Pinocchio's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Geppetto stood in the workshop, and Pinocchio held the chisel between them. The smiling man had used it as bait. That much Pinocchio knew. But he had no idea where to find the man, and the thread stopped here, in this room, with no next knot to pull. "He left no name," Pinocchio said. "No street. Nothing. I can't follow a ghost." The cricket climbed onto a wood shaving. "Then stop chasing the man," he said. "Chase the tool." Pinocchio turned the chisel over. He looked at Geppetto. The old man would not meet his eyes. A pause, a flicker. Shame, the kind flesh carried. "You said you lost this years ago," Pinocchio said. "How?" Geppetto sank onto a stool. His hands shook on his knees. "I did not lose it," he said. "I lied. I sold it. I owed money, and a man paid well for an old chisel with my name on it." The word struck Pinocchio cold. Not lost. Sold. "Who?" he asked. He watched the old man's mouth, the way he had learned to watch. "I never knew his name," Geppetto said. "But he signed a receipt. A paper. He paid me in a debt note, not cash." He rubbed his face. "I filed the note with the town clerk. The blind one, the one who keeps every paper in his head." Pinocchio's chest tightened. A paper meant a signature. A signature meant a name. The trail was not dead. It had simply moved to a filing cabinet. "You hid this from me," Pinocchio said. "Why?" "Because I was ashamed," Geppetto said. His voice broke. "I sold the tool that made you. And then he came back, years later, and used it to drag me here. I did not want you to know I was the one who opened the door to him." Pinocchio set the chisel down on the broad worktable. He felt no warmth from it. He only felt the hard fact of it. The smiling man had bought his way into Geppetto's past. And he had left a paper trail doing it. "The clerk charges for secrets," the cricket said. "A dollar for each one he recalls." "Then I will pay him," Pinocchio said. He looked at Geppetto, and he did not soften. "You will come with me. You will tell him the note is real. He will believe the man who filed it." Geppetto stood. His shame bent his back, but he nodded. "I will come." Pinocchio wrapped the chisel in cloth and pushed it into his coat. The smiling man was no longer a ghost. He was a signature, sitting in a blind clerk's memory, waiting for a dollar to call it out. The trail was warm again. And Pinocchio, who could no longer feel warmth in wood, felt it now in the chase.