The puppeteer.

by WyldKard on November 21, 2002

Most people simply thought he was a poor old man losing his mind to some mental disease. The cops certainly did, keeping their eye on him whenever he crossed the road to his favorite pizza parlor. Every day, as though programmed into his simple mind, the old man would walk down South St. at 2pm, and again at midnight. He never looked anyone in the eye, walking with his arms swinging a bit too far forward, and a bit too far back. There was always a faint trace of a smile on his face, as though he were recollecting some fond memory, or remembering an old joke. The only words anyone ever heard him utter were when he walked into the American Pizza parlor, approached the counter, and said, “A slice and a soda.” He’d pull out a dirty one dollar bill, hold it with a shaking hand for the cashier to accept, and would silently wait for his food. Every once in a while, instead of a dollar, he would accidentally hand the cashier a small, tin figurine, only to spend a minute and a half staring into the cashier’s eyes as he was made aware of his mistake.

There were many rumors about the old man. The residents of South Street watched him for many years. When the old man approached, the children playing in the streets would quiet down and stand still, whispering that the Puppeteer was back. Young mothers would keep a steady eye on their infants, and the drug dealers in front of the nightclub would stop their transactions, as if they needed to watch their back.

The employees of American Pizza served the old man quickly, not only because he was a local legend, but because he was there twice a day. No other customer could stomach their pizza every day, whether it was mid-week or on the weekend. No one but the old man came in on the holidays, and no one, not even Old Lady Gertrude who was afflicted with Alzheimer’s, would stop by when American Pizza was closed, pacing back and forth, peering into the windows past the “Closed” sign. More than once, a cop came by, raising a gentle hand and placing it on the old man’s shoulder. “They’re closed,” the cop would say, feeling sorry for the elderly man. Of course, there was never any verbal response, but rather a look of confusion, sometimes accompanied with a shake of the head. It didn’t matter when the police officer would appear; the old man would stay for exactly thirteen minutes, then head back the way he came, with the same old stride, and the same old smile.

How long he’d been living in the city, no one knew, but it certainly seemed like forever. Teenagers remembered when their parents scolded them. “The Puppeteer will get you if you don’t eat your salad.” “Tell a stranger your name, and that scary old man will make you disappear!” Even the grandparents recalled similar tales, as if the old man who strode down South Street had been there forever. Only once in a blue moon would someone bring this fact up, only to be laughed at. “Afraid the stories are true, Billy?” someone would ask, followed by the inquisitor’s weak smile.

Had people bothered looking, though, they might have seen the old man’s paranoid stare in the annals of history, from photographs dating back to the early 1900′s, to the descriptions written in the logbooks of early settlers. Etchings in buildings throughout the city held the old man’s drawings. Small, cubic figures drawn into the clay of early houses reminded the owners of their abode’s historical context, etchings over a hundred years old. And, had people bothered to look, they would have found similar drawings elsewhere in the city, from the sewer canals beneath the city to the graffiti on the Green Island Bridge.

Perhaps it was these drawings that connected the old man to the city so well, whether or not people realized the connection. His old clothes, tattered with age, fit the man perfectly, hiding the tattoos that covered his back and legs. The lump in his pocket, made from a tin figurine that he so often left behind, was like a part of the man. And, though his figures often ended up in the collection of a small child, whose mother would later lecture the child in fear, they often ended up elsewhere, like the figures neatly placed behind a sheet of glass at the local museum, relics of the civil war. The only thing that didn’t end up behind glass was the old man, who frequently forgot to comb his long, silver hair, which blew in the wind down South St, twice a day.

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