BY DAVID A. KYLE
The locomotive, with flashing eye, roared out of the tunnel in the hill and rushed along the curving track. Halfway through the long bend, the speeding engine suddenly trembled and swayed. Then, within a few noisy seconds, most of the train separated from the rails, coaches ramming each other, sliding and slamming together over and around the engine. The locomotive died with a scream of steam, blotting out with its ferocious shhushh all the other screams …
The child jumped up and down with sudden exhilaration and looked at the wreck.
“Daddy, Daddy!” she said. “It’s crashed!”
Her father, Frank Curtis, stopped talking with the insurance salesman and stepped back from the other end of the living room.
The salesman, stiff and motionless, watched the father put the toy cars back on the tracks.
“If you’re going to wreck your toys, well, all right then, Debbie,” Frank Curtis said. “But can’t you remember we have a guest? Can’t you wait later to play rough?” He adjusted the silk ribbon in her hair.
“Be a good girl for Daddy, dear.” The father straightened up and looked into the smooth, impassive face of the salesman.
“Nothing broken, Mr. Black,” Frank Curtis said.
“She’s an unusual child,” Mr. Black said. “I mean, girls don’t play with toy trains ordinarily.”
“Well, she is unusual, Mr. Black,” the father said. “She likes all the stuff that girls play with, too.”
“Was this hers, also, sir?” Mr. Black asked. He tipped his head towards the book shelf near where they stood. As Frank Curtis was nodding his head in reply, the salesman reached out and caressed the broken body of a model commercial airliner.
“You saw the picture in the paper?” the father asked.
“Oh, I did, yes.” The man quickly drew his hand away, “It was a tragic accident.”
“Tragic?” Frank Curtis sounded and looked puzzled. “I think it can be mended. She broke it weeks after they took her picture with it…”
“That picture,” Mr. Black said sharply, his dark eyes dropping their gaze swiftly to the floor and then back to the six-year-old girl sitting on the sofa. She looked back at him serenely. “She’s an attractive child, takes a wonderful picture.” He was speaking rapidly. “Yes, I saw her picture—with that airplane, of course—in the local paper. It was a nice story, about a little girl who likes boys’ toys as much as girls’. Yes, I read about her.”
Frank Curtis hesitated a moment, then said, “Oh,” and smiled.
Mr. Black continued. “Yes, I read about her. I read a lot, I keep up with things.” He stopped abruptly and then added: “You must be proud of your daughter, Mr. Curtis, very proud.” The father responded with a warm grin, a bit modest.
“Yes, when I read that article, even though it was brief, I felt I knew Debbie. And I wanted to do something for her.” The salesman squeezed the other man’s shoulder. “I’m so anxious to make you one of our clients, Mr. Curtis, that I’m going to give you a deal you simply can’t afford to turn down.”
* * * *
It was just such a deal and Frank Curtis did not turn it down. That was why Mr. Black returned the following month of the first regular collection call. With him he brought a doll for the little girl. She was really appreciative, even if her father did have to remind her to thank the nice man, and she took it up on the couch with her to play.
“They tell me you’re a new man,” Frank Curtis said, “but a good one.”
Mr. Black raised his heavy black eyebrows in honest surprise. “Oh, you checked up on me? That was the right thing to do.” He paused for a moment, as if making a decision, then added, “I’m a veteran. I had many years service—demolitionist.” The smile stayed warm and frank. “I find my new work even more exciting—and more satisfying, of course, because of its humanitarianism.”
Mr. Black picked up his red-and-black plaid cap and as he was leaving, said to Debbie, “It’s a very special doll, you know, honey.” He hesitated, before adding, casually, “I mean, it’s practically unbreakable.”
Debbie’s father looked startled, his mouth opening and closing silently.
On the following monthly visit when Mr. Black came, he said to her, while her father was getting his check book, “I’m sorry your dolly lost its arm.”
She crawled under the sofa and brought out the doll; it was in a sorry state, dirty and ragged, nearly bald, its left arm gone, exposing the hollow shoulder socket.
“Thank you, I’m sure,” the little girl said, looking up with wide soft eyes. “How did you know?” Mr. Black avoided her stare and then Mr. Curtis came in and saw the doll.
“It’s a shame,” Frank Curtis said. “I’d hoped we’d keep it a secret from you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it shouldn’t be any surprise.”
“It’s quite all right, sir. It was only a cheap doll and it’s served its purpose.”
“You know,” the father said slowly, “these grown-up dolls—I can’t get used to them. The obvious maturity…” He picked, up the toy and examined it carefully. “Why,” he said, genuinely surprised, “I think it has real hair!” He put the doll on the bookcase shelf. “I hope my daughter isn’t just plain vicious.”
“Oh, no! She’s just completely human, I assure you.” Mr. Black sighed. “She’s mischievous, but really quite innocent.”
* * * *
For the first time Frank Curtis seemed to sense something behind Mr. Black’s speech. “You seem to know more about my child than I do.”
Mr. Black’s stare was fixed on the floor. “I generalize, of course. All children have two natures—one is primeval, selfish and savage, the other is moral, unselfish and civilized. Children who are still innocent express themselves either way—sometimes both ways simultaneously.” He lifted his head and looked Frank Curtis deep in the eyes. The gaze, unlike the charged and forceful speech, was cool and calm.
“Forget about the doll,” Mr. Black said. He put his right hand in his pocket and pulled out a small package. “Here’s something for her train. I made them for a nephew years ago, but unfortunately he died and I saved them to give to someone else some day.”
He began to unwrap the package.
“Really, Mr. Black, you’re more than kind, but all this gift-giving…”
“This is nothing, believe me. It’s more a personal thing than a present.” He opened the package. Inside were a number of narrow strips of paper,
Frank Curtis examined them. They were all gummed on one side and had the names of some famous railroads printed on them. A few of them read: 20TH CENTURY LIMITED.
In answer to the bewildered look, the salesman said: “It’s very simple, sir. I thought my nephew’s trains would look more real with these glued over the brand name. I thought you might let me fasten them on Debbie’s trains…”
For one of those rare times, the two men looked each other squarely in the face. Frank Curtis chewed on the inside of his cheek for several moments.
“Why should I?”
Mr. Black said wistfully, but persuasively. “I loved my nephew very much—it’s something I wanted to do for him.” He made a little, pensive “hmmph” in his throat. “Children like to associate toys with real things. That’s all.”
Debbie’s father shook his head, frowning. “It sounds foolish. Why should a grown man like you think of such a thing?”
“What would you have me think of? A new style doll, its pleasure measured by its expensiveness? A costly garment, to be outgrown quickly with fashionable waste? A pretty picture book, beautifully, scientifically and heartlessly manufactured?” Mr. Black said this utterly without a trace of bitterness and the smile on his face was overwhelmingly disarming. “The small things often become the important things, the cherished things… And I loved my nephew!”
Frank Curtis said, “You’re a real salesman!” There was a touch of awe in his admiration.
So Mr. Black, with Mr. Curtis’s help, changed the name of the train.
Afterwards they decided to run the train a few times, just to see how it looked.
* * * *
It went around the track several times without incident and then Mr. Black bent down and said softly to Debbie: “Can you make it run faster?”
The locomotive, with flashing eye, roared out of the tunnel...
Mr. Black towered above the layout, his feet planted on either side of the cardboard tunnel.
… and rushed along the curving track…
The father started to say, “It’s going too fast…”
The speeding engine trembled… swayed…
Mr. Black’s face was expressionless and colorless and he picked up his plaid cap in preparation for leaving.
… The train separated from the rails…
“Ooops, off the track,” Mr. Black said in a small voice, strolling towards the door. “Thank you for everything…”
The locomotive died with a scream of steam, blotting out with its ferocious shhushh all other screams.
The following month both the incident and the real tragedy were barely mentioned. “A terrible coincidence,” said Frank Curtis to his caller, which is precisely what he had said to himself when he had picked up the next day’s newspaper and saw the headline. Now no reminder remained, for the paper names on the train had soon dried up and peeled away.
Mr. Black had another present for Debbie, but her father, more out of reflex of custom, rather than a subconscious nervousness, was unwilling to accept it. Mr. Black was magnificently persuasive. He finally got an agreement after he said he was going away and promised that this present would be the absolute end.
Mr. Curtis opened the box and looked inside. What was it Mr. Black had said, Debbie was just mischievous, just human?
The gift was an exquisite glass globe reproduction of the Earth.
It looked quite fragile, so Frank Curtis put it on the shelf for when Debbie would be older and could cherish it.