As a child he asked things like why doesn’t the sea get larger when it rains, since nothing flows out? A perfectly good physics question, he would later learn…

The neighbor boy with the murderous golden hair called him a fool. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to touch this boy or tie himself up in the shining strands or steal one and see what happened. He could have answered this by process of elimination, if any of them had been possible. The golden haired boy never left his house.

Sometimes, the funeral director gave all the children jackets on wire hangers to wear to the funerals of people they had never known. Umbrellas were often involved. Coins were distributed on return of the jackets.

After the funeral of the very fat man whose friends had already died, he kept the jacket and looked under all the rocks in the neighbor’s back garden until he found the false one containing a key. He slipped up the stairs and knocked on a bedroom door.

“No,” said the golden boy.

“Why not?”

“You have to find the egg first.”

“What egg?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“What’s in it?”

“Either love or death. It all depends.”

He didn’t bother to ask on what. He hated puzzles with no organizing principles. He sat down with his back to the door. After a while the golden boy slipped a turkey feather under the door.

“Maybe this will help.”

Now this was interesting. He wanted more information. Desire? Maybe.

Three slow knocks. Two fast, five syncopated. “Remeber that,” the boy said.

“Why?”

“It is unclear to me whether I want to kiss you or eat you.”

“They’re not that different.”

“Different outcomes. Now would you go already?”

The boy didn’t ask: What happened to calling me a fool for my perfectly reasonable questions? He was starting to think there were some fundamental misunderstandings here.

Where would an egg be? Henhouse refrigerator nest. He climbed a trellis to consider the robin eggs in their dirty straw in the porch-roof gutter of the house. A brown speckled one among the perfect blue. Nah, too easy, that’s just a cowbird outsourcing its work. Nothing special.

He returned the jacket to the funeral director. “Bob,” he asked, feeling very adult for using his first name. “I’m looking for an egg. What do you know about them?” He figured if it had to do with death, Bob would know.

“Tricky things, eggs.”

“Why?”

“Because you never know what’s in ‘em until it’s too late to take it back.”

“True,” he said, because clearly it was. He laid down the turkey feather on the table. “I’ll trade you.”

Bob pulled a basket out of the cupboard where he kept his autoclave, for sterilizing the tools. People are already dead, the boy had asked long ago. Not like they can get infections. 

Mold grows fast in flesh, he was told. Can’t risk it with open caskets.

“Here. See if anything strikes your fancy.”

He tried the knocks. 

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” Bob yelled from the next room.

The eggs were warm except for one that was icy. Definitely not that one, he thought.

He tried the knocks again. Maybe Bob had lied. Another egg turned to ice. Aha! A liar. Someone always lies in these kinds of situations. He knew that. Rules are rules.

He kept it up until at last he found one that stayed warm. He tested the rest too. You have to be sure when it comes to eggs.

He brought the warm egg back and stood in front of the golden boy’s house. What now?

He held the egg like a baseball and wound up for the pitch. When the shell hit the window, it shattered and the window shattered. Golden hair, golden yolk.

A rope ladder unfurled from the window.

“I have an idea,” the boy said, when he got to the top and tumbled over the sill into the room. “Lean over a little.” 

He considered the long, golden strands and plucked one from the boy’s head. He slip-knotted it around his own wrist. A tether. Impermanent. The boy collapsed at his feet.