The Martyr of Elmdale

Teddy Morris had a gift. He told his parents as much, as plainly as he knew how: “Mom, Dad, I have a gift.”

His father turned his head, but not his eyes, away from the daily crossword puzzle toward his son. “What gift do you have, Teddy?”

His mother chuckled in the kitchen, busy on her mobile phone. She may have been amused by Teddy’s proclamation, though, far more likely, by some comment or video shared on social media.

“Look no further than the LEGO bricks,” Teddy told his parents. “And you shall know my gift.”

And it was true, the boy could assemble LEGO bricks with masterful craft, an astonishing likeness to the sketches he cared to draw out first, or whatever images he projected within his mind. He once made a replica of the Hindenburg disaster, a zeppelin as large as a sofa cushion fragmenting on impact with its mooring mast. Filling half the living room, an outward eruption of orange blocks represented the flames of ignited hydrogen. Teddy’s parents were astounded by the lifelike quality of their son’s work, the upward bloom of black smoke that nearly reached the ceiling. But the tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster blotted the television screen, and so, before the evening football game began, Teddy agreed to take it down.

“Football is sacrosanct, Son,” his father told Teddy, sitting down with his nightly bourbon. Beside him, Teddy’s mother nodded, agreeing perhaps, though her attention was directed at the screen attached to her palm.

*

Teddy Morris had a gift. And while it was true, his LEGO building was second to none –the way he resurrected a T-Rex from the late Cretaceous, a mammoth from the Pleistocene, the way he reassembled Mesopotamia, raising a dead civilization from its ruinous crypt in an after-school Neolithic Revolution– it was his other gift that Teddy knew was truly unique, an ability beyond the rare skill-set that marked him as a talented hobbyist. It was his other gift that elevated Teddy to lofty summits, to lonely peaks that separated him from the rest of the world.

It came with a measure of pride –this unheard-of talent of Teddy’s. But more than that, it came with responsibility, and with responsibility, came fear. Teddy knew how to use his other gift. But sometimes he wished he could stow it away, bury it deep in a forgotten tomb of colored blocks.

*

Teddy’s death brought smiles to faces of a town that had seen too many lows in too few years. It made no sense, how a child’s drowning could raise the spirits of the down-and-out. And yet, the empty husk of the Elmdale factory no longer seemed to cast its dark shadow over a town that was born in the wake of its past success. The foreclosed houses with their vacant plots of land, with weeds as tall as grown men, and the roofless sheds that fell inward on themselves; how they suddenly, overnight, seemed like promises of a brighter future, verdant fields indicative of good soil, and monuments of historic, rural character. The Pirates, with their 1-12 record, no longer seemed to be about a championship that had escaped a community for 30-odd years. Now, it was about kids having fun, getting exercise, and socializing.

Yesterday, while Teddy lived, Elmdale was a landscape painted with variable tones of gray. Today, with a dead boy under the ice, retrieved from the frozen river and taken to the morgue, with the sad news that Teddy Morris has passed, Elmdale is a watercolor that bleeds out in innumerable bright hues. Held close, the colors are nonsensical, but beautiful. Held at a distance, the canvas betrays a scene, a cheerful town with vibrancy and promise.

Teddy Morris is dead, and even his parents could not find the grief they knew should weigh them down, should bury them alive. It hardly made sense, but their grim condolences came to them like chocolate-covered cherries, decadent and hard to stop consuming. It was only after dinner, which they ate with gusto, followed by the evening news, the nightly bourbon, and passionate sex  –an act which had become in recent years as frequent as their anniversary, that is, once a year– that Teddy’s parents took notice of the LEGO fortress dominating the living room. It was lifelike, astounding in its detail and realism. They studied the castle, knowing what small hands had built its naturalistic turrets, its crenelated merlons. They looked at each other from across the sofa and, as if a spell had been broken, they realized the gravity of their loss.

They wept for what seemed like weeks on end.

*

Years later, the Pirates won state, and the town of Elmdale rejoiced. The factory was long gone, but its outer structure remained as a commemorative nod to the past, its interior rebuilt and refurbished into the Elmdale History Museum and public library. Many of the foreclosed homes of decades past were auctioned and bought, rebuilt or removed, and new homes popped up like mushrooms, new neighborhoods with new families and new beginnings.

Teddy’s parents, whose love had once gone tepid, now share an affection that is warm and very much alive. While their home in Elmdale is special to them, a reservoir of cherished memories, the time had come, they both agreed, to move on.

It was only when the house had been sold, when the documents had been signed, when a moving date had been set in stone, that Teddy’s parents thought to disassemble the castle, the LEGO fortress which had survived nearly fifteen years of rowdy football matches on Sundays, tearful soaps throughout the week. It was the last item in the house to be packed, even after the television, which had stood beside it all these years, casting long, turreted shadows with its pixelated glow.

It was upon the castle’s disassembly that Teddy’s other gift was revealed, explained in a note that was hidden between two layers of vertical brick that made up its curtain wall. Seeing Teddy’s handwriting after all of these years, reading his words written a decade and a half ago, a message intended for them, Teddy’s parents wept as they started reading his note, and continued to weep for many long hours after.

Dear Mom and Dad,

I told you before, but I never fully explained… I have a gift, and I am about to use it.

I can take the bad in this world, or as much as my small body can carry, and store it away. I can take the pain, the sorrow, the anger, and entomb them in my soul. I know these emotions have their place in our world, in Elmdale or in any town, but I couldn’t go on knowing I can do something about it. I couldn’t ignore that I had the power to relieve the people that I see suffering daily… my neighbors, my teachers, and you, my parents. The bitterness in this town, the regret… It is overwhelming. I cannot hope to hold it long.

I can take the bad and carry it for a while, but it’s not half as easy as building the Sears Tower or a brontosaurus. It’s nothing like building LEGO, which is an entirely different gift than the one I am about to use.

Mom, Dad, I am going to help you. I am going to save Elmdale, which I think I can just about manage. But I can’t carry this feeling for long. I’ve got to bury it. I’ve got to make it go away.

I’ve left you something in the living room, a note, which you have now found, I know. Don’t feel bad for taking down my castle. It’s just a bunch of bricks.

I love you.

Teddy

Teddy’s parents read the note through tears and blown noses. In its message, they could hear Teddy’s voice, and it broke their hearts, made them smile, turned them into emotional wrecks. Without a sofa to collapse upon, they sat on the floor among the hundreds of scattered LEGO blocks, fragments of a ruptured medieval castle.

They held Teddy’s note close to their chests as if it were a living child, the most precious thing in all the world. It was only much later that they discussed its meaning, the message conveyed within. The logic in them demanded they believe Teddy’s words to be false, a delusion or misunderstanding, a troubled child’s fantasy. But through the veil of commonsense that seemed to cloud the uncanny truth, both of Teddy’s parents knew it to be true: Teddy had a strange and remarkable gift.

Once, they had been cold to one another, vacant and uncaring. For many years their marriage was upheld merely as a matter of course. When Teddy jumped from the bridge and broke through the ice, it shattered whatever wall of bricks had been laid between them. Teddy returned to his parents the love they had once shared. He saved them, his mom and dad, and all of Elmdale.

JAMES CALLAN is the author of the novels Anthophile (Alien Buddha Press, 2024) and A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.

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