Roger - Deus ex Machina (Part 1)

I used to have a dog. It was probably my earliest memory. It was back before Pops took me away from the home. He told me I was three then. All I can remember is it was brown, and it was mine. It made me happy, but I had trouble remembering sometimes. Pops always said I did.
One of the other boy’s dogs was hiding underneath the demo stage. He was going there to die. I know that because Pops told me so. I didn’t even have to ask. “It’s a dog thing,” he told me in between bites of his hotdog. We had had hotdogs for the past week because Pops met a guy who was selling them for “pennies on the dollar,” as he put it. Pops traded him two of his mops (that was what he did, sold mops) for two boxes of the man’s hot dogs. They were starting to smell.
The man selling electric shavers started making his final pitch and Pops started getting ready. “You get ready and wait up front for when they start handing the money over.” I hoped to God they would this time. Then maybe we wouldn’t have had to eat hot dogs anymore. After Denver I got a steak. After Chattanooga we got squirrel.
Pops made his pitch and we made out pretty well, selling four mops in that hour. The whole time he was yelling to the crowd I could hear a boy calling out for his dog. I would have told him where it was but Pops doesn’t let me walk away from the stage during his pitch. “Who the fuck else will watch the money?” He had a point there; there wasn’t nobody but me and Pops. Not until that night at least.
Sometimes Pops met up with friends after the markets or fairs closed down, especially if he had sold some of the mops. They’d go to the Gypsy woman’s tent and laugh and sing and bark at each other. Sometimes I had to help him walk back to our wagon. Meanwhile, I would play with the other boys, or if there weren’t any other boys I would just run around the tents, as Pops said we couldn’t afford toys. That night, the only other boy in Cincinnati was sitting in a tent crying either over his dog or his Pops beating him for losing it.
I was sitting out by the parking lot waiting for Pops to come back when I met who would be my best friend. I didn’t notice him walk up at first, he just kind of appeared out of the parking lot gridlock. He leaned against the same fence I was just looking out at the cars, just like I was. He was wearing a silly red suit that was real easy on the eyes.
“You like cars, kid?” he asked. I shrugged. Pops warned me to stay away from strangers. And policemen. He said they would just make things more complicated. I simply tried to ignore the man, but he seemed so interesting. He jumped up on the fence and began trying to walk it like the tight rope walkers Pops took me to in Santa Fe. He was a fairly short man. But very proportional, like maybe he was a dwarf, but a very tall one. He had fiery blonde hair that stood nearly straight up and eyes that were just a bit to skinny and a bit too far apart.
“You pitch?” I asked him. He smiled as if that was a very funny thing to ask.
“Never been much of a salesman, per se. I’m more of a persuader.” He smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Benjamin.”
“I had forgotten how strange names have gotten lately. My name’s Loki. Tell me Benjamin, how would you like to have some pizza?” My stomach growled at the sound of the word, and Loki’s smile grew immensely, quite literally from ear to ear. He leaped off of the fence and grabbed my hand as we ran off together towards the darkening fair grounds.
Mr. Petruzzi’s pizza shack was located on the other side of the fair grounds. “Does he know you?” Loki asked. I shook my head. “Fantastic!” Loki straightened himself, pulling his hair upward. He seemed to grow a foot just by doing it. Loki poked around the back of the shack, looking for some sort of entrance. He peered through a small window in the back, waving me over to him. He lifted me up to the window. Mr. Petruzzi was putting the toppings on a large pizza. The window was directly above an oven.
“Grab a match!” Loki called to me. The matches seemed impossibly far away from reach, resting on the base of the oven, not the top.
“I can’t reach it!” I replied. Loki sighed abruptly.
“Silly boy! Just reach further!” I closed my eyes and stretched my arm as far as it could go. Then further. Then further. I felt the sudden feel of wood. I opened my eyes to see my hand several feet away and grasping a match. I recoiled sharply and fell back onto Loki.
“Good job, my boy! Now, let’s have that match.”
“My arm! It kept going!” Loki giggled and walked around the building to a trash can near the shack. He lit the match off of his teeth and threw it in the can. He ran back just as the fire was beginning to catch. As Mr. Petruzzi ran out with a pale of water, Loki and I snatched the pizza from the shack’s counter and ran off back to Pops’ wagon.
Loki and I sat on the edge of the wagon, devouring slice after slice. The food was so delicious I completely forgot about the funny events of the evening. I did not know where this man had come from, or how he had done the things he had done. The moment was just too wonderful to worry about such things. After our feast we laid in the grass, grasping out stomachs. I closed my eyes and smiled. It had been the greatest night of my life. When I opened them, Pops was standing over me and Loki was gone.
“What the fuck is all this mess?” he asked, slurring his words as he did. I had no idea how to answer him. “You steal it?” The words would not come. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me to my feet. “I asked you a question boy! Now you answer!”
“Yes. Loki helped me! He’s my new friend and he helped me get into the shack and he started the fire and he ate it with me and I like him so please don’t make him go away,” I shouted as directly as one can while being elevated by the hair. Pops stared at me, slightly bewildered. Finally, he set me down and belched loudly.
“Heh, good for you,” he said. “Ain’t got no friends so you make up your own. Next time you nick something you leave some of it for me. You don’t and I’ll put you right back in that orphanage.” It was a threat that I had heard often. I had learned to disregard it.
As we lay on our cots in the wagon, I saw Loki’s hair walk past the window. I slowly got up and went outside. Loki sat playfully on the fence of the parking lot. I sat on the steps and asked him the two questions that were keeping me up that night.
“Are you real?” He did not react. He simply sat, and smiled. He always smiled.
“Will I see you again?” To this he stood and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I will be here till you needn’t need me any longer.”