"A Precious Thing"

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The following is a short story by "Bill Brewer". Bill won the 2003 Publication Recognition Program "Fiction and Poetry" award for this piece. (Note: This is copyrighted material. Please do not reproduce without the author's written consent.)

      It was hard enough being 17, but being Thad Eckels, too, was unbearable. From the start, there was the obvious implication that anyone named Thad had to love cowboy boots and monster truck rallies.

      Crawling through the flower bed at a golf course in the pouring rain wasn't his idea of a great Friday night, but that was another part of being Thad Eckels. To those who knew him, he was the good son, the one you could count on to do the right thing. Help orphans with their homework. Play checkers with the shambling wrinkles in the nursing home. Mow the lawn when his brother would skim the mall for babes.

      Being Thad Eckels meant that Sandy would always fall for some other guy. He had tried the smooth approach. Flowers decked with ribbons and quiet walks in the park didn't impress her. Nor did an endless stream of compliments and the occasional poem. No, what she wanted was a guy with an edge; someone not afraid to break the rules, yet slick enough to laugh it off when he got caught. Some sly wag with a swing in his hip and a wink full of secrets; that's what made her smile. Someone like his twin brother, Ricky.

      Thad stooped and yanked a handful of stems. Flowers sure weren't Ricky's style. He was the kind of guy who thought something in leather was always an appropriate gift. When Thad had nearly given up on her, Ricky strutted into her life. She took to him immediately, and the two of them had spent some time together every night for a solid month. They hadn't been so hot and heavy the last week or so, but Thad had no doubt they'd hook up again soon. Being Ricky's brother meant he'd have to sit quietly by and let their relationship play its course.

      But being who he was, when Sandy asked him to come see her on a rainy Friday night just on the cusp of winter, he had to go.

      By the time he'd cut through the golf course in their subdivision and jumped three dozen puddles and a number of swollen gullies, he carried his own puddles in his shoes. Ducking under her front awning, he realized there was no point in dodging any longer; his every step squished and blew bubbles at the edges of his soles. He probably shouldn't have stopped to pick flowers, but he knew what was expected of him. It wouldn't do to show up on Sandy's doorstep empty-handed. Besides, his mother had just given the long talk the night before about treating girls right and being a gentleman. Like he needed to hear that again.

      He rang the doorbell. He wasn't sure anyone was home. Her parents' Humvee wasn't in the driveway. They liked to take the big rig out for mini-vacations on weekends. No lights peeked through any windows, but there was a faint glimmer through the cut glass of the double French doors.

      Lightning cracked the sky, and the thunder boomed so loudly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. At first he feared a million volts of juice were surging through him, but in a second or two, he realized it was just the sudden fright that got the best of him. The echoing rumble had barely faded when one door swung open, and Sandy stood before him.

      "Thad! You made it!" She wore an opalescent silk blouse that bared her midriff and loose pants that fluttered like baby-blue curtains around her legs. Beveled facets sparkled in her eyes, and her belly button seemed an oasis in the flat plains of her abdomen.

      "Yeah, well Mrs. Peterson's shih-tzu got out again, and I had to help her catch it. It wasn't easy in this rain, but I ran it down." He passed her a handful of black-and-gold flowers. "Here, I brought these for you."

      "Marigolds. How lovely." She sniffed them. "Whoa-that'll keep the termites away."

      "I'm glad you like them."

      "Let me go put these in water. You want to come in?" She opened the door wide and stepped back.

      "If you need water, I've got some right here." He stomped both feet a bit so she could hear his sloshing steps.

      "Oh, you poor guy! You're soaking wet! Just leave your shoes on the porch." She disappeared down the entry hall with flowers in hand.

      He pinched off each shoe with the other foot and left his socks in them for good measure. Stepping inside the foyer, he curled his puckered toes in a rug. He slipped off his raincoat, shook it on the porch once or twice, and hung it on a coat rack. The whole house was dark. A staircase led up into blackness. Only a small kerosene lamp flickered on a stand beside the first step.

      "What happened to the lights?" asked Thad.

      "The storm-must have hit a transformer," she called from some other room. "Didn't you hear the thunder?"

      "Was it thundering? I was so busy chasing the dog, I hardly noticed."

      "Aww. How sweet." She returned with two huge towels. "No wonder you're soaked. Here, try these."

      He buried his face in the towels and swept back his hair with one in each hand. When he opened his eyes again, Sandy was halfway up the stairs and disappearing into the darkness above.

      "Hey-come on up. I want to show you something," said Sandy. She turned to one side. In profile, the sculpted curves of her figure caught his eye. Her back arched, poised in a balance that almost reclined against the balustrade, yet still betrayed the tension of one long leg stretching up to reach the next step. He cast his eyes down to her red polished toenails when he realized one of the buttons of her blouse had come undone. Ricky could probably get away with ogling her, but she expected better from him.

      His feet lurched for the stairs before he knew he was following her. He had no idea how he'd see anything in the pitch black of the second floor landing, but then again, he didn't really care what she wanted to show him. Her smile was reason enough.

      "Where's your mom and dad," asked Thad.

      "They're out of town for the week. They haven't seen the Grand Canyon in years, and they needed some time alone."

      When they reached the second story, her voice trailed off into empty blackness. He stepped gingerly forward, trying to follow her voice and at the same time feel with his toes for obstacles.

      "They left you all alone for the whole week?"

      "Sure. Why not?"

      "Aren't they worried you might stay up too late or something?" She opened a door, and light drifted in, perhaps from a window in an adjoining room.

       "I'm pretty tight with my parents," she explained. "It's all about trust. They trust me not to get into trouble while they're gone, and I trust them."

       "You trust them? What for?"

       "I trust them to come back before I run out of minutes on my cell. It's a very precious thing, you know."

       "I'll bet. I'd love to have a cell phone." He liked to play dumb sometimes-it usually got a laugh, and if played right, it added an air of naïveté that girls adored. It was something about wanting to save him from ignorance. Deep down inside, they all wanted to be that blind chick who taught Helen Keller.

       "No, I'm talking about trust. If you can't trust people, you'll never find real happiness."

       He crept into the room with her. Some streetlight glowed through gauzy curtains over the window. Against the opposite wall, a bed was decked in teddy bears and leafy patterns with peach blossoms. In the middle of the room, he noticed a small rug with concentric circles of red and white like a target. Someone had brought one of the chairs from the dining set on the first floor and placed it on the bullseye.

       "So what did you want me to see?"

       "It's in here somewhere." Sandy rummaged through her closet. Her body basked in the vanilla cream aura from the curtains, and raindrops tapped the window in a mesmerizing symphony. What sort of game did she want to play?, he thought. Perhaps Show-and-Tell.

       She stood up again, and catching his stare, she smiled. "Go ahead. Have a seat." She nodded toward the kitchen chair in the center of her bedroom.

       "I can't stay long, really. I told my parents I'd be back in a few minutes."

       "I was hoping we could play a game. It's lots of fun."

       "A game? I thought you wanted to show me something."

       She buried her head back in the closet. "That's what I want to show you, but you'll have to take a seat first."

       Thad looked the chair over again. She must have removed the cushions, and the bare varnish seemed worn to a dull blond in spots. It was a sturdy design. The legs and braces were as thick as his wrists. The seat and back were solid pieces a couple inches thick. He walked across the floor and grabbed one arm. He shook it a bit. The joints held tight without wobbling. It might as well have been made of granite.

       He sat in the chair but gripped each armrest, as if he were about to stand again.

       "Got it," said Sandy. She pulled out one end of a nylon rope. Yard after yard of rope followed, an armful till she found the other end.

       Thad stood. "I don't know. It's getting really dark outside. I'd better leave."

       "You're gonna leave already? It's pouring rain out there. You'd really leave me stuck here with no lights?"

       "You've got the streetlight on right outside your window here. Are you sure the lights are out?"

       "Sure I'm sure. So first my parents skip town for the weekend, and now you want to leave, too?" She twirled one end of the rope between her fingers. "Besides, this is a game for two."

       "You're not going to tie me up with that, are you?"

       "Aw, we can take turns. It'll be fun." She walked toward him and took his hand.

       "I'm just not that kind of a guy. Maybe my brother likes ropes and stuff, but I don't play games like that."

       "What's the matter?" She took his hand and held it to her cheek. "Don't you trust me?"

       Her eyebrows furled in a plaintive, puppy dog expression. She seemed hurt at his refusal. Almost as much as he was hurting to sit back down and play along. He didn't want her to get the wrong idea about him, but there was that soft glow around her, the warmth of her face against his hand, the gentle thrum of the rain outside, and those sad, sad eyes. Whatever he feared, he knew he couldn't live with himself if he made her cry.

       He pulled his hand away and sat in the chair.

       "Okay." He laid both arms on the armrests. "So how does this go?"

       "Well, first I gotta tie you up." She bent down to wrap a few lengths around his ankles.

       "And then?"

       "And then we tell a story." She coiled several loops around one leg, then started on the other.

       "What kind of story?" Done with the legs, she yanked the cord tight and started on his thighs.

       "I'm not sure how it will turn out. I'll tell some, and then you tell some. We'll make it up as we go along."

       "We did that in English class last week."

       "Oh, really?" A long stretch of rope hissed with a sharp zirp as she pulled it across the back of the chair and up to his elbow. "I'm sure we can do better than that. No teachers to grade us here. Just you and me."

       "Not too tight. I might need to grab something later," said Thad. He chuckled a little, but stopped when she didn't laugh with him.

       Sandy said nothing. She bit her lower lip. Both his arms were strapped tightly to the armrests, and she was finishing the last few yards in wide loops around his chest.

       "Hey, that's a little tight. I have to breathe some time," he complained.

       The chair budged forward a bit as she set one foot against the back. She grunted a bit as she pulled the rope taught. His voice squeaked as air was pressed from his lungs. "Hey! I'm not kidding. That really hurts!"

       She tugged a couple more times. "Does it? Are you sure?"

       "Yeah, I'm sure. Loosen it up some."

       She walked around to face him. Smiling, she pulled one loop over his groin and let it snap against the zipper of his pants.

       "Ow! Come on. That's enough."

       "Can you wiggle a bit, maybe get them a little loose?"

       "No, not at all."

       "Good. Then I'll start. Once upon a time . . . " She grasped both his hands and crouched down in front of him. "There was a beautiful princess. She had lots of friends, and got along okay with her parents, but what she wanted more than anything else in the world, was that one, special prince to be her true love."

       A bead of sweat began to roll down his face. He hadn't noticed before, but he realized now the A/C must have gone out with the lights.

       "Okay-your turn." She poked him in the chest.

       "Um, and one day she met this guy who was . . ."

       "The plumber." blurted Sandy.

       "The plumber?"

       "Yeah. It was his job was to go all over the castle and clean out the clogged toilets. He was dirty and stinky, and not very bright. Still, the king and queen felt sorry for him, so they gave him a job. But this plumber, see, he had a brother."

       "He did?"

       "Yeah, a twin brother. Looked just like him, only he was smart. He was a tailor, and he made dresses for the all ladies in the court. He was always clean and smelled great." She nodded at him.

       "And one day," Thad continued, "the princess saw the tailor, and she hooked up with him, because he was like, totally with it and cool and stuff."

       Sandy stood up and leaned over to grab the back of his chair. She tilted it to one side and back so that it pivoted on one leg. He fell back and back, then dropped sharply before she got under the chair. She pulled and tugged, inches at a time, until she had spun him around with his back to the bedroom door.

       "But alas," she sighed, "all was not well."

       "It wasn't?"

       "Not at all. You see, wherever they went, his smelly, rotten brother came along. Well, he didn't really come along. Actually his smell came along. Wherever they went, everything thing around them smelled like a toilet. Their clothes, the furniture, everything. It was like kissing a toilet. Her prince just couldn't get rid of his brother's odor."

       She jerked the chair. Even with the rug underneath, the legs still pressed hard enough into floor to scrape the ceramic tile in zigzag crescent moon scratches as she dragged him into the hallway. She didn't seem to notice.

       "Hey, are we going somewhere?" he asked.

       "That's what she wanted most, somewhere to go. Somewhere that awful, awful smell would never find them." Thunder boomed in the distance. "Something had to be done," she yelled.

       Sandy was dragging him, inch by inch, down the hall toward the stairs. Suddenly, Thad began to worry that maybe he didn't want to see what she had to show him after all. Was it possible he was in trouble? Was there something she found out?

       "So the one brother told the other brother to get lost," he continued, "and they washed their clothes and bought all-new furniture." Was there something wrong with the flowers?

       "Which would have worked fine," she shouted. The thunder had faded, but she her voice was growing louder. "But she just couldn't get that awful, terrible smell out of her mind. She was always afraid that one day, the plumber would return." Finally, she stopped and turned him around to face the stairs. He wondered if she found out about Tracy.

       "No," she continued to yell, "the princess knew they could never be truly happy until the plumber was gone. So far gone, that she knew she would never, ever see him again. She knew the only way she could make that happen was to make sure he had a tragic accident. So one night there was this storm, and she invited him to come over and keep her company while her boyfriend was away."

       Thad interrupted. "But the pol-uh-the king's guards were very smart. Very smart. She knew they would catch her if she tried anything."

       "That's why she decided to tie him up and push him down the stairs. After he broke his scrawny little neck, she'd untie him so it looked like he took a wrong step."

       "Of course, the cops would see the rope marks all over his body. They were very smart."

       "Oh, she wasn't just gonna push him down the stairs. After she untied his corpse, she would have to torch the castle to cover up the evidence. Before he arrived that night, she got a lamp and lit it. She placed it at the bottom of the stairs, close to where the body would land. She would smash it right there, make it look like he dropped it when he fell."

       Sandy shoved the chair forward, and it scooted a couple inches till the front legs dropped with a thud to the next step down. He was leaning forward now, tilting into empty space. She must have been holding the back of the chair. As soon as she let go, he would fall. The lamp still flickered faintly from the foyer below.

       "Hey! Hold on!" Thad cried. "What's this all about? We don't have to do this, Sunshine. What's the problem?" That was a slip. Ricky called her Sunshine on occasion, but he never had.

       She paused a moment, then continued. "Well, when she got the plumber tied up at the top of the castle, they got to talking. She could understand why the plumber always smelled bad, but why do you think his brother smelled bad, too? That's when the plumber told her."

       She tapped his shoulder from behind. Thad could feel a cold river of endorphins gushing through his veins. Maybe she knew about Ricky. "Your turn," she urged. "What did he say next?"

       "But the plumber had no idea what she was talking about. She realized she made a mistake."

       "Until she remembered that she had never actually seen the two of them together. When the plumber was around, the tailor was always off somewhere. When the tailor took her in his arms, the plumber was out of sight. She was finally starting to understand how those two boys could be so different, and yet so much alike. The tailor was totally devoted to her, but the plumber, he liked to play his women, always getting a little something on the side."

       Oh God, he thought. She knew. She knew, and she had him tied to a chair and hanging over the stairs.

       "Then the plumber promised to go get his brother and -"

       "But her suspicions were confirmed when she went to this party a week ago. The whole kingdom was invited. You know who she met there?"

       He held his breath.

       "She met the boys' mother."

       Thad remembered his parents had gone out to a party last Friday.

       "And they got to talking. The princess, she talked about how she knew the plumber and she was crazy for her son the tailor. And do you know what their mother said?"

       "Uh, she said she loved them both very much and she would miss them if anything ever happened-"

       "No, no. Nothing like that. No, she said, 'Ricky? My son Ricky? I'd like to meet him some time.'"

      At that, he felt the chair drop.

      Thad opened his mouth, but his protest turned to yelp as his chair tipped forward and spun sideways, slamming the handrail against his chest. A buzzsaw of blows pounded him on all sides. He flipped. He tumbled. He flipped again. At one moment, his bare foot caught some railing, then twisted free. A pain flashed from his elbow, so brilliant he saw colors. His mouth cracked against a baluster so hard he thought he'd bitten off splinters. When at last he rolled to a stop at the bottom, part of the chair had broken and twisted his leg at a perfect right angle to his hip. His calf muscles clenched in soaring agony at the slightest twitch. The leg had to be broken.

       At least he survived to feel the pain. Thad lay still for a moment and tried not to cry or even breathe. If she thought he was dead, maybe he could try to crawl away when she wasn't looking. The front door wasn't far.

       He heard the steps creak as she descended. She stooped over him and held two fingers to his neck. There was no faking that. He could hold his breath, but not his pulse.

       "No luck the first try," she whispered. "So she had to make up her mind. Would she drag him back up the stairs and let him go again? If at first you don't succeed . . ."

       "Or maybe," he whimpered, "she could let him go if he promithed he would go away, and she would never thee him again."

       "Or maybe, just maybe, that lying, stinking plumber could tell the truth. Perhaps if he finally told her how he was a lousy, cheating creep who lied about having a twin brother, she might forgive him."

       Thad ran his tongue across his teeth. He could feel two kags where his front teeth used to be. "Tho, they could kith and make up? And live happily ever after?"

       "Yeah, happily ever after. Why not? But first, if he wanted to make up, he'd have to go back down the stairs one more time."

       "You gotta be kidding."

       "Or he could take a swift kick in the pants on his way out the door. Either way, there was gonna be no more twin brothers in her life. So what do you say? Your choice."

       "Tho if he dethided to come clean, then maybe he could have hith turn to tie her up?"

       Sandy glared at him. "Sure thing. Yeah, if he could untie himself, then chase her all over the castle and hold her down and tie her up and drag her up to the top of the stairs with his busted leg, then yeah, he could have his way with her."

       Thad blinked and stared into her eyes. They seemed to flicker with cold grey fire.

       She nudged him. "Go on. Your turn."

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