A belated Chrismukkah challenge......
I would like to apologize up front to the following: Charles Dickens, users of eBay, the state of Georgia, my long-suffering readers, and anyone with a cousin named Eb.
Most certainly a formal, “my bad,” should be extended to O. Henry for this twisted version of his timeless yuletide masterpiece, The Gift of the Magi.
Title: Two Men, Not So Much of the Wise
Rating: PG 13 for language. Blame Ryan.
Pairing: None. Typical Ryan and Seth hiijinks.
Future Fic: First Chrismukkah in Berkeley
Prompt: Provided by
mirella67
“I’ve never been so miserable in my life.”
Beta: By the ever patient
beachtree whom I threw this to at two in the morning a few days ago and who had it back to me that very same morning. All tinkering mistakes are mine.
Prologue
“There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.”
Eb Marley is a son-of-a-bitch.
An absolute ass.
He thinks he’s funny.
But really….no seriously…really…he’s not.
He’s one of those guys that is ‘played football in high school, but just drinks beer now’ fat.
He’s annoying and jobless and has no future by self-inflicted design.
He’s also Seth’s roommate’s first cousin, and Seth’s roommate is a nice guy named Stan, who is of ultimate geek and anti-social stature, such a stature that Seth imagines he himself would have achieved had it not been for Ryan entering his life.
Stan is a, ‘But there for the grace of Moses goes I,’ kind of flashback for Seth.
He feels like it’s his calling in life, to help the Stans of the world like he himself has been helped.
So when Stan begs Seth to put up with obnoxious cousin Eb, “Just one more day. Pleeeeeaaassseee, Seth?” Seth nods and says, “Okay. But this is the last night. I can’t stand that guy. And stop begging. Seriously, man, you sound pathetic. Have some dignity. Confidence, Stan. Confidence.”
Stan shakes his head up and down like an eager little beaver and hugs Seth and tells him, “Thanks Seth, you’re the best roomie.”
Seth disengages himself from the hug, pushing Stan back and says, “Okay. Dude. That’s enough. No more hands. We already talked about this hugging thing.”
Cousin Eb stays one more night and gets drunk and pukes in Seth’s favorite cereal bowl and pretty much all over the rest of the dorm room, which is disgusting beyond Seth’s previous definition of the word disgusting, and you would think that would be bad enough.
But it gets worse.
Seriously.
When Seth wakes up in the morning, Eb is gone and so is Captain Oats.
For a second, Seth isn’t sure what to do.
He just stands there, blinking and looking at his nightstand, waiting for The Captain to make a reappearance.
“Captain?” Seth calls out quietly, looking under his bed, in his book bag, the dark corners of his closet and in all the small desk drawers of his desk.
“Captain?”
“I’m sorry,” Stan tells Seth. “Eb took my vintage Rubik’s Cube, too. It’s like he wanted little pieces of our souls to munch on later.”
Seth has known The Captain longer than anyone but his parents.
Years before Summer, Captain Oats was Seth’s first true love.
Eb Marley is a son-of-a-bitch.
Seth calls Ryan and tells him, “I’ve never been so miserable in my life. I realize this is a plastic horse I’m talking about, but…I’ve always had him.”
Ryan believes Seth is indeed miserable, because he sounds desperate and sad and truly and genuinely devastated.
“I’ll take care of it,” Ryan says decisively.
Because he will.
Because this is Seth.
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Act One
“On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.”
Ryan doesn’t do ‘pissed off’ much anymore.
But just like with his black leather jacket and grey hoodie and choker and wrist cuff, Ryan knows exactly which drawer he has his temper hidden away in.
He books a non-stop flight to Eufaula, Georgia and visits Stan’s cousin Eb as the guy is fishing on the shore of the Chattahoochee River and grabs the man up by the shirt collar, effectively freeing a meaty, largemouth bass from the end of Eb’s fishing line.
Ryan says just five words to Eb, none of which are comprised of, ‘Hi,’ or ‘I’m Ryan,’ or ‘Can I talk to you a second?’
He rips Eb’s collar as he sends the guy flying ass first to the ground, and all he says to Eb Marley is, “Give me the fucking horse.”
Eb doesn’t ask a false, “Horse? Huh?” or “I don’t know what you mean, man.”
He doesn’t attempt to counteract Ryan’s badassness, or try and stand up to Ryan, because ultimately, Eb knows damn well he’s out of his league. The guy standing in front of him might be as short as shit, but he’s solid, and quite frankly a little scary looking. Eb is hung over and some things, like, for instance, your pride and self-respect, just ain’t worth getting your ass kicked over.
So he grovels an apology and tells Ryan, “I only took the thing as a joke.”
“Well…” Ryan says, “It wasn’t funny. You’re not funny. This isn’t funny. I’m not laughing and I want the fucking horse back. Now.”
Eb tries to cover his increasing fear with a good-ole-boy façade, because he’s pretty sure he’s about to get his ass handed to him seven different ways, and damn, isn’t that a bitch. Of all the things to lose a couple of teeth over, it would have to be some skinny gay guy’s plastic horse.
He flashes a smiles and tells Ryan, “Listen man, hey, no need to be so hostile. What do you say me and you, we go into town and we get ourselves a couple of beers. There’s this waitress named Tiffany, and damn, boy, you ain’t seen a good time until you’ve seen Tiffany. That is one morally vacant woman.”
Ryan purses his lips and leans down, far enough for Eb to be able to see his own reflection in Ryan’s sunglasses and he makes sure he’s front and center to Eb, so that it’s perfectly clear to the man that his patience has run out.
“Give. Me. The. Horse.”
Ryan emphasizes his request like a verbal grenade, his hand sliding the pin out a little more with each word.
Eb closes his eyes and waits for the first punch, because this guy standing over him is not going to be very happy when he hears Eb tell him, “I swapped it with a dude named Curby three days ago for a case of Rolling Rock.”
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Act Two
“Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor.”
“Listen, I truly am sorry,” Curby tells Ryan, “But I gave it to my girlfriend. She’s into all that My Little Pony shit and Barbie and all that toy collecting hippity-haw-haw, know what I mean? Personally, I don’t get it. But it keeps her busy and out of my crawl space, so what you gonna’ do, right? Got to keep the little woman happy.”
Ryan glances around the smoky bar.
Curby seems like a nice enough guy and maybe Ryan should slow down and try and schmooze the man by buying him another beer and shooting the proverbial shit for a while, warm the man up to him, but it’s Sunday and Ryan still has to fly back to Berkeley tonight and study for a Classic Greek and Roman Architecture final he has tomorrow morning and he just really, really needs to find The Captain and get the hell out of Georgia.
“Um, yeah. So, is there any way I could get it from her? It’s my brother’s. It was stolen from his dorm room.”
“Well that ain’t right, one man stealin’ another man’s horse,” Curby says, shaking his head in disgust. “I should have known something wasn’t on the up and up. Eb Marley is a no good son-of-a-bitch. I’d love to help you, Ryan, truly I would, but my girlfriend already traded it on the Internet for some kinda' rare, purple dainty pony or some sort of thing and I know for sure she done put your brother’s horsey in the mail.”
Ryan cringes and looks at his wristwatch with impatience and asks Curby, “Could you, um, possibly call your girlfriend and get the buyer’s name?”
Five beers later, a beautiful blond shows up, all perfectly symmetrical boobs and low-cut shirt and high-cut skirt, and she drapes her arms around Curby, and gives her man a peck on the cheek, and smiles and winks at Ryan as she hands him a slip of paper with an e-mail address on it.
Curby slaps Ryan on the shoulder and says, “Ryan, let me introduce you to just about the sweetest, hottest woman in the whole wide world, my girlfriend Tiffany. Tiffany, baby, say hey to my new friend Ryan.”
“Hey,” Tiffany purrs and Ryan thinks about how nice it would have been to completely kick Eb’s ass, but he couldn’t, because who wants to make that phone call to Sandy and Kirsten, telling them they need to come to Eufaula, Georgia and bail him out of jail?
But Curby…. Curby, looks like he could kick some serious ass, and after Ryan politely says, “Thank you,” to Tiffany for the e-mail address and sneaks one more glance at her massive boobs, he stands up and shakes Curby’s hand and he tells the man, “Um…Did I happen to mention to you what Eb said about your girlfriend?”
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Act Three
“She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
“Did you get him?” Seth asks Ryan Sunday night over the phone, as Ryan sits in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport waiting for his flight home. “Did you find Captain Oats? Is he okay? Eb didn’t hurt him, right? Did you count his hooves? He should have four.”
Ryan scratches his eyebrow and winces and tells Seth, “Um…there’s been a minor setback. But I’m handling it.”
“Are you sure, man?”
Ryan scoffs and nods into his cell phone and promises Seth, “Yeah, of course. I got it covered. No worries.”
He tries not to feel too guilty when he hears Seth’s overwhelming gratitude.
“Thanks so much, Ryan. Seriously, dude, you have never failed me. Never. Ever. I can always count on you.”
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Act Four
“One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.”
Ryan has three thousand dollars and thirty-eight cents of disposable income and not a penny more.
At least not without using his emergency credit card the Cohens have given him or any of the money they deposit monthly into his checking account for daily expenses and tuition.
In terms of how much money he has that is exclusively Ryan Atwood’s?
That would be three thousand dollars and thirty eight cents.
He can’t use the Cohens' money. That would be wrong. That would be something he can’t live with.
And he can’t tell anyone else about why he needs more money, because Seth is utterly and wholly and entirely embarrassed by the fact that he’s nineteen and having a nervous breakdown over a missing plastic horse.
In one week it’ll be winter break and Ryan promised he would have The Captain back by then and safely in Berkeley and in Seth’s loving hands the minute his friend stepped off the plane from Providence.
He promised.
Ryan glances forlornly at his laptop.
Who knew Seth’s Captain was, “Rare!” “In almost mint condition!” and “A must have!”
Ryan didn’t know that.
He thought Captain Oats was just a plastic horse.
But evidently, he isn’t.
Ryan knows this for certain because the e-mail address Tiffany gave him belongs to a lady whose code name is iStalkToys67, and who, evidently, has zero compassion for Seth’s situation, and e-mailed Ryan back telling him, “This molded stallion is worth a bundle. No way am I giving it up for nada. But by all means, feel free to make a bid on eBay. If you float an extra $200.00, I’ll have it to you before Christmas.”
Ryan stares at his computer screen, at eBay’s primary colored letters dancing around on the top left hand corner of it, and he sighs and stares at the blue, prominently arranged, “Place Bid,” rectangle.
Someone in Austin, Texas wants Captain Oats in a very bad way. In a span of just a few days, they’ve run the price up to $3300.00.
Ryan sighs again and shakes his head back and forth and hopes to God…no one will ever find out that he just did… what he’s about to do.
Because how in the hell is he going to explain spending $4000.00 on a toy?
He can’t.
This is ridiculous.
This is absolutely perhaps the dumbest thing he has ever done, and that includes agreeing to pose naked for Taylor when she was going through her phase of, “I’ve been inspired by a William Bouguereau exhibit and I need a nude male model to sketch, so if you really loved me, Ryan, and wanted me to develop myself as a whole, well-rounded emotionally healthy woman, instead of an insecure, co-dependent freak, you wouldn’t still be wearing your pants.”
This is a really bad decision on his part.
Then again.
This is Seth.
So Ryan sighs, and shakes his head, and hopes Taylor will forgive him, because he only has three thousand dollars and thirty-eight cents. In order to get his hands on the other nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars and sixty-two cents, it’s going take to legally return Captain Oats to his rightful owner…Ryan is gonna’ have to sell the Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth Portfolio, Volume One original lithograph circa 1910 that Taylor stumbled on to in a dusty basement of a Berlin estate sale.
She flew all the way to the States to hand-deliver it to him a few months ago, so excited that Ryan was concerned that her head would possibly pop off.
It’s a thing of beauty, his lithograph.
Sometimes, Ryan gets a magnifying glass out and spends an hour just studying it for some minor details of FLW’s that he might have missed the other one hundred times he’s looked at it.
But he can’t think about that right now.
Ryan clicks the blue “Place Bid” rectangle and types in $4000.00 and closes his eyes in misery and clicks again to send the bid. Then he picks up his cell phone and calls the Turtle Island Book Shop on Claremont Ave. and asks them if he can bring by a Frank Lloyd Wright lithograph that he thinks they might be interested in purchasing.
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Act Five
“At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.”
Ryan picks up Seth right outside of SFO’s baggage claim area.
Seth throws his stuffed to the gills duffel bag in the back of the jeep while simultaneously jumping in the passenger’s seat and bitching, “God, I hate flying back and forth from Providence. Can’t we build like a Chunnel or something? How hard is that?”
“That’s um… that’s under water,” Ryan states, throwing an amused glance at Seth before pulling out into traffic. “You can’t build a Chunnel under land.”
“Well, whatever,” Seth says dismissively. “That’s not my problem. I’m just asking for a faster way across the country than two layovers and five delays. Europe in general is kicking our transportation asses. You can get across seventeen different countries over there in twenty minutes.”
Ryan decides to let the conversation die.
It’s not like Seth is majoring in geography or civil engineering.
Thank God.
Seth looks at Ryan in anticipation and holds out his hands and asks Ryan, “So…where is he? You got him, right?”
He unbuckles his seat belt and turns left and turns right and begins to rifle through the jeep, under the seats, and eventually a little too close into Ryan’s personal space.
“Seth,” Ryan answers, trying to drive and get his friend’s attention at the same time. “Seth, stop. Captain Oats is….um…at your parents’ house….actually.”
Which is totally a lie, but it’s one Ryan is clinging to because iStalkToys67 promised Ryan that she had shipped The Captain via the last sled out of Federal Express and positively, absolutely, Ryan will get the purchased item on time, because like hell she’s gonna’ lose her hard-earned customer appreciation green star review rating on eBay.
“Why didn’t you bring him with you?” Seth asks. “We’ve been apart long enough.”
He looks at Ryan and waits for an answer and Ryan fumbles around a bit and finally goes with, “Uh…rain. There’s rain…in the forecast…and it’s cold…and uh, you know, so…”
Ryan purses his lips and nods and shrugs and scratches behind his ear and finishes with, “I think he’s still traumatized… from the abduction.”
Seth stares at Ryan.
Stares a little more, and says, “You’re scaring me, Ryan. I’m physically ill at ease. Are you taking too many classes there, big guy? Academic haul a little too hefty? How much stress are you under? Did Captain Oats actually tell you he was traumatized?”
Ryan cringes and tries to figure out a way to bide his time, and insulting Seth is always good for a delay in play so…
“This coming from a man who begged me at five in the morning to fly to Georgia to get a plastic horse.”
Seth bobs his head up and down and concedes, “Yeah. That’s very true. That’s very true, Ryan. When you put it that way…I should probably be shutting up right about now.”
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Act Six
“White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper.”
Kirsten and Sandy hug Seth and toss fast and furious questions at him, and Seth repeats his dissertation on the USA needing a national interstate Chunnel system.
Ryan sneaks around the house, looking for anything that might resemble a last minute delivery. But there’s no sign of any boxes other than those wrapped in perfect wrappings and sitting under the Cohens’ Christmas tree.
Kirsten comes into the kitchen, Sophie in her arms and asks Ryan if he’s hungry yet, and Ryan tells her, “No thanks,” omitting the whole part concerning the fact that he’s lost his appetite completely because he’s pretty sure he just sent an anonymous person who refers to herself as iStalkToys a cashier’s check for $4000.00 dollars in exchange for a plastic horse, which was probably all a scam, and now, in addition to having absolutely no money in savings, he has to explain to Taylor where the Wright lithograph went. Then, for added fun, explain to Seth why he couldn’t manage to get The Captain back from a dumbass named Eb.
“Oh, and Ryan?” Kirsten says, before leaving the kitchen, “Honey, a package came for you. I put it on your bed.”
Ryan smiles.
This is good development.
This is a wonderful thing.
He grabs a pair of scissors and rushes into his room, and slices through transparent packaging tape and pokes around the white, Styrofoam peanuts until his hand comes in contact with something hard.
And plastic.
And with…count em'…one, two, three…four…hooves, all sticking straight up and immobile and intact and ironically enough, if the postage time on the cardboard box is to be believed, Captain Oats just made it across the country faster than Seth did.
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Final Act
“And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.”
“I have a confession to make,” Seth tells Ryan. “I almost didn’t believe you’d get him back. I know, I know. Non-believer. I should be shunned.”
“Naw,” Ryan shrugs. “It was…uh. Never mind. You have Captain Oats back, and, I’m not in a coma or being barmitzvahed. So, overall, I’d say we’re ahead of the game as far as Chrismukkahs go.”
“I have another confession to make,” Seth says and Ryan answers, “You know, I really wish you wouldn’t.”
Seth snaps and points at Ryan and does a strange dance with his shoulders that involves moving his entire upper body back and forth, very much like an intoxicated inchworm and Ryan steps backwards a little bit and stares at Seth, waiting for him to finish…whatever it is that he’s doing…for whatever reason he’s doing it.
“I might have brought a little somethin’ for a blood brother. Would you know where I could find one of those, Ryan? Do you? Huh?”
Ryan grins and says, “No. No idea.”
“Oh really?” Seth asks. “No, huh? Well then, maybe I should give this, to someone else.”
Seth spryly holds a manila envelope up, slightly out of Ryan’s reach and he taunts Ryan with it, carefully fanning himself with the mysterious present.
Ryan makes a grab for the envelope and Seth raises it a little higher.
“Oh I’m sorry, what’s that? Thanks for the two pints of O negative, you say?”
He stops fanning himself and smiles at Ryan and opens up the seal.
Out from the envelope slides a plastic slip-covered, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth Portfolio, Volume One original lithograph, circa 1910.
“It’s from that same book, or whatever you call it. It’s not as big as that one Taylor gave you. But…it’s authentic. Turns out…Providence? Lots of old book stores. Although I have to tell ya’ Ryan, Frank Lloyd Wright? He’s a little too mainstream for my tastes. A little too F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
Ryan’s not listening.
He’s fondling his lithograph, and wishing he would have brought his magnifying glass to the Cohens’ and he squints really, really closely and thinks he might see a sharp tilt of Lloyd Wright’s pencil he’s never seen before.
Seth is all bashful smiles and hands in pocket. “You uh… Dad told me about how much you liked the one Taylor gave you and it’s not like you show a lot of interest in a whole lot of things.” He asks Ryan with genuine hope in his voice, “Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” Ryan nods. “This is….this is unbelievable, man.”
He looks up from the lithograph and tells Seth, “Thank you.”
His hands still in his pockets, Seth shrugs and keeps smiling. “Well, it was the least I could do. You did save Captain Oats from living out the remainder of his life in Georgia.”
Ryan doesn’t mention to Seth that there are, in fact, many, many horses that do indeed enjoy living in Georgia, because what’s the use?
It’s not like Seth is attending RISD to be a veterinarian.
Thank God.
“We can get it framed with your other one, the one Taylor got you.” Seth says, pointing to the lithograph.
Ryan places his thumb on his bottom lip and concentrates for a second.
“Ummm….I kinda’ had to sell the one Taylor gave me to come up with enough cash to buy Captain Oats off eBay. By the way, you uh, you might want to give some serious consideration into getting The Captain insured.”
Seth’s mouth drops open and he laughs that awkward laugh he laughs which isn’t really a laugh so much as a “wtf snicker,” and he exclaims, “That’s like…that’s insane. Let me line the ducks up…So you sold your lithograph to buy Captain Oats, but I gave you another one, so now you have yourself a lithograph again, and I have Captain Oats back, and do you know what we have here, Ryan? Do you know what we have here other than a serious need to stop using the word lithograph? Do you know what we are facing here? Huh? Do you?”
A light jab into Ryan’s chest and just for good measure, one more, “Do you.”
Ryan shakes his head, ‘no,’ mostly because he doesn’t care.
“What we have here, Ryan, is a genuine Chrismukkah miracle.”
Ryan clears his throat and eases the lithograph back into the envelope and tells his brother, “You say that every year, Seth.”
Seth points his index finger back-and-forth from the envelope to The Oats.
“True, but that doesn’t diminish the magic of the moment, my friend. You remember this night, Tiny Tim. You cherish this memory. You hug it close to your heart, like a starving, wilting, grimy, overworked Industrial Age British child would cling to a slaughtered Christmas goose.”
They both stand in silence until Ryan motions towards the kitchen with his thumb and says, “Okay…well…Kirsten cooked dinner, so…I’m gonna’ go eat.”
Seth picks up Captain Oats and tells him welcome home, and checks the horse for any sign of any violation of any type, and when he’s satisfied that his childhood friend is safely back in the arms of the one who loves him, Seth packs The Captain deep in his duffel bag, under a bed of fluffy socks.
He arrives in the dining room just in time to see his dad standing over the formally set dinner table with carving knives and proclaiming to a non-comprehending Sophie,
“Yes, Virginia, this is a ham.”
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The End.
Thanks for reading!
The following pieces of work were in some way quoted:
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html
Charlie the Unicorn by TypeQueen:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/280260
(Which may seriously be one of the funniest things I have ever seen.)
The OC by Josh Swartz and his minions of writers.
http://www.theocinsider.com/
Most certainly a formal, “my bad,” should be extended to O. Henry for this twisted version of his timeless yuletide masterpiece, The Gift of the Magi.
Title: Two Men, Not So Much of the Wise
Rating: PG 13 for language. Blame Ryan.
Pairing: None. Typical Ryan and Seth hiijinks.
Future Fic: First Chrismukkah in Berkeley
Prompt: Provided by
mirella67
“I’ve never been so miserable in my life.”
Beta: By the ever patient
beachtree whom I threw this to at two in the morning a few days ago and who had it back to me that very same morning. All tinkering mistakes are mine.
Prologue
“There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.”
Eb Marley is a son-of-a-bitch.
An absolute ass.
He thinks he’s funny.
But really….no seriously…really…he’s not.
He’s one of those guys that is ‘played football in high school, but just drinks beer now’ fat.
He’s annoying and jobless and has no future by self-inflicted design.
He’s also Seth’s roommate’s first cousin, and Seth’s roommate is a nice guy named Stan, who is of ultimate geek and anti-social stature, such a stature that Seth imagines he himself would have achieved had it not been for Ryan entering his life.
Stan is a, ‘But there for the grace of Moses goes I,’ kind of flashback for Seth.
He feels like it’s his calling in life, to help the Stans of the world like he himself has been helped.
So when Stan begs Seth to put up with obnoxious cousin Eb, “Just one more day. Pleeeeeaaassseee, Seth?” Seth nods and says, “Okay. But this is the last night. I can’t stand that guy. And stop begging. Seriously, man, you sound pathetic. Have some dignity. Confidence, Stan. Confidence.”
Stan shakes his head up and down like an eager little beaver and hugs Seth and tells him, “Thanks Seth, you’re the best roomie.”
Seth disengages himself from the hug, pushing Stan back and says, “Okay. Dude. That’s enough. No more hands. We already talked about this hugging thing.”
Cousin Eb stays one more night and gets drunk and pukes in Seth’s favorite cereal bowl and pretty much all over the rest of the dorm room, which is disgusting beyond Seth’s previous definition of the word disgusting, and you would think that would be bad enough.
But it gets worse.
Seriously.
When Seth wakes up in the morning, Eb is gone and so is Captain Oats.
For a second, Seth isn’t sure what to do.
He just stands there, blinking and looking at his nightstand, waiting for The Captain to make a reappearance.
“Captain?” Seth calls out quietly, looking under his bed, in his book bag, the dark corners of his closet and in all the small desk drawers of his desk.
“Captain?”
“I’m sorry,” Stan tells Seth. “Eb took my vintage Rubik’s Cube, too. It’s like he wanted little pieces of our souls to munch on later.”
Seth has known The Captain longer than anyone but his parents.
Years before Summer, Captain Oats was Seth’s first true love.
Eb Marley is a son-of-a-bitch.
Seth calls Ryan and tells him, “I’ve never been so miserable in my life. I realize this is a plastic horse I’m talking about, but…I’ve always had him.”
Ryan believes Seth is indeed miserable, because he sounds desperate and sad and truly and genuinely devastated.
“I’ll take care of it,” Ryan says decisively.
Because he will.
Because this is Seth.
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Act One
“On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.”
Ryan doesn’t do ‘pissed off’ much anymore.
But just like with his black leather jacket and grey hoodie and choker and wrist cuff, Ryan knows exactly which drawer he has his temper hidden away in.
He books a non-stop flight to Eufaula, Georgia and visits Stan’s cousin Eb as the guy is fishing on the shore of the Chattahoochee River and grabs the man up by the shirt collar, effectively freeing a meaty, largemouth bass from the end of Eb’s fishing line.
Ryan says just five words to Eb, none of which are comprised of, ‘Hi,’ or ‘I’m Ryan,’ or ‘Can I talk to you a second?’
He rips Eb’s collar as he sends the guy flying ass first to the ground, and all he says to Eb Marley is, “Give me the fucking horse.”
Eb doesn’t ask a false, “Horse? Huh?” or “I don’t know what you mean, man.”
He doesn’t attempt to counteract Ryan’s badassness, or try and stand up to Ryan, because ultimately, Eb knows damn well he’s out of his league. The guy standing in front of him might be as short as shit, but he’s solid, and quite frankly a little scary looking. Eb is hung over and some things, like, for instance, your pride and self-respect, just ain’t worth getting your ass kicked over.
So he grovels an apology and tells Ryan, “I only took the thing as a joke.”
“Well…” Ryan says, “It wasn’t funny. You’re not funny. This isn’t funny. I’m not laughing and I want the fucking horse back. Now.”
Eb tries to cover his increasing fear with a good-ole-boy façade, because he’s pretty sure he’s about to get his ass handed to him seven different ways, and damn, isn’t that a bitch. Of all the things to lose a couple of teeth over, it would have to be some skinny gay guy’s plastic horse.
He flashes a smiles and tells Ryan, “Listen man, hey, no need to be so hostile. What do you say me and you, we go into town and we get ourselves a couple of beers. There’s this waitress named Tiffany, and damn, boy, you ain’t seen a good time until you’ve seen Tiffany. That is one morally vacant woman.”
Ryan purses his lips and leans down, far enough for Eb to be able to see his own reflection in Ryan’s sunglasses and he makes sure he’s front and center to Eb, so that it’s perfectly clear to the man that his patience has run out.
“Give. Me. The. Horse.”
Ryan emphasizes his request like a verbal grenade, his hand sliding the pin out a little more with each word.
Eb closes his eyes and waits for the first punch, because this guy standing over him is not going to be very happy when he hears Eb tell him, “I swapped it with a dude named Curby three days ago for a case of Rolling Rock.”
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Act Two
“Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor.”
“Listen, I truly am sorry,” Curby tells Ryan, “But I gave it to my girlfriend. She’s into all that My Little Pony shit and Barbie and all that toy collecting hippity-haw-haw, know what I mean? Personally, I don’t get it. But it keeps her busy and out of my crawl space, so what you gonna’ do, right? Got to keep the little woman happy.”
Ryan glances around the smoky bar.
Curby seems like a nice enough guy and maybe Ryan should slow down and try and schmooze the man by buying him another beer and shooting the proverbial shit for a while, warm the man up to him, but it’s Sunday and Ryan still has to fly back to Berkeley tonight and study for a Classic Greek and Roman Architecture final he has tomorrow morning and he just really, really needs to find The Captain and get the hell out of Georgia.
“Um, yeah. So, is there any way I could get it from her? It’s my brother’s. It was stolen from his dorm room.”
“Well that ain’t right, one man stealin’ another man’s horse,” Curby says, shaking his head in disgust. “I should have known something wasn’t on the up and up. Eb Marley is a no good son-of-a-bitch. I’d love to help you, Ryan, truly I would, but my girlfriend already traded it on the Internet for some kinda' rare, purple dainty pony or some sort of thing and I know for sure she done put your brother’s horsey in the mail.”
Ryan cringes and looks at his wristwatch with impatience and asks Curby, “Could you, um, possibly call your girlfriend and get the buyer’s name?”
Five beers later, a beautiful blond shows up, all perfectly symmetrical boobs and low-cut shirt and high-cut skirt, and she drapes her arms around Curby, and gives her man a peck on the cheek, and smiles and winks at Ryan as she hands him a slip of paper with an e-mail address on it.
Curby slaps Ryan on the shoulder and says, “Ryan, let me introduce you to just about the sweetest, hottest woman in the whole wide world, my girlfriend Tiffany. Tiffany, baby, say hey to my new friend Ryan.”
“Hey,” Tiffany purrs and Ryan thinks about how nice it would have been to completely kick Eb’s ass, but he couldn’t, because who wants to make that phone call to Sandy and Kirsten, telling them they need to come to Eufaula, Georgia and bail him out of jail?
But Curby…. Curby, looks like he could kick some serious ass, and after Ryan politely says, “Thank you,” to Tiffany for the e-mail address and sneaks one more glance at her massive boobs, he stands up and shakes Curby’s hand and he tells the man, “Um…Did I happen to mention to you what Eb said about your girlfriend?”
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Act Three
“She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
“Did you get him?” Seth asks Ryan Sunday night over the phone, as Ryan sits in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport waiting for his flight home. “Did you find Captain Oats? Is he okay? Eb didn’t hurt him, right? Did you count his hooves? He should have four.”
Ryan scratches his eyebrow and winces and tells Seth, “Um…there’s been a minor setback. But I’m handling it.”
“Are you sure, man?”
Ryan scoffs and nods into his cell phone and promises Seth, “Yeah, of course. I got it covered. No worries.”
He tries not to feel too guilty when he hears Seth’s overwhelming gratitude.
“Thanks so much, Ryan. Seriously, dude, you have never failed me. Never. Ever. I can always count on you.”
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Act Four
“One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.”
Ryan has three thousand dollars and thirty-eight cents of disposable income and not a penny more.
At least not without using his emergency credit card the Cohens have given him or any of the money they deposit monthly into his checking account for daily expenses and tuition.
In terms of how much money he has that is exclusively Ryan Atwood’s?
That would be three thousand dollars and thirty eight cents.
He can’t use the Cohens' money. That would be wrong. That would be something he can’t live with.
And he can’t tell anyone else about why he needs more money, because Seth is utterly and wholly and entirely embarrassed by the fact that he’s nineteen and having a nervous breakdown over a missing plastic horse.
In one week it’ll be winter break and Ryan promised he would have The Captain back by then and safely in Berkeley and in Seth’s loving hands the minute his friend stepped off the plane from Providence.
He promised.
Ryan glances forlornly at his laptop.
Who knew Seth’s Captain was, “Rare!” “In almost mint condition!” and “A must have!”
Ryan didn’t know that.
He thought Captain Oats was just a plastic horse.
But evidently, he isn’t.
Ryan knows this for certain because the e-mail address Tiffany gave him belongs to a lady whose code name is iStalkToys67, and who, evidently, has zero compassion for Seth’s situation, and e-mailed Ryan back telling him, “This molded stallion is worth a bundle. No way am I giving it up for nada. But by all means, feel free to make a bid on eBay. If you float an extra $200.00, I’ll have it to you before Christmas.”
Ryan stares at his computer screen, at eBay’s primary colored letters dancing around on the top left hand corner of it, and he sighs and stares at the blue, prominently arranged, “Place Bid,” rectangle.
Someone in Austin, Texas wants Captain Oats in a very bad way. In a span of just a few days, they’ve run the price up to $3300.00.
Ryan sighs again and shakes his head back and forth and hopes to God…no one will ever find out that he just did… what he’s about to do.
Because how in the hell is he going to explain spending $4000.00 on a toy?
He can’t.
This is ridiculous.
This is absolutely perhaps the dumbest thing he has ever done, and that includes agreeing to pose naked for Taylor when she was going through her phase of, “I’ve been inspired by a William Bouguereau exhibit and I need a nude male model to sketch, so if you really loved me, Ryan, and wanted me to develop myself as a whole, well-rounded emotionally healthy woman, instead of an insecure, co-dependent freak, you wouldn’t still be wearing your pants.”
This is a really bad decision on his part.
Then again.
This is Seth.
So Ryan sighs, and shakes his head, and hopes Taylor will forgive him, because he only has three thousand dollars and thirty-eight cents. In order to get his hands on the other nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars and sixty-two cents, it’s going take to legally return Captain Oats to his rightful owner…Ryan is gonna’ have to sell the Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth Portfolio, Volume One original lithograph circa 1910 that Taylor stumbled on to in a dusty basement of a Berlin estate sale.
She flew all the way to the States to hand-deliver it to him a few months ago, so excited that Ryan was concerned that her head would possibly pop off.
It’s a thing of beauty, his lithograph.
Sometimes, Ryan gets a magnifying glass out and spends an hour just studying it for some minor details of FLW’s that he might have missed the other one hundred times he’s looked at it.
But he can’t think about that right now.
Ryan clicks the blue “Place Bid” rectangle and types in $4000.00 and closes his eyes in misery and clicks again to send the bid. Then he picks up his cell phone and calls the Turtle Island Book Shop on Claremont Ave. and asks them if he can bring by a Frank Lloyd Wright lithograph that he thinks they might be interested in purchasing.
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Act Five
“At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.”
Ryan picks up Seth right outside of SFO’s baggage claim area.
Seth throws his stuffed to the gills duffel bag in the back of the jeep while simultaneously jumping in the passenger’s seat and bitching, “God, I hate flying back and forth from Providence. Can’t we build like a Chunnel or something? How hard is that?”
“That’s um… that’s under water,” Ryan states, throwing an amused glance at Seth before pulling out into traffic. “You can’t build a Chunnel under land.”
“Well, whatever,” Seth says dismissively. “That’s not my problem. I’m just asking for a faster way across the country than two layovers and five delays. Europe in general is kicking our transportation asses. You can get across seventeen different countries over there in twenty minutes.”
Ryan decides to let the conversation die.
It’s not like Seth is majoring in geography or civil engineering.
Thank God.
Seth looks at Ryan in anticipation and holds out his hands and asks Ryan, “So…where is he? You got him, right?”
He unbuckles his seat belt and turns left and turns right and begins to rifle through the jeep, under the seats, and eventually a little too close into Ryan’s personal space.
“Seth,” Ryan answers, trying to drive and get his friend’s attention at the same time. “Seth, stop. Captain Oats is….um…at your parents’ house….actually.”
Which is totally a lie, but it’s one Ryan is clinging to because iStalkToys67 promised Ryan that she had shipped The Captain via the last sled out of Federal Express and positively, absolutely, Ryan will get the purchased item on time, because like hell she’s gonna’ lose her hard-earned customer appreciation green star review rating on eBay.
“Why didn’t you bring him with you?” Seth asks. “We’ve been apart long enough.”
He looks at Ryan and waits for an answer and Ryan fumbles around a bit and finally goes with, “Uh…rain. There’s rain…in the forecast…and it’s cold…and uh, you know, so…”
Ryan purses his lips and nods and shrugs and scratches behind his ear and finishes with, “I think he’s still traumatized… from the abduction.”
Seth stares at Ryan.
Stares a little more, and says, “You’re scaring me, Ryan. I’m physically ill at ease. Are you taking too many classes there, big guy? Academic haul a little too hefty? How much stress are you under? Did Captain Oats actually tell you he was traumatized?”
Ryan cringes and tries to figure out a way to bide his time, and insulting Seth is always good for a delay in play so…
“This coming from a man who begged me at five in the morning to fly to Georgia to get a plastic horse.”
Seth bobs his head up and down and concedes, “Yeah. That’s very true. That’s very true, Ryan. When you put it that way…I should probably be shutting up right about now.”
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Act Six
“White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper.”
Kirsten and Sandy hug Seth and toss fast and furious questions at him, and Seth repeats his dissertation on the USA needing a national interstate Chunnel system.
Ryan sneaks around the house, looking for anything that might resemble a last minute delivery. But there’s no sign of any boxes other than those wrapped in perfect wrappings and sitting under the Cohens’ Christmas tree.
Kirsten comes into the kitchen, Sophie in her arms and asks Ryan if he’s hungry yet, and Ryan tells her, “No thanks,” omitting the whole part concerning the fact that he’s lost his appetite completely because he’s pretty sure he just sent an anonymous person who refers to herself as iStalkToys a cashier’s check for $4000.00 dollars in exchange for a plastic horse, which was probably all a scam, and now, in addition to having absolutely no money in savings, he has to explain to Taylor where the Wright lithograph went. Then, for added fun, explain to Seth why he couldn’t manage to get The Captain back from a dumbass named Eb.
“Oh, and Ryan?” Kirsten says, before leaving the kitchen, “Honey, a package came for you. I put it on your bed.”
Ryan smiles.
This is good development.
This is a wonderful thing.
He grabs a pair of scissors and rushes into his room, and slices through transparent packaging tape and pokes around the white, Styrofoam peanuts until his hand comes in contact with something hard.
And plastic.
And with…count em'…one, two, three…four…hooves, all sticking straight up and immobile and intact and ironically enough, if the postage time on the cardboard box is to be believed, Captain Oats just made it across the country faster than Seth did.
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Final Act
“And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.”
“I have a confession to make,” Seth tells Ryan. “I almost didn’t believe you’d get him back. I know, I know. Non-believer. I should be shunned.”
“Naw,” Ryan shrugs. “It was…uh. Never mind. You have Captain Oats back, and, I’m not in a coma or being barmitzvahed. So, overall, I’d say we’re ahead of the game as far as Chrismukkahs go.”
“I have another confession to make,” Seth says and Ryan answers, “You know, I really wish you wouldn’t.”
Seth snaps and points at Ryan and does a strange dance with his shoulders that involves moving his entire upper body back and forth, very much like an intoxicated inchworm and Ryan steps backwards a little bit and stares at Seth, waiting for him to finish…whatever it is that he’s doing…for whatever reason he’s doing it.
“I might have brought a little somethin’ for a blood brother. Would you know where I could find one of those, Ryan? Do you? Huh?”
Ryan grins and says, “No. No idea.”
“Oh really?” Seth asks. “No, huh? Well then, maybe I should give this, to someone else.”
Seth spryly holds a manila envelope up, slightly out of Ryan’s reach and he taunts Ryan with it, carefully fanning himself with the mysterious present.
Ryan makes a grab for the envelope and Seth raises it a little higher.
“Oh I’m sorry, what’s that? Thanks for the two pints of O negative, you say?”
He stops fanning himself and smiles at Ryan and opens up the seal.
Out from the envelope slides a plastic slip-covered, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth Portfolio, Volume One original lithograph, circa 1910.
“It’s from that same book, or whatever you call it. It’s not as big as that one Taylor gave you. But…it’s authentic. Turns out…Providence? Lots of old book stores. Although I have to tell ya’ Ryan, Frank Lloyd Wright? He’s a little too mainstream for my tastes. A little too F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
Ryan’s not listening.
He’s fondling his lithograph, and wishing he would have brought his magnifying glass to the Cohens’ and he squints really, really closely and thinks he might see a sharp tilt of Lloyd Wright’s pencil he’s never seen before.
Seth is all bashful smiles and hands in pocket. “You uh… Dad told me about how much you liked the one Taylor gave you and it’s not like you show a lot of interest in a whole lot of things.” He asks Ryan with genuine hope in his voice, “Do you like it?”
“Yeah,” Ryan nods. “This is….this is unbelievable, man.”
He looks up from the lithograph and tells Seth, “Thank you.”
His hands still in his pockets, Seth shrugs and keeps smiling. “Well, it was the least I could do. You did save Captain Oats from living out the remainder of his life in Georgia.”
Ryan doesn’t mention to Seth that there are, in fact, many, many horses that do indeed enjoy living in Georgia, because what’s the use?
It’s not like Seth is attending RISD to be a veterinarian.
Thank God.
“We can get it framed with your other one, the one Taylor got you.” Seth says, pointing to the lithograph.
Ryan places his thumb on his bottom lip and concentrates for a second.
“Ummm….I kinda’ had to sell the one Taylor gave me to come up with enough cash to buy Captain Oats off eBay. By the way, you uh, you might want to give some serious consideration into getting The Captain insured.”
Seth’s mouth drops open and he laughs that awkward laugh he laughs which isn’t really a laugh so much as a “wtf snicker,” and he exclaims, “That’s like…that’s insane. Let me line the ducks up…So you sold your lithograph to buy Captain Oats, but I gave you another one, so now you have yourself a lithograph again, and I have Captain Oats back, and do you know what we have here, Ryan? Do you know what we have here other than a serious need to stop using the word lithograph? Do you know what we are facing here? Huh? Do you?”
A light jab into Ryan’s chest and just for good measure, one more, “Do you.”
Ryan shakes his head, ‘no,’ mostly because he doesn’t care.
“What we have here, Ryan, is a genuine Chrismukkah miracle.”
Ryan clears his throat and eases the lithograph back into the envelope and tells his brother, “You say that every year, Seth.”
Seth points his index finger back-and-forth from the envelope to The Oats.
“True, but that doesn’t diminish the magic of the moment, my friend. You remember this night, Tiny Tim. You cherish this memory. You hug it close to your heart, like a starving, wilting, grimy, overworked Industrial Age British child would cling to a slaughtered Christmas goose.”
They both stand in silence until Ryan motions towards the kitchen with his thumb and says, “Okay…well…Kirsten cooked dinner, so…I’m gonna’ go eat.”
Seth picks up Captain Oats and tells him welcome home, and checks the horse for any sign of any violation of any type, and when he’s satisfied that his childhood friend is safely back in the arms of the one who loves him, Seth packs The Captain deep in his duffel bag, under a bed of fluffy socks.
He arrives in the dining room just in time to see his dad standing over the formally set dinner table with carving knives and proclaiming to a non-comprehending Sophie,
“Yes, Virginia, this is a ham.”
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The End.
Thanks for reading!
The following pieces of work were in some way quoted:
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html
Charlie the Unicorn by TypeQueen:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/280260
(Which may seriously be one of the funniest things I have ever seen.)
The OC by Josh Swartz and his minions of writers.
http://www.theocinsider.com/