Major Spacer in the 21st Century

 

 

June 1950

 

“LOOK,” SAID BILL, “I’ll see if I can go down and do a deposition this Thursday or Friday. Get ahold of Zachary Glass, see if he can fill in as . . . what’s his name . . . ?”

“Lt. Marrs,” said Sam Shorts.

“ . . . Lt. Marrs. We’ll move that part of the story up. I’ll record my lines. We can put it up over the spacephone, and Marrs and Neptuna can have the dialogue during the pursuit near the Moon we were gonna do week after next . . .”

“Yeah, sure!” said Sam. “We can have you over the phone, and them talking back and forth while his ship’s closing in on hers, and your voice—yeah, that’ll work fine.”

“But you’ll have to rewrite the science part I was gonna do, and give it yourself, as Cadet Sam. Man, it’s just too bad there’s no way to record this stuff ahead of time.”

“Phil said they’re working on it at the Bing Crosby Labs, trying to get some kind of tape to take a visual image; they can do it but they gotta shoot eight feet of tape a second by the recording head. It takes a mile of tape to do a ten-minute show,” said Sam.

“And we can’t do it on film, kids hate that.”

“Funny,” said Sam Shorts. “They pay fifteen cents for Gene Autry on film every Saturday afternoon, but they won’t sit still for it on television . . .”

Philip walked in. “Morgan wants to see you about the Congress thing.”

“Of course,” said Bill.

“Run-through in . . .” Phil looked at his watch, and the studio clock “ . . . eleven minutes. Seen Elizabeth?”

“Of course not,” said Bill, on the way down the hall in his spacesuit, with his helmet under his arm.

 

* * *

 

That night, in his apartment, Bill typed on a script.

 

MAJOR SPACER: LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE LEFT IN A HURRY.

 

Bill looked up. Super Circus was on. Two of the clowns, Nicky and Scampy, squirted seltzer in ringmaster Claude Kirchner’s face.

He never got to watch Big Top, the other circus show. It was on opposite his show.

 

* * *

 

Next morning, a young guy with glasses slouched out of a drugstore.

“Well, hey Bill!” he said.

“Jimmy!” said Bill, stopping, shifting his cheap cardboard portfolio to his other arm. He shook hands.

“Hey, I talked to Zooey,” said Jimmy. “You in trouble with the Feds?”

“Not that I know of. I think they’re bringing in everybody in the city with a kid’s TV show.”

He and Jimmy had been in a flop play together early in the year, before Bill started the show.

“How’s it going otherwise?” asked Jimmy.

“It’s about to kill all of us. We’ll see if we make twenty weeks, much less a year. We’re only four to five days ahead on the script. You available?”

“I’ll have to look,” said Jimmy. “I got two Lamps Unto My Feet next month, three-day rehearsals each, I think. I’m reading a couple plays, but that’ll take a month before anybody gets off their butt. Let me know’f you need someone quick some afternoon. If I can, I’ll jump in.”

“Sure thing. And on top of everything else, looks like we’ll have to move for next week; network’s coming in and taking our space; trade-out with CBS. I’ll be real damn glad when this Station Freeze is over, and there’s more than ten damn places in this city that can do a network feed.”

“I hear that could take a couple more years,” said Jimmy, in his quiet Indiana voice.

“Yeah, well . . . hey, don’t be such a stranger. Come on with me, I gotta get these over to the mimeograph room; we can talk on the way.”

“Nah, nah,” said Jimmy. “I, you know, gotta meet some people. I’m late already. See ya ’round, Bill.”

“Well, okay.”

Jimmy turned around thirty feet away. “Don’t let the Feds get your jock strap in a knot!” he said, waved, and walked away.

People stared at both of them.

Damn, thought Bill. I don’t get to see anyone anymore; I don’t have a life except for the show. This is killing me. I’m still young.

 

* * *

 

“And what the hell are we supposed to do in this grange hall?” asked Bill.

“It’s only a week,” said Morgan. “Sure, it’s seen better days, the Ziegfeld Roof, but they got a camera ramp so Harry and Fred can actually move in and out on a shot; you can play up and back, not just sideways like a crab, like usual.”

Bill looked at the long wooden platform built out into what used to be the center aisle when it was a theater.

“Phil says he can shoot here . . .”

“Phil can do a show in a bathtub, he’s so good, and Harry and Fred can work in a teacup, they’re so good. That doesn’t mean they have to,” said Bill.

A stagehand walked in and raised the curtain while they stood there.

“Who’s that?” asked Bill.

“Well, this is a rehearsal hall,” said Morgan. “We’re lucky to get it on such short notice.”

When the curtain was full up there were the usual chalk marks on the stage boards, and scene flats lined up and stacked in twenty cradles at the rear of the stage.

“We’ll be using that corner there,” said Morgan, pointing. “Bring our sets in, wheel ’em, roll ’em in and out—ship, command center, planet surface.”

Some of the flats for the other show looked familiar.

“The other group rehearses 10:00–2:00. They all gotta be out by 2:15. We rehearse, do the run-through at 5:30, do the show at 6:30.”

Another stagehand came in with the outline of the tail end of a gigantic cow and put it into the scene cradle.

“What the hell are they rehearsing?” asked Bill.

“Oh. It’s a musical based on the paintings of Grant Wood, you know, the Iowa artist?”

“You mean the Washington and the Cherry Tree, the DAR guy?”

“Yeah, him.”

“That’ll be a hit,” said Bill. “What’s it called?”

“I think they’re calling it In Tall Corn. Well, what do you think?”

“I think it’s a terrible idea. I can see the closing notices now.”

“No, no. I mean the place. For the show,” said Morgan.

Bill looked around. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”

“Of course not,” said Morgan. “Everything else in town that’s wired up is taken. I just wanted you to see it before you were dumped in it.”

“Dumped is right,” said Bill. He was looking at the camera ramp. It was the only saving grace. Maybe something could be done with it. . . .

“Harry and Fred seen it?”

“No, Phil’s word is good enough for them. And, like you said, they can shoot in a coffee cup . . .”

Bill sighed. “Okay. Let’s call a Sunday rehearsal day, this Sunday, do two blockings and rehearsals, do the run-through of Monday’s show, let everybody get used to the place. Then they can come back just for the show Monday. Me and Sam’ll see if we can do something in the scripts. Phil got the specs?”

“You know he has,” said Morgan.

“Well, I guess one barn’s as good as another,” said Bill.

And as he said it, three stagehands brought on a barn and a silo and a windmill.

 

* * *

 

Even with both window fans on, it was hot as hell in the apartment. Bill slammed the carriage over on the Remington Noiseless Portable and hit the margin set and typed:

 

MAJOR SPACER: CAREFUL. SOMETIMES THE SURFACE OF MARS CAN LOOK AS ORDINARY AS A DESERT IN ARIZONA.

 

He got up and went to the kitchen table, picked up the bottle of Old Harper, poured some in a coffee cup and knocked it back.

There. That was better.

On TV, Haystacks Calhoun and Duke Kehanamuka were both working over Gorgeous George, while Gorilla Monsoon argued with the referee, whose back was to the action. Every time one of them twisted George’s arm or leg, the announcer, Dennis James, snapped a chicken bone next to the mike.

 

* * *

 

“Look at this,” said Morgan, the next morning.

It was a handwritten note.

 

I know your show is full of commies. My brother-in-law told me you have commie actors. Thank God for people like Senator McCarthy who will run you rats out of this land of Liberty and Freedom.

 

Signed,
A Real American

 

“Put it in the circular file,” said Bill.

“I’ll keep it,” said Morgan. “Who are they talking about?”

“You tell me. I’m not old enough to be a communist.”

“Could it be true?” asked Morgan.

“Don’t tell me you’re listening to all that crap, too?”

“There’s been a couple of newsletters coming around, with names of people on it. I know some of them; they give money to the NAACP and ACLU. Otherwise they live in big houses and drive big cars and order their servants around like Daddy Warbucks. But then, I don’t know all the names on the lists.”

“Is anybody we ever hired on any of the lists?”

“Not as such,” said Morgan.

“Well, then?”

“Well, then,” said Morgan, and picked up a production schedule. “Well, then, nothing, I guess, Bill.”

“Good,” said Bill. He picked up the letter from Morgan’s desk, wadded it into a ball, and drop-kicked it into the wastebasket.

 

* * *

 

The hungover Montgomery Clift reeled by on his way to the Friday performance of the disaster of a play he was in. Bill waved, but Clift didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on some far distant promontory fifty miles up the Hudson, if they were working at all. Clift had been one intense, conflicted, messed-up individual when Bill had first met him. Then he had gone off to Hollywood and discovered sex and booze and drugs and brought them with him back to Broadway.

Ahead of Bill was the hotel where the congressmen and lawyers waited.

 

* * *

Counsel (Mr. Eclept): Now that you have taken the oath, give your full name and age for the record.

S: Major William Spacer. I’m twenty-one years old.

E: No, sir. Not your stage name.

S: Major William Spacer. That’s my real name.

Congressman Beenz: You mean Major Spacer isn’t just the show name?

S: Well, sir, it is and it isn’t . . . Most people just think we gave me a promotion over Captain Video.

Congressman Rice: How was it you were named Major?

S: You would have had to have asked my parents that; unfortunately they’re deceased. I have an aunt in Kansas who might be able to shed some light . . .

 

 

* * *

S: That’s not the way it’s done, Congressman.

B: You mean you just can’t fly out to the Big Dipper, once you’re in space?

S: Well, you can, but they’re . . . they’re light years apart. They . . . they appear to us as The Big Dipper because we’re looking at them from Earth.

R: I’m not sure I understand, either.

S: It . . . it’s like that place in . . . Vermont, New Hampshire, one of those. North of here, anyway. You come around that turn in Rt 9A or whatever, and there’s Abraham Lincoln, the head, the hair, the beard. It’s so real you stop. Then you drive down the road a couple hundred yards, and the beard’s a plum thicket on a meadow, and the hair’s pine trees on a hill, and the nose is on one mountain, but the rest of the face is on another. It only looks like Lincoln from that one spot in the road. That’s why the Big Dipper looks that way from Earth.

B: I do not know how we got off on this . . .

S: I’m trying to answer your questions here, sir.

E: Perhaps we should get to the substantive matters here . . .

 

 

* * *

S: All I’ve noticed, counsel, is that all the people who turn up as witnesses and accusers at these things seem to have names out of old W. C. Fields’ movies, names like R. Waldo Chubb and F. Clement Bozo.

E: I believe you’re referring to Mr. Clubb and Mr. Bozell?

S: I’m busy, Mr. Eclept; I only get to glance at newspapers. I’m concerned with the future, not what’s happening right this minute.

B: So are we, young man. That’s why we’re trying to root out any communist influence in the broadcast industry, so there won’t be any in the future.

R: We can’t stress that too forcefully.

S: Well, I can’t think of a single communist space pirate we’ve ever portrayed on the show. It takes place in the 21st Century, Congressman. So I guess we share the same future. Besides, last time I looked, piracy was a capitalist invention. . . .

 

 

* * *

S: That’s why we never have stories set further than Mars or Venus, Congressman. Most of the show takes place in near-space, or on the Moon. We try to keep the science accurate. That’s why there’s always a segment with me or Sam—that’s Samuel J. Shorts, the other writer on the show—by the way, he’s called “Uncle Sam” Spacer—telling kids about the future, and what it’ll be like to grow up in the wonderful years of the 21st Century.

B: If we don’t blow ourselves up first.

R: You mean if some foreign power doesn’t try to blow us up first.

S: Well, we’ve talked about the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Food preservation. Atomic-powered airplanes and cars. Nuclear fusion as a source of energy too cheap to meter.

E: Is it true you broadcast a show about a world government?

S: Not in the science segment, that I recall.

E: No. I mean the story, the entertainment part.

S: We’ve been on the air three months, that’s nearly sixty shows. Let me think . . .

E: A source has told us there’s a world government on the show.

S: Oh. It’s a worlds’ government, counsel. It’s the United States of Space. We assume there won’t be just one state on Mars, or the Moon, or Venus, and that they’ll have to come to the central government to settle their disputes. We have that on the Moon.

R: They have to go to the Moon to settle a dispute between Mars and the United States?

S: No, no. That would be like France suing Wisconsin. . . .

 

 

* * *

B: “ . . . and other red channels.” And that’s a direct quote.

S: Congressman, I created the show; I act in it; I write either half the scripts, or one-half of each script, whichever way it works out that week. I do this five days a week, supposedly for fifty weeks a year—we’ll see if I make it that long. I’ve given the day-to-day operations, all the merchandising negotiations to my partner, James B. Morgan. We have a small cast with only a few recurring characters, and except for the occasional Martian bad guy, or Lunar owl-hoot, they’re all known to me. I never ask anybody about their politics or religion. All I want to know is whether they can memorize lines quick, and act in a tight set, under time pressure, live, with a camera stuck in their ear. The only thing red we have anything to do with is Mars. And it isn’t channels; it’s canals. . . .

 

 

* * *

S: . . . I have no knowledge of any. I’ll tell you what, right now, Congressman, I’ll bet my show on it. You come up with any on the cast and crew, I’ll withdraw the show.

B: We’ll hold you to that, young man.

R: I want to thank you for appearing for this deposition today, and for being so forthcoming with us, Mr. Spacer.

B: I agree.

R: You are excused.

 

 

* * *

 

There was one reporter waiting outside in the hallway, besides the government goon keeping everyone out.

The reporter was the old kind, press card stuck in his hat, right out of The Front Page.

“Got any statement, Mr. Spacer?”

“Well, as you know, I can’t talk about what I said till the investigation’s concluded. They asked me questions. I answered them as best as I could.”

“What sort of questions?”

“I’m sure you can figure that out. You’ve seen the televised hearings?”

“What were they trying to find out?” asked the reporter.

“I’m not sure . . .” said Bill.

The government goon smiled. When he and the reporter parted ways in the lobby, Bill was surprised that it was already summer twilight. He must have been in there five or six hours. . . . He took off for the studio, to find out what kind of disaster the broadcast with Zach Glass had been.

 

* * *

 

Bill wiggled his toes in his socks, including the stump of the little one on the right foot, a souvenir from a Boy Scout hatchet-throwing contest gone wrong back when he was twelve.

He was typing while he watched Blues By Bargy on TV. Saturday night noise came from outside.

Then the transmission was interrupted with a PLEASE STAND BY notice. Douglas Edwards came on with a special bulletin, which he ripped out of the chundering teletype machine at his right elbow.

He said there were as yet unconfirmed reports that North Korean Armed Forces had crossed into South Korea. President Truman, who was on a weekend trip to his home in Independence, Missouri, had not been reached by CBS for a comment. Then he said they would be interrupting regularly scheduled programming if there were further developments.

Then they went back to Blues by Bargy.

 

* * *

 

“Look,” said Phil. “James, you gotta get those rehearsing assholes outta here, I mean, out of here, earlier. When I came in Saturday to set up, I found they used all the drop-pipes for their show. I had to make them move a quarter of their stuff. They said they needed them all. I told ’em to put wheels on their stuff like we’re having to do with most of ours, but we still need some pipes to drop in the exteriors, and to mask the sets off. And they’re hanging around with their girlfriends and boyfriends, while I’m trying to set up marks.

It was Sunday, the start of their week at the Ziegfeld Roof. They were to block out Monday’s and Tuesday’s shows, rehearse them, and do the run-through and technical for Monday’s broadcast.

“I’ll talk to their stage manager,” said Morgan. “Believe me, moving here gripes me as much as it does you. Where’s Elizabeth?”

“Here,” said Elizabeth Regine, coming out of the dressing room in her rehearsal Neptuna outfit. “I couldn’t believe this place when I got here.”

“Believe it, baby,” said Phil. “We’ve got to make do.” He looked at his watch. “Bill, I think the script may be a little long, just looking at it.”

“Same as always. Twenty-four pages.”

“Yeah, but you got suspense stuff in there. That’s thirty seconds each. Be thinking about it while we’re blocking it.”

“You’re the director, Phil.”

“That’s what you and James pay me for.” He looked over at the stage crew. “No!” he said. “ Right one, left one, right one,” he moved his hands.

“That’s what they are,” said the foreman.

“No, you got left, right, left.”

The guy, Harvey, joined him to look at the wheeled sets. “Left,” he pointed to the rocket interior. “Right,” the command room on the Moon. “Left,” the foreground scenery and the rocket fin for the Mars scenes.

“And from whence does the rest of the Mars set drop in?” asked Phil.

“Right. Oh, merde!” said Harve.

“And they’re the best crew on television,” said Phil, as the stagehands ratcheted the scenery around. “They really are,” he said, turning back to Bill and Morgan. “That way we stay on the rocket interior, and you leave, run behind the middle set, and step down onto Mars, while the spacephone chatters away. Also, you’ll be out of breath, so it’ll sound like you just climbed down fifty feet of ladder. . . .”

 

* * *

 

It was seven when they finished the blocking, two rehearsals, and the run-through of the first show of the week. Phil was right, the script was one minute and fifty-three seconds long.

Bill looked at the camera ramp. “I still want to do something with that,” he said, “while we’ve got it.”

“Wednesday,” said Phil.

“Why Wednesday?”

“You got a blast-off scene. We do it from the front. We get the scenery guy to build a nose view of the ship. Red Mars background behind. Like the ship from above. You and Neptuna stand behind it, looking out the cockpit. You count down. Harvey hits the C02 extinguisher behind you for rocket smoke. I get Harry or Fred to run at you with the camera as fast as he can, from way back there. Just before he collides, we cut to the telecine chain for the commercial.”

“Marry me,” said Bill.

“Some other time,” said Phil. “Everybody back at 4:00 P.M. tomorrow. Everything’s set. Don’t touch a goddamn thing before you leave.”

 

* * *

 

Toast of the Town, hosted by Ed Sullivan, was on TV.

Señor Wences was having a three-way conversation with Johnny (which was his left hand rested on top of a doll body); Pedro, the head in the cigar box; and a stagehand who was down behind a crate, supposedly fixing a loose board with a hammer.

Halfway through the act, two stagehands came out, picked up the crate, showing it was empty, and walked off, leaving a bare stage.

“Look. Look!” said Johnny, turning his fist-head on the body that way. “There was not a man there.”

“There was no man there?” asked Wences.

“No,” said Johnny. “There was not a man there.”

“What do you t’ink, Pedro?” asked Wences, opening the box with his right hand.

“S’awright,” said Pedro. The box snapped shut.

 

* * *

 

“Come in here,” said Morgan from the door of his makeshift office, as Bill came into the theater.

Sam was in a chair, crying.

Morgan’s face was set, as Bill had never seen before. “Tell him what you just told me.”

“I can’t,” Sam wailed. “What am I gonna do? I’m forty years old!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that back in 1931.”

“What the hell is going on? Sam! Sam? Talk to me.”

“Oh, Bill,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Somebody. One of you. Start making sense. Right now,” said Bill.

“Mr. Sam Shorts, here, seems to have been a commie bagman during the Depression.”

“Say it ain’t so, Sam,” said Bill.

Sam looked at him. Tears started down his face again.

“There’s your answer,” said Morgan, running his hands through his hair and looking for something to throw.

“I was young,” said Sam. “I was so hungry. I swore I’d never be that hungry again. I was too proud for the bread line, a guy offered me a job, if you can call it that, moving some office stuff. Then as a sort of messenger. Between his office and other places. Delivering stuff. I thought it was some sort of bookie joint or numbers running, or money laundering, or the bootleg. Something illegal, sure . . . but . . . but . . . I didn’t . . . didn’t . . .”

“What? What!”

“I didn’t think it was anything un-American!” said Sam, crying again.

“Morgan. Tell me what he told you.”

“He was a bagman, a messenger between United Front stuff the Feds know about and some they probably don’t. He did it for about three years—”

“Four,” said Sam, trying to control himself.

“Great,” continued Morgan. “Four years, on and off. Then somebody pissed him off and he walked away.”

“Just because they were reds,” said Sam, “didn’t make ’em good bosses.”

Bill hated himself for asking; he thought of Parnell Thomas and McCarthy.

“Did you sign anything?”

“I may have. I signed a lot of stuff to get paid.”

“Under your real name?”

“I guess so. Some, anyway.”

“Guess what name they had him use sometime?” asked Morgan.

“I don’t want to,” said Bill.

“George Crosley.”

“That was one of the names Whittaker Chambers used!” said Bill.

“They weren’t the most inventive guys in the world,” said Morgan.

“I knew. I knew the jig would be up when I watched the Hiss thing,” said Sam. “When I heard that name. Then nothing happened. I guess I thought nothing would . . .”

“How could you do this to me?!!” yelled Bill.

“You? You were a one-year-old! I didn’t know you! It wasn’t personal, Bill. You either, Morgan.”

“You know I put my show on the line in the deposition, don’t you?”

“Not till Morgan told me.” Sam began to cry again.

“What brought on this sudden cleansing, now, twenty years later?” asked Bill.

“There was another letter,” said Morgan. “This time naming a name, not the right one, but it won’t take anybody long to figure that one out. Also that they were calling the Feds. I was looking at it, and looking glum, when Sam comes in. He asks what’s up; I asked him if he knew anybody by the name of the guy in the letter, and he went off like the Hindenburg. A wet Hindenburg.”

Sam was crying again.

Bill’s shoulders slumped.

“Okay, Morgan. Call everybody together. I’ll talk to them. Sam, quit it. Quit it. You’re still a great writer. Buck up. We’ll get through this. Nothing’s happened yet. . . .”

 

* * *

 

Live. The pressure’s on, like always. Everybody’s a pro here, even with this world falling apart. Harry and Fred on the cameras, Phil up in the booth, Morgan with him, Sam out there where the audience would be, going through the scripts for Thursday and Friday like nothing’s happened.

He and Elizabeth, as Neptuna, are in the rocket interior set, putting on their spacesuits, giving their lines. Bill’s suit wasn’t going on right; he made a small motion with his hand; Fred moved his camera in tight on Bill’s face; Philip would switch to it, or Harry’s shot on Neptuna’s face; the floor manager reached up while Bill was talking and pulled at the lining of the spacesuit, and it went on smoothly; the floor manager crawled out and Fred pulled his camera back again to a two-shot. Then he and Neptuna moved into the airlock; it cycled closed. Harry swung his camera around to the grille of the spacephone speaker; an urgent message came from it, warning Major Spacer that a big Martian dust storm was building up in their area.

While the voice was coming over the speaker in the tight shot, Bill and Elizabeth walked behind the Moon command center flats and hid behind the rocket fin while the stage crew dropped in the Martian exterior set and the boom man wheeled the microphone around and Fred dollied his camera in.

“Is Sam okay?” Elizabeth had asked, touching her helmet to Bill’s before the soundman got there.

“I hope so,” said Bill.

He looked out. The floor manager, who should have been counting down on his fingers five-four-three-two-one was standing stock still. Fred’s camera wobbled—and he was usually the steadiest man in the business.

The floor manager pulled off his earphones, shrugged his shoulders, and swung his head helplessly toward the booth.

It’s got to be time, thought Bill; touched Elizabeth on the arm, and gave his line, backing down off a box behind the fin out onto the set.

“Careful,” he said. “Sometimes the surface of Mars can look as ordinary as a desert in Arizona.”

Elizabeth, who was usually unflappable, stared, eyes wide past him at the exterior set. And dropped her Neptuna character, and instead of her line, said: “And sometimes it looks just like Iowa.”

Bill turned.

Instead of a desert, and a couple of twisted Martian cacti and a backdrop of Monument Valley, there was the butt-end of a big cow and a barn and silo, some chickens, and a three-rail fence.

 

* * *

 

Bill sat in the dressing room, drinking Old Harper from the bottle.

Patti Page was on the radio, singing of better days.

There was a knock on the door.

It was the government goon. He was smiling. There was one subpoena for Bill, and one for Sam Shorts.

 

 

June 2000

B ILL CAME OUT THE FRONT DOOR of the apartments on his way to his job as a linotype operator at the New York Times.

There were, as usual, four or five kids on the stoop, and as usual, too, Rudy, a youngster of fifty years, was in the middle of his rant, holding up two twenty-dollar bills.

“ . . . that there was to trace the dope, man. They changed the money so they could find out where all them coke dollars were. That plastic thread shit in this one, that was the laser radar stuff. They could roll a special truck down your street, and tell what was a crack house by all the eyeball noise that lit up their screens. And the garage-sale people and the flea-market people. They could find that stuff— Hey, Bill—”

“Hey, Rudy.”

“—before it All Quit they was goin’ to be able to count the ones in your billfold from six blocks away, man.”

“Why was that, Rudy?” asked a girl-kid.

“ ’Cause they wasn’t enough money! They printed the stuff legit but it just kept going away. It was in the quote ‘underground economy.’ They said it was so people couldn’t counterfeit it on a Savin’ 2300 or somebullshit, or the camel-jocks couldn’t flood the PXs with fake stuff, but it was so they didn’t have to wear out a lotta shoe leather and do lotsa Hill Street Blues wino-cop type stuff just to get to swear out a lot of warrants. See, that machine in that truck make noise, they take a printout of that to a judge, and pretty soon door hinges was flyin’ all over town. Seen ’em take two blocks out at one time, man. Those was evil times, be glad they gone.”

“So are we, Rudy; we’re glad they can’t do that even though we never heard of it.”

“You just wait your young ass,” said Rudy. “Some devious yahoo in Baltimore workin’ on that right now; they had that knowledge once, it don’t just go away, it just mutates, you know. They’ll find a way to do that with vacuum tubes and such . . .”

Rudy’s voice faded as Bill walked on down toward the corner. Rudy gave some version of that talk, somewhere in the neighborhood, every day. Taking the place of Rudy was the voice from the low-power radio station speakerbox on the corner.

“ . . . that the person was dressed in green pants, a yellow Joe Camel tyvek jacket, and a black T-shirt. The wallet grab occurred four minutes ago at the corner of Lincoln and Jackson, neighbors are asked to be on the lookout for this person, and to use the nearest call-box to report a sighting. Now back to music, from a V-disk transcription, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra with “In the Mood.”

Music filled the air. Coming down the street was a 1961 armored car, the Wells-Fargo logo spray-painted over, and a cardboard sign saying TAXI over the high windshield. On the front bumper was a sticker that said SCREW THE CITY TAXI COMMISSION.

Bill held up his hand. The car rumbled over to the curb.

“Where to, kindly old geezer?”

Bill said the Times Building, which was about thirty blocks away.

“What’s it worth to you, Pops?”

“How about a buck?” said Bill.

“Real money?”

“Sure.”

“Hop in, then. Gotta take somebody up here a couple blocks, and there’ll be one stop on the way, so far.”

Bill went around back, opened the door and got in, nodding to the other two passengers. He was at work in fifteen minutes.

 

* * *

 

It was a nice afternoon, so when Bill got off work he took the omnibus to the edge of the commercial district, got off there and started walking home. Since it was summer, there seemed to be a street fair every other block. He could tell when he passed from one neighborhood to another by the difference in the announcer voices on the low-power stations.

He passed Ned Ludd’s Store #23, and the line, as usual, was backed out the door onto the sidewalk, and around the corner of the building. In the display window were stereo phonographs and records, transistor radios, batteries, toaster ovens, and none-cable-ready TVs, including an old Philco with the picture tube supported above the console like a dresser mirror.

Some kids were in line, talking, melancholy looks on their faces, about something. “It was called Cargo Cult,” said one. “You were on an island, with a native culture, and then WWII came, and the people tried to get cargo, you know, trade goods, and other people were trying to get them to keep their native ways . . .”

“Plus,” said the second kid, “you got to blow up a lotta Japanese soldiers and eat them!”

“Sounds neat,” said the third, “but I never heard of it.”

A guy came out of the tavern next door, a little unsteady, and stopped momentarily, like Bill, like everyone else who passed, to watch the pixievision soap opera playing in black and white.

The guy swayed a little, listening to the kids’ conversation; then a determined smile came across his face.

“Hey, kids,” he said.

They stopped talking and looked at him. One said “Yeah?”

The man leaned forward. “Triple picture-in-picture,” he said.

Their faces fell.

He threw back his head and laughed, then put his hands in his pockets and weaved away.

On TV, there was a blank screen while they changed the pixievision tapes by hand, something they did every eight-and-a-half minutes.

Bill headed on home.

 

* * *

 

He neared his block, tired from the walk and his five-hour shift at the paper. He almost forgot Tuesday was mail day until he was in sight of the apartments, then walked back to the Postal Joint. For him there was a union meeting notice, in case he hadn’t read the bulletin board at work, and that guy from Ohio was bothering him again with letters asking him questions for the biography of James Dean he’d been researching since 1989, most of which Bill had answered in 1989.

He was halfway back to the apartments, just past the low-power speaker, when six men dragged a guy, in ripped green pants and what was left of a Joe Camel jacket, out onto the corner, pushed the police button, and stood on the guy’s hands and feet, their arms crossed, talking about a neighborhood fast-pitch softball game coming up that night.

Bill looked back as he crossed the street. A squad car pulled up and the guys all greeted the policemen.

 

* * *

 

“Today was mail day, right kids?” said Rudy. “Well in the old days the Feds set up Postal Joint-type places, you know, The Stamp Act, Box Me In, stuff like that, to scam the scammers that was scammin’ you. That shoulda been fine, but they was readin’ like everybody’s mail, like Aunt Gracie’s to you, and yours to her, and you know, your girlfriend’s and boyfriend’s to you, and lookin’ at the Polaroids and stuff, which you sometimes wouldn’t get, you dig? See, when they’s evil to be fought, you can’t be doin’ evil to get at it. Don’t be lettin’ nobody get your mail—there’s a man to see you in the lobby, Bill—”

“Thanks, Rudy.”

“—and don’t be readin’ none that ain’t yours. It’s a fool that gets scammed; you honest, you don’t be fallin’ for none o’ that stuff like free boats and cars and beautiful diamond-studded watches, you know?”

“Sure, Rudy,” said the kids.

 

* * *

 

The guy looked at something in his hand, then back at Bill, squinted and said: “Are you Major Spacer?”

“Nobody but a guy in Ohio’s called me that for fifty years,” said Bill.

“Arnold Fossman,” said the guy, holding out his hand. Bill shook it.

“Who you researching? Monty Clift?”

“Huh? No,” said Fossman. He seemed perplexed, then brightened. “I want to offer you a job, doesn’t pay much.”

“Son, I got a good-payin’ job that’ll last me way to the end of my time. Came out of what I laughingly call retirement to do it.”

“Yeah, somebody told me about you being at the Times, with all the old people with the old skills they called back. I don’t think this’ll interfere with that.”

“I’m old and I’m tired and I been setting a galley and a quarter an hour for five hours. Get to it.”

“I want to offer you an acting job.”

“I haven’t acted in fifty years, either.”

“They tell me it’s just like riding a bicycle. You . . . you might think—wait. Hold on. Indulge me just a second.” He reached up and took Bill’s rimless Trotsky glasses from his face.

“Whup!” said Bill.

Fossman took off his own thick black-rimmed glasses and put them over Bill’s ears. The world was skewed up and to the left and down to the right and Fossman was a tiny figure in the distance.

“I ain’t doin’ anything with these glasses on!” said Bill. “I’m afraid to move.”

The dim fuzzy world came back, then the sharp normal one as Fossman put Bill’s glasses back on him.

“I was getting a look at you with thick frames. You’ll be great.”

“I’m a nice guy,” said Bill. “You don’t get to the point, I’ll do my feeble best to pound you into this floor here like a tent peg.”

“Okay.” Fossman held up his hand. “But hear me out completely. Don’t say a word till I’m through. Here goes.

“I want to offer you a job in a play, a musical. Everybody says I’m crazy to do it; I’ve had the idea for years, and now’s the time to do it, with everything like it is. I’ve got the place to do it in, and you know there’s an audience for anything that moves. Then I found out a couple of weeks ago my idea ain’t so original, that somebody tried to do it a long time ago; it closed out of town in Bristol, CT, big flop. But your name came up in connection with it; I thought maybe you had done the show originally, and then they told me why your name always came up in connection with it—the more I heard, and found out you were still around, the more I knew you had to be in it, as some sort of, well, call it what you want—homage, reparation, I don’t know. I’m the producer-guy, not very good with words. Anyway. I’m doing a musical based on the paintings of Grant Wood. I want you to be in it. Will you?”

“Sure,” said Bill.

 

* * *

 

It was a theater not far from work, a 500-seater.

“Thank God it’s not the Ziegfeld Roof,” said Bill. He and Fossman were sitting, legs draped into the orchestra pit, at the stage apron.

“Yeah, well, that’s been gone a long time.”

“They put it under the wrecking ball while I was a drunk, or so they told me,” said Bill.

“And might I ask how long that was?” asked Fossman.

“Eight years, three months, and two days,” said Bill. “God, I sound like a reformed alcoholic. Geez, they’re boring.”

“Most people don’t have what it really takes to be an alcoholic,” said Fossman. “I was the son of one, a great one, and I know how hard you’ve got to work at it.”

“I had what it takes,” said Bill. “I just got tired of it.”

 

* * *

 

He heard on the neighborhood radio there had been a battery riot in the Battery.

Bill stretched himself, and did some slow exercises. Fifty years of moving any old which way didn’t cure itself in a few days.

He went over to the mirror and looked at himself.

The good-looking fair-haired youth had been taken over by a balding old man.

 

* * *

 

“Hello,” said Marion.

“Hello yourself,” said Bill, as he passed her on his way to work. She was getting ready to leave for her job at the library, where every day she took down books, went through the information on the copyright page, and typed it up on two 4x6 cards, one of which was put in a big series of drawers in the entryway, where patrons could find what books were there without looking on all the shelves, and one of which was sent to the central library system.

She lived in one of the apartments downstairs from Bill. She once said the job would probably take herself, and three others, more than a year, just at her branch. She was a youngster in her forties.

 

* * *

 

Bill found rehearsals the same mixture of joy and boredom they had been a half-century before, with the same smells of paint and turpentine coming from the scene shop. The cast had convinced Arnold to direct the play, rather than hiring some schmuck, as he’d originally wanted to do. He’d conceived it; it was his vision.

During a break one night, Bill lay on the floor; Arnold slumped in a chair, and Shirlene, the lead dancer, lay face down on the sofa with a migraine. Bill chuckled, he thought, to himself.

“What’s up?” asked Fossman.

“It was probably just like this in rehearsals when Plautus was sitting where you are.”

“Guess so.”

“Were there headaches then?” asked Shirlene.

“Well, there were in my day, and that wasn’t too long after the Romans,” said Bill. “One of our cameramen had them.” He looked around. “Thanks, Arnold.”

“For what?”

“For showing me how much I didn’t remember I missed this stuff.”

“Well, sure,” said Fossman. “OK, folks, let’s get back to the grind. Shirlene, lie there till you feel better.”

She got to her feet. “I’ll never feel better,” she said.

 

* * *

 

“See—” said Rudy—“it was on January third, and everybody was congratulatin’ themselves on beatin’ that ol’ Y2K monster, and was throwin’ out them ham and lima bean MREs into the dumpsters. Joyful, you know—another Kohoutek, that was a comet that didn’t amount to a bird fart back in them way old ’70s. Anyway, it was exactly at 10:02 A.M. EST right here, when them three old surplus Russian-made diesel submarines that somebody—and nobody’s still sure just who—bought up back in the 1990s surfaced in three places around the world—and fired off them surplus NASA booster rockets, nine or ten of ’em—”

“Why ’cause we know that, Rudy, if we don’t know who did it?”

“ ’Cause everybody had electric stuff back then could tell what kind of damn watch you was wearin’ from two hundred miles out in space by how fast it was draggin’ down that 1.5-volt battery in it. They knew the subs was old Russian surplus as soon as they surfaced, and knew they was NASA boosters as soon as the fuses was lit—’cause that’s the kind of world your folks let happen for you to live in—that’s why ’cause.”

“Oh.”

“As old Rudy was sayin’, them nine or ten missiles, some went to the top of the atmosphere, and some went further out where all them ATT and HBO and them satellites that could read your watch was, and they all went off and meanwhile everybody everywhere was firin’ off all they stuff to try to stop whatever was gonna happen—well, when all that kind of stuff went off, and it turns out them sub missiles was big pulse explosions, what they used to call EMP stuff, and all the other crap went off that was tryin’ to stop the missiles, well then, kids, Time started over as far as ol’ Rudy’s concerned. Not just for the US of A and Yooropeans, but for everybody everywhere, even down to them gentle Tasaday and every witchety grub-eatin’ sonofagun down under.”

“Time ain’t started over, Rudy,” said a kid. “This is Tuesday. It’s June. This is the year 2000 A.D.”

“Sure, sure. On the outside,” said Rudy. “I’m talkin’ ’bout the inside. We can do it all over again. Or not. Look, people took a week to find out what still worked, when what juice there was gonna be came back on. See, up till then they all thought them EMP pulses would just knock out everything, everywhere that was electronic, solid state stuff, transistors. That’s without takin’ into account all that other crap that was zoomin’ around, and people tryin’ to jam stuff, and all that false target shit they put up cause at first they thought it was a sneak attack on cities and stuff, and they just went, you know, apeshit for about ten minutes.

“So what was left was arbitrary. Like nobody could figure why Betamax players sometimes was okay and no Beta III VCR was. Your CDs are fine; you just can’t play ’em. Then why none of them laserdiscs are okay, even if you had a machine that would play ’em? It don’t make a fuckin’ bit o’ sense. Why icemaker refrigerators sometimes work and most others don’t? You can’t get no fancy embroidery on your fishing shirt: It all come out lookin’ like Jackson Pollock. No kind of damn broadcast TV for a week, none of that satellite TV shit, for sure. Ain’t no computers work but them damn Osbornes they been usin’ to build artificial reefs in lakes for twenty years. Cars? You seen anything newer than a 1974 Subaru on the street, movin’? Them ’49 Plymouths and ’63 Fords still goin’, cause they ain’t got nothin’ in them that don’t move you can’t fix with a pair o’ Vise Grips . . .

“Look at the damn mail we was talking about! Ain’t nobody in the Post Office actually had to read a damn address in ten years; you bet your ass they gotta read writin’ now! Everybody was freaked out. No e-mail, no phone, no fax, ain’t no more Click On This, kids. People all goin’ crazy till they start gettin’ them letters from Visa and Mastercard and such sayin’ ‘Hey, we hear you got an account with us? Why doncha tell us what you owe us, and we’ll start sendin’ you bills again?’ Well, that was one thing they liked sure as shit. They still waitin’ for their new cards with them raised-up letters you run through a big ol’ machine, but you know what? They think about sixty to seventy percent o’ them people told them what they owed them. Can you beat that? People’s mostly honest, ’ceptin’ the ones that ain’t. . . .

“That’s why you gettin’ mail twice a week now, not at your house but on the block, see? You gonna have to have some smart people now; that’s why I’m tellin’ you all this.”

“Thanks, Rudy,” said a kid.

“Now that they ain’t but four million people in this popsicle town, you got room to learn, room to move around some. All them scaredy cats took off for them wild places, like Montana, Utah, New Jersey. Now you got room to breathe, maybe one o’ you gonna figure everything out someday, kid. That’ll be thanks enough for old Rudy. But this time, don’t mess up. Keep us fuckin’ human— Morning, Bill—”

“Morning, Rudy.”

“—and another thing. No damn cell phones. No damn baby joggers or double fuckin’ wide baby strollers. No car alarms!”

 

* * *

 

Opening night.

The dancers are finishing the Harvest Dinner dance, like Oklahoma! or “ June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” on speed. It ends with a blackout. The packed house goes crazy.

Spotlight comes up on center stage.

Bill stands beside Shirlene. He’s dressed in bib overalls and a black jacket and holds a pitchfork. She’s in a simple farm dress. Bill wears thick glasses. He looks just like the dentist B.H. McKeeby, who posed as the farmer, and Shirlene looks just like Nan Wood, Grant’s sister, who posed as the farmer’s spinster daughter, down to the pulled-back hair, and the cameo brooch on the dress.

Then the lights come up on stage, and Bill and Shirlene turn to face the carpenter-gothic farmhouse, with the big arched window over the porch.

Instead of it, the backdrop is a painting from one of the Mars Lander photos of a rocky surface.

Bill just stopped.

There was dead silence in the theater, then a buzz, then sort of a louder sound; then some applause started, and grew and grew, and people came to their feet, and the sound rose and rose.

Bill looked over. Shirlene was smiling, and tears ran down her cheeks. Then the house set dropped in, with a working windmill off to the side, and the dancers ran on from each wing, and they did, along with Bill, the Pitchfork Number.

The lights went down, Bill came off the stage, and the chorus ran on for the Birthplace of Herbert Hoover routine.

Bill put his arms around Fossman’s shoulders.

“You . . . you . . . asshole,” said Bill.

“If you would have known about it, you would have fucked it up,” said Arnold.

“But . . . how . . . the audience . . . ?”

“We slipped a notice in the programs, just for the opening, which is why you didn’t see one. Might I say your dancing was superb tonight?”

“No. No,” said Bill, crying. “Kirk Alyn, the guy who played Superman in the serials in the Forties, now there was a dancer . . .”

 

* * *

 

On his way home that night, he saw that a kid had put up a new graffiti on the official site, and had run out of paint at the end, so the message read “What do we have left they could hate us” and then the faded letters, from the thinning and upside-down spray can, “f o r ?”

Right on, thought Bill. Fab. Gear. Groovy.

At work the next day, he found himself setting the galleys of the rave review of Glorifying the American Gothic, by the Times’ drama critic.

 

* * *

 

And on a day two months later:

“And now!” said the off-pixievision-camera announcer, “Live! On Television! Major Spacer in the 21st Century!”

 

* * *

 

“ . . . tune in tomorrow, when you’ll hear Major Spacer say:

 

WE’LL GET BACK TO THE MOON IF WE HAVE TO RETROFIT EVERY ICBM IN THE JUNKPILE WITH DUCT TAPE AND SUPERGLUE.

 

“Don’t miss it. And now, for today’s science segment, we go to the Space Postal Joint, with Cadet Rudy!” said the announcer.

Rudy: “Hey, kids. Listen to ol’ Rudy. Your folks tried hard but they didn’t know their asses from holes in the ground when it came to some things. They didn’t mean to mess your world up; they just backed into one that could be brought down in thirty seconds ’cause it was the easiest thing to do. Remember the words of Artoo Deetoo Clarke: ‘With increasin’ technology, you headin’ for a fall.’ Now listen how it could be in this excitin’ world of the future . . .”

 

* * *

 

A few years later, after Bill and the show and Rudy were gone, some kid, who’d watched it every day, figured everything out.

And kept us human.