He stared at the raised hand, forcing it down, hiding it in a pocket. Cynthia’s face had gone suddenly white. In the instant that it took her to recover, her expression went from shock to fear, then into the old, familiar cruel lines.
She smiled, feral and businesslike. “I see you’ve acquired a taste for old meat.” A jerk of her head toward Fletch left no doubt as to her meaning.
“It’s not like that at all,” Keith said. And suddenly he did want to confide in her again, for all that memory told him it was a bad idea. He wanted to explain how his brother’s death had hurt him, had wiped the life out of almost a year of his existence. But as he thought of it, he realized that there was no explanation, no words, no reasons. Only an emptiness and gnawing pain and residual disgust at the world. “I—” He reached out for her.
“Time to move the party on!” the Mummer bellowed. “Let’s get a move on, we can’t hang around here all night!”
The partygoers were leaking out the door. “Far be it from me to interfere with your search for Mommy,” Cynthia sneered, and left.
The Mummer stood by the doorway, bullying the tenants into the hall. Keith trailed the laggers, stood to receive the traditional blessing in doggerel.
The Mummer delivered it quickly, and in abbreviated form. “Here we stand outside your door, just like we did the year before. For food and drink our deepest thanks. We’ve eaten tons and drunk up tanks. We’ll return in a year, no more, and if you need our help—just roar.” He bowed perfunctorily, and shut the door.
Keith gawked. He listened to the tramp and rumble of feet moving up the stairwell to the next apartment. The Mummer had left off the invitation to join the party, and that was unprecedented. It had never happened to anyone before in his experience.
He turned back to his apartment, empty-seeming now that it held only Fletch and himself.
Fletch looked bemused. “Was it something I said?”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t know. Somebody asked where I was searching records, and I explained that I’d started out in Souderton, and suddenly the man in the funny costume was yelling that everyone had to leave.”
“Oh Jesus,” Keith said. “Souderton.”
He tried to explain.
Souderton was the last city within the Drift to die. Its contamination levels were low, and the city had strong and determined leaders. For some twenty years after the Meltdown, Souderton had survived, even thrived after a fashion. They raised their own food, and if they were shunned by the communities beyond the Drift, at least they didn’t have to start all over again in the refugee camps.
But their water and foodstuff was still laced with radioactive isotopes. The tumors and birth defects and leukemias piled up. After two decades, they could no longer be ignored. They were too common, too widespread, a constant background to every thought or action.
By popular account the panic started at a mass town assembly to discuss the problems. An alternative version was that it had been triggered by an old woman collapsing from a heart attack. However the hysteria began, it swiftly became a wholesale evacuation of the city, in a frightened mob of thousands that fled like lemmings toward Philadelphia.
They were met at the city limits by a horde of self-appointed vigilantes, citizens who were afraid of mutation, of radiation poisoning, of anything that came out of the Drift.
Masked and hooded men with filters and rebreathers carried rifles into Souderton the next day, and mopped things up.
“See, I go out there all the time so it doesn’t bother me. But I guess I tend to forget how everyone else feels about the Drift,” Keith said. “And there’s a kind of inherited fear of Souderton itself, of what might have happened if the mobs had broken through.”
“Sounds more like an inherited guilt.” Fletch sat down on the edge of the bed, unlaced her boots, let them drop. “Time for me to hit the sack.” She pulled off the sweater.
Her breasts bounced beneath her shirt. They sagged slightly, not much for a woman her age. Keith found himself trying to picture them in his mind. The room was uncomfortably warm, even stuffy. The single drink he had had made him almost dizzy.
“Uh, listen,” he said. “The bed’s big enough for two.”
Fletch smiled scornfully. “Back off, sonny,” she said. “You can sleep on the couch for one night without rupturing anything.”
Keith awoke at dawn to the sounds of wood on wood and metal on brick and high, childish shrieks. The city’s young were in the streets, welcoming in the new year, and delighting in their yearly right to make noise and roust adults from their slumber.
He returned from the toilet down the hall just as Fletch emerged from the bedroom. She was rubbing her arms slowly against the early-morning chill, and looked as rumpled and used as her old fatigues. “Breakfast in a minute,” Keith said. “How you doing this morning?” He set about starting a fire in the stove.
Fletch winced as she sat down on the edge of the couch. “Not bad for a woman who’s just been run over by a truck.”
There was sugar for the oatmeal, and Keith was able to top off the meal with two large mugs of mixed chicory and coffee. As a bachelor he could afford these small luxuries. Fletch made no reference to his advances the previous night, but chatted lightly and amiably. Before long he found himself almost liking her again.
The meal done, he left to put in a morning’s worth of chores for the Mummers. Pausing at the door, he asked Fletch whether she wanted to wander around town while he was gone—he only had one key.
“No,” she decided, “I’ll stay here and do a few stretching exercises, get my muscles loose again.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be back before noon.”
Keith was put on a work crew tightening bolts on the reviewing stands at City Hall. It was here that the parade would end; after marching up Two Street, the clubs would swing west, then down Broad, to give their final performances beneath the tower of the ornate stone building.
The stands, and the bleachers below them, would hold several hundred privileged viewers: high-ranking city officials, a delegation of Feds up from Atlanta on the weekly train, trade reps from the exporting states in town to hustle up import licenses. A panel of judges was chosen from their number, and the identity of the judges was a zealously guarded secret. There was no easy way to judge a Mummer presentation, to weigh enthusiasm against musical talent, costuming against showmanship, precision against élan. And emotions ran high.
The handful of monetary prizes to be given out would not even cover the expense of costumes for the winners. But the prestige of being the top String Band or Fancy or Comic club was worth more than money to the marchers involved.
Mounted police rode by the stands slowly, their harness cinches and leather jackets creaking ominously. Keith kept to the underside of the bleachers, doing as little as possible. He had checked out the largest wrench available—too large to do any actual work with—knowing that the sight of it made him immune from close scrutiny. For an hour he walked back and forth casually, occasionally stopping to examine an already tightened bolt.
A piercing whistle snagged his attention, and the crew leader gestured him out. “That’s enough,” he snapped. “Start hauling up the chairs.” Keith slung the wrench over his shoulder and complied.
He carried a wooden folding chair under each arm, up the back stairs to the leftmost stand. At the top there was space for a few dozen spectators, a handrail with bunting hanging limply from it, and a grand view down the gray and empty street. A single chair was already in place, a chunky man in a dark and expensive overcoat hunched into it. Keith nodded and started setting up his chairs, moving them first one place, then jostling them to the side.
“Want a sip?”
The man was offering a bottle. “Southern Comfort,” he said. “A fine Southern sippin’ whiskey. Have a seat.”
Keith accepted the bottle, pulled up a chair, and took a swig. The alcohol was sugary-sweet, and burned his throat. He gasp
ed.
“Samuelson,” the man said. His face was puffy and pale, and it was clear that he had been drinking for quite a while. Keith handed back the bottle.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Samuelson. You with the Feds? Atlanta?”
Samuelson shook his head emphatically. “Chief Northern field representative from Southern Manufacturing and Biotech.”
There didn’t seem to be much he could say to that, so Keith smiled and nodded. Samuelson passed him the bottle again. He sipped more cautiously this time, stopping the lip with his tongue and letting only a few drops dribble in.
“They took my watch.”
“Beg pardon?”
Samuelson held up an empty wrist. “My watch. They took it. Made from good homecrafted instrument chips, too. Performs forty-seven different functions and tells the time, sweet as anything.”
Keith nodded again, waited for Samuelson to go on.
“Now why’d they want to go and do a thing like that?”
Keith didn’t know. “Did they say they’d give it back?”
“Oh, sure they said they’d give it back. Right before I leave town. But that’s not the point—how’m I going to run up any contracts if I don’t have samples? They took all my samples, too, and warned me not to try and sell anything without they okay it first. Now I ask you—how the holy hell am I supposed to sell anything without samples?”
“Well, see,” Keith said, “the city is kind of short on jobs. So the authorities don’t like any money going out. That’s why they ban most of the high-tech stuff, because it doesn’t help the job situation.” Even as he said them, the words sounded trite and only half true.
“Hell, boy, that’s no way to get this country moving again. Free trade, that’s the ticket. You cut out all this red tape, and interstate tariffs, and embargoes, and we’d be on our feet in no time. That’s how the old government handled it. Those were fine times for the businessman, I tell you.”
The crew leader appeared at the top of the steps, and bellowed, “Get your ass moving, Piotrowicz! No more of this slacking off!”
Keith shrugged, got to his feet. “Nice talking with you.”
“States rights!” the Southerner called after him. “That’s what’s wrong with this country—you mark my words.”
Keith was back at his apartment just before noon. He led Fletch out to Two Street where, because his block organizer had slated him for the twelve-to-two shift, they were able to find standing space not far from the curb. They were in time to see the last several Comic bands.
Fletch watched with fierce interest as men in feathers, in sequins, dressed as clowns, as Indians, as playing cards, strutted by in organized disarray. A female impersonator tagging after one brigade waggled enormous mock breasts at her, turned around, and flipped up frilly petticoats to reveal grossly overstuffed underthings. She threw back her head and laughed.
“Are there any real women in this?” she asked. “I haven’t seen any.”
“Not any more. They were banned just after the Meltdown.”
The Comic group’s brass band, bright with mirrors, feathers, and cheap glitter, was playing The Bummers Reel. Behind them a ragtag clutch of clowns pulled a wagon float labeled “Christmas with Truceduel.” Atop it stood a skinny man in baggy Santa Claus suit, who handed wrapped presents to blindfolded policemen. “What does that mean?” Fletch asked.
“There’s a city councilman named Truesdale, and there was an incident last May—um, it’s kind of hard to explain if you’re not familiar with local politics.”
“I get the general picture. I imagine your Mr. Truesdale won’t be too amused by this, though.”
“No.” It was the end of Truesdale’s career, in fact, but Keith didn’t bother saying that.
The Comics, with their brass bands, floats, and anarchic slapstick, continued to march by, brigade after brigade. Fletch was fascinated by the garish color combinations they chose for their outfits—orange and green and poison blue was one of the quieter mixes. At one point Keith bought two soft pretzels from a vender and introduced Fletch to that old Philadelphia tradition. They were barely warm, and cost three cents for the two, a price the vender could never have gotten away with any other day.
The groups ranged from the bright and gaudy to the bright and gaudy and inventive. Some, obviously, took themselves more seriously than others—their clown outfits with three-tiered umbrellas were stylized and frilled far beyond the point of comedy, and the marchers stepped in perfect unison. By the same token, the more slapdash groups were often more fun to watch.
“Who’s next?” Keith asked. The last Comic band was strutting away, strewing confusion and firecrackers in its wake.
Fletch lifted her glasses, studied the distant banner that led off the group. “Looks like … Center City Club. Would that be right?”
“Yeah. That’s the first of the Fancies. After them come the String Bands.”
“So tell me. How did all this begin? How did it get organized? What’s it all for?”
Keith started to answer, stopped, tried again: “Uh. I don’t think anybody can answer those questions. My old man used to talk a lot about the history of the Mummers. You can trace them back for centuries, back to colonial times when they were just random gangs of neighborhood men wandering around on the First, shooting off guns and raising hell. But you can’t say when they became Mummers. They just kind of evolved.”
The Fancy club was less than a block away. A hundred fifty strong, they strutted in neatly ordered rank and file, their ostrich-plume headdresses bobbing, the feathered, mirrored, and bedangled “capes”—more like false wings than capes, for they towered above the marchers and out to the sides—dipping to the odd cadence of the Mummer’s strut. A lone Mummer strutted out front, his costume a larger, fancier version of the others’.
Fletch pointed at some black-clad men slipping through the crowd just ahead of the lead Mummer. “What are they supposed to be doing?”
“Don’t look! You’re supposed to pretend you don’t see them.”
She turned to face him. “But who are they?”
“Men In Black. They’re the spotters. They locate certain people and point them out to the King Clown for a tapping-out or—or whatever,” he finished lamely. At her questioning glance, he added, “The King Clown is their captain, the one marching in front. King Clown used to be a type of costume, but there’s just the one now.”
Except for the traditional facepaint, King Clown’s costume was nothing like a real clown’s. His cape was a full twelve feet high, fringed with white ostrich plumes, and glittering with sequins and mirror fragments and even a bit of diffraction grating, which must have come from somebody’s grandmother’s trunk. Two guylines led from the tips of the cape to his gloved hands, so he could manage the ungainly costume in the light breezes that sometimes blew up. Like his followers, he wore primarily scarlet and black, though there were a dozen clashing colors admixed. He strutted with great dignity, occasionally bowing slightly to each side in acknowledgment of the crowd’s cheers.
Keith indicated the Men In Black with a sideways nod of his head. “Look. They’ve marked somebody.”
Four Men In Black had slipped up on the unsuspecting watcher, quietly easing into position immediately behind him. Their eyes and mouths were unreadable, framed by the wool of their black ski masks.
The Center City troupe Mummer-stepped briskly down Two Street, banjos, glockenspiels, and horns not playing but at ready, and for an instant looked as if they would pass the man by. Then King Clown raised a hand, and they stopped and wheeled ninety degrees as one man. The Clown strutted around the troupe and into the crowd. They nervously backed away from him.
The Mummer captain strode up to the marked man. The victim flinched away, found himself held firm by the Men In Black. He stiffened. King Clown stretched out his arm and took the man by the shoulders.
One arm rose once, twice, again. It fell on the man’s shoulder with an audible crack three times. Th
en King Clown whirled and returned to his station. The crowd cheered, and the band broke into Oh Dem Golden Slippers, turned, and marched on. The man from the crowd joined a motley band of followers in mufti, strutting happily after the troupe.
“What the hell was that all about?” Fletch asked.
“It was a tapping out. The man was a candidate, and the Mummers have accepted him. He’s one of the lucky ones.”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing more about this. Do you think you could swing an introduction to the captain after this is all over?”
“Don’t do it. Don’t have anything at all to do with the Mummers. Just smile and watch the parade.”
“Why?”
“Forget I said anything.” Keith stared down the street, ignoring her as best he could. The Fancy club aproached, all glitter and flash, advancing, pausing and advancing again in their odd half dance, half march. It was odd, Keith realized, and strange that it took an out-of-towner’s questions to make him aware of such a simple fact.
King Clown’s troupe was parallel to them and marching past, when the gloved hand was again raised. They wheeled to face the crowd. King Clown strode through the spectators, straight at Keith and Fletch. Sweet Jesus, Keith prayed silently. Let it be somebody else.
The crowd parted and King Clown halted before Fletch, placed his hands on her shoulders. He waited a beat. Then he leaned down and kissed her gently on both cheeks. She smiled brightly at him, and dipped a curtsy. He turned as if to move away.
Then he whirled again, and before Keith could react, the gloved hands were on his shoulders, and he stared into the man’s bloodshot eyes. Keith tried to jerk away, but several pairs of hands held him firm. He could see the weave of the Clown’s costume, could smell the alcohol on his breath. The man’s mouth was a thin line within his painted smile.
Slowly, very slowly, King Clown bent over and kissed his cheeks.
In an instant the restraining hands, Men In Black, King Clown, and all were gone. The band was Mummer-strutting away, playing Funeral March of a Marionette.
In the Drift Page 3