by Terri Favro
“What are you supposed to be?” demanded Judy-Garland.
“A Ukrainian,” answered Sandy.
The four of us lumbered from house to house, Sandy and I huddled under my mother’s umbrella, the Donatos wrestling pink ruffled parasols that were quickly shredded by the wind. Pumpkins grinned lopsidedly from every third or fourth house; long stretches of the block were in darkness, their shell-shocked occupants reluctant to answer the door to knocks in the night. The rain was coming down harder now. We hurried toward the candy store, its windows glowing like a last outpost of civilization. A firetrap of a wooden shack, the store sold frost-encrusted popsicles from a malfunctioning freezer, dirty magazines from a detergent box hidden under the front counter and a dog-eared selection of old Superman and Artie comics. Never much of a business, it had evolved into a teen hangout at the edge of the known world, the point where the streetlights and pavement of Fermi Road ended.
Lugging soggy pillowcases full of cheap candy, we banged our way up the steps of the store’s sagging front stoop. Jayne-Mansfield slipped on the ice and fell with a cry. The three of us lifted her as best we could, our arms stiff beneath layers of winter clothing and plastic costumes. Disguised as cartoon versions of grown-ups, we peered into the vast and terrifying darkness beyond the store. There be dragons.
When we pushed open the door, we were welcomed by a wall of warm air and junior volleyball players, the girls dressed as cats and witches, the boys pretending to be gunslingers in their younger brothers’ cowboy hats and toy holsters. One girl wore a beauty pageant sash reading “Miss Atomic Bomb,” her body wrapped in chicken wire and black felt.
Piotr, the candy store owner’s son, was an astronaut in a cardboard box covered in silver foil. A cluster of hair-dryer hoses bounced out of his chest like decapitated hagfish. We perched on stools next to him while he changed records on the hi-fi, watching one of the gunslingers do the Watusi with Miss Atomic Bomb.
Beside Piotr, a skinny young man with shaggy black hair riffled through a stack of 45s. He was dressed like a soldier — fatigues, combat boots, dog tags — but with buttons missing from his tunic and a T-shirt stained with something nasty, like old blood. A stethoscope hung around his neck.
When he noticed me beside him, he smiled. “Hey there, kid, what are you supposed to be?”
“Bozo the clown,” I mumbled through a mouthful of caramel apple. “How about you?”
“Hawkeye Pierce,” he said.
I frowned. “Who?”
“TV show character. He’s kind of a clown, too.”
“Never heard of him,” I said.
He shrugged. “His show doesn’t air in this time zone. I’ve only seen it because I’m an exchange student.”
His voice sounded familiar. “I feel like I know you from someplace.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s déjà vu,” he said, pulling out a 45. At first I thought he was reading from the record label — I’d never heard the word before.
“What’s dayjawvoo?”
“It’s French for ‘already seen.’ That sense some people have that they’ve lived through something before. Ever feel that way, Bozo?”
I nodded. I finally had a word to describe a feeling I knew well, although I never knew when the dayjawvoo would appear. It bubbled up as randomly as pancake batter on a hot griddle.
Hawkeye Pierce pulled a 45 from its sleeve. He was missing half of the middle finger of his right hand.
“I know who you are now. You’re the guy from the future.”
One of his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “And just how do you know that?”
“We’ve crossed paths twice. Once in the Z-Lands last spring. You were trespassing on private property, so I called you ‘the Trespasser’ in my head.”
Hawkeye grinned. “‘The Trespasser.’ That’s an apt name for me. And the second time?”
“You scraped my cheek cells at the ShipCo company picnic. You told me you were Dr. Duffy from the future.”
Hawkeye frowned. “You’re right about my name, so I guess I can look forward to harvesting your epithelia sometime soon.”
“No, you already did that in the past,” I said.
“Depends on your point of view,” he answered.
Before I could remind him about my having to save humanity, the door banged open and Linda and Billy walked in, holding hands. Billy was wearing the blue denim shirt and pants of a farmhand and a threadbare corduroy sports jacket. His blond hair had grown long and flopped over his eyes, covering the coil of scar tissue dangling from his ear. A fake mustache drooped under his nose. It didn’t seem like much of a Halloween costume.
Billy nodded at the Trespasser. “If it isn’t Hawkeye.”
“Meathead, I presume?” said the Trespasser. “It appears you’re taking the low bandwidth transmissions of Earth Standard Time a little too seriously.”
Billy frowned. “The impact of subversive entertainment is clearly observable within the youth mores of Earth Standard Time. Why not here?”
The Trespasser waved his hands dismissively. “There is no empirical evidence that televised entertainment in a parallel world is indicative of a possible shift of youth culture in our own continuum.”
“It’s intuitively obvious,” insisted Billy.
“Are you a scientist or a sociologist?” asked the Trespasser. “And just for the record, Meathead was a buffoon, an object of satire.”
Billy stiffened. “He was a freedom fighter. A teller of truth to power.”
“You call his fat father-in-law powerful? A careful analysis would show that Archie Bunker was a man more to be pitied than feared.”
The partygoers had stopped dancing to give their attention to the argument between Billy and the Trespasser.
“Who are you weirdos?” demanded Gunslinger Number One.
Billy didn’t answer, just plucked the 45 out of the Trespasser’s hands and read the title: “‘Telstar’ by The Tornadoes. Pop glamorization of spy satellite technology. You actually like this crap?”
“It’s catchy,” said the Trespasser.
“Give the propaganda a rest, Billy, this is supposed to be a party,” said Piotr, putting “Telstar” on the hi-fi.
Miss Atomic Bomb giggled. “Don’t you ever have fun, Billy?”
Billy pointed his finger at Miss Atomic Bomb as if pulling a gun on her. “They’re exploding a thermonuclear device in the magnetosphere as we speak. That sound like fun to you?”
The Trespasser put his hand on Billy’s shoulder as if to lead him away. Billy shrugged him off and stepped into the middle of the room.
“Listen up, everybody. If we told the ShipCo bosses to ban the Bomb, they’d have to listen to us. There’s a lot more of us than there are of them.”
The partygoers gasped. For the youth of Atomic Mean Time, this was wildly dangerous crazy talk.
“What the hell do you expect us to do for a living when we grow up?” demanded Gunslinger Number One. “Shipman’s Corners is a bomb town, asshole.”
“And if we don’t do something about that, it’ll soon be a smouldering radioactive crater,” Billy shot back.
“You sound like a Yammer,” said Miss Atomic Bomb nervously. “Better shut up or they’ll send us all to New Sydney just for listening to you.”
Linda stepped in front of Miss Atomic Bomb. “You’re such a child,” she said.
“I’ve seen TV broadcasts from an alternate world where youth are marching in protest,” said Billy. “They’re occupying buildings and calling for change. And it’s working. They’ve even managed to limit their Domino Wars to Korea and Vietnam.”
Gunslinger Two snorted. “TV from another dimension. How’d you manage that trick?”
Billy and the Trespasser traded looks.
“I’m a scientist,” Billy said.
“Right, and
I’m a monkey’s uncle,” said Gunslinger One.
“Judging by your unevolved state, I’d say that’s highly likely,” said Billy.
The Trespasser inserted himself between Billy and Gunslinger Number One, who was clenching and unclenching his fists. Some of the kids looked mad. Others, scared. Gunslinger Number Two had starting slowly punching the palm of his hand.
“Time to back off,” said the Trespasser softly to Billy.
“It’s always time to back off, according to you. You’re as big a problem as the rest of them, you anti-mutant snob. Go back to the lab and let me do my job. Let’s split, baby,” Billy said, grabbing Linda’s hand and giving a parting shot to the crowd: “Sure hope you like the taste of Strontium 90 in your chocolate milk, kids. A couple of miles from here, there’s enough radium in the ground to make you all glow in the dark.”
Oh no. Linda had told Billy about the Z-Lands.
Piotr jerked his thumb at the Trespasser. “You better go with your friends. Last thing I want is for this party to turn into a brawl.”
Linda, Billy and the Trespasser pushed through the front door, just as a cowboy brushed in past them, dripping wet: Bum Bum. His hands were lost in the sleeves of what must have been his father’s lumberjack shirt. He didn’t even have a hat, just a grubby red bandanna around his neck and tin can lids stuck to the back of his shoes to hint at a costume.
Gunslinger Number Two made an ugly face. “First we got Yammers wrecking the party, now someone invited a Twistie from Z Street.”
“Store’s open to everybody who doesn’t talk politics,” Piotr said, handing a caramel apple to Bum Bum, who sank his front teeth into its shiny brown skin and chewed it as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.
He tossed the apple core into the garbage, nodding in my direction, and then jerked his head at the door. His meaning was clear: meet me outside. He must have found a car. Time to steal my father’s extension ladder and make our move.
“This party sucks. Let’s get out of here,” I said to my friends.
Fortified by candy and hot cider, Sandy, Judy-Garland, Jayne-Mansfield and I hoisted our pillowcases and trundled back into the rain. No lights lit the street past the candy store. I scanned the darkness for the Trespasser and caught a match flaring briefly in a car parked just outside the pool of yellow streetlight that marked the edge of Fermi Road.
“Wait up,” I said to the others, handing Sandy my mother’s big umbrella. Freezing raindrops pinged off my plastic clown mask like BB pellets as I squooshed to the car. My shoes were overflowing.
The Corvair’s windows were sleeted over. I pulled my fist inside my coat sleeve and circled my arm against the glass, scratching a porthole. Surfer rock blasted from the car radio.
I put an eye to the porthole. I expected to see Bum Bum smoking behind the wheel, but instead I saw Linda in one of her lacy bras, her long hair messy all over the seat. Billy’s blond head was bent over her, his lips pressed to her chest as if he were trying to suck out poison from a snakebite. I’d seen this move in Westerns. I stepped away from the car and lumbered back to Sandy and the twins.
“Is it your sister and her Yammer boyfriend?” asked Judy-Garland.
“Let’s find out,” suggested Jayne-Mansfield, heading for the car.
I grabbed the back of her fluffy coat, sending her into a puddle of slush. The last remaining ribs of her parasol snapped. Judy-Garland reached down and hauled her weeping twin to her feet.
“We’re telling!” she yelled, and the two of them stomped away, hand in hand.
“I’m going home,” said Sandy miserably. She slung her pillowcase over her shoulder and headed off toward Tesla Avenue.
I was utterly alone.
Hoisting my drooping pillowcase, I crossed to the other side of the street, wondering what had happened to Bum Bum. On the sidewalk outside of a darkened house, I hit an icy patch and my feet flew out from under me like a Looney Tune character slipping on a banana peel. The back of my head smacked something hard, leaving me dazed. I found myself staring up into the dark sky with ice pellets hitting my face.
I put my hands over my eyes to protect them from the freezing rain, which is why I didn’t immediately know who was speaking when someone above me said, “Plan’s off.”
I took my hands away from my eyes to see a soggy cowboy staring down at me. Bum Bum. He grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet.
“Plan’s off? Why?”
“I got a message. Kendal says someone aimed a blowtorch at him. One of his hands is fucked up.”
“What? How did he get a message to you?”
“A Twistie on my street picks up garbage at ISB. He’s been helping us pass messages written in lemon juice on the insides of potato peels,” said Bum Bum.
“But I—”
Bum Bum shook his head, cutting me off. “Kendal can’t climb down a ladder one-handed. He said they might let him go anyway ’cause he’s not whole anymore. Test pilots can’t be damaged goods. Go home, Debbie.”
Rubbing sleet off my face, I watched Bum Bum walk off into the darkness. I hoped he would turn around and tell me that he was just testing my courage and that we were still going to rescue Kendal. But when the jingle of his tin can spurs vanished into the night, I knew he wasn’t coming back. Sniffling back tears, I trudged toward home.
By the time I got there, the block was in darkness, the Donatos having already tossed their jack-o-lantern into the shrubs and killed the porch light. The princess twins were no doubt already in their pink flannel PJs, gorging themselves on candy in front of Suburban Cavemen.
Inside my house, I stood on the mat, letting the rain sluice off me for a few minutes, then squished my way to my room, past the statue of Our Lady Queen of the World standing in a nook near our telephone. Snakes writhed beneath her bare feet. Her modestly downcast eyes followed me down the hallway. She sent me a telepathic message: Don’t you dare rat out your sister.
I climbed into a hot bath while Dad dumped out my pillowcase on the table and examined each piece of candy, dissecting a taffy apple in a search for pin pricks. He had heard on the news that weirdos were poisoning Halloween candy, like the evil witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Sleepless under my comforter, I listened to the clatter of sleet on the roof. I tried not to think about Kendal and blowtorches, or Billy the anarchist, or the Trespasser, who kept turning up disguised as a different doctor. Life didn’t make much sense anymore.
Eventually, the front door creaked open and banged shut, followed by the accusing sound of my mother’s voice. “. . . past curfew,” she said, but the rest was blown away by the wind rattling the window frame. I couldn’t make out Linda’s answer, but it ended with “. . . for god’s sake, it’s Halloween night.”
Linda was home now and I could sleep. At least one person I cared about was safe. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore an unpleasant soreness, as if Hot Stuff the cartoon devil was pricking his tiny pitchfork into the back of my throat.
three
The Day of the Dead
Something was sitting on my chest. Soft, heavy, feathered, rancid-breathed. I opened my eyes to a dizzy, overheated world, my throat filled with jagged glass.
I couldn’t speak but Linda sensed my distress and went to my parents’ bedroom to rouse Mom, who shuffled into the room, yawning and shaking a thermometer. When she read my temperature, her eyes widened.
“One hundred and four point five.”
I stared up at her. I was going to die on the day after Halloween, the Day of the Dead, despite the U-shot. This made no sense. The cover of a LIFE magazine on our coffee table showed a close-up of a hypodermic needle angling into the tender skin of a kid’s shoulder, with block letters asking: “THE END OF DEATH?” The story was about how the Universal Vaccine had turned sickness into a Technicolor cartoon witch, all jagged bones and black-and-purple robes. If you a
te her poisoned apple, a handsome prince with a stethoscope would wake you with an antibody kiss.
The doctor came that morning and immediately diagnosed tonsillitis. He said I’d need an operation and a short hospital stay.
“Dying of a viral infection is a virtual impossibility. The U-shot’s pretty well eradicated polio and all strains of influenza,” he assured Mom, patting her shoulder. “Her tonsils were probably inflamed before she got her shot.”
Dreamy and hot, propped on pillows and rolled into a blanket, I lay across the back seat of our station wagon with my Wonder Woman comics. I was brought to the Children’s Ward and rolled into a room full of girls in beds that looked like giant cribs.
One girl marched over to peer at me through the bars of my crib, as if I were a zoo animal. With her blonde pageboy and chenille pink bathrobe, she looked like a dwarf version of Doris Day.
“I’m Cindy. Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
I shook my head; it hurt too much to talk.
Cindy sighed theatrically. “Gosh, another deaf-mute. Who’da thunk it?”
I whispered, “Tonsils.”
“Oooo, big hairy deal, daddy-o. You know how many kids have come through here to get their tonsils out? Millions. Don’t be a sucky baby. This time tomorrow, you’ll be sitting like a fairy princess with a big bowl of ice cream, lucky you. Now get out of the crib, we’re playing Deaf-Mute Teacher movie.”
You’re not the boss of me, I said inside my head, but when Cindy lowered the bars of my crib, I got out, my bare feet cramping on the icy floor.
One of my roommates really was deaf and blind — Suzy, an eight-year-old with long blonde hair and huge blue eyes like a baby doll. We were three Annie Sullivans to her Helen Keller, leading her around the room, forcing her to touch things so she’d learn their names. Cindy kept mashing Suzy’s fingers against her lips as she spoke.
