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Sam picked up the phone and dialed. It rang three times before his father answered. “Yes? Who is this?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s me, Dad. Sam.”
“Samuel! How lovely to hear from you! Let me ring you right back, all right? A Gypsy caravan rolled up a few moments ago, and I just need to send them on their way.” A woman laughed in the background; music was playing, other voices. “Five minutes, ten at the most.”
“Oh, sure,” said Sam, realizing that he had no idea where in the world his father was at that moment. Booth had already hung up.
He climbed into bed, waited for a half hour or so before accepting that this jukebox was as broken as all the others, and gave himself over to sleep.
■ ■ ■
In the morning, before thoughts of anything else—before the movie, even—Sam awakened to remember what Mina had told him about how their father had promised to take her to Paris. Booth, compulsive prevaricator that he was, was at it again, showering disenchantment on someone else’s childhood. Sam wasn’t going to let him get away with it. The time had come to inform his father that if he made Mina any more promises he couldn’t keep, Sam was going to punch him in the face.
Aside from that, there was the matter of a certain prosthetic nose—puffy, with a very realistic mole—that Sam had only just recalled. While he was at it, he planned to insist that the money his father owed be handed over immediately. The damned nose had cost him $587.34.
He thumbed in his father’s number. There was a single ring, followed by a recording explaining that the customer he had dialed was currently unavailable. In other words, Booth’s payment was, as of the morning, officially overdue again.
Sam packed his few things. He was decamping for Brooklyn; he could stay in Red Hook with Wesley until he figured out what came next.
Outside, after the deluge, it was sunny and chilly, and everything at ground level had an icing of mud.
Sam got in the car. He started to reverse, checked in the rearview mirror, and stamped on the brake. He put the car back in drive and went forward into his space. Sam got out.
Perhaps ten feet behind his vehicle’s rear bumper was a yawning black pit.
The night’s torrent had caused the parking lot’s big pothole to expand into a sinkhole. The pavement had fractured in a webbed pattern, and huge chunks of macadam had spilled into the hole. The resulting cavity was about the shape and size of a luxury hot tub.
Sam carefully approached an edge and peered into the well. The sides gave way in a jagged slide of ocher-colored mud. At the deepest visible point was a slick of pearly water streaked with oil, but where the absolute bottom lay was impossible to tell.
He returned to his car.
Instead of reversing, he drove forward, bounced over the curb, and crushed a low hedge. Sam executed a wide, spraying arc across the muddy lawn of the apartment complex before thumping down over another section of curb and back onto the drive that led out and away.
At the bottom of the housing development’s driveway stood a large corrugated trash can. Sam braked, buttoned down the passenger-side window. He plucked the DVD case from the passenger seat and flicked it in the direction of the trash can. The case struck the lip and clattered onto the pavement of the entryway median. Close enough, Sam thought, if he thought anything.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
(1969)
1.
To the unenlightened, the derelict Western New York Limited switching yard was an all-purpose dump, a place for the local populace to deposit junked cars and other pieces of large-scale detritus free of charge. It wasn’t a proper scrap yard, per se, but no one seemed to mind; it was convenient, and the railroad sure as hell wasn’t coming back.
To the disaffected sorts who squatted there—dropouts, dodgers, runaways, the homeless—it was known as Tomorrowland. Allie could see two opposing ways to interpret the title: either the designation was intended as predictive of an apocalyptic future, littered with stinking and rusting garbage, where there were scant reserves of clean water; or, less bleakly, it was meant as a comment on the residents’ cooperative use of very limited resources—makeshift shelter, scarce food and water, a dearth of hygiene products—the label for a rough model of the way forward, a stepping stone in the direction of a more sensible world.
That morning Allie, who was depressed for a number of reasons but most of all because she had not taken a shower, had a cup of coffee, or slept in a bed for three days, leaned toward the former.
From behind the wheel of the lifeless Pontiac Parisienne where she currently dwelled, Allie watched a tall, heavyset man hop from the tracks and surf down the gravel embankment to the flat ground of the yard. His enormous grin was visible at fifty yards. If the car still worked, she would have seriously considered running him over.
The heavyset man stopped at a spot in the center of the yard. He picked up a hubcap, swished it around, nodded to himself, and then whacked it viciously three times against the bent front fender of a sepulchral DeSoto. The clangs resonated around the embankments, redirecting off the ten thousand metal surfaces, thrumming on the air and through the ground. Allie felt the reports through the driver’s seat of the Parisienne and instinctively clenched the wheel.
“Good morning, men and women of the future!” the stranger cried. “My name is Booth Dolan, and I am a filmmaker. I am most keen to begin photographing my maiden production, entitled New Roman Empire, but I lack one vital element: a cast.
“That is where I hope you good people will come in.”
■ ■ ■
In the wake of this racket, the residents of Tomorrowland emerged, somewhat shakily, from their various berths: Mayor Paul parted the moldy red curtains at the rear of the front end–less hearse that was his residence. Marty and Anissa crawled from their bed in the doorless green boxcar. Adam and Brittany shuffled onto the porch of the depot to blink out from beneath the lichen-crusted eave. Allie shouldered open the door of the Parisienne and climbed out.
The only one who didn’t show a face was Randall, the paranoiac inhabiting the engine-less hollow beneath the hood of the DeSoto that Booth Dolan had gonged. “Fuck you, man!” Randall’s voice came through the airholes punctured in the rusted metal. Allie had never seen the man, but it was said that at night he sometimes felt safe enough to leave his nest to forage.
“Oops! My friend, I did not realize you were in there. I am very sorry.” Booth flipped aside the hubcap and gave the hood of the car a gentle pat.
The stranger wore a black suit. His jacket was wrinkled and dusty-looking, and his thick, hairy wrists protruded from the cuffs of his white shirt. The hair at his temples was buzzed military-short. The morning sun threw his shadow hugely against a segment of discarded train siding propped against a heap of tires. It was easy to imagine him playing football, a position on one of the lines, or manning first base. Whoever this Booth person was, he clearly wasn’t one of them.
“You drunk?” asked Marty.
“No. I’m inspired,” said Booth.
Marty yawned. “Oh. That’s okay, then.”
“Hold on, mister. This is private property.” Allie had come up beside the DeSoto.
Booth tipped his head to her. “Pardon my intrusion. And you are?”
“Allie. What’s it matter?”
“It could not matter more.” His mouth pulled into a solemn frown.
“Oh, please.” Three days earlier Allie had been a shy, whispery freshman on a music scholarship in good standing at SUNY-Hasbrouck. Today she was petulant, distrustful, and near to washing out. Her transformation had occurred as the result of an introductory meeting with her adviser, Professor Murton. They had been alone in the second-floor studio, and at his request, she had sat down to play a piece by Bach.
A few measures in, the professor clapped his hands to stop her. “No, no. That won’t do, my dear.” Professor Murton rose from his seat and paced around on the hardwood floor, tapping an index finger against his philtrum. A
bald man in gray suspenders, he had a quick, purposeful walk that conveyed an intense, searching intellect.
Allie had to concentrate to keep from squirming on the bench. She wasn’t used to being critiqued, let alone by someone so experienced and important.
“You have talent, but . . . there is a tightness. A snarl in you, in your playing,” he announced after a few seconds. He made a scissoring gesture with his fingers. “It needs cutting loose.”
“Oh.” Come to think of it, Allie thought, her stomach did feel a little tight. “Okay.”
“Good. Good, good. Then what I’d like you to do,” he said, approaching to lay a hand on the chest of the piano, “unless you have any objections, of course, is this: play the ‘Etude’ again and— Actually, no, not that, something much simpler. ‘Für Elise’? Yes, that’s it. You play ‘Für Elise,’ but standing up. No bench. Standing up. Are you with me?”
“Yes, I understand.” She smiled to show how eager she was to please him and to liberate her technique.
“Right, then,” said Professor Murton. “So you stand up to play. And then, as you begin, I shall come around behind you, raise your skirt, slip down your panties, and with the most exquisite gentleness, gain you from the rear.”
“Uh,” said Allie.
“I think you’ll find the experience tremendously freeing.” Professor Murton closed his eyes and nodded as if savoring something delectable. Light lay on his naked scalp like grease.
“I should go,” she might have said, although in her hurry to put space between herself and the professor, Allie wasn’t sure if the words came out. She bolted from the studio, the heavy door slamming shut on Professor Murton’s calls for her to wait. She hadn’t been back to campus since, staying instead at Tomorrowland, trying to figure out what to do.
“I want to give all of you eternal life,” Booth said. “I want to put you in my movie.”
Allie scoffed. She couldn’t remember ever being in a nastier temper. But the others were listening intently.
“What kind of a movie?” Lanky and beaky, Mayor Paul had walked over from the hearse. He was in long johns, and his feet were bare. Mayor Paul’s sweet, stoned character made him well liked by everyone. Although he wasn’t an actual elected official, he had naturally assumed a leadership role: divvying up supplies, defusing arguments, negotiating with the police when they made one of their occasional raids on the camp; also, his hearse was the most impressive wreck.
“An important movie,” said Booth. “A true movie.” The large man in the black suit extended a hand to the golden-bearded dropout.
The Mayor’s hands remained at his sides. “Yeah? What’s so true about it?”
“Everything, every second of it, though especially the part where we show that this war, and everything to do with it, is a dirty damned farce. A farce played by a few evil men who jerk us all around for their personal amusement, like puppets.” Booth kept the hand in place.
“Pleased,” said the Mayor, finally raising his hand. They shook.
Adam lit a spliff and walked over with a milk crate, set it down, sat on it. Brittany came over, too. She hopped up on a discarded radiator. Randall’s voice leaked from the holes in the trunk in an agonized whisper: “Don’t trust him! He sounds like a weirdo!” Mayor Paul told Randall to be cool; his objections had been entered into the public record. The disembodied voice fell silent. A few others approached. Someone said, “Tell us more.”
The stranger removed his wrinkled jacket, draping it over his forearm. He propped a foot atop a battered icebox, leaned forward, knee on elbow, and without saying anything, cast an unhurried look from one member of the audience to the next, all the way around.
When Booth’s gaze lit on Allie, she found herself abruptly transported to an illustration in a storybook that she had spent many hours contemplating as a child. The illustration depicted a man in a coat with tails, holding a long orange cat by the head and legs as if the animal were an accordion, and playing it as if it were an accordion; musical notes swirled from the cat’s ears. Listening nearby, a beautiful woman in a bright red dress swooned. The musician and the cat stared off the page with eyes like Booth’s eyes, wide and bright, eyes of absolute conviction. It was, she would have been embarrassed to admit, the most romantic image she knew, an image Allie had kept in her heart for years, calling it ridiculous to herself but loving it anyway.
She scoffed again and looked away. But she did not leave.
The morning was mild for October. A bird called, less a song than a cackle, rippling through the air above their heads.
“It begins,” said Booth, “with a medicine show.”
■ ■ ■
The story is set in the town of Nix-on-Avon, where a group of young men and women have taken to helping the elderly and infirm for no money at all. These peace lovers, inspired by the example of Jesus Christ, help in the fields, paint houses, and even serenade sleepless children with windowside folk songs, steadfastly refusing any attempts at financial remuneration. If there’s plenty of food, they accept a bite to eat or, if it’s a cold or rainy evening, the shelter of a shed or hayloft, but not money. They are called “the Young Americans.”
For the magnates of Nix-on-Avon, the movement is catastrophic: commerce has ground to a halt because of the sudden fad for bartering and trade; the banks are desolate; the now unnecessary police force spends the day playing cards and napping in the empty jail cells.
“But what can we do?” asks Mr. Jones, the owner of a rifle factory, worrying his emerald ring. The burg’s titans have convened a meeting. Mr. Jones’s beautiful daughter, Daughter, is one of the Young Americans.
“What we need is a war!” one man barks. A few of the men chuckle mirthlessly. War is the best business in the world! They should be so lucky!
From outside comes the tinkling of a bell and clopping hooves, alerting them to the arrival in the street of a novelty—an old-fashioned horse-drawn cart.
■ ■ ■
“There it is: the medicine show. Dr. Archibald ‘Horsefeathers’ Law’s Mobile Hospital! Horsefeathers Law, Purveyor of Rejuvenating Liniments, Healthful Syrups, Wake-up Powders, and General Remedies! I will play Dr. Law! I am the villain.” Booth winked conspiratorially at the gathering. A few people giggled.
Booth raised a finger to signal that there was more. “And did I mention that you, all of you here, you’re the Young Americans? You see, all I want is for you to be yourselves.”
■ ■ ■
Dr. Law offers his services to the businessman. It will be no great difficulty, he claims, to “cure” the Young Americans. His fees are very reasonable, he adds, especially for this kind of work. He invites them to please call him “Horsefeathers.”
Mr. Jones asks if he’s cracked. “How could such a thing even be possible, Dr. Law—er, Horsefeathers? How can you ‘cure’ do-gooding?”
“Pshaw! There’s a cure for everything!” Dr. Law climbs on a chair and looks down on the rich men. “Why, it so happens that I have, after a great deal of study—and a long sojourn in the deepest jungles of South America, where monkeys speak and the wisest of men walk on their hands—concocted an antidote for peace!”
That night, when Dr. Law arrives at their encampment, he addresses the Young Americans with an altogether different pitch. “I am not a miracle worker!” he warns. “I am a physician specializing in the deeper body. There is no magic about this. My medicine is, quite simply, a scientific treatment for the soul!”
After a clanking search among the many pockets of his topcoat, Dr. Law produces a pickle jar filled with inky liquid. Here, he says, is his special Curative of the Inner Aura Juice—CIA Juice, for short—guaranteed to cleanse the spirit of all physical weakness.
“I will offer a free sample to anyone who would like one”—he grins to reveal his several gold teeth, and angles the jar so they can see how prettily the black liquid oozes—“so long as you call me Horsefeathers!”
The Young Americans are weary; t
he work they’ve been doing for their neighbors is hard on the back, on the knees and the feet. A cure for physical weakness sounds good. It’s probably just grape juice, but since it’s free, what’s the harm?
Except for those six or seven who are away helping to plow a widow’s turnip patch, all of the Young Americans accept the free samples of CIA Juice. They take turns sipping from the inky jar. “Sure is bitter,” notes the rifle magnate’s lovely daughter, Daughter Jones. “Say, what’s in it, anyhow?”
“Oh, a great, great many things!” says Dr. Law.
“Like what kind of things, Horsefeathers?” she asks.
“Well, for one thing, dreams!” The doctor explains that he grinds them up into a fine powder using a special mortar and pestle.
The next morning the Young Americans awaken in hypnotized states.
One girl goes to a train track and sprawls on the rails. Another youth picks his way carefully down a steep riverbank, pries a large stone free from the mud, and wades out into the middle of the river until his head disappears beneath the surface. Daughter Jones digs a neat grave and climbs down inside.
She is pulling the loose dirt in on herself when Horsefeathers rushes to stop her. “My dear, my dear!” he cries, dragging her from the hole. “What kind of a gentleman allows his wife to bury herself? I consider it a matter of principle that I should bury all my wives personally!”
The rest of the Young Americans return home to their parents. They proceed directly to the nearest mirror. The boys hack off their long hair and shave their beards; the girls hastily apply fresh makeup. They open their parents’ closets and take out suits and ties, ankle-length dresses and Sunday shoes.
In the middle of Main Street, the Young Americans make a pile of their old rags—torn jeans and sleeveless blouses and sandals—and light a bonfire.
The bankers and business owners look on, delighted—except for Mr. Jones. After refusing to accede to the very reasonable price for Dr. Law’s services—Daughter’s hand in marriage—his fellows locked him inside a basement.