Friday

     Geoffry's dad tells him that his Uncle Rick will be coming for a visit tomorrow. Geoffry has never been this cold before. Earlier, his mom told him that his pre-school is closed today because it's so cold. So he stays in the house, freezing. Every so often he asks his mom to turn up the thermostat, not knowing what this means except insofar as he's heard her say it. She always promises to, but he has noticed no change.

     Geoffry has never seen Uncle Rick before. He understands this is because Uncle Rick lives in Oklahoma City, which is different from Lawton, where Geoffry lives. The simple presence of that word, “different”, has ominous implications, because it marks the presence of so many of the unknowable distinctions that Geoffry must struggle to place in his world. Working from his senses, he wonders if it is much colder in Oklahoma City, and if Uncle Rick is bringing the cold with him.

     It's warmer behind the couch, so he spends most of his day there, wrapped in his blanket. A few times his dad, all smiles, tries to coax him out with the promise of hot chocolate and games of Sorry!, but Geoffry is uninterested in going anywhere that might be colder. Finally his dad shrugs and walks off, coming back once more to ask if he's sure about the hot chocolate. Geoffry finally agrees, and a minute later his dad sets the cup in front of him. His mom makes some comment about them needing to get ready for Uncle Rick, and his dad agrees and leaves Geoffry alone.

     The evening passes in a constant roar of cleaning equipment and housewares being moved about each other. Geoffry stays put. By the time it's starting to get dark, there is white rain coming down in slow motion.

     “Know what that is, Geoff?” his dad asks excitedly.

     “White rain?”

     His dad grins. “You must not have seen snow before.” He asks Geoffry's mom if he's ever seen snow, and she replies that he hasn't. His dad pats him on the shoulder. “Let's go outside, have some fun with the snow. What do you say?”

     “No,” Geoffry replies solidly. “It's too cold.”

     His dad sighs. “Suit yourself. I'm going out.” He grumbles something about not moving here from Michigan to pass up snow when it comes. He pulls on a coat and gloves and heads out the front door.

     Geoffry's mom reads to him before he goes to bed. She reads Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up, which Geoffry doesn't pay much attention to except to look at the pictures. He usually likes the artwork of clay-colored monster lizards, but it seems to have new meaning tonight. He asks her to stop before she's finished, and she quietly obeys. She turns off the light and turns on the night light before she leaves, telling him she loves him. Geoffry curls into a ball under the covers, still cold.

Saturday

     When Geoffry goes into the living room after waking up— to find that it's even colder than yesterday—there is something in the front yard. It looks moundy and white, like the snow on the ground. Were it not for the thing's obvious but somehow twisted humanity, Geoffry would almost think it was part of the snow. It has a hat on its head and a scarf around its neck, and looks at Geoffry with big, round, grey eyes and smiles at him with big, round, grey teeth. Its Pinocchio-nose is a carrot, and its arms are sticks. Geoffry has never seen anyone who looks like this before.

     His dad comes and crouches next to him. “Know who that is?”

     “Uncle Rick?” says Geoffry.

     His dad chuckles, pats him on the back, and walks off. Geoffry goes back to his corner behind the couch. His mom comes pacing through the room with the phone to her ear, talking into it excitedly. “I just don't want you to try the roads if they might be dangerous. The snow and all... I know, but there will be other opportunities to see us.” Then, as she leaves the room again, “Fine. Well, be careful.”

     She hangs up as Geoffry's dad signals her that he's going out. “I'm gonna walk to the video store before they decide to close it. Figure we'll be spending a lot of time inside this weekend.” His mom complains about needing more help with the house, but surrenders. As Geoffry's dad walks out the front door, Geoffry stands up and checks the front window to see if Uncle Rick will go with his dad. But Uncle Rick just stands in his spot, grinning at Geoffry as discomfortingly as ever. Geoffry wonders if this might be some kind of game, but doesn't like it anyway. He sinks back down, wishing Uncle Rick would take the snow back to Oklahoma City with him.

     His dad comes back from the video store a little while later. He shows Geoffry that he has gotten four movies for him and asks if he wants to watch one right now. Geoffry says he does. He likes the idea because this way he can stay behind the couch, lying with his head poking out just far enough to see the TV.

     “Can Uncle Rick take the cold away?” he asks as his dad loads the DVD player.

     “I don't think so,” his dad chuckles. He starts the movie and heads off to help Geoffry's mom clean up.

     The first movie is Spirited Away, about a girl who goes to a house of monsters who make her do hard work and sleep on the floor. Everyone and everything in the movie is much bigger than she is, a fact that hits Geoffry close to home. He watches patiently, having nothing else to do, and asks his dad to turn it off when it's over.

     “Where is that brother of yours?” Geoffry's dad asks his mom as he puts the DVD back in the box.

     “It might take him a while,” she says. “It's a long drive in this weather.”

     “Uncle Rick will be here soon,” he says to Geoffry.

     “He's in the front yard,” says Geoffry.

     “What?” his mom says from another room.

     “Geoffry says Uncle Rick is in the front yard,” his dad says.

     “Well, is he?”

     Geoffry's dad comes over and looks out the front window. “He must have seen another car going by.”

     “Is Uncle Rick coming in?” Geoffry asks, hoping that the pale, round man in the front yard will stay there and not bring the snow inside.

     “In a little bit,” his dad assures him, to Geoffry's dislike. Geoffry asks for another movie after his dad brings him a sandwich and a juice box for lunch, warning him not to make too much of a mess.

     The second movie is The Little Mermaid, about fish-people and the sea creatures that sing for them. It seems nice until the end, when the octopus-woman puts on a crown and starts growing, and growing, and growing up and up, towering into the sky and making a terrible storm come. She laughs and screams with wild, unhinged triumph. Geoffry asks his dad to turn it off.

     “I'm worried about Rick,” his dad says to his mom.

     “Me too,” says Geoffry, casting a nervous eye at the front window, which looks enormous and foreboding from where he lies on the floor.

     “I couldn't get him on his cell,” his mom says.

     “Well, what should we do?” his dad says.

     His mom hesitates for a few moments before replying. “Umm, can you put another DVD in for Geoffry and come talk to me?” His dad does put another DVD in, then goes with Geoffry's mom into another room.

     The third movie is Ratatouille, about a rat chef who controls a man's body by pulling his hair. The rat is visited at several points by the ghost of another chef. The ghost is a man the size of a rat. The fourth movie, which his dad puts in without saying a word after Ratatouille, is Pirates of the Caribbean, about men who turn into skeletons.

     By the time the movies are over, it has long since gotten dark outside. Geoffry's mom hastily puts on two cans of soup for dinner and yells at Geoffry to come to the table when he is reluctant to come out from behind the couch. During the meal, she gets up twice from her chair to make phone calls, and both times she comes back looking more disappointed and worried. After dinner, his dad asks if he wants to see any of the movies again, and Geoffry declines.

     Before bed, his mom hurriedly reads him Peter Rabbit, a story about a bunny who has to get his jacket back from an unseen giant who wants to eat him. When she leaves, she does not say that she loves him and forgets to turn on the night light. Only a faint light comes into the room through the drawn curtains above Geoffry's head. Geoffry stands up on the bed after she's gone, lifts the curtains, and peeks out.

     The snow is coming down again. The window frame is just in his peripheral vision, and combined with the lack of any sound coming from outside, it looks like a big, moving picture stuck on his wall. At the end of the window opposite his pillow, he has a view of Uncle Rick, who isn't facing straight at him like he is from the living room. Instead, he leers at Geoffry discreetly over his shoulder, showing only one jagged eye and less than half his mouth. The side view makes the carrot nose look particularly spear-like. Geoffry drops back down fearfully and pulls the covers about himself. He has a hard time falling asleep.

     When he does, he dreams that his house is a mansion and that he has to stand behind a card table in the driveway and sell towels to strangers. Eventually two bearded men and an old woman show up and ask him where his parents are, and if he's all right. He finds that he doesn't know where his mom and dad are, but he doesn't think he's in any trouble and tries to tell them so. Unfortunately he is unable to speak. The only sounds he can make are soft peeping noises with which he hurriedly tries to form the syllables of his answer. Before he can, one of the men comes a decision. “Don't worry,” he says, “we'll take you somewhere safe.”

     He picks Geoffry up and carries him over his shoulder. Geoffry continues trying to peep his message across, but the grown-ups never seem to get it. They stop on a street corner and say, “Here, this is a safe place.” The old woman opens a mailbox and the bearded man dumps Geoffry inside. All of them run away, laughing.

     Geoffry falls down and down and down. He lands in a circular room, like a merry-go-round. All of the walls are brick fireplaces, only they are tall as trees. One of them is the one he fell in through.

     Down another chimney comes something that is almost too big to fit through it. The thing is a man made of pots and pans, with a big coal stove for a head and knives for fingers. Geoffry stays still, hoping that the man won't see him if he does, because he knows that inside the metal man, making it move, is Uncle Rick.

     Geoffry doesn't even dare to breathe, but the metal man sees him anyway and starts slowly coming toward him. Geoffry steps backward, trying to will himself back up the chimney. He pictures his body whooshing upward until he comes back out the mailbox, but his picturing it does not make it happen. Geoffry begins to cry.

     He is awakened by the phone ringing. But though his eyes open, he is still caught in the transient state between the dream and the real world.

     Geoffry's mother answers the phone. Somewhere down the hall he can hear her muffled, worried speech. After a while, she calls his dad in. “Oh my god, Dave!” she says. “It's Rick!”

     Geoffry stands on his bed numbly, like a marionette, and peeks through the curtain once again. The window is creaking against the force of the wind, and the snow is blowing harder than ever before. The world outside is a black-and-white cyclone, swirling so madly that Geoffry could never believe that it's anything but a living thing, berserk with the mysterious malice that animates the world around him.

     And at the center of the cyclone is Uncle Rick, peering smugly over his shoulder.

     Geoffry hides under the covers.

Sunday

     Geoffry's mom is gone when he wakes up. His dad gets him out of bed and clumsily helps him get dressed, promising that mom will be back soon, and that grandma and grandpa and everyone will be coming to see him too. Geoffry asks if Uncle Rick is still there, and his dad sighs and looks at the ground for a minute before saying, “No, he's not.” The tone of his response makes Geoffry skeptical and he sneaks to the window in the living room, where he sees Uncle Rick right in his usual spot. He does not understand why his dad has lied to him, but is afraid to ask his dad about it. There is nobody else around to ask, so he keeps silent.

     His mom comes back with food from McDonalds, saying nothing. His dad puts his arm around her shoulder after hurriedly sitting Geoffry on the couch to give him his McDonalds. Geoffry retreats back behind the couch to eat it. In the next room, his mother starts sobbing like Geoffry has never heard her, and he knows from what he heard the night before that it's because Uncle Rick has done something terrible.

     The toy in his happy meal is a monkey from Dora the Explorer that is made of rubber and can be made to shoot water through its pursed lips when squeezed. Geoffry tries it a few times with his Sprite and notices that the monkey's eyes also bulge out of its head when it shoots the soda. He tries this enough times to make himself satisfied the monkey has no other undiscovered behaviors, submerging its head into his cup and crushing its belly between his thumb and two fingers whenever he wants it to drink or spit out. The monkey, none the worse for its wear, does the same thing every time. Geoffry finally realizes that he's gotten Sprite on the living room rug and hides as far behind the couch as he can go, expecting to be found out and chastised by his mom and dad. He never is.

     People start arriving after Geoffry has been left to his own devices for a long time. All of his grandparents show up, and another uncle and aunt who he has met before. None of them give him more than a cursory glance and a warm greeting that always feels strange somehow, like they don't really mean it. Then they go to his mom and start talking about Uncle Rick in hushed tones, so that he can never understand what they're saying. All of them wear black, move slowly, and look like something is wrong. It is unlike anything Geoffry has ever seen. The only similar memories he has are of a Superman movie where all the bad guys wear black. He comprehends none of it except that Uncle Rick, and the smothering gloom that he commands, must be the cause.

     After the relatives, people start coming to the house who Geoffry has never met. They behave similarly, sometimes asking Geoffry's dad if Geoffry is all right. Everyone asks if everyone else is all right, as if they are all recovering from some terrible, unspoken wrong.

     The house has never been this crowded. The people go in and out, some coming back and some not, occasionally bringing food for which the others mutter a muted thanks. Some of them—mostly his grandparents—even talk to Geoffry once or twice, mostly about pre-school, a place which has not existed for Geoffry since Uncle Rick came. Finally one of them offers him a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, after which he is still hungry.

     He goes into his room, wanting to snuggle under the covers and look at the pictures in some of his books, but when he comes in, an old woman he doesn't know is already inside, looking at his things. She smiles at him and he runs away. When he returns sometime later, after the people have all left, the books' images all seem foreign, their meaning unknowable without his mom's reading to accompany them.

     He waits for her to come in and read to him, but there is no story tonight. After she tucks him in, she tells him to sleep tight, kisses him on the forehead, and leaves. At least this time, the night light is on. When Geoffry dreams, it is of two colors, black and white. The black looks like a forest of giants shuffling around between each other, and the white looks like one person who stands above them all.

Monday

     Geoffry is barely rested when his dad pulls him out of bed early. He makes him put on his church clothes, an uncomfortable set of Khaki pants and a white turtle-neck with a dark blue jacket. Geoffry is filled with dread when his father complains that the clothing is not black. Whatever has happened to all the people wearing black yesterday, he is sure that he does not want the same.

     He notices that it is warmer out when his mom and dad shuffle him into the garage through the side door, and he hopes that it means Uncle Rick has finally left. But no; Uncle Rick, though looking more disheveled than ever, still grins at him from the front yard as they pull out of the driveway.

     Geoffry's dad drives a route that he has never taken before. Neither he nor Geoffry's mom talk during the drive, but he pats her hand occasionally. After a journey long enough to make Geoffry's pants itch, they arrive at a big field, littered all over with stone markers.

     They park the car, half on the grass and half on the road, and get out. There's less snow on the ground than there was before, but it's still cold out, too cold for just Geoffry's church clothes.

     “Come on, let's go,” his dad says, taking his hand.

     “Where?”

     “To the burial site.”

     Geoffry dimly accepts this, one of the many incomprehensible facts of the world, a secret password that he imagines he'll never know.

     “It's getting warmer,” his dad says to his mom. She nods and presses a tissue to her lip. Not knowing why, Geoffry feels the beginnings of anger toward both of them.

     The burial site turns out to be an empty patch of grass, surrounding a hole in the ground over which a huge, wooden box rests on some kind of straps. There are only a few of the people from yesterday standing around at first, but the rest of them—and what seems like more—trickle in over time, coming to stand in a circle around the hole. One of them is the minister from church.

     To Geoffry's dismay, they talk for a long time in the authoritative manner of grown ups that unspeakingly demands Geoffry's silence. The length of it makes the cold today seem much worse than that of the last few days. He tries to sit down twice, each time to be yanked up by the sleeve by one of his parents, and so can only stand with his arms crossed, struggling against the cold that eats at him and seems like it will forever. Looking around, he can't believe that any of the grown ups are feeling as cold as he is. They stand as if the weather were completely normal, making Geoffry wonder if Uncle Rick's cold is somehow reserved for him alone, and he begins to contemplate the question that has lurked in his subconscious for some time now: is it all because of me?

     This epiphany arrives just before the minister stops talking. Presently two men, not dressed in black, begin to work the straps and lower the box into the ground. There's a person in there, Geoffry finally realizes. His horror is muted because, somehow, the fact seems to fit. And it does too when the grown ups form two lines, each of them waiting for a shovel with which they throw a heap of dirt into the hole, on top of the person in the box. He follows his mother instinctively, not realizing that he is caught up in the same process until his father, in what seems to Geoffry like some sort of gruesome induction, helps Geoffry take a bit of dirt in the shovel and throw it in.

     Why is Uncle Rick doing this?

     All the people in black come back to Geoffry's house that night. Geoffry hides in his room and prays for it to stop.

Tuesday

     Geoffry's mom and dad tell him he will have to stay home from pre-school for one more day. He has learned that this is associated with Uncle Rick and dreads what the day will bring. But when he looks out the front window, Uncle Rick is gone. So is the snow, and so is the cold.

     His mom and dad coax him into watching The Little Mermaid again. “I know there's a scary part towards the end,” his dad says, “but it doesn't stay scary. The good guys win. I promise. It'll make you feel better.”

     “I'd like to watch the end,” his mom adds, and Geoffry gives in.

     They watch to the part with the octopus woman. She grows, she laughs, she makes terrible things happen. Geoffry hides his face.

     “Now,” his dad says, “watch now, Geoff.”

     Geoffry watches as the man climbs onto a ship and works its steering wheel. The wooden spike on the front of the ship turns to spear the octopus woman right through the belly. The movie shows her doubled over, the spike protruding out the other side of her body, before lightning strikes her, making her skeleton show. She melts into the ocean and doesn't come back.

     “You can turn it off now,” says Geoffry. His dad asks if he wants to see the happy ending, but Geoffry is satisfied.

     His mom still demands that they watch all the way to the end. They do, and when it comes she starts crying the way she did when Uncle Rick was around, which makes Geoffry nervous.

     “Uncle Rick is gone, right?” he asks his dad.

     “Yes,” his dad replies solemnly. A moment later, the two of them share their first truly meaningful hug.

_________________________________________________________

     Samuel Tinianow is this issue's feature contributor. Click here for more information on him, as well as a brief interview.

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