Man of Wax by Robert Swartwood Page A

came to the fifth planet on his journey to meet the lamplighter, who was constantly lighting and extinguishing his lamp.  
    Like most children her age, Casey couldn’t really read yet, but she memorized her favorite parts of the book. So when we got to the part where the little prince arrived to earth and came in contact with the fox, she wanted to read his secret.  
    “ ‘Good-bye,’ said the fox,” she’d say, her soft voice light but full of energy. “ ‘Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.’ ”  
    Yet no matter how often she read it aloud, she always had trouble pronouncing essential . I could never decide whether this was really a problem, or whether she did it just so she could get my help.  
    Then near the end, she’d want to read what the little prince said about how the important thing is what can’t be seen.  
    “ ‘If you love a flower that lives on a star, then it’s good, at night, to look up at the sky. All the stars are blossoming.’ ”  
    We’d go on from there to the very end, until that final picture on the last page and the note from the author saying to him it was the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. Casey would always have tears in her eyes, but they were good tears, happy tears, and I always handed her a tissue, and she always took it from me, smiling. And if the sky was clear and the temperature just right, we’d go outside and stand in the middle of the backyard. I’d hold her in my arms and we would stare up at the sky and the stars and ask aloud, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?”  
    And though I claimed to never hear it (because I couldn’t), Casey always said she could hear the stars.  
    She said they sounded just like the book said.  
    She said they sounded like five hundred million bells.

 
     
     
    13

    I may have cried out, I don’t know. I may even have screamed, though until then I’d never actually screamed a day in my life. Who knows, maybe I did scream but the scream was silent and all that I did was just stand there with my mouth open, my throat making a weird sound where it tried to work but kept failing. Whatever the case, I didn’t do it for long until what little was in my stomach churned once or twice and started up the way it had entered.  
    I doubled over and vomited into the grass. At first it came out easily, like in a spray, but the longer I stayed doubled over, the longer I retched, and the more the bile became just little bits and chunks. The pretzels, the beef jerky, the two Snickers bars—they were all there somewhere, partially digested, now soaking into the ground.  
    The images that had risen up in my mind before had ceased. Now I had an actual image of what lay in the Dodge’s trunk. No tangled arms and legs, no head bent backwards. It was just Casey’s body, lying there almost peacefully, except covered in blood.  
    The traffic continued on the highway, everyone oblivious that my daughter lay dead just feet away. It made me hate those people even more, those people probably waiting to make it home in time to catch their favorite sitcoms or dramas, who maybe picked up a DVD at Redbox and just wanted to relax for the rest of the night. They might have had a run-in with the boss today, who berated them in front of their coworkers, or maybe their boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with them and they were thinking that their life couldn’t get any worse.  
    No, I wanted to tell them, I’m sorry, folks, but believe me it can. It can get a whole lot fucking worse.  
    I stayed that way for a long time: doubled over, my hands on my knees, staring at the ground. I noticed, even in the dim light, that some of the vomit had gotten on my sneakers. Something wet was on my face, something I didn’t realize were tears until I started wiping them away. I was crying but I wasn’t sobbing, and I told myself I was a terrible father for