Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel

by Tom Hourie

  You know that final scene in The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman has just spirited Katherine Ross away from her own wedding and they escape on a city bus? And then they sit in the back seat looking at each other and wondering what happens next?

  That’s what it was like when we woke up the next morning. Yes, we still had our freedom but what were we supposed to do with it? Finally, for lack of a better plan, we decided to make for Devon and continue our search for Henry Babbage.

  Easier said than done. Schrödinger was sure to have told Alistair Fox where we were headed. To make matters worse, the water based paint we had used to cover the van’s side panels had begun to wash off, partially revealing the curlicued letters underneath. We might as well ride around in a circus wagon as drive a van with “The Amazing Doctor Hades” printed on the side. We tried smearing the sides with mud but it didn’t seem to help much and it washed off in the rain almost as soon as we had spread it on. Did I mention it had been drizzling from the moment we left London? We spent almost as much time pushing the van out of muck-filled cart tracks as we did driving.

  It was during one such exercise in frustration that Providence came to our rescue in the form of Comanche Joe Chisholm. We were stuck in a particularly muddy lane whose rutted surface bore the cloven-hoofed imprints of many cattle. I was at the rear of the van with my shoulder against the door and my hands clutching the rear steps. Sarah was driving, if you can call it that. She knew only two throttle positions. All the way out, and all the way in. The van’s rear wheels would spin like a dragster’s every time I told her to hit the steam and I was covered with mud and cow shit from the hips down.

  “Take it easy, for God’s sakes,” I kept yelling. “You’re just digging us in deeper.”

  “We wouldn’t be in this predicament if you hadn’t got us stuck in the first place,” she shouted back helpfully.

  I sat on the rear steps to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my face. I was scraping some of the gluey muck from the soles of my boots when I something moved in the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw a cowboy in a rain slicker and a high-crowned ten-gallon hat sitting astride a chestnut mare.

  I’m hallucinating, I thought. Right now I’m seeing Tom Mix but soon it’ll be giant pink bunnies.

  “Seems like y’all could use some help,” the man said in a Texas twang. “I’ll have the boys hitch Sam and Ruby up to the front of your wagon.”

  Sam and Ruby turned out to be a Texas Longhorn Steer and an American Bison respectively. My sense of unreality grew as I watched two men named Zeke and Ned hitch them to our front axle and urge them forward with cries of ‘Hiyaah, haah.’

  “You best follow along with us in case you get stuck again,” Ten-gallon hat man said, once were free. “The rest of our party are fixing dinner up ahead.”

  ‘Up ahead’ turned out to be a malodorous rubbish dump on the outskirts of Basingstoke where several brightly-colored wagons were circled around a small campfire. I would have taken the place for a gypsy campsite except for the presence of a Concord Stage Coach whose door sported a hand-painted illustration of a charging Bison above the words ‘Comanche Joe’s Wild West Show.’

  “Are you Mister Chisholm?” I asked ten-gallon hat man.

  “Yes Sir, I am. How be you put your wagon over yonder and come get dry by the fire?”

  My first instinct was to refuse Chisholm’s invitation. We were on the run and we didn’t know these people. Maybe they had seen the same newsreel we had and would turn us in for the reward. But the fact was Sarah and I were both wet, tired and hungry. We needed a place to rest and this was as good as any. And besides that, Schrödinger’s van with its multi-colored side panels looked right at home among the Roma caravans. It was as close as we were going to get to being inconspicuous.

  Night had fallen by the time we had parked the van and changed into dry clothing. I stuck a couple of branches in the ground near the smoking fire and used them as a drying rack for our clothes.

  We were far enough from town that the only illumination came from the campfire and from the stars overhead. The flickering light illuminated a circle of faces whose olive skins and high cheekbones would not have looked out of place in on the shores of The Adriatic Sea. Two men in embroidered red vests were tuning a guitar and a violin to an accordion played by a third man; dark-haired women in long skirts quietly nursed babies; three older children played tag around the camp’s outskirts.

  “I bet you folks are hungry,” Chisholm said. “Hang on while I rustle you up some grub.” He returned a moment later with two mess tins filled with garlic-smelling goulash. Normally I don’t like garlic but the stew was delicious. Sarah and I muttered out thanks and ate like a pair of starved wolves.

  “Thanks again,” I said, as I wiped my tin clean with a crust of bread. “My stomach was beginning to think my mouth was on strike.”

  “You’re American, if I’m not mistaken,” Chisholm said. “Whereabouts you from if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Washington State.”

  “Is that a fact? Mostly logging up there I expect.”

  The interrogation that followed was gentle but comprehensive. I was reluctant to answer our host’s questions at first, but his quiet manner was reassuring and I found myself offering him an edited version of the circumstances that had caused Sarah and me to leave London.

  “You didn’t have much choice by the sounds of it,” he said, when I told him about killing Arthur Flowers. “What kind of gun did you use? Rifle? Shotgun maybe?”

  “Top break revolver,” I said. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”

  “Heavy sonovagun,” he said, turning the Adams over in his hands after I had returned. “Reminds me of Jesse James’s Schofield. Don’t suppose you ever handled a Colt?”

  “You mean a Colt single-action? Too expensive where I come from. I shoot an Italian copy.”

  “Italian? Huh! That’s a new one. Tell you what,” he said, pointing to a heap of debris just beyond the edge of the campsite. “Why don’t you head on over yonder? I’ll be with you in a tick.”

  A full moon had risen and I was able to make my way to the garbage pile without difficulty. Chisholm showed up a few moments later carrying a western holster and a Colt single-action army revolver.

  “Here,” he said, giving me the holster. “Let’s see what you can do. Aim at that old mirror over there.”

  This was different from shooting at the range where people pretty much leave you alone. Having someone watch made me nervous. I felt like I was auditioning for something but I wasn’t sure what.

  Still, a gun is a gun and a target is a target and I made up my mind to give a good account of myself. I adjusted the gun belt so that the top of the holster was level with the heel of my hand and took several slow breaths. Take your time, I said to myself. No point in being fast if you miss.

  Then I experienced a phenomenon I had previously only heard about. My muscle memory took over and my body acted instinctively. I felt my right hand streak downward and bring the Colt to my waist where my left hand was already waiting to cock the hammer. I squeezed the trigger as soon as I felt the sear click into place. The crack of the shot and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the clearing. The six gun rolled back in my hand and the mirror burst apart in a sparkling cascade of fragments.

  It was hard, but I restrained myself from punching the air and shouting ‘Yesss!’ I wanted to give the impression this was the way I shot all the time.

  I glanced over at Chisholm who was regarding me with pursed lips. “Whyn’t we head back over to the camp?” he said. “We might have some things to talk about.”

  “You might be wondering how I come to be sitting in a field in England with a bunch of Roma,” Chisholm continued, once we had returned to the fire. “Don’t call them Gypsies by the way,” he added in an undertone. “They don’t like that.”

  Whenever I remember the next few minutes I think not only of Chisholm but also of the three Romani musicians who wer
e now playing a ballad whose slow rhythms added a lyrical counterpoint to the cowboy’s story.

  It turned out that Chisholm, Zeke and Ned had come across the Atlantic with one of the several Wild West Shows that toured England after Buffalo Bill’s command performance for Queen Victoria. “We were never big like Bill, mind you,” Chisholm said. “We stuck to the smaller towns. No royalty where we went.”

  The tour was going reasonably well until they played three very successful days in Burton-On-Trent after which Erastus Widmerpool, their promoter, took off with the gate along with any other funds he could lay his hands on. “Sonovagun better hope he never crosses my path again,” Chisholm said. “So there we were, just the three of us with a passel of animals to feed.”

  “Why didn’t you sell the animals and use the money to buy tickets to The States?” I asked, regretting the question as soon as I saw the shocked look on his face.

  “We’d never do that,” he said. “Them animals got a right to get home just as much as we do. No, we decided to stick it out. No choice. Instead of running our own show, we rented space in the midway of any local fair we could find. Me doing the patter, Zeke with his rope tricks and Ned showing off the animals.”

  “So how do the Gyp.., sorry, Roma come in?”

  “They were working the same circuit we were. Doing some fortune telling, playing their music and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. Got themselves into trouble this one time and we got them off. Told the local sheriff they was Indians who didn’t know any better. The sheriff didn’t really believe us but he didn’t have room for so many people in his lockup so he let them go so long as they promised to stay with us.” Chisholm paused for a sip of black coffee before going on. “And they kept their word. Mostly because they saw the advantage of seeming legit. In return, they play the Indians in our show’s big finalee. Get themselves all made up in war paint and attack the stagecoach over there while we hold them off.”

  “How’s it working out? Are you making money?”

  “Could do a lot better, which is why I’m telling you all this. One of the things people expect to see at a Wild West Show is a sharpshooter and Zeke, Ned and me can’t shoot for beans. Not a one of us can hit the broad side of a barn.”

  “And you’re thinking about me? Don’t let what you saw over at the dump fool you. I’m no Sundance Kid.”

  “Don’t have to be,” Chisholm said. “Here’s how we’ll do it…”

  Chapter XXXXI:

  Sharpshooting – A Purdey Side-By-Side

  And that is how I became ‘Gentleman Bob Liddel, Gunslinger of the Plains.’

  “Why gentleman?” I asked Chisholm

  “We don’t have any more western outfits,” Chisholm said. “And even if we did, nobody would ever believe you were a cowboy. We’ll get Aunt Tsura to whip up some dude clothes for you. Get her to fix up a costume for your girl too. Something Mexican I’m thinking.”

  “For Sarah? What’s she got to do with it?”

  “You got to have an assistant,” he said, looking at me like I was an imbecile.

  Aunt Tsura turned out to be a toothless, stoop-shouldered crone who appeared to have stepped from the pages of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Her idea of taking measurements involved hitting me with a long wooden ruler while shifting my limbs into impossible positions. But she knew how to sew, I’ll give her that. She came up with a kind of Bat Masterson outfit for me, complete with frock coat, bowler hat, floppy necktie and a gold lame vest so shiny you could use it to signal passing spaceships.

  Sarah ended up as a Latina vaquera with a sombrero, knee-high red boots and a fringed skirt with matching vest.

  “Now what?” I asked Chisholm after he had given his approval to our new costumes. “I have no idea what we’re supposed to do next. And where does Sarah fit in? It only takes one person to fast draw, unless you want us to shoot each other.”

  “You don’t start with the fast draw,” he said. “That’s your peace dee resistance. You start by shooting glass balls with a little four-ten shotgun. I got a little Remington pump-action that should do the trick. Sarah throws the balls up and you hit ‘em. Trick is to wait ‘til the ball is at the top of the arc. That’s where it’s slowest.”

  “Hang on,” I said. “You never said anything about shotguns. I’ve never fired one in my life.”

  “Is that a fact?” Chisholm said. Sarah cleared her throat and was about to say something when Chisholm butted in. “Well, you best start practicing,” he said.

  So I spent the next two days by the garbage pile shooting at miscellaneous objects Sarah threw into the air. We used whatever we could find. Old dishes, broken toys, once even a pair of false teeth. The two things I most remember about those sessions are the smell, a mixture of decaying refuse and burnt gunpowder and Sarah’s look of exasperation as I missed one easy shot after another.

  “You might at least have hit the Toby Jug,” she said after one particularly egregious failure. “It had big flappy ears, just like your own.”

  “Think you can do better?”

  “Well since you ask,” she began to say but she was interrupted by Chisholm who had come to see how things were going.

  “Not something most people would pay to see,” he said, after watching me miss three targets in a row.

  “Maybe we should forget the shotgun and just stick to the Colt,” I said.

  “It’s like I told you, people expect both.”

  “If I might intrude on your weighty discussions,” Sarah said, with the air of a woman who has finally managed to get a word in edgewise. “I am an excellent markswoman with a Purdey side by side.”

  “What’s a Purdey side by side?” Chisholm asked.

  “It is the finest shotgun in the world. My father has a matching pair. I once hit a pheasant at two hundred yards. We measured.”

  “Was the pheasant standing still or walking?” Chisholm asked.

  “It was flying,” Sarah said in a horrified tone. “One never shoots sitting birds.”

  “I know some people who aren’t so particular,” Chisholm said. “Ok, let’s see what you can do.”

  What Sarah could do was impressive. She missed only one of the various objects I threw, a bust of Stanley Baldwin she claimed to have spared on the grounds that its subject was a friend of her father’s.

  I may be the first performer in the history of show business ever to lose top billing without first appearing on stage. Chisholm decreed we would be known as “Bonita and Bob, the Deadeye Duo.” He said his decision was based on the ladies’ first principle but I think he was beginning to have doubts about my star qualities. That made two of us.

  Chapter XXXXII:

  Sarah’s Popularity – The Honeymoon Ends

  If you are like me, you think of appearing in public as an unpleasant duty, something to be gotten over with as quickly as possible. It was different with Sarah.

  I began to realize that her earlier incarnation as a suffragette had been nothing more than an outlet for a suppressed streak of exhibitionism. For Sarah, the spectators’ attention and admiration were like sunlight and water to a wildflower. She would skip into the ring blowing kisses and finish her entrance with a few steps from an Irish jig. Nobody ever asked or cared why someone billed as Bonita Valdez would perform a Celtic folk dance. The people loved her.

  Some people loved her a little too much. One of her fans was a middle aged man we took to calling ‘Prince Albert’ owing to his luxuriant sideburns. He would bribe the Roma to deliver letters in which he offered to leave his family and take Sarah to the Lake District where they would enjoy ‘a life of bliss frolicking along primrose-bordered byways.’ His attentions ceased only after Sarah sent him a reply in which she agreed to go with him on the condition that he legally adopt her mentally-handicapped son.

  Her act was deceptively simple. I would kneel down behind two stacked bales of straw whose ostensible purpose was to protect me from stray shots. Really, they were just there to inject a n
ote of suspense into the act. “Keeps ‘em guessing,” Chisholm said. “Maybe one day they’ll see you get shot.”

  “Kind of like going to NASCAR to watch the crashes,” I said.

  “Where’s Nascar?” Chisholm asked.

  I would throw glass balls into the air and Sarah would shoot them. We would start with one, then two at a time, then three. Sarah would hold up the appropriate number of fingers to show how many balls were in the current sequence. I wore a green celluloid eyeshade while she was shooting to keep glass fragments out of my eyes.

  When we got to five balls she would deliberately miss one. This was her cue to turn to the crowd with an elaborate pout on her face which usually earned her a sympathetic ‘Awww.’

  Then she would hold up six fingers and crouch down as though getting ready to charge up San Juan Hill. I would throw six balls, two at a time and she would hit all six in the air. Then, while the crowd was still applauding, I would start throwing balls as fast as I could and she would shoot them down in a continuous stream “bam, bam, bam, bam bam” like a snare drum. She would then curtsey to the crowd and exit to loud cheers and whistles.

  My part of the act was a variation of the traditional carnival wrestling challenge. The Roma would set up a wall of straw bales where they would attach two balloons at chest height. Would-be gunslingers would pay a shilling a shot to try to beat my fast draw. I and my challenger would stand side-by-side facing the balloons. We would each draw at the sound of a whistle and try to be the first to burst our respective balloons. I never lost for reasons you will see in a moment.