It isn’t logical to play with what ifs, but for some reason, that’s just something the human mind is conditioned to do (If you had read the story, Tony wouldn’t be at the bookstore. He’d be sitting with you trying to figure out how Roberts’ story had his name right, along with some loose details like his attachment to school and the presence of a girlfriend, let alone the striped shirt and beard). Once again, it’s pointless to wonder. You didn’t read it, you weren’t going to.
Anyways, let’s get to that wonderful ending; I’m sure Tony’s a flip case by now.
Tony wasn’t lying when he said he had to break up with his girlfriend; it’s just that he couldn’t do it so suddenly. Maybe he should give it a moment and check out the story you turned him on to, he thought. After all, they’ve been together for years; he owes it to her to let his thoughts cool down.
It took Tony about a half hour to get from the pizza place to the bookstore; the walk was pretty far. He normally wouldn’t have made the trek, but he needed to put things together in his mind (some things needed dissection, I guess you could say). Once he got there, he asked one of the clerks where he would find Adam Roberts’ brilliant short story, The Mystery of a Statement, and the clerk responded with a chuckle, “It’s right this way!”
Tony’s appearance was quite fun for the clerk, it added a little bit of spice to the day. Every once in a while, a boy would come into the bookstore around lunchtime with jeans, a beard, and a striped shirt, asking where Robert’s story was. It’s possible that some were just playing a joke, but Tony seemed the oblivious type. The clerk made some small talk with Tony on the way to the location of Roberts’ story. Upon reaching the shelf, the clerk laughed once more, “There it is! Enjoy!” Tony assumed either the clerk was slightly off, or this was a funny story.
When Tony opens the book, you’re finishing the second to last slice of pizza. He decides to read it right there, just like he thought you did, so he sits in one of the larger chairs and props his left shoe up on his right knee. At first, he’s not impressed. A choose your adventure piece - without the choices essentially? He’s always hated second person stories because he’s had a hard time pretending he is the “you”. Roberts’ lovely story, of course, will show him that the “you” is just someone specific that readers should imagine themselves as. The way people sometimes wonder what it would be like to be someone else, perhaps.
As Tony reads on, he begins to panic. The first concern of his comes upon reading the line, “Your friend Tony is waiting outside the door and you are pleasantly surprised because you don’t have your cell phone on you.” The next line is far worse, “He is wearing his only pair of jeans and the striped shirt he wore the night before.” Tony speed-reads a few more lines. The pizza place. Then a paragraph later - SNID!!! That one pushes Tony over the edge and he looks around the store as if Adam Roberts himself is standing behind a stack of books.
He quickly calls you on his phone but you don’t pick up. He’s so flustered by the story that he forgets he just read the part about you not having your phone. Mostly it’s just that he isn’t really accepting the text yet. He calls twice and leaves a frightened sounding message. The main themes of his message (you’ll hear it later) seem to be fear and a strange woman in the bookstore that he doesn’t trust. After reading some of the chilling sentences that basically describe his day so far, Tony has acquired a heightened ability to not trust people. The woman he is most concerned about may have been singled out due to her worn down appearance, which is a shame, but it’s in moments like these that stereotyping becomes a bit more justified. You’re sitting at the pizza place, stuffed, completely oblivious to it all.
Tony remembers you saying the ending is what’s really interesting. Something about the final pages being open ended and interesting. He flips franticly to the second to last page, hoping it will somehow calm him down; though he’s almost positive he can’t relax by this point (The effect of the mentioning of SNID is sort of irreversible.). He begins reading at, “The suspicious old woman…”
The suspicious old woman seems to lurk towards Tony as though she is going to harm him. She is wearing a pink tattered dress and moves in a jittery fashion. There is something rumbling about under her dress that has Tony frozen like a statue. He glances up and down - at the story, then back to her, hoping to find some sort of solution. He tries to think in ways that the story doesn’t predict, but it seems to have him pretty well figured out. He could toss the book violently at the woman, maybe killing whatever beast is rummaging about her stomach. He assumes that adventure isn’t covered in the text.
Instead, he just sits, as the old lady approaches him, dragging her feet. A foul stench, similar to that of a dead animal overwhelms Tony’s nostrils as the old woman nears him. He is so interested in the end of the story that he risks looking down for a second to catch up. He reads of his failure to take action (“Instead he just sits, as the old lady approaches him”) and is frustrated beyond words. Unable to read the final paragraph, Tony looks up to the woman, now standing right over him. She raises her arm to point at the book, and at that moment, a grey ferret climbs up and peeks its head out of her disgusting cleavage.
The ferret startles Tony to the point of dropping the book to the floor, and the woman asks in a wretched tone, “Can’t finish it?” Tony runs out of the bookstore, without reading the most important, yet confusing paragraph.
The old woman bends down somehow to pick Roberts’ story up off the ground from where it landed. She lethargically maneuvers towards the shelf where it is the only missing copy, and she places it back with the others. She throws her hands in the air and, almost in unison; her ferret climbs out of her cleavage and atop her head. It sits there on her greasy grey hair, blending in. Animal atop animal, the stench is unbearable. If you zoom in just far enough, you can see the ferret’s eyes twitching at an ungodly rate. It has fallen asleep and looks quite cute resting there in the tufts of the old woman’s hair. Give the little guy a couple seconds and he’s in full blown REM sleep. The woman’s eyes close and she enters the pizza place.
Goat Show
By Brett Cihon
It was 4:30 in the morning and Gabe was watching a band struggle to catch and kill a loose goat.
How did it come to this? Gabe wondered. So late, and I’m watching a group of morons run all over the stage after a farm animal. Is this what constitutes a good show nowadays? Not the music, not the scene, not even the drinks, but how many animals the band is willing to sacrifice onstage for the purpose of what? Entertainment?
As the goat galloped in every direction, Gabe thought it was the band members who were in peril, not the goat. They’d been chasing him for minutes, and on the few occasions they managed to corral the thing into a corner, the goat would lower his powerful head, charge, break free, and the chase would start all over again. So far, the only item that had been sacrificed was a rather expensive-looking bass guitar, its neck snapped under the weight of a hoof.
Gabe’s friend Andrew leaned close. “They’re doing it all wrong.”
“What do you mean they’re doing it wrong? How else do you kill a goat?”
“They really should have given him some tranquilizer first. Drugs or something, you know?” Andrew answered, then returned his eyes to the stage and took a long, slow sip of beer. Gabe puckered his face in disgust, but he agreed. Some tranquilizers might have made this more pleasant, for all parties involved.
For most of the night, the party had matured about how Gabe had expected. Metal bands played indecipherable noise on a stage positioned in a back corner of a warehouse. Young adults lounged around on various shipping containers and abandoned printing presses, watching the bands with little interest. Gabe hadn’t talked to any girls, but he hadn’t really expected to anyway. A party like this didn’t exactly attract Gabe’s ideal woman. No, here were the black metal types; complete with dark makeup and daddy issues. Not the kind of
girl you brought to a nice sushi restaurant. But Gabe didn’t mind. The design of the warehouse, the domestic beer, and the over the top performances were enough to keep his mind occupied for the evening.
“I guess they couldn’t find any animal tranquilizer,” Andrew whispered, leaning back over. He took another pull from his beer can.
“Find animal tranquilizer? What do you mean they couldn’t find animal tranquilizer? They found a goat, didn’t they? You’d think some pills would be easier to find than a goat, at least in the city.” Andrew contemplated this for a moment, nodded, and then took another swig.
It was around 3am when the party had begun to taper off and Gabe wanted to leave. By then, the mildly normal kids had left and only the real metal heads were staying around to watch the last band, Christ, Christ, the Collegiate Killer, take the stage. Gabe was about out the large bay entry door, but Andrew had convinced him to stay.
“No man, we got to stay for their set,” greasy haired, mostly drunk Andrew had explained. “I hear they do some crazy shit.” And how crazy it is, Gabe thought. He watched silently as the goat thrashed its head and kicked its way out of a corner, longing for a path off the stage.
About midway through Christ, Christ, the Collegiate Killer’s first song, one of the band’s two guitarists set down his instrument and disappeared behind a metal door. He stepped out of the door minutes later, struggling to lead a dingy, curly-haired goat by a black collar to the front of the stage. After a few kicks and grunts, the guitarist finally managed to tie the belligerent animal to an amp near the singer - center for the crowd.
The band finished their second song (if you could call it a song, Gabe thought) and waited in silence, letting the absurdity of the goat’s presence slip into the crowd. Then the singer, a weak grin on his face, announced, “Hail Goat Satan,” kicked at the goat, and screamed off into the third song.
The goat jumped around, called out, and pissed on the floor while the band crunched away. For a while it looked as if this was the act - the crazy shit - a breathing, moaning goat as the centerpiece of the act. But around the time Gabe was pontificating on how the goat’s harsh cry may have actually improve the overall sound of the band, the singer unsheathed a butcher’s knife attached to a belt on his hip. “Tonight,” the singer growled, “tonight, we offer goat blood for Goat Satan. Fuck Satan. Hail Satan.”
The singer waved the knife wildly in the air while the band sped through one (or was it two?) more songs. When they were finished, they bowed in unison, the singer muttered another “Hail Satan,” and the band descended on the goat, trying to form a circle around the raving animal. The goat, in his terror, spurring an increase of strength, broke free of his shackles, charged headfirst at the bassist, giving him a good shot in the groin, and sought an exit.
“Tranquilizers would have been key,” Andrew said, as each individual band mate looked increasingly embarrassed. “I don’t know much about goats, but I’d say that goat is pissed.”
At first, the band members seemed more enthused with the new development. But after realizing how difficult it was to grab and maintain a struggling goat, the band’s hooting had dropped away, and stress began to show on their faces. No one had managed to keep a hand on the goat for more than three seconds. Every tentative touch was met with a ferocious shot from a goat leg. The goat, not to be surrounded, charged randomly at kneecaps. Only by sheer luck did the drummer trip over a loose cord and fall back just in time to avoid a goat head aimed for the stomach.
At first it was funny, but the crowd had grown anxious. They wanted blood. Or peace. Or music. “Pussys!” a girl dressed in back yelled out. Others around her laughed and started to offer insults of their own.
“Kill your drummer, he sucks!” one chubby, younger looking partier yelled.
“What a joke!” someone else yelled out. “Kill the thing!”
The motions of the band became frantic, but the more they rushed towards the goat, the harder the goat fought them off.
“Maybe they could stun it first. With a bat or something?” Andrew suggested.
Gabe didn’t want to see the band hit the goat with a bat, but he did sense that crowd unrest and individual shame would spark one of the band members to act; bat, rebar, bass guitar, whatever. And that would get gruesome. Gabe was ready to tell Andrew that he would see him later, that he didn’t want to see a goat get smashed with a bat, or decapitated, or whatever the band was planning to do, when a deep voice broke through the crowd.
“Give me the knife,” Gabe heard the voice say. The band stopped their chasing and looked around.
“Give me the knife.”
A thick, strong man in black clothes and heavy boots lifted himself up onto the stage. He was sweating. He wasn’t a tall man, but his wide shoulders and thick torso gave him a presence. He walked towards the singer and the crowd silenced. Even the goat’s moans fell away, and he settled himself against an amp in the far corner of the stage.
“Give me the knife,” the man repeated.
The singer, disheveled and heartbroken with the way the night was unfolding, handed the man the knife. The man studied it for a second, pushed his long black hair out of his eyes, and moved for the goat. The goat let out a squeal and tried to run. A well-placed leg hit the man hard in the thigh, but the man in black didn’t flinch, he kept moving. The man swooped up the goat, one hand on the throat, and held it in his arms. He moved with the animal to the edge of the stage and looked out at the crowd.
“Let’s take a vote,” the man said. “Whoever wants to see the goat die, raise your hand now.”Not a hand went up. The goat struggled, but the man held it tight. “Whoever wants to see the goat live, speak up now.” Again silence.
The dusty air of the warehouse settled down on the crowd. Gabe looked around the crowd, who at one time looked tough in their makeup and steel-toed boots, shuffle and shy their eyes to the ground. They were no longer in charge. Someone in the crowd coughed, but the man in black kept still, his eyes shifting over the crowd, the muscles in his arms throbbing against the goat.
Finally, to the side of the man, the singer spoke up. “For Satan,” he muttered. The voice sounded confused, saddened.
Without hesitation the man kneeled to the ground and put the knife to the goat’s neck. He chuckled. “For Satan then,” he said and drew the knife from ear to ear.
A strange ripping broke the silence of the warehouse and dark blood ran down the dirty coat of the goat, collecting there, then falling in large drops onto the stage. The goat’s eyes rolled back and his body slumped over, defeated. The man let the goat fall into the blood, rested the knife on the ground, and wiped his stained hands over his black jeans. He stood up, grinned at the crowd, and jumped off stage. The band, white faced and silent, watched the dead carcass of the animal for a moment, before slowly, one by one, returning to their instruments.
Outside the warehouse, Andrew giggled. “I told you they do crazy shit,” he said. Gabe shook his head and tried desperately to steady his step. They were south of the city, way south, and they would need all their heads to find their way back.
First Responder
By Tony Gill
Mostly what they call heroes are just those that do, that are called to action when everyone else is standing around. This happens surprisingly often. It happened to me last week. I’m a doer.
She was standing by the curb with the rest of us. I noticed a small break in the traffic in the near right lane. Then, and as I told the paramedics, for no apparent reason she stepped down from the curb as if to cross the street. It made no sense. Even a child would know not to walk across the street when she did. It’s like that videogame “Frogger,” except whoever had the joystick, because she obviously wasn’t working the controls, didn’t have her hop front to back, side to side. She just set out in a flat line. My guess was drugs or maybe she was one of those mental patients with a nervous brain that speed-lope wherever they’re going. Either w
ay, there she went; and to look at her walking away was to look at someone whose next and last step would have immediate and life-altering consequences.
She wasn’t from around here—an Indian I think. And no, not like the baseball team. A Hindu or something. Her hair was braided down her back, and she was wearing this billowy off-white blouse, like a threadbare sheet, down to her feet. She was also wearing tennis shoes, I remember, because one of them flew clean off.
In my peripheral, as she set out to cross the street, I made a move to jump out with her—just one of those numb lemming mentalities—but caught myself in mid-stride. I watched her walk forward without the slightest hesitation—like I said, point A to point B—and then she casually turned her head and stared at the car barreling toward her. I couldn’t help but think about the cult leaders that set-fire, poison and hack their followers into tiny pieces. Those starry-eyed sheeple never ever resist, much less question what awaits. How could all those people forget their heads and get tricked into going out like that? Her guru, the bastard with the joystick, must be a real smart sadist marching her across three lanes of traffic like a golem.
And the driver of the Mercedes coming at her—probably thinking she would get out of the way because there was plenty of time. I don’t know. I don’t know what he was thinking. Again, he didn’t. I would have at least laid on the horn. She had two more lanes of steady traffic left to cross and nowhere to go but back to the curb. I saw the driver look at her and she looked at the driver and they both expected the other to do something. Anything. Except continue doing what it was they were doing…but hey, they didn’t do anything. And that was just it.
Tires squawked. Just enough to slow down to about thirty or forty, I imagine, then a loud thud. Her hip, I think, came into contact first with the chrome grill, causing her to double over the hood. Of course the sheer momentum flipped her entire body up on top of the Mercedes, almost to the windshield. Gradually, she slumped off the far side of the car. I noticed one of her shoes had rolled across the street next to mine at the curb. The laces were still tied.
And you know, she never went down. The other lanes were still packed with speeding cars as she braced herself against the side of the Mercedes and continued forward, pure determination.
Shit, I couldn’t believe it. I was stunned. Left thinking, a ton of metal just slapped her and she hasn’t snapped back to reality? It seemed like I stood there for a good five minutes with the whole world in freeze-frame. Eventually, I dropped my backpack. And when I moved the world started moving again as if it were waiting for my cue to resume its normal spin. I sometimes imagine if I had stayed still would the rest of the world still be stuck in that moment, unable to go forward?
The Mercedes crept past me with the guy inside and a passenger, his girlfriend or wife from the look of it, yelling and swearing what an idiot he was, and how could he hit her when he saw her standing there. The rage in her voice came clearly through their rolled-up windows. But the girl wasn’t standing around. She was walking.
I ran over…or, well, I can’t really remember, but one moment I was on the curb and the next I was standing over her. She looked at me with full moon eyes and I hesitated to touch her feeling a little embarrassed because she was staring at me like I had a horn sprouting out of my forehead. Actually, she was the one with a large goose egg on the side that bounced off the windshield.
I didn’t let go. Instead I asked her if she was alright. It’s a dumb question considering what she did to herself. Just the same, she didn’t say a thing. I grabbed her arms. She was still staring at me with that ridiculous glare when she grew as soft as a balloon filled with Jell-O. And even a body as small as hers is hard to manage when it goes slack. So I struggled at first as she began to go unconscious right there in the middle of the street with the traffic all around. Her body slid down the side of the Mercedes. I was having trouble propping her up on the car so I could get a better hold of her when a guy came over and barked at me to get her off the damn road. And I was trying but she was a dead weight. So I grabbed her shoulders, motioning to him to do the same with her legs, and we shuffled over to a grassy spot near the curb.
Though she wasn’t responding to various voices asking if she was alright, her eyes were open a sliver, which was a good sign I thought. All the folks who just there, dumbfounded now gathered around. I could feel their inquisitive stares as I hovered over her, craning around one another to peer. Someone made the call and before long an ambulance hopped the curb. A female medic, along with the three others she ordered around, asked no one in particular why this woman’s pants zipper was unfastened. It was accusatory, and I felt directed at the two of us males who were crouched around her. My face warmed with indignation. I kept silent and let a middle-aged woman like herself inform the medic that we hadn’t touched her there.
At this point I stood and backed away. I saved her goddamn life and I’m being questioned over sexual harassment? Not that I was fishing for a “Thank You” from a bunch of strangers for doing what none of them managed to do, but I surely didn’t expect accusations like that.
I raised my hand when the female medic asked who the nearest person was to the accident. She wanted the details, details for the record, for the lawyers. I told her everything except for the part about me freezing on the curb and not grabbing her sooner. I’d already been suspected of something I didn’t do, why put any more ideas in this lady’s head? The Mercedes driver was still sitting in his car, on the phone, un-accused and un-interrogated. Probably talking to the family lawyer, strategizing ways to keep this off his driving record. His female passenger stared out her side window with what in any other situation would be a bored expression. I suspect she was experiencing a much milder version of what the girl her husband or boyfriend dented his hood on will have when she comes to.
After giving out my contact information and answering a few brief legal-sounding questions and after the ambulance was only a noise competing among the resumed traffic, I picked up and went to work. I was late to work, but no one noticed. A few days went by before I called the nearest hospital. I told the receptionist what had happened and the date it happened on, but without a name she snorted when I asked if she recalled the young woman. There were too many patients, I was told. So I asked if anyone had died that day that fit her description. I’d have to identify myself as a family member for that information, she said.
Does it count as a rescue if the person saved is on her deathbed by the time you get there? I was the first responder, and I hesitated. I may have been the closest to her but a few feet away ten others never budged.
Just yesterday, an insurance lawyer called. He wanted to know a few details of what happened before the accident. I told him that the medic wrote everything down I had to say, including the phone number he used to call me. He still wanted to go over what happened:
“Was she in the street”?
“She was in the pedestrian crossing.”
“Was the light green?”
“Which light?”
“The one she was crossing against.”
“Probably, I think.”
“In your opinion, was she crossing the street illegally?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“How fast was the car going when it struck her?”
“I don’t know.”
“How fast do you think?”
“I’m not going to try and guess.”
“How far from her were you?”
“Right next to her.”
“When she was hit? Why do you think she crossed the street at that time?”
“Maybe she was confused.” I asked what her condition was. He didn’t know. I asked her name. He said it was confidential. I told him not to call me again. He wished me a good day and ended the call.
I’m sure she’s alive and fine. A cast, a broken hip, a few cracked ribs and a concussion. Why did her shoe come off and zipper come undone? That’s as m
uch a mystery as to why a receptionist from a hospital with suburban in its name failed to recall anything about a pedestrian hit by a car. And why weren’t there any police at the scene? There are those dreams that you confuse with reality for a little while until you remember something strange occurring that seems too implausible to ever have happened. What happened seems like that sometimes.
Jenny Gets a Beater Bike
By Will Schmitz
Jenny woke up thinking that this wasn't going to be the day she was going to find her beater bike. What a rotten dream she'd had - finding herself on a beach where a tidal wave was coming in. The pressure, rush, force, and sound of the water was awesome. Jenny was twelve and dreams about suddenly being crushed out of existence were not common to her. The worst part of the dream was when she lay looking up at the wave (she was on her stomach and had to crane her head up so far to see the top of the wave that it hurt), and it felt like her heart was going to stop. She tried to struggle awake, but was pinned to the beach. The wave was coming down when a voice outside her window came in to save her.
“Jenny. Jenny? You there?” It was Sara.
Jenny's eyes opened. She was on her stomach. Her chin was propped up on the folded-double pillow. Her arms were stretched out to her sides.
“Jenny, wake up. I've been looking through the garage sale ads and I think I've found a beater bike for you.”
Jenny was so glad to be alive that the possibility of finding a bike that day wasn't even important for a few minutes. As I said, Jenny thought her bad dream was a sign saying that nothing good was going to happen this day.
It was a Saturday morning in mid-summer, July 24th. Jenny had been looking for a beater bike for over three weeks. She'd even managed to convince her mother, twice, to drive her to neighboring towns on Saturday morning to visit yard sales. No more of that.
"You'll just have to be more patient, dear. One of those kinds of bikes will turn up."
And then her mother asked Jenny what she wanted. "One of those ugly things." But in the case of beater bikes, ugly is beautiful, at least it is to the folks in the know about such things. You can ride a beater bike in any weather. You can ride it hard, too - over curbs, dirt mounds, and on the bumpy trails that wove through the woods nearby.
Sara was Jenny's best friend, but Sara's best friend was The Bishop, Kirk Bishop, also known as The Cork because he was known for liking to tell corkers. Whatever story you told, Kirk would always try, and mostly succeeded, in telling you something even more astounding. He read a lot, especially his mother's Enquirers. There were plenty of corkers in there.
Jenny found Sara in the kitchen where Mrs. Blaustein had forced Sara to sit down and get ready to eat a bowl of cereal with Jenny before the two of them went all over town. It didn't matter that Sara hated breakfast and that eating something in the morning made her feel nauseous.
"Why's Sara want one of those bikes when she's already got a ten-speed?" Mrs. Blaustein was saying when Jenny dragged herself through the kitchen door and carried herself over to the table to plop down in a chair. "Not even a good-morning from you, young lady?"
"I had a bad dream. I still feel asleep."
Mrs. Blaustein bit her lip slightly when she heard Jenny say this. Jenny'd never reported a bad dream before. Mrs. Blaustein told herself that she'd have to consult a child development book about his. She mentally reviewed all the things she had to do that day and made a place for a stop to the library to read up on this phenomenon.
"Where's there a beater bike for sale?" Jenny asked Sara.
Sara, who was looking mournfully into her bowl of cornflakes that were beginning to get soggy, perked up. "Washington and Market Streets. It's supposed to start at nine sharp so we should go as soon as we can."
Jenny turned to her mother. "That's not too far, Mom. We could go over there and come back and have breakfast."
"You eat first," Mrs. Blaustein said firmly. "That bike's not going anywhere in the next ten minutes."Sara looked back down at her bowl of flakes and put her left arm on the table so her unhappy head could have a hand to rest on as she ate. An idea came to her about these uneatable flakes.
Jenny owed her a favor. "Would you mind changing bowls with me?"
Jenny caught on. "I don't like soggy flakes either, Sara."
"Yeah, but you hate them less than me. Who came over to tell you about this great bike? Who woke you up from that nightmare you were having?"
"Okay, pass ‘em over."
The corner of Washington and Market was seven blocks from the Blaustein house and Sara and Jenny walked, or rather ran, all the way there, barely being polite to the people that they knew who saw them along the way. Mrs. Oliver, who was working in her flower beds pruning her white roses, is older and was particularly offended when the two girls flashed by. Mrs. Oliver had them in to taste her strawberry jam only three days before. She is a widow, lonely, and had shared some of her most treasured remembrances with the two. Mrs. Oliver felt abused and as she bent back over to continue working, told herself that it wasn't worth the effort to talk to and be kind to young people if these were the results. Only interested in themselves.
Jenny had noticed Mrs. Oliver's dissatisfaction and tried to say something about it to Sara. "I think on our way back from the sale we should stop and talk to Mrs. Oliver for a while. She looked mad at us when we went hurrying by."
"You want that bike, don't you?" Sara said as they rounded the corner of the block.
"I haven't even seen it yet. It might not be the one I want."
"Aw, come on! Whatever that old woman's mad about, we can make it up to her later. My grandma's always getting mad at my dad about something and it's usually no big deal."
As Sara and Jenny approached their destination, they got anxious. There were cars parked on both sides of the usually un-trafficked street. There was quite a crowd assembled on the lawn of the house the girls were heading for. As they reached the edge of the crowd, a fat man in white shorts pushed a beater bike out to the sidewalk. Sara grabbed her hair and moaned. It was a premier beater bike. Its fenders had been painted a bright yellow and the frame was painted sunset purple. The bike's only apparent defect was that its back tire was flat, a $3.67 investment. Sara sat on the grass and continued to stare after what had been lost.
"Maybe I couldn't have ever afforded it," Jenny said as she stood appraising the thing. "I only have fifteen dollars."
"Go and ask him," Sara replied.
The fat man was huffing and puffing as he tried to fit the bike into the trunk of his late model Detroit manufacture. Damned trunk wouldn't hold the suitcases of a trained family of fleas.
"Pardon me," Jenny said. The man stopped fussing with the bike for a second to take a stern look at Jenny.
"Yeah? What can I do for you?"
"Could you tell me how much you paid for that bike?"
"This thing?" he said regarding his treasure without mercy. "Five and a half bucks. Why?"
Jenny kept calm. She didn't want to show either disappointment or excitement. She wanted to outsmart this fellow if she could. "I'm just curious. Did you buy it for yourself?"
"What? Are you trying to be a wise-guy? In the first place, it's a girl's bike and in the second place… But never mind all that, what do you want?"
Jenny stood fidgeting and was uncertain as to what to say. “It looks like it's in good shape.”
"Yeah, all it needs is a tube patching and a new paint job. You still haven't said what you want, honey." The man had built up a sweat getting the bike angled so that it would fit in the trunk and it was obvious he wanted to leave. Jenny was forced to make an offer.
"You wouldn't consider selling the bike, would you?"
"I thought that's what it was," the fat man said wiping his brow with the back of his hand and wiping it off on the white Bermudas. "No, not even for twenty bucks. I drove all the way over from Whitebluff at six this morning to be the first one at this sale. The bike's for my niece. She's been nag
ging me to get her one of these dinosaurs for three weeks. Well, I got one now and I ain't gonna give it up. Sorry."
He turned and walked around the side of the car muttering to himself about nerve and audacity. The seat of the car must have been hot, both Jenny and Sara thought, because the man winced as he slid behind the steering wheel, but it was too early in the morning for a seat to have heated up that much. The man had sat down on the open safety pin he had used to pin the garage sale ad to his shirt the night before. Jenny and Sara considered the punishment just.
"Well, there goes the best lookin' beater bike in town," Sara said as she got up from where she'd been a spectator on the grass.
"Let's go get a malt at Ambrose's. We have to shake this bad luck."
"I don't think even that will do it. I think my dream sort of jinxed me for the day," Jenny sighed as she stared after the bike disappearing around the corner of the street. "I should go home and spend the rest of the day safely indoors."
"We could watch cartoons. What time is it?"
"About nine-thirty."
"Great. The Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner Hour will be on."
"Okay. That might help shade the curse. And we could do some drawing after that. I got a set of pastels the other day that I haven't had a chance to use yet."
"Should we walk past Mrs. Oliver's and talk to her for a bit? I wouldn't want her mad at us."
"Yeah."
The two were about half a block away from Mrs. Oliver's - they could see her bent over as before with a small pair of shears in hand - when Kirk wheeled up behind them on his beater bike and slid to a halt. The girls told him about what had happened to them and what they had planned for the rest of the morning. Jenny's mood went from mild to gray because she knew what was going to occur next: Kirk would be invited along, Kirk would get all of Sara's attention, Kirk and Sara would want to go out and go swimming or something leaving Jen at home to experiment with the pastels by herself. That was the scenario, Jenny decided. She resigned herself to it.
"We have to talk to Mrs. Oliver first, though," Jenny reminded the other two.
Mrs. Oliver was grumpy when they came up to her. It's hard to make up with some people right away. The three of them attuned to the old woman's state of mind and left her after five minutes of simple exchanges about the way the flowers looked and the weather. Mrs. Oliver seemed to take pleasure in contradicting everything either Jenny or Sara said. When Jenny said that the roses seemed prize, Mrs. Oliver soundly asserted the beautiful flowers' ordinariness. When Sara predicted an early and severe winter, Mrs. Oliver disagreed and said a long Indian Summer was on its way to be followed by a moderate winter.
"She sure was ornery," Kirk said as he walked his bike along.
"We made her mad," Sara explained with a shake of her head.
"It's stupid. We should have just come right out and told her about the beater bike and what a hurry we were in."
The cartoon show had one outstanding Tweety and Sylvester.
"That's from the Depression," Mrs. Blaustein said over the kids' shoulders as they ate popcorn out of a big Tupperware bowl.
"How can you tell that, Mrs. Blaustein?" Sara asked.
"By the way they've drawn the cat to look so down-and-out. The bareness of the block they're on says it, too."
The three were puzzled by Mrs. Blaustein's remarks and would have asked more questions about the Depression if the cartoon hadn't started to get so wickedly funny. Tweety's nest was in a tree in the center of the dog pound. The cat would have some trouble getting by the bulldogs to the bird. Mrs. Blaustein had ideas about the satirical implications of what that situation meant too, but she was already behind schedule and had to leave the house.
Jenny got up from in front of the set to go to the kitchen and kiss her mom good-bye. “When's dad coming home? I hate it when he has to work on Saturdays.”
"Managers have to put in extra hours when there are changes being made. He should be home by no later than four. I'll see you at six. Goodbye, hon." Mrs. Blaustein had already picked up her purse and keys from the counter top and now put them down again to kiss her daughter. Mrs. Blaustein began to act in a great hurry after the exchange of affection and almost went off without the keys.
When Jenny returned to the living room, the cartoon show was promising to be back in a minute.
"I'll turn it off," said Kirk, rising from his feet and scooping the last handful of popcorn out of the bowl.
"Why?" Sara asked.
"Cause it's not gonna return with anything except a roll of program credits," Jen answered picking up five un-popped widows.
"They just want you to watch an extra minute of commercials."
"Leave it on! I want to see if you two are right."
"Didn't know you were from Missouri, Sara," Kirk cautioned.
"Whatya mean?"
"You're being mule headed."
"We'll see." Jenny and Kirk were right, making Sara feel preyed upon. Jenny decided that she and Kirk could be closer friends if she kept him around the house for the afternoon. She offered to get out the pastels and drawing paper.
But Sara spoke up saying that it would be better to go outside and do something. “Don't you agree, Kirk?”
He agreed. Jenny didn't want to bring up her bad dream or the reason for wanting to hide from the world in front of Kirk. Let Sara tell him, she would. As Sara and Kirk were leaving they invited Jenny to meet them later. “Come out and watch the brigade after supper.”
"It's no fun to come out and have to sit and watch," Jenny pouted.
"Don't worry, you'll get a bike before too much longer," Sara said half encouragingly.
Jenny spent the rest of the day doing dishes, reading, doing laundry, and drawing. Anything to stay inside during the day. After the sun started to set, that would be all right. It was the full day that was dangerous.
What to draw? Jenny fussed with the pastels, selected colors, but couldn't start a line. Finally, she collected books and magazines to work from. One of the books was about Carnival and how it was celebrated around the world. She didn't want to use that immediately. She put the book aside to look at completely later on. Jenny opened the other books and magazines at random, until she'd opened to a photograph. The idea was to take a central image out of each photograph and make a composite picture out of it. Instead of drawing a picture of a hippopotamus underwater, he ended up on a house lined street. Egrets took the place of telephone poles and trees became fishing hooks. The sun was purple and the sky was yellow. The picture pleased Jenny and she decided to keep it. She never showed any of her work to her mother and, in fact, hid it in a place where her mother wouldn't find it. Jenny felt that her mother was too careful with her.
Apparently, her mother was trying to avoid the mistakes that had been made with her two sisters. It was better when her two sisters were at home. They were on a trip to France now with their high school class. When Jenny's blue, stay at home days came, at least one of her sisters spent the time with her.
Jenny took up the Carnival book after putting away the drawing materials and hiding the picture. Dancers in Rio marched in a throng with matching costumes on; they seemed to belong to separate clubs or groups. The first photograph that shocked Jenny was of a very pretty girl without legs who was marching in the parade on her stumps. Jen shook her head. The photo was eerie to her. She stopped turning the pages for a second and began to think about the parades that she'd seen: Thanksgiving Day, Rose Bowl, Macy's . . . The people in the Carnival book were less quiet, less stiff, more frenzied, less happy.
Turning more pages, there were many pictures of people dressed like devils or like poorly attired and cheaply adorned princes and princesses. And the fat people - greedily fat, like no fat people she had ever met or seen. Then there were pictures of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, but the pictures were of whores and people drunk or on drugs. The picture that scared her the most reminded her of her dream. A group of people dressed like sea monsters with wood
-like skin and draped in green kelp marched down an Icelandic street. So many of the people were dressed like animals. The distinction between animal and human was erased in these Carnival merry-makers. In the American parades, people were people and animals were animals. Jenny put the book back where she'd found it. The questions the book raised, Jenny decided, she would ask her father. He hated to hide things and spoke openly about what his daughters were curious to know, to the chagrin of Mrs. Blaustein, who believed the world should be revealed to children in stages.
The daughter anxiously began to await the arrival of her father home. She'd have two hours to pose questions to him in before her mother returned.
Mr. Blaustein was well over an hour late when he turned into the driveway. Jenny, at first worried, then quailing over the lost opportunity, was resigned by the time her father arrived. He was usually so punctual! He professed tremendous belief in the appropriateness of punctuality, and today, but Jenny told herself that it fit that he'd be late today.
Going out to greet her dad, Jenny could see him smiling broadly at her from behind the windshield. Peering around the side of the car, you could see that the trunk was open. Jenny ran around to the back of the car. There was a beater bike folded into it.
"Stopped at an auction I read about in the paper this morning during a break. This one okay?" Mr. Blaustein asked as he put his hands on the frame to pull it out to show his daughter.
"Okay? It's great!" Jenny said jumping up and putting her hands around her dad's neck to give him a kiss.The bike wasn't as flashy as the one that she'd missed buying that morning, but it was there, and no flat tire. She could ride it right away.
"You want to try 'er out?"
"No," Jenny said shaking her head and running her hand along the handlebars and frame. "Mom will be home soon and I want to help with supper. I'll take it out later."
Taking possession of the bike, Jenny led it into the garage and leaned it against a ladder. The bike was much discussed during supper. Jenny's father had followed her into the garage, turned on the light, and together they'd gone over the bike's strengths and weaknesses.
“Have to get you a new seat for it. The springs are shot under this one,” her dad said.
“Oh, Dad, the springs are fine. What it really needs is an ace paint job,” Jenny said.
“A paint job, eh?”
"What do you want to paint it?" Jenny's mother asked.
"I was looking through that book on Carnival that you got from the library and there's a peacock man from Brazil whose costume's colors . . ." Jenny continued to explain. Mrs. Blaustein pursed her lips slightly at the thought that she'd allowed her daughter to be exposed to such material. A safer place would have to be found. What the child development books at the library had to say about nightmares had disturbed Jenny's mother.
Supper dishes done, Jenny wheeled the bike out of the garage and oiled and cleaned it. Then she rode the bike towards the woods. Umph; not as easy to pedal as the ten-speed. She put the bike on one of the narrow trails that led to the center of the woods where there was a glide. You could hear the voices cheering and yelling and shouting as you approached the open area. It was the beater brigade engaged in their nightly activity, forming sides and jousting with one another until everyone was gloriously tired. Jenny nudged her bike forward to join sides.