Corsets & Clockwork

by Trish Telep

  "Knowledge is power," he said gravely, rubbing his cheek, "but power corrupts."

  "Why do you always use wisdom to irritate me?"

  "Beneath all this grease lies a complicated man. A main," he emphasized, like the song on the radio. His untried schoolboy voice was so unlike Muddy Waters' worldly growl that Sue Jean couldn't help but giggle. This time when Chickie put his arms around her, she let him. Irritating mannish boy indeed, but he was her mannish boy.

  "So you wanna make the scene at the Old Mission tonight?"

  Sue Jean agreed, not just because she planned to talk him into helping her organize a sit-in, but also because she really liked making out. She had only recently discovered that she was very good at it, and Sue Jean liked doing things she was good at.

  "Cool, mama." Chickie kissed the side of her neck and let her go. "Lemme just lock this dollhouse away in the back." He grabbed a large, tarp-covered object from the workbench.

  "A dollhouse?"

  He laughed. "Look at the way your eyes just lit up." He set the dollhouse back on the bench and removed the tarp. "You gals say you outgrow dolls and stuff, but it's all lies."

  "It's beautiful," Sue Jean exclaimed, admiring the gables and the wraparound porch. "But it looks just like Mr. Peterson's house."

  "Yeah, this is his kid's dollhouse. He asked me to electrify it for her birthday." He undid the latches and opened the house so Sue Jean could see the interior. "See the switches in all the rooms? Flip one."

  She did, and ooh'ed when the little doll kitchen flooded with light. "I would have died for that when I was ten." Sue Jean was dying now as a matter of fact, but she wouldn't give Chickie the satisfaction of admitting it.

  "Did you see the dolls the kid keeps in it?"

  There were three dolls, one in the bathtub, one on the couch, and one standing in the corner in the master bedroom, like a child that had been naughty. All three dolls were hideous, as tall as Sue Jean's hand, bald and nude with gnarled skin. They looked like creatures out of a gross horror flick where old men had mutated into tiny trolls.

  But this wasn't a drive-in. This was real life. And in Portero, reality was unnaturally thin. In addition to battling social injustice, Porterenes also had to confront the occasional monster or two that slipped through the thinnest places. Sue Jean preferred the monsters to the bigots, though; monsters were more easily destroyed.

  She picked up the doll from the bathtub. "My neighbor found one of these things in her mousetrap last week," she said.

  "Maybe the kid found them roaming in her backyard, scooped them up in a jar, and made Mr. Peterson stuff them for her amusement."

  "Morbid kid," said Sue Jean as she put the doll back in the tub.

  "Morbid yourself. I remember when you put your Chatty Cathy's head in a vise."

  "That doll was defective. Or possessed. She wouldn't shut up." Sue Jean grimaced at the memory. "Ever."

  Chickie tweaked her chin. "You're a tough little mama, Sue Jean. Lucky for me I like--" He frowned and moved her aside so he could peer into the dollhouse.

  Sue Jean was about to ask what was wrong when she saw it herself. The light in one of the doll bedrooms was flickering. Chickie reached in to test the switch in that room, and the doll standing in the corner turned and launched itself at his hand.

  Chickie screamed as blood streamed down his arm. He tried to fling the doll away, but its jaw was clamped tight.

  Sue Jean scanned the workbench and picked up the first tool she saw--a pair of scissors. She grabbed the doll and neatly snipped its head from its body. The head was still clinging to the back of Chickie's hand, though, so she had to dig it out like a stubborn thorn. Finally she placed the head and body back in the naughty corner.

  "Think the other dolls are still alive?" Sue Jean asked, using the tissues in her pocket to clean the blood from Chickie's wound.

  "I don't aim to find out." He shooed away her attempts at first aid and closed and latched the dollhouse. He covered it with the tarp and carried it outside to his car. "This is going back to that kid today. That thing almost ate me!"

  "Your pinkie is bigger than its whole body," Sue Jean scoffed, moving aside the toolbox he kept in the trunk of his car so he could set down the dollhouse. "Coward. Why did I ever get mixed up with someone who fails the test so miserably?"

  "What test?"

  "My ideal mate test," she said, just to provoke him. "There're only five criteria--twenty points for each one. You scored abysmally. Looks: ten--"

  "Ten? Out of twenty?"

  "Intelligence: twenty; bravery: zero; social conscience: zero. Even if you aced the passion criterion, you'd still fail."

  "I'll show you passion." Sue Jean thought he was going to grab her, but there were too many people on the street. Instead he lowered his voice. "Just wait till we get to the Old Mission. I'll melt the starch outta your petticoat."

  "Don't be vulgar." But Sue Jean couldn't wait to see what would happen to her petticoat.

  "You like that I'm vulgar." Chickie leaned close to her, indecently close. "That's the real reason you hang with me."

  The proper thing to do in public would have been to step back and maintain her distance, but Sue Jean didn't want to be proper. She wanted a kiss. So she stole one and said, "That and your car."

  "I thought you said it was shallow."

  Now that all of his attention was on her, Sue Jean was no longer jealous of his T-bird but admiring. She remembered when he'd brought it in from a salvage yard a year ago, wrecked and practically smoking from the accident that had mangled it. And now it was a work of art, a red and white confection gleaming in the spring sun.

  "I said you were shallow. Your car, on the other hand, is seriously righteous."

  * * *

  The Old Mission had been abandoned by Spanish priests centuries ago and now its ruins lay sprawled in a clearing deep in the woods. It had found new life as a popular make-out spot, and several cars were parked there, including Chickie's. Moonlight glinted on passion-fogged windows as far as the eye could see.

  Sue Jean checked her makeup in the rearview mirror and fluffed her hair. She had cut it recently, and it was short and incredibly chic, like Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones. She hated the vanity in her that made her care about such things as cute hairstyles when there were so many problems in the world, but she didn't see any reason why she couldn't help her fellow man and look good at the same time.

  "Why're you doing that?" Chickie asked, switching off the interior light. "I'm about to undo all that primping and preening and mess you up in a big way, mama."

  "Don't speak to me like that, Chesney Albert Hill."

  "Hey!" He actually looked around as if he expected to see the ears of his cronies pressed against the windows. "Ix-nay on the Chesney business."

  He thought he was so cool. Chickie's own normally soft, curly hair was slicked into a ridiculously greasy pompadour. He'd exchanged his coveralls for black jeans and a T-shirt and his prized red letter sweater. She prized it too. If Chickie ever got around to asking her to go steady, she would get to wear it, and everyone would know they were a serious couple. But it was hard to get Chickie to be serious about anything.

  "Sorry, daddy-o," she told him. "I'd hate to think I was ruining your reputation."

  "When you call me daddy-o," said Chickie, sighing in the dark, "I wish you wouldn't sound so ironic."

  A Studebaker pulled up next to them--right next to them, totally ignoring make-out spot etiquette. They realized why when the Studebaker's windows creaked down, flooding the clearing with Little Richard's raucous rendition of "Tutti Frutti" and Chickie's basketball teammate's incredibly loud voice.

  "Chickie Hill!" Nate screamed, leaning past his girl, Peggy, in the passenger's seat. "What's buzzin', cuzzin'? Still trapped in the old wage cage?"

  Chickie rolled down the window and said, "Sadly, yeah, but I got time off for good behavior."

  "So you can practice bad behavior?" Nate winked suggestively at
Sue Jean, who rolled her eyes.

  "You know it, but what's with Junior?" Chickie nodded at the little boy in the backseat of the Studebaker who was wearing a cowboy hat and scowling. "Y'all giving him pointers?"

  "Very funny, peabrain," Peggy said, offended. "It's just that I have to babysit now that our folks are joyriding across the country."

  "Joyriding?" Sue Jean asked. "Did they go to D.C.? For the freedom rides?"

  "Yep."

  "Couldn't you just die?" The sense of unfairness washed over Sue Jean anew.

  "Yeah." Peggy looked wistful. "Be nice to stick it to the man just once."

  "I'm a man," Nate told her. "Come stick it to me."

  "This is grody," said the little boy in the backseat, as Nate kissed his sister's ear. "Can't we go to the zoo?"

  "The zoo's closed, Shrimp," said Nate.

  The little boy turned to Chickie. "You're the one who got stuck in a closet when you was five and came out all grown up."

  "That's me."

  "Don't lie to him," Sue Jean said.

  "It's not a lie," said Chickie. "It's a legend. Don't hate me because I'm a legend."

  "I like legends," said the boy. "Peggy, tell me the legend of Sleepy Hollow."

  "Peggy's busy, kid."

  Peggy pushed Nate away. "Whyn't you go play hide-and-seek, Leo?" she said. "That way you can have fun and me and Nate can have some privacy."

  "No." Leo looked out of the window at the ruins, wide-eyed. "It's haunted here."

  "Betcha it's not," Peggy said. "Come take a walk with me, and I'll prove it."

  "You oughta take Sue Jean," Chickie told her as she helped her brother out of the backseat. "She's not scared of anything. This monster tried to attack me in my dad's garage and she saved my life."

  Leo grabbed Peggy's waist tight. "A monster?"

  "It was this big," said Sue Jean reassuringly, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "If you see it, just stomp it like a cockroach."

  "Come on, Leo," said Peggy. "Ain't any monsters around these ruins. Everybody knows the Old Mission counts as hallowed ground."

  "That's why you hear so many people screaming, 'Oh, God, yes!'"

  "Little pitchers have big ears, Nate." Peggy shot her boyfriend a speaking look and then led her brother off toward what remained of the Old Mission.

  Sue Jean was hoping that Nate would turn off his interior light and mind his own business now that Peggy was gone, but he seemed content to keep jabbering at her and Chickie.

  "So you're Miss Bravery, huh?" he was saying as he popped the cap off a soda. "Ma's always asking me to kill spiders. I can't stand spiders and she knows that, but she always wants me to kill 'em when they get in the house. Here's to brave chicks." He lifted his soda bottle and drank.

  "You're the brave one," Chickie told him. "Driving around in that skuzz bucket. Want I should jazz it up for you? Just say the word. Got my tools in the trunk."

  Nate gave him the finger. "Climb it, Tarzan. Not only is this baby a classic, it's a chick magnet. You know how much action I get cruising in this--" He looked at Sue Jean's disapproving face. "I mean, how much action I got before I started going steady with Peggy."

  "Obviously the car's not the only skuzz bucket," Sue Jean said, turning the knob on the console that raised the windows.

  "Don't let him spoil the mood, mama."

  "It's not spoiled."

  And it wasn't. They were alone now and it was dark and "There's a Moon Out Tonight" was playing on the radio, one of her favorite songs. As far as Sue Jean was concerned, the mood was finally set.

  "Let's get in the back, okay?"

  She followed Chickie into the backseat where they could cuddle without the console getting in the way.

  She put her face in his neck and inhaled his warm scent. "You should really change your mind about doing a sit-in with me."

  Chickie groaned. "Not that again."

  "It would be just like this." She squeezed him tight. "We'll sit on the floor of Ducane's and cuddle and sing songs of protest."

  "Until they sic the dogs on us."

  "Are you afraid of dogs, too, you big coward?"

  "No. I'm afraid of being eaten by dogs. I never showed you my glove box, did I? Whyn't you check it out."

  "I'm sick of gushing over your car, Chickie."

  "There's something in there for you. A present."

  Sue Jean leaned forward and rummaged around in the glove box while Chickie attempted to caress her rear end through her many layers of crinoline. Buried beneath A History of the Necronomicon and old issues of Hot Rod Magazine was a pink, beribboned box just big enough to hold a ring. Sue Jean squealed and sat back against Chickie, tearing open the gift.

  "What's this?" she asked disappointed, staring at the ring in the box. She had been expecting his class ring, a sign that they were going steady--an even better sign than wearing his letter sweater--but this wasn't a class ring.

  The band was cobalt-blue glass, and above it spun a dime-sized replica of the planet Earth. Sue Jean had seen satellite photos of the Earth on the news, but all anyone could see on TV were grainy black-and-white images. Chickie's Earth, though, was shockingly detailed. Colorful and gorgeous.

  "Amazing." Sue Jean held the ring to her face and tapped it. And the Earth moved. Not the one spinning over the ring, but the real Earth beneath her. She felt a rumble like someone was beating a dozen timpani in her belly. Even the moon, visible through the sunroof, seemed to shiver.

  "Did you feel that?" Sue Jean fisted her hand in Chickie's T-shirt. "Was that an earthquake?"

  "Maybe a small one." His heart wasn't even beating fast.

  "You did that?"

  "Just to remind you how powerful you are." He removed her hand from his shirt, and slid the ring on her finger. "I know sometimes you feel helpless, which I don't get at all because ... you're the strongest person I know. You could wrap the whole universe around your finger if you wanted. You can do anything."

  Sue Jean melted against him. "You know how you've been wanting to get to third base?" she murmured. "Batter up, Chickie."

  "Really?"

  She smiled. Now his heart was beating fast. "I guess I'm not that strong. Say nice things to me and I turn into mush."

  "I like mush."

  Sue Jean studied the blue orb spinning over her finger. "But I'm scared of this. What if I break it and the whole world breaks?"

  "Touch it again."

  She prodded it with her finger, but nothing happened.

  "That initial quake was just me showing off."

  Only he would think creating a ring that could jostle the Earth was "just showing off."

  "You're very unusual, Chickie Hill."

  "I'll say. You just gave me the all clear to head for third base, and I'm sitting here like a wet firecracker. Come here."

  He pulled her close and--

  "Nate!"

  They jerked apart, startled--not by the sound of Peggy's voice, but by the tone.

  Peggy raced to Nate's Studebaker and clawed open the driver's side door. "Leo's been kidnapped!"

  Nate leaped out of the car and grabbed her. "By whom?"

  "The Ku Klux Klan!"

  The name brought the other couples out of their cars in a way even the earthquake hadn't been able to. Sue Jean pulled Chickie out of the T-bird to join the disheveled crowd.

  "Peggy?" Nate was saying. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes! I was walking Leo around the ruins, showing him how safe it was." Her sudden hysterical laughter made Sue Jean's skin crawl. "And then he told me he had to whiz. So I waited while he left the ruins and went into some bushes near the forest. A minute later Leo screamed my name, and I saw them coming out of the trees--a whole crowd of them. The Klan!"

  "That doesn't sound right," Chickie said. "If you'd said they burned down your house and hung your brother from a tree, that I'd believe. But kidnapping?"

  "I know what I saw!" Peggy shrieked, as Sue Jean elbowed Chickie in the sid
e. "Those horrible white costumes, the long pointy hats. They stole my brother!"

  "Call the sheriff," someone suggested, a boy originally from up north judging by the accent and the naivete.

  Nate gave a grim laugh. "Sheriff Ramsey's in the Klan." He pulled a rifle from the trunk of his Studebaker. "I'll get Leo back."

  Peggy took his arm. "I'm coming with you."

  "So are we," Sue Jean added.

  "No." Nate blocked Sue Jean's way. "This is personal. But if something happens, get help."

  Peggy and Nate ran off, and as they disappeared through the ruins, the northern boy said, "A full moon, an earthquake, and now the Klan? I say we split while the splitting's good."

  "You're not even going to try to help?" exclaimed Sue Jean when everyone headed back to their cars.

  "Help how?" The headlights of the exiting cars illuminated a girl with lipstick smeared across her cheek. "With what? You got rifles in your car?"

  "Nope," said Chickie.

  "Well you can bet the Klan does. Nate--he's delusional going after them with a peashooter."

  "What he is," said Chickie, "is vengeful. The KKK burned down his uncle's store last summer, remember? Nate obviously thinks it's payback time.

  "Well, leave me out of it," said the girl as her guy dragged her away. "If my dad finds out I was up here tonight, he'll kill me a lot worse than the Klan ever could."

  In less than a minute, Sue Jean and Chickie were the only ones left at the make-out spot.

  "Cowards!"

  "They're not cowards for not wanting to get lynched."

  "But it's 1961 not 1861. Remember? Why would anyone be afraid of getting lynched in this glorious day and age?"

  Chickie sighed. "Again with the irony."

  A gunshot sent the two of them leaping into each other's arms. At least temporarily. Sue Jean broke free of Chickie's embrace just as another shot was fired and ran toward the sound.

  "Sue Jean!" Chickie chased after her into the ruins, past broken stone and teetering archways, past the bushes and then finally into the woods.

  It was very dark beneath the trees with no moonlight to brighten the way, and several times Sue Jean ran face-first into low-hanging branches and slipped in what felt like slime. The darkness, however, was unexpectedly broken by the light of a campfire.