Other Worlds, Better Lives, A Howard Waldrop Reader Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003

by Howard Waldrop

  “Hey! I want you to know how much I—me and Roger—appreciate all you and Sarah and Miz Jones did for us. Especially for Roger, Admiral. We couldn’t have been an easy thing—”

  “Aw, hell. All I said was give me those kids; they need something like a parent right now, and I don’t have time to argue with you.”

  “Wasn’t like ordering around swabbies on a boat, though, was it?” asked Stewart.

  “Well, no,” said the admiral. “But I got you, didn’t I?”

  Then he cleared his throat. “Look, Stewart. This thing might get a little hairy. Keep on top of stuff. Get Roger and Miz Jones and Sarah somewhere safe, if it comes to it. You’re the man of the house right now.”

  “Of course I will, Admiral,” said Stewart.

  “Well, gotta get off the blower here—they’re only giving everybody one call. I oughtta know, I signed the order myself. And I’m strict.” He laughed.

  “Admiral, we—”

  “Get back to your books, Stewart. Tell Sarah and Miz Jones I’ll be back the minute this little flap is over.”

  “Sure thing,” said Stewart. There was a transcontinental click on the other end of the line.

  * * *

  Stewart remembered the first few days after the lab explosion that took his mom, dad and that fugitive Nazi scientist whose body was found in the debris with them. Roger of course had never spoken afterwards. Stewart had been in a daze—he’d been doing his math homework one minute; the next the lab across the driveway and half the house were gone. It was two days before his hearing had come back.

  The admiral, who’d been working with his parents the week before, and who was on his way back from Washington when it happened (the week after the collapse, then sudden reemergence of the Soviet Union, when it looked like the messages his dad had been getting from Mars were faked by the Nazi from South America) got there in the first few hours while the ruins were filled with firemen, police, FBI, and the military.

  Aunt Jessica and Uncle Hume had wanted to adopt them, but of course the State of California said, “They’re actors. New York actors, mostly, and they have kids of their own.”

  So the admiral said “Give them to me. Those boys need me.” The State reminded him he wasn’t married. “You’re right,” he said. “I figured if I needed a wife, the Navy would have issued me one. But I’ve lived in the same house when not on blue-water duty for twenty-four years, my sister lives with me, and we’ve had the same housekeeper for twenty of those years, and we don’t intend to change now. And I don’t want either boy to go into the Navy—assuming the little one starts talking again—they got too many brains for that, I’ve seen their IQ scores. They’ll have to get real jobs when they grow up, like everybody else. I’ll give them a good solid home and I’ll take care of them till they’re ready to leave. Now tell an admiral in the US Navy he hasn’t got the onions to be a fit parent.”

  A week later they’d moved into the admiral’s house, and their lives had been swell ever since.

  * * *

  Stewart watched Roger finish the Frankenstein monster while he fiddled with what was turning out to be some Fibonacci curves. He plugged in some unknowns.

  Roger climbed into bed, staring at the monster, which he’d put on the top of the bookcase that was the footboard to his bed. He’d put it there, striding toward him off its graveyard base, arms outstretched for him.

  He reached down under his bed, from the ragged pile there, and took out Famous Monsters of Filmland #12, which seemed to be his favorite. He went to sleep with his bedlamp on, the magazine across his chest.

  Stewart got up, put the magazine back in the pile, pulled the covers up around Roger, and turned off his light.

  Then he went downstairs to raid the refrigerator.

  THURSDAY. “Because They’re Young”

  “Ready to go?” asked Stewart.

  “I don’t know,” said Gadge.

  “What do you mean? All this stuff getting you down? I’m the one who’s worried the hell about Roger, and the admiral. I’m here. I’m ready. I want to see some flicks.”

  “Look,” he went on. “I been zombieing around for three days. I haven’t had the fun of fighting over groceries and lugging five gallon cans of gasoline home, or stocking a fallout shelter, or buying shotgun shells. I been moping around and worried about my little brother, who hasn’t said a word in six years anyway.”

  “How is Roger?”

  “Who knows! No different than always. Watches the news. Don’t change the subject. Are you coming with me to the drive-in or not?”

  “Look, Stewart. Everything’s pretty spooky right now. I mean, what if there’s World War Three while we’re there . . .?”

  “Listen at you. All the Russian ships slowed down but the one that’s fifty miles out ahead of the others. It won’t reach the blockade till Saturday. Nothing’s gonna happen till then. Besides, what would you do? I mean, supposing you only had an hour to live?”

  “That’s easy,” said Gadge. “Send both Veronica and Angela Cart-wright to my room. Have Hayley Mills wait outside in case they don’t kill me . . .”

  “Right! There you go! And where is it you can ever ever hope to see girls like that?”

  “At . . . at the movies,” said Gadge. He sighed. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  There were only a dozen other cars waiting to get into the Luau Drive-In, with its neon Hawaiian party going on on the backside of the screen facing the road. There were red neon flames where the pig cooked; a guy’s neon hands plucked on his neon ukelele strings; two hula girls’ hips moved back and forth in their neon green grass skirts.

  “Look, guys,” said the owner who was taking tickets, and who lived in the house that was the screen, with its upper story porthole windows. “Not enough people show up, there won’t be movies tonight. We’ll announce it and give your money back as you exit.”

  “Whatta ya mean, no show?”

  “Kid, the world might end any time.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Stewart, “if it doesn’t you’ll regret being out our six bits.”

  * * *

  The sound piped in over the speakers before the show started was the local radio station. The DJ was saying “and that was Charley Drake with ‘My Boomerang Won’t Come Back.’ And now here’s one from way back in 1959 to take us up to the news . . .” “Quiet Village” with its rainfall and bird noises and tinkling piano came on.

  “I’ll go get some crap to eat.” said Gadge. He got out and headed back toward the concession stand as the floodlights around the screen came on with the dark.

  * * *

  He got back in with the big cardboard carrier. There were two big bags of popcorn, two big Cokes, two Clark bars, a big box of Dots and a roll of Necco wafers.

  “How much I owe you?” asked Stewart.

  “Man, this place is expensive,” said Gadge. “It came to a dollar-ten in all. If you don’t want any of the Dots, give me 50¢.”

  * * *

  There were previews, then a cartoon (an old Looney Tunes) a newsreel and some more previews, and then the first of the triple feature started to roll.

  “I really don’t know why I’m here,” said Gadge. “Hayley Mills isn’t in any of these movies—I’m sure she’s not in Bride of the Gorilla—when it was made she would have been about two years old.”

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” asked Stewart. “Maybe you’ll see another girl of your dreams in this. Or Poor White Trash. Or High School Confidential?”

  “Yeah, right. If they were my age when these things were made they’d be about forty by now . . .”

  “Come on. Where’s your appreciation of cinema history?”

  Raymond Burr, the guy who played Perry Mason on TV, was having trouble in th
e jungle.

  “Seriously,” said Gadge, biting into the Clark bar. “How is Roger?”

  “He seems okay,” said Stewart. “Well, no different anyway. He just watches TV more. He’s been in study-hall for two days. They sent some of the special ed kids home Tuesday—some of them got too upset. He still answers any yes or no question you ask him, shakes his head, like he always has. I talked to his shrink last week before all this happened.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Same stuff as you and me heard growing up. Post-wonder effect. It wears off or it doesn’t. Not enough of us around to figure out if everybody comes out of it or not. I mean, it’s what, a decade or less . . . Bobby was one of the first and that was only eleven years ago.”

  “It was sure as hell less time for me than since this movie was made.” said Gadge.

  * * *

  Stewart awoke with a start. Gadge was snoring away in the passenger seat. Stewart looked at the screen. It was another movie—a guy in a black hat was doing something bad.

  He looked at the clock on the dash. Only 9:30—this must be Poor White Trash. Yeah, there was Peter Graves.

  “Hey,” said Stewart. “Wake up.”

  “Huh, what? Huh?”

  “You know the idea I had about going to the movies to forget our troubles?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Bad idea,” Gadge repeated. He looked up at the screen. “What happened to the gorilla?”

  “Wrong movie,” said Stewart. He cranked the motor, put the speaker back out on its hook on the post, and drove toward the exit with his parking lights on.

  There were still two cars way out in the back row, their windows steamed up. The lights in the snack bar were already out.

  “Wake me up when we get to my place,” said Gadge.

  Then he was snoring again.

  Stewart was thinking about “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back.” When the song first came out, there was a line in it about practicing till you were black in the face. Now the song said blue in the face. Go figure. The Aborigines must have a tough union.

  FRIDAY. “Gazachstahagen”

  Bobby said, “A Raymond Burr gorilla movie?”

  “If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin,” said Stewart.

  They were sitting in Stewart’s ’53 submarine Merc at the Hi-Spot, eating burgers. Stewart had swung by to pick up Bobby just as he’d swung in from work with his paycheck in his pocket. They went by Bobby’s bank, where he cashed his check and put $8.00 in his savings account, and then they’d driven here.

  “That guy was always having trouble with gorillas, wasn’t he?”

  They had the same radio station on in the car as the one piped in over the drive-in’s speakers. The song ended and the DJ said “. . . and that was Larry Verne with ‘Please Mr. Custer’ and then Ben Colder’s ‘Don’t Go Near the Eskimos’ and a happy oog-sook-mook-ee-ay to you, too . . .”

  Then the news came on and it was grim. The blockade waited for the Russian ships: the one out ahead of the others, the Grozny, was still coming on strong, the others slow behind it. The President and cabinet were meeting in the War Room. Absenteeism in schools and jobs was running 35%, 50% at defense plants on the East Coast and the Midwest. Stores all over the US were out of toilet paper, bulk foods and batteries. There was price-gouging all over; some stations were selling gas for as much as 50¢ a gallon. The weather forecast came on, then the DJ played Jack Scott’s “What in the World’s Come Over You?”

  “And Gadge thought this was a big bluff thing,” said Bobby.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Stewart chewed on his fries. “Look. Don’t you sometimes wish . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “What?”

  “I mean, look at us. You, me, Gadge, especially Roger. All that stuff we went through. It didn’t change a goddam thing.”

  “Well, how do we know it didn’t change anything?”

  “Okay, Mr. Philosophical. Everybody knows there’s guys from outer space. Well, one, and his big robot enforcer. They went away. We never heard from them again. Then everybody thought my and Roger’s dad was talking to Mars; things went crazy. The Russian Orthodox Church overthrew the Commies, for god’s sakes . . .”

  “For about a day—” said Bobby.

  “For about a day. Then Krushchev and Beria came down on them like a ton of bricks. It was like, you know, a little holiday, and then business back to Commie usual.

  “And Gadge—his gramps makes a robot. Then all kinds of spy stuff—where Pomphret comes in; Commie spies. Then it’s over. Gramps sends up the robot in a souped-up V-2. It’s never seen or heard of again. ‘Cranky Old Man Shoots Robot Into Space.’ The end. Two years later—Ooops! Sputnik!”

  “Your point being?”

  “Nothing changed. Not one thing. We’re right back to Us vs. Them, like The World is all there is, like we’re all that matters . . .”

  “Well,” said Bobby. “Most people can’t handle the idea we’re not alone; that strange and marvellous stuff happens all the time, that—that—”

  “But it did happen. We saw it; they saw it; they went crazy, too. But to them, it wasn’t personal. It was just The News; then something else took its place. It was just this year’s tortilla Jesus.”

  “We got on with our lives. Well, except for Roger,” said Bobby. “Why shouldn’t people who weren’t even there?”

  “Yeah, but Truman? Eisenhower? Kennedy? Krushchev too. They saw what happened. You don’t see any of that influencing foreign policy, or scientific research, or anything. Just business as usual. Now look where it’s got us!”

  “You expecting somebody to drop down from Pluto and straighten this out?”

  “No. That would be the easy way out of this mess our world leaders have gotten us into.”

  “Well, what do you want?”

  Stewart looked over the steering wheel out into the big plate glass window of the Hi-Spot where the carhops whizzed by on roller skates.

  “I want a world better than this one,” he said. “I want a world with shadows, and wet streets, and neon lights flashing ‘Hotel’ ‘Hotel’ outside my windows. Everything here seems to be taking place in a grey flat light. I want to be able to smoke like Robert Mitchum, and drink all day and night like Barton Maclane, and never, ever blow my beets. I want—I want to break someone’s heart, or have mine broken, in the rain . . .”

  “Why, why,” said Bobby, “. . . you . . . you’re a romantic! Take me back to my place before I become so filled with cheap sentiment that I can’t move.”

  “Asshole,” said Stewart, and flashed his lights for the carhop to come and take the tray.

  * * *

  They pulled up in front of the apartments. Things looked different.

  There were two times in his life when Bobby had gone somewhere to do something, and when he got back found the world completely changed.

  One had been in 1951. He’d gone off of play baseball in the neighborhood park, and when he got back, he found that his mom and Carpenter had gone off in the cab, and the rooming house was full of cops, FBI men and MPs.

  The other was tonight, when he stepped out of Stewart’s car and realized his 1946 Ford Super Deluxe wagon was gone.

  * * *

  He awoke from a dream of Hayley Mills, in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, climbing over a high fence.

  Gadge got up and took a pee, then got back in bed.

  What a week. Teachers on his case. Russians with missiles all over, bad gorilla movies, and now Bobby gets his woodie stolen.

  He turned on his radio; the DJ was babbling, it was 2:30 in the morning. Good thing he only had a language lab on Saturdays at noon.

  Ral Donner’s “The Girl of My Best Friend” came on, a Golden Oldie fro
m way back last year.

  He thought of Gramps; he could see him and the robot like it was yesterday. Gramps had been dead four years now; the robot had been gone five. After all that stuff with the Commie spies, Gramps had shot the robot off in the V-2 the Army had given him, a year before Sputnik. They’d lost contact with the robot and the rocket a few minutes after takeoff, and that was that. While he was still little, ten, eleven years old—he held out hope that the robot was still up there. He’d watch the night sky for hours at a time for some blink of light, some flashing thing passing overhead. Nothing.

  When they made that crummy movie based on Gramps, they hoked it all up. There wasn’t any telepathy-thing with him and the robot. It was a fairly simple big machine and could perform some simple functions. That didn’t mean Gadge hadn’t loved it, and Gramps.

  And there wasn’t a love-interest for his mom, either. They made all that stuff up. His mom had died three years ago. He had enough money left over from Gramps to go to junior college, and live in these swell apartments, and eat and put gas in the Vespa, and that was about it. There was more money coming when he turned twenty-one.

  As if the Russkies would ever let that happen, now.

  What he mostly remembered about the night he and Gramps went to the planetarium for the supposed lecture (a cheap Commie trick to kidnap them) was that there had been a bunch of teenagers in a circle out in the parking lot; in the middle two of them were having a knife-fight. He’d watched from the back seat, between the two big Commie refrigerators with bad haircuts, as they pulled away. One of the juvies was throwing down his knife.