Gordon Rammlebaun's Puzzleporium

A love for puzzles is all Gordon has, but a challenge to his family's legacy leaves him ready to defend his place in the small town he calls home.

“Whatcha working on these days?” the fire chief asked Gordon from the counter of the coffee shop. They caught each other’s eyes as he craned for the waitress’s attention. Barb shuffled dutifully among the clients, her tight pixie cut and red earrings never seeming to change as her thick forearms juggled pots of regular and decaf.

“You know I can’t reveal my secrets, Doug,” Gordon said. He sat in his regular seat, overlooking the square where his store was in direct view across the way. He pulled his tweed blazer sleeves down, smoothing out his wisps of gray hair with his slender fingers. Their dexterity allowed him to design and cut puzzles with the surgeon-like skill of a cardiologist. The two little ash-colored caterpillars that seemed to wiggle over his eyes gave him the wizardly look a master puzzler required. Only the gold earring on his left earlobe seemed out of place, but Gordon Rammlebaun had been places before landing in this town. None of that mattered now. He was happy.

“Aw come on now. You think if I know what your next series of puzzles’ll look like, I won’t get one for me and the Missus?” the fire chief said.

“Do you think I’m in the business of risking it all to find out?” Gordon replied. A smirk revealed the gleaming white of an incisor.

“Fair as can be, fair as can be,” Doug said. His round cheeks blushed as he looked back down at his coffee, which Barb had filled without his knowing. She floated over to Gordon and placed an arm on his shoulder, smiled, and filled his cup.

When Gordon Rammlebaun came to town, no one expected him to put their little hamlet on the map—but he did. After opening his shop, the Puzzleporium, nearly fifteen years ago, puzzle enthusiasts from across the country flocked to the town to get one of Gordon’s uniquely made puzzles, the kind of thing that existed nowhere else in the U.S. 

Even the travel guide books talked about him.

He had achieved a dream. Finally.

Every morning he’d go to the coffee shop before opening up at 9:30. Every morning he’d talk to Barb, the waitress, and mingle with the fire chief, the barber, the dairy owner who all started their day with the thickest, blackest coffee in town.

And every month, sure as the morning fog, and sure as its disappearance by the time Gordon closed at noon for a sandwich back at the coffee shop, Gordon Rammlebaun would deliver a new set of puzzles, each one different, but inspired by some theme. Florals one month. Cemeteries another month. World landmarks another month still. Customers both new and faithful would gobble them up to complete them at home, sharing them afterward, or framing them, but always counting on Gordon’s expertise.

He was a professional.

He knew that.

He was proud of that.

It was the excitement that he brought to his customers, however, that he truly loved. It was a power that few could know, that required no teaching, yet demanded the focus of the most learned scholar.

He looked at his watch and knew he had to get going soon. He swallowed the last of the coffee, black, and recalled his grandfather, who always smelled of the stuff. He inspired this all. The man survived the Civil War battlefields and retired in peace making puzzles for the family to do at Christmas. It was his way of coping with the horror he had seen. Body parts strewn across the fields. Horses blown into two. Gordon could only imagine. His dad continued the tradition, creating them out of old wartime posters and scraps he could collect after the First World War, also as a coping mechanism. Bodies with tank treadmarks imprinted on their torsos. Horses also blown into two. 

Gordon was the first, though, to put the Rammlebaun name on a box and solidify the legacy, and to commercialize it. He never made it to the front lines of the Second World War, he recalled with bitterness as they discharged him for those ridiculous reasons. It branded him. He never had a family. Puzzles were a way for him to cope, too, about his own, personal battlefronts.

But it worked. There was no greater pleasure than giving someone a box of apparent nothingness and hearing how proud they were to turn it into something through communal force. This was Gordon’s calling. Childless though he may be, nieces and nephews and distant cousins all clamored to continue his legacy, though he still had a lot to give. He walked across the square to the Puzzleporium, his temple that guided an empire, unlocked the door, and began his day as he had done for years.

But the rumbles of invading marauders were not far off.

One morning, over coffee, Barb was talking to Doug. The stout fire chief with his cherubic cheeks stirred his cup with a gentle clinking. Gordon Rammlebaun overheard, or eavesdropped, as the case was. Their words weren’t meant for him, but they made no show of hiding them. Like they wanted him to hear. 

Like they were alerting him.

“Ya hear about that new place? Board No More? That new lady, in from up north, she’s sellin’ all sorts of board games and whatnot. Seems like a real fun kinda place,” Barb said with no joy in her voice. He turned to see her top up his coffee, then place the pot down, and wiped her glasses on her apron. She wasn’t smiling.

“Geeze, as if people around here ain’t got enough to keep them busy with Gordon’s puzzles,” Doug said. He motioned to Gordon’s table and caught the puzzle master’s eyes blazing into his. Perhaps the fire chief wasn’t prepared to talk to Gordon, but his stare made it impossible to avoid it. “Uh, um, you know anything about this new shop?”

Gordon’s hand trembled imperceptibly, as scalding coffee dribbled down the side of it.

Barb’s eyebrows rose inquisitively.

“No. This is all news to me,” Gordon said.

He heard the gates of his empire rattle, as they had once before, years before he came to this town. But Gordon Rammlebaun didn’t let it worry him.

Later that day, from across the square where the Puzzleporium had earned a more than prominent position for a decade and a half, Gordon watched as children and adults alike poured into the new storefront, a red banner announcing “grand opening” hanging askew. People were leaving holding boxes, not unlike his puzzle boxes, with board games that he had never heard of, nor ever cared to know. Board games were an opiate the masses didn’t need. Puzzles required concentration, skill, and adeptness. Board games required rolling dice and pulling cards, hoping for the best. Any idiot could play them. There was no skill in luck. No respect in chance. But to complete a puzzle required higher order thinking, bringing people together in the process, not dividing them. Board games blew the horses apart. Puzzles stitched them together joyously.

A patron came in, the box of a board game poking out of her canvas bag. She browsed the shop haphazardly before approaching the counter where he leaned attentively on the elbows of his tweed jacket.

“Hi Mr. Rammlebaun! Got any new puzzles with animals this week?” the young girl, probably twenty years old, asked. Her blue eyes were wide with hope. She seemed like a recruit who only just retrieved her uniform before being shipped off to war.

“Not this week. I’ve been working with pottery collections, ancient Chinese stuff and European porcelain. Lots of tough design work to really challenge fans,” he said. He feigned wiping sweat off his brow and smiled to expose his gleaming smile, whitewashed as if one of Tom Sawyer’s fences.

“Oh great, well, um, I’ll be back soon if you have an animal puzzle. I bought this new game for my brother, and it’s all about catching farm animals. I thought it would be fun to give it to him for his birthday with a puzzle, too, but I guess the game is enough. And that woman at the board game shop, she is just so, so dang nice,” she said.

Gordon’s lips quickly peeled down over his teeth as he seethed inside. His heart fluttered. His neck burned.

“I suppose so,” he said.

As she left, he made the sign of the cross, hoping that her soul would be saved. And that his patience would not be tested further.

The next week, after the townspeople had fed like hyenas on a carcass at the new store, Gordon found himself in the coffee shop, as usual, when a young teenage boy in suspenders approached him. The boy fidgeted awkwardly, as teenage boys usually did. He had chocolate milk on the corner of his mouth.

“Um, Mr. Rammlebaun, I, uh, I wanted to, uh, well,” he began.

“Yes, boy, go on then, spit it out, what’s the matter?” Gordon said. He tried to sound kind.

“Well your puzzle that I bought a few days ago, I swear, it, well…”

“What about my puzzle?” Gordon asked.

“Well…”

“Yes?”

“It seems that after we finished it, my Pop and I, well, it was missing a piece,” he said.

The other diners in the coffee shop seemed to gasp collectively. Never had a puzzle from Gordon Rammlebaun’s Puzzleporium been anything but complete. Watergate just five years ago was one thing. But this, this was a scandal of a higher order.

A woman, about forty or so, with auburn brown hair coiffed high, stood up and turned at her booth.

“You know, that’s funny you should mention. My daughter said the same thing about a puzzle I bought for her earlier this week,” she said.

Barb poured Gordon a cup of fresh coffee, as it might distract him from the Visigoths bearing down on him at that moment. She lifted the pot before the cup was full.

“I heard the same thing about the Hendersons party last night. Apparently the puzzle they worked on with their friends was missing a corner. Peculiar, ain’t it?” Barb said, suddenly fanning the flames. Gordon felt the knife sliding into his back.

“Well it truly is,” Gordon said. His knuckles grew white as he sat alone.

But he knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

That afternoon, the news had spread, and no one came to the Puzzleporium. The following week, there was a line outside of Board No More, while the Puzzleporium remained nearly empty. People walked by on their way to the post office or to the drugstore, but no one stopped. No one visited the town’s main attraction.

Gordon didn’t know what to do. A front page article in the local newspaper reported on it, calling it the end of an era. “The Jigsaw is Up,” one headline read. More puns followed but Gordon didn’t need to piece together all the clues. He knew what was happening. He knew subterfuge when it was at work. He had teetered on the brink of war before and he recognized the signs.

It was happening.

Suddenly he was on a battlefront at last.

Dozens of customers reported missing pieces from their puzzles. The Puzzleporium brand lost its caché. It lost its fans. Its admirers. Its revenue. Gordon Rammlebaun was losing ground, and fast.

One October morning, after Barb served him a fresh cup of coffee with a quivering hand in an awkwardly silent coffee shop, Gordon crunched through the leaves on his way to the shop to see a printed notice taped to the door. He had missed too many rent payments. Not selling a puzzle in nearly a month had such an effect. The news had already spread around town. The bank was taking action. Foreclosure seemed inevitable. Everyone was gabbing about it. 

Gordon’s heart sunk slowly, joining the Lusitania and the Bismarck, at the bottom of the Atlantic.

With it went the joy he felt.

The pride he had.

The legacy he built.

The great puzzle empire was in decline, sacked by scandal. His reputation torpedoed right into his hull, but not by fickle tastes or bored customers. No, Gordon among all others knew that the real usurper was the proprietor of Board No More: Ms. Nattlesby.

He was sure of it.

Undeniably certain.

A few days later, Gordon arrived to open his shop, but the lock had been changed. He couldn’t enter, and the puzzles inside looked forlorn, helpless without him there to sell them.

“It’ll be OK, dear,” Barb said as she poured him another cup of coffee in the shop. “No one’s going to keep you closed for long. You’re an institution around here.”

“No one wants puzzles anymore. Not when board games are all the rage,” he said. He smoothed out his thinning gray hair, feeling the weight of time pressing on him heavier now that he had no puzzle empire to cushion him.

“You’ll figure it out, Gordon. It’s just another puzzle to solve, isn’t it?” she said.

“Sure is, Barb. Sure is.”

He walked along the canals all afternoon, wondering what to do, and ended up back at the square just as Board No More began to close up, with Ms. Nattlesby pulling down the shades of the shop. Puzzles had been a means to bring people together, to soothe what burned. Gordon didn’t want to lose sight of that. He knew what he had to do.

He opened the door and cleared his throat immediately upon entering. His bushy grey eyebrows remained flat, belying all emotion.

“So sorry, but we’re closing,” she said, without looking. That voice, older, raspier, but familiar to Gordon.

“A moment of your time, miss?” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh, Mr. Rammlebaun, of course. How are you?” she said.

“Doing well, Ms. Nattlesby. Business is well?” he asked. He tapped a box with some inane cartoon mouse drawn on it. He considered knocking it onto the floor.

“As well as can be expected. And you?” She dropped her arms to her hips and assumed a power pose.

“You know the answer to that.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. But Gordon knew she did. The two stared each other down, like they had years ago. This time, however, he didn’t want to leave. He wouldn’t be bullied out of his town by her. Not again. Not this time.

“You’ve been pilfering pieces from boxes, all over town, souring the people to the Puzzleporium. You’re driving them against me. I dare you to deny it,” he said.

She stepped toward him, placing a hand on the counter. She smiled with her mouth, but her eyes remained narrowed. “I do wish I knew what in the world you are talking about, Mr. Rammlebaun. The people have fickle tastes, and they seem simply to have lost a taste for puzzles and have grown keen to my board games,” she said. He waited for her to add again to the sentence.

“Lies. All of it,” he growled.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night,” she said. She adjusted her thick-rimmed glasses.

Gordon reached to the door behind him and turned the locking mechanism with a dull click.

“Ms. Nattlesby, I believe we have to have a talk,” he said to her.

“Oh is that so?” Her eyes narrowed even more sharply, as if prepared for anything that the master puzzler could bring.

The next day, at the coffee shop, the town was buzzing anew. Barb couldn’t keep up with the coffee pot as clients came in and dashed between each other’s tables. Orders of cherry danish and Denver omelets flew out of the kitchen as she struggled to squeeze between chatty patrons. People all over town had woken up to find pieces of paper, cut into shapes of puzzle pieces, slipped under their doors or placed on their card windshields. Each was different, but what they depicted together was anyone’s guess. Calls poured into the police station and officers ushered those who brandished the puzzle pieces toward the square, and through word of mouth, nearly everyone who had a puzzle piece had arrived at the square, leaning against trees and piling onto the wooden benches. They numbered at least two hundred. 

Children skipped school, the postman missed his route, and the bakers let their dough prove longer than needed all in an attempt to solve this giant puzzle. Communal joy washed over the town.

It was a town-wide challenge, and they all knew who was to blame—or to thank. Gordon could see it all from the coffee shop. He chuckled to himself silently as the show played out, the best type of theater he could have ever imagined. Every child, teen, and adult was beaming with anticipation to discover what this town-wide puzzle would represent, and what it all would mean.

Like most of his puzzles, there was no picture to work from, no indication of the final outcome, making every Puzzleporium creation a true, oftentimes gratifying surprise. The excitement cut through the mystery of it all as the individuals moved in organized chaos, a flock of swallows floating in unison through the square. Slowly, the image began to take shape as the townspeople brought their pieces together and found logical fits. They placed them on the ground, creating a border, filling it in, matching colors and patterns and lines and shapes.

The fire chief climbed to the top of the church belfry to make sense of it all, and screamed down, “It’s a map!”

The final pieces fell into place. The map was complete, save one piece that likely belonged to Old Mrs. Maistre, who usually slept until 2PM thanks to her penchant for late night reading.

“I called her, and she indeed has a piece, but it shouldn’t make a difference,” Barb said to the police chief. He nodded and sent the drug store owner up to the belfry to give the fire chief a small camera. He snapped a Polaroid and brought it down to the police captain to take it from there. The crowd formed behind him as the town looked in awe.

“Where’s it lead?” the veterinarian asked.

“That’s, well that’s the town, sure as can be,” the barber said.

“S’gotta be some sort of treasure hunt,” the grocer conjectured.

“Maybe it’s heading to another puzzle,” a school teacher mused.

No one was in agreement except on the necessity of following the map to wherever it led. The excitement doubled like the very loaves of bread the bakers had all neglected hours ago.

The puzzle master sipped his coffee, watching as they began to move off into the direction of the map, nearly the size of a basketball court. He stood and poured himself another cup from the pot, since Barb and the other servers left to follow the crowd, past the old mill, through the arches to the farmer’s square, toward the Henderson’s dairy. He would know it all went to plan—and he was sure it would—when their collective gasp would echo across the town square. He scooped a sugar cube into his coffee and stirred it.

This is why Gordon Rammlebaun created puzzles. This is what he lived for, to bring people the thrill and excitement that no banal game could ever bring. Board games were not the future of recreation and leisure. They were a passing fad, a novelty that needed to be put in its place.

And Gordon Rammlebaun knew how to do just that.

No one would ever challenge his puzzles again.

Even if it was his last puzzle ever, it wouldn’t be soon forgotten. That morning, he unified the community to a cause, bringing them together for the greater good, whether they realized it or not. 

And Ms. Nattlesby should have never crossed him by stealing his puzzle pieces. Not this time. Not the last time. But every puzzle has a solution. 

Eventually. 

The townsfolk would have a heck of a time putting her back together once they found her in the trough of the Henderson’s dairy where he left her last night, carved into as many pieces as he could manage before even the most advanced puzzler would find difficulty assembling her again. But they’d figure out sooner than later that it was her. 

Those long surgeon-like fingers, though, managed to work wonders to separate her most difficult joints over in his workshop at the Puzzleporium.

They don’t call professional puzzlers “dissectologists” for nothing.

He sipped his coffee again, enjoying moments of post-war peace, knowing his empire would transcend the ages.