Fast Eddie_King of the Bees

by Robert Arellano

  Above all, there was Jocy. Already I felt like I would not survive without seeing her again. As a bus driver, I had been smug about my alienation, but I had just been racing toward cold comfort. Now there was no way I could keep on a bee-line for geriatric days, hell-bent on a time and a frame of mind when it would not matter to me any more whether I ran, although I could not be certain if such a time would ever arrive. By displacing tits with ass, Jocy had substituted monarch for mom, and distracting me from my mother fixation she had given me a new reason to live.

  Stupefied, I was brought to the northbound lanes beneath Dewey Square, the deepest point in all Dig City, where the entire colony had congregated, the pumped-in air buzzing with laughter and song. The central tunnel went down 120 feet to duck beneath three other levels—the Red Line, the Silver bus loop, and the lobby of Dewey Square station—then cut up in a five percent grade to cross over the Blue Line at about thirty-six feet before heading out the tunnel mouth to the cable stay bridge. By all of this dramatic digging, the abandoned artery had bequeathed Dig City an enormous hall of the people known in the underground as the Comb.

  “You’ve got to wait before we can take you up,” said the thug at my left shoulder. “There’s a rally going on.”

  We stood up front near where Cray, at center stage, had his arms raised. “Stay calm,” he shouted above the din. The people of Dig City would not pipe down. Voice cracking, Cray crowed, “I have everything under control.”

  Catcalls, whistles—somebody called, “Give us the gamer!” Others in the crowd began taking up the cry: “We want the King kid!”

  Scowling, Cray came over and grabbed my arm. “This happens every now and then. You can’t control them. Looks like you’re up, Eddie.”

  Cray yanked me toward the middle and the swarm began to settle. Did lucky breaks come in threes? Hell, I sure hoped so. Anyway, it had been that way back when I had sucker-punched Some Nerd, escaped a mother’s bosomy headlock, and head-faked Apple Jack all in one night. Now after the TW squeeze and the Spinks tour, I was going to get a lastditch grip on Dig City. I looked out at the swelling sea of pale faces and prepared to plumb my submerged powers of performance. It was just like back in the day of the old sideshow, only instead of begging for attention from a handful on the sidewalk, I would be up there locus solis, front and center. Whatever contortion had pleased the populace then, I wished it might work its mojo now. “What’s got them so pumped up? Is it the scare with Spinks?”

  “Better,” Cray said. “Levis is dead.”

  “Wow! Why are they so riled?”

  I saw a malicious twinkle in his eyes. “Do you know what a hecatomb is, Eddie?”

  “Human sacrifice?”

  “The people of Dig City demand it. They get this way every time there’s a bit of excitement around here.” Cray shoved me out beneath the tunnel ceiling’s proscenium, where big toe, an attention-galvanizing gavel, bumped thumpily against an antique newspaper vending machine, the makeshift podium. For a second all was silent except for Cray snickering in the wings. In the conniving ivories of his devilish grin, I could see he was primping himself for the role of begrudging Brutus in the prevailing putsch. I squeezed my eyes shut in an effete attempt to make it go away, then a mad cacophony welled up in the hall. For an ostrich’s instant, I thought what I heard was applause, but looking I saw the motionless mass, the thousand blank expressions. The thunder above was just a train going by on the Red Line, constructed in 1917 and known as “the Rattler” for better than a century.

  Psychologists say politicians never got enough affection during infancy and spend the rest of their lives overcompensating, trying to make literally everyone love them. If that was the case, then I supposed I had it coming when I set myself up for this moment. It had taken me a shrimp boat of hubris spilling over to get here: the hushed hall, the grotesque ocean of eyes cresting before me in a tsunami of indignation. Why had I not just enjoyed the life of the educated grifter and remained in the Nec with Shep? Or, after discovering the unseemly patrimony, why had I not simply accepted the congenital imperative and adapted to the comfortable ways of a Corrente? Why had I gotten sidetracked from the honest work of a hackney operator, with nobody to bother and no one to be bothered by except the hundred-odd passengers haranguing me every day? The answer was elementary enough: so that I could make it down here for a public disemboweling at the hands of a dour, disenfranchised counterculture. I was not even a puppet, unless you’re thinking along the lines of Punch and Judy. I was more like a piñata. They were propping me up for a pillory!

  As long as I was not going to get out of there alive, I decided I might as well cast my lot in favor of a challenge to their revolutionary principles. I could at least use the opportunity to prod them a little on their pretensions of thrift. I figured, what did I have to lose, and decided to let loose. My brief flirtation with Jocy had convinced me they were capable of greater than that which lame Levis had laid out for them. I cleared my throat loudly, dankly, with all the charm and music of a finger bowl full of wet walnuts, and spoke. “As I understand it, these ceremonies are not about popularity, so I’m going to tell it like it is. The overworld upper class has been hoarding its stores long enough.”

  I thought I detected a restless, harping hiss amplifying in the audience. Or was it just steam from the sewers?

  “It’s the earth’s winds, rivers, and fossil fuels that provide the current which three centuries ago Benjamin Franklin, the great revolutionary, first harvested.”

  There went up a murmur I took to be the murderous disapproval of the mass. Like Socrates willingly sipping his hemlock, I was satisfied to imbibe their indignation—the measure! Executed at Athens, that brainy ancient, who has been described as he-who-did-not-write, had likely held in mind’s eye a lovely morsel—its beauty the material analogy of truth—of stripling Alcibiades; so I, delivering my unapologetic apologia, did envision a no-less-comely hunk of my fair beloved, Jocy.

  “These are trying times. Just when an enemy has been defeated, you discover your leader has fallen. Whomever you choose as your next chief, Dig City, may he or she, by whatever peaceful means, provide the people with their share of power.”

  When they surged toward me like an army of zombies, I could not make out the message of their menacing incantation. I saw the tide rolling toward me, grabbing hands reaching greedily for my sleeves, cuffs, and collar, and I knew that huffing around the subterranean dead ends like a maze-trapped rat would just waste everyone’s precious oxygen. I shut my eyes, swelled my chest, and breathlessly awaited the drawing and quartering, the undefiled image of Jocy’s ass in my imagination a talisman of booming truth, the brimming scales of justice, the American way I could never escape, amen! But instead of being torn apart in the Comb, I was lifted up, hoisted atop shoulders, and showered with salutatory spanks.

  Not only did the citizens of Dig City want me to stay, they wanted me to run the place, no questions asked. No family history to discourage me, no home to go to: With a little reluctance, I allowed them to crown me a cardboard Caesar.

  My first order of business was to get a briefing on the state of the state from my Minister of Information. Besides being Dig City’s self-designated seer, Terry was also the mastermind behind infrastructure. He sat at his touch term and told me all about the way things work. Animated diagrams projected on the walls of the Hive dramatized his demo.

  Dig City was virtually impregnable. To keep the 1950s highway open during construction, workers hollowing out the tunnels at the end of century 20 had reinforced ceilings and walls with strong slurry. Floor pilings were sunk forty feet into bedrock, so the bottom would not drop out from under us any time soon. America’s first subway made an awful racket at spots, but thousands of tons of good Baltimore steel would never relent. Dig City maintained control of the vent buildings and pump houses, which kept air in and water out. The thermal processes of the earth, along with a few propitious natural gas deposits, supplied enough heat to keep
DC at a temperate, if clammy, sixty-five degrees. Gardens thrived under grow lights in the humid southern tunnels beneath Milk Street Atomic, the Beast’s nuclear power plant. Organic fertilizers, artificial light, and step techniques applied to the nitrogen-rich soils yielded surplus harvests. Anything lacking in the mundis sub rosa could be obtained by a few overworld sympathizers who helped camouflage our elaborate system of ventilation, suction, and induction.

  “What about the harbor and the closeness of the ocean?”

  “The tide varies by nine feet every six hours and twenty-five minutes,” Terry said, “but Dig City is waterproof to be-tween five and ten feet below the floor, plus our pumps are in great shape. Every section of substructure is held down by gravity slabs and further anchored with tie rods. Thanks to Cape Cod, the continental shelf is actually more than a hundred miles from here, so there’s enough sweet water in the table to last a thousand years, even without the rainwater reservoirs upstairs.”

  “Any chance the Beast might try to sabotage life support?”

  “When it comes to basic resources, we would be able to hold out longer on everything—everything, that is, but one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Air. A protracted outage that depletes our backup generators could leave us without adequate oxygen.”

  “Shouldn’t we get some of our engineers working on ventilation alternatives?”

  “We have a mole upstairs who goes by the codename Hermanito. He’s analyzed the ventilation situation, and the reports suggest it’s not a cause for concern. Dig City and the Beast are symbiotic organisms. If overworld ever tried to shut us down, they would experience the same power privations. As long as their electrical plants are running, we’ll have our air. Besides, we’re all beholden to the same boss, and Hermanito says he’s a sympathizer.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Apple Jack, the new mayor.”

  You can bet I bit my lip at that nugget of Dig City politics. Now I knew it would be especially necessary for me to protect my identity. In my estimation, Apple Jack was one to keep a promise, and if he ever found out about who had just been elevated to DC’s highest office, it would mean the end of not only this hustler’s regal weekend, but maybe even the whole underground colony.

  “When do I get to meet this Hermanito?”

  “Sorry, Eddie.” Terry said. “Hermanito is the cornerstone of Dig City intelligence. I can’t risk blowing his cover.”

  On the spot, I thought: If anyone went snooping around Spinks’s den, they might make the connection to the accident in the Ted Williams tunnel and maybe trace me all the way back to Pauly and Apple Jack.

  “In order to forestall future sabotage,” I suggested, “we should seal off Pan-Harbor Command.”

  “Sure,” said Terry.

  So goes my first decree.

  In one of the air shafts onto Chinatown, a wall had been knocked out into the cellar of an out-of-business Asian grocery to create the commander’s quarters, known as the Nest. Terry assured me this was one of the safest spots in Dig City. As it did not belong to the regular network of tunnels and shafts that made up the former artery, overworld authorities were not aware of its existence. I went back to my new cell to lie down, take inventory, maybe snatch a nap. My narrow bed sat on the pronounced incline of an out-of-service loading belt, directly beneath bulkhead doors that swayed onto Kneeland Street sidewalk.

  The camaraderie around Dig City reminded me of that around the Nec, which, although aboveground, had been similarly cell-like: someone’s breathing always a few inches from mine; the sense of ambitious projects, however pie-in-the-sky, to occupy our time; and the energy—everreplenishing, seemingly inexhaustible—of us-against-them. After giving up my life as a road rat, it had been this tightknittedness I had missed most, but there was something different this time. I had slept soundly back with the rats, but in the Hive I’d been given a poisonous gift, the sweetest nectar of duress: I lay awake contemplating a voluptuous figure. Overnight I needed somebody, and it did not matter whether a reawakened impulse toward altruism was polluted by this newfound acquisitiveness, for, just as surely as I would have to awaken to the electrically illuminated day and let my lungs breathe the artificially-circulated air, I would need to allow each to evolve unencumbered; my every exhalation seemed to sound her name: Jocy!

  Before I could doze, Cray burst into my cell with his next big surprise. “The wedding is in half an hour.”

  “Who’s getting married?”

  “You and Jocy.”

  All the colony came out to the Comb. It was a simple, civil ceremony. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off Jocy’s big butt in her bell-bottoms. Although Dig City thrift would have us eschew the extravagance of a reception, Jocy and I stood forever in the receiving line, where I met our fair-skinned subjects one-by-one. Mitts swollen from all the glad-handing, I walked Jocy back to her cell. Besides the vows, this was our first opportunity to speak since the night of my arrival. I stood by her door, rigid as a cigar-store Indian.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered, “to hear about the chief.”

  “Don’t you get it, Eddie? You’re in charge now.”

  “Sure, but what about Levis of late?”

  “Nobody is too shaken up by the loss. He wasn’t doing the community any good. It would be better if you just forget about him.” Gently, Jocy touched my hand. “Goodnight, Eddie. See you tomorrow in the Hive.”

  I sure had come a long way since the days doing partridge pose and picking pockets in the Beast. Eddie King: I was not completely certain I wanted the new job, but I was psyched it came with a queen. Cray had told me that the marriage was purely for PR, but still I was ascendant: Who was to say she would not eventually come to love me? I wondered what the mourning period was down here. What would merit the level of my infatuation? Would I wait a year? Five? Ten? Fifteen for the queen? None of those figures seemed prohibitive, nor did I register a blip of reluctance. Already, in my monotonous young life, I had become used to paying dues. And man! would she be worth it!

  The clomping of commuters just inches above my head began at 5:30 AM—talk about incentive to get a jump on the day! As it was, the job I had set for myself would require medical-intern hours. I began implementing a plan to bring about infrastructural autonomy. It had yet to be determined whether my dream was practical or just a wad in my pipe.

  The overworld’s resources had been underexploited for fear that Apple Jack would crack down on the occupation, but the Beast’s infrastructural integration with the artery left light-lubbers no way to curtail how Dig City had been piggybacking on their utilities. The parallel opposites shared the same gas, telecom, and electric. Where circuits were sparking, there was nothing wrong with connecting a few wires. It was like holding one’s cup beneath an open tap. I was certain that Dig City could be making a lot more of its position if only we could leave behind bleeding-heart frugality and recognize that utilities were ours for the taking. Even the overlords would be better off for not hoarding their surplus if we just went ahead and took it. The slogan printed on posters plastered all over the tunnels: one nation, underground, with batteries and plug-juice for all.

  Mornings, I read voraciously, surveying e-books on intentional communities of the last four hundred years, from Jamestown and Plymouth to Jonestown and Chunnelville. I admired J. H. Noyes and Oneida, although I was a little alarmed by the leader’s enthusiasm for communal marriage. On the other hand, you had Father Rapp’s Economy, a city of enforced celibacy. Legend had it he had accidentally killed his son while, in a rage over a broken rule, carrying out a hasty castration. I took the best stuff from these cults and added a dash of road rat’s graft. Our workers hijacked truckloads of energy cells direct from factory lots and kept the juice flowing by continuous, systematic relocation of cryptic siphon grids that skimmed the upstairs neighbors everywhere from their city shafts to the transformers in corporate basements. Dig City’s humble siphons were of course a minor nuisanc
e to the utility companies and the businesses from whom we borrowed, but I was reminded of the pickpocket’s creed: to steal, to purloin, and never to yield. It seemed like a wholesome ideology: clever utilization of an abundance that had been metered by an avaricious syndicate.

  Terry and Cray were pretty tight-lipped about the details of what had happened to my predecessor, and delicacy proscribed my trying to pry the story out of Jocy, but legends of Levis’s profligacy were popular currency. Levis had been an innovative architect, an able contractor, but ultimately no leader. After building the Dig City infrastructure, he began acting kooky. He took to going on boozing binges with his bodyguards. He would burst into song at state suppers. By the end, with his flamboyant couture and frequent personality lapses, Levis had been an embarrassment to the movement, and finally became estranged not just from his go-getter wife, but from the whole of the underground country. In the big scheme of things, Levis had done Dig City a favor by dropping out. His charisma had been convenient in the early days of the colony. He was the eccentric around whom the first Dig City immigrants had centered their discipline, but his heart had not really been with the revolution. According to some rumors, a compulsive gambling habit and reckless betting had embroiled him in dark debts. While trying to pay them off, Levis got wrought up in wild, cowboy histrionics. Out carousing on dangerous roads, some bandits had run him down—typical Mass highway robbery. Thus a luckless wayfarer ascended to his seat.