MEMORIES OF A MOOSE

Floodgates come in all shapes and sizes.

"Does it bother you?" 

"No, it doesn't bother me." 

She gave me a wary look. 

"why should it bother me?" I asked. 

She turned away. We proceeded. 

It was basically what I expected. Just a lot of metal, machinery, automatic filling, masqueraded to look magical and inviting. I remembered the last time I attended the county fair. 

It was one peculiar rainy weekend. Not necessarily rain, but misting to get everything damp. It never eased up. I was with my brother and the stranger. We walked up and down the grounds, listened to a barker try to get people to buy tickets to see the gorilla woman, the snake woman, electric woman and so on. The stranger moved on. I looked at stuffed animals, pretty colors; dogs, bears, cats, lined up on both sides of a net with a basketball hoop way in the background. The stranger stared at the setup, then slowly moved on. More mist. 

He rode on a haunted house ride. As soon as we entered the dark building, I screamed the entire time and dug my forehead into my brother's thigh. Once we were off that ride, we carried on past several more nets, basketballs, stuffed animal assemblies. The stranger barely slowed down, just a slow steady pace. 

I don't recall getting anything to eat. Maybe we didn't. Hall of Glass, I think a ferris wheel, the two-headed baby, and then, we left. Back in the truck. Drove away. Last time I attended this fair until now. Much of it seemed exactly the same. She wanted to go on the rides. I didn't want to do that. Didn't care for it. We did a couple. I held my eyes shut on them. She didn't like I did that. 

There was no romantic interest between us. She just wanted someone to go with her to the fair. I just hadn't been in so long, so I said, why not?  

We stopped at an age-weight-month of birth stand, and I offered myself up. She seemed annoyed I was doing this. The guesser took one look at me. 

"You're going to be a hard one," he muttered. Sure enough, he guessed incorrectly and I was instructed to retrieve a prize. 

I looked over these stuffed animals of all variations. Really different from what I had seen sixteen years earlier on my last visit. The previous stuffed animals on display back then looked like cotton candy critters. These were more defined, bearing a better resemblance to established cartoon characters. 

And then I saw the unmistakable yellow apron. Oh, always that apron with the bonnet. Rarely saw one without the other. Like so many other children of my generation and before, I had grown up watching Molly Moose cartoons. There just seemed to be nothing funnier than her attempts at domesticity. How often was my childhood cheered up by the adventures of Molly Moose? I reached up to retrieve the figure, and suddenly I remembered her last cartoon series. 

Molly Moose and her sidekick, Apple Yak, were going time-traveling. I was older now than when I watched cartoons, but I still enjoyed them. The new cartoons, for whatever reason, I couldn't understand, began airing in the fall, beginning of the month. About the same moment we started back to school. I couldn't understand that. It was like defusing a happy experience. I never thought about looking at the cartoons as an effort to cheer us up, to make us feel better about ourselves. 

The three of us sat huddled in the bedroom; my other brother and our older brother, just staring at the depictions on the screen. Bright colors and music and funny voices. I never questioned Older being in there. He had watched all these cartoons the same as the rest of us, enjoying them all the same. 

Older had just graduated high school earlier that year, around the start of summer. He started college that fall, around that very moment. I didn't know. Didn't pay any attention to such matters. For right now, all it was about was Molly Moose. She just didn't seem the same as when I had been younger, but I guess this was my attempt to cling to some passing childhood that was all just slowly slipping away from me. 

I never once thought about Older potentially doing the same thing. 

The stranger worked early on Saturdays. Not sure why. Get caught up on his work or something. He came home right as Molly Moose and Apple Yak were sailing away in a bright orange sailboat. Apple Yak was asking a lot `of questions. He always did that. 

I strained to listen to Apple Yak, which had suddenly become difficult. The stranger was standing, more like swaying, in the bedroom doorway, speaking in his usual loud voice. I had already learned to just zone him out, especially when he didn't seem to be saying anything worth listening to, which was the majority of the time. Toward the end of this blathering, I heard strange proclamations of, "he's a cripple. He's a cripple." 

I didn't pay any attention to what all progressed, but my focus to Molly Moose had ended as well. Older didn't remain in the bedroom watching cartoons. He may have been summoned into the living room by the stranger. Only later  in passing to go to the kitchen or the bathroom during a commercial did I spy the stranger with a new friend. I don't recall what Older was doing. The new stranger was an unbelievably grizzled old man, thin as a rail, his clothes unbelievably dirty. He sat on the couch, quiet, seemingly not observing much. I returned to watch cartoons. I didn't know who he was, or what this was all about. 

Sometime later, over the course of the day, I was now watching one of the superhero variety, when suddenly there came a loud strike, followed by an unbelievable amount of yelling. I felt a chill shoot through me with no idea of what just transpired. This sudden racket was immediately followed by my own mother's voice, yelling even louder, summoning to the stranger. 

"John! John! That thing has fallen in the bathroom! Now you get him out of this house and away from these children right now!" She spared no words. Having brought this person into our home, the stranger had vacated to his tool shed, no doubt to partake of his favorite elixir to make his morning merry.  And I guess we were supposed to cater to his new act of kindness. 

The giant sea serpent emerged from the watery depths and seized the spacecraft as it flew too close to the watery planet. The erstwhile crew emerged from the craft, flying with jet packs, to fire upon the creature. This was all I was seeing. Now a fast food commercial, followed by another fast food commercial. Songs and music and bright merriment. 

When all cartoons were over, the house was quiet again. I listened to Older speak to mother. I had no recollection of Molly Moose or anything else I had strived to focus upon that morning, but knew even less of what happened in reality. 

"What did you do with him?" she asked. 

"Just drove near an alleyway and put him out there," he answered. Older had been tasked with driving back to the city. The stranger was not able to do so. 

"What did your father do?" mom inquired. 

"He was passed out," Older replied. The stranger was lulled off into his wonderfully intoxicating dreams. 

"What about the other man?" she further queried. 

"He had passed out, too," Older said. "I had to wake him up to get him out of the car." 

That night, the friendly journeys on Passenger Bus was airing. I tried to never miss Passenger Bus, but after a while, all the episodes watch about the same. 

We sat at a picnic table next to a concession stand. It was so hot, a fan was blowing air, trying to cool any occupants who might be in the vicinity. As I ate my fries, I stared at Molly Moose. Her glasses, her big teeth. 

She sat across from me, eating a burger. I looked at her, but she wasn't looking at me. Her thoughts were elsewhere. I was there just so she wouldn't be alone. I was fine with that. I glanced back at Molly Moose. 

I thought about the last time I had been to the fair, with Other and the stranger. We didn't get any prizes, which was just as well. I couldn't recall seeing any I liked. I thought about the three of us, just damp from the sprinkling mist. I looked at Molly Moose in my hand once more. 

I hadn't asked to go to the fair then. 

"Daddy's taking you and Roger to the fair next weekend," was all I heard. I didn't object. Didn't ask why. At the time, it seemed to be the normal thing to undertake, to expect, so we could at least say we had been. The last time we had gone, I must have been about four, over ten years earlier. So the Other and I went to the fair. And it rained. 

I  continued to stare at the comical looking plush figurine in my hand as I took a sip from my own drink. The last excursion to the fair, as miserable as it may have been, was in October, when the fair came to town, same as it had now. And that was the annual appearance of that fair a month after the new Molly Moose cartoon aired, on that Saturday. 

When the stranger brought the wino into our family home. 

And then, Other and I were taken to the fair the following month. Older didn't join us. He was going to college. 

I strained to remember what the stranger said, standing in the bedroom doorway. 

"He's a cripple. He's a cripple." 

And then here was this one-legged wino. Where had he found this unfortunate man? I didn't know. He had brought this transient into his home with his wife and children, for what purpose? To impress us? No. 

To impress Older. The stranger's firstborn child. 

"He's a cripple," was all I had heard. Why hadn't I listened to more of what he said? 

Because I was watching Molly Moose. And here she was now, in my hand. 

The stranger wanted Older to be impressed with his actions, being kind to this miserable soul. 

"Wow, Daddy! What a generous person you are! Look at how thoughtful you are to society's less-fortunate!" 

Older said the wino told our sister how pretty she was. She remained in her bedroom, with the door closed, until the spectacle had been removed from the house. 

"Gee, daddy! Maybe I won't bother with college, since you obviously didn't need it to make you a good person! I'll just get a job somewhere." 

Was that what the stranger was wanting from Older? Well, he didn't get it. Older went off to college not long after that. 

And the stranger took me and Other to the fair. In the misting rain. And we got nothing. Don't even think we ate anything. Didn't get any candy. Not even taffy. 

We were his second chance. Second and third I suppose, to try to make an impression on us with this little endeavor. I had never realized that before. There was more significance in "Daddy's taking you and Roger to the fair," than anything that transpired. Was the journey deemed a failure? Absolutely nothing was said to us. And as the stranger's offspring, I seemed perfectly content with it that way. Absolute quiet. 

Much better than the noise and racket he had normally engaged in. 

He passed away, all in good time. Whether we were supposed to be impressed with that rainy journey to the fair, it was never mentioned again. I arrived home, alone. She ventured off on her way. Nothing romantic at all. 

I sat once more, holding Molly Moose before me, and contemplated calling one of my brothers, not sure which one I would, but I didn't. Didn't call mom either. 

There weren't many visits to the stranger's grave. Why would I? When I was given an inclination to do so, I took Molly with me. I guess the intention was to leave her there, as a reminder, as some form of closure. 

I stood before my namesake's grave, saying nothing, holding the moose in my hand. Garbed in her pretty yellow apron and bonnet. 

I didn't leave her. Molly Moose will serve as a reminder as to what mattered to me, and also as a reminder of what mattered to the stranger.