The Old Reactor

by David Ohle

  “I didn’t see that in the brochures.”

  “Pure freedom means no money, no law, nothing. Think about it.”

  “We pay nothing for our rooms,” Moldenke said, lighting a Julep, “or the food. We’ve got streetcars and pass cards. Good bear claws in the Old Quarter. Passable sausages at Smiley’s Meats, too. It’s not so bad. I’m getting used to it.”

  The waitress set the food on the table. “There’s your orders.”

  Salmonella asked, “Why is that stupid cook wearing a veil. Is he deformed?”

  The waitress whispered, “Yeah, but not from deformant. A jellyhead mother threw her baby through that kitchen window over there. It landed in the fryer and splashed him with hot oil, mostly in the face. People don’t like looking at him while they’re eating.”

  Salmonella asked, “Did the little jelly get fried?”

  “It did, black as a cinder.”

  The fry cook called out, “Order up!”

  “Why do they kill their babies?” Salmonella asked.

  Moldenke shrugged. “Why do they cut off heads and leave them at Saposcat’s?”

  “Zanzetti’ll figure it out,” Udo said. “It’s got something to do with their gel sacks.”

  The food was served by the woman Moldenke had seen in the privy. “Hi, there,” she said to him. “I saw you outside. It’s my sister’s turn now. She’s got a bad stomach.”

  Moldenke blushed. “I apologize again for barging in on you.”

  “It’s nothing. Here, enjoy your food.”

  Salmonella picked up a mud fish whole and bit into it above the fin, the crispiest part, and complained it was cold.

  Udo said, “Eat it anyway. There’s a storm coming. We’re not staying any longer than we have to.”

  Moldenke ate his meal rapidly and drank his tea with a single lift of the cup, then waved his pass card. “This one’s on me. Thanks for the ride.”

  The waitress brought the bill and checked pass cards. “Where you three headed?”

  “The west side.”

  “Big change in the weather. Snowstorm coming, you know? Drive careful.”

  Dear Moldenke.

  You’ll be glad to know that I am leading a strike of the Bunkerville garbage men. Some pretty unsanitary conditions have begun to arise as the result of the work halt. Little boys are running barefoot through great steaming mounds of trash and refuse, their childish cheerfulness undimmed by the fact that with every passing day another twenty thousand tons of garbage is added to the heaps already decomposing in the hot sun. Talk of the plague is on every tongue.

  The paper asked scientist Zanzetti about it and he said, “No one can say we weren’t forewarned. It’s only a matter of time until Bunkerville is completely liberated. This strike is an early sign.”

  You see, we’re eventually going to liberate this city one strike at a time. When you get back, everything will be different. No one can go up to the striking garbage men with their crudely lettered “Stink City” placards and their brutish oaths and say, “I’m very sorry but somebody has to pick up the garbage and on this particular turn of the wheel it looks like you.” No one has the charisma needed for a job like that. We will not lose this battle.

  Ozzie

  Despite the sudden drop in temperature and the threeinch accumulation of snow on the ground, Altobello’s outskirts, mostly scrublands, were thronged with jellyheads celebrating Cowards’ Days. Some had even spilled out onto the byway, causing a hazard for passing motors. Most drivers made an effort to avoid hitting them, uncontrollably sliding this way and that in the process. Other drivers made no such effort and ran them over, leaving the snow gooey with gel and blood.

  Salmonella shouted, “Look, they’re making snow angels. Don’t run over them! Let them have their fun.”

  Moldenke maneuvered the motor around them.

  “I don’t know what they’re celebrating, or why they call it Cowards’ Days,” Udo said. “In jellyhead history, is there some kind of famous coward?”

  Moldenke said, “Who knows? Maybe cowards were honored for ending a war by giving up. Did the jellyheads ever have a war? I can’t remember.”

  “They’re awful aggressive with deformant,” Udo said.

  Moldenke burped several times then angled into a little pullout with a picnic table and a privy for public use. “My bowel, we’ll have to stop.”

  There was another motor there, balanced precariously with a flimsy axle jack straining under the load. One of the side tires had been removed and lay flat on the ground.

  Salmonella frowned. “Hurry up. I don’t like this place.”

  Udo said, “I count six jellies sitting in that motor. One of them has a baby and it’s crying. Can’t you hear it? Why aren’t they changing the tire?”

  “Pull out,” Salmonella shouted. “Drive right through. Get back on the highway. This looks bad. We shouldn’t stop.”

  Udo said, “Shut up!”

  “Don’t blame me if there’s trouble,” Salmonella said. “Those are bad jellies.”

  “They look decent enough to me,” Moldenke said. “Like a family.” He walked to the privy without incident, stopping to scoop a handful of snow for wiping. He knew there would be no paper. The jellies watched him enter and waited quietly until he came out.

  Udo checked to see that his niner was loaded. If one of them made a move toward Moldenke or a threatening gesture, he would aim to kill. He had an eye on the privy and the jellies too. Salmonella sat at one of the windows watching. When the privy door opened and Moldenke stepped out, one of the jellies leaped from the back door of the crowded motor with a baby. “Please change that tire. We don’t know how.”

  Udo snarled and shouted out the window, “They’re trying to trick you. Don’t look them in the eye.”

  Moldenke said, “No, I think they really need help. I’ll change the tire.”

  “You’re stupid, Moldenke,” Salmonella said.

  Moldenke set about changing the tire in the biting cold, his fingers quickly numbed. The jelly with the half-frozen baby stood over him, cradling it. “Hurry up, you. My baby’s cold and I’ve got sack rot. I’ll be dead in a week.”

  Moldenke was aggravated by her tone and no longer sympathetic. “Take the baby inside the motor. I’m sorry about the rot, but don’t stand out here watching me.”

  “My husband’s got bad sacks too.”

  “I’m doubly sorry then. I’ll change the tire. Don’t watch me.”

  The jellyhead mother didn’t seem to understand what Moldenke was saying, as if he were speaking a foreign language. The baby licked the drips from one of her valves. The sight and the smell of it disgusted Moldenke.

  The mother backed away, not far, and watched from a different vantage.

  When the tire was mounted, Moldenke jacked down the vehicle, tightened the lug nuts, tapped the hubcap on, and put the tire tool, the jack, and the flat tire in the rear storage trunk.

  “There you go. Glad to help out jellies in trouble. Too bad about the sack rot. It’s a sad thing, I guess.”

  Moldenke climbed back into the motor. Udo, sitting in the driver’s seat, said, “I feel better. I’ll drive,” then stepped on the accelerator. As the machine rolled forward slowly, the jellyhead mother threw her baby under the rear wheels. The bump, then the crush of bones, could be heard and felt inside the motor.

  Moldenke stood and looked back. “Should we stop?” He put his head out of a side window to get a better look at what had happened.

  Two male jellies ran behind with cans of deformant.

  Udo opened a red-handled petcock on the dash, juicing up the flow of heavy water and the motor rolled faster, but only until it reached a small grade leading back to the Byway, where it stalled long enough for several of the deformantwielding jellies to catch up.

  Udo reached over to pull Moldenke in. “Get back in here!” It was moments too late. One of the jellies had already squirted him on the side of the head. His ear foamed and burned lik
e fire. The hand he had put up to deflect the spray was burned and blistering.

  “I told you, stupid,” Salmonella said.

  “I’m learning to listen, girl. I’m learning to listen.”

  Udo drove the motor along Arden in a drizzle. The snow had stopped, the air had warmed, and gutters were running with dirty slush. Salmonella, for reasons unknown, thought about her mother. She grew restless and asked Udo, “Where is my mother?”

  “Stop playing that old tune, girl. I’m blue in the face from telling you your mother went back to Bunkerville.”

  By this time Moldenke had become convinced that Salmonella, as a freeborn, had no capacity for familial feelings and he was surprised to see her showing such curiosity about her mother.

  “I want to know how old I am,” Salmonella said.

  “A mother would probably know,” Moldenke said.

  Udo’s pale face pinked. “I’ve told you a hundred times, you’re about sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Fifteen, maybe? Or eighteen?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t remember.” Udo fingered his niner. “She needs to go back to the Home. Let’s take her to the Home.”

  Moldenke wondered if the Home was open all night.

  “Please don’t take me there again.” Salmonella pretended to snuffle.

  Moldenke looked away. It was not his business.

  “It’s a good place,” Udo said, “better than out here where freedom stinks. In there, it’s educational. You’re going in. It will be better for you. Listen to your daddy.”

  Moldenke agreed, “Maybe he’s right. The Home would be the best place for you now.”

  Udo brightened with an idea. “Do me a favor, Moldenke. Put her up in your room for the night and take her to the Home tomorrow. So we don’t kill one another.”

  Tired as he was, with his ear throbbing and hot to the touch, Moldenke took the offer. He had had enough squabbling for the day and needed rest.

  Salmonella said, “Moldenke, there’s something coming out of your ear.” A waxy brown liquid had begun to run from the canal and the rest of the ear showed small white-tipped pustules. “I’ll stay with you. You need help.”

  “Your call, Moldenke,” Udo said.

  Moldenke thought Salmonella’s company for the night could prove to be an asset. She would distract him from his deformity, if nothing else. Aerosol deformant’s effects were unpredictable. Even a small amount could lead to significant changes in facial structure, with blistering, seeping, and intermittent bleeding.

  “All right,” Moldenke said. “I get the cot, you get the chair.”

  Salmonella squared her shoulders. “I’ll be your nurse. You do what I say. You’ll get better.”

  “All right.”

  “But don’t take me to the Home.”

  Udo parked the motor around the corner from the Tunney Arms while Salmonella packed a few things from her nook into a leather bag.

  Udo said, “Get her to the Home as quick as you can. You understand me, Moldenke?”

  “Sure. We’ll take the streetcar tomorrow if they’re running.”

  “Don’t you be diddling her, you hear?”

  “I hear. That’s not going to be a problem.”

  The concierge, asleep in a wooden chair in her little receiving room, woke up when Moldenke and Salmonella entered the foyer. She stood at her Dutch door yawning. “Who is that girl? One room, one person. That’s the way we do it.”

  “It’s just for the night. She’ll be going to the Home tomorrow. No real mother, no real father.”

  Salmonella produced a tear. “I’m an orphan. Let me stay. This poor man needs help. Look at his ear.”

  The concierge put on her bifocals and looked at Moldenke’s ear. “You’ve gotten yourself deformed, haven’t you?”

  “It was a light dose,” Moldenke said, and hoped. “It may resolve itself. Who knows?”

  “Here, I have something.” The concierge went into an adjacent room, a kitchenette, and returned with a small bottle labeled Barrel Honey Concentrate. “It’s anti-deformant from Zanzetti Labs. Try it. Rub it in.”

  Moldenke could see beyond the kitchenette, through a slightly opened door, a commode, and next to it, on the floor, a pre-liberation roll of tissue for wiping.

  “Is that a wet commode, ma’am? You hardly ever see those.”

  “My husband built it for me after the liberation, before he went back to Bunkerville. There’s a big rain barrel on the roof. That’s what flushes it all into a lagoon he dug out back.”

  “That’s really something,” Moldenke said.

  “It makes life a little better for me.”

  “I’m certain it does,” Moldenke said. “I see a bathtub, too.”

  “It doesn’t drain and can’t be used.”

  “All right then. Thank you.”

  Moldenke had one more thing to ask the concierge. “Is there any mail for me? A friend is looking after my house in Bunkerville. He’s promised to keep me posted about it.”

  She looked through a small stack of letters. “Yes, you did get one.”

  Moldenke opened the dirtied envelope and took a few minutes to read the letter.

  Dear Moldenke,

  All is mostly well at the house on Esplanade except I think there might be termites in the door frames. The wood is crumbling. And some sort of animal, maybe a ground hog, has dug a deep hole in the back yard, which is convenient because the house toilet doesn’t work at all and I use the hole as a latrine. Didn’t you say something about maintenance money for this place? How do I get it? Does it come by mail?

  Hope you’re doing well in Altobello. In so many ways, I wish I were there. But I see my job as staying and doing what I can to liberate Bunkerville. My aim is to have the place completely free when you return.

  Your friend,

  Ozzie

  Moldenke gave the concierge the awkward little salute he always gave when he felt uneasy. “All right, thank you. Good night.”

  Salmonella grasped Moldenke’s hand and led him up the stairs and into his room, where a dim bulb hung from the ceiling by an electric wire, not giving enough light to get a good look at the damages to his ear and the flesh around it. He had to rely on Salmonella’s sharp young eyes to describe it to him as he lay on the cot.

  “It’s red and purple and leaking brown stuff.” She applied barrel honey concentrate to the ear. “We don’t want it to get any worse. This might help.”

  The heaviness of the ear tilted Moldenke’s head sideward and downward. His swollen hand now lay beside him on the cot without sensation. “Put some on that ankle gouge, too. It’s festering.”

  Salmonella dipped a finger into the honey and gently spread it over the wound. “Why do you want to put me in the Home? You need somebody to take care of you. I can do that.”

  Moldenke’s lids sank over his eyes. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

  The morning brought a raucous noise from the street. Moldenke went to the window. There were a few hundred jellyheads marching along Arden Boulevard tooting kazoos. They held no banners, carried no flags, sang no songs, and shouted no epithets or slogans. He wondered what had gotten them out at dawn to march that way without apparent cause or purpose. It wasn’t even Cowards’ Day, but the day after.

  Salmonella joined him at the window. “Who are they? What are they marching for?”

  “I don’t know,” Moldenke said. “It could be anything.”

  Salmonella scratched her head. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to Saposcat’s.”

  “All right. How does my ear look?”

  “Pretty ugly.”

  The concierge stopped them on the way out.

  “How’s that ear today?”

  Salmonella shook her head. “Bad.”

  “Did you rub it good with that honey?”

  “Yes. It didn’t help.”

  “Show me that ear. Let me see it.”

  “No time. I’ve got to get to the privy right away. I’ve got a con
dition.”

  “His bowels get angry,” Salmonella said. “He potties in his pants all the time.”

  “Like Franklin, the famous golfer,” Moldenke said. “We have the same problem.”

  “For goodness sake, go ahead and use my crapper.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Hurry up,” Salmonella mumbled.

  Moldenke entered the little toileting room and savored the look of the wet commode. He hadn’t seen one since Bunkerville, and seldom then. It was clean and the porcelain gleamed, even in dull light. On a small wooden stool within his reach was a copy of Burke’s Treatise. Although he was curious to read a bit of the well-worn copy, he didn’t want to overstay his time on the commode. He sat down and relieved himself with exquisite pleasure, then carefully unrolled the paper, wound it thickly around his sore hand, and wiped himself, careful not to get fecal contaminant on the cracked, slightly bleeding palm. When he flushed, the water swirled with energy and quickly emptied the bowl. “Really nice,” he said to himself. “Really nice setup.”

  He wondered if perhaps the concierge might somehow be persuaded to give him toileting privileges when he needed them and began to consider what approach to take toward that end. What could he offer her? Everything in Altobello was technically free. Would she accept an exchange of janitorial services? But what could he do with his sore hand the way it was. He wouldn’t be able to sweep or mop.

  No, he decided to put it to her foursquare. He said, “What can I do in exchange for use of that commode? I never know when the need will strike. It could be in the middle of the night. I can’t be running down to the public privy all the time. You seem like a kind woman. Please.”

  “When the rain water up there freezes, it doesn’t work. And you’ll need to find your own paper. They always have extra down at the privy. Just take some.”

  “All right, that’s fair.”

  “And when the lagoon out back gets full, I expect you to help me cart it down to the ditch in buckets.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Please don’t tell the other guests you’re using my commode. I’ll have a line out here.”

  “I won’t say a word.”

  Salmonella patted her stomach. “Let’s go eat.”