by Matt Ruff
“Don’t lose any sleep over them, Luther,” Blackjack advised. “They deserved what they got. And this way you don’t have to worry about fighting them.”
Still Luther made no reply. He crawled under the tarpaulin and did not speak again for several hours. The truck rolled on, passing through a short tunnel at the edge of town and beginning a long ascent out of the valley.
They were back on the road to Heaven.
THE RIDE OF THE BOHEMIANS
I.
If some peace-loving millionaire were someday to sponsor a search for the quietest quiet little town in all Pennsylvania, one of the runners-up in the competition would almost certainly be the town of Auk. (The winner of such a competition would, without question, be Thanatos. Officially incorporated in 1892, Thanatos, which is located thirteen miles outside of Scranton, is literally a graveyard. The town’s one living resident is Desmond Emery Sargtrager, a groundskeeper, and he does not even snore.)
Though Auk can never hope to surpass the perfect serenity of Thanatos, on a good day it comes very close. No major highways pass within ten miles of it; the surrounding countryside is plain Pennsylvania forest, without a single cave, ski slope, waterfall, or other potential tourist attraction. The sole industry is the manufacture of jigsaw puzzles, surely one of the world’s less action-packed businesses. Perhaps the finest demonstration of Auk’s peaceful nature, however, came during the town’s hundredth anniversary, which was celebrated in a calm and orderly fashion just a few years before the time of this story. There were no fireworks, no marching bands or parades, and only one speech, which lasted for exactly two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, making it shorter than the average FM pop tune.
While outsiders might consider this a boring state of affairs, the people of Auk—many of them senior citizens or at least middle-aged—are quite content with their lives. They need no change of pace, thank you very much, and if they feel a need for high adventure they can always subscribe to cable television, which has been available for some months now.
But nobody ever gets what they want, not all the time. Two days after Luther and Blackjack had their run-in with Dragon, the town of Auk received a century’s worth of excitement in the space of two hours. It was an event that Auk’s citizens still talk about—and fear the repetition of—to this very day.
The incident was born out of a mad tea partier’s recipe of travelers who arrived in Auk one after the other, like succeeding waves of an assault group: three hunters, two bear cubs, four nuns in a renovated limousine, one full-grown bear, seven and a half refugees from a Rhode Island motorcycle gang war, and two vacationing Methodists, one of whom was suffering from hemorrhoids.
And, caught right in the middle of things, Cornell University’s self-appointed guardians of non-conformity.
The Bohemians.
II.
For Jed Cyrus, the town Constable, it started out a very ordinary day. He woke up promptly at 6:00 A.M., showered, shaved, dressed, kissed his wife on the right cheek as she continued to sleep, and left the house at precisely 6:20. He walked up Cherville Drive, one of Auk’s four side roads, until he reached Main Street and turned left toward the center of town. That was at 6:25. If things had continued on in the usual way, he would have stopped at the Canterbury Café at 6:30, spent fifteen minutes sipping lazily at a cup of black coffee—he always drank half of it and threw the rest away—and then gone on to the station house to begin the morning’s paperwork at 6:55.
The first sign that things were not going to go so routinely came when, during his walk down Main Street, Constable Cyrus got a pebble in one of his boots. They were tight-fitting boots, snug and comfy, and how a pebble ever managed to get into one of them was something of a mystery, but it lodged itself behind his heel and became impossible to ignore. By the time he removed it and got his boot back on, he was two minutes late to the Canterbury.
A small thing, you might think, and of course you’d be right. But later, when they were cleaning up the debris, Constable Cyrus’ mind kept going back to the pebble and wondering if it hadn’t been some sort of omen, a warning to turn around and go back home to bed.
Jankin Badewanne and his wife Alison, Auk’s most elderly—and earliest-rising—couple, were playing checkers on the porch in front of the Canterbury Café when the Constable arrived.
Morning, Jed,” they said in unison, without looking up. The Constable tipped his hat to them, as he did every morning, and then paused on the porch steps. He took a quick look up and down Main Street to make sure that none of the buildings had disappeared overnight. None of them had, not even Farrell’s Bar and Grill, which always looked ready to blow away at a moment’s notice. Satisfied, he tipped his hat to Jankin and Alison one more time and went into the Café.
The big clock that hung behind the counter read 6:32 as he came in. Perry Bailey, the proprieter took one look at the Constable and hurriedly set the clock back two minutes.
“Morning, Jed,” said Bailey, handing him a ready-made black coffee. Constable Cyrus gave him thirty cents and a tip of his hat. Then he went over to a table by the front window and sat down. He sipped his coffee contentedly, thinking that this was surely one of the nicest parts of his day.
The hunters showed up five minutes later, and the Decadents were not far behind.
III.
The Risley Hall Bohemians had left their summer lodgings in SoHo just over a week ago, crossing New Jersey along the back roads and cutting through Northeastern Pennsylvania on their way to Binghamton, New York. At present there were only six of them on the move, but their number would triple once they reached Binghamton, and quintuple by the time they finally rode into Ithaca.
The temperature had been cool for a summer week, which was fine with them. A Bohemian’s clothing is important, and the hint of fall in the air had allowed them to wear their longcoats comfortably during the journey, at least during the early and evening hours of the day. They made a colorful procession coming into Auk.
Lion-Heart, the reigning King of Bohemia, rode in front on a magnificent black stallion whose mane had been clipped in Mohawk fashion and dyed bright purple. The horse was a certified Thoroughbred, foaled in England, but Lion-Heart himself was much more difficult to classify. Due to an extremely liberal-minded set of ancestors, he had genes and features from just about every race on earth: dark brown skin, tight-curled red hair that he kept very short except for a single long braid-tail in back, green, almond-shaped eyes, sharp nose, thin lips, narrow jaw, and long, well-muscled arms and legs that were almost hairless. He was not handsome by any usual standard, but he was so refreshingly different that this went unnoticed. As befitted his status as King, his longcoat was as purple as his horse’s mane.
Myoko and Fujiko, the Grey Ladies, rode beside Lion-Heart on horses that were no less magnificent than his. Both women were mixed Asian, but while Fujiko was small and wore her red-tinged hair trimmed above the ears, Myoko stood near six feet and had hair cascading like black midnight halfway down her back. Their longcoats, naturally enough, were grey.
Ragnarok, the Bohemian Minister of Defense, and Preacher, the Bohemian Minister of Ministry, rode side by side behind the Ladies. Ragnarok,
blond and light-skinned, was the only Bohemian not mounted on a horse. He drove a jet black motorcycle instead, patiently keeping pace with the others; he wore a black vinyl trenchcoat and dark sunglasses, even at this early hour when the sun was barely above the trees. Preacher, a tall, heavy-set black, wore a white longcoat and rode a white stallion.
Z.Z. Top, the Minister of Bad Taste, was a study in soiled leather. Bringing up the rear on a grumpy burro (a San Diego Padres baseball cap had somehow been affixed to the animal’s head, which did not improve its temper; neither did the personalized plastic Disneyland license plate—CHICO 69—dangling from its tail), he looked like the cloned offspring of James Dean and Fidel Castro after a quick trip through a garbage disposal. He gave the impression of seldom having bathed in his lifetime, a
nd this impression was not incorrect. One of the Great Unwashed, the Top had filled his saddlebags with can upon can of the most loathsome beer money could buy: Black Label Light, Iron City, Utica Club. God bless this swill. He was kind to children, though.
The Bohemians entered the Auk town limits at about half past six. They had been on the move since four that morning, hoping to cross the border into New York by mid-afternoon. A quick breakfast was first in order, however, and as they moved through the still-sleepy town they kept an eye out for a restaurant or Café.
By the time they found the Canterbury, the mad tea party had already begun.
IV.
At 6:35, Constable jed Cyrus was still sipping his coffee, but he had stopped thinking how this was one of the nicest parts of his day. Instead, he stared out the window of the Canterbury Café at the three men who had pulled up in front of Wayne’s Texaco, wondering if he ought to go and arrest them. Crises of responsibility like this one always gave him an upset stomach; he could feel the coffee turning to acid already.
The three men—hunters, by the outfits they wore—looked both ugly and stupid enough to have been children of incest. They stood in front of the gas station, scratching their heads in puzzlement. Every so often one of them would reach inside the pickup truck they’d come in and honk the horn for service. Apparently they hadn’t bothered to read the five-foot-high sign that said WAYNE’S TEXACO / OPEN 8 A.M. to 10 P.M.
The Constable couldn’t have cared less about their dubious parentage or their lack of intelligence. These things were not crimes, at least not the sort that you made arrests for. What did bother him was the makeshift steel cage trailer that the hunters had attached to the back of their pickup. There were two live bear cubs in it. Now Constable Cyrus was no hunter, and not terribly familiar with the latest gaming regulations, but he felt reasonably certain that late August was not bear season. Even if it was, he had a sneaking suspicion that capturing live cubs might not be legal.
He was weighing the moral consequences of simply letting them go, letting the police in the next town take care of the arrest and the associated paperwork, when his morning suffered a further bad turn. All at once the air was filled with the buzz of approaching motorcycles, and the three ugly hunters looked around as a pack of even more unsavory men on Harley machines rode into view.
Constable Cyrus had never seen a bike gang outside of the movies before, and was not overjoyed to have this status quo revoked. They were not Hell’s Angels, but looked relatively fearsome all the same—shoulder patches on their leather jackets identified them as THE RHODE ISLAND DECADENTS. Constable Cyrus did not ask himself what such people were doing out of New England; he was too busy trying to keep his knees from knocking.
The bikers numbered seven. In the grand scheme of things their true names are unimportant—call them Sleepy, Sneezy, Sleazy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, and Doc (a further patch on Doc’s jacket proclaimed him DUKE OF THE DECADENTS). Ravenous after an all-night ride, they drew up in front of the Canterbury, their grit-spattered Harleys the most menacing vehicles Constable Cyrus had ever laid eyes on. A sidecar was attached to Sleazy’s bike, and in it rode a bound trunk topped with a funeral wreath. Scrawled on the trunk’s side was the epitaph: FRED—NO BRAKES, TOUGH SHAKES.
As the Decadents hopped up onto the Café porch, the Constable took a moment to mourn the fact that he was not carrying his revolver. In truth, the weapon had been left locked in his desk drawer at the station house since he had first taken office ten years ago. He wasn’t sure he would have had the courage to use it anyway, but at this point in time it would have made him feel a lot better.
“Hey, hey,” said Sleazy, stepping up beside Jankin and Alison Badewanne as they continued to play checkers. He snatched a black piece off the board and bit it neatly in two, spitting the checker halves into the street. Both Badewannes looked up angrily, saw the tire chain Sleazy held coiled in his right hand, and said nothing.
“Hey, hey,” said Grumpy as he slammed open the Café doors and strode inside. The sight of Constable Cyrus brought him up short.
“Hey, hey,” said Duke Doc, joining Grumpy. At this point Constable Cyrus made the great mistake of standing up; Doc noticed immediately that he wore no sidearm and began to smile.
“Hey, hey,” Doc repeated, bringing out a switchblade and pressing the stud. Eight inches of steel sprang forth, gleaming dully. “Good morning, officer.” In contrast to the weapon his voice was polite, almost cultured.
Perry Bailey stood frozen behind the counter, praying silently that he would be ignored. The Constable swayed a little on his feet, and sputtered: “I . . . I . . .”
“What’s that?” Doc asked, running his fingers lovingly over the knife blade.
“I . . . c-c-could . . .”
“Please, sir,” said Sleazy, stepping into the Café with the tire chain wrapped around his fist. “Please speak up.”
“I-I-I-I . . .”
The other four Decadents crowded inside, weapons out.
“Officer?” asked one of them. “What are you trying to say?”
The Constable pursed his lips, and with great effort shouted at them: “I could have stayed home this morning!"
That said, he fainted dead away.
“What a shame,” Grumpy sighed. “No spine.”
“Fucking tragedy,” Sleazy agreed.
“Tell us,” asked Doc, glancing over at Perry Bailey. “Does he always collapse under strain?”
Perry Bailey began to do some stuttering of his own, but he was spared a fainting spell by the passing of the four previously mentioned nuns in the limousine. Like the pebble in the Constable’s boot, the nuns were nothing spectacular—they drove straight through Auk without stopping, looking somewhat out of place in the big car, which had been donated to their convent by a rich miller in the hopes that God would forgive him his wealth—but they did have some small effect on the course of events.
The Decadents moved back out on the porch to watch the nuns go by. They waved, and one of the nuns waved back, giving them a quick blessing out the car window. Then, as the bikers watched the progress of the limo up the street, their collective gaze was drawn for the first time to the Texaco station, the hunters, the pickup truck, and, most interesting of all, the bear cubs in the steel cage trailer.
Doc took one look at the cubs and forgot all about Perry Bailey and the unconscious Constable.
“Hey, hey,” he said softly.
V.
The street outside the Canterbury was soon littered with broken glass. When the Decadents first advanced on the Texaco station, one of the hunters foolishly reached into the cab of the pickup for a shotgun. Four bikers disarmed him and knocked him senseless. Grumpy went running up the street shooting out windows; when the last shell had been fired, he tossed the empty shotgun through the glass front of Farrell’s Bar and Grill, demolishing a neon sign that foretold THE BUD SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.
“Where’d you get the cubs?” Doc asked one of the two hunters who were still standing.
“It was Fred’s idea!” the hunter said fearfully, pointing at his fallen companion.
“Fred?” Doc smiled, and looked affectionately over his shoulder at the trunk in the cycle sidecar. “Fred, meet Fred.”
“He said we could sell ‘em!” the hunter babbled on, his eyes wide. “We found out where they lived, tracked them to this cave, and Fred, he had a what-do-you-call, a trankilizer gun—”
“A trankilizer gun,” Doc repeated.
“A trankilizer gun,” echoed the other Decadents in unison.
“We knocked ‘em out,” the hunter continued. “Knocked those cubs right out. But it was dark as hell, and they were awful heavy carryin’ back to the trailer. And then the mother bear showed up . . .”
“The mother bear,” said Doc.
“The mother bear,” echoed the Decadents.
“Yeah . . . yeah, the mother bear. She showed up, but we got away with the cubs anyhow and shit mister a
re you gonna kill us or what?”
“We’ll see,” Doc replied. “Pick up Fred here and get into the middle of the street, please.”
“W-what?”
“Get into the middle of the street. Both of you. And Fred.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the two hunters lifted up Fred and dragged him into the middle of the street with them. Four Decadents mounted their cycles and began circling the hunters like sharks. Sleazy and Bashful jumped up on the back of the trailer and began yanking on the triple-padlocked door of the steel cage. One of the cubs stuck a paw out at them and Sleazy whipped it back with his tire chain.
“Hey!” the wide-eyed hunter called to them, eager to do anything that might improve his chances of survival. “Hey, I got the keys to that if you want ‘em!”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sleazy said, continuing to yank at the door. All three padlocks were beginning to give.
Doc got back up on the Café porch to watch the festivities. This was the most fun he’d had since being chased out of Providence by the Firedrakes, a rival gang. Looking into the Café, he saw that the Constable was still out cold, though Perry Bailey was doing his best to revive him.
“Good” Doc said to himself. If the Constable was typical of the Auk citizenry, they should have at least another half hour before someone heard the commotion and got up enough courage to call the State Police. The bikers could be safely across the line into New York before the first trooper showed up.
The four Decadents Lightened their circle around the hunters. One cyclist broke formation entirely and cut down the middle, slapping the wide-eyed hunter lightly on the shoulder and getting a shriek out of him. Doc laughed at this, and as he did one of his thighs struck the Badewannes’ checker board. He suddenly realized that the two old folk were gone.
“Oh hell,” he said. They were nowhere in sight; it didn’t take a genius to guess what they’d gone to do. Breaking into a light sweat, Doc looked up the street, half expecting to see the State Police sneaking up on them. He saw the Bohemians instead, and they were somehow more disturbing.