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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 31 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - The scruffy park opposite Masty Hall now sprouted blossoms of scruffier humankind and its crueler impedimentia -
banners and merchandise tables, some still under construction, others in
place since dawn. The air ripened with clashing aromas and a cacophony of
junk food being sold out from backs of pickup trucks, authorized or not, junk
wood sawed and hammered into makeshift stages and booths as Andy, Marty,
Jorge Gamba and Fredrika
toted crates of nails, duct tape and flyers from a tired, yellow VW bus
towards a platform being slowly established facing the convention center. |
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City
workers also milled ‘round the plank stage making sullen gestures towards each
other, glancing at their watches or talking, texting and twittering, furtively,
on their devices while stacking up speakers stamped with the numerals of a
junior high school audio visual department; it was warm, already... sunny...
and a steady stream of Conks still flowed in and out of Masty
Hall. Some lingered beneath the marquee of the Embassy Theatre next door, a
dollar grindhouse long dead since that multiplex had
opened in the burbs, just over the line from the
North End and then went bankrupt, itself, during the plague - its chipped, red
plastic letters still reading "Dea Z ne,"
"D ath talk r," and "T e Ma c Chr st an"; a few wandering
souls even disappearing, inexplicably, into its depths. Others even stopped,
for a moment, to watch reconstruction of a long-transcended past underway
across the street, a decades-gone political Brigadoon... held together, barely,
by duct tape.
"How's
that place?" Jorge gestured with a hammer. "We want to be next to
that tree, it'll support our banner."
"I
don't know, man," Andy snarled. "It might be reserved."
"What's
all this reserved shit?"
"Last
night, Herb said that he was going to organize all the booths of authorized
participants, assign all these numbers and things. We were too tired to stop
him."
"Well
I don't see him. What's wrong with just setting up?" Jorge pressed.
"Dunno," Andy waved. "He had some sort of
strategic plan in setting all these people either next to one another or not
next to each other so as to ensure safe spaces, and I mean I didn't understand
what he was talking about. People
infected with the Coronovirus Sixth Wave? Kept nodding off. So
just set up," he decided on the spot. "What the fuck! Somebody else
comes along being offended or talking about their
reservations, work it out. That's what everybody else seems to be
doing..."
Marty
broke in. "Herb’s doggin’ round like snoop doggy
dogcatcher in that security guard uniform of his, with clipboards and all of
these cardboard tags with numbers on them, but he's come up against people
who'd already dug in and they just ignored him. Oh... and there's some strange
Euros, associated with that crazy woman last night, handing out lists of
processes that all speakers are supposed to follow – trigger words and phrases
that we’re not allowed to say."
“Did
they bring guns?” he asked, only half-facetiously, then
shrugged. Jorge shrugged back and they dropped the stuff by the tree. From the
stage, Dion posed and wandered on the oldies station, booming out from one of
the City workers' boom boxes.
"God
bless Siva's Hammer Printing," Fredrika grunted,
setting down a box of leaflets. "If it weren't for their cheap
union-busting copies, the activist community in this town would go broke!"
A
time-warped hippie with a face brown and wrinkled as a raisin hailed Andy from
across the park. "Can you give us a hand with the free food?"
"It'll
be OK," Andy promised Jorge and Fredrika.
"Just ignore Herb."
He
was halfway to the sidewalk where people were unloading boxes from a station
wagon, when an earnest-looking young CNC delegate in a blue blazer and nametag
intercepted him, asking "Are you in charge?"
Andy
waved to indicate the confusion of the construction – dogs and radios and
screeching children, lone-wolf political theorists shouting out manifestoes to
the strangers and the trees...
"Nobody's
in charge of this! But what do you need, anyway?"
A
woman joined him... young, freckled, wedding band on her left ring finger.
"Excuse us," she apologized, "but this man across the street
pointed you out and said that you could help. Funny," she added, peering
back towards Masty Hall, "I don't see where he
went..."
"You
see," the Conk spoke up, "we're from Indiana. We're with the
challenge delegation?" Andy's blank face slowed him down. "Anyway, to
make a long story short, we made this reservation at the Nite's
Inn, all the way out in Miscautaway, and they told us
it would be eighty-four dollars, but when we got here yesterday the manager
said the Coalition discount didn't apply because we weren't on somebody's list
and it would be a hundred seventy-two..."
"For
one night," his wife tried to smile before delivering her punchline. “Each!”
"Anyway,"
the man resumed, "we don't have very much money... we had to stay last
night at the full rate because there isn't anything else in town. But we can't
afford it again, tonight or tomorrow; they're eighteen miles away and there
isn't anything available this side of the capital..."
"That man," his wife continued,
bouncing off her husband like a tag team wrestler, "he suggested that you
knew some sort of lower cost hostel, like a YMCA? It wouldn't have to be
luxurious, even comfortable, even; we only need a place to… like your sort used
to say, trash?"
“Crash, honey. We
have sleeping bags,” the Hoosier volunteered.
"Sure!
Sure!" Andy repeated, his head beginning to feel
like it had just been bounced off a turnbuckle. "I can help you but he's
right... it won't be very comfortable. But if you can't find anything else,
here's the address." He wrote down the address of the Jefferson Street
Sanctuary on the back of a flier attacking resumption of the Star Wars
deployment... the President's Siti 3.2 Program that
had passed the Senate with only four dissenting votes after the Russians
occupied Moldavia and the meatballs had been passed round. "Ask for Eddie;
we don't charge, but do take donations for the community, twenty..." he
looked down at their shoes, "thirty dollars, whatever you can spare. For the both…"
"That's
marvelous," said the Conkette. "Oh... thank
you! Thank you!"
"Like
Luke Bryan says, I knew people in town were basically good, or the CNC wouldn't
have chosen to hold its convention here," her husband beamed with fresh,
Midwestern Penceian optimism. "That must just
have been one bad case, that motel manager... not very American, if you catch
my drift," he winked.
"Yeah,
well it takes all kinds," Andy smiled goodbye. "See you later…
maybe..."
He
continued his voyage across the park to the free food truck, which Rael, among
others, was helping to unload.
"What's
this shit?" he sniffed.
"Bagels and raw cauliflower."
"Ugh!"
he said, picking up a vegetable. "Look at this black mold, this shit's ancient!
Moldavian! It should be going to the old
folks' home."
"So
we'll just scrape it off," Rael answered, undeterred.
"Fine. Fine!"
He tossed the venerable vegetable aside and kicked at a box of bagels, one of
which fell off and rolled down the sidewalk and into the grass. A pigeon
landed, poked at it two or three times before wandering off, fluffing indignant
feathers. "Critics! Where does this go?"
"Over
by the Labor party... no, wait... the Workers' booth."
"What
the fuck," Andy coughed, hoisting the free food onto his shoulder and starting
to walk. "They're all Trots, and anybody who eats this shit's gonna get
the trots, too!"
"You're
in your usual pleasant mood," Rael shouted after him.
Andy
turned, balancing the box of old produce against his neck. "Well, for a
start, that reporter kept calling my hotel all night, kept getting Babu's family out of bed so he wouldn't go away until I
called him back... that one hanging around City Hall told him and he wanted to
know this and that..."
"Terrific!"
she brightened. "The animals need publicity!"
"Not
his kind. Trust me! He's that jerk columnist who wrote about those squats on
West Demoyne and, after the Urinal came out, Pinhead
had the cops come round and throw everybody there into prison!"
"Oh, him... that, that human! Did you
hear anything about the Klan coming tomorrow, trying to disrupt the
demonstration? Those Aryan somebodies, from Colorado? Wolverines from up in
Michigan, somewhere, and those boys who never jerk off? Or relatives of that alt-Jesus fellow in
Kansas who used to picket the dead soldiers?"
"Just the usual disinformation. I thought they were
going to blow up the convention. Or join it as Tillerman
delegates... whatever... nothing about these Conks makes any
sense!"
He
dropped the box in a clearing with other dubious foodstuffs. A thin Old Lefty
in a faded red t-shirt memorializing East Germany leaned over the table on
which he'd been cutting old carrots, frowning...
"Thanks,
man." Andy grunted a reply without looking up, but the guy wasn't
finished. "Hey, like... you know we really can't afford another one of
those fees..."
"What
fee?" Andy said. "You're giving this shit away,
right?"
"The
forty dollars that these people were askin'
for..."
A
bug skidded into a fluorescent light, blowing out in Andy's brain. "Guy with a clipboard? Maybe wearing security guard
clothes..."
"Nah...
we already laid twenty on him, earlier. This guy in a business suit, older, like
me... fat, wearin' shades? An' this woman with him,
looked like a hooker?"
"Emil!"
He turned to Rael, who'd arrived out of breath, toting still more food.
"Oh... this is great, fuckin' Emil! Our lawyer's hustling his back fees by
shaking down the booths. Hot shit! Listen, you can stay, no matter who comes
round. What you do is put out a can for donations, mark it for Demonstration
Expenses. That guy or the other one, younger, with clipboards, whoever comes
around first, they can empty it... tell 'em Andy told you to do it..."
"But,"
the Oesterophile demurred, "we already have our
own can..."
"No
law against having two. Or three. You see a cop around? A Turk?
Put out the cans... Rael, there's gonna be a lot of this shit round. Three cans!
Can you hit restaurant alley and liberate some dumpster cans? Not too filthy…"
"I
don't know... maybe if there's enough help at the animals' table..."
"No
problemo," Andy assured her. "I've seen
it... full of all your rich young liberals from the U. who hate their parents,
ergo all human beans. Austin’s human
extermination brigade..." Rael opened her mouth
to protest but Andy Bidened her on the shoulder,
blowing a kiss into her ear. "It'll be fine... listen, I gotta check out that stage, see ya
round..."
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SUNDAY the NINTH - 10:14 PM
"Hey,
punk," Nelson said through his cigar, "how can you fuckin' think
with that damn thing on?"
"Huh?"
Dannie answered through “What the Fox Said” on his left ear-pod.
Helen,
heading off unnecessary conflict with little more than three-quarters of an
hour to airtime, motioned the editor over. "Hey!" she diverted
Nelson's attention away, "take a look at this opening segment of the
Catfish speech. Parnell ties in everything, even Baby Claire."
Nelson
took the cigar out of his mouth, turned away... the
editor squinted into one of the monitors as Helen ran the speech back.
"Thank
you, thank you," boomed a disembodied political voice. "What
wonderful people! And... I've just learned wonderful
news from Florida… the doctors say Baby Claire will make it. How about that...
she's gonna make it!"
"He talkin' about the operation?
They had it, already, nobody tellin' me?"
"Hell, no! Talking about the money."
"It's
not clear from the shot. How does it time out?" Nelson asked, grudgingly.
"Fourteen
seconds..."
"Well...
with voice-over maybe," Nelson said, not wanting to give in so easily.
"Where the fuck's Billy? Kid, we need a lead... gimme
one. Take that damn thing off!"
And,
before Dannie could remove the ear-pod himself, Nelson ripped it off and threw
the thin, wheedling tones of James Blunt… or, maybe, was it Josh Groban?… across the editing console as a twitchy little man
in a safari jacket clattered into the studio.
"As I was saying, and where the fuck were you?"
"Needed
a beer," the reporter shot back. "And a blowjob.
Haircut... whatever! Tried to get close to the victim when
the coroner's people rolled up, couldn't. Corpse in bloody clothes was all I could
see. Male… probably. Or not – head blown
away to hamburger heaven. Cops and
Turks everywhere! Fuckin' East End's a Costa Rican
warzone... crazy out there!"
"Do
you have ninety-two seconds of rioting?" Nelson demanded,
"Ninety
minutes, if you want it." With fumbling fingers, two of which still held a
smoldering cigarette, Billy began pulling cassettes and thumbdrives
and junk... coins, a comb, a switchblade knife, a dried apricot... out of his omniverous pockets.
"Helen,
you work with him," Nelson turned away. "Kid!
I said I needed a lead..."
"How's...
uh... this?" Dannie stammered, "...a night of triumph and tragedy in
the city. Wait... another possibility, better... a night of triumph and
terror..."
"Whatcha think, Billy?" said the manager with a
prejudicial scowl.
"Terror...
dunno, sounds foreign, like
as if Iranians were involved... Irakians? Italians?" the reporter free-associated, finding the
cassette he'd been looking for. "'Cept for the
Turks, this is strictly homegrown. Take a vizzy..."
Newspeople, even Marla's hairdresser, huddled round the
monitor for a peek. Soundless scenes of breaking glass, then breaking heads
came and went. A Prius exploded in flames, a nightstick busted open the nose of
a girl no older than fourteen; a shirtless man, noting the camera, made an
obscene gesture…
"Have
to cut that part," Nelson sighed. "Assholes! Always getting into the frame! When do we get to that body?"
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