“Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck those words mean,” he nodded. “But, also, how can they have a reputation for being both emphatically religious and extremely racist? Isn’t there a bit of a conflict of interest there?”
Patrick patted Ben on the shoulder. “That, my good sir, depends on which racist preacher you ask.”
They continued on St. Joachim, past its New Orleans-style second-story iron porches, across Dauphin Street, where the path became markedly cleaner. On the right stood a tall brick building with a rusty theatre marquee hanging precariously over the sidewalk with the name SAENGER painted in flaking, dappled cream against a faded red background. The sidewalk and street in front of the Saenger Theatre were clean for almost the entire block. Not just clear of rubble and trash, but actually clean, as if someone had recently swept and mopped the asphalt and polished the low metal pylons guarding the theatre entrance. Patrick let out a low whistle. “This block seem alarmingly tidy to you?”
Ben nodded. “‘Alarmingly’ is the key word.”
“Yep. That settles it,” Patrick nodded. “This street spells adventure.” He unsheathed the machete and sliced it a few times through the air.
“For crying out loud, Pat. Can’t we go the boring way just once?”
“Boring?” cried a high-pitched voice from above. A spry little man bounced to life above the theatre’s marquee. The entire heavy, metal overhang rocked back and forth with the weight. He grabbed onto the giant S adorning the front and dangled over the street. “Did you say boring?” He swung over the edge of the metal roof and spun lightly to the ground. He was small, easily a foot shorter than Ben, with bushy white whiskers and mischievous green eyes. He wore brown pants with purple stripes and a clean white shirt under a purple patchwork vest. On his head, he wore a brown bowler hat with a wide, purple satin ribbon. On the whole, he looked like some sort of homeless leprechaun. “Nothing’s boring on this block, not if the Saenger Players have anything to do with it!” He danced a quick little jig over to the entry doors and grabbed a black curtain that Ben hadn’t noticed before. It hung from a track that ran along the perimeter of the marquee above. The little man ran around the sidewalk, sweeping the curtain shut behind him. “Come,” he said, beckoning to the two visitors with his free hand as he ran, “and experience the wonder, the excitement, the grandiose entertainment of the stage!” He whipped the curtains all the way closed with a schnook, closing himself inside the overhang.
Ben raised a finger to Patrick before he could open his mouth. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Oh, I think it sounds fun!” Patrick said.
Ben shook his head emphatically. “You are such an idiot. Where’s the notebook?” Patrick dug it out of his backpack and handed it over. Ben opened to the page of perils. “You know what a mummer is? It’s an entertainer, like a jester. Or an actor. Like Willy Wonka in there. We’ve seen enough peril, okay? I’m sitting this one out.”
“Oh, puh. I’ll have you know that I’ve been thinking about that list, and I don’t think it’s even accurate. I think Old Lady White Eyes was full of stuff and nonsense.”
“Oh, really?”
“Oh, really.” Patrick crossed his arms and harrumphed.
“Well!” Ben held the list up and ruffled it dramatically. “Let’s just see what we have here! The light bringer.”
“I have seen no lights worth noting, nor any bringers of such,” Patrick insisted.
“No, just a demonic preacher who drove a stake through your hand.”
“He was not made of light,” Patrick pointed out.
“But he sure as hell thought he was bringing you into the Light of The Lord. Let’s see, what else. The running man. Oh, my. If only we’d come across a running man somewhere along this trip.”
“There’s no proof that she meant those running men,” Patrick said. “Lots of men run. Not just drug addicts and politicians.”
Ben continued. “The demon’s daughter. I seem to recall a feisty little Southern belle with a zombie for a father. The butcher. I think we can all remember a little group of hopeful transsexuals who turned out to be excellent butchers, can’t we?”
“Don’t you dare bring Ponch’s death into this!” Patrick cried, leveling a warning finger at Ben’s nose. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
“The butcher,” Ben insisted. “And the fire drinker.”
“I have not met a single fire drinker!” Patrick said, stamping his foot. “Of that, I am absolutely certain.”
“We met a man whose last name was Tinder and who had a killer bar in his study.”
“Oh, come on. A Tinder who drinks is a fire drinker? That’s a stretch.”
“It’s also a match. That leaves the siren, the something Tom/hollow man duo, and the mummer. That,” he said, pointing toward the curtain, “is a mummer. Please, for the love of God, let’s just keep moving.” He stowed the notebook and took a few exaggerated, leading steps down the road. “Come on. Let’s go. Away from peril.”
But Patrick just stood, staring at the black curtain and stroking his paltry whiskers. “If what you say is true, and the batty old disappearing woman was right, then I think we have no choice but to go into the mummer’s lair.”
Ben shook his head violently. “No, no, no. We do have a choice. Right now. I’m giving you the choice. Let’s go.”
Patrick’s eyes narrowed, and he bit thoughtfully on his thumb. “You know what I think? I think this is fate.”
“It’s not fate, it’s stupidity.”
“I find the two are often interchangeable.”
“With you, they often are,” Ben sighed miserably.
Patrick grinned. “Hey. Benny Boy.”
“What?”
“Remember the first rule of the trip?”
“Oh, please don’t.”
“I call the shots.”
“Then you can go in alone.”
“You’d send me in to certain doom alone? No, no, no, I call this one a double barrel shot. We both go. Friends to the end.”
“If you drag me in there, our friendship is staying out here.”
“Friends to the end!” Patrick insisted.
Ben pulled out the wrench. “I want you to know that I’m doing this under protest, and that if I find a professor’s jacket somewhere on this trip, I’m braining you with this wrench in a study.” He smiled smugly and pumped a fist into the air. “Clue joke. Nailed it.”
“Noted.”
They pushed through the heavy black curtain. The little man had been busy while they lingered outside; he’d pulled a large puppet cart out onto the sidewalk from inside the lobby. It was a sturdy wooden cart topped with a high frame made of two-by-fours. A silky blue curtain was draped along the frame. The cart itself was painted a darker blue with small white stars dotting the plywood night sky. The words SAENGER HARLEQUINS were painted in the center in huge, block letters. A pair of feet showed beneath the cart. The puppeteer, whoever he was, was already in place. The old mummer stood just off to the side of the cart, his hands clasped proudly behind his back.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he squeaked.
“It’s early afternoon, tops,” Ben grumbled. The mummer pushed on, undeterred.
“Welcome to the historic Saenger Theatre, where the lights light, the props prop, and the actors do their best to act. Our next performance will begin in just over fifteen minutes. We apologize for the delay, but we do hope you’ll enjoy a bit of preliminary entertainment before the show.” He gestured grandly to the puppet cart and stepped dramatically away, slipping off to the edge of the sidewalk. The curtains slid open and revealed a standard Punch and Judy set-up.
“Judy? Judy! Where are you?” the little Punch doll demanded.
“I’m right in front of you,” said Judy. Punch jumped in surprise.
“That explains a few things about your bedroom performance last night!” Judy cackled.
“Why, you!” Punch picked up a bat and swung. Judy ducked, and Punch fell over from the momentum. Judy beamed, open-mouthed, into the audience.
Ben heard a light footstep behind him. He turned just in time to see the small mummer swinging his own bat directly at Ben’s head. Ben wasn’t as quick as Judy; the bat caught him just above his right eye in an explosion of colors and pain. He hit the floor and fell into darkness.
15.
It was Calico who saw the girl first. He gave the signal for the men to halt. He moved in closer, creeping through the Mississippi woods. When he reached the clearing by the little river, a wide grin spread across his face. The girl was tied to the tree, and she was alive. That damn near made her the girl of his dreams.
•
When Ben came to, some hours later, he was alone on the curtained off sidewalk. The puppet cart was gone, along with the puppeteer, Patrick, and the old leprechaun bastard with the bat. Thudding pain crushed through his head. He struggled to his feet and groped blindly for the curtain. His hand closed on the heavy velvet, and he tugged at it until he found the edge. He threw it open, and dim, watery light filled the sidewalk. Even the low glow of the Monkey fog pierced his eyes like tiny pins. He shied away and waited for his eyes to adjust. Dried blood cracked and flaked from his right cheek as he grimaced the pain away. If Patrick’s still alive, I’m gonna kill him.
He staggered out of the portico and into the street. He peered out into the gloom, and as he watched, the building across the way pulled itself apart like an amoeba, then jellied back together. Well, that’s not right, he thought. He blinked hard. The building pulled itself back into soft focus. It still wavered, but not quite as badly. He scanned the road, searching for a clue, any clue, as to Patrick’s fate. He found a very good clue in the shape of two spindly legs kicking out from the top of a round, metal trash can one alley over. Ben shuffle-stumbled his way toward the frantic feet, his own legs behaving oddly. They appeared to be averse to head wounds.
The closer he stumbled to the alley, the louder Patrick’s muffled cries became. “Grmmuh orrahir! Ffash tishffel!” he bellowed from inside the can.
Ben approached the alley and reached for the can. He slip-stumbled toward it, the world swimming in and out of focus, and lost his balance. He pitched forward, smashing into the metal can with the crown of his head. The can, its occupant, and the rotten trash inside all tipped over with a mighty CRASH. Patrick wriggled out of the felled can and spat something out of his mouth that might have been either a coffee filter or a diaper. Either way, it was used.
“What were you saying?” Ben asked.
Patrick plucked loosely rolled cigarette butts from his hair. “I said, get me out of here, this trash tastes awful. Are you okay? I thought you were dead. There was a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel so well.” He put one hand on the brick wall and the other on his hip, trying to stabilize both his legs and his stomach.
“You probably need a transfusion,” Patrick pointed out, wiping some soft, yellow, crumbly paste from his shoulder. He brought a bit to his nose and sniffed. “Wuf.”
“You volunteering your inner juices?” Ben asked.
Patrick shook his head. “All my innards are full of garbage. Maybe we’ll find a Red Cross tent. They like to pitch those things in disaster areas, don’t they?”
“Yeah, usually. They really screwed us on this whole apocalypse thing.”
“Abandoned us in our time of greatest need. I never trusted them. They probably blew all my donations on crack and whores. Or maybe that was Toys for Tots...?” he wondered. He dismissed the thought with a wave of his hands. “Bah. Doesn’t matter. Either way. Short of finding a hollow tube and two clean needles in this rubbish, you should rest before we move on. Build some of that blood back up. Don’t move, okay?” Ben nodded. “Okay. But also, we can’t stay here. I don’t think it’s safe.”
“You know what I like about you? Your clear-headed leadership.”
“It’s one of my many excellent qualities.”
“Never taking my advice, that’s another great quality you have. I think I’m legitimately sick of saying I told you so.” He proved it by retching into the gutter.
“Oh, boy. Don’t be alarmed, but I’m pretty sure you have a concussion.”
Ben groaned as he pressed the hem of his shirt to his head. It instantly soaked through with blood. “That’s because I got smashed in the head with a baseball bat. Why didn’t he use you for batting practice?”
Patrick shrugged. “Probably out of respect for my sheer awkwardness. It’s not nice to kick a man when he’s down, cosmically speaking. He hit you, then threatened me, and I, of course, flew into my instinctive and lethal opossum mode.”
“You fainted?”
“I woozed.”
“And the Smurf was able to stuff your ass in a garbage can?”
“Technically, he stuffed my head into a garbage can.”
“Great. I get a concussion, and you get a Charlie Chaplin film.”
“You have a hole in your head, and I have a hole in my hand! It all works out in the end!” Patrick said cheerily. “Seriously, though, we should get the hell out of here. Think you can make it a few blocks? There’s got to be a cozy gutter somewhere a little more out of the way.”
“Yeah. I can make it.” Ben heaved himself off the wall, faltered a bit, then stood on two uneasy legs. “Can you grab my bag?”
Patrick sucked in a mouthful of air through his teeth. “Baaaaaaaag,” he said slowly, inclining his head ever so slightly. “Riiiight. Yes. The bags. Your bag and my bag. Well. See. The thing about the bags is, the King of Munchkin Land took them.”
Ben’s head lolled back on his shoulders, narrowly missing the brick wall on its way down. He snapped it forward again and wobbled as dark stars beamed in front of his eyes. He wasn’t doing so well. “What do you mean he took them? He took who?”
“He took whom. And whom he took is the bags. Both bags. Two bags. Your bag, and my bag. And also, the machete.”
“What?” Ben blinked.
“And the baton. And the hammer. Also, the knife. And, also, the wrench.”
Ben’s hand flew to his belt loop. It was empty. “Son of a bitch!” he screamed. His head rushed with helium, and he toppled over against the alley wall. “He took everything?”
“No, he didn’t take everything. He didn’t take our lives, and I think we should be grateful for that.” Patrick tried for a little hug. Ben slapped him in his forehead.
“Jesus, Patrick, our food? Our supplies? Our weapons, how could you let him do that?!”
“Oh! I’m sorry! I should have consulted with you before I let myself be thrown into a trash can by a midget with remarkable strength, except I couldn’t, because you were on the ground, unconscious, and completely useless! As a matter of fact, the way I see it, this is your fault!”
“My fault!” The little blood Ben had running through his veins was pumping like gasoline. “How in God’s name is this my fault!”
Patrick, however, remained oddly calm. “Because you let yourself get hit with a bat. And that was the wrong thing to do in that situation.” Ben opened his mouth to scream some more, but his strength left him, and he crumpled to the ground. He pitched forward and pressed his cheek to the cold asphalt. Patrick continued. “It’s especially surprising after that run-in we had with the first duster. You saw how he used his head to smash that bat to bits. That’s what you do when someone swings a bat at you. You use your head to smash it to bits, you don’t let him bash your brains out with it. I hope you learned something valuable her
e today.”
And then, for the first time in probably two decades, and completely against his will, Ben began to cry.
Patrick frowned down at him, his hands on his hips. Oh my God, he thought. I broke Ben. “Come on, Benny Boy,” he said, crouching down and patting his friend lightly on the back. “Can I say something? This just makes it more of an adventure! And I think we can both agree, that’s a positive thing.”
Ben spit a stream of pink, foamy mucus. “Remember when you said, ‘Hey, let’s go watch this dumbass show, because I’m fucking retarded,’ and I said, ‘No, you are fucking retarded, but we should go and not follow this creepy ass midget into a dark theater’?”
“I don’t think those were the words exactly--” Patrick began.
“This is what happens when you make the rules,” Ben rasped. “You get a hole in your hand, your buffalo gets slaughtered, you find rotting bodies in a lunatic’s basement, we get attacked by drug addicts, I get my skull broken by a midget with a bat, and we lose every bit of food we had in a place where it’s very, very difficult to find more food. That’s what happens when you make the rules. Do you understand that?”
“Actually, I’ve been meaning to remark on how shockingly easy it’s been for us to find food on this trip.”
“Yeah. Keep making jokes. You’re pretty fucking good at that. You’re not very fucking good at keeping your best friend safe, you’re not very fucking good at keeping anybody safe, with your stupid ass decisions, but, hey, you can deliver a punch line. Congratu-fucking-lations.”
Patrick sat down on the freezing asphalt. He picked at the bandage around his hand. After three years, he could still recall the entire conversation he’d had with Annie that last day on the phone, every single word of it. He also remembered the words that had gone unsaid. Where are you? Why aren’t you here? Why didn’t you protect me? And he remembered that he didn’t have an answer. Not then, and not now. “Benny, my boy,” he said quietly. “Look. All joking aside. You’re right. I’m still living like it’s five years ago and bad decisions are fun because no matter what sort of trouble you get into, there’s always a doctor, or a lawyer, or a policeman, or a wife to get you back out of it. But that’s not the world we live in.” Ben snorted. Patrick continued. “I don’t know how to deal with this. With any of this. I don’t know how to do this, to live this life, without them. I’m flying blind, here, and I’m mucking it all up. I’m just…I’m sorry. I am really sorry. It’s a serious thing that you got hurt, and a serious thing that I got hurt, and a serious thing that we’ve lost our supplies. But I want you to know that as soon as we get you back on your feet and not possibly dying of blood loss in a gutter, we’re going to find the evil leprechaun who did this, and we’re going to get our shit back. Because he has our weapons, and our food, and our bandages. And he has the pudding. You know the trip is pretty much for nothing without the pudding.”
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