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"Dost thou know the Muffin Man?"
"Yea!" cried three younglings: a double chocolate chip muffin, another a cornbread muffin, the last a bran muffin. They were soaked in mud and rainwater scudding through the lane. "We're his kids! The Ragamuffins! Stop barring the way and let us see him!"
"They're his," confirmed a voice, muffled from within the room. "Make ajar the door."
The scotch egg permitted the Ragamuffins passage, and the little grudge-holders paid it in kind by sticking their tongue out and pulling their eye down.
At the end of a small, musty corridor was the sleeping quarter of a sickly, sickly man. They expected to be met with a swelling scene of bedlam, what they were met with instead was a meditative, pacific calm. The muffin trio caught sight of a couple strangers kneeling by his bedside: a milk carton in a sailor hat and a lime fruit preened in a priestly raiment.
The holy man was laying down some benediction, neared its denouement, "… as Saint Citrina averred, he who knoweth not love knoweth not the Bulb, for the Bulb is love. MacGuffin is a faithful servant who knows the truth of thy love, O Bulb, and so let his soul be shouldered by cherry cherubins, to the pearly milk tea gates, atop clouds o' cotton candy. Your will be done."
The dairy man said, "Amen."
With phlegm in his voice, the Muffin Man said solemnly, "Limerence, Milkbeth. This is goodbye, then."
"... Goodbye," said the holy man.
"G-Goodbye," sniffled the dairy man.
The fading Mister MacGuffin said, "Till we meet again, in a better world if not this."
With atrabilious finality, the two excused themselves, glancing several times before finding the strength to depart the room.
The Ragamuffins were at last alone with him.
Well, was this him? Was this the selfsame man? Who changed their diaper, taught them foodspeak, and helped them learn how to cook? They used to follow him around like ducklings, but the infirm MacGuffin abed before them was a completely different person in his declining years. His butterscotch skin had paled, his breathing sounded grievous, and his mouth drooled mindlessly. He who once loomed so large in their minds now looked so frail, swaddled in layers upon layers of blankets.
The framed portraiture on the side table, slightly obscured by bushels of flowers, only hammered the point home. It was a yellowed daguerreotype a local artificer had taken for them some four or five years ago. His health hadn't deserted him then compared to the present, a mutinous skeleton of a body rank of putrefaction. He was once their caretaker, but now he could hardly take care of his own self.
"Your clothes are dirty," MacGuffin observed, his voice half a grate and half a gargle.
"What's happening, dad?" said little Chip.
"Sick, I am."
"From what?" asked their sister Maisy.
"The tyranny o' clock and calendar," said MacGuffin. "Time, sweetie. We are time's subjects, and time bids begone, citing this effect of gravy-like gravity."
"Do you need medicine?" Bran, the youngest, suggested naively. "Maybe we can go around Little Candia, get some—"
A wet, painful cough seared the Muffin Man's throat. "I'm afeared there ain't no medicine for mine ailment."
"Then what? Then what do we do?"
"Nothing." A detached, defeated expression on MacGuffin. "Not a thing. There's nothing we can do, for there's nothing to do, as sound and fury signifies. Wait with me, children o' mine. Spake to me. It'll make thy father helluva lot jubilated."
Maisy was baffled. "We're supposed to pretend everything is alright?"
"Because everything will be alright." The Muffin Man gazed by the bay window. The weather was raging something awful outside. Each thunder cracking startled the kids. "It's just a storm. It passes."
"It's not the storm I'm worried about," said Chip, tears bubbling. "It's you."
"My Ragamuffins," he said it so lovingly. "Dry your dolour. When I'm gone, other people will get their turn. You will get your turn, and it will be as beautiful as I had gotten mine. I've been around for seventy-two trips around the Bulb. I've lived through the reign of a milk-monarch and an egg-emperor. This was a fantastic deal, and I got a better deal than most. To imagine I am owed some greater reward, that I have no proof exists, is not something that occurs to me to want."
"What's going to happen to us?" asked Bran, snot dripping.
"You still got each other. Don't fret, I have those who will look after you when I have passed."
"The two who were in the room awhile ago?" Maisy was quick for her age. "We don't know who they are!"
He gripped her hand stubbornly. "What month is it?"
"Huh?"
"The month, dear. Ahem, what month of the year?"
"Harvestdusk," said Maisy.
"Fall is coming to an end anon, thus the climature will be dark and wintry soon. Don't imbibe overmuch the inclement weather. You can see this dust bowl of a house is already withering: diced tomato-ants climb the walnut wallpaper, carpentry cracks away piecemeal, noodle-worms crawl out of the woodwork, holes are gaping in the stairwell. Methinks I heard a lettuce-frog croaking in the attic the other e'en. No one will be around to preserve it no longer. The clergy house beside Saint Basil's Basilica will be a better home for you. There's good people, a hearth, and inanimate food over there. I asked them to make sure you finish your education. Stay close with each other. Support one another. Bundle up together … against … the … cold…"
Her lips fluttered. "Dad? Dad?"
"I'm here, sweetie, I'm here. Sorry, just flat-out tired, inadequate in the season of all natures, repose." Frowningly, he swallowed his throat. He was quiet for a good few long minutes, and his kids were quiet with him. It seemed to them like he was preparing for something. Then he laughed so suddenly, so abruptly that spit came flying out his mouth. "You guys remember Mama Marma and Rosa Rubiginosa? Down the lane? How often they fought?"
The Ragamuffins were utterly bewildered at the shift of tone, but their father had always been a goblet half full kind of guy.
"They still do," said Chip. "Fight, I mean."
"It was much worse back in th' day. They argued o'er the tiniest things. Didn't care if the whole neighborhood could hear them, those two ladies would duke it out the whole evening. There was more beef between them than Meatlanders."
"I don't like it when they involve us," said Bran. "Mama Marma hates it when we visit Rosa Rubiginosa, and Rosa Rubiginosa hates it when we visit Mama Marma."
Their father cackled. "Damned if thou dost. Damned if thou dost not."
Things almost felt normal again, but his cackle turned into a cough. His cough turned into breathing. His breathing turned into labor.
Maisy filled a bowl with a water pitcher and handed it. "Why are we talking about them?"
"Thank you." Her father gulped it down. "Nothing, really. I just remembered the flowers they sent me." He nodded at the bouquet on the side table. "You know, they weren't always on bad terms."
"No way," said Bran.
"Indeed. I remember when I used to go to school with them."
"You used to go to school?" For the bran muffin, imagining a young version of his father was inconceivable.
He sighed like a furnace. "That's right. Predating my Muffin Man personality, I was a Muffin Boy. A very bad, not-so-classy Muffin Boy at that. A whining muffin schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to the schooling place. Heh, bullied, I was, by kids bigger than me. Pretty soon I entered the habit of bullying kids smaller than me. Oh, the headmasters were even worse. Punishments both verbal and corporal. That place was terrible. Everyone punched downward all the time, and I was sucked into that mess. Took some time to change that old persona. It's honestly a miracle I didn't turn out angry like our Mama Marma or Rosa Rubiginosa by the end of it."
Chip asked, "How come you didn't?"
He smiled something sweet, and said something guttural. "Lucky, I guess. Luck acts more forcefully than any one person. That's what they don't tell you. The suffering doled out in a shelf life ain't always conducive to character growth. I'm just lucky mine was. My luck was that I learned an important enough lesson antedating my being due, in the dumbest o' circumstances no less.
"See, I had a friend, this biscuit-boy. The first of a kind I made. Found him in a lovely little co-inky-dink, skipping class as I myself was in the process of skipping class. The two of us were Bedlamites. He was fun to be around. He promised me we'd be the best of friends, that when we grew old we'd rule the world. ‘Through frying pandemonium and sheer terror,’ he said, ‘we’ll walk through it.’ Yeah, them’s were strong words for ones so young.
"Us students came from penury-stricken families. Oppressively poor. Worst of all, there was never enough inanimate food to go around during repast. The Bulb answered our prayers one afternoon, as my buddy and I were out and about, we encountered a fresh purple pie on the windowsill. It was this dense and giant cooked thing o' sweet potatoes. Holy hungry hell, the smell alone had us floating to its scent trail. No one else was around to claim it, so by our summation, no would be around to miss it.
"The biscuit-boy and I stole the purple pie without a second thought. Its foison meant it could fill thirty bellies three times over, so we decided to share it with the rest of class. Beautiful, it was. All of us supped like kings that day, but the catch was that the inanimate pie was supposed to be for the headmasters. We nommed more than we could chew. Not an unprecedented result. When they realized it was missing, they sounded alarum. The teachers fiddled up a storm to uncover the pie thief. We were the prime suspects, so they interrogated me and my biscuit buddy, isolating us in separate rooms. For over an hour, two adult teachers tried to get a confession out of me. A name I could assign blame to. Said nary a word, made hardly a sound. I got out, and—wouldn't you know it?—the biscuit-boy told on me anyway.
"Methought I was going to undergo a violent alignment change. Helping someone only to get naught in return made me so angry, but what made letting go of that anger easy over time was countenancing and not countering the nature of things. The reward wasn't the point. It never was. What need have I for reguerdon like that? The guilty pleasure wasn't the theft, but eating with the others. It was pure wonderment, seeing us all get together for once, Marma and Rosa chief among them. No fighting, no yelling, just a communal meal. The feeling only made more sense as I grew up, not less.
"Folks always ask why bother helping, and that assumes an origin point to the idea. A cause to an effect. Something that be primary. The beginning of a chain of events, but for me it is beginning-less. To aid others is primary. There is no cause. There is no origin point. The first truth I had figured out for myself was that I wanted lend to help.
"It's funny thinking back on that childhood incident. Losing my biscuit friend felt like the end of the world. Now look where I am. I have three worlds," he said paternally, eyeing his three children. He patted each one of them on the head, earning his filial regard as the patron saint of head pats. "Better deal than most."
The weather cleared. He seemed encumbered with somnolence, eyes vacant. "The bell inviteth me. Sans sight, sans touch, sans taste, sans aught. Our revels now are ended. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything..."
On his visage, the light of the Bulb bloomed in a brief burst of summer during fall.
Silence and stillness that signified everything.
His face had become a ghost town.
Exeunt the Muffin Man, who died in Drury Lane.
Writ on his epitaph: No muffin more genuine. No man more faithful. No hero more intrepid.