“Patrick you are the world’s worst ham. You really want to go back there?”
“Yeah! It was fun. You should have been there the first time. There was a hundred people gathered around watching. You want to come see?”
“Of course I will, and I’ll take your picture so your mom will believe it when you tell her all about San Diego. You really need to call her tonight. She is going to be awfully lonely without you home on Christmas Eve.”
“I know. I just hope she doesn’t cry. I can’t stand to see a grown woman cry.”
“Well, have patience with her. She’s had patience with you all these years. Babies cry a lot too, you know, and you were a baby not too long ago.”
“But I’m growing. I can even ride a bike now. I went down the hill and back up without crashing into Mrs. Rathburn’s bushes.”
“That’s good, and I hope you start watching for cross traffic on Coronado Street because you could have gotten killed today.”
“I am careful. It was my very first try and I was busy being scared when I crashed into you. Now I’m not scared, so I look both ways first.”
I tied his string tie and shined his boots.
“There, are you ready to go?”
“Yeah!”
“Go ask Uncle Rusty if he wants to come, too.”
The mall was packed. I didn’t see how they could make room for a kid to do rope tricks in the middle of the corridor, but the manager of the photography studio waded through the crowd and posted a barricade in a circle and put a table at one end. He placed two chairs at the table and set down a stack of pictures of Patrick printed on typing paper. Patrick signed about twenty of them and then stood in the middle of the circle and loosened up for his performance. He’d brought Bill’s rope this time and opened a small loop, then began turning the rope smoothly and consistently. No wobbles. People were looking at him as they went about their holiday shopping. He ignored them, concentrating on getting into the rhythm. I understood what he was doing, but Rusty was already fascinated. As Patrick became more comfortable with it, he turned the rope to his side, brought it over his head, then down to his feet. He started stepping into the loop and then out of it, turning it, while keeping it moving. I had to admit the kid was good for a six-year-old. He must have been really bored practicing at home. I wasn’t sure why James had him only lassoing fence posts when he really should have been out catching colts. That was about all the roping we did at the ranch. Patrick could be catching colts, then gently leading them around to get used to being led. Or he could catch the horses when the hands needed them for a chore. Then he would get used to a moving target and the horses would get to know Patrick better.
People were stopping to watch now, but Patrick concentrated on the rope. If he became distracted by the crowd then his rope wobbled. So he twirled the rope, then jumped and turned some more. Pretty soon a woman noticed the stack of pictures and asked me for one. The twenty pictures that Patrick had signed went quickly and people kept asking for more. I told them that if they wanted a signed one, they would have to wait. A few people took unsigned ones, but many people wanted their picture autographed.
“I’m going to buy him a soda. He’s going to need one pretty soon,” Rusty said, and then disappeared into the shopping crowd. Fifteen minutes later two large sodas appeared on the table but Rusty vanished again. Patrick stopped, relieved to see the cups sitting there. He took a long drink and started signing pictures.
“Are you his agent?” a woman asked me.
“No, I’m his aunt.”
“Well, would you give his agent this card?” she asked.
“I’ll give it to his mom. He doesn’t have an agent and doesn’t really need one either. He’s just a kid.”
“Well!” she said in a huff, and walked away with a signed picture. Two minutes later she was back. “This business card is for the photography studio. Can I have Patrick’s business card?”
“My nephew doesn’t have a business card. He’s only six years old. Six year old kids don’t need business cards.”
“How did he get this gig if he doesn’t have an agent and he doesn’t have business cards?”
“This isn’t a gig. He came here to have his picture taken and the studio was surprised to see he could turn a rope, so they set him up out here to draw customers. He’s a ham, so he did it. That’s it.”
“Well!” she said again and left.
“Are you a movie star?” a teenage girl asked Patrick.
“No, my dad’s a horse trainer. He taught me how to use a rope.”
Use a rope. It was as simple as that. These weren’t tricks to him.
“That is so amazing!” a woman gushed at him. “How did you learn to do that?”
“My dad made me practice roping and I got bored so I made it a little more interesting.”
“I’m going to buy my Jimmy a rope. Maybe he can do that, too.”
“Have I seen you on TV?” a man asked.
“No, but my aunt has been on TV,” Patrick answered.
The man turned to me, “Can I have your autograph?” he asked.
“Not that kind of TV. I’ve just been on the news because of my work. I’m not an actress.”
“I bet you are so proud of him!” a grandmotherly woman said, giving me a hug.
I am, I thought. He was able to read and recognize a mule deer track, ride a bike and twirl a rope. He’s a ranch kid. Sheesh. But I really was proud of Patrick because he was smart, cute and happy, but then even one of those qualities would have done it for me.
“Three down, one to go,” Rusty said as he sat down next to me. “Can you take a walk around the crowd and find him?”
“What?”
“Pickpockets. If you spot him, point him out to a security guard. I’ll stay with Patrick.”
I walked the perimeter of the crowd. It took me two laps around the outskirts before spotting her. She was a punk girl with orange and black hair, thick eyeliner and wore low rider leather pants. After watching for a few moments I knew she was clearly working the crowd. I went to a security guard and pointed her out. She spotted me with the guard, raised a pink glittery box over her head and yelled, “Torpedo Toys has Tabatha Twisty dolls! They found a box in the back!”
The crowd turned as one and stampeded in the direction of Torpedo Toys. The barricade around Patrick came down. The girl took off into the crowd. The pictures went flying. A few kids left behind in the rush stood crying. Frantic mothers ran back, angry about the delay. When we looked up, Patrick sat in a heap, pictures settling to the floor around him.
“Up staged by Tabatha Twisty,” he said in disgust.
“Yeah, and I bet they don’t even really have them,” I said. “That was just a pickpocket causing a distraction so she could get away.”
“It wasn’t a total loss, I got offered a part in a soap opera,” Rusty said.
“You aren’t going to do it, are you?” I asked.
“No, I have no desire to get into acting. My performance today at the school was more than I wanted to do.”
“What did you do at the school?” Patrick asked, curious.
“I had to pretend to be Cassidy’s daddy.”
Patrick thought that was funny. “You had to pretend to be Grandpa? He’s old!”
“Gee, thanks, Patrick.”
We returned to the Michaels’ home where Patrick called his parents to wish them a Merry Christmas. Whenever he called his mother I expected to catch hell from Jesse. It seemed she had adjusted to the fact that Patrick was in San Diego until Wednesday. I began to wonder what Patrick was actually telling her because normally he didn’t smooth things over. If anything, his bright enthusiasm made his adventures appear even more outlandish than they really were. I sat with Rusty in the living room, visiting with his parents, Bill and Bev. Cody was working at Tacky T-shirts. He must really have been stuck on that girl who worked there. He’d managed to keep the job for months. With Patrick on the phone the house seemed nice and peaceful.
“It’s so much fun having kids in the house again,” Bev said. “I can’t wait to have a whole houseful of kids for the holidays. Patrick is such a character.”
“Yeah, but after spending a week with him now I’m afraid to have kids!”
“Oh, dear, don’t say that. When you have your own children you grow with them. Anybody would be exhausted suddenly given the care of a six-year- old boy. When you have a baby, it’ll be different. Just wait and see.”
“It’s been half an hour. It’s too quiet. What is he telling her? I hope he didn’t tell her about getting stuck in the top of the tree, or being dragged across the mall by a purse-snatcher. I know I’m going to catch hell from Jessie when we take him back home.”
Then we heard the sound of small steps coming down the attic stairs.
“Mr. Michaels, sir?”
“You can call me Bill,” he said with a smile as Patrick entered the room.
Patrick seemed to relax a little after hearing that. “Do you have a little bitty wrench?”
“A little wrench? What do you need a little wrench for?”
“I’m trying to build something with the metal things in the attic.”
“That’s great! I’m sure we can find a little wrench somewhere,” Bill said as he disappeared up the attic stairs with Patrick. We then heard the two of them moving erector set pieces around, searching for the tools that went with it. There was a small avalanche followed by the sound of plastic boxes being opened, and finally Bill returned to the living room. “I think I’ll stay upstairs for a while,” he said, appearing a little embarrassed to be more interested in Pat’s project than our conversation below.
“He’s a sucker for building things,” Bev told me.
As the afternoon wore on, Bev and I turned to the kitchen while Rusty wandered up to the attic. I helped with the dinner preparations by peeling potatoes and carrots.
“There’s no telling how many we will have for dinner tonight. I always hate for Chase to spend the holidays alone so he has an open invitation, and Sandy will probably be here. She will come Christmas morning, too, but we won’t wait for her if Patrick is ready to open presents. I know how hard it is for a kid to wait on Christmas morning.”
“What was Rusty like on Christmas?”
“Oh, he was the quiet one. He always seemed thoughtful and never exclaimed or got excited. That was Sandy and Cody. They would carry on terribly if they had to wait or go to bed before they were ready. Those two would always get so excited when they got a gift they were hoping for. With Rusty, it was more like a quiet affirmation. I never knew if he really liked his gifts or not. I waited to see if he used them and he always remembered to thank us for them. He was just quiet about it.”
“I know what you mean. The first year we celebrated his birthday I bought him a new computer desk and decorated his office. He was so quiet I thought I’d done something wrong.”
“I bet he liked it though. In his heart he is very appreciative of any little thing you do.”
“What about Tony? I don’t know very much about him.”
“Tony was a middle child in every way. He was the average of the two other personality types. He was more focused, especially when it came to sports. It seemed to me that Tony was interested in a new sport every Christmas. Baseball, soccer, basketball, football, lacrosse... I think he tried them all.”
“I was a lot like Rusty,” I admitted. “There wasn’t very much I needed or wanted as a kid. Freedom to explore was tops on my list, and that’s something you can’t package. As long as I was free to follow where my curiosity led me I was happy. So Christmas wasn’t a big deal. As I grew up my favorite gifts were my horse because that added miles to my exploration and a friend to do it all with, and books that helped me understand what I was seeing out there.”
“Oh, my, what did your parents do?”
“They bought me all the toys that the other kids wished for. I thanked Mom for all the gifts, and then let my sister play with them. I was glad the toys were around for others, but I didn’t care for them myself. I’ve always liked useful things, so now Christmas is a little easier. There’s always something I can use around the house, and Rusty has helped instill a little bit of fashion sense in me. You should have seen me when we first met. My wardrobe consisted of camouflage, khakis and jeans. I’ve grown in so many ways because of him. He’s the best thing that has ever have happened to me.”
“Have you told him that?”
“No, I guess I haven’t, but I know he sees it. He knows I’m happier, more settled and far more comfortable with myself. I don’t run for the woods now whenever something scary happens and he’s the reason for those changes.”
“You’re good for him too, you know. He’d do anything for you.”
“He’s always been kind like that, even before I really knew him.”
Bev slid dinner into the oven and we went upstairs to see what the guys were doing. Bill and Rusty were in conversation and watching Patrick building something elaborate. Patrick was bent over his creation, his brow creased in concentration.
“What are you building, Pat? It looks like a brace for an elephant trunk!”
“You wouldn’t believe it if we told you.” Bill answered. “He’s building a ball return for the pool table.”
“Wow! Now that you’ve told me what it is, I can see it. What made you think of building that?”
“Nothing, I don’t even know if it’ll work, or if I’ll even have enough pieces, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try.” Patrick answered.
I thought to myself that his parents had no idea what they were really dealing with here. When he complained about the baby books he was forced to read at school, they weren’t able to see that he was bored. They only saw a whiney first grader. Jesse would have thought a ball return for the pool table was a silly idea. She’d say there was no way that atrocious looking contraption would be going on her pool table. She’d tell him to go brush his teeth and then put on his good clothes for dinner. And he’d do it while his mind went numb with boredom. I reminded myself that Jesse wasn’t a bad mom and James wasn’t a bad dad, they were simply unaware of Patrick’s potential. I vowed right then and there that if my kids ever wanted an erector set ball return on our pool table, I would encourage them and be proud to have one. I’d see the intelligence behind their complaints; I’d challenge my kids, not smother them with emotions and stiff dinner dress. Whenever they wanted to explore I would go and explore with them. They’d wear play clothes and make mud pies, and crawl around in fields stalking deer and following game trails.
“Hello, earth calling Cassidy. You there, hon?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.”
“Look, Aunt Cassidy, the screws for the erector set fit right into the screw holes from the fancy pockets. I only have one done so it works, but I know how to do it now. Should we make the balls go to one end or the middle? It would be shorter tubes to go to the middle but it would be easier getting the balls out if it went to the end. We could make them go to the side of the middle. That would solve both problems.”
“The little engineer,” Bev commented.
“At pool halls the balls go to the end of the table where you rack them so it’s easier to rack up the balls,” Rusty explained.
“I don’t know if there’s enough pieces to do that,” Patrick countered.
“Well, start at one end and work your way to the other. Then, if you run out of pieces, we’ll just make up new rules and only use the pockets with ball returns on them. That’ll make the game more challenging, too.”
“Four kids’ erector sets plus some and it might not be enough,” Bev observed. “You’ve got big aspirations, kid.”
“Use the big pieces for the long tubes and the short ones for the short tubes,” Rusty advised.
“Let him figure it out for himself,” Bev scolded. “He’s doing a fine job.”
I heard a light click downstairs.
“Chase is here,” I told them.
“I didn’t hear the bell,” Bev said.
“He didn’t ring the doorbell. He knew we were expecting him.”
Chase climbed the stairs to the attic.
“What are we all doing up here?” he asked.
“Building a ball return for the pool table,” Rusty pointed out.
“It seems to take a lot of supervision to build a ball return for a pool table,” Chase observed.
“Okay, send a ball down,” Patrick instructed.
Chase picked up the four ball and rolled it into the pocket where it gently followed the track and dropped into a plastic box at the end. Patrick crawled out from under the table and peeked over the top grinning.
“It worked!” he said brightly.
We spent the afternoon talking around the pool table, sitting on the floor, watching Patrick build. It went quicker once Patrick discovered he didn’t need to build tubes, he could build troughs.
Sandy arrived but nobody noticed. We were trying to figure out how to get the trough a certain shape so it would reach the box without jamming. Sandy stood there arms on hips watching us.
“It looks like it should work,” I said.
“It’s getting stuck right here,” Patrick said, pointing. “It’s hard to move just one piece of it. If I move one I have to move almost all of them.”
“Well, there’s nothing you can do. It’s got to move so you’ll have to take it off and try again,” Bill advised.
Sandy said, “This reminds me of that old junker Tony had. All four guys were under that thing every weekend trying to figure something out. Did it ever work good enough to pass the smog test?”
“No, it was just a dud car. We sold it to a junkyard for scrap,” Bill replied. “But it wasn’t a total dud. We all learned a lot from that old car.”
“Speaking of learning things,” Chase added, “I think I finally convinced Slick there’s a few people who won’t do his bidding. Cassidy convinced him that matters were not always in his hands. He wanted to pack that kid off to jail on Christmas Eve, clean up the school, and be done with it. He’s got a lot more work ahead of him now. He’s probably going to spend Christmas trying to figure out how to break up this drug ring Shawn got pulled into. That kid was low man on the totem pole. He’s signed up for special counseling at the school and they’ll keep tabs on him until he graduates. They have a college placement office and he spent the afternoon in that office taking personality profile tests. Now he’s chosen a course of action. Can’t say I agree with all those surveys and some of the questions are very… umm… questionable, but at least it’s a start. When I took one of those tests, it said I should be a chef. Can you imagine me as a chef? If I wasn’t here, my Christmas dinner would be a hamburger and French fries. I might add a slice of cake for a special occasion. I might go buy a six-pack but can you imagine me a chef?”
“Slick shouldn’t spend Christmas working, and he must have something better to do than that.” I may not have cared for the guy but I didn’t want him spending Christmas alone in his office. I also didn’t like the idea of him scouring bad neighborhoods for people who just wanted to have a peaceful holiday. It may seem a little naïve but I’d rather believe that criminals don’t work on holidays. So why should detectives? “Rusty, he can’t spend Christmas all alone.”
“He spends Christmas how he chooses,” Rusty said. He knew what I was thinking, and he didn’t like it.
“Okay,” said Patrick, “I think we’re ready to try again.” He carefully screwed the trough to the pool table and Chase sent down the nine ball. It threatened to get stuck just because it lost momentum, but it finally made it all the way down the trough and into the box. “I’ll try again if there’s time, but it works good enough for now.”
Patrick started on the next pocket, but each ball return had to be slightly different, so he wasn’t able to simply build six identical troughs and attach them. Each had to be fitted to the pocket it attached to and then be tweaked until it hit the box at the right angle. It was quite a feat for a kid, but he didn’t see it that way. It was just something to do and he thought it was interesting. I wasn’t going to throw geometry and physics into his fun, but it was tempting.
After dinner, seven adults and one kid played three-pocket pool. The balls were supposed to go in the ball return pockets. A target ball in a different pocket was a scratch and meant ball in hand. We never knew who won because there wasn’t really a rule about that. If we counted the balls everybody sank, then Chase won easily. Patrick declared his project a success and told everybody he’d finish the job the next day, but there would be little chance of that happening after all the presents had been opened.
“Now you have to go right to sleep or Santa Claus won’t be able to come. He needs plenty of time to deliver all the presents.”
“I’ll try. It’s no fair that kids have to fall asleep on the hardest night there is to sleep.”
“I know, but you’ll survive. I did and so did Uncle Rusty. It’s just part of being a kid.”
“Why don’t adults have to go to bed? Does Santa come while adults are awake? Have any adults seen Santa?”
“I haven’t. I always thought Santa preferred to work alone, so I never tried to see him. Time for sleep. Just give it a try. I’m going to bed soon, too.”
I went downstairs to join everyone in the living room watching an old movie, but fell asleep halfway through it. Rusty finally woke me up when the movie ended.
“Come on, Mrs. Claus, we still have work to do.”
We pulled out our box of gifts and placed them all under the tree, then filled one of those fuzzy red and white stockings with candy and little doodads. It wasn’t his Christmas stocking from home but then he knew not to expect that. Bev brought out her gifts and added them under the tree. Many of them were labeled from Santa Claus rather than from Bill and herself. Cody then added his gifts to the pile.
“Chase, it’s nearly midnight,” Bev said. “You can stay if you want to. There won’t be much for you to do in the morning but at least you’ll already be here. I know there are a few things for you under the tree, but we buried them.”
“Who’s staying in the attic?”
“Rusty and Cassidy.”
“Is the hammock put away for the winter?”
Bev nodded. “It’s the couch or floor but I’m sure we can come up with something. You don’t want to drive all the way home and wake up in that cold trailer. You know you’ll just come back in the morning anyway.”
“Are you making cinnamon rolls?”
“I doubled the recipe.”
“First one up turns on the Christmas lights,” Bill said as he headed up the stairs to bed.
Rusty stood in the attic and dropped down a bundle of comforters for Chase. Then we all turned in, knowing it would be a very short night. We all expected Patrick to be up before dawn.