Written by RF Wilson – Sheila Magnuson, a barista at Mean Beans Cafe, was on a break when she noticed that Sam was missing. Sam was a neighborhood icon, always seen seated on a chair outside the front door of the Downtown Gentlemen’s Store. He looked like a life-sized Cabbage Patch doll, overstuffed in old chino pants, a white shirt, well-aged tweed sport coat and tennis shoes. He sported a bushy mustache and a pipe. His legs were always crossed, the daily paper stretched between his open arms. Locals routinely said, “Hi, Sam,” in passing, leading more than a few tourists to call out greetings as well, only to feel foolish when they realized they’d been taken in by a large dummy.

The shop was across the street from a row of stores which included a bookstore with tables out front from which patrons observed the area’s activities. Once Sam’s absence had been noted, word spread quickly on the street. No one knew how it could have happened with all those street-side people-watchers. A spot on the TV news that night, a brief note in the next day’s paper and a long piece in the local weekly highlighted the significance of Sam to that corner of the community.

Three days later, the first “Sam-sighting” was reported. The proprietress of a jewelry store down the street, called Mike Nicholson, the owner of the men’s store, to say she had seen Sam sitting on a wall at the city square on her way in to work. “Sam was down on the square Mike. Really.”

Within a half-hour, Mike had received four similar calls. There were those who thought these observances were the result of the publicity; people seeing someone who looked like Sam assuming it was him. Others wondered how on earth someone would mistake a bunch of padded clothes for a person. Customers and other downtown regulars encouraged Mike to replace the dummy. He declined, saying that the publicity had brought a flurry of sightseers to the store, but few buyers. Within a month of Sam’s disappearance, the Case of the Missing Mannequin had been largely forgotten.

It was late November, the week before Thanksgiving, when word got around that there had been another sighting, this time on a bench at the city bus terminal. Given that bus riders as a whole might be less tuned into the fate of a men’s store dummy than the cafe and bookstore crowd, the story was given some credence. But when the TV and radio people arrived the next day asking for anyone who had seen someone fitting Sam’s description, no one came forward.

At 9:02 the following day, two days after the bus station observation, and just after Mike Nicholson had walked into his store and had not yet opened for business, the first call came that Sam had been seen riding a bus.

“Riding it?” he asked, incredulously. He thought this was more “dummy fever,” but within the half-hour, five more people called to report the same thing. It was on a route from the north-side, headed downtown. All the sightings had been within a few minutes of one another. All of the callers had seen Sam at a window at the rear of the bus, although none of them had been riding it. No one who had been a passenger acknowledged seeing it. Feeling more than a little foolish, Mike called the transit company to ask if anyone had reported noticing his dummy. He was able to laugh, along with the several people to whom his call was shuttled, about the absurdity of the situation, a life-sized doll supposedly taking public transportation.

From the times and locations of the alleged sightings, the driver of that particular bus was identified. Tim Harmon, however, denied knowing what they were talking about. “On my bus? A dummy? How would it get on the bus anyway? Somebody’d have to carry it on. Don’t you think I’d notice that? Somebody carryin’ on a life-size dummy?” Nor did he remember seeing a human being who fit the description of Sam, and did they really think he would not be able to distinguish a bunch of stuffed clothes from a real person?

Mike Nicholson was inclined to chalk it all up to an extended practical joke. The Weekly, the local entertainment and arts tabloid, actually ran a follow-up story, “Dummy Dumbfounds Downtown,” tracing Sam’s reported escapades. They cited a psychologist who attributed the fuss to mass hysteria, the same phenomenon associated with witch burnings centuries ago. The story once again faded from the public interest.

Six months had passed when a man described as very short, pudgy, wearing a white shirt with a frayed collar, chino pants, and an old tweed jacket, handed a note to a teller at a bank on Hendersonville Road. “I have a gun,” it read. “Give me all your money. And no funny business. I ain’t no dummy.” The man was said to have had dark hair, a scraggly mustache, and held a pipe. He had on sneakers.

Within an hour of releasing a description of the perpetrator, the police received half a dozen calls pointing out that this description matched that of the missing mannequin. That night on the local TV news, the reporter and anchorperson could hardly contain themselves.

“So, the prime suspect in the robbery is the life-sized dummy that used to be outside the Downtown Gentlemen’s Store, is that right, Wanda?”
“Well Chuck, that’s what it seems like. I understand that police have shown the tape from the security camera to the store’s owner, and he has confirmed that the robber is the spitting image of his beloved Sam.”
“So, you might say, the police are dumbfounded,” Chuck replied, plagiarizing their print rival, The Weekly, amused at his own cleverness.

The next Monday was unseasonably cool and windy. People hustled to office buildings with their collars up, heads down. Later, Sheila, the clerk at the cafe next to Mike’s store, would wonder how she’d missed it. She’d gotten to work as usual, made coffee, put the chairs on the floor, helped the baker fill the shelves. The bagel delivery guy made no mention of it, either. It was Charlie Dixon, her regular first customer, who pointed it out.
“Sam’s back,” he said, nodding toward the chair in front of her neighbor’s business.
Sheila looked out, stared bug-eyed, then looked back at Charlie.

Sam was sporting a well-tailored herringbone jacket, charcoal gray slacks with razor-sharp creases, a blue button-down Oxford cloth shirt and dark blue and red rep-stripe tie. He had on tasseled loafers which had been shined to a high gloss. His mustache was neatly trimmed. The pipe was gone. Through stylish, rectangular-rimmed glasses he was, apparently, reading the Wall Street Journal.

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RF Wilson writes in Asheville, NC, where he lives with his wife, Beth Gage. He is the author of the novel, “Killer Weed,” recently published by Pisgah Press and the short story, “Accident Prone,” in the anthology “Carolina Crimes” published by Wildside Press.