Fractious (2 page)

I didn't care what they thought of me. If anyone had bothered to talk to me, they would
have discovered a lonely guy who was scared to death of being outside where the bad men could
get at me. My apartment was safe and safety meant not getting mugged again. Not getting
mugged again meant not being in pain from the cracked ribs or bruised jawbone. Not getting
mugged meant not losing my ID and having a gunman point a deadly weapon at my chest. Not
getting mugged meant being okay. It meant being alive. It meant not being scared.

But it had happened. And I could not make it un-happen.

I watched the little man walk toward me for a few seconds before I had to shake my
head and take an honestly good look. I'm not one for staring at people who are different from me,
or freaks as some would call them, but this dude caught my eye. He was about three feet tall with
shaggy black hair and some mean ass blue eyes. He was looking at me just as I was looking at
him.

He walked by with a scowl on his face that said I should not be staring like a fool. Yet I
couldn't look away. It wasn't his small stature or his intense eyes that made it almost impossible
for me to look away. It was his bright green top hat that caught my eye.

I couldn't hold my tongue. It's a gift. "St. Paddy's was months ago."

He gave me the finger and walked into a tree.

Now, I say walked into a tree in a certain way. He didn't smack into it because he wasn't
watching where he was going. He walked right up to the tree and disappeared into it. Merged
with it. Became one with the tree. Passed through it. Walked through solid matter. I can't think of
any other ways to describe it. But he walked right into the tree. And he didn't come out the other
side.

I shook my head. "Did that just happen?"

"Yeah," someone said. I lifted my head to see a burly parent walk by, dragging a poor
kid along by the hand.

"I just let one off, buddy. Sorry about that." He also gave me the finger, which sent the
kid into gales of laughter as he was pulled off his feet, but Mr. FoulMouth did not walk into a
tree. He continued on down the path, dragging the now laughing kid, who apparently did not
mind so much the being dragged part of his life, along behind him.

I went to investigate the tree.

First I walked around it, my hand brushing the rough surface. The bark felt like normal
tree bark and the tree itself was solid all the way around. It felt like a real tree. I made quite sure
that it
was
a real tree, crouching down on each side and feeling the tree up and down. As
I was getting fresh with this poor elm, people began to point and stare and talk amongst
themselves, yet I didn't care. It felt good not to care. This was normal stuff, anyway. The
pointing and staring, not feeling up a tree.

Eventually I just sat down in front of said elm tree, my back to the park, stumped. I even
called out, "Here little leprechaun," a couple of times, but I got no direct answer. What else could
I do but sit there and wait for the little man in the bright green top hat to return and explain
things to me.

Instead, a former coworker found me first. "Guy?" she said from behind me. "Is that
you?"

Still sitting on the ground, I turned my head and looked up. "Hey, Crista. What are you
doing here?"

"I'm babysitting my neighbor's kid," Crista Himmelmen pointed over her shoulder at an
insignificant kid. "What happened to you? You just up and disappeared from work."

"I got fired," I said, not ready to get up and admit defeat in not finding my
leprechaun.

"Why?"

"I was in a coma."

She lifted an eyebrow and said, "Oh. Well."

I took one last look at the elm tree before me and made good use of it to get to my feet.
Then I turned to Crista. "What are you doing here?"

She raised both eyebrows. "I told you, babysitting my neighbor's kid. That one. Over
there." She pointed and this time I followed her finger to where a small boy sat in the sand
tossing said sand into the air. The other parents weren't saying anything, which made me think
they weren't as annoyed as they appeared. "I hate that kid." Crista snorted in disgust. "In fact, I
hate kids in general."

"Then why babysit?"

"I need the extra money," she said. "Part time doesn't cut it nowadays."

I couldn't resist looking back at the mysterious tree that had somehow swallowed a
leprechaun and left no trace whatsoever. Just in case he'd decided to show his face again.

"So." She drew out the word until it sounded like it had fifteen o's attached to it. "I better
get back to that kid. Eventually I have to stop him from throwing sand or else the cops will show
up again. I guess that means you can get back to your tree."

"It ate a leprechaun," I found myself saying.

Crista gave me an incredulous look before saying, "Yeah, trees'll do that."

I realized that she was making a joke at my expense. "Not funny," I said to myself. Then
I went back to watching the tree.

That tree and I became really good friends. I sat and watched it for another week before
things got really weird. I didn't see anything else strange, at least nothing that caught my eye. I
was there twenty four seven, so I couldn't have missed anything.

I was eating leaves and begging water off passers by so I was able to live, but still, I was
skinnier at the end of that week than I had been before my two week seclusion from the world. I
began to think that the leprechaun knew I was watching his tree and wouldn't come out again.
So, on a Friday, I went back to my bench and stopped watching the tree.

But the tree continued to watch me. Much to my dismay, Crista was also watching
me.

Now Crista is a pretty girl. She's a few inches shorter than me and has long blonde hair
that she ties back in a pony tail. She's slim but not too slim, with a little meat on her, that gives
her some nice curves. Pretty but not my type, although I don't really have a type so maybe she
was my type, after all. I liked her because she seemed to be a somewhat nice girl, but as far as
going any farther, I doubted she saw me that way.

I was annoyed by the fact that she saw me making friends with an elm tree on a daily
basis. I wasn't ready to give up my leprechaun quest, and she obviously wasn't about to just let
me go insane without an intervention.

"Look, Guy," she said, as she sat down next to me on the park bench that day. "I think
you've lost it."

"Lost what?" I said, looking at her with curiosity.

"Your mind?" she said with a hint of sarcasm. "That ball of muscle inside your
skull."

"Yeah," I muttered, "I think the leprechaun might be responsible for part of that."

"What's all this about leprechauns?" she said. "I've heard of obsessions, but man."

"I'm serious." I had no clue as to why I was even talking to her when my feet and legs
worked well enough to get me the hell out of there without too much embarrassment. Instead, I
was still talking and well on the way to mortification. "I saw a leprechaun. He walked past me,
flipped me off and went into that tree right over there."

Crista raised one eyebrow and looked over at the tree. I was beginning to think that her
eyebrow was actually stuck there and I had never noticed that before. Then it happened. Not her
eyebrow raising or even lowering for that matter, but the tree.

Out of the side of the elm, the little man emerged. He came right over to me, jumped up
on the bench, took off his bright green top hat and whacked me over the head with it.

Stunned, I rubbed my head. Even though it hadn't really hurt, I was still shocked.
"What'd you do that for?"

I heard Crista say, "Who are you talking to?"

The leprechaun said, "Fuck's your problem?" in a perfectly normal American
accent.

I was expecting the typical Irish accent typically associated with leprechauns and was
highly disappointed. "I don't have a problem," I told him.

He stood before me, real as the pigeons on the statue of Frank Sinatra that dominated the
park. "You have been sitting in front of my fucking tree for the last week," he said. "You gotta
have some kinda problem to be doing that."

"What difference does it make?" I said, still rubbing my head where his bright green top
hat had hit me. "You'll just disappear into it anyway."

"Well you've been sitting your dumb ass in front of my door, and I can't leave if you're
sitting in front of my door."

"You live in a tree?" I said.

"Where else should I live?!" he yelled, and planted his hands on his hips.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "A house maybe? An apartment? In the sewer? Hell, live in your
car, but people do not live in trees!"

Now, during this little exchange Crista had moved to the far end of the bench and
looked as if she was getting ready to bolt. You have to give her props for not getting up and
running away the instant I began talking to the leprechaun she so obviously could not see.

"So," I said after a moment had passed during which I stopped rubbing my head, "are
you a leprechaun?"

"Fuck you!"

"A foul mouthed leprechaun?"

"I'm not a damn leprechaun!" he yelled at me. "Stay away from my tree. Stay away from
my door. And stay the hell away from this park! I catch you here again and you're gonna lose
what's most precious to you."

Unable to think of anything precious at all, I said, "What would that be?"

"Your balls, damn it!" He whacked me over the head with his bright green top hat once
more, before donning it and sauntering off to his tree. He disappeared into it again and was gone
completely.

I sat there, more dumbfounded than usual.

"What was that?" Crista said.

Her voice brought me back to what I usually knew as reality. "The leprechaun," I said
matter-of-factly. "He told me to stop sitting in front of his door. And he hit me with his bright
green top hat." I rubbed my head again, realized what I was doing, and stopped. "He cusses a
whole hell of a lot."

"A cussing, green top hat wearing leprechaun," Crista said, as if she were trying to get
her head around the concept and failing miserably.

"Bright green top hat," I corrected. "Did I forget to mention that it was
bright
green?"

"Yes," she said. "And I think you should go see a doctor. Like, now."

"He was here!" I insisted, suddenly and insistently. I grabbed her hand and put it on top
of my head. "Feel the lump? Right there. That's where his hat hit me!"

Crista pulled her hand away. "You should really go see someone," she said. Then she
walked away.

I watched her go, thinking to myself about what had just occurred. A little man who
stated that he was not a leprechaun and apparently did not want to be called such had just hit me
over the head with a bright green top hat, cussed at me, and then gone back into his tree. I was
just beginning to think that maybe the gunman had hit me harder than the doctors thought when
the little man, who was not a leprechaun and apparently did not want to be called such, suddenly
reappeared out of his tree again. He sauntered over to me, bright green top hat in hand then used
said bright green top hat to hit me in the face. My head rocked backwards on my neck before I
turned and locked my eyes on his face.

"What was that for?" I said with a slur.

"I don't fucking like you." He returned to his tree and disappeared.

I went home.

* * * *

I tried really hard to draw the leprechaun that was not a leprechaun but who I could not
stop calling a leprechaun because that was what I first identified him as. The best I could come
up with was a stick figure wearing a bright green top hat. The bright green top hat was definitely
the best part of my drawing and there was no other likeness to the real figure at all. I wasn't ready
to doubt myself though. I'd seen him a total of three times. Twice he'd hit me and once he'd given
me the finger. There was nothing in his demeanor to make me believe that he wasn't real.

"Okay, Fractious," I said to myself, "the real question isn't is he a leprechaun or not but
how the hell does he get in and out of that tree?"

I began to devise a plan. Using a disguise, I would go down to the park and sit on a
bench but not my normal bench. He knew my normal bench, of that I was sure. In my clever
disguise, I would wait and watch until the leprechaun who was not a leprechaun reappeared, no
matter how long it took.

The next morning I put on a fedora, a trench coat and a pair of dark sunglasses I just
happened to have in my closet for such an occasion and went to sit on a bench on the opposite
side of the park from where I usually sat. I still had a good view of the leprechaun's tree and my
disguise was good enough so he would never recognize me. Hopefully, if Crista was there with
her neighbor's kid, she wouldn't recognize me either. And hopefully no one would call the
cops.

I sat for two hours, pretending to read the newspaper. I never noticed it was upside down
until the leprechaun who was not a leprechaun appeared from his tree. He sauntered right over to
me, took off his bright green top hat and whacked me over the head.

"How'd you know it was me?" I said, rubbing my head in a general repeat of the
previous day.

"You think that just because I'm short that I'm stupid?"

"I'm not sure," was my answer.

"What's your name, kid?" he said, and settled down on the bench beside me.

I took off my dark sunglasses and stashed them in one of the many pockets of my trench
coat. "Guy," I said, pronouncing it properly so he'd make no mistake.

He repeated it properly, although with a touch of disbelief. "Serious? Who gave you a
shitty name like that?"

"My mother," I said defensively. "She was French."

He threw his hands up in the air. "That explains everything."

"Not everything," I said. "Doesn't explain why I can see you."