Stories for Chip

by Nisi Shawl

  Chocolate pie! But as she opened her mouth to assent she found herself saying instead, “But Ma—Pa—”

  Msieur was already in the showroom; she heard the muffled bell that rang whenever he slid free the drawer holding the day’s receipts. Plaquette crept forward; obediently, Claude followed her onto the crimson carpet. Startled, Msieur thrust his hands below the counter so she couldn’t see what they held. “What’s that you say?”

  “My folks will worry if I don’t get home ‘fore too late. I better—”

  “No. You stay. I’ll have the Café send a messenger.”

  That wouldn’t help. She couldn’t say why, though, so she had to let Msieur herd her back to the workroom. Under his suspicious eye she wound up the George again and walked it to her bench. Not long after, Claude rejoined her. “That’s right,” said Msieur, satisfied. “And if this goes well, I’ll have a proposition to make to your mother. Eh? You have been quite an asset to me. I should like to, erm, deepen our connection.”

  Plaquette swallowed. “Yes, Msieur.”

  His face brightened. “Yes? Your own place in the Quarter. You would keep working in the shop, of course. Splendid, then. Splendid.” He winked at her! The door to the showroom slammed shut. The jangle of keys told Plaquette that Msieur had locked her in. Like a faint echo, the door to the street slammed seconds later.

  She sank back onto her seat. Only grayness, like dirty water, trickled in at the workroom windows, fading as she watched.

  So even if she became Msieur’s placée, tended to their left-hand marriage, he would expect her to continue in this dreary workroom.

  She frowned, attempting to recall if she’d heard the grate and clank of the safe’s door closing on the day’s proceeds, the money and precious jewels Msieur usually hid away there. Sometimes she could remember what had happened around her during the last few minutes of her trance.

  Only the vague outlines of its windows broke the darkening workroom’s walls. And beneath where she knew the showroom door stood, a faint, blurry smear gleamed dully, vanishing remnant of l’heure bleue. She must go home now. Before Msieur returned with his chocolate pie and his unctuous wooing.

  She considered the showroom door a moment longer. But the door from there opened right to the street. People would be bound to see her escape. The workroom door, then; the delivery entrance that led to the alleyway. She twisted to face it.

  Msieur had reinforced this door the same summer when, frightened of robbers, he sank his iron safe beneath the workroom’s huge oak cabinet. It was faced outside with bricks, a feeble attempt at concealment that made it heavy—too heavy for Plaquette alone to budge. Plaquette, however, was not alone.

  Marshaling the George into position, she set him to kick down the thick workroom door. He did the job, walked forward a few more feet, then stopped there in the alley, lacking for further commands. A dumb mechanical porter with no more sense than a headless chicken.

  Though she hadn’t planned it, Plaquette found she knew what she wanted to do next. She rushed back to her bench. Claude cheerfully rocked after her. She erased all the corrections that she’d meticulously made to Msieur’s notes. She scribbled in new ones, any nonsense that came to mind. Without her calculations Msieur would never work out the science of making a wireless iron George. Someone else eventually might, but this way, it wouldn’t be on Plaquette’s conscience.

  She took a chair with her out into the alleyway, climbed up onto it, and unscrewed the George’s cap. She upturned it so that it sat like a bowl on the George’s empty head. From her apron she produced the bottle she’d taken from Ma’s kitchen; the one with the dregs of jake in it. Ma could never bear to throw anything away, even poison. Plaquette poured the remaining jake all over the receiver inside the George’s cap. There was a satisfying sizzling sound of wires burning out. Jake leg this, you son of a—well. Ma wouldn’t like her even thinking such language. She screwed the cap back onto the George’s head. Msieur might never discover the sabotage.

  One more trip back inside the workroom, to Claude’s broom closet. On a hook in there hung the Pullman porter’s uniform that Msieur had been given to model the George’s painted costume after. It was a men’s small. A little large on her, but she belted in the waist and rolled up the trouser hems. She slid her hands into the trouser pockets, and exclaimed in delight. So much room! Not dainty, feminine pockets—bigger even than those stitched onto her workroom apron. She could carry almost anything she pleased! She stuck Claude’s wardenclyffe in there. Serve Msieur right to lose two—no, three—of his playthings.

  But now she really must hurry. She strewed her clothing about the workroom—let Msieur make of that what he would. A kidnapping or worse, her virgin innocence soiled, maybe her lifeless body dumped in the bayou. And off they went—Plaquette striding freely in her masculine get-up, one foot in front of the other, making her plan as she made up the stories she told Pa: by letting the elements come to her in the moment. Claude rolled in her wake, tipping dangerously forward as he negotiated the steep drop from banquette to roadway, falling farther and farther behind.

  When they came to the stairs up the side of the building where she lived she was stumped for what to do. Claude was not the climbing sort. For the moment she decided to store him in the necessary—maybe she’d figure out how to get him back to Msieur’s later. She’d miss his cheerful face, though.

  Ma yelped when a stranger in a porter’s uniform walked in the door. She reached for her rolling pin.

  “Ma! It just me!” Plaquette pulled off her cap, let her hair bush out free from under it.

  Ma boggled. “Plaquette? Why you all got up like that?”

  The sound of Pa’s laughter rasped from her parents’ bedroom. Pa was sitting up in bed, peering through the doorway. “That’s my hellcat girl,” he said. “Mother, you ain’t got to go out on the Frisco run. Plaquette gon do it.”

  Ma stamped her foot at him. “Don’t be a fool! She doing no such thing.”

  Except she was! Till now, Plaquette hadn’t thought it through. But that’s exactly what she was going to do.

  Ma could read the determination in her face. “Child, don’t you see? It won’t work. You too young to pass for your Pa. Gonna get him fired.”

  Plaquette thought fast. “Not Pa. Pa’s replacement.” She pulled herself up to her full height. “Pleased to introduce you to Mule Aranslyde, namely myself. Ol’ Pullman’s newest employee.” She sketched a mock bow. Pa cackled in delight.

  A little plate of peas and greens and ham fat had been set aside for her. Plaquette spooned it down while Ma went on about how Plaquette must have lost her everlovin mind and Pa wasn’t helping with his nonsense. Then Plaquette took a still protesting Ma by the hand and led her into the bedroom. “Time’s running short,” she said. “Lemme tell y’all why I need to go.” That brought a bit more commotion, though she didn’t even tell them the half of it. Just the bit about the George. And she maybe said she’d broken it by accident.

  ◊

  Ma twisted Plaquette’s long braids into a tight little bun and crammed them under the cap. “Don’t know how you gonna fake doin Pa’s job,” she fretted. “Ain’t as easy as it looks. I messed up so many times, supervisor asked me if I been in the whiskey.”

  Plaquette took Ma’s two hands in her own. “I’m a ‘prentice, remember?” She patted the letter in her breast pocket that Pa had dictated to her, the one telling Pa’s porter friend Jonas Jones who she was and to look out for her and thank you God bless you. She kissed Pa goodbye. Ma walked her out onto the landing, and that’s when Plaquette’s plan began to go sideways. There at the foot of the stairs was Claude, backing up and ramming himself repeatedly into the bottom stair. Plaquette had forgotten she had Claude’s wardenclyffe in her pocket. All this time he’d been trying to follow it.

  “Plaquette,” said Ma, “what for you steal Msieur’s machine?” It wasn’t a shout but a low, scared, angry murmur—far worse. In the lamplight scattered into the y
ard from the main street, Claude’s white-gloved hands glowed eerily.

  Plaquette leaned out over the railing to contemplate the problem.

  “I know you think he yours, but girl, he don’t belong to you!” Plaquette didn’t even need to turn to know the way Ma was looking at her: hard as brass and twice as sharp.

  “I—I set him to follow me.” Plaquette faltered for words. This was the other part she hadn’t told them.

  Ma only said, “Oh, Lord. We in for it now.”

  From inside Pa replied, “Maybe not.”

  ◊

  “Watch where you’re going!”

  Plaquette muttered an apology to the man she’d jostled. Even late like this—it must have been nearly midnight—New Orleans’s Union Station was thronged with travelers. But in Ma’s wake Plaquette and Claude made slow yet steady headway through the chattering crowds. A makeshift packing crate disguised her mechanical friend; Plaquette held a length of clothesline which was supposed to fool onlookers into thinking she hauled it along. Of course the line kept falling slack. Ma looked back over her shoulder for the thirteenth time since they’d left home. But it couldn’t be much farther now to the storage room where Pa had said they could hide Claude overnight. Or for a little longer. Soon as the inevitable hue and cry over his disappearance died down, Plaquette could return him to Msieur’s. So long as no one discovered Claude where they were going to stash him—

  “Stop! Stop! Thief!” Angry as she’d feared, Msieur’s shout came from behind them. It froze her one long awful second before she could run.

  Ahead, Ma shoved past a fat man in woolens and sent him staggering to the right. Behind them came more exclamations, more men calling for them to halt, their cries mixed with the shrieks and swearing of the people they knocked aside. How’d he know where to look for her? Trust a man whose business was numbers to put two and two together. Msieur had friends with him—How many? Plaquette barely glanced back. Two? Four? No telling—she had to run to stay in front of Claude so he’d follow her to—an opening! She broke away from the thick-packed travelers and ran after Ma to a long brick walk between two puffing engines. Good. Cover. This must be why Ma had taken such an unexpected path. Swaying like a drunk in a hurricane, Claude in his crate lumbered after her.

  The noise of their pursuers fell to a murmur. Maybe she’d lost them?

  But when Plaquette caught up with Ma, Ma smacked her fists together and screamed. “No! Why you follow me over here? Ain’t I told you we putting your fool mistake in the storage the other side of the tracks?”

  “B-but you came this w-w-ay!” Plaquette stammered.

  “I was creating a distraction for you to escape!”

  The clatter and thump of running feet sounded clear again above the engines’ huff and hiss. Coming closer. Louder. Louder. Ma threw her hands in the air. “We done! Oh, baby, you too young for jail!”

  One of the dark train carriages Plaquette had run past had been split up the middle—hadn’t it? A deeper darkness—a partially open door? Spinning, she rushed back the way they’d come. Yes! “Ma!” Plaquette pushed the sliding door hard as she could. It barely budged. Was that wide enough? She jumped and grabbed its handle and swung herself inside.

  But Claude! Prisoned in slats, weighed down by his treads, he bumped disconsolately against the baggage car’s high bottom. Following her and the wardenclyffe, exactly as programmed. Should she drop it? She dug through the deep pockets frantically and pulled it out so fast it flew from her hand and landed clattering somewhere in the carriage’s impenetrable darkness.

  Hidden like she wished she could hide from the hoarsely shouting men. But they sounded frustrated as well as angry now, and no nearer. Maybe the engine on the track next to this was in their way?

  The train began moving. From Plaquette’s perch it looked like the bricks and walkway rolled off behind her. Claude kept futile pace. The train was pulling up alongside Ma, standing hopelessly where Plaquette had left her, waiting to be caught. Now she was even with them. Plaquette brushed her fingers over Ma’s yellow headscarf. It fell out of reach. “Goodbye, Ma! Just walk away from Claude! They won’t know it was you!” Fact was, Plaquette felt excited almost as much as she was scared. Even if Msieur got past whatever barrier kept them apart right now, she was having her adventure!

  The train stopped. Plaquette’s heart just about did, too. Her only adventure would be jail. How could she help Ma and Pa from inside the pokey? She scanned the walkway for Msieur and his friends, coming to demand justice.

  But no one showed. The shouts for her and Ma to stop grew fainter. The train started again, more slowly. Suddenly Ma was there, yanking Claude desperately by his cord. She’d pulled his crate off. It was on the platform, slowly disappearing into the distance. Together, Ma and Plaquette lifted Claude like he was luggage, tilting him to scrape over the carriage’s narrow threshold. As they did, the tray holding the books caught on the edge and was dragged open—and it held more than book scrolls. Cool metallic disks, crisp or greasy slips of paper—Msieur’s money!

  How? Plaquette wasted a precious moment wondering—he must have put the day’s take into Claude when she surprised him in the showroom.

  Ma’s eyes got wide as saucers. She was still running to keep up, puffing as she hefted Claude’s weight. With a heave, she and Plaquette hauled him into the car. He landed with a heavy thump. The train was speeding up. There was no time to count it; Plaquette fisted up two handfuls of the money, coins and bills both, and shoved it into Ma’s hands. Surely it was enough to suffice Ma and Pa for a while. “I’ll come back,” she said.

  The train kept going, building speed. Ma stopped running. She was falling behind fast. “You a good girl!” she yelled.

  When it seemed sure the train wasn’t stopping again anytime soon, Plaquette stuck her head out—a risk. A yellow gleam in the shadows was all she could see of Ma. Plaquette shoved the sliding door closed.

  Well. She’d gone and done it now. Pa’s note was no use; this wasn’t the train making the Frisco run. It for sure wasn’t no sleeping car train. A porter had no business here. The train could be going to the next town, or into the middle of next week. She had no way of knowing right now. For some reason, that made her smile.

  She fumbled her way to Claude’s open drawer. The money left in there was all coins, more than she could hold in one hand. She divided it among the deep, deep pockets in her trousers and jacket.

  She was a true and actual thief, and a saboteur.

  Finally she found the wardenclyffe. Feeling farther around her in the loud blackness, she determined the carriage was loaded as she’d imagined with trunks, suitcases, parcels of all shapes and sizes. Nothing comfortable as the beds at home, the big one or the little. She didn’t care.

  When the train stopped she’d count the money. When the train stopped she’d calculate what to do, where to go, how to get by. She could slip off anywhere, buy herself new clothes, become a new person.

  She settled herself as well as she could on a huge, well-stuffed suitcase and closed her eyes.

  Claude would help. She would punch more books for him to read and collect from the people who came to listen. Send money home to Pa and Ma every few weeks.

  She’d write the books herself. She’d get him to punch them somehow. She’d punch a set of instructions for how to punch instructions for punching. She’d punch another set of instructions and let Claude write books too. And maybe come back one day soon. Find Billy. Take him away and show him a new life.

  The train ran toward the north on shining steel rails. Plaquette’s dreams flew toward the future on pinions of shining bright ideas.

  Festival

  Christopher Brown

  The yard in front of the homeshare is filled with the kind of ungoverned cars you’re not even allowed to drive anymore. A little Suzuki with the hatch cut off hides in the tall weeds, next to a Dodge panel truck that’s lost its panels and the skeleton of some ancient muscle car. The house is a lot o
lder.

  Eden laughs as she and her friends sit there in the rental car, recalibrating their expectations.

  “It looks like the Alamo,” she says.

  It doesn’t really. It’s a brick house. Old, and out of place. Out of place with this rundown street in a weird part of town, with the online pics Nick sent around, with their idea of where they belong.

  Eden already feels out of place with Nick and Marley and Shannon and Honda, even though they have been friends since college.

  “Why can’t the world look more like the website?” says Marley.

  Eden sees the silhouette of some big water bird in the trees back there, watching a cargo plane come in so close you can see the seams.

  “This place is cooler than any website,” she says, but it’s hard to hear.

  “Maybe just wait until we see the inside,” says Nick.

  “Maybe just we shouldn’t let you pick the rental next time,” says Marley.

  “At least it’s close to the airport,” says Honda.

  “Like not even five minutes, right?” says Nick.

  “Which is why all the trailer parks,” says Eden. “And that junkyard or whatever that was down the street. This is awesome. Adventure travel.”

  “Well it’s only ten minutes from downtown,” says Nick. “And it’s just a place to crash. We’re gonna be at the festival the whole time.”

  “Where’s the river?” asks Honda.

  “Right past those trees,” says Nick, with the confidence of a dude permanently connected to the network through his glasses.

  “Why don’t you all get out of the car and come see,” says a man’s voice. The guy is standing there by the car. His smile reveals a couple of fucked-up teeth. His hands are dirty with engine grease. He wipes them on his jeans, then pushes his long hair out of his eyes. His hair and his jeans both look like they have not been washed in a long time.