lap had become damp.
She must be dreaming! She clutched at such a realization. Yes! Her father dying so suddenly: it simply had not happened! She was dreaming and, as proof, here was her plastic dinosaur twisting about in her lap, crying. Which was what she had been doing pretty much nonstop since her father passed away the week before. I hope Mom doesn’t think I wet myself, she thought, then pinched her arm (ouch!) and looked up and around. Oh, Ellie was awake all right. On the pulpit the minister droned on from behind his lectern, right in front of those large colorful windows. And there was Dad’s wooden casket (she absolutely hated the sight of it) and her mom sniffling into a soiled hankie (which was probably as damp as Ellie’s lap) right beside her.
Horace had been her father’s final gift to Ellie, given less than two weeks before his death. Now it wept in her lap and all she could think of was that it looked as though she had peed herself.
She glanced over at Mom, but that parent was caught up in her own grief, as were those sitting all about her. The service was well-attended (her dad had been much loved), and yet everyone was so absorbed in their own reflections and sorrows that Ellie Bodeman sat essentially alone. She often felt alone, playing by herself in her own backyard, but she had never felt this alone in her life. .
Returning her attention to Horace, who had meanwhile curled up like a contented kitten in her lap, Ellie realized that along with the tears soaking her black dress (purchased especially for this terrible occasion) Horace seemed heavier—a living being—and warm. The Bodemans had no pets, although there had been talk off and on ever since she could remember about getting one: her father wanted a dog, but her mother always had some reason why they needed to hold off. “We should wait till Ellie’s older”, being a favorite. All of a sudden Ellie hated her mother for using her as a scapegoat in such an argument. Negative emotions were so close to the surface lately, ever ready to bust out and find expression. Now Dad was gone it would always be too late; she would never be old enough.
Then there was Horace. The warmth emanating from his little body was like that of the neighbor’s cat that crept through the hedges and permitted Ellie to hold him, a privilege afforded no one save her.
She studied Horace with rapt attention, watching him sleep—if anything this kept her mind off her father, whose lifeless shell reposed (what a horrible word for it!) in front of the pulpit . She hated seeing her father like that. He looked so alive Ellie half-expected him to leap up, laugh and tell everyone the great joke was over. He would pick her up as always and swing her around ’til she became dizzy and call her his little dandelion seed.
Yet he steadfastly refused to do any such thing; he remained up there stuck inside the casket.
This mental image of her dad was enough to bring the tears back that had been her constant companion the past week, and as she gasped an awful sob, her mother emerged from her somber reverie long enough to squeeze her daughter tight. Grateful, Ellie felt immediate shame for her bright flash of anger. She had Horace, Dad’s final gift to her, and that must be enough.
Only when she glanced back into her lap she saw Horace’s flank had resumed its shiny plastic appearance, and he was no longer curled into a ball. It was a toy, nothing but a stupid plastic toy.
Ellie might have forgotten the incident entirely if not for what took place several days later. It was early morning as she wheeled the toy box out of her closet. When she lifted the lid of the large wooden box Horace leaped out, a purple blur bursting forth. The dinosaur landed against Ellie and she cried out in surprise, losing her balance and falling on her rear end. Horace threw his tiny arms about her neck and began licking her face with a prickly tongue that sent happy little shivers throughout her entire body.
“Horace!” she bellowed, sitting up and laughing and cradling the feisty critter. “You scared me half to death! I missed you!”
She set him on her bare floor, empty aside from a throw rug beside her bed, and he ran about her on powerful hind legs, purple tail flailing wildly like a windsock in a hurricane. She watched his antics with joy, delighting in his every movement. Toenails clicked merrily against the hardwood.
There came a brisk knock upon the door. Horace abruptly ceased running. He fell on his side with the light thud of an inanimate object and gradually slid to a stop. Ellie poked at the still form. Nothing. Just cold lifeless plastic.
The peremptory knock was repeated, this time with insistence.
“Ell, are you okay?” her mother called. “I heard you downstairs.” The door creaked open.
“I’m okay, Mom,” Ellie said, trying to keep the impatience from her voice. All she wanted was for her mother to leave so Horace would return to life and resume racing about the room. She prodded him with a toe. Horace steadfastly refused to move, much like Daddy in that coffin. What if it was a snooze you lose deal? What if Horace grew tired of the game and stopped coming to life?
“I slipped opening the toy box is all.”
Her mother stepped into the bedroom, looking distraught. “We should get carpeting for your room so you won’t fall, dear. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Ellie repeated, resisting the urge to rub her sore bottom; that would only push matters in the wrong direction. “I don’t want carpeting,” she added, unconsciously aping her father’s oft declared opinion of the stuff. He had absolutely hated wall to wall carpeting, claiming it ruined perfectly good wooden flooring. Ellie was reminded, poignantly, of Dad showing her how to ride a throw rug across a newly waxed floor, and her heart seized with the intensity of the memory. Never again! Never, ever, ever!
Her mother did not seem to want to leave and suddenly Ellie did not want her to.
“I was thinking about Dad,” Ellie said, voice hitching in her throat.
“Me too,” her mother agreed. “I think about him all the time. I look around while I’m busy doing something, expecting him to be standing there, his big jovial presence hovering over me, as it used to. I used to get so annoyed at his always getting into my personal space,” she sniffed, “and now that’s all I can think of. That’s all I want, for him to go ahead and invade my space. Just now I opened a cabinet to get a glass. It squealed, and my first thought was that I’d have to get Andy to take care of that. He was always good with that sort of thing; I can’t even screw in a light bulb, and . . . “
Ellie rushed into her mother’s arms and found what solace she could there, perhaps not all she needed, but enough—for each other was all either of them had. There had been talk of a younger brother or sister for Ellen (she had always been “Ellen” in these serious discussions), talk which would never again enter the sphere of physical reality. Never would she have a younger sibling now, and this realization brought raw emotion boiling to the surface. What would her sibling’s name have been? Had Mom and Dad ever gotten around to discussing this all-important subject?
Horace, she thought, as she wept in her mother’s arms. Horace might have been his name-o.
It happened for the third time in the backyard, in sight of the patio, a simple but sturdy structure Dad had built. An amateur carpenter, he always refused to use any form of measurement aside from his eye, which worked well enough for him. When friends or family members asked what Ellie and her mother’s plans were, this meant where were they going to move now that there were no longer three of them—their home was clearly too big for two—Mom would be adamant in her reply: “We’re staying put.” There would be no talk of leaving this house where so much of Andy lingered. The patio, for instance. Could her and Ellie just pack up and leave after he had spent so much time putting it together?
Ellie understood this and approved, was perhaps more serious about staying even than Mom, as she had been exceptionally close to her dad. There were echoes of him wherever she turned. The reason she took Horace everywhere and showered him with so much love was because the plastic dinosaur was the last thing she would ever receive from the man. No way would Dad leave the way the minister said, soul flying up to heaven like a bird; he would stay behind, Ellie was sure of it, to watch over his family. And maybe, just maybe, a piece of him had entered her dear Horace.
She was playing in the sandbox, an old rowboat her parents had repurposed, in shade provided by two small trees. Maybe Ellie was getting too old for such games, but she found much solace digging with her plastic shovel in the dampened sand. She was in the midst of forming dome-shaped buildings with the upturned pail when it happened. Catching a bright flash of violet at the corner of her eye, she turned to see a purple snake-like thing sticking out of the sand, waving frantically to and fro. Ellie grabbed for it, unsure what it was. Then Horace’s familiar saurian visage emerged. She giggled as the dinosaur belched out a mouthful of brownish sand.
“Jeez!” she cried. “You shouldn’t do that.” Ellie used to love eating sand, and so understood its mesmeric allure, its rough texture and grittiness between the teeth. At least she did until her parents convinced her to stop, it being dirty and gross, among other things.
Ellie lifted her T-Rex by his tail and held him dangling; he was clearly agitated. He kicked and squirmed in her grasp. No doubt about it; he was alive and furious! In the branches above, squirrels grew anxious, started barking.
Setting Horace down in front of her crossed legs, she studied him as he panted—his flanks pulsing in and out as he took a series of deep breaths and released them.
“Are you Daddy?” she pointedly asked the dinosaur.
Gradually Horace ceased huffing and puffing from the exertions of his subterranean adventure, then propelled himself upward through the air. Ellie caught him easily, enjoying the weighty substance of him, and he nibbled at her thumb in an affectionate manner. Her heart jumped at this positive answer to her question, only to have that organ plummeting into her stomach moments later. He looked her straight in the eye and shook his head.
“But,” she said, the weight of the world crashing down about her. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go! Her lower lip trembled, her eyes blurred with tears—and yet . . .
Horace clutched at her fiercely with his absurd T-Rex arms. Only there was nothing absurd in the potency of the gesture. It was like Mom’s show of affection. Exactly like it, in fact.
Holding him tightly in both hands, Ellie kissed his proboscis and then set Horace back amongst her homemade buildings, drying and beginning to crumble about the two of them like the ruins of some ancient miniature civilization. Her buildings may fall into entropy, as things made by humans were wont to to do, but what Horace offered was something more, something much stronger and longer lasting.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she told him. It really was as if her father had returned to comfort her.
He chirped happily, much like the squirrels barking, a chorus in the branches, above. She glanced up, saw several of the furry rodents gazing downwards, bottle brush tails twitching in tandem.
Ellie returned her attention to Horace. “Want to go on an adventure?”
No hesitation. The pint-sized tyrannosaur nodded furiously, dizzily. His tail swatted one of the pail-made buildings with a thwack; it crumbled into powder.
Ellie smiled, swooping him up and cradling him to her. He might not be Daddy, but he was something almost as good. He had come for her in her time of need. A true friend. She set him back down, reached for her tennis shoes and pulled them on. Laboriously she tied the laces, something her father had taught her how to do the year before. Once she finished she held out her hands and Horace returned to her. He had been knocking down her sand structures with mighty sweeps of his purple tail, but now he came to her and leaped into her arms.
She stood up and stepped out of the rowboat carrying him, leaving behind the pail and shovel. Ellie had Horace and no longer needed to seek comfort in these inanimate toys.
Above on their tree-limbs the squirrels chattered and barked rather like fans cheering their team at a sporting event, and Horace gazed up beyond Ellie’s shoulder, craning his neck to do so. It seemed he understood the squirrels. When he chirped they responded, and vice versa. They seemed to be having a regular conversation.
Ellie waited, somewhat impatiently it was true, for them to finish.
Then without another pause she headed for the hedges that separated her home from the great forest beyond, making for the gap her mother knew nothing about. A gap her father had showed her once upon a time, a little secret just between the two of them. She cast a glance back at the house and the patio, feeling a twinge of sadness descend upon her for a past she could never retrieve, then turned back to the towering wall of green. The squirrels had fallen silent. A breeze rustled through the hedge. Twigs and leaves beckoned, enticing her onward towards the unknown.
Ellie darted forward, into the gap afforded by that beckoning verdure, Horace squirming against her chest with joyous anticipation. Whatever was to come, dangers and wonders both, the two of them would face them together.