Part 1 - 4

Tomlin was unforgettable by anyone who met him. Dark haired and quick, as a baby he clung underfoot like soot around ankles. Because unlike the other children, his parents never minded what he did, for better or worse, and left all his wants to a carousel of nannies that never stayed put for too long. His hands grabbed all things, hems, rattles, hair; all for someone to see his cleverness but no one ever did, and it made him a poor playmate with other children. While not so uncommon for babies, he never outgrew the selfish parts of himself or got tempering of any kind. With a scowl and a wail, everything from a milk bottle to wooden blocks were set in his lap to hush him almost instantly.

Tomlin put it together two wrongs: that he deserved all the things he didn’t, and forgot about what he truly did.

As a young boy, he asked everyone for little favors, like answers to schoolwork or pennies for sweets. People obliged, either from his good looks or haughty manner of speaking that, coming from a child, was comical. No one thought he wouldn’t grow out of it. But he did keep growing, no different than as before. Apprenticeships, higher studies or voyaging all got hemmed and hawed, and once a teenager Tomlin had mastered the craft of doing practically nothing at all, but appeared the opposite.

“Where are you off to?” his father asked each morning and counted the gold in their safe without a single glance to Tomlin.

“To find pearls in the bay,” Tomlin said, never once wondering what his parents did all day, and set off with his pockets empty.

But unlike some who cast out nets and dove into the waters at Pearl Bay for wealth, all Tomlin did in the frigid water was stick in a single toe. Before it even dried, he was warming in the sun like rising bread, and waxing his charms on anyone who crossed his path. Sometimes he got a coin, which he spent on the way into town on a beer. Sometimes he got ignored, which he took as his presence being too dashing for the weak. And sometimes, he got just half a sandwich. The days getting anything at all waned, as did the unmarried women who once flirted on the shores alongside him before tiring out in the hot sun. By late afternoon one day, a sour-milk expression curdled his face.

“Any luck?” his mother asked on his return home and rouged her cheeks before another dinner party without a single glance to Tomlin.

“Not yet, but I’ll get what I want,” Tomlin said, and despite his empty pockets, he ended the night with more money, a hearty meal, and a hot bath without ever asking for them. It wasn’t a lie to him, thinking he’d end up just where he wanted to be, despite never working for it. He was raised to never worry about food or shelter, and for all appearances, the family prospered. They dined with the wealthiest in town and wore exotic fabrics from across the Lonely Sea. And the grounded people of Glenbaine all knew his future, and talked over shucking clams and drinking cider: he’d end up the next spoiled brat of so-and-so, big as a stuffed turkey, always sneering down from his three-storied mansion on the lesser-folk who, as circulated among too many exclusive parties, never tried hard enough to get further up than a barnacle clinging on to something greater than itself.

But had Tomlin been a little more curious, he’d have seen the dwindling stack of his father’s gold and empty cigar box, and his mother’s near empty rouge pot and dried perfume bottle. Maybe he’d have noticed his own allowances thinning every week, and socks that needed to be worn more than once. But he never minded anything, and carried on like nothing changed even when invitations to parties stopped, and the last servant was sent packing to who knows where the ungrateful urchin.

Once he’d grown into a man his only profession was begging, borrowing, and boasting. Even his parents, who spoiled him into a person unfit for anything, wound up swindled out of their last gold coin by the time they were swept away by the winter flu. Their home got seized right after their deaths, with everything in their possession going to debts. Every silver fork to sooty chimney brick was gone until nothing remained of the family but a bitter taste in the townsfolks mouths. Left an orphan far too old and far too horrid for anyone to take in, Lazy Tomlin set off out of town with his pockets stuffed with food and head with nonsense.

“Maybe I’ll find a rich maiden, even a widow if I must. Any wife will do, if pretty. I’ll be mostly faithful to her if her cooking is tasty. At least on Sundays, in the afternoon,” he said one day to himself and took the Old Trail in hopes to find a wife in Porttown up north, the last place where no one knew his name or what kind of a plague Tomlin was to anyone he got latched onto.

Even if a three-day journey across Hemlock Pass that made widowers and orphans alike, dozens flocked to tell the humble, quieter folk in Porttown the deeds this Tomlin did in his less than twenty-one years of living.

Fathers of broken-hearted daughters left with cologne-soaked handkerchiefs, some all in the same family. Kind people swindled for fake pearls at the bay, only to be put out of pocket by the jeweler who proved them fake. Children from every house in Porttown, all wishing they’d never emptied their piggy banks to the man promising to buy them delicious, never-ending candies from across the Lonely Sea. All mere dalliances in the day of Tomlin, who was indeed a charming, clever man you never wanted to see smile lest he woo you.

But no one ever worried, because Lazy Tomlin never arrived. Before anyone knew he’d gone missing, Tomlin got to a fork in the road. One way was longer but rarely met anyone with harm. The other way was for fools puffed up with more hot air than a chimney flue.

So naturally, Lazy Tomlin took the shortcut.