by Bright,R. F.
Madam Beamon aimed a sneer at the pear-man, and said, “Well, aren’t we the odd duck.” He smiled darkly. She had to time this just right.
In the middle of the staircase, a veteran tumbled forward, having caught his foot under his buddy’s cane. A hushed panic broke out.
The drunken Leprechauns didn’t respond for a few seconds. Jon and his first rank were only a few yards from the gangplank — it was now or never. They rushed the deck.
The pear-shaped man knew he’d been hoodwinked. “You fuckin’ whores!” he cried.
Madam Beamon had positioned herself directly over the radio phone, and as he bent for it, threw her cap of whiskey in his eyes and lowered a hammer blow on the back of his neck. He was tossed forward, but right onto the phone. She dove onto his back and pinned his hands to the deck, but he shrugged her aside and grabbed the phone. In the struggle, Madam’s platform shoe had fallen off. She snatched it up and laid into the pear-man, hammering him mercilessly with it as they rolled around the deck.
The veterans slammed each Leprechaun onto the deck. Several of Madam Beamon’s girls seized the opportunity to settle old scores, putting their spearlike stilettos to good use. The price of a ride to town had often cost their dignity, and now they’d have it back. Fair’s fair, thought the veterans, who were to a man eternal defenders of women.
Madam Beamon grappled for the radio phone, but with his last bit of strength the pear-shaped man lurched free and put it to his misshapen head. She leapt to her shoeless feet, took three wobbling steps and kicked it out of his hand and into the Hudson. He glowered at her, but she landed a left hook on his nose, which burst open like a ripe pimple. An uppercut put him on his ass, and she finished him off with a heel to the chin.
“Who’s in charge here?” yelled Jon Replogle.
“This one,” said Madam Beamon, and she hurled her shoe at a Leprechaun clinging to a banjo and writhing on the deck under the knees of a half dozen vets. “D.J. Riel — Captain Banjo.”
Jon dragged Captain Banjo up by his collar and rammed him into the aft rail. “You’re takin’ us across. Now!”
“Not if you’ve scratched me instrument,” said the snarky Captain Banjo. “You can’t cross here. It’s mined.” Jon slammed him onto the deck. He crumpled, laughing insanely, “Your apology reeks of insincerity.”
Jon hauled Banjo up by his lapels, put him in a strangling headlock and whipped him into the railing, and said calmly, “Just give us a . . . little to the left, little to the right.”
“Now you’re bein’ right rude,” said Banjo. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Leprechaun Slayer,” said Jon, raising the well-worn banjo and teeing it up to Banjo’s head. “You’d rather die than take us across?”
“When did I say that?”
“I want to know where those mines are.”
“I want my banjo!” The old Leprechaun folded his arms across his chest.
Jon gave a nod and Captain Banjo was stood upright, reunited with his banjo, and resumed command. “We’re off then, lads!” he said, as though nothing unusual was afoot.
Jon turned to the sound of a banjo tuning, and shook his head. “What now?”
Captain Banjo checked for damage amongst its many cracks and scratches, and tossed Jon a dirty look. “You’re lucky, my chalky friend.” He bobbed his head, and said, “We’ll just pull ’em in.”
“How long will that take?”
“Couple hours. It’s ticklish work.”
“We don’t have a couple hours.”
“Well, then,” said Banjo. “Let’s call it a day.”
Jon started to boil. “I want to get across as fast as possible, and I want to do it five or six times, both boats, one right after the other.”
“Well, then. There’s only one way for it.” Captain Banjo coiled the ends of his dusty red mustache. “We yank on the rope so hard, it comes out of the cleat on the other end, way over there on the other side. The line will come out and float downstream. We take off, up-stream, holding our end of the line. Then, we drive across and hook up our end on the now empty cleat. And none’s the worse for wear.”
Jon turned pale, which made his eczema a pinkish blue.
“Granted! It’s a fuckin’ circus. There’s thirty-eight mines on this string. But these ropes is old as Avarice himself. And there’ll be no room for error.”
Jon couldn’t tell if Captain Banjo was putting him on.
Banjo made a scornful face. “They won’t pay for infrastructure, even to save their own lives. The mine-string will either pull off the cleat, or it’ll break.”
Jon winced and nodded his head fatalistically.
The ferry’s engines made a throaty diesel chug, smoke belched, and icy foam sloshed through the little harbor. The vets watched the crew remove the mine-string from a deadeye cleat on the dock and wrap the loose end around the gigantic winch mounted on the side of the ferry. The Leprechauns tended the string with hooks on long poles and grapples on nylon lines, which they could throw with great accuracy.
Captain Banjo pointed at a rusty lever, and once lifted, the gigantic winch began to turn. The line went taut and slowly pulled itself out of the water, breaking the surface farther and farther out into the Hudson. Captain Banjo rotated his fist next to his ear and the engines revved louder. The winch hissed as the line, now wet and straining, slipped on the drum and grabbed, jerking the firmly moored ferry mightily.
The line was out of the water so far across it disappeared into the fog. Then? Captain Banjo heard something no one else could and shot both fists into the air. The line went limp and came rippling across the river, slacking into the water right in front them. The mine-string drifted aimlessly, waiting for the current to take it downstream.
“And we’re off,” said Captain Banjo, aiming his arms like two tomahawks upstream. The mooring lines were tossed and the ferry raced out of the little harbor as the winch wound in the mine-string’s slack, its unseen far end floating aimlessly. Captain Banjo punched both fists in a frantic one-two one-two boxing move. “Keep that line close to the drum, hold the tension. Don’t let it slip off that drum.”
Jon stared at the rust-caked winch with a fatalistic smile.
“This is the drop-your-knickers moment, my pasty-faced friend. When we pull the slack out of the string, if we’re not at the proper angle to the current, the line will go over the top of the drum, jump off the winch and unspool.”
“Then what?”
“Make mine a double!”
Jon thought he might be seasick.
“Never done this before . . . always dreamed I might.”
“So you would rather die than take us across?”
“No. But I’d rather take my chances on all of us dying, than take you across.” He raised his arms parallel to his shoulders, his banjo dangling from his right hand like a plumb-bob. He tilted to the right, starboard, and the stout little ferry sluggishly answered the helm and beat upstream. “And now I get to live my dream. You dumped it in my lap. Haaaaa, ha! Haul in, lads,” he yelled.
Three men with basketball-sized grappling hooks stood at the aft rail and one by one swung them out into the river, catching and hauling in the drifting mine-string. They pulled the line up the side and draped it over the rail, taking control of as much slack as they could.
The current, slow but monumental, was starting to take the free end of the line with its string of thirty-eight mines, each lovingly hand-painted in punkish shamrocks dripping black hearts with the universal motto — Pogue Ma Honen.
Jon could feel their straight course upstream begin to arc, as though they were on a very long swing. There was so much happening, but at a dreamlike, hydraulic pace.
“Mind the string, me droogs. Tension, tension, tension!” Captain Banjo’s insane smile was reassuringly determined. His plan appeared to be working and he was riding high. If they caught everything just right, the mine-string would stay on the winch and under control. But none of this equ
ipment was meant for this purpose.
Everyone adjusted their grips, widened their stances and studied the line as it swung off their downstream side. But now that they’d pulled the slack out of the line, it started to pull back. The crew slowly paid out the line like rose petals, keeping just enough tension to maintain control. The current pulled harder and harder on the loose end as the ferry pulled the slack out of the line. If timed perfectly, the ferry would stop engines at the top of this arc, then drift downstream with the mine-string, match speed in the drift, then slowly wind it in on the winch. It all hinged on the moment the tug-of-war began. Ticklish work, indeed.
The line grew taut, and the men leaned into it. Captain Banjo dropped his arms and they cut engines. The ferry lurched and bobbed in the churning current. Suddenly the ferry tipped forward and the string threatened to slip off the winch. Banjo looked terrified.
Jon was reeling. . . then . . .
Everything went pure white and blue and silver. The fog turned to wool plasma, and lightning flashed — cracking its electrical whip.
On the Great Lawn, the Tesla Coil was on full blast and upstaging the sunrise. Conditions were perfect; the cloudy atmosphere was a dewy conductor. With each blast, ringlets of pure electricity branched into red-hot threads and the sky went from gray gloom to fluorescent glow.
From the roofs of the delivery trucks, dozens of cube-screens projected the Dance-Off at the Meadowlands, which had ignited a gyrating craze here on the lawn. Everyone danced in an erratic circle around the dazzling Tesla Coil. The circle broke spontaneously into several conga lines. The women quickly joined the snaking line, whose beat fit right in with the always danceable Duke’s “Take the A Train” — everyone danced.
Waaaaaaa…waaaa…wa wa wa wa wa…
Tendrils of blue and red plasma curled into the clouds and arced across Airship One’s lightning rods. Max held Lily close as a magnetic wave passed through them — pure exhilaration.
Mr. Leun smiled, “Tesla Coil,” and started mumbling a Buddhist prayer.
At the Meadowlands, the dancers went crazy and everything else went to hell. No rules. No game. Just chaos. Hip-shaking, hugging, kissing and borderline offensive displays of personal affection were going on all over the place. They shouted that trombone hook over and over again, until everyone had someone in their arms.
ReplayAJ appeared on a little monitor in the ticket office, and said to Strumbellina and Clichénoir, “That went well, but it wasn’t because of our game. We got more veterans here than we could have ever expected.”
“When result exceeds expectations — that’s a win,” said Clichénoir, fumbling with her headphones. “Time to make the mood fit the mode.”
Todd Williams was way up in the nosebleed section. He could see the parking lot and the Manhattan skyline from there. Groups of volunteers clustered around him, eager to help. “Todd?” came a voice from a laptop sitting on the bleachers. A cube-screen popped out with Levi Tuke’s face. “Where’d they all come from? I’m stunned.”
Todd shrugged.
“From the satellite we can see people crossing the Hudson already. The Verrazano Bridge is packed. Same thing on the Brooklyn and Queensboro. All we can do is go with it. Try to calm things down . . .”
The stadium hiccupped as the music changed to the Count Basie version of “Moonlight Serenade”, a waltz with a little swing. All the arms and legs that had been flailing to “Take the A Train” slowly collapsed in tender caresses. Things calmed instantly.
When the music changed on the Great Lawn, Anita Boenig draped her arms around Christopher Eddy’s neck, assuming even he could dance to a serenade. And he could. But it only stirred his sense of failure. “Did you search me out so you could gloat?” he said affably.
“Who said I searched you out?”
“Well, I just thought . . . anyway, who put those thumb drives all over the place? That’s a pretty shitty thing to do.”
Anita smiled at him warmly. “Who’s your biggest customer?”
“Ah, I guess that’s American Reserve.”
“That’s a bank, right?”
“Yeah, American Reserve Bank, LLC. In the Cayman Islands.”
“If it’s a bank, then it was Tuke.”
Christopher Eddy paused for a moment, they drifted apart, and he said, pulling her close, “That’s a relief.”
They danced into the swirling crowd, rubbing elbows with the whole digital community that had until now been divided against itself. Segmented. Hackers and hipsters dancing with wage slaves and IT professionals. And the lowly ITs suddenly, for the first time in their lives, realized they were not as despised as they had assumed.
Someone yelled, “There’s an airship up there!”
Airship One nosed out of the clouds and into a descending circle, slowly closing in on the Great Lawn.
The crowd went insane!
The blinding light, concussive noise and raw bolts of lightning had caused the men tending the mine-string on Ferry A to stumble and lose their grip. As the tension lifted, the ferry rocked forward on the wake, and the current pulled the mine-string up and over the winch drum. The string lost all tension and began to unfurl, flailing in murderous loops. A man with a grappling hook tried to grab the mine-string, but it tore the hook from his hand, flinging it far out into the Hudson.
Captain Banjo covered his head with both hands. “Stand off! Stand off!”
The mine-string spiraled violently into larger loops until the last and largest slipped quietly into the drink. A brief series of diminishing rolls and the ferry settled like a bobbing cork, and the half-mile long necklace of mines painted in shamrocks and black hearts set off slowly on its own down the river.
Banjo lowered his hands. “Well, my pasty-faced pirate. We can go back to Weehawken, continue on to Manhattan, or most fun of all, go chasin’ after them mines.”
“We cross, and that’s that,” said Jon, pointing with his chin and closing the subject.
Captain Banjo whirled his cherished instrument over head, the engines churned, and the ferry lurched toward Manhattan. He set it in his lap and plinked around, improvising his sullen mood. He turned to Jon with a sour face. “You fuckin’ tinkers think you’re direct, but maybe you’re just rude.”
Jon stared him down. “You Leprechauns think you’re poetic, but maybe you’re just touchy.”
Captain Banjo crinkled his lips. “I like you, Chalky, you got manners. But we’re freemen by blood. We got no choice. We do what we want and we don’t care what you think. But stupid as we may be, we still know it’s the greed, the greedy fuckin’ Caflers what makes it all go sideways, always has been. If you’re going against them, well, we’re rootin’ for you. We got nothin’ to lose. Not anymore. So! We’ll be taggin’ along. And that’s that!”
“You ever shut up?”
“I will die in mid-sentence. If it kills me.”
Jon bowed his head. “Why not?”
Captain Banjo bowed his head in sincere friendship. “We’re all buried in the same grave, brother.”
72
An exploding blackness woke Fred, who thought the blinding flash a lingering dream fragment. He rocked forward in his comfortable seat, in total darkness. Where am I? He’d fallen asleep just as the Tesla Coil sparked and they’d entered the Weehawken Sub-Hudson Train Tunnel. Flash! Black! Floating nothingness. Clacking wheels. The cabin lights blinked on and Fred could see nothing but wide reflections of the interior in the windows, narrower distortions in their shiny frames, and carnival mirror images wrapped around poles and chrome trim.
A sudden thought of Max brought him to his feet, confused and angry. Sharp glints of light flashed by from the occasional object out in the tunnel, a track marker, a utility shed, or a signal pole. He’d forgotten about his claustrophobia, living high in the mountains. Hand over hand he pulled himself forward. Or was it backward? Those damn seats… Car after car he checked on the veterans, and soon found himself between the passenger cars and the e
ngine on a split landing with exit doors to either side. A steel door with a heavy-duty handle barred his way to the engine room.
After bouncing a few minutes, he opened the left-side door and stuck his head halfway out — his stomach insisted — and watched the oncoming depths swallow everything. An oily black film stinking of creosote and urine sent torrents of revolting stench across his face. He felt better immediately. He could tell they were making a soft turn. In the distance he spotted a smudged but still glittery red barrier on huge wooden pylons announcing the end of the line in iridescent white.
Adrenaline and paranoia divided Fred’s attention. Max is up there somewhere. A movie flickered in his head of his boy slugging it out with ten maniacs swinging nail sticks . . . Stop, stop, stop! Do something. Move. Move. He opened the door to the passenger car and began to ready the men. Suddenly, the door to the engine room opened behind him.
Everyone stopped to look.
The sharp-dressed Conductor filled the doorway, majestically raising a microphone on a spirally cord to his lips, and said in a velvet baritone, “Pennsylvania Station! New York City! Seventh Avenue, Madison Square Garden.”
Fred smiled approvingly and tipped an imaginary hat.
The Conductor returned the gesture, and asked, “Know where you’re going?”
Fred had assumed they’d simply get off the train and head over to the UN, but he now realized just how big a deal this was. “I never thought we’d get all this way, I guess.”
The Conductor waved him closer with two wiggling fingers next to his ear. “I ain’t been here for years, so I can’t say nothin’ for sure, but there used to be a pedestrian tunnel in the middle of this platform. Go down that tunnel. When you get to where that tunnel intersects with a bunch of other tunnels, look for the signs that say Seventh Avenue, or Thirty-fourth Street. That’s your exit. Seventh Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street. The other tunnels, the stairs and passageways lead to other platforms, not the street. The only way out is at Seventh Ave or Thirty-fourth Street. Follow the signs.”
