Events are Developing

Arlo blew dust off the top of the old cardboard sneaker box; the orange and black design was scuffed and fading. The dust lit up in the rays of early morning light like a crashing wave of sunburst as it scattered into nothingness. He coughed into a fist.

“What’s that?” Piper snuck up behind him.

She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and she wore her paint covered working overalls. Arlo was wearing a beaten-up old sweater with a Magpie logo. They were both prepared to get dirty.

“Box of photos I found on the top of a bookshelf,” Arlo replied.

“We’re not here to reminisce. We need to get this stuff sorted out, oh, and we really need to find dad’s pocket watch before the funeral,” Piper reminded him.

“Go upstairs and check his sock drawer, he liked to hide things in there.”

Piper stopped on the stairs so that Arlo could only see her feet. He watched her turn around and crouch down.

“Sorry if I’m a grump, Ar. I just wish I could’ve spent one last day with him.”

“I know, Pipes, me too.”

Arlo opened the lid of the box to reveal two stacked rows of filed polaroid photos. He slipped the first one out of the box and held it up. They had the classic white border, smudged by old fingerprints. The photo was blank. He pushed the row back and started to flip through the box. The first row was all blank photos. He flipped through the second row with the same results.

“Damn, that’s a bust,” he said to the empty room.

He pushed back the dining room chair. The kitchen was exactly as it had been when he was a kid: a lot of brown on brown over yellow linoleum. The sink filled with dirty coffee mugs. He bumped his head on the semi-living vine that hung low from one of grandma’s macrame plant holders. He made his way upstairs.

Piper was in their father’s room checking the pockets in the sea of black, blue, and brown suitcoats.

“Nothing in the sock drawer?”

“No, but I thought maybe he’d left it in one of his coats. Hey, what was in those pictures?”

“Nothing, they were all blank.”

Arlo waved his hand as he spoke, forgetting that the first photo was still gripped between his fingers. As he brought it up level to his face, he saw a blur of green in the photo.

“What was that?” Piper asked.

“You saw it too?”

“Yeah, hold it up again. Is that – ”

“Dad?” Arlo finished her sentence.

He held the photo up and they watched their father’s image bleed into the photo. He was wearing his favorite green on green plaid shirt and was looking at himself in the mirror.

Then the photo changed. It began to move, and they watched their father push his graying hair into place and run two fingers over his groomed mustache.

“What the fuck?” Arlo thought.

“What the fuck?” Piper said.

Their father opened his sock drawer and pulled out his pocket watch. He twisted some dials on it and clipped it to his shirt pocket and tucked it inside. Then he began to walk toward them.

“Oh, he’s walking right toward us. What, uh, oh, move!” Arlo said.

The polaroid visage of their father came closer and closer until he was a blob of green and then they found themselves staring at a photo of an empty set of drawers.

“He took the watch,” Piper said.

“Yeah,” Arlo lifted an eyebrow.

“Turn around, maybe we can still see him.”

Arlo turned around and, sure enough, they were watching their father’s back go down the stairs.

“Go, go, follow him,” Piper pushed her brother out of the bedroom.

The siblings followed him down the stairs where he sat on the third step from the bottom. He slid laceless shoes on his feet, hoisted himself up with the help of the banister, and opened the door. He stepped out of the house.

Outside he started to get into a car; he was halfway in and halfway out when something behind them caught his attention and he leaned forward and waved. The photograph froze right there and stopped moving.

Arlo shook it around.

“You broke it,” Piper said, snatching it away from him.

“No, it just stopped. Isn’t that dad’s old mustang? He loved that thing.”

Arlo ran his finger across the photo where the bumper of the midnight blue mustang sat.

“Didn’t you say there were more photos in that box?”

“Yeah, I did.”

Arlo and Piper dashed back to the table where the rest of the box was waiting. They each took another photo and held them up.

“What did you do? How do they work?” Piper asked, holding hers up to the light fixture.

“I have no idea. Maybe we’re both hallucinating?”

Arlo shook his photo back and forth and then blew on it.

“Maybe it picks back up where we left off?” Piper said.

She jotted back to the door and held up the polaroid. A blur of green over midnight blue manifested into the photo, swirling into place.

“It worked. Get over here. Oh, ummm, holy shit, get your keys… and the box of photos! It looks like dad’s taking us on a drive.”

They followed his car down the neighborhood. It was clear their dad was avoiding the main roads; it was just like him. He took a left by their elementary school and then a right at the grocery store. He pulled into the Eggs by Phone parking lot and parked.

“I loved Eggs by Phone,” Piper said.

Their dad had brought them to the place as long as it had been around. The building was round and had a ring of fogged glass bricks. Above and below the glass it was decorated like an old farm and had a train that went around the ceiling once every thirty minutes. Each booth had a phone bolted to the table and when you were ready to order you would pick up the phone and call it in to the chef. The chef would then prepare your food; when it was ready they would push a button for your table which lit up a little lightbulb and you would come pick it up from the counter.

They got to know the chef, Betty, very well. She knew them as real regulars and could almost always guess their orders on site.

They watched their father walk into the restaurant, stop at the counter where he turned. Both he and Betty held thumbs up to a camera with half goofy smiles. The photo froze there.

They pulled the photo down to see neither their dad nor Betty, but rather a giantess.

“I just opened. You can seat yourself,” the burly chef said, tossing her long braids in a hairnet and smoothing her apron over her ample breasts with her meaty arms.

Piper held up another photo, but it remained blank. She shrugged at her brother.

“Maybe that was it. Maybe he just wanted us to stop here?”

“We haven’t had breakfast yet,” Arlo took a seat.

The two sat at their usual old booth. There was still a chip in the laminate countertop where he had once dropped a syrupy plate. They looked through the menu. Arlo ordered the chicken and waffles with a side of hashbrowns. Piper had the bacon and avocado omelet.

When the light on the phone lit up with a buzz Arlo offered to go pick up their meals. When he got up to the chef he stopped and pulled the recent photo out of his pocket that featured his dad with Betty.

“I was wondering if you knew this man?” Arlo held out the photo.

“Scranny? Scranton came in here at least twice a week. That’s him with my aunt Betty before she retired. Are you Arlo? Oh, and that must be Piper! He talked about you guys a lot, my aunt said he would bring you in before school a lot before you grew up. Oh, I heard about… I’m very sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you,” Arlo said and collected the plates.

“I forgot how much I loved the greasy food here,” Piper said.

“Remember how often we would be late for class when dad brought us here before school?”

“Yeah, it was always the days he thought he was in too much of a rush to make breakfast, but we always ended up taking longer here than it would’ve been to have a piece of toast.”

“He didn’t believe cereal was an acceptable breakfast.”

The siblings finished their food, dropped their empty plates off at the wash station, and left. Piper held up a blank photo one more time, but nothing materialized.

“Where are you going?” Piper asked when Arlo took an unusual turn.

“Backroads,” Arlo said.

They drove by Pine Meadow Elementary. Piper had her feet up on the dashboard and was waving one of the blank photos back and forth when she pulled her feet sharply down to the floor.

“Whoa, stop, go back! I saw something. The photo flashed. In the school parking lot!”

Arlo pulled a quick U-turn and pulled into the drop off zone of the school.

“Look, look!” Piper held up the photo and they saw their dad’s back as he waved to the school’s entrance. The Magpie mascot frosted on the glass shimmered in the morning sun as the doors closed.

Their father turned around smiled at the camera, he pulled his pocket watch out of his front pocket and mouthed “Right on time.”

The photo froze on his cheerful smile.

Arlo pulled out another blank photo and walked around in a circle with it, but didn’t get anything to emerge.

They sat in the car outside the school, a swarm of birds flew overhead, and stared at the smiling photo of their dad. Perfectly quaffed mustache, perfectly white teeth.

“You have that look on your face,” Arlo said.

“What look?”

“You are getting an idea,” Arlo said.

“Where would dad have gone after dropping us off?”

“If he dropped us off then it must have been his day off work. He liked going to the hardware store and talk to the guy that worked there. Didn’t they have free popcorn?”

Ten minutes later they were watching their father walk into the hardware store, greet the clerk, and munch from a bag of popcorn. The photo froze on a candid of their father spilling popcorn on his shirt.

“Where else did dad like to go?” Piper asked.

“The mechanic. Dad wanted to work on his car himself but came there and asked incessant questions. They finally started giving him on the job training,” Arlo said.

“Didn’t they buy him his own uniform shirt?”

“Yeah, with his name on it and everything. They said he was their best unpaid laborer. He loved it.”

Ten minutes later they were able to watch their father deliver a dozen donuts to the local mechanic, high fiving him, and getting comfortable in a chair to ask non-stop questions.

Each photo froze wearing his favorite green on green plaid shirt with pocket watch in the breast pocket. Some were candid, some purposely captured, but all of them were a random scattering of time.

They watched their fully-bearded father feed the ducks at the pond in the park, they saw him with graying temples as he checked in on the bunnies at the local pet store, he ordered a cherry shake at the local dive wearing his favorite purple baseball cap, he picked up a bouquet of black-eyed Susans from the market while sporting his new cane.

Everywhere they went was someone ready and willing to tell them a story about their father and each location gave them a frame of reference to keep along with a photo.

By the time they got home they still had more than a dozen blank photos. They watched him wrapping presents for their birthday, clacking tongs while grilling one of endless barbeques, fixing the kitchen sink in a ridiculous spray of water, relaxing on the couch snuggling their lazy orange cat.

“I remember this day. I loved dad’s floppy gardening hat,” Piper said about a day their dad wiped sweat from his brow as he buried another petunia against the bricks of the house.

“That’s the model airplane I worked on with dad,” Arlo said about their dad wearing a funny monocle and squirting glue onto a tiny plane part.

They had two blank photographs left, but had had no luck in figuring out where they could watch whatever memory it held.

“We’ve been in every room of the house. Everywhere dad would go,” Piper said.

“No, that’s not true. We both know we left one place out,” Arlo responded.

The light was preparing to dim as they pulled into the entrance and parked. There was a large pine tree near the southwest corner of the small grassy knoll. If you stood to the north of the pine tree their mother’s resting place was three headstones in front and two headstones to the east.

Piper held up a photograph and their father started to emerge. They watched as he placed a bouquet of black-eyed Susans on their mother’s grave and proceeded to sit and talk to himself. He took out his pocket watch and set it next to the flowers, then leaned back and closed his eyes. The photo froze with him smiling; it was the most genuine smile they had ever seen.

When they pulled the photo away, they saw a dried-up bouquet of black-eyed Susans resting on their mother’s grave. Arlo picked it up, feeling the crunch of the dried stems crumble in his hands. There, underneath the flowers, was their dad’s pocket watch.

Arlo picked up the watch and lowered himself into a sitting position under the headstone. Piper sat next to him.

“Remember when dad used to play scavenger hunts with us?”

“Yeah, that was always fun,” said Arlo.

“Today felt like that,” said Piper.

“Looks like we got to spend one more day with him after all.”

“We’ve been everywhere now. What do you think is on the last photo?” Piper asked.

Arlo took the photo from her and shook it back and forth a couple times.

“I think, maybe, it’s for us. You know, like, maybe we aren’t supposed to know what’s next? It’s supposed to be our job to figure it out.”

“I like that,” Piper said.

Arlo held the photo up to the swiftly dimming skyline. It was black and white against a crimson and orange burst of sunset.

“Some events are still developing.”

The End