Threadbare- The Traveling Show

by Alexandra DeMers

  “An act. She was pretending, just like that dish was trying to misdirect me with her feminine wiles and that French kid pretended to be a gimpy mook.” Carver paused and raised a quizzical eyebrow at Norton. “You didn’t actually buy that bunk, did you?”

  “Well, I thought that—”

  “Oh, dear!” The Inquestor’s face fell. “You did! Well, that’s a real shame. I’ll have to wire IHQ in the morning and let them know not to expect you at the testing center.”

  “Sir?” Norton’s eye twitched.

  “If you can’t see through a few smart-assed teenagers, then I cannot in good faith give someone like you my endorsement. You don’t need to pass any exam if all you want to do is beat up girls, freaks, and foreigners in public. You’re better off staying with the police.”

  “I will take the exam with or without your endorsement,” Norton tried to keep his voice level. “I don’t know how a nancing, off-the-cob... buffoon like you managed to pass it, but I have what it takes to wear the black and then some!”

  “Listen here, jackass.” Carver cast the newspaper aside in anger. “You can forget about the black. You can forget about the exam, because the only way you’re ever going to see IHQ is in a Nieuwestad travel brochure. I’m blacklisting you!”

  Norton blanched, and for a while the only sound in the cafe was the ticking wall clock and the gurgling coffee machine. His stunned silence didn’t last, however, and Norton’s anger soon seethed up and boiled out of control.

  “If you don't get that girl,” he snarled. “If you don't call the local blues and round up every last one of those freaks tonight, I will do it myself. I will show you how inquestors are supposed to handle traitors! Five minutes with me, and that scrawny brat will spill everything she knows about the rebels! The only red left in this town will be their blood all over those stupid trailers!” Spit flying, he bellowed, “I will get results!”

  Norton tried to stare Carver down, but the Inquestor wouldn’t engage him. He only regarded him with mild irritation until Lily returned with the coffee. Carver brightened when she refilled the cups, and he caught her wrist before she could bolt behind the counter again.

  “Thank you, Lily.” He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “Earlier you mentioned pie. Could you please bring us a slice? I bet pie would cheer up my friend here while we work out a couple of little gripes.”

  She nodded, and after hesitating a moment longer, he released her.

  Lily pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen. Once she managed to unlock the cooler, she scanned their stock and tried to guess what flavor the Inquestor would like.

  Red. He’s probably a cherry kind of guy.

  She cut him a generous slice from an unopened box and crowned it with a dollop of whipped cream. Satisfied with her charming presentation, she set the plates on a serving tray and backed through the double doors into the dining room again.

  The sight before her made Lily drop both plates in horror. Blood was splattered across the booth and running down the front window. Carver smashed Norton’s face with the handle of his 1911 again and again, and each blow whittled away at Norton’s ability to resist.

  “‘Nancing?’” the Inquestor cried. “‘Off the cob?’ I’ll show you ‘off the cob!’” Casting the sticky weapon aside, he pounced over the table and caught Norton in a chokehold. Norton kicked and groped at the Inquestor as the last of his life was slowly crushed out of him. With a final jerk, Carver snapped his neck.

  Carver met Lily’s eyes in the reflection of the front window. He spun to face her and let Norton's body fall in a crumpled heap to the floor.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” he said, smiling apologetically. He straightening his blood-soaked jacket, picked up his pistol, and stalked towards her. “And I’m very sorry you had to see that.”

  Deep within the Nieuwestad Prison of War Criminals in a mostly vacant block, a man named John Merchant dug into the wall beneath his bunk. John was a slight, bookish man with a neatly groomed beard and presently, he was the cell’s only occupant. Almost every prisoner, except for those captured with Cleo in the last big bust, had been taken to the city square the day before. As he scratched at the wall with a rudimentary pick, John tried not to think about how much time he had left before he made that trip himself.

  He wiggled out from beneath the bunk and crouched to examine his work. Hours of careful, quiet digging resulted in a hole the size of a soup can. When he replaced the cement wall-front, the hiding place was nearly invisible. Using his hands, he swept the leftover crumbled concrete into his hat and got to his feet with a stretch. He hid his pick inside his bed frame and left the cell carrying his hat in his pocket and a large book under his arm.

  John kept his head down while he walked briskly down the echoing corridor. There weren’t many guards in the near-empty D-block, but John knew that it was best not to make eye-contact with one. They could give him a beating if they thought he looked threatening. Then again, they could beat him if they thought he was hiding something, too.

  Predictably, the guard on duty shouted at him. “Merchant! What are you up to?”

  “Library, sir,” he said clearly, raising the book but not his eyes.

  “That book too long for you?”

  “Dumas was known for his adventures but not for his brevity, sir,” he replied with a wry smile. “I was hoping they had that book of dirty poetry in ‘cause I got my name on the waitlist.”

  The guard laughed and flipped his newspaper to the funny pages.

  Located in the main corridor between blocks, the library was once no more than a broom closet. Over time, the prisoners had organized the space to hold the growing collection of books left behind by their predecessors. It was run on an honor system, and people had taken to writing their names on the inside cover of the books they borrowed as a way to leave their mark. Some of the more popular titles had names on both covers with lists stretching into the beginning chapters.

  John opened the heavy tome to add his own name, and he found something curious. There was only one name written in sloppy blue ink, followed by a row of tally marks that stretched across the title page like a multi-colored picket fence. At first he was confused. Had one person really read this book over a hundred times? He wondered if he knew the book’s original owner when he realized that the sloppy name was “Edmund Dantès.”

  John sighed. He left his mark, a solitary graphite slash, before he replaced the old book and retrieved the one he wanted.

  The NAR wanted people to believe that this prison held the nation’s worst traitors, thieves, and murderers, but John saw something else entirely. Taking the upper levels back to his own block, he saw a typical American community where men and women carried on as best they could until their time was up. In one cell, a man read the sports highlights aloud to his roommates. In the next, a husband and wife sat together on the bottom bunk, staring at a photograph in their hands. In another, a group of women set each other’s hair with strips of a torn bed sheet and gossiped about a man with a reputation. Of course there were a few real criminals among them, but John knew if he took a sample of the crimes these people were going to die for, he would find such offenses as “possession of illicit diversions” and “agricultural larceny” before he found treason or murder.

  John stopped to visit a friend who lived at the end of the row, and he found him playing cards with his cellmates.

  “Hey, Dick!” John called out. Dick was a serious, sturdy man who farmed before he served in the army, and he was imprisoned for using both of his skill sets outside of the NAR’s permission. Ignoring Dick’s scowl, John looped one arm through the bars and thumbed the worn pages to the first poem. “I just got the book of dirty prose. What do you think of this? ‘Come slowly— Eden, Lips unused to thee— Bashful— sip thy jasmines— As the fainting bee—’”

  Irritated, Dick reached beneath his bunk and threw something at him. “Get out of here with that filth, John! Don't you know
I've been saved?”

  John caught the coil of scrap-wire and apologized. “Oh, right. Sorry, pal. See you at the mess hall later?”

  Dick nodded and returned to his game.

  John went down to the lower levels and found another friend, Mel, daydreaming on his bunk and picking his teeth with a splintered matchstick. A firefighter pre-war, somebody thought it would be funny to issue him a flamethrower when he was drafted. Before he was arrested, Mel was the one Cleo called on after a storehouse was emptied or a replacement home was liberated so that those buildings could never be used again.

  “Mel, you wanna hear something that'll make you blush?” John waved the book at him, getting his attention with one of the racy illustrations. “'As I would free the white almond from the green husk, so I would strip your trappings off, Beloved. And fingering the smooth and polished kernel, I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting.'”

  “Trap-stripping, you say?” Mel sat up and took the book from John. He scanned the poem and returned it with a grin on his face. “I’m going to have to check that one out after you.”

  “Good luck,” John answered dismally. “The waitlist is months long. I get the feeling we’ll have all taken the last tour bus to Nieuwestad by then.”

  He opened his book as he walked away, and two paper clips and safety pin slid into his waiting palm.

  John met his third friend, Bob, on his way to the yard with a group of others. “Hiya, Bob. Going outside?” he asked pleasantly. “Take my hat. It’s warm out.”

  “Want to come out with us?” Bob casually pocketed the hat filled with chipped concrete. “I hear it’s awfully lonesome up in D-block these days.”

  “Not today. I’ve got a new book.”

  “What is it?” Bob asked with feigned interest. While men like Mel and Dick served on the ground during the war, Bob was an ex-administrator. Before that, he taught classic literature and had his name on nearly every book in their broom-closet library already.

  “You've read the Bible, right?” John said.

  “You're funny, John. Ma couldn't drag me to church.”

  John rolled his eyes. Apparently Bob had an appreciation for theatrics as well. Surrounded by prying eyes and suspicious ears, John didn’t think this was the appropriate time for improvisation, but he had no choice but to play along.

  “I bet you wish you had. Listen to this! Song of Solomon.” John read the passage with exuberance, but when he looked up to gauge reactions, he saw only looks of confusion.

  Bob scratched his head. “‘Strengthen me with raisins?’ What does that even mean?”

  “It's supposed to be dirty,” John said. “Looks like your ma couldn't drag you to school either.” Bob punched him in the shoulder, and John felt the heft of a wooden spool fall into the breast pocket of his red jumpsuit.

  Just then, a group of guards came storming up to them with their nightsticks drawn. “No congregating in the corridor,” one barked like the red Cerberus insignia on his shoulder. He grabbed John forcefully by the collar. “You there! What’ve you got?”

  “A book, sir.”

  “What book? Read it!”

  John opened a page at random and came upon a poem that fortunately didn't take much imagination for everyone present to interpret, especially not with the accompanying illustration.

  “I'll be confiscating that.” The guard snatched the book away. “Get back to your own block immediately.”

  John retreated to his cell, shaking from the thrill of nearly being caught. After all, he had what he was really after.

  Later that night, hours after lights-out had been called, John laid quietly in his bunk. When he heard footsteps echoing through the empty hall, he rolled onto his side and pretended to sleep while he watched the door.

  “You up?” Mel whispered. The silhouette of Dick and Bob appeared behind him.

  “Yeah.” John moved to the floor and the others joined him in a circle, sitting cross-legged. “I got it done, too. How about some light?”

  Dick took out a small tobacco tin that had been filled with grease. A wick protruded from the top and Mel lit it with a match, setting the tiny lamp in the center of their circle. John crawled under his bed and went to retrieve what he had been hiding in the hole in his wall.

  To an untrained eye, what he brought out looked like a pile of junk tacked to a scrap of wood. To these men, each war veterans and now imprisoned freedom-fighters, this was a foxhole radio.

  “Does it work?” Dick asked.

  “Of course it works,” John snapped. “I wouldn't risk us all getting shot if it didn't.”

  “What do you think it's gonna be? Music or news?” Bob asked, leaning back on his hands. “My money's on music. DJMA loves him some swing.”

  “It had better be news,” Dick grumbled. “Or what's the point?”

  John connected a few loose wires, and then ever so faintly, they could hear static through the tin can speaker. They leaned in so close that they were nearly touching heads while John searched for the right signal.

  “I knew this was a waste of time,” Dick lamented after several minutes of fruitless static. “It doesn’t work.”

  “We couldn’t hear anything over your bellyaching anyway,” Mel hissed. “John knows radios. If we can’t get a signal, it’s probably because DJMA threw a fit up at the station and broke something.”

  “Thank you,” John said appreciatively and resumed his search. Smiles broke out on all of their faces when the small device finally picked up a bubbly clarinet solo on the rebel's pirate radio station.

  “Ha! Music! I called it,” Bob exclaimed, and the others shushed him.

  They listened to the big band record in silence, tapping their fingers in time. For some, the music reminded them of nights after a successful raid when Marc Antony would sling record after hot record, Cleo would dance, and they’d all feast on the spoils of a busted storehouse. For others, it reminded them of simpler times before the war. Whatever memories it stirred up, it carried them away from the prison where release was synonymous with death. For those few, short, happy minutes, they were free.

  “Here he comes,” John whispered when the song concluded. “Finally.”

  “Hello, ladies, gentlemen, boys, and girls,” DJMA cried with exuberance. “Rebels, freedom-fighters, disgruntled citizens, and the true-blue bozos trying to figure out where I am and how to decode my secret messages. Et-gay offay ai-may ashun-stay! I don't want to talk to you.”

  The prisoners chuckled. It felt good to hear their old comrade’s voice again.

  “Good evening! I’m DJMA, or Marc Antony for those of you tuning in for the first time. That record I just played for you was one of my personal favorites. It's lost its sleeve and label, though, so I can't tell you for certain what it was called or who played it. See, that's the problem with the world these days. I wanna get some good tunes, I gotta get 'em from a man who's been hiding 'em in his outhouse and used the sleeves for kindling years ago.

  “I oughtta name this record before it’s lost to history. Yup, I’m gonna do that right now. Here's a bit of tape. Here's a marker. I think it’s called, ‘Rhythm on the Radio’ and the fella who sings it… golly, his name is right on the tip of my tongue. If I had a phone you could call, I'd give you my number so you could tell me what that song really was. Heck, if I gave out my number on the air, those blue bastards would be keeping the operators up all night trying to chat with yours truly.

  “There's only one person I want calling me right now, and that's this doll I met in my travels last week. She was as cute as a button! I played up my best traits like my handsomeness, my singleness, and my popularity, but I don’t think she bought it. It’s so hard to meet nice girls when the blacks-and-blues keep sending all the free ones to replacement homes. How’s a guy like me ever going to get some company up here? This station gets awfully lonely, especially without Cleo around. Somebody cheer me up and call this number. It's the President of the New American Repu
blic, Alexander Fairchild's personal phone number. Dial it up now.”

  “D'you think it's really the President's number?” Bob whispered.

  As if he had heard him, DJMA shouted, “It really is his number! One of my fans up in Nieuwestad sent it to me. I tried it out the other day and managed to get ahold of Fairchild himself! Well, I just left a message with Old Alf for his wife. I told him to thank her for the lovely, romantic evening we shared, eating cheeseburgers and smashing mailboxes in a stolen Interceptor. I was hoping for an intimate tour of the presidential palace, but Alf needed a bedtime story so we had to cut the good times short. If you’re listening, Gertie-Baby, do Marky a favor and drop in on the salon before our next date. Your moustache is impressive for a lady, but when we kiss it sure tickles something fierce.”

  Everyone was grinning and biting their tongues to stay silent, but poor Mel was nearly smothering himself to keep his laughter in control.

  “But you're not here to listen to me brag about my prank calls. You want some news! I know my paper is around here somewhere, but this place is such a mess. I really need a lady up here. This station isn’t the only thing that could use a feminine touch. Ah, here’s my paper. Today’s edition of the NAR Globe was hiding under my coffee. Here we go. It says... 'aircraft carrier sinks, all crew aboard presumed dead.' Wow, that's a big one! Was it our aircraft carrier? Yup. Sure was. The NARS Vulcan. Says here she was coming back from Europe and lost communications in the middle of the night. She was presumed missing until a fishing boat came across her wreckage. Now I don't know much about boats, but aircraft carriers are supposed to be the biggest, toughest floaters out there, right? I mean, you'd need a gun the size of the Fourteenth Street-Canarsie Line to make a dent in it, right? Well, the fine journalists at the Globe think it was Tall-Me!

  “Oh, that Tall-Me! What a card! They say he’s derailed trains, robbed banks, slaughtered countless NAR police forces, and now they say he's wrecking aircraft carriers? Does he have the kraken at his command? I suppose now he's got his own fleet of haunted pirate ships that just appear when his enemies need vanquishing? How does one little man, with maybe a couple of his red buddies tagging along, take out an aircraft carrier when he's busy raiding storehouses and liberating replacement homes here on dry land? Why are you so quick to accuse him, Globe, but you won’t consider that maybe, just maybe, it’s one of the many European nations we’ve pissed off? England? France? Germany, maybe? I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t appreciate it if I caught my supposed allies two-timing me. There are too many unanswered questions here, Globe. You need to brush up on your reporting. You wants some tips on journalism? Call me. Or don't. I don't have a phone.