“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never met Tall-Me in person, but if I did, I would like to shake this man's hand. If he did even half of the stuff he's accused of, well, that makes him a true American patriot in my book.
“What else is in the news today? Looks like we have battling headlines. The next one says ‘top rebel leader Cleo found entirely guilty. Public execution by firing squad scheduled for Freedom Festival.’”
DJMA paused. They could hear papers shuffling across his desk and a clatter, which might have been a falling coffee cup.
“Sorry, folks. I know that the number one rule of radio is no dead air, but this one's hitting me a little hard. Unlike Tall-Me, I know Cleo. We’ve been close for years. If she hadn’t insisted I stay at the station, I probably would have been captured with her and all of the others, too. She's one of the most... incredible women I have ever met. This picture they have of her is garbage. Probably manipulated. They made her look like this shriveled, weaselly little old lady. In reality, she is keen and lean. Her hair is beautiful— all soft and curly, like a giant, chocolate war-bonnet. She's got this beautiful dark voice and big beautiful eyes. I know, I said ‘beautiful’ a lot. I mean, that's why they called her Cleo. She was like the ancient queen with a commanding presence. That's why I go by Marc Antony now, too. She's got my heart, and I’d gladly die for her. I bet her whole crew feels the same way.
“You know, nobody else could shoot like her either. She had this gun, this humongous Sharps rifle of legend, that was nearly as tall as me, and she'd carry it around like a lady carries her purse. One time, I saw her shoot— hang on, I’m keeping that story to myself. You god-damned, dirty, blue bastards tuning in can keep guessing as to what exactly she's so good at shooting at. I'll give you a hint. You better keep your curtains shut!
“This next song I’m dedicating to Cleo. It's got some keen Egyptian themes in it, and you night-owls can really cut a rug to it, too.” There was a clinking of glass. “I’m pouring myself a special coffee now. Cheers, Cleo. Don't reach for your snake yet, and I won't fall on my sword. Hang in there, boss!”
John had only listened to the song’s introduction when his instincts alerted him to another presence. He looked over his shoulder and jumped a mile high when he saw a silhouette standing in the open doorway of his cell. Everyone scrambled to their feet.
Caroline Stewart laughed softly and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. “Easy, gentlemen. It’s only me.” She took a hand-rolled cigarette from her pocket, and Bob lifted his tin lamp with trembling hands to light it for her.
“Christ, Cleo.” John wiped the cold sweat from his brow. “I thought you were a guard.”
She exhaled, smoke swirling around her long, wild mane of dark hair, and the glow from her cigarette made her mischievous eyes shine orange. “A little bird told me you made another radio. I never want to miss a broadcast. What's the news?”
“The Globe’s reporting that Tall-Me sunk an aircraft carrier,” Dick informed her.
She listened to the quiet, tinny music coming from the scrap radio while she smoked. After a while she said, “This is a good song.”
“DJMA said it was for you. He read about your execution.”
“I hate that he's so worried about me,” Caroline purred. “But I am glad that he’s still free and working with the others to get us out.”
“You know this for certain, boss?”
“They must be.”
“So... you're not worried?” John tried to read her face, but the grease lamp and distant hall light were too dim.
“If Tall-Me is taking out aircraft carriers, then what's a little concrete prison wall? Even if he doesn't get us out…” She tapped her ash carelessly onto the floor. “At least our death will be celebrated with fireworks.”
The others regarded at her warily. “You seem optimistic.”
“I've been trying to be more positive. Somebody very dear to me always was.”
Mel suddenly remembered something. “Speaking of which, I saw this in the mailroom. It looked personal, so I snatched it up before it went to the screener.” He pulled a tightly folded envelope from inside his shoe. “Sorry if it's a little damp.”
Caroline shot a dual stream of smoke from her nostrils and quickly scanned the letter. Even in the darkness, the others could see the color drain from her face.
“Who's it from, boss?” Bob asked, leaning in. “Who would be crazy enough to write you and implicate themselves?”
Caroline swallowed the growing lump in her throat. “My daughter.”
“Your daughter?” John repeated. “But she was supposed to be taken care of.”
Her expression hardened with rage as she lit the letter with the end of her cigarette. “Get a message out to our friends. Somebody needs to find her before the inquestors do.”
Glorious soon proved to be exactly what the small traveling show needed; he was a performance genius with exceptional musical and technical talent. By the time they put on their next show, he completely rewired their stage lights so that they would run more efficiently, and he improvised catchy, new show music on a keyboard of his own invention. It was a fascinating little toy that he would hook up to a car battery and manipulate the buzzes, pops and whines into rhythms and melodies.
Glorious also had a genuine interest in the talents of others. Oftentimes he could be found watching the performers practice or shadowing René and Amandine while they worked, but the person who intrigued him most was the mysterious Sangria. He had seen her contortionist act, but he was far more curious about what she could do with her fiddle. He asked her to perform for him one morning, and she reluctantly agreed.
Unsurprisingly, she showed up hours after the appointed time. Glorious didn’t seem to mind that she kept him waiting. He sat on the tailgate of his truck, tinkering with the innards of an upright piano while he listened to René play the guitar. Amandine was nearby, testing her sewing machine on some scrap fabric, and she paused to watch the impromptu performance.
“I thought you would have given up by now,” the contortionist sniffed.
“Fat chance. I took the liberty of fetching your fiddle,” Glorious said, handing Sangria her battered case. “I'd still very much like to hear you play me something.”
Baffled, she demanded, “Play what?”
“Anything.”
Sangria heaved a sigh and bent to unpack her violin. She strummed the strings, tuned them, and applied a few strokes of rosin to her bow. “You want something off the cuff?” she asked stiffly, placing her instrument under her chin.
“Natch.” Glorious waved his hand at René. “Do that thing you were doing earlier, son. That thing with the rhythm.”
René nodded and struck chords in a rapid, jaunty succession.
“That sounds an awful lot like gypsy jazz,” Amandine said playfully, shaking a pair of scissors at him. “Somebody call the inquestors. We’ve got a reprobate among us.”
René strummed even louder, daring her to do something about it.
“Look at the brass on Monsieur Personne!” Glorious laughed. “Listen here! Did y’all know that during the Renaissance, the church tried to ban the tritone? They tried to ban harmony? This prohibition on jazz is the same thing. All of the inquestors in the country can’t stop the music, not if enough people want it.”
“That’s all fine and good,” Sangria grumbled. “But a history lesson isn’t going to help if an inquestor hears us now.”
“I hope an inquestor hears us now because I ain’t never seen one dance before.” He slapped René on the back and turned on his keyboard to add an electronic beat. “What I’ve got planned for the festival is gonna be harder and stronger than jazz. It’ll be faster and hotter than swing! But I’m just one man with a little electric music box. I got some really big dreams, and if I ever want to see those dreams come to life, I need some ingenuity, some creativity, and a little magic.”
Sangria rolled her eyes. “Sounds like what you really
need is a genie in a bottle.”
“Don’t need no genie. I got all of that and then some right here with y’all.”
“Well, then what do you need me for?”
“Every sundae needs a cherry on top. Every crown needs a jewel. What I need is a star for my show.” Glorious clasped his hands together in a theatrical plea. “So how about it, Miss G? Can you make my dreams come true?”
Sangria stared at the ground in silence. René continued to play, but after a while he glanced up at Glorious with doubt.
All at once, she launched into a complicated bariolage. Her whole body moved in time, twisting, bending, and even leaping to match the voice of every spontaneous note. Glorious gave a whoop as René changed the key. The challenge fired her up, so she sawed an even more elaborate flourish of notes across the strings.
Amandine stood slack-jawed at the performance before her. Sangria could dance as furiously as she played and her flexibility added a bizarre, spellbinding element to the display. Glorious wanted to see how far she could go. He turned the tempo up and watched as she started into a slow pirouette. She spun faster and faster until he cut off the beat, and Sangria performed a shocking death drop. She threw herself flat on her back and pulled a jagged, sustained tremolo up the neck of her violin.
At last, she dropped the instrument at her side and breathed hard.
“Now, that's cooking with gas!” Glorious cried, throwing his keyboard aside. “Miss Mandy, did you hear that? Did you see that?”
Amandine had frozen mid-stitch, bent over the table. She stood up with a laugh as soon as the surprise wore off. “Sangria, that was swell! I’ve never heard anything like that in my life!”
“Cat’s outta the bag, Miss G! Ain’t no turning back now!” Glorious leaped off of his tailgate and darted to Marmi's tent to tell her everything.
René offered a hand to help Sangria sit up. “Quelle surprise. You’re much better at that than I thought.”
“You think you know everything, but you don’t.” She warned him off with a swipe of her bow and noticed Coronado watching them from his truck.
The illusionist granted her a single nod and resumed feeding his doves.
The days that followed brought the group a little closer to Nieuwestad. It wasn’t the most direct route, and they made very slow progress, but the less time they spent on the road gave them more time to develop their show for the Freedom Festival. Coronado was relieved to split creative control with Glorious, but he was surprised when the electrician insisted that they also involve René, Nick Thatch, and Amandine in the process. He reasoned that if they really wanted to astound the cosmopolitan audience, they would need the most incredible visual display that their collective talents could conceive.
Nick had a background in engineering, so he was directed to design a portable set that could incorporate moving parts that René was responsible for constructing. Once Coronado and Glorious had chosen themes for each act, Amandine was given control over the aesthetic.
While the others were able to work immediately, scavenging supplies and equipment from dumps, junkyards, and abandoned buildings, Amandine was left with only her ideas. She offered to scavenge with them, but Glorious said that if there was any place they should not cut corners, it was in the costumes. René agreed; he never came across satin or rhinestones at the dump anyway.
One dusty, dry afternoon, René went searching for Amandine and the twins pointed him towards the stream beyond the trailers. He found clotheslines stretched out in the sun, and he ducked past the swaying bedsheets and trousers towards the tinkling sounds of laughter. Amandine, Margaret, and May were at the washtub beside the water, sitting on stools in the shade. René was about to call out, but his voice caught at the sight of her.
Amandine’s yellow dress was pinned up so that she could straddle the washtub and her hair was tied up beneath a blue scrap scarf. She sang a swing tune with Margaret, one with a chaka-chaka rhythm that they used to guide their scrubbing. “Scrub me, mama, to the boogie beat,” they sang and burst out laughing. René couldn't help laughing too. Amandine was so vibrant, so healthy, and so different from the frail thing he met at the bakery.
May was the only one who noticed him standing amongst the colorful, drying saris. The dancer raised an inquisitive eyebrow when he didn’t announce himself, but as usual, she said nothing.
“Hello there,” he said at last. Amandine gave a start.
“Howdy, stranger.” She draped a wet shirt against the edge of the tub and waved. “I haven't seen you all morning.”
“That's because Glorious and I were at the junkyard,” René replied. He crouched by the stream and splashed cool water over his face.
“Find anything good?”
He took a long drink out of his hands before answering. “Oh, yes. We found something quite wonderful. You're going to love it.”
“What is it?” She looked around excitedly. “Where is it?”
“We came back to get some extra help because it’s big. Come with us, and we'll show you.”
Margaret and May shooed Amandine away permissively. With a word of thanks, she stepped into a pair of short brown boots and followed René back to camp.
“I hope I'm not under-dressed,” she said, retying her scarf into a bow above her ear.
“It's only the junkyard,” René replied a little anxiously. Amandine caught him staring at her, and his gaze broke with an embarrassed cough.
She playfully nudged him with her elbow. “That rinse in the stream didn't really do the trick. I might have to take you and your laundry to the washboard when we get back.” She nodded at all of the stains on his clothes.
“I am sorry if I smell.” He tugged at the front of his shirt to let some air in. “I’ve been busy since the sun went up. First I had to fix Jean-Claude’s radiator. Then Ludmilla asked if I would clean out her stovepipe. After that, I went to the junkyard with Glorious. He wants to build a... an electric instrument. He showed me his technical plans, and I can't even begin to describe it. Anyway, it can get a little dirty when you have to dig through garbage for the right pieces of scrap.”
“You don't stink,” she assured him. “Even if you did, you're entitled to it. I don't know anybody in this camp who works half as hard as you do.”
Her silly compliment caught him off-guard and seeing him grin and fluster for a response made Amandine overcome with an urge. Mustering up all of her courage, she reached for his hand and her slender fingers slipped as easily as puzzle-pieces between his. René was so surprised by her impulsive gesture that he stopped dead in his tracks.
Softly, she said, “René, I’m... I’m so very fond of you, I can hardly control myself.” Her spontaneity quickly gave way to mortification, and she stared at their clasped hands in horror. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me!”
She tried to let him go, but he held on tight.
“Amandine, I think of you every minute,” he confessed. He had trapped all of his feelings behind a wall since the day he first laid eyes on her, and the dam had finally burst. “You even appear in my dreams. There used to be nothing I loved more than my work, but now everything I do feels like a chore that keeps me from spending time with you.”
“Well, then.” Her voice was small but full of hopeful joy. She moved closer until she was near enough to feel the summer heat radiating off of him. “It's out in the open.”
“Everybody knows it already,” he chuckled. “Even Glorious.”
If Amandine were back home, she knew that the next course of action would be to tell all of her friends about her new beau and then wait for René to plan their first date. She imagined that her mother would like René very much, but her father might have been too quick to judge him by his appearance. “Apparel oft proclaims the man,” she could hear him say with gruff disapproval. Now that she was on her own, she had no idea who to tell or what to do.
She bit her lip and traced half-circles in the dust with her boot. “So what do we do now
?”
“Now?” René glanced around to make sure nobody was near, then he tilted her chin up with his free hand and kissed her once very lightly on the lips. Amandine squeaked and felt her skin prickle to the pounding pulse in her ears. It was all such a sweet shock; she wanted him to kiss her again, but he was already at arm’s distance before she had even realized what had happened.
René gave her the kind of warm smile that made her heart quiver when he turned back towards camp. “Now, we go see that surprise I was telling you about.”
Amandine bolted from his side as soon as her trailer was in sight “Gia!” she cried, stumbling up the stairs. Whether she liked it or not, Sangria would have to assume the role of her best friend because this development was impossible to keep to herself. The first thing every best friend needed was a nickname.
“Gia?” Sangria repeated. She was lounging on her bunk with her bare feet propped outside of the open window. “Nobody's ever called me that before.”
“Gia,” Amandine said breathlessly. “You won't believe what just happened! René kissed me!”
The contortionist didn't look up from her fashion magazine. “Finally made his move, did he? About time. You were driving everybody nuts with all your sighs and doe-eyes.”
Threadbare- The Traveling Show Page 14