Candy Crane
My brother Joshua lost interest in Walmart’s toy crane at eight, shortly after he gained enough hand-eye coordination to manipulate the metal claw. Too many times, he’d failed to grab a plush hedgehog or Game Boy until our parents ran out of quarters, then slid, despairing, onto the grimy concrete floor. But the candy machine’s glass front bore a promise: A win every time. The candy claw moved with more precision than the one with the toys, and it stayed active until it had snagged enough candy to fill a child’s fist. Fun-size M&Ms, lime Dum-Dums, butterscotch rounds.
My two sisters and I took turns with Joshua at the candy crane during our family’s biweekly shopping trips until the day my winnings caused me to vomit. A box of Junior Mints, the chocolate coating chewed and defecated into millimeter-wide pebbles, grubs wriggling in the minty center when I took a bite. After that day, we girls stood around waiting while Joshua manned the controls alone. It took more than beetle larvae to scare him away.
On one Walmart trip, after the wormy Junior Mints, Joshua ran ahead to the candy crane while our parents selected a shopping cart. “Watch Joshua,” my dad said, filling my palm with extra quarters. I moseyed to the arcade area, pausing over the fresh for-sale candy, the tabloid speculation about the recent murder of JonBenét Ramsey, with my sisters ambling behind. I hid the quarters in my pocket, hoping Joshua would satisfy his stomach with whatever slid out of the metal chute before we arrived.
But when we reached the candy crane, another child was squeezing the controls. Joshua wasn’t at the toy crane, wasn’t anywhere. I’d always noticed a draft in that area, chilly in winter, sticky hot in winter. A cool breeze that day, early spring. For the first time, I really looked around: the bottom six feet of the exterior wall was made of transparent vinyl flaps. A wall created for blue-vested workers pushing shopping cart trains. “Is he out there?” one of my sisters whispered. I split up our search party: one sister to find our parents, another to lap the inside of the store. I burst through the flaps, out into the last light of the sunset, screaming our brother’s name.
A minute later, my dad joined me outside, along with a frightened-looking manager, a few cart boys. My mother, my dad told me, had requested a call for Joshua over the store intercom. He took a look at that vinyl wall, gasped, “Joshua’s been kidnapped. Some pervert came in through there.”
My dad merely echoed my fears, but hearing the words out loud made me unable to stand. I collapsed, tearless, onto the curb by the pop machines. The intercom called again and again: Joshua Childers, come to the front of the store. The manager muttered into his walkie-talkie, and the cart boys pledged to look for a stray little boy along with the carts. My dad sprinted for the minivan to drive around: past the bus stop, past the colony that lived in their station wagons, past the unauthorized used car lot and vegetable stands, now closed from the night. Past rows and rows of shoppers’ coupes, minivans, pickups, station wagons, sedans. So many ways to disappear a child.
Then, after ten awful minutes, Joshua approached the entrance from the parking lot, humming to himself. He’d snuck off to the toy aisle, then, feeling unsure how to find us, decided to wait by the car. He’d gotten bored and returned by a circuitous route, barely missing our dad. I squeezed Joshua’s bony body, laughed and cried.
Fourteen years later, when I found out Joshua had killed himself, I pictured myself in the Walmart parking lot. Relived those long-ago moments when I’d felt certain I’d never see him again. I remembered how silent the world had felt without my brother. How I had wondered who I’d be with him gone.
