Tinker and Blue (27 page)

44

“Fire!”

Capricorn's voice roared its alarm through the Human Rainbow Commune, waking the few residents who hadn't already been lured from their bedrooms by a familiar, yet foreign, smoky odour that had awakened them in the early morning hours.

“There's no fire here, buddy,” Blue corrected Capricorn while addressing his remarks to the group of curious onlookers who clustered in the kitchen doorway. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Tinker chimed, throwing his greetings over his shoulder while he continued the busy employment that kept his back to the crowd and his hands in the sink.

“Merry Christmas,” added Mrs. Rubble, standing up with a creaking back-stretch from her inspection of the oven.

Capricorn returned their greetings with a distracted nod while looking around the kitchen, his open hands asking a speechless question.

“We're cooking you Christmas dinner,” Blue explained, lifting his beer in a toast to the project, then setting it down beside several empties that explained the festive glow in his eyes.

“What kind of a dinner?” Capricorn inquired, staring at the stove.

“Turkey with the works, as the other fellow says,” Blue answered, pointing to Tinker who was peeling vegetables at the sink. “We're going to put out a spread that'll make your mouth water. Our gift to you.”

“Blue, I know it slips your mind, but this is a vegetarian commune.”

“I know that, Capi, but this is Christmas! Christmas without turkey is like ... is like ... turkey without stuffing, and I'm even making my mother's own stuffing. I watched her do it a few times, and it isn't all that hard, bread and empty the cupboard as near as I could tell. But let's make a few introductions here. Mrs. Rubble, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Mrs. Rubble.”

—

“It's just not the same when you don't have to fight over the legs, is it, Tinker?” Blue observed from his self-promotion to the head of the table, carving knife in hand. “Sure I can't interest any of you in a slab of breast? Turkey's hardly meat at all, more like an evolved vegetable.”

“So that's what today's fashionable carnivore is devouring,” Capricorn said, pointing to the platter where Blue was trying to chop off a leg for Tinker, his swinging hand rising higher each time the turkey successfully fended off the amputation. Finally, he struck the gladiator's blow that allowed him to raise the leg high over his head, a Roman arena champion displaying his enemy's heart, and say, “Hey, Tink, catch.”

Once the vegetarians had come to terms with the turkey in their oven, the idea of Christmas dinner acquired a cheerful appeal. A communal competition of ideas and recipes erupted, along with a theological dialogue on the ethics of gravy. By the time they found their way to the table only Karma and Capricorn had resisted Mrs. Rubble's gravy ladle, but there were just three for turkey, and Barney brooding under the table.

With dinner set on Mrs. Rubble's Christmas tablecloth, Blue halted the proceedings, ordered everyone to stand, and began singing “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Jesus, happy birthday to you...” his carving knife conducting the others to join him, after which he drove it into the chest of the golden turkey. “Let's eat!” The table became a murmur of memories.

The chatter led Mrs. Rubble and Tulip to discover that they grew up a generation and a few blocks apart in Lowell, Massachusetts. They began mining each other's memories. Blue insisted that Tinker tell the one about the Christmas his Grandmere died, a story that led Capricorn to wonder if, besides themselves, there were any other living Cape Bretoners “since the national hobby back there appears to be burying each other.” The talking took them through dinner and into a fruit salad dessert hurriedly made by Kathy and Karma. Clearing off the table, Blue took the turkey into the kitchen, carved away huge chunks of it, added some gravy and put it down in a corner where he knew Barney would discover it long before Karma would. He scratched Barney behind the ears as the dog devoured his Christmas dinner.

“Blue,” Karma said, standing behind him.

“I dropped it, Karma, and Barney ran in before I could pick it up and you should never try to take food away from a dog unless you don't need your hand,” Blue explained, drawing Karma's attention to the fact that her vegetarian dog was lapping the last of the gravy from the plate. She held out a small package to him, Christmas wrapped.

Blue took the gift, his eyes resentfully finding the gold chain and cross around Mrs. Rubble's neck. Opening the package silently, his mind scrambled for an excuse. Inside, he found a silver ring in the lobster claw shape of Cape Breton Island, a fragment of turquoise inset on the western coast to indicate his hometown. She had commissioned it from one of the silversmiths in the district.

“Karma, I ... my ... your ... gift...” he said, slipping the ring on his wedding finger, finding it a perfect fit. His stammering excuse was rescued by a sudden disturbance in the living room and Tinker's voice wishing Cory a merry Christmas.

“It's Cory, Karma. Let's wish him a merry Christmas,” Blue said, guiding Karma out of the tight corner he found himself in.

Cory, in black beret and fatigues, was a long way from Colorado where Blue first saw him, beads and headband, among the horses. They passed around the handshakes and hugs, offered him a Christmas dinner which he accepted, but adding, “I don't bring good news, man. That FBI agent, special agent Bud Wise picked me up again yesterday. Lots of questions about Colorado.”

“He'll never stop hunting Capricorn,” Tulip said.

“No. That's the strange thing. It's Tinker he was asking about,” Cory said. “It's Tinker they're looking for.”

“Me? The FBI are looking for me?” Tinker said with disbelief.

“You, man. He picked me up yesterday, grilled me for a few hours and let me go. Told him I didn't know anything. I waited until today to come over, making sure there was no tail on me.”

“But why?” Capricorn asked.

“Some wild idea that an illegal alien named Tinker was inventing something. He asked me over and over what kind of research was going on up there. He's crazy, man, crazy, but then again he's with the FBI and so insanity is prerequisite, right,” Cory said.

“What do they mean ‘illegal alien'?” Blue said, recovering from the shock of Cory's news. “Tinker's not Mexican, he's Canadian.”

“An illegal alien is anyone who is in this country illegally,” Capricorn explained. “You fit the description.”

“No we don't, we're Canadian—”

“We're fucked, that's what we are, Blue. At least, I am. What did he say about inventing, Cory?”

“Something subversive to undermine the American energy industry, Tinker, but they didn't go into details so I don't know what he meant. In fact I'm not sure he knew what they meant.”

“I do,” Kathy said, tears rising with her words. “It's my fault. When you told me in Colorado that you were planning to invent an oxygen engine, I thought it was a wonderful thing to do. With an oxygen engine we can stop poisoning the planet with fossil fuels. I wrote about it in my journal. They took my journals away along with everything else when they raided the commune, including Cory and Tulip. I'm sorry, Tinker, but I never thought—”

Tinker's touch assured her there was no blame, but his mind swirled around the wild, unwakable dream that he was ... “wanted by the FBI. I'm wanted by the fucking FBI. Blue, what are we going to do?”

“We can be in Vancouver by tomorrow night, and home for New Year's Eve, Tinker.”

“But they'll be watching the bus stations. You've seen the movies. You know how they are. When the FBI has you in its sights they got you, man. I'm fucked.”

“We won't need a bus, buddy,” Blue said.

“Whatever we're going to do, we have to decide quickly,” Capricorn said. “The FBI looking for you brings them close to me. If they picked up Cory, they'll be looking for Tulip next.”

“So there's your choices, Tinker. Cell mates with Capi in Alcatraz or buddies with me back home. What's to decide here? We drop the FBI a postcard from Calgary and they stop looking for you and the heat's off Capi here.”

“I got to think about this,” Tinker said, getting up, taking Kathy by the hand and leading her toward their room.

“Oh, shit,” Blue groaned.

—

While Tinker and Kathy were in conference, Blue tried to forget the fact that it was Kathy to whom Tinker was talking the situation over with and not him. When Peter?, Gerry and Nathan arrived at the commune, Blue threw himself into assisting Mrs. Rubble and Tulip, who expanded the dinner preparations of a Christmas plate for Cory to include their most recent guests. Soon they were sitting at the table again, the band members being filled with turkey and filled in on Tinker's unexpected notoriety. Their appetites for turkey soon turned the Human Rainbow Commune back into a vegetarian stronghold – no scrap of meat to be found.

When Tinker and Kathy returned, Tinker announced that he didn't want to leave San Francisco, not his job nor Kathy who was not prepared to leave the city with him. “I'm learning a lot in the tunnel. I'm learning a lot period. They never caught you, Cap, maybe they won't catch me. I'll just have to lay low for a while.”

“And where are you going to lay low?” Blue asked. “The FBI knows you're some kind of a hippie. They'll go through here like the SS, arresting everybody. You know where the best place to lay low is, Tinker. You may not like winter in Cape Breton, but it's not prison.”

“I know a place,” Mrs. Rubble offered. “I don't have a spare room but I do have a day bed, and I don't know a single FBI agent so there's no reason for them to go looking for you at my apartment, is there?”

“It could do for a while,” Tinker said thoughtfully, noting that Mrs. Rubble's apartment was within walking distance of work. “It will give me some time to think about what I really want.”

Peter?'s efforts to find out more about the oxygen engine were ignored by Tinker who had more important things on his mind, but the implications of Tinker's invention were as self-evident to him as Blue's music.

“No wonder they're looking for you, man. You're talking about an energy source that's as natural as breathing. It won't just salvage the planet from our inhuman greed, it makes that source of energy available to everyone. The ultimate democracy, I always believed, is reflected in the potential of solar energy. No one owns the sun, man. Like God, to use a metaphor I don't believe in myself, it belongs to us all. So does the oxygen we breathe. Economic dynasties will topple with the development of your engine. Maybe even governments. No wonder the FBI wants you, and I'm willing to bet they don't want you alive. The powers-that-be want the massive contents behind that modest cranium of yours to stop functioning, and if it takes a bullet to do that, then so be it. The FBI is not without its executionary resources.”

The others weren't paying a lot of attention to Peter?'s rambling exploration of Tinker's pending invention until the suggestion that Tinker would not be taken alive.

“We better get moving,” Blue said. “Tinker, pack! I'll drive Tinker and Mrs. Rubble over with the van. None of you know where she lives, so you can't give my buddy up, not even to save your little pinky fingernails. Come on, let's go, everybody move! We gotta get Public Enemy Number One out of here.”

After a flurried moment to pack, the whole population followed Tinker and Blue down the stairs into the backyard where a stunned Tinker stopped the parade.

“What's up, buddy? You look like you've seen Danny Danny Dan's ghost,” Blue said.

Tinker's forefinger pointed weakly toward the tan and brown vehicle parked beside the commune van.

“Oh, you mean the Plymouth,” Blue said. “Didn't I tell you about that? I guess not. Gerry knew this guy, eh, does body work. He came by one day when you were at work and took it. Not a bad job, except that new coat of paint kind of ruined Kathy's butterfly and the other paintings. It was supposed to be your Merry Christmas gift, but this Christmas is not very merry, as the other fellow says.”

Tinker approached the Plymouth, reaching out with a timid hand, as if afraid it would disappear under his touch. It didn't. He walked around it, looked inside, opened the driver's door, turned the keys in the ignition and the engine leapt to life. Letting it idle, he walked to the front of the car, opened the hood and studied its vibrating engine.

“Tinker, I don't think this is the time to be thinking about taking it apart,” Blue said.

Tinker lowered the hood, took his suitcase from Blue, put it in the back seat, then opened the passenger door for Mrs. Rubble, hugged Kathy, and sat behind the wheel. Blue leaned in the open window.

“It's like I said, buddy, by tomorrow night we can be in Vancouver, both of us.” Tinker shook his head wordlessly. “Think about it because there's worse things than being in jail, buddy. If we stay here, we'll have to stop calling you Tinker and start calling you Aloysius.”