(by Edward Zeusgany and Alex Anders,
© Copyright 2001, all rights reserved)

Although he had plenty of money, Roy bought a modest little house on a dead end street that backed up to a limited access highway. It was lined with other homes of like size, all situated on small lots. Not a run down neighborhood, the owners maintained their properties in a reasonable albeit less than fastidious fashion.

Roy didn’t believe in spending on himself. He had hardly any furniture and what he did have was mismatched, second hand, and semi dilapidated. Ten years ago, he bought his compact station wagon new, took good care of it and drove cautiously. Instead, you can find him among the contributors to various local charities as “anonymous,” and somewhere near the top of the list.

He acquired his new place in the late fall, shortly after his mother died. The family home, where he had been caring for her, was much too large. Until winter, he had little involvement with any of the other residents on Dyer Lane. He had met or exchanged perfunctory greetings with most of the adults and knew the rest only by sight. Folks there waved to each other in passing, from their cars or from the sidewalk.

Being largely ignored suited him. Then there was a heavy, overnight snow storm followed by an early morning knock on the door.

“Shovel you out,” the kid said. He was taller than the shovel, but not much. Roy wondered if he was big enough for this sort of work.

“How much?” he asked.

“Ten for the drive, walk, and sidewalk. Five for the drive only.”

There wasn’t much shoveling to do for the car. Knowing that a storm was coming, Roy had parked it as near to the street as he could. But that was where the youngster would have to cut through the huge pile that the town’s snow plow had pushed up.

“OK,” he said.

“The ten dollar job?”

“Sure.”

“OK,” the boy said and turned to his labors.

Roy closed the door and went to get himself a second cup of coffee. Standing in the open doorway had chilled him. He watched the morning news on TV, as he did nearly every day now. In order to take care of his mother when she became ill, he had retired from his employment as an electrical engineer with a major manufacturing company.

That had been a mistake, the electrical engineering not his mother. When Roy was barely an adolescent himself, his much older sister had married a man who was a Ph.D. physicist. This fellow had first majored in electrical engineering as an undergraduate. That got him caught up with the idea, that and the tenor of the times, when engineering seemed to be the in thing.

His guidance councilor had tried gently to talk him out of it. She must have seen that it was not likely to be the right choice of career for Roy. Although his best grades had been in math and science and his worst in languages, he had also done very well in social studies. He should have studied for the law, as had been his inclination prior to his sister’s engagement.

But he persevered and graduated from college in the middle of his class and had been modestly successful since. Never having married, he had money to invest and a good deal of inside knowledge about emerging technologies. He was soon making more money from his investments than from his employment. Even so, he stayed at work until his mother gave him the excuse he needed to quit.

The intervening five years had given him time to reflect. There was no way he was going to return to industry as an employee. They had tried to make a manager out of him, but that had failed. He had no management ability, being far too soft hearted to discipline anyone. So he had stayed in the same position for many years and was well tired of it.

*****

Every now and then Roy looked out the window to see how the lad was progressing. He was ready to go out there himself to help, if it looked like the kid had taken on too much. But the youngster, for all his lack of size, was making steady if slow progress. An effective and neat job was being done and the youth did not appear to be in the least fatigued.

A while later there was a second knocking at the door. “Done,” the youngster said when Roy opened up.

Roy reached for his wallet and found that it wasn’t in his left rear pocket. “Come in,” he recommended. “I’ve got to go upstairs for the money.”

The kid stomped his feet to shake off the snow and entered. As he doffed his knit hat, the hair that tumbled out arranged itself roughly into the shape of a haystack. With his back to the kid, Roy smiled as he climbed the stairs.

Returning he handed the boy two fives. “Thanks,” the boy said.

“Thank you,” Roy reciprocated. “It looks like you did a really good job.”

“Do you want me to do it every time it snows enough to call off school?” the youth asked, all business.

“Sure,” Roy agreed.

“I’ll charge you less for light snow, if you want me to clean that up too.”

“OK”

“But it might have to wait until after my last class.”

“Sure.”

“Except on weekends.”

“Right, and you probably have other places to do too.”

“No, my older brothers have them all lined up.”

“I see. Well, thanks again.”

“Sure. Bye.” The kid stuck his hat back on and pulled it half way over his ears. “See ya,” he said as he returned to the cold outside.

Roy watched to see which house the boy would head for. He was pretty sure he knew, suspecting it would be the one that reminded him of illustrations done for the nursery rhyme, Old Mother Hubbard. Kids were packed into it in the same way as that huge shoe that served as her home. Too small for the crowd, they seemed to be spilling out of it. Indeed, one warm fall afternoon Roy had seen two adolescents exit a second story window and scramble over the roof of the wraparound porch to the lower limbs of an overhanging tree. From there they descended to the ground.

Before winter, the porch, clearly a later add on to the original structure, was closed in. The screens were replaced with windows. Some of the kids probably slept out there, he figured, given the lights that glowed well into the evening. He imagined that the basement must have been converted into rooms as well.

The youngster shuffled through the snow that had yet to be cleared from the front walk of the Hubbard property. A short while later, out they streamed in mass with shovels and brooms. An older boy operated a snow blower. The place was finished in what seemed a scant few minutes, before some of the youths headed off with shovels, one with the blower, and descended on other houses in the neighborhood.

*****

It was a snowy winter. The lad didn’t come as early as he had that first time. But he never failed, arriving immediately after the family homestead was put in shape. Knowing that Tristan had only the one job, Roy invited him in afterward for a mug of hot cocoa. It had been years since he had had any himself, not bothering to make it just for one.

“I mow lawns in the summer,” the lad announced between careful first sips of the mouth scorching brew. Taking the man’s silence as a possible refusal of his services, he added, “I’m very reasonable and I supply the mower.”

His mind not having been fully engaged, Roy had taken the first statement as being merely conversational. Perking up, he recognized that this was an attempt to transact business. Tristan’s oblique ways were designed to avoid any chance of his having to face outright rejection.

“That’s a good idea. Fine,” he said, settling matters quickly. He was rewarded with a toothy grin before the youth quickly regained his poise and munched on a cookie.

*****

“Can I use your bathroom?” the boy asked one morning while waiting for the chocolate, sugar and milk to heat.

“Sure. It’s upstairs, can’t miss it,” Roy allowed. It was right at the top of the stairs and between the two bedrooms.

“You have an empty room,” an amazed Tristan couldn’t help himself from observing, on his return to the kitchen. This was certainly the true state of affairs. Roy only needed one room for sleeping so he had a bed and bureau in the one he chose to use, because it received sunlight first thing in the morning. The other bedroom had absolutely nothing in it.

On later occasions the youngster frequently made mention of the crowded conditions at his own home and the toll that took on him. “My mom can’t remember whose clothes are whose. Half the time I have to go scrounging around for socks, because mine are all gone.”

Problems with school books and papers seemed to be his greatest complaint. “I pile my stuff neatly in a corner, then somebody gets horsing around and they get kicked all over.”

“I’m always losing my homework, or it gets ripped, my notebooks are torn apart. The books get damaged and I get blamed for it.”

“If I put anything down someone moves it and I have to look all over and sometimes things just disappear forever.”

“If someone wants a piece of paper they just tear a sheet from my notebook and don’t even bother to check that my assignments aren’t written down on the other side of the page.”

These concerns are advanced between occasional comments on the peculiarity of Roy having a vacant upstairs room. The man can see where Tristan is heading with these seemingly random commentaries, but decides not to help out, hoping that the kid will never be able to bring himself to ask directly for what he wants.

*****

Spring arrived finally and Tristan insisted that Roy needed to put in a few plants, like his parents did at their place. “I know how to do it,” he asserted. So they took a trip together to the nursery where they chose a few things and Roy paid the bill. The youngster got his parents to come over to make sure he was putting the shrubs and flowers in the right places.

They were glad to meet Roy, they said, having heard so much about him. Roy hoped he wasn’t blushing, specially since there wasn’t any reason to, except for certain thoughts that bordered on fantasy. He had learned not to allow himself to day dream about what might happen between himself and another person. If something ever did occur, it wouldn’t be in the way his mind created. The experience would be less perfect and less satisfying. Of course this was so since reality could seldom rise to the level of perfection that was routinely achieved in his imagination.

But everything must have been all right, because they thanked him for giving Tristan his first real job and invited him to come and have a meal with them sometime. They did a lot of cooking out in the warmer weather, they proclaimed. There was always plenty, Tristan’s mother insisted, chuckling in slight embarrassment for the obvious and necessary truth of her assertion and the reasons for it. Roy had no intention of taking up this offer.

Summer came and with it the heat. The grass grew and Tristan was there whenever it began to look ragged, or shortly thereafter. He had to wait for the lawn mower to be available, since his siblings, even the girls, mowed lawns. Roy bought a mower.

“Can I use it for other jobs, if I pay for the gas,” Tristan sheepishly asked the man.

“What other jobs?” Roy didn’t get it right away.

“At other houses. I can get some if I have a mower.”

“Oh. OK,” Roy allowed.

Tristan always did his lawn first and then went off to his other customers. Later he would bring the machine back. He would be tired and sweaty.

“Can I take a shower here?” he pleaded, one afternoon. “I always have to wait at my place. And someone’s always coming in,” the boy complained.

“In the shower with you?” Roy teased.

“No. In the bathroom,” Tristan corrected the man, as though he were an idiot for asking such a dumb question. “My sisters are always wanting something from the medicine cabinet or to dump something into the hamper. But my brothers will sit on the toilet. Phew! While I’m taking a shower!” He was becoming increasingly indignant as his lament continued.

“OK, OK!” the man capitulated in order to avert the kid’s distress progressing to hysteria. Tristan laughed and so did Roy.

Tristan pressed his advantage. “Can I keep my work clothes here?”

Roy pretended not to understand. “You’re going home naked?”

The boy did color a little. Maybe he had thoughts too. “No, numb-nuts,” he kidded back. “I’ll bring them over here next time I come and change before I go to work.”

Roy wasn’t sure he approved of how things were moving, but he acceded to this latest request. On the one hand he enjoyed the increasingly chummy relationship that was developing between them. He would like it to become much more, eventually. On the other hand, it was dangerous, particularly if Tristan’s parents developed suspicions and acted upon them. It would be better if matters progressed slowly. So he avoided making any suggestions that might result in the youth spending any more time with him than was already the case. But he couldn’t bring himself to reject proposals that came from the youngster himself.

After his work day and after he had cleaned up, Tristan and Roy would share an afternoon soft drink. The lad had to tell him his adventures; stories of the peculiarities of his clients, run ins with their pets or pre-adolescent children, whatever had happened that he deemed worthy of report. His hair would be wet from the shower and he would smell of soap and shampoo.

“I’ll be starting high school in a few weeks.”

“That’s right, a freshman in high school,” the man restated the obvious. “Are you looking forward to it.”

“Sort of,” Tristan acknowledged. He hesitated, working up the courage to make his appeal. “Can I keep my school books here?”

He rushed on not wanting to give Roy a chance to say no before he had made his pitch. “I want to do better than in junior high. Grades in high school really count. For trade school or even community college maybe. You have that empty room I could study in.”

Roy knew that if he delayed in responding he would see hurt and pleading on the boy’s face. So he caved in at once. “Sure.”

Tristan continued with one more sentence, still making his case, then, “Huh?”

“Sure,” the man repeated. “You can use the room. But you have to get your parents’ permission. I want them to know where your going to be and what for.”

“Thanks, Roy,” the kid said, with an expression of relief that the man found much more pleasing to see than the alternative would have been. “That wont be any problem.”

Roy found a used card table at a thrift shop and bought a brand new, molded plastic arm chair to put in the spare room. He gave Tristan a house key in case he was out when the youth returned from school. The youngster moved in the Saturday before school started, bringing with him a new back pack, that he had received for his birthday, stuffed with his required gym clothes and the notebooks he had purchased that day. He planned to stop by each morning on his way to school to pick up his things. That way they would never get lost or ravaged in the perpetual ruckus of life at home, the kid explained.

Most school days Tristan spent the afternoon studying and returned for part of the evening after having his supper at home. He would come down stairs now and then to ask a question about something or for assistance of some kind. Roy would often be at his computer, surfing the net. He liked to read newspapers from around the country and leave comments on their message boards.

The man showed the youngster how to use the net to search for information on a topic. Tristan’s experience with computers was pretty limited. He caught on quickly though and became so enthused that it was starting to interfere with the man’s avocation.

Roy’s hardware was a little out of date anyway, so he treated himself to a new laptop that he could take with him if he should decide to take a trip someplace. He brought his old desk model up to the boy’s room. Tristan had several neat stacks of materials set on the floor along one wall. This made the fellow feel guilty about having only provided an old card table when he obviously needed a desk.

The man checked the local newspaper looking for the advertisement of the local estate auctioneer. The one for that weekend was of antiques, but there was a Thursday night sale of less glamorous material. The listing of items to be offered included desks and chairs, so he went and obtained one that was small enough to fit into the back of his wagon. One of the employees of the auction house helped him load it. He left it in the car until the next day when Tristan could help him get it into the house and up the stairs.

The boy was thrilled with the computer, but was told he would have to wait to use that machine for the internet until the phone company put in a second telephone line. That way they wouldn’t be holding each other up, Roy explained. The youngster liked the desk, but it was the computer that really excited him.

“How come you’re doing all this for me?” the youth suddenly asked.

“I guess I must be your fairy godfather,” Roy responded, chuckling as at a joke.

But Tristan looked at him in all seriousness. “Are you gay?”

The man looked the kid straight in the eye. The idea of denying it flashed thought his mind. “Yes,” he acknowledged, holding Tristan’s gaze.

“Me, too,” the boy announced, then broke into a fit of laughter as though he had just heard the best joke of his life.

*****

Tristan was always trying to drag Roy over to his parents’ house to have supper with them. It took all of the man’s resistance to keep it down to once or twice a week. There was no need to let them know if he was coming or not. There was always enough, as Tristan’s mother had indicated, and any leftovers were finished off well before the next evening’s meal.

The youngster told his parents that it would be more convenient for him if he slept over at Roy’s, since he was there studying every night and had to go back to get his things before school anyway. The first Roy heard of this was when Tristan’s parents asked him if that arrangement would really be all right with him. They were concerned, the father said, that their son might be taking advantage of Roy’s good nature.

Roy was flabbergasted, but did not let on that he had no idea what the kid had been up to. “Well,” he said, as though this proposition had previously been discussed only as a vague possibility for the distant future, “I don’t have any real objection, if it suits everyone else.”

“We’d want him here for supper every night,” Tristan’s mother said, indicating that they had already decided to give their approval. “And you too, whenever you want to,” she amended.

More trips to the auction house yielded a single bed, a chest of drawers, a bedside table, a table lamp and a rug. The only new item was an alarm clock. Slowly, the boy’s clothes filled the closet and the bureau drawers. Even more slowly, Tristan had fallen in love with Roy.

He slept in his own bed just three nights. On the forth night, after Roy had retired, the youngster appeared in his under ware and stood at the side of the man’s bed. “If you’re my fairy godfather, doesn’t that mean I’m your fairy godson?”

Roy didn’t say anything. “Can I sleep in here?” Tristan continued. The man folded the covers back. Snuggling together, Roy slipped a hand gently under the kids T-shirt and up his back. The youth felt the guy’s erection pressing against his thigh. Reaching down, he got a firm grip on it. Roy gasped. Their first night together, as it turned out, wasn’t so good for sleeping.

*****

Tristan didn’t go to the local community college after all, but to the state university a hundred miles away. They both knew it was coming and their love affair had cooled off, though they hadn’t felt the need for separate bed rooms. The youngster had leaned all that he could from Roy, at least for a while, and was ready for the wider world. His romantic thoughts might be ageless, but his erotic ones had honed in on youths about his own age.

Because the boy was incapable of keeping a secret, the man knew this. So he was not surprised when Tristan called before Thanksgiving and asked if he could bring a chum from college home with him to spend the holiday. Roy moved into Tristan’s room so that the boys could have the double bed. For this act of thoughtfulness he was rewarded with a hug and heartfelt thanks.

That night he looked at Tristan’s graduation picture on the night stand beside the bed. “To my Fairy Godfather,” the youth had written. “No one could have a better friend.” Roy turned over and faced with an impossible mixture of pride, love and self pity, very quietly cried himself to sleep.

Tristan came back for other holidays with other boys. They would spend much of their time at the Phillips homestead. It was not as packed as it had been. Tristan had been the youngest boy and third from last. So most of the kids had left home. Though they came back often with friends, then wives, then grandchildren. Weekends and holidays were arguably more hectic than ever. Roy stayed away then, though he received visits from the visitors, who had come to think of him as part of the family.

When Tristan had left for college, his parents, particularly his mother had insisted that Roy continue to share the evening meal with them as often as possible. At first he had done so out of loneliness, but oddly enough they became real friends.

All though Tristan’s senior year in college he had a relationship with a boy he had known in high school. This time it stuck. The two of them returned to the local area and found jobs. Tristan worked with a firm that performed safety testing of food products and his friend was a school teacher. Roy suggested that they live with him while they built up some savings. They never left.

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