The Toynbee Convector

“I hate for the night to be over,” said Charlie, very quietly. “Can’t we go around a few blocks and finish off some lemonade on your porch. And have him come, too.”

“Lemonade it is.” Colonel Stonesteel banged his heel on the car-floor. The car exploded into life. “For the lost king and the Pharaoh’s son!”

It was late on Labor Day evening, and the two of them sat on the colonel’s front porch again, rocking up a fair breeze, lemonades in hand, ice in mouth, sucking the sweet savor of the night’s incredible adventures.

“Boy,” said Charlie. “I can just see tomorrow’s Clarion headlines: priceless mummy kidnapped. rameses-tut VANISHES. GREAT FIND GONE. REWARD OFFERED. SHERIFF NONPLUSSED. BLACKMAIl EXPECTED.”

“Talk on, boy. You do have a way with words.”

“Learned from you, colonel. Now it’s your turn.”

“What do you want me to say, boy?”

“About the mummy. What he really is. What he’s truly made of. Where he came from. What’s he mean... ?”

“Why, boy, you were there, you helped, you saw—”

Charles looked at the old man steadily.

“No.” A long breath. “Tell me, colonel.”

The old man rose to stand in the shadows between the two rocking chairs. He reached out to touch their ancient harvest-tobacco dried-up-Nile-River-bottom old-time masterpiece, which leaned against the porch slattings.

The last Labor Day fireworks were dying in the sky. Their light died in the lapis lazuli eyes of the mummy, which watched Colonel Stonesteel, even as did the boy, waiting.

“You want to know who he truly was, once upon a time?”

The colonel gathered a handful of dust in his lungs and softly let it forth.

“He was everyone, no one, someone.” A quiet pause. “You. Me.”

“Go on,” whispered Charlie.

Continue, said the mummy’s eyes.

“He was, he is,” murmured the colonel, “a bundle of old Sunday comic pages stashed in the attic to spontaneously combust from all those forgotten notions and stuns. He’s a stand of papyrus left in an autumn field long before Moses, a papier-mâché tumbleweed blown out of time, this way long-gone dusk, that way at come-again dawn... maybe a nightmare scrap of nicotine/dogtail flag up a pole high-noon, promising something, everything... a chart-map of Siam, Blue River Nile source, hot desert dust-devil, all the confetti of lost trolley transfers, dried-up yellow cross country road maps petering off in sand dunes, journey aborted, wild jaunts yet to night-dream and commence. His body?...Mmmm...made of...all the crushed flowers from brand new weddings, dreadful old funerals, ticker-tapes unraveled from gone-off-forever parades to Far Rockaway, punched tickets for sleepless Egyptian Pharaoh midnight trains. Written promises, worthless stocks, crumpled deeds. Circus posters—see there? Fart of his paper-wrapped ribcage? Fosters torn off seedbarns in North Storm, Ohio, shuttled south toward Fulfillment, Texas, or Promised Land, Calif-orn-I-aye! Commencement proclamations, wedding notices, birth announcements... all things that were once need, hope, first nickel in the pocket, framed dollar on the cafe wall. Wallpaper scorched by the burning look, the blueprint etched there by the hot eyes of boys, girls, foiled old men, time-orphaned women, saying: Tomorrow! Yes! It will happen! Tomorrow! Everything that died so many nights and was born again, glory human spirit, so many rare new daybreaks! All the dumb strange shadows you ever thought, boy, or I ever inked out inside my head at three a.m. All, crushed, stashed, and now shaped into one form under our hands and here in our gaze. That, that is what old King Pharaoh Seventh Dynasty Holy Dust Himself is.”

“Wow,” whispered Charlie.

The colonel sat back down to travel again in his rocker, eyes shut, smiling.

“Colonel.” Charlie gazed off into the future. “What if even in my old age, I don’t ever need my own particular mummy?”

“Eh?”

“What if I have a life chock full of things, never bored, find what I want to do, do it, make every day count, every night swell, sleep tight, wake up yelling, laugh lots, grow old still running fast, what then, colonel?”

“Why then, boy, you’ll be one of God’s luckiest people!”

“For you see, colonel.” Charlie looked at him with pure round, unblinking eyes. “I made up my mind. I’m going to be the greatest writer that ever lived.”

The colonel braked his rocker and searched the innocent fire in that small face.

“Lord, I see it. Yes. You will! Well, then Charles, when you are very old, you must find some lad, not as lucky as you, to give Osiris-Ra to. Your life may be full, but others, lost on the road, will need our Egyptian friend. Agreed? Agreed.”

The last fireworks were gone, the last fire balloons were sailing out among the gentle stars. Cars and people were driving or walking home, some fathers or mothers carrying their tired and already sleeping children. As the quiet parade passed Colonel Stonesteel’s porch, some folks glanced in and waved at the old man and the boy and the tall dim-shadowed servant who stood between. The night was over forever. Charlie said:

“Say some more, colonel.”