You’d like to know if I told my father where I’d been for those four months. The answer—if I may borrow from the facial expression of a certain small, sled-pulling kiddie—is duh. How could I not? Was I supposed to tell him that some miracle drug obtained in Chicago had changed Radar from an elderly arthritic dog at death’s door into a hale and hearty German Shep who looked and acted about four?
I didn’t tell him everything right away, there was far too much, but I was straight with him about the basics. There was a connection, I said, between our world and another. （I didn’t call it Empis, just the Other, which was what I called it when I first came.） I told him I’d gotten there from Mr. Bowditch’s shed. He listened carefully, then asked me—as you have surely guessed—where I’d really been.
I showed him my arm, and the deep divot above my wrist that will remain there for the rest of my life. That didn’t convince him. I opened my pack and showed him the gold door knocker. He examined it, hefted it, and suggested—tentatively—that it must be a gilt-coated yardsale item actually made of lead.
“Break it open and see for yourself. Might as well, it’ll have to be melted down eventually and sold. There’s a bucket of gold pellets in Mr. Bowditch’s safe from the same place. I’ll show you that when you’re ready to look. It’s what he was living on. I sold some myself to a jeweler in Stantonville. Mr. Heinrich. He’s dead now, so eventually I guess I’ll have to find someone else to do business with.”
That got him a little farther down the road to belief, but what finally convinced him was Radar. She knew her way around our house to all her favorite spots, but the real convincer was the stippling of small scars on her snout from an unfortunate encounter with a porcupine when she was young. （Some dogs never learn about those, but once was enough for Rades.） My dad had noticed them when we were keeping her after Mr. Bowditch broke his leg, and after he died—when she was on the verge of stepping out. The same scars remained on the younger version, probably because I’d hauled her off the sundial before she reached and passed the age when she got a noseful of quills. Dad looked at them for a long time, then looked at me with wide eyes.
“This is impossible.”
“I know it seems that way,” I said.
“There’s really a bucket of gold in Bowditch’s safe?”
“I’ll show you,” I repeated. “When you’re ready. I know it’s a lot to take in.”
He sat cross-legged on the floor, petting Radar and thinking. After awhile he said, “This world you claimed to have visited is magic? Like Xanth in those Piers Anthony books you used to read in junior high? Goblins and basilisks and centaurs and all that?”
“Not quite like that,” I said. I’d never seen a centaur in Empis, but if there were mermaids… and giants…
“Can I go there?”
“I think you have to,” I said. “At least once.” Because Empis really wasn’t much like Xanth. There was no Deep Maleen or Gogmagog in the Piers Anthony books.
We went a week later—the prince who was a prince no longer and Mr. George Reade of Reade Insurance. I spent that week at home eating good old American food and sleeping in a good old American bed and answering questions from good old American cops. Not to mention questions from Uncle Bob, Lindy Franklin, Andy Chen, various school administrators, and even Mrs. Richland, the neighborhood nosy-parker. By then my father had seen the bucket of gold. I also showed him the baby light, which he examined with great interest.
Do you want to know the story I whomped up with the help of my dad… who just happened to be a crack insurance investigator, remember, a guy who knew a lot of the pitfalls liars fall into and thus how to avoid them? Probably you do, but let’s just say that amnesia played a part, and add in how Mr. Bowditch’s dog died in Chicago before I ran into trouble I can’t remember （although I do seem to remember being conked on the head）。 The dog my dad and I have now is Radar II. I bet Mr. Bowditch, who came back to Sentry as his own son, would have liked that one. Bill Harriman, the reporter from The Weekly Sun, asked me for an interview （he must have had an in with one of the cops）。 I declined. Publicity was the last thing I needed.
Do you wonder what happened to Christopher Polley, the nasty little Rumpelstiltskin who meant to kill me and steal Mr. Bowditch’s treasure? I did, and a Google search turned up the answer.
If you think back to the beginning of my story, you may remember me being afraid that my father and I would end up homeless, sleeping under an overpass with all our possessions piled in a shopping cart. That didn’t happen to us, but it did to Polley （although I don’t know about the shopping cart）。 The police found his body beneath a Tri-State Tollway overpass in Skokie. He had been stabbed repeatedly. Although he carried no wallet or identification, his fingerprints were on file, part of a long arrest record going back to his teens. The news article quoted Skokie Police Captain Brian Baker as saying the victim had been unable to defend himself because he had two broken wrists.