Three days later and three towns over, Leonard was eventually found. He wasn’t dead, but he was dehydrated and weak and had a broken arm. The Collective gathered around the common room television to watch the local news. Leonard was still dressed as a soldier. He still had on his old wig, as well as a new cast, as two policemen helped him into a cruiser.
“Look at him!” Gavin said. “He’s as white as a sheet.”
“Check out his eyes.” Howie whistled. “They don’t look real.”
Teddy hung back in the common room and stared at the floor while the newscaster gave his report. Leonard had been found on an elderly couple’s front porch. When confronted, he’d told authorities he was the first president of the United States and that he was originally from Nebraska. Thanks to a student ID, the cops were able to determine that his name was Leonard Salts and he was from Ursula, Illinois. He was now in good hands and being sent back to his parents, accompanied by a school counselor. “He’s a lucky young man,” the newscaster said in closing. “He was pretty bad off when he was found.”
The Collectives, save for Teddy, clapped when the segment cut to a commercial.
“All’s well that ends well,” one said.
“Talk about making history,” said another.
Teddy skipped class for the rest of the week. On Saturday, a tall sad man, accompanied by a dean of some sort, came to pack up Leonard’s things. Teddy stood in the hall and listened while they wrapped Leonard’s creations in newspaper.
“I can’t figure out what went wrong,” the tall man said. “Leonard always had a good head on his shoulders.”
There was a long silence. Teddy’s stomach spun one way and then another.
“Some people do better close to home,” the administrator finally said. “I’m sure he’ll bounce right back once he gets back to what he knows.”
Teddy left the hallway and went to his room. An hour later, he watched from his window as the tall man and the dean walked from the Collective with the yam-colored suitcases and a dolly full of cardboard boxes. Teddy watched until they disappeared around a wooded bend in campus. He watched the bend until the sky was black. Teddy couldn’t stop thinking about Leonard or the teeth in the velvet box. He couldn’t stop thinking about the museum waiting for the teeth, and how they might never receive their order and Leonard would lose his chance. But mostly he thought about watching Leonard work—his bent back and the gentle scrape of his tools and the slow evenings suspended in amber.
Teddy sank into a deep depression. Within a week, he took a leave of absence and went home to his mother in Massachusetts. She babied him with soup. She gave him half of her Prozac prescription. Teddy spent his time sleeping and reading old comic books and trying not to think about Leonard. On Thanksgiving, Teddy picked up the phone and called Information and got a number for a Walter Salts in Ursula, but before he could convince himself to call, he burned the piece of paper the number was on. He lit a match and held it to the paper and dropped the paper right before it burned his fingers. The ashes of Walter Salts’s number left a little brown scar on Teddy’s white bedspread.
“Why don’t you go somewhere after the holidays?” his mother suggested. “Somewhere where people really have it bad? A place that will make you feel better about yourself?”
Teddy was doubtful, but he took her advice. In January, he went somewhere hot and humid and primitive—a place where he was tall and godly and the bearer of good and necessary things. It turned out his mother was right: seeing people worse off than himself really did put Teddy in a better mood. Before long, his spirits soared. He saw himself as a benevolent king. One who was good with a shovel, a soup ladle, a campfire guitar. Teddy gained approval, mostly from himself; he grew nearly giddy with self-righteousness. By the time he returned to the States that summer, Teddy had, for all intents and purposes, erased Leonard Salts from his memory.
Years later on a Sunday drive home from the beach, Teddy stopped at a rest area with his young family. It was a dark and dated pit stop, but it had clean-enough bathrooms, and while Teddy’s wife tended to their son and daughter, Teddy stood in the vestibule with his hands on his hips and stared at the vending machines. He peered into one that offered crackers and chips, and then into a second that offered water and juice, before he finally paused to consider the space between the two machines. There, tucked in the shadows and bolted to the wall, was a small, nondescript box. Curious, Teddy moved closer and saw that the box was made of glass and steel. It was smudged with fingerprints but inside were a set of yellowed false teeth and three brass buttons and a neat row of crude bullets. Teddy frowned. He felt his stomach do a little flip, and he leaned in closer still. There wasn’t a plaque anywhere to be found, just a little strip of paper inside the box, upon which was typed the word: REPLICAS. Teddy bent over until his nose touched the box. He stared until his eyes watered. For a moment, he could hear the scraping of Leonard’s tools and was back on Leonard’s bed, suspended in amber, right at the threshold of the afterlife. He saw Leonard’s nimbus of hair, felt Leonard’s warm hand on his cheek. He heard Leonard say: You’re the best friend that I’ve got here, Teddy. You’re a good guy.
And then: his wife and children. Loud and soapy and fresh, their shoes squeaking against the floor. “Vending machines!” they squealed. “Can we have quarters, Daddy? Can we? Can we?”
Teddy couldn’t speak. Their presence was suddenly tin plates clattering all around. He stormed from the rest area and went out to the car and sat panting behind the wheel. When his wife and children finally climbed back in, Teddy started the car and gunned the engine. He put all the windows down and drove off, fast and erratically, first in one lane and then in another. In the roar of the hot summer wind, as he sped westward, Teddy could once again see the horse. It had gone mad from fear and was galloping toward the horizon in a cloud of dust. Behind it, clinging to the training lead, was Teddy. He thought he had let go long ago, but he realized he never had. He realized he never could, even if he wanted to.
THE HORSE LAMP
JARROD HAD BEEN called to the girl’s house to fix her satellite dish, but when he got to the peeling blue rental and walked around its weedy perimeter, he saw that the girl didn’t have a satellite dish. She had cable. Jarrod tried to explain the difference between the two services while the girl stood barefoot on the stoop wearing a see-through tank top and a pair of minuscule cutoffs. Jarrod noticed that the girl had dirty feet—filthy, really—and that her toenails were painted the color of mustard. Both of her pinkie toes were curled in for warmth against the other toes like two cold grubs. While Jarrod talked, he imagined the girl shoeless at the drugstore, standing in the nail polish aisle for a while before stealing a bottle of yellow polish when no one was looking. He saw the girl walk right past the cashier, carefree and careless, her brown feet slapping the tile. For a good portion of his satellite-and-cable explanation, Jarrod looked at the girl’s feet and imagined her shoplifting. He did this to avoid looking her in the eye. Every time he looked up, there the girl was, staring at him hard and brave and dumb, chewing slow on a wad of gum. It made Jarrod feel dizzy to look at her head-on. It made him feel like he might keel over in the red landscape gravel that was scattered around the tiny house.