Yes, one day this would all be his—the shop, the town…and more. Because Father Reginald and Granddad Arnie, though both calculating men who had left the books better at the end of each year than at the beginning, had never been men of vision. They saw the shop only for what it was, not what it could be. Oswald, on the other hand, had spent a great deal of time thinking about how things would change once he assumed leadership.
“Boy!”
Oswald glanced over the display counter in the direction of the voice. His father and mother sat at one of three dine-in tables. The tables were the bright stop-light red of a McDonald’s interior, loud as a fire engine siren.
His father’s spectacled eyes glared over the edge of the Sunday paper. The paper showed the heading, “JIMMY CARTER: IF KENNEDY RUNS, I’LL WHIP HIS ASS.” The boy - Bicycle Boy was how Oswald thought of him - was never late. Every Sunday at six in the morning, that newspaper would come to rest on the step, sometimes wrapped in plastic if there was inclement weather. It was just a single oddity in a world now full of them, like a dream in which the mind makes all kinds of unusual connections.
“You’re late for work,” Reginald said. “Do you think this shop runs itself?”
“Is Kennedy running for president?” Oswald asked, not certain why he was asking. There was a certain diffidence that always overcame him in the presence of his father, as if Oswald were dressed like a man but still only a child, a living snapshot of himself taken when he was twelve years old.
“No,” Reginald answered, frowning. “It’s just a re-run. You know that.” Then he added in an off-handed manner, “George Bush is still in the second year of his term.”
“Senior or junior?” Ellen asked with a delicate press of her lips. “I can never keep the two straight.”
“Junior,” Reginald said. He had the look of a man who has just discovered his friends have been slipped a drug, and he is the only one whose mind is still his own.
Oswald had known George Bush was president, and would continue to be president a few years more…yet why did other names, other faces, come to mind? He remembered a time his mother had been ill, and he had walked down the street to fetch a gallon of milk. On the way back he had seen a shop (”Ed’s Electronics”) with television screens in the window, and he had been quite sure the man on the picture had been giving a State of the Union address. He had also been quite sure this man was not George Bush Senior or Junior, nor even Kennedy or Carter, because none of those men were black. Or maybe the whole episode was only what his mother would have called a “false memory.” Some days Oswald suffered quite a few false memories.
“Now go on across the street, Os,” Reginald said, returning his attention to the paper. He pronounced the abbreviated form of Oswald’s name as Oz. “And I strongly suggest pulling your head out of your ass, boy. You keep staring off like that, someone’s going to think the lights are out upstairs.”
“Reginald,” his mother said. “You needn’t be cruel.”
Reginald flapped the paper. “I didn’t raise a retard, Ellen.”
“I’m not a retard,” Oswald said, though his protest sounded weak to his own ears. He was conscious of something he lacked in the presence of his father—backbone, some might call it. He imagined his father was no more than a fly buzzing about the room and tickling his ears…and then Oswald pinned the imaginary fly to the wall with an imaginary nail. He felt marginally better.
“No?” Reginald answered, raising his eyebrows. “Well praise the Lord, that flushes my fear right down the fucking toilet!”
“Language!” Ellen said.
“What does it matter, anyway?” Oswald asked. “No one’s coming. It’s been days.” His earlier confidence in the fortunes of the day had deserted him. His father often had that effect on him.
“There’ll be someone,” Reginald said quietly, not lifting his nose from the paper. His voice had taken the tone of someone for whom the world has unburdened all its secrets, a sage who has bought his understanding with the hard currency of years. “There always is. Now, go on and report for duty.”
Oswald was familiar with all his father’s tones, and he understood this one to mean, You’d better get a fucking move on before I whoop your ass. And so, not wishing to share Kennedy’s fate, he started toward the front door.
“Don’t forget the walkie,” Reginald said. “If something tugs the line, I want all hands ready to reel it in.”
Oswald took one of a pair of walkie-talkies lying on the table. As he closed the door behind him, he inhaled a deep breath and tried to smile. His cheeks twitched. The smile felt crooked, like that of a person who has just suffered a stroke.
It’s in the eyes, he told himself. All in the eyes.
With a violent effort, he shoved aside all thoughts of Reginald and wrenched the smile fully in place.
Chapter 23: Playing for Points
A fine mist was falling. Droplets of moisture gathered in Oswald’s dirty-blond hair, which was swept back from his forehead with the trademark gleam of Brylcreem. Some of the other called him “Slick” or “Smooth,” monikers he did not love but could tolerate. He could tolerate a lot—oh yes. That was the only way to survive. A person who responded to the slightest provocation would not last a day.
He crossed the street and opened the door to a glass-fronted store with a sign that read “IMPORTED CIGARS.” The symphony of gunfire from the city serenaded him, a sweet music to lure his thoughts away from the distraction of his conversation with Reginald. Technically the butchery was inside city limits, as the sign down the street indicated. But if the middle of the city was its heart, this part of the city was, at best, its fingertip, a far-flung mess of crumbling buildings that probed the edge of the countryside. For all its faults, however, this outer edge boasted the same route that was the lifeblood of the city’s heart.
The highway, that vast gray serpent, cut an undeviating line straight into the city, coming from places Oswald had never been and heading toward places he had only heard of. Like a tributary of the Amazon River, it flowed from an unknown wilderness ruled by no law except the violence of nature, where a traveler could take any name he liked and choose any history he wished. Oswald found a strange appeal in this possibility.
He climbed the stairs to the second floor apartment. On one wall, drawn in marker directly on the matte paint, was a large calendar. Some of the days were blank, while others described names and quantities: “Cartwright, 68 lbs.,” or “Holly & Michael, 112 lbs.” Oswald’s name was not on the board, and it was nearly the end of the month. This re-discovery sent a thrill of excitement through his veins.
“Well if it ain’t Os the Great and Powerful,” said one of the veterans, Bob, who claimed to have made a killing in the garbage disposal business. “How’s it hanging, Slick?” He held out his hand for a high-five, then lowered the hand just as Oswald tried to slap it.
“Any activity?” Oswald asked, dropping into a chair placed in front of one of the apartment’s several windows. The windows did not provide an open line of sight in every direction, but that was why they kept an additional person stationed on the roof.
“Not since the Asian couple we bagged last week,” said Angel, a tattooed African-American who, along with Bob, supervised the communications and acted as a quick-response team. “It’s been quiet, but we’ve got our feelers out. Someone will show up.”
“Been getting a lot heading for the city,” Bob said. “Used to be they wanted to get out. Now they want to get in. What you think that’s about, Slick?”
Oswald did not answer. He had read Bob’s tone and knew that, no matter what answer he gave, it would be the wrong one. Oswald was a master at reading other people. Nine times out of ten, they said one thing and meant another.
“I think they’re looking for handouts,” Angel said. “They always do.”
“Too bad there ain’t a government to hand anything out,” Bob answered with a chuckle. But Angel only looked at him, his face as serious
as a ton of bricks.
“What?” Bob said.
Angel glanced at Oswald. “I wouldn’t want anything getting back to Reggie.”
“You can keep a secret, right?” Bob said to Oswald in a conspiratorial voice. “Just between us old pals?”
Oswald, who had been staring down the middle of the street, thought he caught a bit of movement, but it was difficult to tell in the mist. Maybe it had just been a stray dog.
“Slick?” Angel prompted. Through the reflection in the window, Oswald saw Angel look at Bob, raise a finger to the side of his head, and spin the finger in a circle as if scrambling eggs with a fork.
Oswald turned from the window and shrugged to the two men. “Sure. He doesn’t listen to me, anyhow. Just talks.”
“Be that as it may,” Angel said in a slow-as-molasses voice, “I have your word on this? Cause ole Reggie don’t like change.”
“You’ve got my word,” Oswald answered, beginning to sense Angel might actually know something worth hearing. Oswald had long ago had his fill of stories about “the last bastion of civilization.” As far as he was concerned, all such stories were hogwash, pipe dreams to keep alive hopes that should have burned long ago with the rest of the world. Anarchy was the natural state of all things—so said the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And who could argue with science?
Angel settled back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. “Well, then, you remember that Asian couple we were just talking about? Remember the chick? She had—”
“The pink hair,” Bob said. “Right, right. Fine ass, too.”
“Well, when I was watching them, just keeping tabs until they reached the hotspot, I heard them say something interesting about where they were going. Said there was a place with food, a place where—”
“Are you telling me you bought into this bullshit?” Bob said, glancing at Oswald for support. Oswald, though sharing Bob’s skepticism, said nothing. He sensed that Bob was only trying to manipulate him into taking his side, and he was not going to be easily manipulated.
“Will you let me talk?” Angel said.
Bob raised his hands in surrender.
“As I was saying,” Angel continued, “I didn’t believe them either when I first heard them talking. But they went on talking, and - go figure - I went on listening.” He paused. Oswald felt certain Angel was being deliberately slow. He had won their attention, and now he was going to milk it for all it was worth.
“They didn’t say how they had heard of this place,” Angel continued. “But they said someone on the inside had found a way to grow food—I’m not talking mushrooms and turnips. I’m talking real food—fruits, vegetables, wheat, you name it. Said it’s all there. Someone created his own little kingdom right in the middle of the city.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And the punchline? Sounds like the big man is accepting applications. If you can contribute, you can eat.”
He leaned back again and waited for the words to sink in. Bob frowned, as if deciding how best to poke holes in Angel’s story. Oswald, however, was imagining the place Angel had just described. It was impossible, of course—if anyone had built such a place, there would be a million people ready to trample all over it in their greed. But what if…
He turned back to the window because he did not want the others to see his face. Angel had had no reason to fear Oswald would share this with Reginald—or anyone else, for that matter. This secret was too good, too pure if it was true, for him to adulterate it by telling others. Bob and Angel weren’t worthy—not like he was. He sensed there was a reason he was hearing this story. It had been an accident of fate that Angel and Bob had heard it too, but no matter. Those goons didn’t have the slightest idea what kind of treasure had just fallen into their laps. They didn’t understand. They weren’t—
The word was on the tip of his brain again, but there it stopped and waited. Because he had seen something moving in the street, and it was not just a stray dog.
It was a man and a little girl, walking side-by-side.
_____
Oswald called them “points.”
That particular designation, of which he was quite proud, had come from a pseudo-game he used to play with his high school buddies, Chuck and Ted. They were all dropouts, of course, but their specialty lay in convincing their parents they were nothing if not studious, well-mannered, responsible young men.
As they cruised the neighborhood in Chuck’s red corvette convertible (Chuck was the only one of the bunch whose parents had any money to speak of), Chuck would see some old lady navigating the sidewalk with her walker, and he would raise his voice above the roar of the wind and ask, “How many points?” The others would calculate the difficulty of hitting said lady, along with her ability to dodge the oncoming vehicle, and give a number somewhere between one and ten.
Old ladies were usually awarded one point.
Cyclists, however, were another matter. They usually merited two or three points—partly because they stood a greater chance of swerving away, and partly because they were so freaking annoying, encroaching as they did on the lane currently occupied by the red corvette.
(”Freaking” was a word Oswald used quite often, since using the more vulgar variation of that word invariably provoked the swift justice of his father’s belt, even though Reginald himself could be quite foul-mouthed. Reginald might be miles away, but Oswald believed his father to be capable of a species of clairvoyance reserved especially for picking up bad words. “You used a bad word today, didn’t you?” his father would say, the belt hissing as it brushed the loops of his father’s khakis. Sometimes Reginald’s clairvoyance was a bit over-zealous, and Oswald would get whipped even when he hadn’t used a bad word.)
One point for old ladies, two or three for cyclists, and six or seven for a mother with a stroller. They would have been the most difficult to hit, since the mothers always seemed to swerve farther from the street as soon as the corvette roared into view. The three friends had never discovered a target worth ten points. That number was reserved for figures of high standing—the president, for instance, walking along the side of the street, flanked by his Secret Service guards. This had never happened, of course, but there was always a chance.
Now, though Chuck and Ted and the red corvette were gone, Oswald had an application for their point system far more practical than the silly what-if game they had used to entertain themselves while playing hooky.
In order to stay alive and not end up like Old Lady Iris (whose disappearance, Oswald thought, required no investigation), Oswald had to earn points. Everyone in the community had to earn points—that was what made them a community. Tallies were kept, rewards were given to those who got ahead in points, and those who fell behind…
Oswald had seen firsthand the fate of the slothful. That was all the motivation he needed.
That was why, when he saw the man and the little girl walking along the edge of the highway, he did not tell Angel or Bob. They would have taken the credit, claimed to have seen the two figures first. No, if Oswald wanted the points, he would have to do the work—alone.
After offering to bring the two men sandwiches, a trick that guaranteed they would let him go without any trouble, Oswald left the store and began moving along the sidewalk, the walkie-talkie strapped to his belt. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was alone, he stole into an alley and unlocked the trunk of a dilapidated old Chevy Tahoe. He crawled into the spacious trunk and passed a quick eye across his “things,” making sure everything was where it was supposed to be. The trunk was his hideout, the place he went to be alone and read his comics. This place, unlike the apartment above the butchery, was his and his alone.
Oswald pushed aside a pair of aviator sunglasses and grasped the long object beneath—a bright yellow 4’ cattle prod. He withdrew the prod, arced it once to make sure the battery was still charged, and then closed the trunk.
As he continued through the alley, turning right at the end to fo
llow the block on the opposite side from the deli, he tracked the two figures in his mind, guessing where they would go. It seemed clear to him they intended to go into the city. What if, like the Asian couple Angel had talked about, they had heard of a new civilization in the heart of the city and meant to see it for themselves? Oswald told himself they would be fools to believe such a tall tale, but he could not ignore the nagging suspicion that maybe, just maybe, there was something to the idea. It seemed possible that someone might have organized a group of people and built such a place. Whether it would still be standing was another matter.
Oswald turned right at the end of the next block. He was now moving in behind the two figures. He was hoping that, once he reached the place where he had last seen them, he would be able to catch sight of them again. If he was wrong, they might stray into someone else’s net and give someone else the credit.
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