End Time (2 page)

The walk home from the Fairfield station was a brisk ten minutes, the blue shadows of an early spring evening, punctuated by the welcoming lights from the village shops and streetlamps, dwindling to darker tree-lined streets. The village lights always seemed to comfort Poole, the reassuring normality of small town life.

But as the town lights began to give way to the quiet residential houses, Poole sensed something wrong. He passed the village gazebo in the gathering dusk; the firehouse was lit up, the truck bay doors open, one truck on a call. And farther on he spotted fire truck lights under the trees. His pace quickened. He was coming up on his street. And his heart jumped.

More lights, a local sheriff cruiser, a Connecticut State Police vehicle, that town fire truck—the lights bounced off the houses like broken glass thrown in his eyes. Poole began to run, praying
Jesus please, Jesus please
without any coherent thought behind it; Lauren's face swam before his eyes.

In a wave of relief he saw the shadowed figures of his family, counting heads in a nanosecond, yes everyone there, Lauren holding Corky on a leash in one hand and Peaches in the other. The dogs' tails were wagging; always a good sign. Every one of his neighbors, all the families had come out into the street, standing on their patch of yard. The firemen were wrapping their hoses, but his house didn't seem burned.

Sheriff Mike was talking to Lauren; when she saw her husband, she ran to Poole hugging him. “We're okay.” And she wrapped him in her sweet scent. Both dogs nosed for a good place under his hand, delighted to see him, doing the greyhound chattering thing which some thought meant doggie laughter. Lauren snuggled in his arm.

Relief washed through him, but what Guy saw at the house made him wonder even more. A ten-foot section of his white picket fence was flattened, like a buffalo had trampled through. The sidewalk around his house was littered with more discarded protest posters, cheap wooden handles, plastic water bottles, plastic deli bags, a scattered box of wet Cracker Jacks. A bag of candy corn scattered everywhere, and a mess of toffee buttons, like some kid had dropped his Halloween swag bag.

What the hell?

Then he saw the reason for the fire truck. A swath of lawn before his front door was burned. Three eight-foot letters scorched into the grass. P—I—G. And the word
bloodsuckr
—misspelled.

“Charcoal fluid,” Sheriff Mike explained. “Don't worry about it lighting up again, and the Staties have some names and addresses if you want to press charges. There's a parade permit on file.” The scorched grass, the soaked grass, the busted picket fence. Sheriff Mike frowned, baffled, almost ashamed. “I'm really sorry about this, Guy. It kinda got away from us. Then I just wanted them back on the bus and outta here. I don't have holding cells for a hundred ass-clowns.”

“Who the hell are these people?” Poole demanded.

Sheriff Mike sighed. “They're some group from down in the city, going on a tour of the rich people's places. They were okay, right up until the end. Maybe the little brass historical plaque set them off,” Sheriff Mike suggested. “Thought you were a town father or something.” Scuff marks on the front steps; someone had pried off the brass plaque. It was nowhere in sight. Stolen? No, it lay bent on the damp ground. Finally, a message scrawled across his white-painted front door in purple indelible marker:
Felix says Hi!
Corky sniffed a little brown scruffy thing at the corner of the front steps. A dead sparrow. Then Peaches nosed it too.

“No, Corky, Peaches—keep away!” Lauren pulled the two dogs back from the dead feathers.

“P-I-G? Pig?” It dawned on Poole. “As in
Capitalist
? Oh yeah, that's right. The big moneybag outfits, banks and thing, everybody's mad at.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” That from Sheriff Mike.

“
Geez
.” Lauren shook her head in complete disbelief. “You didn't even work for a bank.”

 

2

The Pied Piper

The Pied Piper always stood on the southeast corner of Washington Square Park in Manhattan, the “dark” corner because the tall buildings blocked the sunshine most of the day. Then only in late afternoon did the slants of light come in from the West Side. As usual he dressed in his signature top hat and tails, black trousers with the black satin ribbon down the seam.

He'd bought the outfit from a costume liquidator back in LA, oh maybe like
over 60 years ago
 … in the safe, secure, and Playtex-living-girdled 1950s. The smarmy clerk told him at the time, “This is the exact outfit they used in
Tales of Manhattan—
last worn by Eddie Robinson. And I'll be damned and bite my tongue if it isn't true.”

Ten minutes after the Pied Piper left with the jacket and pants tied in brown paper, the top hat in a “complimentary” hatbox for an extra four cents, the smarmy clerk caught his shoe on a creaky floorboard and banged his chin on the counter. Biting off a bit of his tongue. He lisped for the rest of his days, and damned if that wasn't true.

Today, in our present day—the Piper set up in his usual spot by a park bench, putting an open violin case on the pavement for coins, a battered boom box behind it, and his small black doctor's satchel on the bench. The satchel was pasted over with Felix the Cat stickers, smiling Felix at his “Howdy!” smiling best. The Pied Piper had two acts—the teaser and the pay-off—which he announced by way of a square slab of cardboard; on one side was scrawled the word
MUSIC
—
at which point the boom box would flip on with Dvorak's
New World Symphony
while the Pied Piper synced along on his violin.

The violin a dented wreck with no strings; the strung bow with a wisp of bowstring flying about his face. The top hat, the tails, the trousers, the long, gaunt man sawing away—a goofy enough street act. Pure dumb-show, but funny enough to sometimes get a crowd.

When any manner of audience appeared, he'd leave off the music, flip the cardboard around, which now read
MAGIC
—and he'd go into his second bit. An old cassette tape in the boom box played the Ann Bennett rendition of Felix's theme song. But oftentimes the tape skipped or blurred rendering the lyrics nearly incoherent:

Felix the cat,

The funderful, funderful cat!

Whenever he gets hisself fixed,

He makes you gag on hiz bag of trix!

And that's when Felix's magic doctor satchel came in for a workout.

Last audience of the day was a lone scrawny kid of about thirteen in a dingy Hope T-shirt that looked like it hadn't been washed this month. The Pied Piper opened his bag of tricks and pulled out a box of candy. He showed them to the boy. Chocolate Babies.

“Hey kid,” he whispered, “want an N-Word candy?”

The man's narrow, Satan's face peered down, waiting for a reply.

The boy didn't even blink. Maybe he'd never heard the fashionable euphemism actually spoken out loud—if that was possible—just the real N-Word from rappers wit attitudes on the radio or called out across the street in the 'hood. He looked at the creased, smudged candy box and shook his head. The Pied Piper spilled a few coco-babies into his open violin case, amongst a handful of coins and dollar bills. These chocolate babies were a little different: All their mouths were open and they were howling.

“Mama told me never take nuthin' from strangers.”

Another dingy box of candy came out of the satchel. “How about some Jujubes? The kikes eat those; they make the Joos rich.” Now the kid knew he was in the presence of a whack-a-doodle.

“Didja hear me, my mother said—”

The Pied Piper threw the box of Jujubes into the violin case, and some scattered across the pavement, little cylindrical candy drops of a thousand colors like tiny gems. The gaunt Piper leaned forward, his long face a few inches from the kid's. “Boy, your sainted mother is a crack whore who's standing on the corner of Avenue B right this second, tricking for dinner money and a fix. If there's any left over, she might remember to buy you a bologna sandwich and a carton of milk.”

The kid took a step back. His dark face twisted in rage. Forget the N-Word; now this peckerwood brought Mama into it. “I'm getting my boys. My boys are coming back here for you. I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna find out where you live.”

The Piper stood to his full six-foot-five height, a human praying mantis. A creased smile crossed the sharp hatchet face; a pale tongue licked his thin lips. “I like it. You do that. You bring all your boys to me.” He reached for his satchel again. “No Chocolate Babies, no Jujubes, how about a little dinner in case your mama forgets the milk and bologna?”

Out came a rather large, dead rat. It swung before the lad's face.

“You're fukked up.”

“Really? I'm gratified you think so.” The long, gaunt man dropped the rat into his violin case, and it fell with a leaden thump.

“And now for my last trick.…”

He reached inside the satchel and slowly drew out a bright children's book. It was large and flat and way too big for the satchel, like one of those endless scarves magicians pull from their sleeves that keep on coming. He placed it carefully on the park bench, upright. “This is for you and your
boys
. Maybe between the four of y'all, you can actually read a page, if you go slowly and mouth out the words.”

“I don't need your fukkin' book.”

“Why, look at that!” The Piper's eyes fell to the violin case; the dead rat had lifted its head and was sniffing the air. “Well, well, well.… Whattaya know, I guess Mr. Rat wasn't so dead after all.”

The kid jumped away from the suddenly alert, sniffing rodent, then took a few steps back, retreating from the long man's presence; the waddling rat now scooted under the bench and onto the grass. “We're gonna find you, Slim.”

“I'm counting on it.”

Show over.

The tall man carefully packed his things: his satchel, violin case, and boom box; with his cardboard sign under his arm he left the park. He knew the kid was following him at a safe distance. Smart lad.

An hour later the kid passed the park bench again on his way back to Avenue B. The children's book was still there; no one had touched it. Gingerly he picked it up. The cover showed some sort of old castle town in sunset and in black silhouette a parade going over a bridge, led by a long, gaunt man. The title read
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
. And that long-legged honkie was right on the money.… This boy in the hopey T-shirt, son of the crack whore, couldn't read so well, but at least the book had pictures.

*   *   *

There were still a few cruddy apartments over in the West Village that weren't taken over by the gentrified, whitesy-cutesy, uppity-and-coming. They existed like the eyes on a potato, a few here, a few there. The apartment overlooking Sheridan Square was one. A three-story walk-up, a dozen smelly habitats. And Number 4A, the long gaunt man called home. He lived behind his closed door like that very rat he'd dropped in Washington Square Park. Paint peeling off the walls, cracked tiles in the bathroom, no shower curtain around the leprous tub, yellow blinds drawn. A porcelain stove and sink in one corner. The power company had turned the electric and gas off years ago, but that didn't bother Piper. And his was the only apartment in the building that didn't have a dozen locks, jimmy bars, or dead bolts on the door. Just another Felix the Cat poster glued to the outside in the hallway—enough protection. Everyone knew better than to bother him.

Some of his neighbors had seen him do his tricks in the park, but he didn't go to the park every day, so they just thought,
Hey, he works from home
. In any case, that's where his most important business was done.

His creature comforts were simple. An old leather club chair sat in front of an old Zenith TV with rabbit ear antennae. A large coffee table, with bowls of Fireballs; boxes of animal crackers; circus peanuts; long strips of white paper with candy buttons; a glass jar of Pixie Sticks; and a few packages of wax Coke bottles filled with red, green, blue, and yellow treacly syrup, Nik-L-Nips.

A Kenner Products Easy-Bake oven—the kind little girls used to yearn for every Christmas Eve in the dark ages of the 1960s—sat near the crusty, useless kitchen stove, along with some open Betty Crocker Angel Food cupcake mix. The Easy-Bake oven plug lay on the counter unplugged, as did the Zenith television cord, snaking along the floor and lying useless under the wall socket. As Leona Helmsley once famously said, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

In Mr. P.'s safe bubble only the little people needed electric current to make their lives work—while he could short out a lamppost or turn it on again like an electric eel. The man was a lanky humanoid lightning rod. No need for a power grid or Con Ed to make his appliances blink; the Piper always had plenty of juice on demand.

He sat in front of the TV and pointed. “On please.” The old TV clicked and warmed up.… Then after a moment, “Cable Channel Guide.”

The blue image of the channel guide filled the screen, with its little boxes.

“What to see…? What to see…?” The blue page scrolled down, pausing every so often. “A thousand channels and nothing to watch,” the gaunt man sighed.

He paused over
Bridezillas
. Worth watching some little twat drink too many Jell-O shots and barf on her little $4,000 white gown? Or swing at the groom with a chainsaw? No, been there, done that.

What Not to Wear
. There you go. That was always good for a laugh. Especially as a repeat. He'd seen the episode before. The classy Stacy London and dapper Clinton Kelly were trying to dress a brassy young lady with enormous bosoms who normally dressed like the Bride of Frankenstein and insisted on going to job interviews with her hair in a Kennedy Girl's Vegas beehive. In the original airing of the episode Stacy and Clinton had assisted her very well: some slimming dresses, plain open-collared shirts, the hair went from beehive to French twist. No more chartreuse nail polish.