All three of them close their eyes, hold each other’s hands, and start singing, real somber-like:
“Flintstones
Meet the Flintstones
They’re the modern Stone Age fam-i-leee!”
Dr. Seabrook is watching everything with a calm, serene expression, like the whole show couldn’t be more normal. Even though these homeless guys are singing a TV show theme song, they’re acting like it’s a sacred thing, like a chant or one of those songs I hear the congregants sing during photo ops at church.
And Seabrook doesn’t like religion. Not one bit.
So all at once Seabrook hollers, “Your majesty!”
And that’s when things get weird.
things get weird
“Don’t let it speak, your grace,” Gray-Aide says. He stumbles over the pillows and draws near to Shwo-Rez’s side. He whispers in Shwo-Rez’s ear, but still loud enough for us to hear: “Who knows what could happen? They could hex you.”
Shwo-Rez raises his hand and motions for Gray-Aide to move away from him. “We will allow it to speak.”
Gray-Aide opens his mouth to argue, seems to think better of it, and hangs his head. He sits just below Shwo-Rez on a rotting couch cushion and stares streams of ice water at Seabrook.
In fact, all eyes are on the doctor, who clears his throat.
“Your majesty,” he says, bowing from the waist, as the other Shrub Men did. “Most humbly, we the crew of the Tamzene bid you greetings.” It’s like he’s reading from the same cheesy script as them. It impresses the hell out of me that he could just pull it out of his ass like this. After my band hits it big, I’ll land a part or two in a movie, and I might be smart to listen to how this dude wings it. “My name is Doctor Seabrook. This is my partner, Kang, and our other crew members are but mere boys—Mr. Winthrop Brubaker and his associate, Arthur, uh . . .”
“Wraith gibberish, my liege!” Gray-Aide cries.
“Silence,” Shwo-Rez says. “You have come from the evil mountains?”
“Sir?”
“The evil mountains,” Shwo-Rez repeats. He points over his shoulder.
Above the tops of the boxes, the trees hold a milky morning sky. Thin clouds streak across it, and sparrows and pigeons swoop in the haze.
“Oh,” says Seabrook. “Do you mean Lynnbrook, Ohio? No, your grace, we come from much farther away.”
“Lynn-brook?” Shwo-Rez repeats, apparently mystified.
“Begging your majesty’s indulgence,” Seabrook says, bowing again, “what town is that on the horizon?”
“Town?” Shwo-Rez repeats, rubbing his chin.
“Yes, the city skyline there.”
“Siii-teeee?”
Silence falls on the courtyard. Off in the distance I hear the honks of car horns and the tapping of music. Is it? It is! I can hear, “When the lightning crashes and the thunder rolls . . .” I need the Grizzlies now more than ever. If this is a reality TV show, these producers are cruel sons of bitches.
“Wraithery!” Gray-Aide exclaims after a moment, pointing a finger at Seabrook.
Maybe it’s the frustration of being so close to an actual town. Maybe it’s Seabrook’s smile. Maybe it’s the spears. But mostly, it’s because His Eminence taught me to never, ever, under any circumstances—especially not among liberals or on national TV—tolerate shit.
I am officially done playing nice.
“All right,” I say. “This is ridiculous.”
Shwo-Rez smiles at me like a goon. “Yes, my child?” he says.
“Come on. Where are the cameras? You guys might be getting paid to act like this, but we’re not.”
“Mr. Brubaker,” Seabrook whispers. “Perhaps it’s best not to—”
“Oh, come off it, Doctor,” I say. “Evil mountains, my ass. That’s a city over there, Shwo-Rez. Civilization. Made by human beings.”
“Blasphemy!” Gray-Aide says. “No wraith or man could ever build a mountain! Why, it would take more digging stones than we have in all of Eden.”
I stoop and begin picking up throw pillows, searching for the hidden cameras and microphones. “And we’re not ghosts, psycho. We’re human beings. You have no idea, do you? You have no clue who you’re messing with. I’m Winthrop Brubaker, freako.”
“Yellow-Hunter! Remove them from this place!” Gray-Aide shouts. He trembles, and a patchy red blot—a hive—bubbles on his forehead.
Seabrook moves toward me like he wants me to shut up, but Yellow-Hunter points a spear at him.
“Gray-Aide!” Shwo-Rez loses his temper.
“Don’t you people know reality TV has been done to death? Hour-long crime dramas are where it’s at now. If you want this take to count, people, you’re going to have to let us sign a release form or something. I know contracts. My old man is a congressman, for God’s sake. I demand a trailer and a quick ride to town.”
“The great debate among those in Eden has long been about wraiths, you see,” Shwo-Rez says. “There are the wraith believers, like Yellow-Hunter, and the non-believers, such as Gray-Aide.”
“What do you believe these wraiths to be, your majesty?” Seabrook asks.
“Spirits,” Shwo-Rez says. “The dead.”
“You’re not fooling anybody! This is scripted! This is scripted! The least your douchey producers could do if they’re going to write scripts is to give you a decent trailer. Seriously. They build you a cardboard shantytown? Why do you stand for that shit?”
Shwo-Rez laughs. “Is this a joke? How is it possible to make something that comes from earth? Shrub People build their homes from the bark of trees that we find on the ground.”
“Fine. Fine. What about those clothes you’re wearing?”
“The skins of animals.”
“You are so full of shit!” I shout at the fat king of the bums.
“Enough, Mr. Brubaker . . .” Seabrook says.
“Right,” I mutter. “Those shells around your neck are just gross squashed soda cans.”
“Enough!” Shwo-Rez leaps to his feet. His goes all red, and saliva falls from his lips. “You go too far in your blasphemy, wraith. The sweetworm is a gift from heaven. It leaves its shell for us. Sometimes, when we find these beautiful shells, some of their nectar has been left behind within them, and this is a truly precious gift from above, and blessed is he who drinks from it. Now, I know you speak evil. To suggest a sweetworm is wraithery from the evil mountains is pure mischief. Remove them.”
Quick as they came, my king-sized balls crawl back up into me. Boxes and everything start spinning.
When they jab him with a spear, Arthur jolts as if someone hooked jumper cables to his toes. He whirls, and the bullhorn of his PA system strikes one of the hunters in the belly, knocking him to the floor. He scrambles toward the flap in the cardboard boxes where we entered the courtyard, but Yellow-Hunter and another Shrub Man overtake him. They drag him back in by the shoulders.
Kang moves to help the kid, but a hunter jams a spear into the skin under his chin.
Shwo-Rez stands. “We must execute them,” he says. “We must make haste, and hope that if others come they will be as easily slain.”
I will stand fast and resolute . . . I will stand fast and resolute . . . I grab at the song, but the lyrics slip through my fingers. The world continues to spin.
Shwo-Rez stops glaring and looks at the sky. And now I recognize him. The face. The face from the poster in the river.
It’s Councilman Bob Schwartz.
The Gray-Aide guy looks horror-struck. “But perhaps doing evil to evil will only bring more evil upon us,” he says. “This must be thought on, your majesty.”
Shwo-Rez waves at him dismissively. He picks up his box of illegal cigars and caresses its side as lovingly as Seabrook fingers his crucifix.
“Yellow-Hunter,” he says. “Put them in the cage.”
CHAPTER NINE
birds
It looked no different than any other smoke the town of Lynnbrook produced�
�a black, roiling pall that poured from the towers. Some felt a tingling under their wings; others sensed a change had happened within themselves.
By that spring, they knew. No bird was a mother. The eggs that were laid were weak. Mothers crushed babies in their nests before they could become pink things gasping for food. Instead of the cries of thousands of tiny voices, there was only the wind in the trees and the melting of the snow.
Some knew it was the smoke. Others thought it was another trick men had played on them on purpose.
Some, however, recognized that the stone yards where the men laid their dead had grown larger that season.
The smoke stopped altogether. Not just the poisoned smoke, but everything that had come from the towers stopped flowing. The silent trees became filled with another cry, one the birds hadn’t heard before at such volume.
Some of the men moved into the trees and ate what they could find on the ground.
The birds watched them and sang.
i meet esmerelda
Yellow-Hunter forces us into the chicken wire dome next to the bonfire logs. The whole town surrounds us. They yell and poke us through the chicken wire with spears and sticks. Some call us wraiths. Then Yellow-Hunter gets between our cage and the crowd and tells the crazies that the prisoners must be left unharmed, and that the great Shwo-Rez will let them all know by nightfall what he’s decided.
Even after Yellow-Hunter calms them down, most of the crowd hangs around, gawking at us like we’re the monkey cage at the Philly zoo.
Arthur crouches and rocks back and forth. He isn’t bawling anymore but he looks plenty scared, so I sit next to him and say: “When the lightning flashes and the thunder rolls . . . you know . . .”
Frowning, he stands and goes to the other side of the cage.
I follow him. “So what do you think they’re going to do to us?” I ask. “Our dads do have a lot of cash after all. Maybe they recognized me from TV . . .”
His frown gets darker, and he turns his back on me.
“So I was wrong about the reality TV thing. I can admit it,” I say. “I mean, who would really think that actual homeless people would talk like that without a script? You have to admit, though, it’d make for a pretty good show—kidnapping people and throwing Lord of the Rings at them . . .”
While I’m talking, Arthur picks up a branch from the ground. In the dirt in front of him, he draws the words, GO AWAY. Then he takes out his pocketknife—the Shrub People must not have seen it—and starts whittling the branch.
What a pantload! I feel like reminding the kid that if it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be back in Pennsylvania like a little loser.
So I just say, “What-ev-er, man,” real cold and walk away from him.
Eventually the crowd peters down, and the crazies return to their cardboard boxes, leaving us alone. Kang and Doctor Seabrook examine the cage—a dome of chicken wire with long sharp ends the hunters have shoved into the ground. Kang could probably push the cage over no problem, but the hunters positioned us in the center of town. Every time we move a Shrub Person has his eye on us.
“Don’t bother,” Clarence says.
I forgot he was here. When they brought us into the camp he hollered at the homeless guys who captured us, but since then he’s shut up. He’s sitting Indian style in a corner of the cage. The chicken wire’s shadow creates crosses over his skeleton-like body.
“They’ll nail you with a spear if you try to escape.” His voice is phlegmy. “I’ve been here two days, I have.”
“Why didn’t you yell for the police?” Seabrook asks.
He snorts. “Police. There’s no such thing out here. Besides, you really think they’d put old Bob Schwartz away?”
“I knew it!” I shout.
“Ain’t you all from Lynnbrook?” Clarence asks.
“No,” Seabrook says.
“They’re not even from Lynnbrook!” Clarence shouts. Nobody cares.
“The guy running the show here is Bob Schwartz,” he continues. “Used to be on the city council. Took so many bribes he’s still the richest man in the county. And this here is his land.”
“Listen,” Seabrook says. “Who are all these people, and what do they want from us?”
“It ain’t them,” Clarence says. “It’s Schwartz. Most of these people don’t care about you any more than I do. Schwartz runs the show, and all of them do anything Schwartz says. Except me, and that’s why they put me in here.”
“What does he tell them to do?” Seabrook asks.
“You got to act nuts. You got to put your duds on all funny and sing songs and parade around. You got to believe in ghosts. You got to say Schwartz is your king. And you got to change your name. All that for some free food and a cardboard box to keep the rain off your head.”
“And if you don’t?” Seabrook asks.
Clarence smiles. I think he might have one tooth, but it’s way back in his head and I can barely see it. “They put you in here,” he says. “I come here from Lynnbrook, I did. Cops are hassling you all the time in Lynnbrook. So people say all the time, Go out to Bob Schwartz’s land. There’s free food and free junk. So I come on out here. But when I got here, I seen them all acting like this. I tried it out for a bit like the rest of them, but the whole thing is just so damn silly. I raised hell. Put on my clothes normal-like and stopped acting like a damn fool, and they shut me up in here!” He shakes his head and looks at his lap. “If we all just hung together, we could have it real nice out here, we could. But then I guess old Shwo-Rez would pout that we don’t want to play no more and kick us off his land. Or worse.”
“But what do they want with us?” Seabrook asks. “Why won’t they let me get back to my ship?”
“They’re pretending you’re ghosts. They do that with all the outsiders.”
“But what do they want with us?”
“You ain’t pretending. They want you to.”
Seabrook sighs. “Again, sir. If we don’t pretend, what happens?”
Again, Clarence shows us the hollows where his teeth should be. “River’s only a couple of miles that way,” he says, pointing over our heads. “Runs clear into Lake Erie. One time an old buddy of mine, Bob Shanks, got hopped up something fierce and fell in right around these parts. Never did find no body. See, the county dredges that river so it’s almost like a canal. No branches or nothing. Nothing for a body to get snagged on. A body’ll float for a long time before it’ll sink. And Lake Erie’s over two hundred feet deep in some places, and so dark and polluted down there, nobody’d ever find a corpse. Not in a million years.”
Arthur whittles. Seabrook fiddles with his crucifix key chain. Kang sits and stares. The bums lie in their boxes.
I stand, lean against the cage, and stare at the city on the mountain. I can just make out lights on the radio towers and in the office buildings over the tops of the trees.
From here, it looks like the forest could strangle the city if it wanted to. The monster trees could lasso the buildings with their branches and pull them down. It’s up to the people in the cities to keep beating the forest back, keep hacking down the vines and bushes and limbs with machetes to preserve their Nintendo Wiis and plasma screen televisions.
Just as I’m starting to zone out, I notice this chick watching me.
She has reddish-blond hair—a little older than yourstruly, maybe, and a good head taller, though that isn’t saying much. She wears a black T-shirt knotted over her breasts and a pair of ratty-looking blue jeans wrapped around her waist. Her navel gawks at me above the jeans, and her skin is brown all over. She’s pulled her hair back from her face and clipped it with a clothespin. She leans against a refrigerator box a few yards from the cage with her arms crossed.
Girls are coming my way soon enough—that is, after Trotsky and I launch our band and the first disc drops, I know the chickies will be coming in droves. But for now . . . in school, the girls make it plain they want nothing to do with me. I’ve been on one officia
l date—a prearranged movie His Eminence concocted for me with Millicent Fouquet, the six-foot-tall daughter of his chief of staff, Maximilian Fouquet. We looked like a freak show. After the security detail had secured the perimeter and dropped us off at the Cineplex where we’d agreed to watch an X-Men film together, Fouquet’s lips snarled and she said she planned to meet her girlfriends to watch the latest Zac Efron chick flick, and that she didn’t give a flying fuck what I did so long as I didn’t sit within forty yards of her. So we watched movies separately, and I wrote this wicked sad power ballad, the best I’ve ever written.
I don’t have an aversion to girls. Far from it. Hip-hop videos on YouTube have more than a few hotties—chicks with jiggly rumps and boobs like howitzers chewing gum and staring longingly through spiked eyelashes at the camera. Many is the night I sit alone in the parlor at the edge of the Barcalounger, afghan coiled in my lap, just waiting for one of those videos to flash on the screen and imagining what girl flesh might feel like.
I know, I know, people. Pathetic to be all of fourteen and to never have done it.
But the point is, you can see then why this chick noticing me temporarily makes me forget the deep shit we’re bathing in. Here is a chick wearing very little clothing checking yourstruly out. And, damn it, I haven’t showered or brushed my teeth in days. My body smells not much better than the average Shrub Person and, though I haven’t seen a mirror recently, I’m positive my hair is inadvertently doing a greasy flip thing like that band A Flock of Seagulls I once saw on VH1’s I Love the ’80s.
The girl comes to my side of the cage and loops her fingers through the chicken wire. I back up a little. Her blond hair is mangy, her tan dirty, and her boyish hands callused and mutilated from biting her nails. Little black hairs peek out from beneath her pits, and her legs need a good shaving. The teeth are crooked, and one of her front ones is broken.
“Who are you?” she whispers.
I stand back so she won’t catch a whiff of me. “Winthrop,” I whisper back.
“Look, you’d better get out of here.”
We Are All Crew Page 9