All I wanted to do was go fishing, because that’s what Sunday afternoons were for. The fact it was the first week of November didn’t matter. The weather was warm, nearly sixty, and David Walker had given me an open-ended invitation to visit the lake that backed up to Happy Hollow on the back part of his farm. No one wanted to fish there much; country folk are notoriously superstitious, and to them legend may as well be fact. I never minded, though. The Hollow was just dark woods full of darker stories. I had my pole by the door, my tackle box full, and my hat on. In other words, I was ready.
The Old Man, however, was not.
I checked the bait again and then the pole, and then jangled my keys at him like he was a pet rather than a higher being.
He raised his hands from the couch and pushed them out and apart. “Just…wait,” he said.
“Daylight’s burnin’, Old Man,” I said. “We gotta get.”
“Cowboys are gonna score,” he said, pointing to the television. “Bet you twenty.”
“You don’t have twenty,” I said. “I’m gonna leave you here if you don’t hurry up. I’m pretty sure you can catch up later.”
“You can’t go yet,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because company’s coming.”
“It’s Sunday afternoon,” I said. “You know folks don’t go visiting until Sunday evening, and you know nobody ever comes to see me.”
“Company’s coming,” he repeated. “It’ll be interesting.”
“And why’s that?”
“ ’Cause it’s a dinosaur,” he said, then raised his eyebrows up and down and uttered a mock growl.
I sighed. Not because he said a dinosaur was coming to see me, but because I really had to stay. Because a Lesson was about to be imparted. And even though I knew it would be a valuable lesson—if not at that moment, then surely at some point—I really just wanted to go fishing. But the Old Man had always been of the opinion that what all people had in common was their amount of little moments. Big moments varied from person to person, he said. Some had more, others less. But we all had the same amount of little ones, and the secret of life lay in them. Wise, yes. And profound, too. But as a result he never let me miss one of them, even when it meant I had to wait to catch dinner.
I sat down beside him on the sofa and watched as Dallas fumbled on the ten.
“You owe me twenty,” I said. “Guess you folks don’t know everything, huh?”
His mouth said nothing, but the sudden and passing look of confusion on his face did. I’d never seen him surprised by anything.
He recovered enough to say “Put it on my tab,” then he interrupted me before I could ask another question—“Someone’s coming.”
“Yeah, I know. The dinosaur. T-Rex or Stegosaurus?”
“T-Rex.”
I nodded. “Sounds about right.”
I got up and walked into the kitchen for a bag of jerky. If I had to sit around the house all afternoon waiting on a dinosaur, I might as well grab a snack. I’d just taken a Coke out of the refrigerator when the doorbell rang.
“Dinosaur’s here,” the Old Man called.
“Didn’t know they rang doorbells,” I answered.
I walked back into my small living room and looked through the glass on the upper part of the door. Nothing.
“You messin’ with me?” I asked him. The doorbell rang a second time and answered for him. I grabbed the knob and said, “Sure are growin’ them things small nowadays.”
I opened the door and looked down. The Old Man had been right. There was a dinosaur on my porch. A T-Rex, actually. Styrofoam teeth jutted out from his head and a piece of brown felt had been glued to his chest. His long tail stretched all the way to the steps. Impressive.
“Trick or treat!” it said.
I turned to look toward the sofa, which was now empty. The Old Man had fulfilled his mission of keeping me at the house. I guessed he didn’t think sticking around was necessary.
“Trick or treat!” the boy said again. He held out an orange plastic bag and shook it for effect.
“It’s not Halloween,” I told him.
“I know.”
“Halloween was last week.”
“I know,” he said, shaking his bag again.
This, I decided, was a new low. A blatant example of modern society’s pollution of young people with the poisons of greed and selfishness. Not only did I probably give this kid a handful of candy last week, now he was back for more.
“Didn’t you get enough the first time around?” I asked.
“Nuh-uh.” (Shake.)
“Little greedy, ain’t ya?”
He wrinkled his brow and tried to decide if I’d just complimented or insulted him. “…Yes?” he asked.
“What’s your name?”
“My name’s Logan the Dinosaur!” he yelled. “Now give me candy or I’ll eat you!” He added a “Grrr!” on the end that sounded like a frightened mouse.
“Well, Logan the Dinosaur, I think you probably have enough candy at your house, don’t you?”
“No. I don’t have any candy.” He said those words with an air of defensiveness that implied he’d had that asked of him quite a few times that day, thank you.
“What’d you do,” I said, “eat it already?”
“Nope. I didn’t get t’go.” He shook his bag again. “Please?”
“You didn’t get to go trick-or-treating last week?” I asked.
His shoulders slumped and his bag nearly dropped onto the porch. From what I saw, what would have spilled out wouldn’t amount to much. “I got dressed and went to Granny’s,” he said, “and then I got sick. I yarked in my bag.”
“You did what?”
“I yarked in my bag. You know…” He stuck a finger halfway into his mouth and made a heaving sound.
“Gotcha,” I said.
Then it was my turn to wrinkle a brow. Logan answered my question before it was asked—“No, not this bag.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Mommy says I can have a do-over,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “She says we don’t get much do-overs and that’s why they’re special. I think do-overs are the best.”
I followed Logan’s thumb toward the driveway. His mother stood at the end, resting an elbow on the mailbox. She offered a wave and a what-was-I-supposed-to-do? shrug. I waved back and smiled because I was beginning to understand.
“Well, I’ve never been one to stand in the way of a good do-over. But I’m outta candy. Gave it all away last week.”
“That’s okay,” Logan said. “Most everybody’s been out. They just gave me cooler stuff.”
He opened his bag for proof—two baseball cards, a pencil, some glue, three golf tees, and a five-dollar bill were inside.
“Not a bad haul,” I said. “Okay, little man, I tell you what. You hang here, and I’ll see what I can find.”
I left Logan at the door and let him peek while I rummaged through the living room trying to decide if I had anything at all that would appeal to a boy his age. Unfortunately, the pickings seemed slim. In the end I settled on a small spiral notebook, two AA batteries, another baseball card, and an arrowhead I had found near the creek by my house.
“There ya go,” I said, emptying it all into his bag.
“Awesome,” he whispered. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Happy Halloween.”
“You the man who runs the gas station?” he asked.
“That’s me.”
“My mom and dad go to the Texaco, ’cause we live near there. They say you’re a nice guy, just kinda crazy.”
“Well,” I said, “I reckon I appreciate that.”
“Here,” he said, reaching into his bag. “You can have this one.”
He pulled out one of the golf tees and held it up to me. “Happy Halloween, too,” he said.
Logan the T-Rex bounded back down the driveway to his mother. We exchanged another wave and shrug, and I watched as he knocked on the door of the Thompsons’ house across the street. Stephen-with-a-P-H was the lucky one who answered.
“My name’s Logan the Dinosaur!” I heard. “Now give me candy or I’ll eat you! Grrr!”
I stood and watched Stephen-with-a-P-H scratch his head and try to figure out what in the world was going on. Then my eyes drifted. Not to Logan the Dinosaur, but to the person standing at the end of yet another driveway—his mother.
Her son might have been the star of that show, but she was the wisdom behind it. What had happened to Logan the week before was beyond his control, a stroke of misfortune that culminated in a yark into his trick-or-treat bag. At some point she realized that might be a night he would always regret, and then at another point she realized it didn’t have to be that way. She could take that regret and turn it into a triumph.
She could change the future.
“Now they scored,” the Old Man said from the couch. I looked from him to the television. Sure enough, several football players dressed in white and silver were acting stupid in the end zone. “See? I just had my time line wrong.”
“You still owe me twenty,” I said.
“Nice little Halloween present you got there,” he said.
“Nice kid,” I told him. “Guess I’m supposed to hang on to this.”
“Like your life depended on it.” There was a seriousness in his words that bothered me. I felt as though he were speaking prophecy rather than some old adage.
“Logan was right,” he said. “Do-overs really are the best. You’ve always believed them to be rare. Impossible, even. I get that. But see your eyes, Andy. I watched you as you stood there thinking maybe you had that all wrong. That maybe such a thing is possible.”
“I don’t need a do-over.”
He began to fade, but not before he offered one word.
“Soon.”