TIM JONES-YELVINGTON / FIGURES UP AHEAD, MOVING IN THE TREES
The boy is playing Barbies with the Boy Next Door. Say it like I told you, he tells the boy. Here, let me show you. He snatches back his Barbie. She wears a sequined dress and red bouffant. In his other hand, he waves a black-haired Barbie in a tailored pantsuit.
This is my stage now, says Black Hair. You’re a washed-up hag!
How dare you, says Bouffant. He positions her molded hand to slap Black Hair’s cheek.
This is boring, says the Boy Next Door. Why can’t we go to my house, and play with my Transformers?
Your Transformers are ugly, says the boy. They have ugly hair and ugly clothes.
Whatever, the Boy Next Door says. He stomps out the bedroom door. I’m going to go ride bikes.
The Boy Next Door is gone. Gone again. The Boy thinks, When I have a baby brother, he’ll do just as I say.
§
The Boy goes out to lunch with his Mommy, his Mommy’s secretary, and his grandmother. They’ve spent the morning shopping for Christmas presents, but all the Boy wants for Christmas is a baby brother. His Mommy says without a daddy, there can’t be any babies.
His attention wanders from the adults’ conversation, mind circling the cul-de-sacs of his private musings. He’s thinking about the movie his Mommy just took him to see, and its opening credits, a cluster of tadpoles swimming a ripe red tunnel, shouting Keep up!
He’d tugged his Mommy’s arm, asked what’s happening? What are those? Later, she told him, neglecting certain details she deemed inappropriate for a child in the second grade, however mature the Boy may be for his age.
Mommy, he interrupts, in the clutch of inspiration. I know how I can have a baby brother! I can give you some of my sperm!
His grandmother purses her lips, harumphs. His Mommy’s secretary chokes her laughter with her napkin. His Mommy pinches his shoulder, says, We’ll discuss this later.
§
The Boy dreams. He stands in his backyard under a full moon, on the threshold of the nearby woods, trail haloed in mist. His skin glows pale white, wrists perfumed—vetiver and sage—wrapped in linen, his Sunday suit. Up ahead, a figure is moving in the trees. He parts the foliage, tiptoes down the path.
He walks, follows the sound of the creature—for he knows now it’s a creature, some ogre of the night—its sound a moan, an arrival that rattles the Boy’s bones, at once a pleasure and acute terror. With each of the Boy’s steps, the ogre retreats, lies continually beyond the Boy’s grasp, evasive, until suddenly, it’s behind and upon him, breath hot, firing the hairs on his neck.
He wakes up screaming. His Mommy collects him, carries him to her room, her bed, where he nestles into her left shoulder, his favorite spot. She is watching a movie. A blond woman and tiny, blustery man argue over whether they can ever truly be friends. At a diner, the blond orders, a complicated order, all substitutions and special requests. She scrunches up her face and makes a noise. For the Boy, this noise is familiar. Like a pale imitation of the ogre. It demystifies, anesthetizes the sound, and the Boy feels calmed. Yet strangely, left longing for the very thing that when dreaming frightened him to his core.
§
He walks next door, knocks on the door. The Boy Next Door’s door.
Can the Boy Next Door come out and play?
I’m sorry dear, he isn’t home right now.
In the corner of his eye, he sees the curtain lift, then drop.
§
The Boy dreams. This time, he’s inside a department store, the store where he and his Mommy went shopping for Christmas presents. Everywhere he looks, lights pop, tinsel shimmers. He turns a corner, and finds an aisle full of watches. He picks one up, looks for the time, but sees it has no hands. He hears a voice call his name, and recognizes it’s his Mommy’s secretary. He runs from the aisle, then suddenly, a wall of stained glass materializes in his path. Too late to change his course, he careens toward it, braces for the shattering. Then suddenly, he’s on the other side, having somehow passed through without a cut.
Where have you been, his Mommy’s secretary scolds. You’re late. She’s waiting for you downstairs!
In the basement, between the restrooms and the dishtowels, he finds a train track. A locomotive squats at the mouth of a dark tunnel, puffs smoke. A man in a red uniform shouts announcements. The Boy gathers his courage, asks him, Sir, where does this train go? To the west side of this department store, the man answers, All aboard!
The Boy slips through just as the sliding doors close. The train clatters, doors reopen onto a section of the store unlike any the Boy has ever seen, the white tile replaced by cushioning fabrics in vibrant pink and green, toys hung from the ceiling on translucent thread.
From a throne of pillows, a new boy reigns. Blond, cheeks ruddy, he wears a banded tee in primary colors. He motions for the Boy to approach. He lifts his shirt, squeezes his navel, and out pops a multicolored bundle of threads. In the morning, the Boy wakes to find it balled in his fist.
§
It’s Christmas Eve day. The Boy Next Door circles his driveway on his bicycle. He sticks out his tongue at the Boy.
You’re weird, he says. I don’t want to play with you anymore.
The Boy picks up a handful of small pebbles to throw at the Boy Next Door, but he’s already turned the corner, is rattling down the path into the woods.
That night, in his bedroom, the Boy sews a doll with his clump of thread, a boy doll with blond hair, red face, a ringer tee. He places his Barbies in a circle around the doll.
Time for your concert, he says. The Barbies sing, and the Boy sings along, his favorite song from his favorite cassette.
I want to see you clearly
Come closer than this
But all that I remember
Are the dreams in the mist
A warm wind whips through the room. The boy doll’s hair stands on end. The Boy places the doll in a box, wraps the box in shiny paper, tiptoes into the living room, places it beneath the Christmas tree. In bed, he closes his eyes. Every second of the night, beneath the tree grows another life.
§
On Christmas morning, the Boy’s Mommy unwraps the box. A blond haired boy pumps his fists, shouts, TA-DA! Though younger than the Boy, he’s big. Like already a toddler, practically a kindergartner. He pogoes into their Mommy’s lap.
Oh Mommy, says the Boy. My baby brother, exactly like the one in the department store—he’s just what I’ve always wanted!
The Boy’s grandmother sits in a recliner, inspects the new child through her spectacles. He’s quite a nice baby brother, she says. Not quite so lovely as my neighbor’s, but still very nice.
The Boy looks at the Christmas tree. He wants to remember this day, this moment, forever. He says, Let’s call him Tannenbaum.
§
The Boy shows off his bedroom to his new baby brother.
He picks up the black-haired Barbie, hands it to Tannenbaum.
This is Genevieve, he says. Now do as I say. Make her sing. Make her sing If Looks Could Kill.
Tannenbaum sticks the Barbie’s head inside his mouth, bites down.
NO! the Boy shouts. Tannenbaum, NO, you’ll ruin her!
§
The Boy dreams. A nightmare, he is trapped on a bicycle. He hates this bicycle, like he hates every bicycle. He pedals and pedals, but the bicycle never moves. He sees Tannenbaum in the distance, with his back turned toward the Boy. Tannenbaum, he yells. But Tannenbaum never turns.
He wakes in a sweat, shouts. He waits for his Mommy to come. He waits. He slips from his bed, tiptoes down the hallway into her room. Tannenbaum sits nestled under her left shoulder, in the Boy’s favorite spot. They are watching a movie. His mother motions to her other shoulder. Join us, she says. He falls asleep on the wrong side, gnarled into a twist. In the morning, his spine rages.
§
The Boy finds Tannenbaum in his bedroom with the Boy Next Door, playing with his Barbies. The Boy Next Door holds the black-haired Barbie in front of a net. It’s the butterfly net the Boy’s grandmother gave him for his fifth birthday, that’s languished in the back of his closet ever since. Tannenbaum holds the Barbie with the bouffant, her sequined dress hiked up to her waist. He pulls one of the Barbie’s legs out in front of the other, strikes a marble. The marble glides toward the net.
What are you doing, the Boy asks.
The Barbies are playing soccer, Tannenbaum says.
No, says the Boy, No, you’re doing it wrong! He rips the Barbies from their hands. Tannenbaum stumbles backward, falls onto his butt. The Boy shakes the bouffant Barbie. He says, This Barbie is a singer and actress, but she’s not as popular as she used to be. Then he shakes the black-haired one, says, This one is trying to take her place.
You hurt me, Tannenbaum says. I’m telling Mommy.
Nobody likes a tattle tale, says the Boy Next Door.
§
The Boy asks his Mommy to put Tannenbaum back inside the box. She pretends she doesn’t understand. Sweetie, what box? The box he came in. The box under the tree. Sweetie, Tannenbaum came from my tummy. Remember when we brought him home from the hospital?
Though the Boy has spent his whole life playing by himself, he has never felt more alone.
And then he has a plan.
§
The Boy takes Tannenbaum for a walk in the woods. They circle the path. As they round the corner back toward the house, Tannenbaum begins to run. Wait, shouts the Boy. Mommy will be mad if I forget to check you for ticks.
The boy lifts Tannenbaum’s shirt. On his lower back, just above his tailbone, he finds a small loose thread, looped through a backstitch. The boy unhitches the thread. He pulls. He pulls and pulls. The thread unravels and unravels and unravels, until there is only a pile of thread in place of a boy.
§
The boy’s Mommy dabs her eyes. He hugs her leg tightly, looks forward to the evening, in her bedroom, when we will snuggle into the space beneath her left shoulder to bring her what comfort he can.
Later, he stands in the middle of the woods. Somewhere, he is certain, there’s a boy who will memorize his lines, who will play his games just right. He feels a warm wind whip around him, through the trees. It rustles the leaves, his hair, awakens the ogre. He feels the ogre inside him now, it becomes him. It opens and closes his mouth, his chest, his hands. Extends his fingers to stroke the back of this imaginary boy’s neck, this neck that he will someday encounter in the flesh. There’s something out there, he’s certain now, something he can’t resist.
Note:
“Figures Up Ahead, Moving in the Trees” appropriates language from the song “These Dreams,” by Heart.
Tim Jones-Yelvington is the author of Strike a Prose: Memoirs of a Lit Diva Extraordinaire (co•im•press), This Is a Dance Movie! (Tiny Hardcore Press), and Don't Make Me Do Something We'll Both Regret (forthcoming, Texas Review Press). His debut poetry chapbook, Become On Yr Face, was winner of the 2016 DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press chapbook contest, and its followup, Colton Behavioral Therapy, winner of the 2017 Gazing Grain contest.