The bottle cap man

He didn’t read us stories. “Go ask your mother!” Dinner was nothing to speak of. Hot-dog soup. Yet, we didn’t mind a bit when my Mom worked at the Phoenixville hospital until after we had been told to, “Go to bed!” On those nights, we were privy to tales and adventures we were sure our friend’s fathers didn’t indulge them in. We sat on the dock, staring out at the stagnant, algae filled canal with our stick and string, bobber and hook fishing rods, baited with stale bread and listened to the anecdotes from his childhood, all the while building our own.
It got to the point that we began to question the buckets and buckets of coke, pepsi and beer bottle caps that were collecting on the front porch. Old galvanized rolling rock buckets full of caps lined our front porch. They’d been there for weeks, and months even, waiting for a purpose. It wasn’t unusual for Dan to have a gathering of materials that one might find strange. Pat, Carney and I didn’t mind. It helped us mask our own messiness and destruction of the house.
So, Carney asked. What are we going to do with these?
We are going to make a bottle-cap Man. I want to trick Buck!
Why? What’s a bottle-cap man? How long has he been conjuring this one up? When do we get started? These thoughts bubbled on the surface of my mind. Knowing my father, I knew that he was just like us on the inside, but he’d been captured by responsibility, trapped in the routine of work and providing for his family. Doing the best he could. Underneath the layers of adult life he was a kid like my brothers and I, full of devious innocence, not wanting to come home and get a shower after a long day of sweaty play.
Weeks went by, with more hot-dog soup and long summer nights playing man-hunt or camping in the back-yard. We’d nearly forgotten about the bottle cap man when he called us all into the backroom. Shemomma, our German Shepard, lay in the corner, sleeping in the sweltering heat. Something was amidst, I thought as Dan pulled out my Mom’s sewing kit. I knew full well that we weren’t going to be putting patches on our play clothes this night.
Sitting on the old, red velvet couch we’d often used to help us make forts in the living room, Dan began to explain to us the big plan. “I need your help. Tonight we are going to make the bottle cap man. It looks like tomorrow it might rain so we need to get working. And, don’t tell your Mother.”
Explanations weren’t really his thing. Neither was talking too much if the mood wasn’t right. Pat, Carney and I knew that Dan was up to no good, so naturally, our kid mischief switch went off and we dove right in with him.
A few hours went by. Hot dog soup was forgotten as we ordered take out hoagies and fries from the Fitzwater Station, across the street. We worked on, stuffing Dan’s old dungarees with bottle caps, and sewing them up at the ankles. An old flannel shirt was filled with bottle caps and fastened atop the worn and tattered bottoms. We gathered a few more items to complete our creation: Basketball head. Old fishing cap. Worn out boots. Work gloves for hands. Fishing rod.
It was dark now so we were ready to make our move. Down to the canal we crept, body parts in hand. Dan had filled us in on the details of his prank while we were in the back room, breaking to eat dinner around the pieces of our project. “We are going to set up the bottle cap man in the canal tonight. I’m going to row out to the middle of the canal and drop an anchor. Then I’ll place the bottle cap man in the middle of the boat and make it look like he’s fishing.” Big deal, I thought…where’s the catch here? “Buck will go berzeck tomorrow when it rains. He won’t be able to handle the sight of someone out in the canal fishing in the rain. He’ll sit on his front porch complaining, knock on our door and give us the whole story about the lunatic out there fishing in the rain. It’s going to be great!”
To my parents, Buck was an exasperating old man. He’d sit out front smoking cigars and shout out, over the railing dividing our porches, “Betsy, do you see the crowd at the Fitz tonight? John must be giving the beers away. Hey Danny, I’ve got a question for you. When are you going to mow your grass? It’s getting a little too high for my liking.” I didn’t mind him, he let us play on his porch and he always had a candy bowl on this coffee table full of candy, the hard kind that took a while to eat. With a neighbor who had an opinion about all things thinkable in life, I guess it made sense that my dad would play prank on him. Give the old guy something new to stew over on his front porch.
After the bottle cap man had been secured Dan met us, dripping, back on the dock. “Looks pretty good doesn’t he, Sar?” he whispered into my ear, making my skin tingle with goose bumps as the cold water dripped on my shoulder. “Yea,” I whispered back, drunk in the moonlight and mischief of the evening.
The next morning, I rustled out of bed and ran to the window. The bottle cap man was perched in his boat, quietly fishing for a golden carp. I giggled with excitement about the possibility of seeing Buck fret over the man fishing in the rain.
Rain it did. Torrents and sheets. Lightning and thunder and Buckley Chambers screaming on his front porch at the man in the water. “Crazy old fool. What’s he doing out there in this weather. Is that Sammy Smith? Has he been hitting the sauce early in the day again? Hey…Sammy…get out of the boat, there’s a lightning storm.”
We three sat and chuckled along with Dan as the bottle cap man went on fishing. My Mother came out on the front porch, a break from her busyness inside catching up after a long night’s work. “What’s going on? Oh my, is someone fishing out there? Hey, get out of the boat!” our chuckles grew louder in our bellies but our lips stayed silent. The joy of this secret was that it was ours. If we revealed this mayhem to my Mother, what else might she want to know about our nights with Dan?
It turned out that after the rainstorm, the bottle cap man ended up sinking. Somehow. He became a mystery that we chattered about all through childhood. Each time the water in the canal was low and we searched for treasures, the bottle cap man was on our periphery. I think that even my father kept an eye out for him.
While we all spent many more nights with Dan while my Mother worked, the hot dog soup waned as Pat got older and started to get to know his way around the kitchen. Our adventures began to cease as the demands of more homework and sports practices creaked their way into our rowdy world. But, the magic of a little goodhearted humor still stays with my brothers and I, our leader in the jest, my father, Dan the creative genius behind the bottle cap man.