Below is a short story (written by yours truly), which I told with much trepidation to a classroom of college students, divulged especially for you:
The President’s Private Attic No. Nine
Ding always called it a new opportunity. This was his way of softening the blow, putting a ribbon on an ugly gift. There isn’t any time to stop and smell the roses, he always told Ash, chewing on the penlight that he held in his yellowish teeth. Got to get a move on, can’t stand around and watch the grasses grow.
They were always on the move. Traveling from an apartment in the West to a campsite in the South, by train, taxi, subway, bus (although Ding didn’t like busses), and occasionally hitchhiking. Study the hitchhikers, like I used to do, and see if you can spot them: Ding could be identified by his knapsack. He wore that knapsack everywhere. Sleeping at the train station, walking to the grocery store for a newspaper, even in the shower. It was as much a part of Ding as his filthy work boots, or his greasy strings of hair, which were in danger of reaching the back pocket of his jeans soon. Ding loathed long hair, but he never seemed to have the time to cut it.
Ash didn’t look anything like his father. His bright, hazel eyes contrasted with Ding’s dark blue ones, and his rumpled hair and rather perplexed expression, which he always seemed to have no matter how hard he tried, looked nothing like Ding’s rough, impenetrable face.
Ding would be standing on the edge of the road, looking anxious, keeping one knurled hand on the strap of his knapsack, the other hanging over the edge of the road, thumb pointed to the sky. Ash would be standing off to the side, baking in the heat. I could never tell what Ash thought of Ding. He never seemed to be afraid of him exactly. He certainly wasn’t fond of him. Nobody could be. Perhaps it was because of the repulsive smell that hovered around Ding, like a protective charm. Or maybe the way he didn’t really have any eyebrows, just folds of skin that hunched over and stabbed at you from across the road until you had to check and see if you were bleeding.
Ash, on the other hand, possessed the air of one-trying-to-keep-clean-even-if-one- did-not-own-a-bar-of-soap. He seemed intelligent, too, like a person who somehow- manages-to-know-a-great-deal-of-things-regardless-of-a-lack-of-schooling. The boy had a knapsack of his own, though not nearly as sturdy and large as Ding’s. He kept a weather-beaten book inside of it, which seemed to be filled with facts that he thought everyone ought to know.
I overheard a conversation the other day. They were standing under the overpass while Ding squinted and cursed at a wrinkly map in his hands.
“Ding? Do you know how many bones are in an elephant’s trunk?”
“Due for rain.” Ding said, looking up at the sky. “We’re gonna to have’ta keep moving, boy, or risk getting caught in it.”
Ash tried again: “Ding?”
Ding’s forehead sank over his eyelids. “What?”
“Do you know how many bones are in an elephant’s trunk?”
Ding looked at his son for a moment just long enough to give Ash a familiar, withering stare, where one fold of skin sinks low and the other shoots up high.
“What,” Ding said, “Is the matter with you?”
Ash didn’t look at all put off by Ding’s question. “I was just wondering if-”
“Do I look like I care about bleeding elephants?” Ding asked.
Ash took a dangerous second to decide. “No.”
“Are we on some ruddy Savanna havin’ a sodding picnic?”
“No.”
That seemed to settle the matter to Ding. He went back to his map. If it were me, I would have left it at that. I’d seen what Ding could do when he was in a temper (he always seemed to be either coming out of one, or falling back in), but Ash, clutching the blue, water-damaged volume, seemed bizarrely persistent.
“They don’t have any, Ding.”
“What?” Ding shot another estranging glare at his son, who looked unflinchingly back.
“They don’t have any bones in their trunks,” Ash explained. Ding pocketed his map and demanded who the blazes Ash was talking about. When Ash began to explain that elephants don’t have any bones in their trunk, but rather 40,000 muscles, Ding replied with a sharp blow to Ash’s ear.
I have examined the ring on Ding’s fourth finger before. It was a black rock, with dangerously sharp-looking wires that hooked together to keep everything in place. It was no wonder Ash began bleeding. He ignored the deep red trail trickling down his cheek and stared hard at his father’s back, daring him to turn around again. Ding didn’t. That’s when I began to suspect that, in some ways, Ding was more afraid of his son than his son was of him. That was the first real clue.
One can never get any proper sleep in my line of business. The problem with these people is, they never really stop moving. And you never really know when they plan on packing up and leaving. You have to keep track of what time and where and why. The latter is the trickiest bit. At the beginning, Ash was always asking his father why, and I was sincerely hoping that Ding would answer. But, of course, if he had, then my job would have probably been over, and that would have meant the end of my paycheck.
The job was almost done, anyway. I had everything I needed, and there was only one step remaining: telling Ash. It would be a bit problematic, finding a moment when Ding wasn’t within arms reach of his son. He could be so overprotective, as they always were. It never took very long to get the job done, however: telling Ash that he wasn’t who he thought he was. That Ding was not and had never been his father. That we had been watching him ever since he had been taken. That he needed to get Ding’s knapsack.
The latter set off a whole other train of problems to deal with, but they were no longer mine. They were Ash’s. Or, Ashwin’s, I should say.
(The End)
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