the wagon

by nick nelson

on walter cameron’s fifth birthday, his parents bought him a little red wagon. his father , mitch, had not wanted to buy it, as he would have preferred something a little more manly, like a football or a toy gun, but walter’s mother, alison, prevailed, as she rarely did in any differences, great or small, with mitch. alison thought the little red wagon was “just darling”, a poor choice of words with mitch, but somehow she persuaded him anyway. walter loved the wagon as he had never loved anything before, and would never love anything or anybody again. walter had the wagon for eight days when it was stolen or otherwise went missing. the camerons lived in a neighborhood of people like themselves, where hardly anybody thought to lock their doors even at night, and children usually left their toys out in their yards , even in the rain and snow. walter cried for days. mitch was at first chagrined, then infuriated at this. alison wanted to report the supposed theft to the police, but mitch refused. how can we prove the kid didn’t just lose it? and how much time do you think the police will spend looking for it? they will just laugh at us. there he goes again! stop crying, you little baby! man up for once! but he lost his present, his birthday present, alison protested. we should get him a new one. i will get him a new one if he stops crying. a better one this time. walter eventually stopped crying and alison held mitch to his promise. to buy walter a new present. mitch bought walter a football, but walter never played with it, not by himself and not with billy webster, the only friend his own age he had. when walter was thirty years old, he was married for eleven months to a woman a few years older than himself. one of the reasons she gave for leaving him was that he was “always” running on about the little red wagon (actually he mentioned it to her five times). walter dreamed about the little wagon often, sometimes two or three nights in a row. somebody told him, or he read in the readers diges, that everybody dreamed every night, whether they remembered it or night. maybe i dream about the wagon every nifght, he thought. walter found this a comforting thought.