rabid1st | LJ Idol Entry #6

THE CANDY MAN

I once knew a portly man in a brown, three-piece suit. He had a quiet dignity. His fluffy white hair made him seem ancient to my seven-year-old eye, but he moved with the effortless grace of a young man. Every afternoon he walked down the dirt road past our rented bungalow. Coming home from work, I assume. I have no idea what he did for a living, maybe he was a banker or a lawyer. Wherever he came from each day, I noticed him soon after we arrived. He had little choice but to notice me. I bounced out to say hello on the third day of our acquaintance, and every day thereafter, frisking around him like a colt. We traveled the road together for the short span that kept me within sight of my house. One of my mother’s rules was to always stay within sight of the house. I could talk to him, though, because he wasn’t a stranger. His habits were like clockwork, so I always expected him.

One day, quite unexpectedly, he offered me some candy. He fished a cellophane-wrapped peppermint out of his pocket and held it out to me. I told him I would have to ask my mother. She didn’t generally allow me to eat candy. He told me he would wait. I ran back up the street and burst into our house with the grand news that some man in the street had offered me candy. My mother went to the window, twitching the curtain aside to peer out at the man in the brown suit. Then, she told me to remember to say thank you. I didn’t realize it, then, but that day marked the beginning of the end of my quiet walks with the portly man in the brown three-piece suit.

Word gets out about free candy. He brought me sweets every day for a few weeks. Single peppermints gave way to rolls of Lifesavers. Spontaneity gave way to planning. He began to ask me for my order and let me choose from several flavors. My mother had a weakness for the Butter Rum ones. I wasn’t much of a candy fan, though I would eat an occasional Wild Cherry from the Five Fruits. Mostly, I selected the Butter Rum.

I don’t know how the news spread, maybe someone saw us together. Maybe my mother blabbed. But the promise of free candy became the talk of the neighborhood. Soon I had a dozen other kids waiting with me, dancing attendance on the man in the suit. I became a sort of bait to catch his generosity, but in the rush and clamor of his arrival, my slight figure was quickly shunted to the back of the crowd. “Candy! Candy! Candy man!” the other kids would sing, hands out for the bounty.

The man in the brown suit didn’t seem to mind the press of children, the grasping hands. He would laugh over their antics, but I felt as if our special time had been stolen. Still, he always made me feel special. He waited until the rest were gone, some of them took forever to leave, and then he would draw out one final roll and hand it to me. “Butter Rum for my girl,” he would say, then I would with him to the corner. Before we parted, he always asked, “And what would you like tomorrow?”

The Candy Man became legendary in our neighborhood. Kids said he had a treasure room full of candy. There was talk of a daring raid to liberate the loot. The bigger kids hunted down his house. It was only two blocks away, a huge Tudor-style mansion, lurking behind a seven-foot tall hedge with an ornate wrought-iron gate. My babysitter's kids turned out to be his neighbors. They were not the best neighbors to have.

They tormented his wife, a stick-figured female of delicate elegance who seemed to hate children. They called her the wicked witch and challenged one another to get as close to her as possible, springing out of the hedge to make her scream. I didn’t play those games, because I thought the Candy Man might like his wife and I liked him. I once asked him why he didn’t have kids of his own and he said, “I do have kids, just not here.” I didn’t ask if his wife was really a witch, even though I was strongly tempted. We never asked too much of one another, we just liked to walk along together at the end of our days.

Years later, discussing him with my mom, I learned that she’d always known who he was. Grown-ups? Go figure! They never tell you anything! It seems the Candy Man was famous in our town. His only child, a son, had died in a private plane crash. After that, his wife had fallen into a hopeless depression. She never left their property, except to go to church. He did all of the shopping and chores. He lived a lonely isolated life, walking home every day to that cheerless house behind the tall hedge. I guess it was a good thing I introduced him to those other kids, even if they were annoying, because when I moved away, he still had everyone else to keep him company. But I've always wondered if, after I was gone, he looked for me in the crowd...if he missed me...if he always kept an extra roll of Butter Rum Lifesavers in his pocket, just in case.

****** This is my entry for LJ Idol Week 6 *****
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marstokyo.livejournal.com

Aww this is really sweet (no pun intended). I enjoyed it.

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