Puppet Pete

Pete raised himself up and looked over to Mr. Cedric. The man looked like Pete himself had looked so many times before, with his master’s body for support; slumped, lifeless. His face was too pale, the red trickle at the corner of his mouth too bright. The lips no longer moved, no longer gave Pete a voice. The teeth looked like dead soldiers, stacked up like sandbags.

For a few moments, Pete did nothing. He felt another splinter rise up on his cheek and then fall away to the floor; a wood shaving puddle-pile of tears gathered up by his boots. It was too much, he thought glumly. Pete silently sighed and began to scrape his body over to Mr. Cedric. Even though his timber nostrils could not smell, he knew there was the leftover scent of death in the air. As he clawed at the floor, Pete heard the scrape of his own saw-bones break the silence. He was glad of the new sound; it’s scratching replacing the memory of the last noise, the rattle.

His mind played out a thousand shows as he edged along the floor; a life together. Pete had always marvelled at how Mr. Cedric had always known just what was in his mind; they had always known how to make a crowd laugh. For Pete, it was in his impossibly blue eyes, always astonished, yet somehow warm; for Mr. Cedric, it was the timing, knowing when to pause and when to chatter. They knew each other’s mind; that’s what love was, after all, wasn’t it?

Pete felt another splinter chip off, this one as much a blush as a tear. A sudden horror rushed into him; what if someone else took him, put himself…inside? Pete swivelled his neck in disgust and concentrated on the job at hand.

‘No use worrying about tomorrow today,’ Mr. Cedric’s had always said to him in the days before a big show.

Pete edged to the foot of the chair and reached out for his shoe laces. He slowly climbed up Mr. Cedric's body; first up the feet, then gripping tightly to the curves of the pressed trousers; A pause at the belt, before using it as a ledge, then slowly swinging up the length of the red and white tie. He stopped for a moment at Mr. Cedric’s chest and motioned himself hard onto it. His head rested against the cold skin, cool even under the shirt and he listened to the hollow place, where the heart had once roared. He rested there for a long while, gathered up against the chest thinking, this is what death sounds like.
    
At last, Pete reached the face. The thin jet of blood had dried now and Pete reached out, gently wiping it all away. Afterwards, Pete shook his hands and watched as the blood flakes drifted down onto the floor. Just as carefully, he put his wooden fingertip onto his eyeballs and rolled them back into sight; they were green, the same colour as lime jelly and beautiful. Pete ran his palm across Mr. Cedric’s cheek and tried to smile, but instead just felt his
jaw sag back into its square slot.
 
Life is never silent, Mr. Cedric had said, over and over into the mirror, to Pete, before each show. Life is noise and movement and grace.
   
Pete reached down with his small hands and put his fingers to Mr. Cedric’s throat. Slowly, ever so slowly, as if he were a baby or a bomb, Pete began to move the jaw, first to one side, then the other. The stiffness had begun to set in and he did not want that, that…finality. Instead, he began to work the mouth, firmly and then with more speed. When he was ready, Pete began to move his own locked jaw.

No words came out: How could they? Pete felt a jolt of despair ride through him; just two dummies, one made of wood, the other stiffer than oak, punch-line, ta-dum. But then he thought about their life together, the places they had seen. Pete began to hear the laughter of the audiences swell up from some unseen, better place. The noise grew around them, then settled in the back of Pete’s helpless, wooden throat. It roared and leapt and drummed until it was almost too much.

And then he spoke.
 
Pete the Puppet spoke with the voice of all the crowds, from all the years, and spoke as clearly and as beautifully as Mr. Cedric had done in his whole thirty-one year career. The words were simple and heartfelt and even though there were no jokes, Pete felt his saw-bone face lock into a small smile. He talked and watched his words rise out of Mr. Cedric’s mouth; his jaw perfectly in synch, his lips not moving, even as the teeth slightly trembled. And the sound filled the room with echoes until he could speak no more.