Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  Sitting back, I told myself I had to go. I hadn't seen anything. It was just some blip in my vision, like the way my eyes seemed to make patterns and meshes in the dark. But then I saw it again.

  The only lights in the slubs were corn oil lamps or the pale blue florescent bulbs powered by the truck and bus engines. I couldn't imagine what he might have. Worse, he wasn't supposed to have anything like that. If one found a rusted cluster of gears, a hard green wafer traced with lines of gold, or coils of colored wires, it was all to be immediately turned over to M-Bunny for proper recycling. Besides, it was said a lot of that stuff could kill you.

  In the darkness of his pocket, the light flashed again. Dad had something that wasn't M-Bunny. He had something illegal, unloyal, and dangerous. I panicked and rose, making my way toward the fry truck.

  I stopped after twenty feet. I couldn't leave that thing with the lights-whatever it was-with my barely conscious father. If the rep discovered it, Dad was doomed. I returned to his side. Gingerly poking into his pocket, I grasped the thing between two fingertips and pulled.

  It was a thread seven inches long. It blinked and sparkled like it was encrusted with a dozen microscopic stars. And even when I shielded it from the moonlight, the specks didn't disappear. They actually grew brighter and blinked on and off.

  In the distance, there was a brief pause as the fry melody reached the end of its loop and began again, and in that blip of silence, where the space around me expanded to include the vast hush of corn and wind, I floated far from the world I knew. The sparkling thread in my hand was like nothing I had ever seen or dreamed of.

  Maybe I should have tucked it back into Dad's pocket, or dug a hole and buried it, or grasped his shoulders, shaken him, and demanded to know what it was and where it had come from. Instead I tucked it into my own pocket and started toward the fry truck.

  I didn't get a chance to really examine the yarn until I was at the back of the M-Bunny bus heading to the corn mill. I only had a bit of scratched glass as a magnifier and wasn't sure what I was looking at, but that yarn told me things. It told me that there was a place of reason and artistry. It told me that there was a place where I might fit in.

  "Bunny?" I asked Kira, confused that she thought it was from the slubs. "You mean M-Bunny."

  She pointed at the screen. "This signature is Bunné."

  I stepped closer. It would be a while before I had the vocabulary, but I later learned my hidden thread was what's called a "novelty" or "compound" yarn-one made of several components-five in this case. Two were thicker matrix-fibril, one was angora wool with a loose z-twist that looped and spun around the two main mono-fibers like an extended spring- thick and fuzzy here, narrow and smooth there. A micro-mono wrapped around the wool connected it to the others. And threaded loosely among all of these was another very high-twist yarn that resembled a miniature string of lights-in this case light-emitting polymers.

  I asked, "What's Bunné?"

  "The beating heart of my enemy… and the tap root of my inspiration." Kira faced me. "I was part of Bunné at one time. I dreamed with her and was a proud saleswarrior at her fantasy knitting subsidiary, Casper Union." Her expression darkened. "But I saw what they were doing to the brand. They were replacing craft with rage, silver with tin, and heart with spleen." For several moments she seemed lost in thought. "If you were a Bunné spy, that would explain your handsome knitting, but not your presence before me. And hearing your past… about this yarn from your father… I am moved. Both moved and baffled by what you are."

  I was glad that she wasn't threatening me anymore, but she hadn't answered my question so I asked it again.

  "Bunné!" she cried. "Miss Bunné is the ruling celeb of this sex and shopping country of Seattlehama. Around her rumors of terror swirl, but she is the tower and she is the light. Truly she is grand, and I haven't stopped loving her even as my heart is filled with the tar of hate." Kira paused as if to gather her warTalk. "I worshiped her and her dreams. But I could not stay with Casper Union. I can't fathom how she has been duped by those who pervert her vision and her love. To my death I will battle back to her feet and clear a wide and bloody swatch of truth!"

  She spun back to the magnified yarn. "So, I believe you, Tane Cedar. I believe and hold dear as I have not before that you truly are a former man of the prison crop… but how did your father acquire it?"

  "I don't know."

  "You did not inquire?"

  I shook my head. "He died the next day."

  She bowed her head slowly as if offering her condolences. "Remon, you are a cloudy mystery. Someday we will knit that haze into meaning, but for today, your past binds and unites us… it powers our fight together!" She took it from the magnitron and held it in her palm as one might a jewel. "It is quite a yarn."

  Tucking it into my pocket, I found myself deeply relieved to have it back. No less a relief was to have gained Kira's trust, even if it took a bloody nose and a scratched neck.

  "I sense a deep furrow of talent in you." She stepped beside the Stanton-Bell Tex-knitter. "Demonstrate the rhythm of your knitting for me. Audition for possibilities."

  Without a hesitation, I stepped up and grasped the handles.

  SEATTLEHAMA: INFINITE LAYERS

  Kira had me knit twenty skivvé in a row. She reloaded the cartridges three times, urging me on. "Knot and start again! Yes… Brilliant! … It's sheer intensity. Spectacular! Excellent!"

  I worked faster and faster. Skivvé piled up around us. Another cartridge went dry, I stopped moving the handles and we locked eyes. Hers glowed with intensity. I thought she was going to get more yarn, but she grabbed her thick coat, but did not button it. Stepping from the Stanton, I undid the front of my slacks, and we fashioned each other on the pile of my knit skivvé.

  "I have found my Remon," she whispered as we lay there cooling off. "Truly a Remon of worth and terror."

  "The man in the worm jacket told me that Remon was from the slubs."

  It seemed to take a moment for her to figure out whom I was talking about. "That's a Mulberry Jacket! He is dressed as brave Commander Sheppard. But as for Warrior Remon, he is not from. He fights wars. He slays ferocious beasts, and he is championed by the city. But then… in a mysterious moment… he is injured. Some songs describe a battle in which a gang of corn prisoners slashed him. Another ballad describes a threat from Bunné who curses his manhood. What ever is the cause, Remon is cut across his groin. While his exact injury is never known, he never again wears a fashion panty. And yet, ravaged by war and the heat of love, he and Bunné find that their love for one another blooms like a glamorous cancer."

  She was so adamant I couldn't laugh. "Is this real or not?"

  She gazed into my eyes. "What is truth is that Warrior Remon was a man of fashion and talent and so are you." She shook her head and smiled. "If you walked into the knitting conservatory where I schooled and danced with a Stanton-Bell as you have today you would be crowned dark emperor of the loops!" Her face was aglow and excitement flowed from her. "You have all the belongings of knowledge, the twisted fibers, and the precision knotting, but you need lessons of design."

  "In the corn all we had were B-shirts and shorts and they weren't even real cloth. I want to learn everything."

  "First," said Kira as she flexed her hand before me. "The study is skin. We learn its stretch and wear. We learn its ease and comfort. That is the heart of fashion. All the layers we stack on top must not sacrifice its pleasure and beauty. Our customer is skin. And as the foundation, skivvé are the rhythm of dress."

  For a minute we sat there staring at our hands as we flexed our fingers and watched the skin wrinkle and stretch. My eyes wandered to her skivvé, the tube of which rested on her thigh. "Why you wear men's skivvé? You don't have a root."

  She laughed at me. "They are men's fantasy skivvé. Several years ago, in Bunné's Sweet Way Surgery Duo, she wore the first pair. From then on it is fashion. The market has doubled every year. The fantasy skivvé
has become the badge of honor of the true knit saleswarrior." She pushed herself up, took down a yarn cartridge, and inserted it into the slot on the back of the Stanton. "We will first knit the woman's reality skivvé," she announced. I wasn't sure what she wanted, but began knitting and when the knit heads came to the crotch, and I was about to add something, she held my right hand still. We produced a simple, smooth skivvé.

  "The female sculpture," she announced as she pulled it from mannequin hips. "The stage is empty, the actor, hidden. There can be no drama. It delights some, but not the saleswarrior of purls. For us, we find dignity, power, and ferocity in the ghost." She pulled her dress above her belly. "The man is positive… an appendage of expression… a wand of will… a needle of knitting!"

  I still didn't really understand, but felt I could pretend I did. Kira stared at me intently. I didn't know what to expect.

  "I promote you, Warrior Remon."

  I remembered how Withor had hated me, dismissed my yarn snatching, and used me. "I'm so glad I found you." I hoped her promotion meant I could continue to knit.

  She paced back and forth. After a minute, she stopped and spoke softly. "You shall know the inner mechanisms of the corporation and the dire clock mechanism in which we run." Her expression was almost sad as she gazed at me. "Today… the creditwarrior I lunched with had charts covered in the blood of loss. The balance is that Python Duck is in its last minutes. We must profit. We must chart now!"

  "I had no idea." Even as I spoke, I recalled my first impression of the empty Python shop compared to the crowded and shiny Casper Union. "What can I do?"

  "Exactly! You… Warrior Remon… you will be our sensation! You will be our scandal. No man knits fantasy skivvé and no former prisoner ever did!"

  She didn't mean I was going to knit Python Duck's skivvé, did she?

  "Yes," she replied as if reading my mind. "And it is a smoky and desperate map. But without sensation… without spectacle and risk, the creditwarriors will take our Stanton, our yarn, our needles, and our hope." She took my hands and cradled them in hers. "These are the artistry and honor I have searched for. These hands are the labor and the might. You Remon of Loin…" Her eyes focused on mine. "You are the craft that I do not possess. From now on you are Python Duck's Chief Executive Knitter!"

  "Kira," I asked, "are you sure?"

  "Time is desperation and we have arrived at the endgame. Tell me now: Can you grace the loops?"

  "Yes!" I squeezed her hands in mine. "I will knit for you."

  "I will honor and assist you, Remon. We have a day to design your line, and relaunch our glory! We must now loveeffort!"

  The next day the flagship was darkened. Workers redid the floor with plush black fabric. The walls were covered with green poles and the ceiling was dotted with thousands of blue lights. Pyramids of dirt were piled six feet tall.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "The fantasy skivvé of pure male savagery."

  I thought of my life amid the corn and how so much of it was spent working corn plants, pushing the kernels into the dry land, watering them, tending them, and harvesting the ears. It was hardly pure male savagery.

  "The real slubs weren't like this. They were much more dull. There were brutal moments, but that was all about recycling. Mostly we farmed and worked in mills." Although she listened, she didn't hear. And maybe it didn't matter. I was happy just to spend that night and most of the next day on the Stanton-Bell. I didn't love making these fantasy skivvé, but I couldn't get enough knitting. I made variation after variation and Kira would come in every hour or so, look them over, and make comments.

  "They're robust and vigorous," she said. "They're male and distinct! Try one with a slightly more narrow tube. I'll return in forty minutes."

  Near shopping dawn, as designers, constructors, and caterers finished, Kira selected three of my skivvé and dressed them on new full-sized, articulated wooden mannequins. Two were naked except for the skivvé; the third also wore a Rebel Sheep jacket and a violet shirt with layers of ruffles. She introduced me to the two newly hired saleswarriors, who like Kira were dressed in their short orange sailor suits with my blue skivvé below. I also shook hands with a clock drummer who was going to play along with Ginn. For a half-hour Kira gave a rousing, if mostly indecipherable, warTalk. Then the windows were opened, and doors were thrown wide.

  To my surprise, hundreds of costumed t'ups were lined up in the hallway, and in an instant the place was full. While some headed straight to the craft and catering tables, most surrounded my skivvé. In my design, the tube was just a couple of inches shorter and open at the end. Below was a single large pouch. As the t'ups stared, pointed, and some even reached forward and squeezed the tubes, I felt exposed and vulnerable. Each frown, each furrowed brow, each small guffaw were jabs to my solar plexus.

  "They're the most amazing skivvé in the history of fantasy garments." To my right stood Worm Jacket. On my left was Giraffe. "Truly an achievement far beyond the mere knitting and design. You are a credit to all the prisoners. I think Kira has found both an executive designer and a cause célèbre."

  Giraffe spoke, but I couldn't quite make out his words through his mask.

  Worm Jacket leaned in. "He wants to see you buttonhole Kira again. He's dé bazed." He laughed and while the lower half of his face was a smile, his eyes conveyed hurt.

  Kira greeted both men, took me by the arm and paraded me around for more questions and what seemed like ten thousand photos.

  "Are you really a slubber, Remon?"

  "How did you learn to knit?"

  "Did you really eat nothing but corn?"

  "How many flats did you kill?"

  "Do they kill the prisoners to feed the crop?"

  "What's your inspiration?"

  I tried to answer the questions as best I could. Kira usually took over with her warTalk. "He represents the crown of hardship… the transformation of potential into love… the hate of the criminal blossomed into the elemental cruelty of the finest men's fantasy skivvé ever knit!"

  For me the party soon became a whirlpool of sounds, faces, and a knot of feelings. One moment I would feel proud and powerful, but a moment later I would overhear some t'up say, "He's a filthy corn needle! She's just using him to save her beleaguered company. Meanwhile she's ruining men's fantasy skivvé!"

  And just when I didn't think any more customers could fit into the space, and Ginn and her drummer had cranked up the volume of their hammering melodies, and people were sloshing back milky glasses of something they called corn wine, eating roasted cougar vagina, laughing and gossiping and a few were even fashioning each other, four more entered our flagship-four Casper Union saleswarriors. I recognized Josephone from before.

  Once our customers saw who they were, they began to push back. The music came to a ragged end. The crowd hushed.

  "This," cried Josephone, pointing her knitting needles at the skivvé on the dressed mannequin, "is infamy. No man shall knit our crotches and certainly not a prisoner! It will not stand. You have finished your fantasy, Kira Shibui. We are simply here to cut the plaited cord and purl you and your knitter." With that she snapped her needles together.

  Kira stepped into the clearing before me. Her two new saleswarriors flanked her on each side. She seemed calm and cool. And when she spoke her voice was like curling vapor from pure ice. "The uninvited learn from the heart and the skill of our needles, and now that you have seen majesty, you will retreat and live in the lint below your automated knitting contraptions."

  Josephone's nostrils flared. Her mouth shrunk to a dot. Swinging her needles she whacked the mannequin in the face. The thing teetered back and forth several times and then clunked over backward and smashed on the floor. Josephone laughed like she had never seen anything so hilarious. When she turned to her minions, they imitated her exactly.

  I was near the back of the flagship, squashed in the crowd of frightened fans, customers, and shoppers. Behind me I heard someone mutter, "Ki
ra's dead and so is that prisoner knitter of hers."

  ARK TEXTILE TRADING

  In the foyer of the office of Ark Textile Jobber was a twenty-footwide model of a sunken ship complete with twisting vines of seaweed, a giant squid with glowing red eyes, several cavorting mermaids, their tails covered with radiant teal scales, and a giant crab with pinching claws. Above this papier-mâché menagerie hung a large lit sign: The offices and consult of Dr. Galvon T. Horse, Textile Prospector and Deep-Sea Fabricator.

  I paused for a moment, considered the garish colors, the grating typography and texture of the signage, and felt confident that this man and his company-one I had never dealt with before and would make sure not to deal with again-was the right choice for the illicit yarn I now needed.

  A mermaid came toward me. Her skin had been dyed blue and the cobalt glitter on her eyelids was so thick and apparently heavy she had to lean her head back to peer at me. "Babe," she began with a perfunctory smile as fresh as the Paleozoic, "do you have an appointment to see the beloved Doctor of Fibers?"

  I tried not to roll my eyes. "I'm Tane Cedar."

  "Oh." Frowning, she looked me up and down, she said, "You look thinner than I thought, babe."

  "It's the suit."

  Her frown, which was maybe the natural inclination of her mouth, tightened for a beat. "He's with some others, but just go on in, babe."

  I was tempted to suffix my reply but just said, "Thank you."

  Through a door made of old planks, the main room was a large warehouse that smelled of starch, sizing, dust, and a mingling of unconfident colognes and perfumes. Tables were stacked with jagged mountain ranges of fabric in all manner of plaid, check, tweed, print, flock, and solid. Among the tables, here and there, stood dozens of customers pawing the stuff, pulling lengths of ribbon and lace from spools, comparing color samples to the bolts, and bargaining with the seafaring staff. And despite the plentiful sound absorbing material, the volume of talk was like a raucous party.