Fifteen

Ragle sat at his old oak desk, studying the papers strewn across it intensely. A tap on his office door interrupted his thoughts.

“Come in.” Ragle said. The door quietly opened and a boy of ten tiptoed inside. Ragle took a last glance at one the papers in front of him and looked up. His serious expression faded. “Walter!” he said, happy to have a break. He’d been working for eight hours straight and had even missed dinner. Walter smiled back at his dad and Ragle leaned backwards in his chair, more relaxed than before. Seeing that he would have his full attention, Walter pulled something he had been holding from behind his back.

“Look what I made today!” he announced proudly.

Ragle stood up from his chair and bent down in front of his son, holding out his palm. Walter placed a small toy model inside it. Another one of these things, Ragle chuckled to himself. Walter was always coming up with these toys; they were made of things he found around the house or outside. A very resourceful kid, Ragle thought. He studied it closely now. It wasn’t anything recognizable, just the product of a kid’s imagination. But it was well made.  Aluminum foil was used to make the shape of a sphere, hollow inside. There weren’t too many wrinkles in the foil since he had built it so carefully. Beneath it was a thin piece of wood, beat up scrap he must of found outside somewhere. Puffed out cotton balls surrounded the base, so stretched out that they resembled smoke. An opening on the side was cut the shape of a rectangular door.

“I’m going to add a light too, one that’ll fit inside- make it really nice. Mom says she’s got some old Christmas lights I can use. I’ll take them apart and then it’ll be done.”

“That will be great, Walter. Keep going. This one might be your best.” Ragle then bent closer to the toy and peeked through the doorway so he could see inside the sphere. There was a small triangular window cut out directly across on the other side. He looked through both, and turned it clockwise until he could see Walter’s face through the openings.  Through the triangle window, Walter beamed.

 

Another memory, the most significant one yet, had come back to him. Seeing Walter with that colored light had triggered it. Walter, not just a 16 year old who admired him, but his son. The imaginative young boy who had made those fascinating toys was now outside with a real spaceship, waiting to take him to the moon. Walter had to have built it, or at the very least designed it. The ship outside resembled the toy from his memory so closely. 

The old desk, too, that he and Walter had carried from the basement was actually his. Mrs. Keitelbein, Beverly, he corrected himself, had said that the desk was her father’s, Walter’s grandfather. It had been a gift to Ragle from his father-in-law. He looked over at Beverly, Mrs. Keitelbein, his wife who had infiltrated the system with a false identity to save him, along with their son. She could already tell he had remembered them. I’m not alone, Ragle thought. I do have a real family, besides the one that had been created for me. And now we’re going to the moon, all three of us. Together, Ragle and Beverly looked outside the window at the ship and the colored light. Walter, still standing there, was waving for them to hurry up.  It was time for them to board.