“Absolutely.” I know none of those ancient sailors thought the earth was actually flat by that point in history, but they had no real idea what they were sailing into. I think of the stories they’d heard, of the friends who’d sailed out and disappeared. Out there in the middle of the unknown Atlantic, rocking on the waves of the same ocean I’m rocking on now, past where the mapmakers had charted, Columbus’s crew had only the rolling, open sea and the shifting stars in front of them, only their faith and the word of their good captain.
“Maintain that frequency, Victor,” Quinn shouts. “Target reception optimum.”
Hardy and I turn from the water. Paul is hunched over our fearless leader at the monitor, Nicotaint pinched between his black lips. We head back to see what’s being tuned in. On the screen the Mad Maestro stands center ring beneath the tent, gripping the microphone. Quinn punches a key and the volume booms from the PowerBook. “… The hour is almost at hand. And where is your champion? Licking false wounds! Quaking in fear at the fury of the inevitable Thunder Symphony!” He pinches one side of his handlebar mustache and rolls it, trying to look sinister.
This brings some applause from the crowd, but they are drowned out by booing and catcalls. Somebody yells out, “Take your classical crap back to Australia!” The camera scans the audience, rolls over a lot of bare flesh—smooth round shoulders and flat tan bellies. Tank tops and two-pieces. Several pockets of black clothing suggest groups of Dark Disciples, but I can’t be certain. The screen is too small.
Quinn touches the control on the side of his headset. “Antonio, slow and steady on final approach. Initiate.”
Instantly the engine whines and we start forward. On the screen, Maestro launches into a speech about his plans to restore calm to the SWC. “Order must be established in the wake of this chaos. And only a strong and noble leader can accomplish such a feat. Is Apple-seed such a man? Who among you has seen him here? Will he show his face? No! Because he fears the consequences. That boyish whelp would rather forfeit the championship than face me.”
Quinn says, “Rev it up, Antonio.”
We lurch ahead, and the front end rises slightly.
Quinn stands, walks to a small gray box attached to the bow. It looks like a tiny cannon. He hollers, “They’ll talk about this for years.”
Maestro continues his rant. “I stand before you to reveal the unfettered truth. Hardy Appleseed and his co-conspirator the Terror are fraudulent.”
The crowd boos loudly and I feel strangely validated. It’s like they’re sticking up for me. Like they’re protecting my good name. Somebody lobs a plastic yellow bucket into the ring, the kind Brook once used to make sand castles. It bounces past Maestro, who punts it through the ropes and over the audience, a nice improv.
“If this is not so, then where is the All-American Blunder? He has abandoned you. Rather than face the music he has shown his true colors as an unmitigated coward.”
Grinning, Quinn presses a button on the gray box. Three firecracker shots launch three streaks arching into the late-afternoon sky ahead of us. The three flares, roaring side by side toward the beach, trail three smoky tails colored red, white, and blue. On the monitor, the Maestro turns toward the ocean and says, “Egads!”
Quinn touches his headgear and says, “Victor, if you please” into his mike and a moment later I hear it through the monitor, blasting over the speakers under the tent: Kate Smith’s full-bellied voice asking, Oh say can you see?
“It cannot be!” Maestro shouts into his mike.
The crowd goes berserk, burying Kate’s deep bass.
“Full throttle now, Antonio. Hardy, prepare for disembarkation, we’re approaching implementation of phase two.”
Hardy turns to me and I translate, “Get ready for the go code.”
We start crashing through the breakers, rising and falling with each smashing wave. Quinn puts a hand on my shoulder and I turn. He offers me the sagging mask of the Terror and shouts, “Don’t forget your face.”
I lift the mask with my good hand, take a breath, like I’m about to go underwater, and duck my head into the tight fabric.
Wash and spray from the ocean splashes over the rim and we get dowsed pretty good. Then the boat slows. Over the metal walls, I can hear fans yelling. We slide to a sandy halt and everything is still. Lots of yelling now. Someone barks directions to the crowd through a bullhorn. Overhead a gray seagull circles us.
“Clean and tight,” Quinn shouts, and Hardy nods his head sternly to all of us before leaping over the side of the wall. Paul and I crowd around Quinn’s monitor and see Hardy charging up the beach through a corridor of red-shirted security guards. The fans scream wildly, whipping their beach towels over their heads. The national anthem’s conclusion blares at full strength. Hardy jumps up onto the ring and vaults the top rope, lands with a thud on the canvas. Maestro backs away and lifts the mike. “Just a moment now, old chap. Marquis of Queensberry rules.” Hardy locks his huge hands on either side of Maestro’s head and lifts him onto his tiptoes A female voice screams, “Crush his skull!” But Hardy merely slams Maestro to the canvas, where he slides under the bottom rope and bolts off in the opposite direction, down a roped-off path through the audience.
Hardy, following the plan, searches the canvas for the microphone. Holding it with one hand, he snaps the other to his forehead and salutes the crowd. The camera shows them roaring their approval, saluting him back. One young lady, above the crowd on somebody’s shoulders, is naked from the waist up. The camera cuts away.
“I. Have. Returned,” Hardy says solemnly, and they scream, applauding as if he had risen from the grave. He lets them go for a minute, then lifts his hand to calm them so he can continue. “You all know I ain’t so good at speech making, but I sure do appreciate all them cards and prayers and such while I was in the hospital. As for what the Mad Mushroomhead just said about me being a coward, don’t believe it. He is a liar and liars can’t be trusted. I ain’t no quitter. I will always be your champion.”
The chant rises quickly. “Apple-seed, Apple-seed, Apple-seed.” He lets it build, takes a long slow walk around the ring with his arms outstretched, as if he’s absorbing their faith in him, like their adoration is healthy radiation. Again he quiets the crowd. “I know you might be surprised by who come with me today. We wasn’t always friends. But we must put the past behind us for the sake of the future.” Hardy hesitates, remembers. “Of the great future ahead of us.”
I swear I hear someone yell “Amen!” The camera shows the security guards circling the ring, arms locked together, straining to keep the fans back. Quinn taps me. “Stay focused on our objectives and execute the action plan. I have complete confidence in both of you.”
I help Paul to the front of the boat. He’s leaning on the cane with one hand and me with the other. His thin body is shaking inside the long black coat. He reaches up and pulls the Nicotaint from his black lips and tosses it onto the metal floor of the assault vehicle, crushes it with his foot as if extinguishing a real cigarette. He reaches into the pocket of his black pants and opens his palm to me. Sitting dead center is a single paper clip. Paul looks at me with his one eye and says, “For luck,” then folds it away. Amazed at myself, I respond, “See you on the beach.”
We hear Hardy now over the loudspeakers ahead of us. “Because when the chips were down these boys showed me what they was really made of.”
Like the drawbridge of a castle, the front end of the assault vehicle slowly lowers. At first I see a blue split of sky, then the red-and-white top of the circus tent’s peak, then the heads of the crowd, then the whole scene before us, the security corridor holding back the fans, the clear tunnel leading up the beach, and Hardy standing in the ring looking in our direction, waiting for us.
Hardy booms into the mike, “Please welcome my new tag-team partner, the man that saved my life, the Unknown Kentucky Terror! And this here is gonna be our manager, the man formerly known as Snake Handler!”
As h
e announces us we step off onto the sand, out into the open, and the crowd is stunned into a strange silence. Good and evil can’t join forces. Moving slowly for Paul, we shuffle through the sand up the security tunnel, and the fans stare in disbelief. One kid sticks his face out and points at his forehead, where a cobra tattoo curls from his hair. “A hundred and twenty bucks!” he shouts. “And this don’t come off!” Security shoves him back into the masses. Another one, a Disciple complete with black overcoat, cries out as we pass, “You think this is a game? You think this is just my hobby?” And then just when we reach the ring, a girl slips through and throws herself at his feet. “Please,” she begs, “we’ll be all alone.” A guard carries her away.
I help Paul up the steps into the ring, and Hardy splits the ropes for him to climb through. I follow, and Paul and I stand on either side of Hardy, who takes our hands and raises our arms. Though the Disciples bury their faces, the audience at large erupts in a spasm of excitement. Everybody likes happy endings.
As we turn to give all the fans—and each of the three pay-per-view cameras—a good look, I can see over the heads of the crowd, out past the rolled-up walls of the tent. The beach beyond is practically deserted. Everyone is here, or on their way toward us. But down by our amphibious assault vehicle, away from everyone else, is someone just sitting there, a girl I think. I can’t see her face, but she’s sitting on a bike or something right along the water’s edge, not even looking to see what all the excitement is about. Maybe she’s fishing.
We finish a full rotation and Hardy passes me the mike. I start in on my speech, “Standing here, beside a great American hero like Hardy Appleseed, is the finest privilege of my life. And because I was injured fighting side by side with this man, I wear this wound as a badge of honor. From this day forward, I pledge myself to him and the ideals which he embodies.”
The fans applaud and I feel their love, the quick acceptance they’ll grant me now that I’ve converted to the good side of the Force. I look at the cameras and hope some of these pictures make it to the website where Brook can download them, show Alix the proof that I am a hero. And at the same time I imagine Rhonda at Sanctuary House, right now at this exact moment, curled on a donated couch and watching me here, knowing my secret face beneath the mask.
The cheering dies down some when I pass the mike to Paul. Before he can begin, a Dark Disciple at ringside points a finger and shouts, “Don’t trust that two-faced bastard!”
Another joins in: “Sonuvabitch told us he’d—”
Hardy stomps on the canvas and yells, “Y’all be nice!”
But Paul settles a hand on Hardy’s thick arm and stops him, then lifts the mike to his black lips. “Don’t be angry, Hardy. We can’t blame them for their distrust. They speak for many here, no doubt. Many who even now suspect me of some trickery. This face is the face of deceit and betrayal. And the name Snake Handler carries with it lies and bitterness.”
“Then you must have a new name,” I suggest on cue.
“And a new face,” Hardy adds.
The audience is transfixed. I picture Quinn in the boat, grinning as he follows along with the script he concocted. Solemnly, I walk to the corner and pick up the waiting props, a towel and a plastic water bottle. I return to center ring, where Paul now kneels before Hardy like a squire about to be knighted, or a convert about to receive first communion. He folds his hands together around the mike and it looks like he’s praying. “Go ahead,” Paul says to us. “Do what must be done.”
I squirt water into the towel. Hardy steadies Paul’s head with one big hand, and with the other he takes the wet cloth from me and gently dabs at Paul’s forehead, making small tender circles, revealing the thin pink scars from River Road. The crowd has fallen to unbearable silence. A single female Disciple shouts out “No!” but no one responds or picks up her cry.
Paul’s one eye is closed peacefully, and Hardy lifts away the pirate patch, drops it to the canvas. Wine still colors the eye. As Hardy washes the face paint from his nose and his sunken cheeks, the purple bruise becomes clear. Hardy dabs the wet whiteness from his goatee. Even the black lipstick is wiped clean. When Hardy’s finished, Paul’s upturned face glistens with newborn slickness. Hardy drops the wet towel on the mat and turns his head side to side, looking for something to dry Paul’s face. We hadn’t considered this. Improvising, Hardy reaches back and gathers up a corner of his own All-American cape, then brings it to Paul’s face.
When Paul stands, he unbuttons his long black coat, pulls it off his shoulders and reverses it, exposing a pure white inside. He puts his arms through the sleeves and buttons the coat again. Hardy declares, “Snake Handler is dead. From now on, you’ll be Saint Handler.”
Saint/Snake nods his head in approval and says, “No longer will I deal with the snakes and devils of this world. Now I will walk with the righteous and the just. With the angels.”
Three seconds of absolute silence, then someone in the crowd pumps his fist and chants “Saint-Saint-Saint” and the audience snaps out of its trance, falls in step with the rhythm of the new mantra. Their faces gleam with wonder and joy, as if they’re witnessing something essential and meaningful. And because we’re what they’re looking at, I feel elevated. But then some voices, probably the scattered Disciples, begin countering the Saint chant with “Snake-Snake-Snake.” A dozen faces in the crowd look left and I turn to a circle of fans huddled together like a rugby scrum. Because of all the movement it’s hard to see exactly what’s at the center, but then a ripped piece of black clothing gets tossed into the air. I see an arm, then the flash of a bloodied face. Just then another scrap breaks out closer to the ring. Two men have got a Dark Disciple’s arms locked behind his back and a third one is kicking him in the ribs. “Reform your evil ways!” screams the kicker.
Snake, or Saint, or Paul, still has the mike, and he holds up one hand and shouts, “Wait! This was to be a day of great celebration. Everyone is entitled to a second chance!”
A middle-aged man rams his beach umbrella into the gut of that kid with the cobra tattoo.
Hardy’s head twitches, such a fast snap that I think he’s been stung by a wasp. When I turn to him he’s staring and blinking hard, but not looking at me or anything.
Someone with a bullhorn orders, “This violence will stop. Cease and desist the disruptive behavior or be designated hostile.”
Saint/Snake, now leaning over a rope into the crowd, begs, “Please. It’s never too late to begin again.”
Hardy cups a hand over his right ear and closes his eyes. He says, “What? What?” It’s like back in the pet church.
The bullhorn blasts, “We have German-made stun guns. They are fully charged.”
But the crowd has turned to riot. For fifty feet around the ring every body seems locked into every other body, a mosh pit gone mad. A kid wearing white face paint starts crawling under the bottom rope. In one fist he grips a steak knife. I grab Paul’s cane and nine-iron the punk with a one-armed swing. I glance back toward the boat, but the security tunnel has collapsed. “We need to be someplace else!” I yell, but Paul has started to cry, and Hardy’s on one knee now, both hands covering his ears.
Just about everyone else is screaming.
Suddenly Hardy stands, yanks the mike from Paul, and leaps up onto the top turnbuckle. He hollers through the speakers, “Would ya’ll shut the heck up! I can’t hear my Jesus.”
Remarkably, the crowd freezes. Two thousand faces stare at Hardy in silence.
“Well, thanks.” Hardy shakes his head. “OK,” he says, giving God the go ahead to retransmit, I suppose. We all wait as Hardy listens, his face focused intensely. “Oh no,” he says. Then, “Well, of course I’ll help. Where is she?” He turns to the ocean. After dropping the mike, he jumps down into the crowd.
Hoping this is part of Quinn’s action plan, and not a divinely inspired diversion, I turn and say, “Snake, do you know what’s going on?”
“Don’t call me that,” he shouts,
and I begin to realize he’s not acting. But clearly, he’s also surprised by this turn. We’re off the script. I picture Quinn in the boat yelling “Cut!” into his headset.
“Sorry,” I say to Paul, and slide under the bottom rope. I fall in behind Hardy, and the crowd parts for him like the Red Sea for Moses. It’s crazy and creepy, but no one says anything as we cross the sand. Blood streaks a few faces. Hardy has to step over a moaning teenager, but his pace is methodical and deliberate, the stride of a man possessed. We reach the edge of the crowd and step onto the open beach. Finally I move beside Hardy, about to ask him where we’re going, but then I see the answer. Not fifteen feet in front of us is Marna, parked in her wheelchair in the wet sand. Her two crooked arms wrapped in on themselves, her wrists locked at sharp angles.
We step up behind her and Hardy says, “Hi.”
She looks up at us. Her curly black hair and her freckled cheeks. Her eyes fix on a point above and beyond our faces. Hardy says, “Was you looking at the ocean? I like the ocean.”
She grins, nods what could be a response. The waves crash to white foam and ripple up to our feet. Behind us the crowd is afraid to come any closer. Over their heads, I notice the pay-per-view cameras are aimed in our direction. Hardy asks Marna, “How ’bout we go for a dip? Wouldn’t you like that?”
Two thick black buckles crisscross her legs, one above and one below her knees. “Hardy,” I say. “This girl can’t swim. She shouldn’t go in the ocean.”
Ignoring me, Hardy kneels down next to the wheelchair and whispers to Marna, “Don’t fret none. I’m awful strong. Strong enough to carry you. You’ll be safe with me.”
“Hardy,” I say. “This maybe isn’t such a good idea.”
He looks up at me, smiling. “It’s definitely a good idea, Mr. Cooper.” He taps the Miracle Ear. “It’s my Jesus’s idea.”
With this he begins to unbuckle Marna’s legs. He stands, puts one arm under her knees, the other around her back. Grinning madly, she lays her arm around his neck and he hoists her frail body. He seems huge, and she, somehow, even smaller. He turns to the ocean. “C’mon, Mr. Cooper. Jesus says you can come too.”
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 20
