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    Mafungo lived alone in a house that stood atop a hill nestled on the edge of town. The townspeople often talked about Mafungo, but only in whispers, using words like “crazy” and “aberrant” and “unholy” and also, “devout.” 

    Mafungo lived with a hairless cat named Geronimo and a bird of paradise named You. He took the cat on long walks through the forest which lay across from the only bridge that led to or from town. Snickers, sly eyes, chortles and guffaws seemed to follow him like drafts of wind everywhere it was he and Geronimo went. Mafungo, however, cared little for the hearts of those who wore their ulterior motives like chainmail beneath their social armor. He sought the companionship of the thespians and ragers, of those who took their moonshots, of the sort of folk who invented fairy tales and built bunkers, for imagined wars, out of sticks and mud. 

    And so it was, Mafungo, silently, took on an obscure project. At the local hardware store, on four consecutive Saturdays, he could be found pacing the aisles in search of engineered woods and other hard materials. At the ore, whose entrance sat among the northwest corner of the belly of a limestone quarry, he opened a book, procuring a vast number of copper sheets in addition to many nails and tacks and screws. 

    Upon seeing the spike in strange activity, which only served to compound the strange activity preceding it, many a neighbor questioned Mafungo about his motives. Mafungo, however, remained tight-lipped and consistent in response. “Do you know what an organ is?” To which: “Yes. We go to church, of course.” 

    The lights in Mafungo’s home began slowly to linger, later and later, amongst the swill of the deep, drunk night. The image of Mafungo in silhouette form, plastered against the wall, hammer raised overhead, became the stuff of local legend. During the day, the hammering struck a ceaseless and methodical cadence, raps of a gigantic, mechanical woodpecker. Though Mafungo received no less than a hundred notes from agitated neighbors, he ignored them all. 

    This pattern continued for five weeks until it was at last replaced, to the increasing angst of some, with the rip-roaring, rat-tat-tat of a buzzsaw. Now, children clung to the bay windows of that house which stood atop the hill at the edge of town, hoping (unsuccessfully) to catch a glimpse of whatever contraption it was that that crazy, aberrant, unholy, and devout man named Mafungo was building. 

    The rumor mill churned. First, little Timmy reported that the contraption was a bomb. He claimed he saw some sort of smelt being poured into some sort of spherical chamber. This rumor was rather quickly replaced by Patricia’s more “plausible” yarn. She claimed she saw Mafungo cinching together the untreated wood of a secret staircase leading below earth, inferring that Mafungo must be building an underground laboratory. Next: it was a giant Trojan horse. Followed by: a portal to another dimension. Then: a scaled replica of The Dolomites, a sex dungeon, a labyrinth that ushered one from one area of the living room to the pantry of the kitchen.     

    Mafungo was a notorious introvert. Rarely, if ever, did he speak unless spoken to (he was however polite and trained in the art of small talk, despite appearances). But for whatever reason, Mafungo took interest in a particular child. This child, one might say, was a runt. Standing half the size of her peers, Rutevega oft was the last chosen when the students lined up to compete in outdoor games. She was not especially well-positioned or regarded. Her mother kept Rutevega’s hair short and did not encourage the girl to bathe or maintain any sort of regimen in the way of hygiene–which caused many an elder to misconstrue her for a toddler tomboy.

    One day, Mafungo forewent his labor to see about dear Rutevega. He found the young gal skipping along the sidewalk across from the schoolhouse, and ducked into a bush.     

Rutevega, who had been singing to herself, heard a “pssst!” elicited from the bushes before the fence that surrounded the rubber plant. She squinted her eyes, seeking out the source of the sound, before a hand forced itself through the roughage and beckoned her. Rutevega knew instantly who it was by the pale color of the exposed forearm fixed to the hand waving at her. Mafungo, the odd-brained hermit who lived on the hill. Mafungo, the bane of the town. Mafungo, the sleepy-eyed vamp who knew and cared for things nobody else knew or cared for.

    Rutevega slowed her feet. Proceeding carefully, she passed over from the concrete to the grassplot. At the bush’s hem, she halted. A voice shot forth.

    “Rutevega… is that you?”
   “Hello, Mafungo.”

    “Ah, fantastic. Just the sprite I was lookin’ for.”

    “Why are you in the bushes, Mafungo?”

    “Because of the people.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I don’t like to be stared at.”

    “Who does?”

    “Precisely. So–instead of being stared at, I cling to shadows. And hug draperies. I hail to such curiosities as yourself from the depths of certain foliage.”

    At this, Mafungo smiled. Rutevega, who perhaps ought to have been frightened, wasn’t in the slightest. An unexplainable warmth emanating from Mafungo superseded that logical beast idling inside her head, the thing that begged her to send an alert to the garbage men hauling rubbish across the avenue. Rutevega, bold Rutevega, rode her gut and instead returned a smile. The fabric of her brow drew wrinkles whereto it fell like a fleshly curtsy filled with wonder.

    “Mafungo, the town is talking.”

    “Towns do not talk, people do.”

    “You know what I mean.”

    “Yes, I do. You want to know what I’m building, don’t you?”

    “More than anything!”

    “And I suppose you will use this information against me in order to gain favor with your peers, who are unkind to you.”

    Rutevega’s eyes swept over the laces of her shoes, blushing.

    “Well… the thought did cross my mind…”

    “I understand you well, girl. We are quite the same, us outcasts. Some of us sport old growths. Others lack limbs. Many of us are the sole proprietors of eyes that do not cross.”

    Rutevega smiled again. Mafungo was making sense.

    “Come to my house and see my organ later this evening, won’t you?”

    “Is that all what you’ve been fixing up?” 

    “Please–promise me you will. It’s grander even than your Father’s.”

    “I promise.”

    Mafungo reeled his pale arm back through the throat of the bush and a moment later, vanished.

    Rutevega could hardly contain her excitement–she felt as though her body had been injected with the sugar of a thousand candy bars. As she raced home on the double, Rutevega began to plot. Later that night, she determined she would sneak through the back door of her apartment between supper and shower time, when her parents were occupied with Charlie, her little baby brother. Then, she would wind through the perimeter of the graveyard, rather than the streets where the lamps shined amply, in order to avoid detection. A quick hundred yard sprint across the green of the eighteenth hole at Village Oaks, a fording of the dingy, moss-hewn creek below the mill, and she would land in the vacant lot beside Mafungo’s house, that infamous Victorian overlooking the rest of town from its vantage upon the hill.  

    Rutevega mapped out her route on a sheet of paper when she got home. When her mother hailed her for dinner, the mercurial runt blasted down the corridor and flung herself into her assigned chair at the table. 

Her father followed shortly after, a piece of paper waving like a small flag in his hand.

    “Rutevega…” Martin spoke. “What is this?” He pointed to the drawing of the map that outlined Rutevega’s path from the apartment, through the graveyard, across the golf course, over the creek, and up to the front door of Mafungo’s house on the hill.

    “It’s… it’s nothing. It’s for a school project.”

    “Rutevega…” her father’s eyes narrowed into snake-like slits, scrutinizing her like only a parent can scrutinize its sow.

    “I swear!”

    “Do not LIE to me.” Rutevega’s father banged his knuckles into the facade of a kitchen cabinet. 

    “Alright, alright. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.” Rutevega hated lying, and her father had outed her. She would have to reveal Mafungo’s secret, after all.

    “You know how the town’s been talking… about Mafungo and his… hammering?”

    “Yes, of course.”

    “Well, he called to me from the bushes outside of the rubber plant today. Said he had tracked me down.”

    Rutevega’s mother stopped stirring the chili that was boiling in a pot atop the stove. Her father meanwhile grew red around the cheek.

    “Go on.”

    “Well, he told me… runts like us, he and I, we ought to stick together. That we are different… in a way.”

    “Is that all?”
   “And then he asked me if I’d come by and see his organ tonight.”

    Rutevega’s father let loose an anguished roar.

    “Honey! Mind the children. I’m gathering a few of us to go and pay old Mafungo a visit. That sick twat!”

Not an hour later, Martin and the fathers of the town were gathered outside of Mafungo’s home. Torches had been lit. Sickles had been sharpened. And saliva lay splattered across the pavement, frothy and bubbling.

Rutevega’s father rang the doorbell.

    “Who is it?” A voice called out from behind the front door.

    “Open up.”

    “Why should I do such a thing?”
   “Because if you don’t let me in, I’ll rush your door and beat you senseless.”

    “My, my! Such… vulgarity.”

    “Like you’re one to talk, molester!”

    “Molester?” Mafungo opened the door and was face to face, eye to eye, with a huffing, puffing Martin.

    “The jig is up, queerbag. Rutevega told me everything.”

    Mafungo’s eyes danced around in his head, then snapped back into focus.

    “Ah, she told you I was going to show her my organ.”

    “Why you–” Martin had to be restrained. 

    “I was going to show you all my organ eventually.”

    A chorus of “eews” and “yuchs” erupted from the mob, which was sprawled out before the stairs of the front porch.

    “Mafungo.” Cried someone from the back. “What is this nasty business about? Why you talkin’ so dang nasty all’uh’sudden?”

    “Yeah!” Affirmed another. “You were always queer… but least back then’s you was decent!”

    Mafungo scratched his chin. 

    “I think there may be a misunderstanding. My motives are pure.”

    “Sure they are!”

    “So says the sicko!”

    “Let’s boil ‘im up and send ‘em packin’!”

    Mafungo suddenly understood the severity, the significance, of the moment, even if he didn’t understand the exact nature of the upset.

    “Follow me.” Mafungo waved, motioning for the mob to enter his home. He thought it best to show them the result of his toiling. If the misunderstanding persisted thereon, then it was as it was meant to be.

    Mafungo led the way through the mud room, into the dining room, and at last into the windowless great room where for weeks he had hammered and thwacked and sawed and shanked. 

    A great organ, stretching some thirty foot in height, with tubes welded out of copper, stood before them. It was bent into the shape of an anatomical heart.

    The townspeople were stunned silent.

    “I was going to donate it to the church later this week. Father Christ’s looked pretty used up.”