Chapter 2

The Man With The Toy Store

Heart attack, the doctors said. No previous history of them, no symptoms, he was in perfect shape for a man in his seventies. It came out of nowhere, not even waking him up.

There was no reason for him to be gone. No reason at all.

#

A few days after his death, Ty found himself sitting in a church. Rain hammered the roof to where he couldn’t even make out what the speaker was saying. Then again, he couldn't focus on much of anything. He wasn't even sure what the service was—a memorial, or the funeral itself?

The amount of people around him—that, he was aware of. There wasn’t an empty seat in the whole chapel, even more people forced to stand against the walls, in the aisle. He had never seen a church so packed before, all gathered not for God, but a single man.

For Ty, this was no surprise; his grandfather was the greatest person he – or anyone, for that matter – could have ever known. He was kind and caring, always ready to do everything in his power to help someone in need. Full of joy and jokes, the kind of man that everyone who met him fell in love with before he even opened his mouth.

By many measurements of success, his grandfather was a failure. He was not a businessman or a politician. He wasn't rich or (despite the crowd) known nationwide. He would not show up in a history book. Heck, his death wouldn't even make the local news. He was only a man.

A man who ran a toy store.

#

A few blocks from Ty's neighborhood was the downtown area, little more than a rundown assortment of shops and businesses. Not a lively place, no artists or college students. About the only thing it had going for it was the zero percent chance of your place getting shot up or robbed—too boring to even attract criminals.

In the middle of this depressing sight, squished between a bank and a laundromat, stood his grandfather's toy store. His fellow business owners hated him and his store with a passion. Painted in bright, cheery colors, his building was a pastel splotch on their perfect gray world.

Even though it was noticeable and interesting, not many people got close enough to the downtown area to see it. His grandpa made no effort to advertise either, resulting in an obscure store that by all rights shouldn't have been able to draw in enough customers to stay in business.

Ty asked him once why he was all right with keeping the store so hidden, to which he replied, “Because the people who need to find it, will.”

And they did. Somehow, no matter how bad the money situation looked, the store would bring in enough cash month by month to keep them going. Without fail, at least one person would come into the store every day. If that wasn't strange enough, most of them weren't even residents of their town; people from all over the country wound up in the tiny shop.

Ty asked them how they found their store, and they all had the same story: they didn't know. None decided one day that they were going on a thousand mile road trip to find a hidden toy store—it just happened. By a series of random events, they were brought to Ty's town and drawn to the store soon thereafter.

Why? Ty didn't know. He loved the place, but he knew that a lot of other kids would find it boring and old. There were no superhero figures, no famous cartoon characters, no trading cards—any popular toy that had a TV commercial was guaranteed not to be on his grandpa's shelves. Instead, there were stuffed animals, train sets, yo-yos, wooden animals, vehicles, monsters. Anything you could imagine being built without needing to be mass-produced in a factory.

The toys may not have been flashy, but they each had personality. Everything that was sold, his grandfather made by hand. No matter how small the toy, he poured love and care into every detail. He worked harder than anyone Ty had ever seen, making just enough money to keep living.

One day, Ty sat in the workshop, putting together a LEGO set while his grandfather worked. He finally asked him, “Grandpa, why do you make toys?”

He put down his tools, taking extra care to place the project he was working on atop his desk. He added one more touch—a final tooth in the dinosaur's mouth—before giving Ty his full attention.

“Some might think that a toymaker does it to see the look of joy on a child's face. That is wonderful. I enjoy that. But I don't make toys to see it. I make toys, Ty, to give the gift of remembrance. Somewhere along the way, life strips us of the kid that once lived in our hearts. As grown-ups, we get so bogged down by this whole living business that we forget what it is like to be alive.

“My job is to bring that missing piece back to life.”

Ty's grandfather firmly believed that for one to be happy, they had to hold onto what he called an “inner child.” You had to remember to enjoy the simple things, how to have fun, how to laugh, what it was like when the world was full of wonders.

Ty believed it, too. How could he not? He had seen countless inner kids born again from the magic of his grandfather's toys. Adults came in with their children and, more often than one would think, it was the parents that walked out of the store with a toy in their arms and a grin on their faces.

Every one of those adults bought what they did for one simple reason: it reminded them of something from their childhood. It could have been an almost exact replica of their favorite long lost doll, a train set they always wanted but never owned, or something else entirely that jogged their memory. Once they remembered, they were sure to never quite be the same again. They were happier, younger, and each of them thanked Ty's grandfather for his work, never forgetting the man.

The crowd alone was proof they hadn't. Ty recognized at least one-third of the massive gathering in the church as people who had walked out of his grandfather's store with a toy of their own. And—besides a few family members—the other two-thirds? Complete strangers. He knew, without a doubt, that the vast majority of them were there because of something his grandfather made.

A shuffling beside him snapped Ty out of his thoughts. It was his father, leaving his seat and entering the center aisle. He walked calmly to the podium and, like so many others that day, began to speak. Even though Ty was unable to pay complete attention to the previous speeches, he would bet anything on them being better than his father's. It was the standard spiel: he was a great man, loving father, husband, and friend—on and on it went. They were words of obligation, not love and pain, words from a son who had never understood his father.

It wasn't always like that, or so he was told. There was a time when they were close—nowhere near as close as Ty and his grandfather were, but close. That changed as his father grew older. There came a time when the two of them represented opposite ideals and ways of life; an inner child-less workaholic and an old man who built toys, finding the concept of “growing up” ridiculous and laughable. They drifted apart, only speaking or seeing each other when absolutely necessary.

Such as a funeral.

Muted, obligated claps came from the crowd as his father spoke the last words of his cookie-cutter speech. Next thing Ty knew, he was standing over his grandfather's grave, the last of the rain sprinkling down around him. The funeral ended and people dispersed to their cars, driving off in every direction. Ty did not move.

His grandmother approached Ty by the headstone. She held her hand out to him and he took it in his own.

#

That evening, there was a get-together at their house for close friends and family. Ty did not participate, instead sitting on the corner of the couch, drawing as little attention to himself as possible. He tried to hide inside himself, but he couldn’t quite manage it this time, being forced to deal with the outside world.

He listened as crying people mourning their loss slowly became happier, laughing as they remembered their friend, husband, father-in-law, grandfather. The son shed not a tear, nor cracked a smile.

Ty's father sat beside him on the couch but said nothing, making no attempts to reassure or console his son. They just sat on edge, not looking at one another, like two entirely different species avoiding direct contact.

That was usual for them.

When his father did not leave after a good ten minutes passed, Ty could no longer deal with him on top of all of the other people in his house. He got up and walked through the crowd; a few people attempted to stop and talk to him but upon seeing his face and zombie-like gait, they steered clear.

He made it to his room and slammed the door shut behind him, not opening it again for days.

Anna was the only person he talked to in complete sentences after that. He tried to play it cool most of the time, act as cheerful as he could, and listen to stories of her trip, but he could never fool her. She knew he was faking in a second and goaded the truth out of him.

“When was the last time you went outside?”

“Dunno.”

“You've left your room at least, right?”

“Just for food, sometimes.”

“Ty...” She sounded so sad. Even in his current state of simultaneous pain and numbness, he couldn't bear to hear her like that.

“I'm fine, really. Enjoy the rest of your trip, I've gotta go.”

“Hey, wait! Don't you dare hang up on—”

He started avoiding talking on the phone with her from then on, insisting on text messages instead, hoping he would have an easier time faking happiness that way.

He should have known better; through texts, she just read him like a book.