Fringe Magazine - Issue 7 Archive

I mixed up a big ball of dough, and after it rose by the hearth a few hours Lester spent the afternoon sculpting. “It’s so much softer than wood,” he whispered while hollowing out the well of an eye socket with his carpenter’s fingers.

I watched over his shoulder. “Careful you get them both the same size. We don’t want him looking uneven.”

Lester shaped the nose with his tools, then pinched out a pair of thin lips. He carved two rows of teeth while holding his breath so he wouldn’t shake and cause dental problems in years to come, and I made sure the oven was clean. He scooped gingerbread shavings from the tabletop into his cupped palm, then coiled them on the brown head I’d washed lightly with egg.

When the hair was finished, I pulled down the heavy iron door and Lester slid the tray into the heat. He asked, “How long will it take?”

He was still sitting there when I came back, and I had to scoot him aside to open the door. We stood shoulder to shoulder with the heat on our faces as the room around us filled up with sweet, spicy air. The little brown boy in the oven stretched his arms up over his head, yawned, and rubbed one eye, then the other, with a smooth-fingered fist. He blinked twice when he saw us looking in at him, and Lester gasped beside me.

I reached in to slide out the tray, but the boy hopped up on his stumpy legs and leapt over my arm to the floor. In a dash, he wriggled out through the mail slot and disappeared into the lane.

Lester ran out after him, still in his slippers and vest, and I followed with flour all over my apron and quilted mitts covering my hands. We ran down the hill past the winter wheat field and threshers at work in the barn, through a cloud of their chaff that made Lester cough, and past three small boys hanging high in a tree while a girl watched them from down below.

We reached the riverbank without seeing a sign of the gingerbread boy. “Oh, I hope he didn’t fall into the water,” I said, but Lester was panting too hard to reply—he’s still a big man, my Lester, but not so strong as he was on our wedding day when my mother said we’d have powerful sons. Out in the river there was only the orange crown of a fox swimming from one bank to the other, so we rested a moment then walked up the hill much more slowly than we had come down, back to the oven we’d left standing open and all the heat we had lost, and whatever dough might be left in our bowl.