Sputnik's Children

by Terri Favro

  Dad pointed out that the wine cellar in Nonna’s house no longer served a useful purpose, so why not empty the barrels and turn it into a basement apartment? Nonna would appreciate a little bit of extra income, and the boarder would provide protection and companionship. A university student, perhaps? I sat with my head bowed and listened to this plan, a little lump of grief growing inside me for poor Nonno Zin.

  We waited and waited for Nonna Peppy, but she didn’t show. Mom finally threw up her hands and slammed the bowl of pasta down on the table.

  “See? She knew we were going to try to talk her into something. She’s probably over there now, having imaginary conversations with Pop.”

  They were still arguing over Nonna when a knock rattled the front screen door. Thinking that the Trespasser was about to announce himself, I hurried away from the table to answer the door. It was not the Trespasser standing on the front porch, but a sixteen-year-old John Kendal, looking like a lean, muscular David poised to crush an unseen Goliath lurking in my mother’s rose bushes. He had a huge canvas sack full of Shipman’s Corners Examiners thrown over one shoulder, one hand gripping the canvas strap. The other hand hung beside him, a maimed claw, three fingered, covered in lumpy scar tissue, startling pink in colour. I was almost dizzy with relief: just as Bum Bum had told me it would, Kendal’s gruesome wound must have been his get-out-of-jail-free card from the scholarship school.

  He smiled at me. “Hi, Deb. Collecting.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Kendal was our paperboy now.

  “Hold on,” I said and rushed to the kitchen to get the money, relieved that my parents still left it on the windowsill. As Kendal pocketed the change, he leaned closer to me and said in a low voice, “It’s finally over with Angie.”

  “Really?” I said. “Wow!”

  I crossed my arms over my embarrassment of breasts, wondering what I was supposed to say next. The only Angie I knew was Angie Petrone, a Z Street girl who was older than Linda and had dropped out of St. Dismas in grade nine. I used to see her in her rubber apron and headscarf, smoking a cigarette while she waited at the bus stop to go to work at the canning factory.

  Kendal was frowning. “I thought you’d be happy, Debbie.”

  Finally! A clue. Happiness! Over a breakup with Angie Petrone! (What had been going on between Kendal, Angie and me for the last year and a half, I wondered.)

  I gave an unconvincing little laugh. “I’m super-happy for you, Kendal! Why wouldn’t I be? Angie was all wrong for you.”

  Kendal fiddled awkwardly with his canvas bag. “Since I’m a free man now, want to meet up with me at Cresswell’s?”

  I nodded, a bit stunned at this unexpected turn of events.

  “Great. Tomorrow around three. Bring any comics you want to sell, and we’ll see how much we can wring out of the old dickhead,” said Kendal, handing me a little ticket stamped with PAID IN FULL WEEK OF JUNE 30, 1971.

  I watched Kendal head down the walk, then turn and give me a wave and a grin. I smiled and waved back. That’s when it struck me: Kendal actually liked me. As in like, liked. Like girl-boy like. Even in this gross, stupid body with breasts sticking out all over the place.

  When I went back into the kitchen, my family was still chewing over Nonna Peppy’s future while Mom put the salad on the table. I sat down, feeling that, despite the Trespasser’s claims, I was destined to live the simple life of a precocious small-town teenager who had been pitched through time like a speeding softball.

  “It’s settled then. We’ll advertise for a boarder,” said Dad, tucking a napkin into the neck of his denim shirt.

  “Cresswell’s is a good place to advertise for a renter,” suggested Linda. “Debbie, you’re always going there for comics. Why don’t you stick up a sign tomorrow?”

  “Happy to,” I said. As Sputnik Chick would tell the world: there are no coincidences.

  Mom reached over and refilled my glass with Sparkling Sparrow Grape Drink.

  “Drink up, cara, it’s good for you,” she urged.

  I’d already finished one glass but quickly downed another. It tasted super-good. And even though the grape drink was non-alcoholic, I was suddenly more relaxed and happier than I could remember feeling in a long, long time.

  three

  Jesus Weirdo Superstar

  I might have changed over two years, but Cresswell’s hadn’t. Same crappy junk on the shelves. Same dandruff on Cressie’s ratty cardigan. Same wad of masking tape holding his glasses together over the bridge of his nose. Same teetering walls of boxes full of comic books.

  I handed Cressie my Basement Apartment for Rent sign and Kendal plunked down our combined collection of comics. I’d found a stash in my room, under the bed, including a humiliating number of Artie and Betty & Velma comics, a few tattered copies of Classics Illustrated — Prince Braveheart and the like — and two years’ worth of Wonder Woman issues. Sadly, they’d reinvented her origin story yet again by taking away all her powers and sticking her in a mod clothing boutique to solve crimes, true-detective style. Even her distinctive costume was gone. She was just a brunette in go-go boots now. It made me sad to see how she’d been diminished.

  “Okay if we hang around and browse, Cressie?” asked Kendal as he counted our earnings.

  “Knock yourself out, but if I catch you stealing anything, I’ll cut off your nuts,” muttered Cressie to Kendal, dumping my Wonder Woman and Betty & Velma comics into a box marked ALL GENRES/TITS & ASS. “Hey, man, anyone ever tell you how much you look like that guy on Cool, Black and Dangerous? Must be why all the white chicks are hot for you.”

  As if to prove Cressie’s point, I felt a rush of embarrassed heat creeping up my face to my scalp.

  “Fuck off, douchebag,” muttered Kendal, just loud enough for me to hear, as he took my hand and walked me away from the counter.

  We made our way through an aisle piled so high with junk that we had to walk sideways, past a shelf crammed with noisy jewellery music boxes; it looked like a ballerina insane asylum with little mechanical dancers twirling and leaping to tinny versions of the Blue Danube and Swan Lake, all playing at the same time. Beside them, a jumble of walking dolls lay on top of one another, their vinyl arms outstretched, glassy eyes wide, stiff plastic legs stuck in the air. I tried not to look at their little pink mouths, permanently pursed in the shape of an O.

  Kendal and I settled down on the dusty linoleum in an aisle marked WEIRD STUFF. The comics in this part of the store weren’t just second-hand Lemurman comics but obscure titles, a lot of them going back to the ’50s, some run off on Gestetners and stapled together by hand. There were hot-rod comics, horror, monster, even religious comics. If you looked hard enough, you might find some sexy, subversive stuff, too, like the ones Cressie imported (or, more likely, smuggled) up from California, like Zapruder! and Mr. Naturally and Kurt the Cat.

  Mixed up with WEIRD STUFF, I found a year-old copy of the tabloid National Eavesdropper, either misfiled or mistaken for a comic book. On the front cover, Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds were shown together — in a clearly doctored photograph, since the two of them wouldn’t have been caught dead posing for a picture at the same time. Liz Taylor was in a red sequined dress, her breasts like two missiles. Debbie Reynolds was wearing a gingham middy blouse, knotted hillbilly-style over her bare torso. The headline said: “DEBBIE AND LIZ REVEAL ALL! Including beauty and weight-loss tips.”

  While Kendal poked around in the boxes of comics, I scanned the weight-loss tips. Debbie Reynolds swore by fresh air, exercise and a can-do attitude. Liz Taylor preferred purging. I read her method with interest. She relied on the supervision of a noted Viennese physician, but her basic methodology sounded easy enough. Eat, toss your cookies, repeat.

  “Debbie, check this out!” Kendal had yanked out a box marked PROPAGANDA and pulled out a comic called COMMUNIST MENACE IN PLEASANT VALLEY USA! On the cover, f
amilies ran out of burning houses, the aproned mothers screaming, the fathers shot dead by dark silhouettes of figures in army helmets. The story was about a typical middle-American town taken over by Communists. At first, the small-town population foolishly tried to make the best of it, believing that everything would be fine under their Soviet rulers, as long as they didn’t talk about politics. “Better red than dead,” said the town’s mayor. He was wrong, of course: the Commies turned churches into henhouses and pigsties and burned down office buildings and banks. The capitalist factory owners were strung up in the town square as an example. Before you knew it, the mothers were being worked to death in tractor factories, their children brainwashed to squeal to the secret police if anyone in the family showed signs of counter-revolutionary activity. But the darkest fate was reserved for the fathers, who all disappeared overnight. Families were told that the men were sent to work on farms that would provide food for the people in the cities. Turned out the men had been taken to planned family centres where they were forced to impregnate American women who looked like versions of Elke Sommer — blonde, tall and beautiful.

  Kendal shook his head when we got to that part. “Those guys get a comfortable bed and three squares a day, just for making out with a bunch of blondes? If that’s Communism, I’d be interested in joining the Party.”

  “I doubt the girls like it,” I pointed out. “Looks like they have to pop out one baby after another ’til they drop. Doesn’t sound like much of a life.”

  “It’s a lot like some families in Shipman’s Corners,” Kendal said.

  We went back to reading.

  I was right: the girls’ only job was to remain pregnant in order to produce more workers. Every baby was fathered by a different man and raised communally in order to break down capitalist family structures and promote Free Love.

  One page showed a barracks of beautiful young women with big tummies, sitting around knitting, smoking and reading Das Kapital. One girl had fallen in love with a widowed father, and he with her, and she begged the boss of the barracks, a mannish-looking woman named Klebb, to let her run away with him. Instead, they took the pregnant girl to a prison and kept her locked up. They didn’t show the birth, of course, but the girl’s cries of “AHHHH! Someone, please help me!” were drawn in ghostly letters, drifting through the bars of her solitary confinement cell. Outside, a female prison guard peered through the tiny cell window, a lone tear rolling down her cheek. When Klebb finally came to the prison to get the girl, she was curled up in a corner of the cell, weeping over a pathetic little bundle in her arms. “Are you quite recovered?” demanded Klebb coldly, and the girl whimpered, “My baby is dead.” And the evil Klebb said, “Good! You were too attached to the infant. I’ll take you back to the production centre immediately — you’ll soon be ready to give us more workers. A new man is waiting to produce with you now.” And the girl said: “No . . . no . . . NO!” On the last page, there was a close-up drawing of the girl’s eyes looking crazy, and the words — “THE END?”

  I stared and stared at that page and wondered if that’s what it had been like for Linda, waiting to give birth to Billy’s baby, a story that seemed oddly similar to the one in The Communist Menace.

  Kendal and I were interrupted in our reading by Cressie’s voice at the cash. “Sorry, son. You boys are coming through here all the time, but I got no work. I haven’t been able to afford help since 1952.”

  I peered down the long tunnel of the cluttered aisle and saw the back of the man Cressie was talking to. He wore a dashiki, tattered jeans and brown wavy hair down to his shoulders, like Jesus.

  “I’m not here seeking gainful employment, man. I have a business deal to propose. You’re a pawnbroker, I assume.”

  “Some call me that,” said Cressie slowly, scratching the bald patch on the back of his head. “What you got for me, son?”

  “A mechanism for safekeeping. I’ll be back for it.”

  “Heard that one before,” snorted Cressie.

  I watched Jesus rummage in a little hobo pack, but he didn’t pull anything out right away. “You a vet, Cresswell?” he asked.

  The expression on Cressie’s face changed to one of suspicion. “I got drafted all right, but before I could report, boom, they dropped the A-bomb and the show was over. Biggest disappointment of my life.”

  “Korea? New Zealand? Or one of the other Domino wars?” asked Jesus softly.

  Cressie shook his head. “No draft in Canusa since Doubleyou Doubleyou Two, ’cept for building bombs at ShipCo. What’s this about?”

  Jesus looked back and forth theatrically, like an actor on stage. “You just seem like the kind of guy who might have seen action. Anyone else in the shop?”

  “Nah. Well, yeah, couple of kids in the back looking at comic books. No one to speak of.”

  I was lying flat on my stomach beside Kendal, The Communist Menace spread on the floor in front of us. We looked at each other. Kendal put a finger to his lips.

  Jesus pulled something out of his bag and handed it to Cressie: a twisted pigtail of shiny metal, the size of a loaf of rye bread, coppery in colour. It looked like a giant Slinky that had been pulled apart and welded so that the springy bits wouldn’t go back together.

  “What the hell is this?” enquired Cressie, turning the copper pigtail over and over.

  “It’s a solenoid, obviously. Don’t dick me around,” answered Jesus.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Cressie, who didn’t like anyone to have one over on him. “Just haven’t had one in the shop for a while. What the hell does it do, again?”

  Jesus put his hands on his hips and bent backwards slightly, shimmying back and forth, as if trying to work out a kink in his back. “It’s an electromagnetic transducer.”

  “Right,” said Cressie, nodding.

  “I’d suggest keeping it behind the counter instead of out on the shelf. Wouldn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

  Cressie continued examining it. “What you want for it?”

  “A hundred.”

  Cressie snorted. “You think this is the fucking Crown Jewels or something? I’ll give you ten.”

  “Fifty,” said Jesus. “You and I both know it’s worth a shitload more than that, so any more crap out of you and I’ll take my business elsewhere, man.”

  “Forty. Final offer.”

  “Outstanding.”

  The two shook hands. Cressie opened the cash drawer and counted out the bills.

  “You drive a hard bargain, Cresswell,” said Jesus, gathering his money.

  Cressie wrote out a pawn chit and Jesus slipped it carefully into a wallet that he took from his jeans pocket. I was surprised by that wallet, made of clean black leather as if it was brand new. It didn’t seem like the type of thing Jesus would carry.

  “I can’t guarantee it’ll be here when you come back for it,” said Cressie, packing up the electronic pigtail in a battered Florsheim shoebox. “I get people in here looking for all sorts of shit.”

  Cressie was slipping the box onto the highest shelf beyond the cash when the sudden rising-falling WAHHHH of the town’s air-raid siren hit the shop like a tidal wave.

  When Jesus spun around, I got a clear view of his face. His eyes were covered by a pair of black sunglasses, the kind test pilots wear, but his face showed signs of sun damage: pink peeling burns with patches of tender-looking new skin. He looked like a very young version of the Trespasser, who, I knew, could show up at any age.

  Had he made the jump, after all? Or was this just another version of him, dropping in from the future? Would he even know who I was? I figured the best course action was to watch and wait.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he shouted at Cressie.

  Cressie waved his hands reassuringly. “Simmer down, it’s just a malfunction. Happens all the time.” Before he had finished his explanation, the siren tra
iled off with a groan like a dying hippo. The school caretaker must have gone up on the roof and pulled the plug. Hand on chest, the Trespasser swayed and slumped against Cressie’s counter.

  “You look like you seen a ghost,” said Cressie, grabbing the Trespasser’s arm — I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to prop him up or push him out. “You gonna have a heart attack, go have it somewhere else.”

  The Trespasser snapped his head from side to side, as if trying to get water out of his ears, and shrugged off Cressie’s hand. “Fucking siren, I thought it was World War Three starting ahead of schedule.” He straightened himself and slung his backpack over one shoulder. The bell over the door chinkled as he walked out.

  Kendal and I got up off the floor and brushed the grit from our legs. Through the big front window of Cressie’s store, we could see the Trespasser climbing into a blue Cutlass that looked as if it had been through a war. The paint was scratched and burned away, exposing patches of rust-coloured metal. Ragged holes gaped where the passenger-side door handles had been torn off. He adjusted his rear-view, then peeled away from the curb with a squeal of his tires.

  “Know what an electromagnetic transducer is?” asked Kendal.

  I shook my head. “I’d love to find out.”

  “Let’s give him a tail,” said Kendal.

  * * *

  We left Cressie’s without saying goodbye and pedalled our bikes along the main street. When we turned a corner and coasted up behind a battered blue Cutlass with Massachusetts plates, Led Zeppelin II throbbing out of the windows, Kendal looked back at me over his shoulder as if to say, bingo.

  A sleek, black Mustang with a spoiler on the hood and New York plates pulled up behind the Cutlass. A woman wearing a white winged nurse’s cap was behind the wheel.

  The light turned green. Despite its beaten-up body, the Cutlass accelerated like a souped-up hot rod, as if the Trespasser knew someone was tailing him. Kendal stood up on his pedals and pumped his legs so fast, I fell farther and farther behind. As the Cutlass approached an amber light, its engine revved and it peeled through the intersection, tires squealing.