“Hear that, Charlie? What’s it say?”
“Well—”
A gust of wind blew the colonel up the dark stairs like so much flimsy chaff.
“Time, mostly, it says, and oldness and memory, lots of things. Dust, and maybe pain. Listen to those beams! Let the wind shift the timber skeleton on a fine fell day, and you truly got time-talk. Burnings and ashes, Bombay snuffs, tomb-yard flowers gone to ghost—”
“Boy, colonel,” gasped Charlie, climbing, “you oughta write for Top Notch Story Magazine!”
“Did once! Got rejected. Here we are!”
And there indeed they were, in a place with no calendar, no month, no days, no year, but only vast spider shadows and glints of tight from collapsed chandeliers lying about like great tears in the dust.
“Boy!” cried Charlie, scared, and glad of it.
“Chuck!” said the colonel. “You ready for me to birth you a real, live, half-dead sockdolager, on-the-spot mystery?”
“Ready!”
The colonel swept charts, maps, agate marbles, glass eyes, cobwebs, and sneezes of dust off a table, then rolled up his sleeves.
“Great thing about midwifing mysteries is, you don’t have to boil water or wash up. Hand me that papyrus scroll over there, boy, that darning needle just beyond, that old diploma on the shelf, that wad of cannonball cotton on the floor. Jump!”
“I’m jumping.” Charlie ran and fetched, fetched and ran.
Bundles of dry twigs, clutches of pussy willow and cattails flew. The colonel’s sixteen hands were wild in the air, holding sixteen bright needles, flakes of leather, rustlings of meadow grass, flickers of owl feather, glares of bright yellow fox-eye. The colonel hummed and snorted as his miraculous eight sets of arms and hands swooped and prowled, stitched and danced.
“There!” he cried, and pointed with a chop of his nose. “Half-done. Shaping up. Peel an eye, boy. What’s it commence to start to resemble?”
Charlie circled the table, eyes stretched so wide it gaped his mouth. “Why—why—” he gasped.
“Yes?”
“It looks like—”
“Yes, yes?”
“A mummy! Can’t be!”
“Is! Bull’s-eye on, boy! Is!”
The colonel leaned down on the long-strewn object. Wrist deep in his creation, he listened to its reeds and thistles and dry flowers whisper.
“Now, you may well ask, why would anyone build a mummy in the first place? You, you inspired this, Charlie. You put me up to it. Go look out the attic window there.”
Charlie spat on the dusty window, wiped a clear viewing spot, peered out.
“Well,” said the colonel. “What do you see? Anything happening out there in the town, boy? Any murders being transacted?”
“Heck,
“Anyone felling off church steeples or being run down by a maniac lawnmower?”
“Nope.”
“Any Monitors or Merrimacs sailing up the lake, dirigibles felling on the Masonic Temple and squashing six thousand Masons at a time?”
“Heck, colonel, there’s only five, thousand people in Green Town!”
“Spy, boy. Look. Stare. Report!”
Charlie stared out at a very flat town.
“No dirigibles. No squashed Masonic Temples.”
“Right!” The colonel ran over to join Charlie, surveying the territory. He pointed with his hand, he pointed with his nose. “In all Green Town, in all your life, not one murder, one orphanage fire, one mad fiend carving his name on librarian ladies’ wooden legs! Face it, boy, Green Town, Upper Illinois, is the most common mean ordinary plain old bore of a town in the eternal history of the Roman, German, Russian, English, American empires! If Napoleon had been born here, he would’ve committed hara-kiri by the age of nine. Boredom. If Julius Caesar had been raised here, he’d have got himself in the Roman Forum, aged ten, and shoved in his own dagger—”
“Boredom,” said Charlie.
“Kee-rect! Keep staring out that window while I work, son.” Colonel Stonesteel went back to flailing and shoving and pushing a strange growing shape around on the creaking table. “Boredom by the pound and ton. Boredom by the doomsday yard and the funeral mile. Lawns, homes, fur on the dogs, hair on the people, suits in the dusty store windows, all cut from the same cloth....”
“Boredom,” said Charlie, on cue.
“And what do you do when you’re bored, son?”
“Er—break a window in a haunted house?”
“Good grief, we got no haunted houses in Green Town, boy!”
“Used to be. Old Higley place. Torn down.”
“See my point? Now what else do we do so’s not to be bored?”
“Hold a massacre?”
“No massacres here in dogs’ years. Lord, even our police chiefs honest! Mayor—not corrupt! Madness. Whole town faced with stark staring ennuis and lulls! Last chance, Charlie, what do we do?”
“Build a mummy?” Charlie smiled.
“Bulldogs in the belfry! Watch my dust!”
The old man, cackling, grabbed bits of stuffed owl and bent lizard tail and old nicotine bandages left over from a skiing fell that had busted his ankle and broken a romance in 1885, and some patches from a 1922 Kissel Kar inner tube, and some burnt-out sparklers from the last peaceful summer of 1913, and all of it weaving, shuttling together under his brittle insect-jumping fingers.
“Voila! There, Charlie! Finished!”
“Oh, colonel.” The boy stared and gasped. “Can I make him a crown?”
“Make him a crown, boy. Make him a crown.”
The sun was going down when the colonel and Charlie and their Egyptian friend came down the dusky backstairs of the old man’s house, two of them walking iron-heavy, the third floating light as toasted cornflakes on the autumn air.
“Colonel,” wondered Charlie. “What we going to do with this mummy, now we got him? It ain’t as if he could talk much, or walk around—”
“No need, boy. Let folks talk, let folks run. Look there!” They cracked the door and peered out at a town smothered in peace and ruined with nothing-to-do.
“Ain’t enough, is it, son, you’ve recovered from your almost fatal seizure of Desperate Empties. Whole town out there is up to their earlobes in watchsprings, no hands on the clocks, afraid to get up every morning and find it’s always and forever Sunday! Who’ll offer salvation, boy?”
Amon Bubastis Rameses Ra the Third, just arrived on the four o’clock limited?”
“God loves you, boy, yes. What we got here is a giant seed. Seed’s no good unless you do what with it?”
“Why,” said Charlie, one eye shut. “Plant it?”
“Plant! Then watch it grow! Then what? Harvest time. Harvest! Come on, boy. Er—bring your friend.”
The colonel crept out into the first nightfall.
The mummy came soon after, helped by Charlie.
Labor Day at high noon, Osiris Bubastis Barneses Amon-Ba-Tut arrived from the Land of the Dead.
An autumn wind stirred the land and flapped doors wide not with the sound of the usual Labor Day Parade, seven tours cars, a fife and drum corps, and the mayor, but a mob that grew as it flowed the streets and fell in a tide to inundate the lawn out front of Colonel Stonesteel’s house. The colonel and Charlie were sitting on the front porch, had been sitting there for some hours waiting for the conniption fits to arrive, the storming of the Bastille to occur. Now with dogs going mad and biting boys’ ankles and boys dancing around the fringes of the mob, the colonel gazed down upon the Creation (his and Charlie’s) and gave his secret smile.
“Well, Charlie...do I win my bet?”
“You sure do, colonel!”
“Come on.”
Phones rang all across town and lunches burned on stoves, as the colonel strode forth to give the parade his papal blessings.
At the center of the mob was a horse-drawn wagon. On top the wagon, his eyes wild with discovery, was Tom Tuppen, owner of a half-dead farm just beyond
town. Tom was babbling, and the crowd was babbling, because in the back of the wagon was the special harvest delivered out of four thousand lost years of time.
“Well, flood the Nile and plant the Delta,” gasped the colonel, eyes wide, staring. “Is or is not that a genuine ole Egyptian mummy lying there in its original papyrus and coal-tar wrappings?”
“Sure is!” cried Charlie.
“Sure is!” yelled everyone.
“I was plowing the field this morning,” said Tom Tuppen. “Plowing, just plowing! and—bang! Plow turned this up, right before me! Like to had a stroke! Think! The Egyptians must’ve marched through Illinois three thousand years ago and no one knew! Revelations, I call it! Outta the way, kids! I’m taking this find to the post office lobby. Set it up on display! Giddap, now, git!”
The horse, the wagon, the mummy, the crowd, moved away, leaving the colonel behind, his eyes still pretend-wide, his mouth open.
“Hot dog,” whispered the colonel, “we did it, Charles. This uproar, babble, talk, and hysterical gossip will last for a thousand days or Armageddon, whichever comes first!”
“Yes, sir, colonel!”
“Michelangelo couldn’t’ve done better. Boy David’s a castaway-lost-and-forgotten wonder compared to our Egyptian surprise and—”
The colonel stopped as the mayor rushed by.
“Colonel, Charlie, howdy! Just phoned Chicago. News folks here tomorrow breakfast! Museum folks by lunch! Glory Hallelujah for the Green Town Chamber of Commerce!”
The mayor ran off after the mob. An autumn cloud crossed the colonel’s face and settled around his mouth.
“End of Act One, Charlie. Start thinking fast. Act Two coming up. We do want this commotion to last forever, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir—”
“Crack your brain, boy. What does Uncle Wiggly say?”
“Uncle Wiggily says—ah—go back two hops?”
“Give the boy an A-plus, a gold star, and a brownie! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, eh?”
Charlie looked into the old man’s face and saw visitations of plagues there. “Yes, sir.”
The colonel watched the mob milling around the Post Office two blocks away. The fife and drum corps arrived and played some tune vaguely inclined toward the Egyptian.
“Sundown, Charlie,” whispered the colonel, eyes shut. “We make our final move.”
What a day it was! Years later people said: That was a day! The mayor went home and got dressed up and came back and made three speeches and held two parades, one going up Main Street toward the end of the trolley line, the other coming back, and Osiris Bubastis Rameses Amon-Ra-Tut at the center of both, smiling now to the right as gravity shifted his flimsy weight, and now to the left as they rounded a corner. The fife-and-drum corps, now heavily implemented by accumulated brass, had spent an hour drinking beer and learning the triumphal march from Aida and this they played so many times that mothers took their screaming babies into the house, and men retired to bars to soothe their nerves. There was talk of a third parade and a fourth speech, but sunset took the town unawares, and everyone, including Charlie, went home to a dinner mostly talk and short on eats.
By eight o’clock, Charlie and the colonel were driving along the leafy streets in the fine darkness, taking the air in the old man’s 1924 Moon, a car that took up trembling where the colonel left off.
“Where we going, colonel?”
“Well,” mused the colonel steering at ten philosophical miles per hour, nice and easy, “everyone, including your folks, is out at Grossett’s Meadow right now, right? Final Labor Day speeches. Someone’ll light the gasbag mayor and he’ll go up about forty feet, kee-rect? Fire department’ll be setting off the big skyrockets. Which means the post office, plus the mummy, plus the police chief sitting there with him, will be empty and vulnerable. Then, the miracle will happen, Charlie. It has to. Ask me why.”
“Why?”
“Glad you asked. Well, boy, folks from Chicago’ll be jumping off the train steps tomorrow hot and fresh as pancakes, with their pointy noses and glass eyes and microscopes. Those museum snoopers, plus the Associated Press, will rummage our Egyptian Pharaoh seven ways from Christmas and blow their fuse-boxes. That being so, Charles—”
“We’re on our way to mess around.”
“You put it indelicately, boy, but truth is at the core. Look at it this way, child, life is a magic show, or should be if people didn’t go to sleep on each other. Always leave folks with a bit of mystery, son. Now, before people get used to our ancient friend, before he wears out the wrong bath towel, like any smart weekend guest he should grab the next scheduled camel west. There!”
The post office stood silent, with one light shining in the foyer. Through the great window, they could see the sheriff seated alongside the mummy-on-display, neither of them talking, abandoned by the mobs that had gone for suppers and fireworks.
“Charlie.” The colonel brought forth a brown bag in which a mysterious liquid gurgled. “Give me thirty-five minutes to mellow the sheriff down. Then you creep in, listen, follow my cues, and work the miracle. Here goes nothing!”
And the colonel stole away.
Beyond town, the mayor sat down and the fireworks went up.
Charlie stood on top of the Moon and watched them for half an hour. Then, figuring the mellowing time was over, dogtrotted across the street and moused himself into the post office to stand in the shadows.
“Well, now,” the colonel was saying, seated between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the sheriff, “why don’t you just finish that bottle, sir?”
“It’s finished,” said the sheriff and obeyed.
The colonel leaned forward in the half-light and peered at the gold amulet on the mummy’s breast. “You believe them old sayings?”
“What old sayings?” asked the sheriff.
“If you read them hieroglyphics out loud, the mummy comes alive and walks.”
“Horse radish,” said the sheriff.
“Just look at all those fancy Egyptian symbols!” the colonel pursued.
“Someone stole my glasses. You read that stuff to me,” said the sheriff. “Make the fool mummy walk.”
Charlie took this as a signal to move, himself, and sidled around through the shadows, closer to the Egyptian king.
“Here goes.” The colonel bent even closer to the Pharaoh’s amulet, meanwhile slipping the sheriff’s glasses out of his cupped hand into his side-pocket. “First symbol on here is a hawk. Second one’s a jackal. That third’s an owl. Fourth’s a yellow fox-eye—”
“Continue,” said the sheriff.
The colonel did so, and his voice rose and fell, and the sheriff’s head nodded, and all the Egyptian pictures and words flowed and touched around the mummy until at last the colonel gave a great gasp.
“Good grief, sheriff, look!”
The sheriff blinked both eyes wide.
“The mummy,” said the colonel. “It’s going for a walk!”
“Can’t be!” cried the sheriff. “Can’t be!”
“Is,” said a voice, somewhere, maybe the Pharaoh under his breath. And the mummy lifted up, suspended, and drifted toward the door.
“Why,” cried the sheriff, tears in his eyes. “I think he might just—fly!”
“I’d better follow and bring him back,” said the colonel.
“Do that!” said the sheriff.
The mummy was gone. The colonel ran. The door slammed.
“Oh, dear.” The sheriff lifted and shook the bottle. “Empty.”
They steamed to a halt out front of Charlie’s house.
“Your folks ever go up in your attic, boy?”
“Too small. They poke me up to rummage.”
“Good. Hoist our ancient Egyptian friend out of the back seat there, don’t weigh much, twenty pounds at the most, you carried him fine, Charlie. Oh, that was a sight, you running out of the post office, making the mummy walk. You shoulda seen the sheriffs face!”
?
??I hope he don’t get in trouble because of this.”
“Oh, hell bump his head and make up a fine story. Can’t very well admit he saw the mummy go for a walk, can he? Hell think of something, organize a posse, you’ll see. But right now, son, get our ancient friend here up, hide him good, visit him weekly. Feed him night talk. Then, thirty, forty years from now—”
“What?” asked Charlie.
“In a bad year so brimmed up with boredom it drips out your ears, when the town’s long forgotten this first arrival and departure, on a morning, I say, when you lie in bed and don’t want to get up, don’t even want to twitch your ears or blink, you’re so damned bored…Well, on that morning, Charlie, you just climb up in your rummage-sale attic and shake this mummy out of bed, toss him in a cornfield and watch new hellfire mobs break loose. Life starts over that hour, that day, for you, the town, everyone. Now grab git, and hide, boy!”
“I hate for the night to be over,” said Charlie, very quietly. “Can’t we go around a few blocks and finish off some lemonade on your porch. And have him come, too.”
“Lemonade it is.” Colonel Stonesteel banged his heel on the car-floor. The car exploded into life. “For the lost king and the Pharaoh’s son!”
It was late on Labor Day evening, and the two of them sat on the colonel’s front porch again, rocking up a fair breeze, lemonades in hand, ice in mouth, sucking the sweet savor of the night’s incredible adventures.
“Boy,” said Charlie. “I can just see tomorrow’s Clarion headlines: priceless mummy kidnapped. rameses-tut VANISHES. GREAT FIND GONE. REWARD OFFERED. SHERIFF NONPLUSSED. BLACKMAIl EXPECTED.”
“Talk on, boy. You do have a way with words.”
“Learned from you, colonel. Now it’s your turn.”
“What do you want me to say, boy?”
“About the mummy. What he really is. What he’s truly made of. Where he came from. What’s he mean... ?”
“Why, boy, you were there, you helped, you saw—”
Charles looked at the old man steadily.
“No.” A long breath. “Tell me, colonel.”
The old man rose to stand in the shadows between the two rocking chairs. He reached out to touch their ancient harvest-tobacco dried-up-Nile-River-bottom old-time masterpiece, which leaned against the porch slattings.