“Sure you did. You kept Chick from thinking too much.”
“Why didn’t you just put a clothespin on his nose?”
“Trust me, Oly. You were useful.”
From the journal of Norval Sanderson:
“
In the night, while they slept, he went among them and took their swords and shields and stacked them in a ditch by the road. He bound their hands and feet as they lay dreaming. They woke lying in rows on the death cart and their first sight was the body of their leader spread and bound on the great wheel before their eyes, his many wounds dripping into the dust.…”
Which is the way all coups and counter-coups should be accomplished — fast and quiet with only the guilty suffering. I have to hand it to young Arty. He might have made a grand South American general. He went fast and hard through the Arturan camp last night, checking off the names on his “disaffected” list. Seventy people left the camp, escorted by the guards and handed a refund check for whatever they’d paid as an admission fee. Down the road they went, grumbling in their vans and station wagons. but, if they have any sense at all, they know they got off light and lucky
.
If I hadn’t been at the road myself to watch them go I might have speculated otherwise. There will certainly be rumors that Arty was less than fastidious in his techniques — that some were brutalized or even murdered. I might, I say, have considered the possibility myself. But the angry frustration on those faces wasn’t fear. Miz Z. handed out the refund envelopes at the gate, and Arty parked in his chair by the Arturan Administration Office (the camper on the green Dodge pickup) to supervise — a guard beside him and others trotting up and away again for instructions or to report. Altogether an orderly and discreet process. When I wandered up to him he greeted me calmly. “Just quelling this little revolt, Norval,” he said
.
“What about the high priestess? Won’t she fuss?” I asked. It seemed unlike the good doc to give up just because she’d lost her army. The primary weapon she held was her own surgical strike
.
“Dr. Phyllis is being taken care of,” he told me. A guard ran up to say, “That’s the lot,” and Arty headed for the operating theater. I tagged along but he made me wait outside by his chair with the guard while he went up. I stood around listening to the surgery generator hum. Eddie, the guard, sat down in Arty’s chair and dozed. I wandered home, composing imaginary coverage of Arty’s repression of the Great Lobotomy Schism. I didn’t discover Doc P.’s fate until this morning
.
I took a tour of the Arturan camp early and watched the holes in the line close up. All the gaps left by the deserting schismatics — tent spaces, parking spots — that called attention to their emptiness like missing teeth have been sponged away. Miz Z. simply walked the lines and told everyone to move over and fill them. One fight broke out when a novice backed his scrofulous Volkswagen into one of the Harley sidecars, leaving a discernible dent. The other Arturans quickly subdued the irritated Harley owners and the rest of the morning proceeded in untrammeled harmony with much delighted gossiping: “That Arturo! He’s a pisser!” “He showed ’em the road and told ’em they were welcome to it.” “A relief, really. They were disruptive, arrogant. Definitely interfered with my P.I.P.” “Them types wouldn’t be happy anywhere.” “They’ll be causing trouble in some hallelujah bin next.…”
Miz Z. came clapping her hands down the line around noon saying there would be a special Aqua Man service at 1
P.M
. They all scurried for clean bandages, barking at the novices to get ready
.
It was a short service with only the Admitted admitted. Arty came in to a tape of “The Ride of the Valkyries” and a roar of bubbles that subsided to reveal him floating in a hot-pink spotlight. He had a lot of gleam gunk on for the occasion and he made one of his more dynamic impressions. His talk was actually a chant — rhythmic: “She served us — she served us all — now we serve her,” while an honor guard of one-fingered novices rolled out a wheeled cot with what remained of Doc P. ensconced in white satin. Chick tagged along behind. When the cot stopped in front of Arty’s tank and the white spot hit it, Chick stepped up and peeled back the top sheet
.
The crowd of amputees took a minute to catch on to who it was lying trussed like a leg of lamb. No mask. No cap. Only the spectacles glinting over her closed eyes were familiar. A short mop of grey hair spread around her face. She was still completely out. Those glasses were as useful to her as shoes, right then, but Arty, the clever little snot, knew the folks would need something to pin her identity on. Arty waited while the murmurs started and spread. Finally somebody down front yelled, “Doc P.!” and the joint went up like an ammo dump
.
When the roar died down, the spectral voice of Arturo, from the glowing tank above the cot, introduced Doc P.’s replacement
.
“The Apprentice — the Student — the Assistant. Now come into his own with his first act, this, the ultimate service to his teacher!”
Chick was charming — flushed pink and gold — his child body bobbing in an embarrassed bow to the storm of applause. Funny how all the Arturans adore him. They’re delighted that he’s now the surgeon.
24. Catching His Shrieks in Cups of Gold
I’d expected Chick to fume endlessly about nipping Doc P. but he surprised me. In the act he was businesslike. Afterward he was gently nostalgic. He stood very close to her until the ambulance took her off. She was going to an Arturan rest home near Spokane. Chick also blossomed, as Mama would say, in his new fame as full-fledged surgeon. Arty claimed not to be surprised.
“That blush-and-shucks game of his was a dead giveaway. The kid always wanted an act of his own.”
An act he had. The Arturans treasured him. On his eleventh birthday he was in the surgery for fifteen hours straight. He had a talk with the nurse on the day he was named successor. That cool and efficient personage became his dog and priestess on the spot. She’d never cared for Doc P.’s bullying. The Arturans pestered him constantly. I’d laugh, seeing some patriarch in a wheelchair rolling madly to catch up with the barefoot towhead kid in the dusty coveralls, or the two hard-bitten motorcycle vets sitting on a trailer hitch so this scrawny runt of a kid could peer into their big spongy ears or lift up an eyelid to examine the exploded blood map underneath.
“Well,” Chick confessed, “I don’t need to touch them or even look at them to tell what’s wrong. But they like it, so I do it.”
They gave him no rest. Mama grumbled about his health and his lost childhood as she sewed baby clothes on her machine in the dining booth of the van.
“When does he climb trees? When does he sneak candy from the booths? Where are his friends to coax him into teasing the cats or giving Horst a hotfoot? They’ll drive him into the ground. They’ll suck him out of his natural growth. Look at his wrists and elbows! He’s knobby!”
Arty was pleased in a guarded way. He kept an eye on Chick in case delusions of grandeur should beset him, but privately Arty was convinced that with Chick as “The Knife” he was safe from revolutions. “He’s a loyal little insect,” Arty would grin. But Arty was intent on keeping the Arturan act solid. He toured the camp every day, supervised the office work, did his shows three times a week, conducted interviews, sent out advance men, advised Papa about the midway, and stayed away from Mama and Iphy.