Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  “It’s a bit late in the day for you to out alone, isn’t it young man?”

  Will shrugged.

  “You here with your momma and daddy?”

  “No,” Will said. “It’s just me.” He instantly regretted that slip. Stern had once told him there were people called purferts who did nasty things to little children, but his attention was on the night sky and that incredible purple-red color made him forget his usual line that his mom and dad were in a nearby store and would be out any minute.

  “I see,” the man said.

  Instead of yelling at Will or getting creepy or asking all kinds of grown-up questions the man sat on the curb, setting down a heavy canvas bag that had been slung over one shoulder. He was wearing a dark yellow coat that hung down past his knees and a wide-brimmed hat that hid his face in shadow. The man didn’t say anything about Will’s filthy face and hands, his dirty clothes, or the torn knee of his Chinos.

  “What are you looking for?”

  The man sounded like one of the cool cowboys on TV. Whut are yuh lookin fore? Well, when he actually got to see TV, since Stern hated most television shows, calling the device The Great Lobotomizer, which sounded like something cool and gross, right out of a creature feature. Recently the jerks at the Compound had limited his entertainment even more; they now strictly controlled all that Will saw and heard of the outside world.

  Will looked up at the man, seeing a face that was shaped all wrong and was as white as a toad’s belly, even in the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat. I should be scared of him, Will thought, but I’m not. “You asked me what I’m looking for. Not what I’m looking at.”

  The man nodded and smiled. Despite the fact that his teeth were weird and his eyes were set too far apart on a head that was shaped all wrong, he reminded Will of Stern for a moment; the smile and nod the Doc would give Will when the boy got the correct answer to a doozy of a question, the kind of smile that would be followed by Stern patting him on the shoulder and saying, “My clever boy.”

  “I’m looking for Skylab,” Will said, trying not to think about Stern. “It’s like ... this big house they just shot up into space, where astronauts are going to do experiments and stuff.”

  The man nodded. “It’s an empty rocket stage, isn’t it?” Innit? “Jam-packed with equipment for their work.” He looked up and said, “Imagine what they will see.”

  “I know,” Will said, feeling a rush of excitement. “NASA is real lucky they had smart guys like Von Braun working for them cause—“

  And this made him think of Stern again.

  Edmund Stern was dead, a final stroke unleashing a raging torrent of blood within his brain while he had slept. The closest thing Will had to a father was gone, and now he was considered property, a thing owned by the Compound and nothing more. He was fed and clothed and housed and trained, but no one wanted to talk to him outside of tests and interviews, no one was there to comfort him when he got hurt in his training, and no one cared if he woke up scared in the middle of the night after a bad dream.

  Will was angry and frightened and alone. He had left the Compound and wandered across the country, walking, hitchhiking, and sneaking on buses and trains. He knew that people from the Compound were out there somewhere, searching for him.

  After looking up again and seeing nothing but unmoving stars in a sky now the dark purple of a plum, Will said, “It’s kind of warm to be wearing a long coat.”

  “True,” the man said, tilting his head. “But it gets chilly up in the mountains or out in the desert, and I—“

  A rusted pickup truck braked on the street in front of them and two men got out.

  “Well, holy shit,” one of them said. He was wearing overalls.

  “Yup,” the other man agreed. This one had a nasty wet stub of a cigar between his fleshy lips and he was holding a small bottle of liquor. “By my blessed mama, if it ain’t the King of the Fuckin Freaks.”

  Will thought these guys sounded like they belonged on a TV western too, but they also sounded mean and slippery, like talking weasels.

  Overalls asked, “What the fuck you doin in our town, King Freak?”

  The man in the long coat and wide-brimmed hat stood slowly. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said, raising his hands.

  Will’s gaze went from the dusty black boots under the cuffs of the man’s jeans up to the wide-brimmed hat. I hope I grow as tall as him some day, he thought. And then he thought, what is wrong with his hands?

  “Well you got trouble,” Wet-stub said, “Both you and the grimy brat” He took a drink from his bottle.

  Will got up and took a step. He was thinking maybe he should just walk away. If he was bigger he could have pounded these guys into pulp, but he wasn’t bigger. He was just a kid.

  Wet-stub reached out and grabbed Will by the arm. “Where in hell you think you’re goin, baby-face?”

  “Hold on, gentlemen,” the man in the long coat said, “There’s no need for—“

  “You shut your mouth, King Freak,” Overalls said. “You freaks think you can come down outta the mountains and walk our streets and shop in our stores, you all gotta learn your place.”

  “Dell City has welcomed us with open arms,” the man in the hat said.

  “Not all of us,” Wet-stub said. “Not freaks and grubby little baby-faces, anyhow.”

  Will looked up at Wet-stub. “I’m not a baby,” he said quietly. “I’m almost thirteen.”

  “Oooh, careful,” Overalls said with a laugh.

  Wet-stub raised a hand. “You smart-mouth little shit-heel. A good smack—“

  Will punched the man in the testicles.

  Wet-stub bent over. The wet stub of the cigar fell from his mouth and he dropped his bottle. It smashed apart on the street, and then Wet-stub vomited on the shards of glass.

  Overalls reached into a pocket and took out a sap, ten inches of stitched leather weighted with lead on one end. “You little cocksucker, I’ll—”

  The man in the long coat grabbed Overalls’ wrist with a hand that wasn’t quite right. The hand squeezed and Will heard soft snaps like someone chewing salted pretzels. Overalls let out a shriek and dropped the sap.

  Wet-stub stood up and opened his mouth to say something.

  The man in the long coat took off his wide brimmed hat and leaned close. “Don’t,” he said.

  Wet-stub and Overalls got back in the pickup truck as the man in the long coat put his hat back on, hiding his face in shadow again. The pickup roared down the street out of sight.

  Will took a step and stumbled, feeling dizzy. The man in the long coat caught him and lifted him in his arms.

  “You got a name, young man?” the man asked.

  “Will.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jon. When was the last time you ate anything, Will?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “I had an apple yesterday. Or maybe it was before that.”

  “Well, that just ain’t proper,” the man said.

  The sky and the stars started to spin and Will’s eyes slipped closed.

  When Will opened his eyes again he was sitting on the broad seat of an old pickup truck as it drove up a steep hill. The road led up into the mountains that loomed east of Dell City just over the border in New Mexico. The yellow headlights illuminated a gravel road cutting between high walls of gray rock.

  “Come on now,” the man in the yellow coat said. He was driving, one bone-white hand on the steering wheel, the other working the gearshift.

  The engine and the transmission were making a racket.

  The man saw that Will was awake and he said, “Welcome back, little stranger.”

  There was a loud ratcheting noise and the truck stalled. Then it began to roll backward.

  “Dang it,” the man said, stomping on the brake and fighting with the gearshift. The truck shuddered and lurched forward again. The man gave Will a wink with one wide-set eye and said, “Easier than sleeping on a bed of porcupines.”

&nbs
p; “Where are we going?” asked Will.

  “Home,” the man said, and then he was quiet as he concentrated on his driving.

  The road went up another mile, and dropped down through a mountain pass. The pass narrowed here. Gray walls of stone were within arm’s length of the truck. They came out of the pass into a valley between crags of rock, and men with rifles waved the truck through. They passed a sign on one side of the road.

  Hometown

  You Are Welcome Here!

  The valley was a couple of miles across and five times as long, and Will thought he could see fields in the distance. Closer up Will saw street lights and lots of ugly buildings; warehouses and Quonset huts, both of which he had seen in the older parts of the Compound back East. Most of the Quonset huts had been converted into homes, many with fenced in yards and little flower gardens. Farther down one street he could see the wooden frames of new houses under construction. There was a grassy central square and a big two-storey hall that seemed to be a gathering place.

  The man pulled over and parked the pickup. People who had been in the hall came out onto the street, waving and calling to them.

  “Hey Jon,” one man shouted, “How’d it go?”

  When he got closer Will saw that the man was an Indian, an actual real live Indian, with copper skin, a strong nose, and long black hair. He had a badge pinned to his shirt, a rough-hewn polished star of pale gray metal with the word LAW stamped in the center.

  “Not good, Spears,” the man in the yellow coat said, opening his door and getting out of the truck. “We better get those crops going real soon because Dell City is getting less and less friendly, even on a quick run for staples at the supermarket. The time’s a coming when we’ll have to fend for ourselves as much as possible.”

  The Indian man named Spears shrugged. “Yeah, well, fuck the white man, eh?” He glanced at Will and said, “No offense, Little White Man.”

  Will laughed and said, “None taken.”

  “Hey, we got a diplomat here, I like this kid,” Spears said.

  Another man approaching Will’s side of the truck said, “You didn’t miss much Jon. We’re all still haggling over the same proposals in the Hall.” The man spoke with a wet lisp. The streetlights dimmed and then brightened again. “And of course we have generator issues to discuss.”

  The man in the yellow coat, Jon, looked at Will and said, “We’re trying to set up a town government,” he said. “Kind of tough when everyone wants something different.”

  “You got that right,” the man on Will’s side of the truck said as he leaned in the open passenger window. “Pain in the posterior is what it is.”

  Will looked at the man and scuttled away, scrambling out the driver’s side door. Jon grabbed him and scooped him up.

  “That’s not very polite,” Jon said. He set Will down and walked the boy around the truck to face the man who had just spoken to them. “Will, this is Ed. He’s our school teacher. Since he thinks he knows a lot of history, he’s also on the town council.”

  Ed was average in height, wearing corduroy pants and a cotton shirt. He had a bit of a gut, stark white chalk dust under the fingernails of his right hand, and he was wearing wire-framed glasses. His head was a pyramid of flesh, with a few sparse graying hairs on the rounded point. If he had a neck it was hidden under wide, sagging jowls that touched his broad shoulders. His mouth was monstrous, the mouth of a shark, with uneven, sharp teeth and huge fleshy lips that looked raw at the corners. His nose was a pink bulb and his eyes, even magnified by the lenses of his glasses, were small black beads. That massive, terrible mouth closed, and lips eighteen inches wide curved into a smile.

  “Pleased to meet you, William. “ He offered his hand and Will shook it warily. “And for the record,” Ed said, “I do know history. For instance, I know that Jon here was a lousy student.”

  “Come on now,” Jon said.

  Ed put a hand to the side of his mouth and leaned close to Will. “He sucked in school. I don’t know why anyone put him in charge of this town.”

  Will laughed, and then impulsively reached out and touched one side of Ed’s mouth where the flesh looked raw and tender. “Does that hurt?”

  Ed stood up straight, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “No, son, it doesn’t hurt at all. That’s just the way I was made.” He put a gentle hand on Will’s shoulder and said, “But thanks for asking.”

  “There’s lots of people in Hometown like us,” Jon said. He was speaking to Will and sharing a bittersweet smile with Ed. “People who look different, maybe a bit scary, but are just like anyone else inside.”

  A girl a few years older than Will ran past the truck. “Evening, gents,” she said with a laugh. She was wearing cutoffs that showed off her tanned legs and shapely bottom, and a halter top that showed off a lot more. Will’s eyes were huge. Her red hair was feathered and flying like flames. She waved to a group of teenagers on the square and ran on. When she raised her arm and waved Will realized she had membranes of translucent skin that stretched from her wrists to her sides, just above the back strap of her revealing halter.

  Will was stunned. “She’s got wings?”

  “Who, Suzy?” Jon shook his head. “Technically speaking, they aren’t wings. She can’t fly, but she can glide, sort of.”

  “Cool,” Will said, his eyes quickly moving from the membranes under the girl’s arms to the high, frayed edges of her cutoffs.

  Jon saw what Will was looking at and chuckled, laying a huge, gentle hand on top of the boy’s head and turned Will in the other direction.

  “What’s the story with the kid?” Spears asked.

  Jon looked down at Will. “I don’t know. I think he and I need to chat. But first, I’m gonna take him to see Vicky.”

  Jon led Will across a lawn to one of the Quonset huts that had been made into a home. Spears followed them. The house was painted green, with white trim around the windows and doors. Jon opened the door and led Will down a hall to a cozy room. There was a kitchen area with a dining table and chairs at one end, an old wood stove, sofa and easy chairs at the other.

  Will looked up at Jon, wondering how that face could be real. His head and his hands are all wrong, he thought. This is so weird.

  Then Jon gave Will another smile, and the kindness in the man’s eyes put him at ease.

  A woman was sitting in one of the easy chairs in the glow of a lamp with a golden shade. Will sucked in a breath. She was the most beautiful woman Will had ever seen. Her hair was the color of butterscotch, braided into a rope over one shoulder. She was wearing a white dress and her tiny feet were bare. She was a fox, and the shape of her body made Will’s belly do a flip-flop, but she was so pretty that he instantly felt bad for feeling whatever he felt when his innards tingled like that. Her eyes were as gray as the mountains outside, but so much softer, and they saw nothing.

  “Hey Vee,” Jon said. His voice was soft when he talked to her. He moved Will in front of her and got down on one knee. “I found a stray, baby.”

  Jon took Vicky’s soft and slender right hand in his own, his hand looking like more of a weapon than anything else now that Will could see it clearly. Jon gently set Vicky’s palm against Will’s face so it cupped his cheek.

  “What’s—“

  Jon shushed him.

  Vicky’s face didn’t change. She stared straight ahead, her breathing so shallow that she might have been a statue. She blinked slowly, and gave the slightest of smiles. Then a tear appeared in the corner of one eye and ran down her cheek.

  Spears took a step forward. Jon stood and put a hand against Spears’ chest. “Hold on.”

  Will didn’t notice. He was mesmerized by Vicky and wondering if she was okay. She hadn’t moved or said anything. She just stared straight ahead like a statue, but she was so pretty he couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “You sit here,” Jon said, guiding Will to one corner of the sofa.

  Jon and Spears stepped away and Jon turned on a light in
the kitchen. They started talking, the soft murmur of their voices lulling Will to the edge of sleep.

  Jon opened the fridge. He took out some sliced chicken breast, a loaf of homemade bread, and a jar of mayonnaise.

  “You’re making a sandwich?” Spears sounded astonished, but he kept his voice low.

  “The boy stays here until I find out who he belongs to. If he’s all alone then—“

  “Vicky cried when she touched him, Jon. You know what that means!”

  Jon sliced some bread and began spreading the mayonnaise. “She smiled. A smile means the newcomer is safe.”

  Spears shook his head. “She also cried, and tears mean the newcomer is dangerous. Why aren’t you letting me do my job?”

  “Are you so eager to take that little boy up to Broken Tooth and throw him off?”

  Spears appeared hurt by that, and a man as tough as Spears didn’t hurt easily. “Jon, you of all people should know I don’t enjoy—“

  Jon cut him off. “I’m sorry, my friend. That was ... I don’t think that at all. There’s just something about this boy.” He raised a hand, his fingers working, grasping nothing. “I have a feeling that he’s ...” He shook his head. “The boy is alone and on the run and needs a home, and I want to help him just because of that—“

  “So you think, but if he’s gonna stay here then you got some phone calls to make to be sure his parents aren’t looking for him.”

  “I know,” Jon said. “But there’s something about him. It’s ... it’s almost like he touched greatness. That boy or someone close to him will be very important to Hometown some day. That sounds crazy, I know, but that’s how I feel.”

  “Vicky cried, Jon. She cried. And Vicky is never wrong.”

  Jon gave Spears a slow nod. “So he’s a good kid in need of help, but we have to get rid of him because he’s a danger to us.”

  Spears crossed his arms. “So what are you gonna do?”

  “For starters, I’m going to get the boy something to eat,” Jon replied, finishing the sandwich.