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Ezra's First Friend
by Pirate Turner
It had been fifteen years ago to the day that Ezra had first been told, by his own mother no less, that he would live a lonely, miserable life and never once make a true friend, and he still remembered that fateful day with heart-rending clarity. Even now he could feel her pulling on his earlobe as she'd carried him away from his first friend, and he reached a hand up to gingerly touch that lobe. He'd not tried to make a friend since, and he often wondered what had happened to that little, Irish boy he'd met while Maude had been away on business. She'd returned home to learn that he was at the boy's immigrant family's homestead and had shown up, as Ezra tended to like to phrase the term, on her broomstick to literally drag him away from the family who had welcomed him, for the first time ever in his sorrowful existence, with loving arms.
There had even been talk of Ezra running away to be with his friend and their family, after the small boy had confessed to his true living conditions, but Maude had put a stop to it all. She had barred the family from even ever seeing him again, and she'd come even closer to talking Ezra's ear off than pulling it off as she'd dragged him home. He could still hear her words to this day, and they made his green eyes mist with tears he refused to acknowledge, another hard-earned lesson from his mother.
Standishes, she had told him quite sternly, did not make friends. They only ever encountered two types of people in their lives for there were only two types in the whole world: those who made themselves your enemies to begin with and those who pretended to be your friend, who used you and let you use them in turn, until they found some reason to turn against you that would benefit them. There was no such thing as friends, nor loving family, but only people to use or be used by, and Standishes never allowed themselves to be used. To that end, he was to always keep the world safely at an arm length's distance, using the people he met only to better his own needs and desires and discarding them just as swiftly as he drained all that he could out of them or being allied with them became questionable to his health and well-being.
Ezra had learned that lesson well, but within the time span of just the last few months, he had learned just how wrong his mother was. His green eyes shone as he watched his small friend across the room. He had a friend now, and he had come to him through no great feat. He was no dashing hero or damsel in distress, but he was truly Ezra's friend. Ezra smiled, his gold tooth sparkling in the candlelit shadows. They had, however, done quite well at using Ezra's alliances.
Since meeting the considerably smaller man, Ezra and he had traveled from town to town, making acquaintances and then almost as quickly emptying their pockets. No one could stop them, and none would ever be wise to the game they played. Ezra's lips turned up into a wry grin. No one would even believe him if he told them of his friend and their secret, and indeed, had he not known the tiny man himself, he, too, would never have believed.
He could still remember his shock when he had first met Seamus. He had been playing a fellow cardshark for hours on end. The saloon had been closed so long that daylight was coming. The cardshark, however, was the husband of the woman who owned the saloon and so they had continued to play well pass closing hours. Ezra had already won everything that the other man had on him, as well as all that he owned within the saloon, short of the saloon himself, when the man had made him a quite startling proposition.
Ezra hadn't believed him at first, and he'd tried to persuade him to offer the saloon instead. Yet the saloon was his wife's, and the man, much to Ezra's surprise and somewhat disbelief, claimed to have no legal rights to the saloon until his wife's father passed. He had known Ezra had not believed him, and so he had taken a small bag out of his pocket and dumped its contents onto the table between them. Ezra's life had changed instantly.
Ezra listened to his friend's song as he remembered.
"I was walking down the High Street
When I heard footsteps behind me
And there was a little old man (Hello)
In scarlet and gray, shuffling away
Well he trotted back to my house
And he sat beside the jelly
With his tiny hands on his tummy
Chuckling away, laughing all day"
He'd never forget the thoughts that had whirled through his mind when that bag had been fatefully dumped before him, nor the shock that had riveted throughout his being. He'd been told all his life that friends, magic, and special creatures did not exist. He had been told he was special only because he was a Standish and that his dreams of having friends and knowing love would never happen because such things were only fairy tales and did not truly exist.
And yet, out of the bag, before him, had tumbled a fairy tale being quite alive and furiously angry. The tiny man had jumped up and down onto the table, shaking his fists at both of the humans peering down at him and cursing loudly in Gaelic. Ezra had never seen such before in all of his life, and he'd known immediately that he had to win him from his opponent. Winning had come easily, but it had been what had happened afterwards that had taken Ezra by even more surprise.
"Oh, I ought to report you to the Gnome office
(Gnome Office)
Yes
(Hahahahaha)
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you can't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you can't catch me"
Said the laughing Gnome"
Ezra had kept the Gnome for a day, pondering over what best to do with the tiny man. Although he had known full and well that he could earn more than enough money off of him to achieve all his monetary-demanding dreams and never have to lift a finger or play a game of chance again, unless he wanted to for pure leisurely purposes, Ezra had recognized something within the tiny man that had troubled him. He, too, was a kindred spirit, lost in a cruel world that had every intention of using him until there was nothing left in him to use.
Meeting the Gnome had brought Ezra to a crossroads in his life. He had had a choice. He could use him to successfully earn more money than he could ever possibly spend in his lifetime, or even in generations after his lifetime, or he could do something that he had not done in years, something that Maude had thought well beaten out of him. He could give hope to the tiny, deformed creature. He could show kindness. He could be a friend, with no intentions of drawing anything out of the other man, and let him walk away.
"Well I gave him roasted toadstools
and a glass of dandelion wine
(Burp, pardon)
Then I put him on a train to Eastbourne
Carried his bag and gave him a fag
(Haven't you got a light boy?)
"Here, where do you come from?"
(Gnome-man's land, hahihihi)
"Oh, really?""
Although he had debated the question for quite some time, all along, since the very first second Ezra had laid his eyes upon the Gnome, he had known what he must do. He had known that he could not keep, sell, or use him. The Gnome was a living being, trapped in his life much as Ezra was in his own, and he had to let him go. That was the real reason why he had striven so hard to win him, not so that he could make money off of him nor turn his own dreams to realities but so that at least one person in the harsh world of reality would have hope.
He had had the power to return the Gnome's dreams to him, and that power had been truly mind-blowing. Nothing he had ever done before in all his life had felt more right or better than the day he'd sent Seamus on his way, and yet, despite all of his mother's warnings that helping others would only end up getting him hurt and that everybody in the world was to be used before they could use him, that simple act of kindness continued to reward Ezra daily. He had dared to go against his training and sacrifice his own wishes to make another's dreams reality, and he had been reaping the benefits ever since.
"In the morning when I woke up
He was sitting on the edge of my bed
With his brother whose name was Fred
He'd bought him along to sing me a song"
He'd awakened the very next morning to the strangest sound he'd ever heard before in all his life, and when he'd cracked his green eyes open, he'd barely been able to believe his eyes for upon his bed had not only sat his little, Gnome friend but a second Gnome. The second Gnome, Seamus' brother as he had turned out to be, had been making a very strange noise with his mouth, a racket unlike anything Ezra had ever heard before. Though the sound had at first been grating on his ears, Ezra had since come to adore the noise for it reminded him of his friends and of a friendship that, despite all of Maude's stern warnings, the gambler now knew would never end. He would have risked everything on that game of chance to free Seamus, and yet now, everything in his world was brighter by far because of the chances he had taken for the tiny Gnome who wasn't even supposed to exist.
"Right, let's hear it
Here, what's that clicking noise?
(That's Fred, he's a "metrognome", haha)
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you don't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you can't catch me"
(Own up, I'm a gnome, ain't I right, haha)
"Haven't you got a gnome to go to?"
(No, we're gnomads)
"Didn't they teach you to get
your hair cut at school? you look
like a rolling gnome."
(No, not at the London School of Ecognomics)
Now they're staying up the chimney
And we're living on caviar and honey (hooray!)
Cause they're earning me lots of money
Writing comedy prose for shows
It's the-er (what?)
It's the Gnome service of course
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you don't catch me"
Ha ha ha, oh, dear me
(Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you can't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and
you can't catch me")
(One more time, yeah)"
By the time Seamus had finished his song, he was doubled over with laughter, and Ezra still sat quietly, watching his friend. The Gnome looked up, his round cheeks red with bubbling laughter, and questioned, "Well, haven't ye a tongue, lad?"
Ezra smiled, and his radiant smile sparkled in the darkness. "You know Ah do, Seamus," he replied. "Ah was just thinking."
"That ain't likely tae get ye far, boyo."
"Ah, but it has," Ezra replied, his smile twisting to include a glint of mischief. "You know Ah was always told you were not supposed to exist."
Seamus shrugged his tiny shoulders. "That's what they all say."
Ezra raised a single, gallant brow. "Oh, they do, do they?"
"O' 'course," Seamus said, pausing to burp the dandelion wine he'd been drinking. "Ye knae that. None o' 'em believe in any o' us wee people."
"Well, yes, of course," Ezra acknowledged, "but that was not the particularly of your existence to which I was referring."
"Oh?" It was Seamus' turn to raise a brow in question.
"Indeed," Ezra replied, walking closer to his friend and raising his own glass of wine. "I was told I would never have a friend."
"Aye, well, yer bitseach o' a mother was wrong, friend, as ye knae now." They clicked their glasses and drank their wine, Ezra nodding his head in acceptance.
"Indeed," he said, and a part of him wished that Maude could see him now. He had everything she'd always told him he wouldn't. He had magic in his life, a true friend, and even a distant family in Seamus' brood. The gambler was happy at long last for he'd taken the very chance that his mother had always told him not to and dared to believe in a better world and another being, and for the first time in his young life, Ezra had hope.
"So what's th' town fer tomorrow?" Seamus asked, turning over onto his tinny bed that Ezra had made for him and preparing to lay down for the night.
"Ah believe the next town is Four Corners," Ezra replied with a gleam to his green eyes and sparkling smile.
"We'll take it by surprise," Seamus vowed, his accent growing thicker as he drew closer to sleep, "an' we'll get all their money."
Ezra smiled as his strange, little friend fell asleep. No one would ever believe the true secret of his immense success at cards, or his own happiness in life, but then again, no one need know. Seamus and their friendship was his secret to keep, and never had the gambler been prouder to keep a secret in all his life. "Good night, Seamus," he whispered, "and happy Saint Patrick's Day." His only answer, as Ezra turned out the light, was a wheezing snore.
Tomorrow would be another bright day, Ezra knew, for every day since Seamus had returned to him, of his own free will, had been a glorious day, filled with friendship, laughter, magic, and adventure. Ezra went to bed smiling. He couldn't wait to see what the next town, and adventure, would hold!
The End