‘What? Blood, Father, is Father Warren—?’
‘No prob, no sweat, just forgot to tell you I ordered this neat little unit, figured we could cycle a few pints right through him put it in these little plastic phials one drop each and — well don’t look at me like that, Sister, criminy! Not as if we’re taking anything away from him, he’ll still have blood of his own only we add a pint and drain off a — look, people hear about a stigmata first darn thing they want is a drop of the precious — okay never mind! Just tell me where I can contact this kid, one with the muscles. The natural.’
‘Natural? Father I don’t think—’
‘Natural, natural athlete, heck all these boogie kids are naturals. Point is this guy could make all the difference on the gridiron next season against St Larry’s — damn it I mean darn it, where is he?’
‘You must mean Roderick but he—’
‘Yeah Robert, where’s Robert?’
She waved, almost blessing him. ‘Gone, Father. Home or—’
‘Gone? Gone?’ He vanished and she could hear him bawling in the hallway:
‘ROBERT! Hey Robert, wait up!’
…his feet flapping down the stairs and hitting that miraculously shiny little patch of floor at the bottom… then a cry… a thump…
Then blessed silence.
‘Somebody oughta teach that nigger a lesson, knocking Father Owhatsit down the stairs like that, leaving him all paralysed from the waist up was it? Or down? Just who does this Doc Sam think he…’
‘Oh it wasn’t him, it was that other nigger one that’s been living in sin with Ma Wood, Violetta saw them… and anyway a man that wears a skirt and don’t like girls…’
‘Jake told me the Wood boy’s gone black, didn’t he used to be paralysed himself? Bobby Wood, used to be so paralysed they had to wheel him around in a little tank or…’
‘Jake’ll say anything, told me the kid was a two-headed robot, but listen before Doreen gets me under that drier and I can’t hear a thing, guess who asked Doc Sam to examine her the other day?’
‘Robots, shit we got enough damn robots out at the factory, Jap robots, German robots, reckon the machines is taking over all right, makes you wonder who won the damn war…’
‘Makes you wonder if these here Lewdites ain’t got something there, least they know the difference between a man and a god-durned wheel, but listen, my old lady says some nigger robot stuck a knife in Father O’Bride…’
‘Bob Wood? Yeah I heard that, same asshole knifed Father Warren a few months back ain’t it? Sure it is, hell they get away with murder these days… Not that I like Catlicks, only you let a bunch wild niggers run around with knives…’
‘Machines is taking over, hell they even got machines’ lib, no shit, my wife’s going to the Ladies’ Guild to hear one of ’em, makes you wonder who won… three beers here, Charlie?’
‘Trouble-maker from way back, remember when he was at the public school here, wrecked the damn computer, just went berserk and wrecked…’
‘Somebody oughta wreck him, you know? Somebody oughta teach that little shit a lesson.’
‘I blame his home background I mean what do you expect? I think I liked the other ones better dear, the uh pink frames with rhinestones? What do you expect? Ma and Pa Wood aren’t exactly, well I mean they’re communists for one thing, atheistic communists, dressing that kid of theirs up in that porno get-up for the Christmas play, no wonder he scared poor old Sister Martha to death… only what do you expect, anybody sets a big toilet out in their yard, health hazard the sheriff had to break it up, we saw the whole thing! And Herb says she oughta be locked up. Do you think the rhinestones are too…?’
‘Remember how she tried to poison Jake Mcllvaney? Cookies with ground glass and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was behind this gingerbread…’
‘Oh she was, didn’t you know? They had a big police raid there, the FBI took away all her ginger to test for poison too bad they didn’t take her away at the same…’
‘And she’s been playing house with a black man ever since poor Pa, probably poisoned him too! And she’s a witch, everybody knows…’
‘Well the boy always was a trouble-maker, ask anybody, didn’t his teacher Miz Beek commit sui…?’
‘Mrs Feeney says he’s like he’s got the devil in him, you know he actually stabbed one of the priests?’
‘I blame his background. My Chauncey never would…’
‘Well, somebody better teach him a lesson.’
Roderick was at the dining-table, covering page after page with cipher calculations. Ma paused to kiss the top of his head.
‘That’s a good boy. Now I’m just going out to the Guild, be back in time to give Pa his supper. But if he wants anything meanwhile will you stick around?’
‘Sure, sure.’ It wasn’t polyalphabetic with a repeating key, it wasn’t a multifid, it wasn’t Playfair or a substitution followed by a grille transposition… was it even a cipher?
It had to be. Something in the world had to make sense. Ma would say it all did make sense, only you had to be on the astral plane to perceive it. Pa would say nothing made any sense at all, only we have to make our own sense out of it.
He gave up on the cipher and wandered into Pa’s workshop. There was the radio, still faintly murmuring music for its own easy listenin’ enjoyment. There was the box of inventions. There was the photo of Rex Reason, the cards hand-lettered by Miss Violetta Stubbs: ‘OVER THE HILL doesn’t mean DOWN AND OUT…’
The lettering was the same as on the piece of cloth. Sure, it was part of a hand-lettered tie: not remember wit fun, but
printed sideways so the mourners could read it. Sure, so…
After a moment, Roderick took down the green key from its nail below Rex and left the house with it.
At twilight the giant letters SLUMBERTITE NEVER SLEEPS suddenly flared up like curious trees bursting into flame. The low slab of windowless factory supporting their neon splendour now seemed lower, less significant. The two tiny figures climbing out of their microscopic Rolls-Royce seemed nothing at all.
‘God, I love this place, bub. Almost makes me wish I was a religious guy… I don’t know, if I… if God…’ Mr Kratt recovered quickly. ‘Come on, let’s get inside, can’t stand around with your finger up your rectum all evening.’
He strode off across the perfect lawn, leaving Ben behind. ‘Come on, come on.’
‘Yes sir. I was just, I was just thinking…’
‘Too damn much thinking, your thinking got us into this mess, bub. Trouble with you artsy-fartsy academics, can’t see anything clearly, everything’s got too many sides to it. We had a good goddamn thing going there with Jinjur-Boy, only you had to go and spill your guts to the FDA the minute they came sniffing—’
‘It wasn’t like that at all, Mr Kratt I, all I said was—’
‘Was enough! Mercury batteries, why the hell admit a thing like that, you know what it’s gonna cost to fix this up? Hell of a lot more than you’re worth. Thing gets this far you can’t just grease a few palms you know. Gotta fix up a whole publicity campaign, pictures of a coupla senators and their kids eating the damn things, the works. And we gotta move fast before we get every hick consumer group in the country after us, look what they did to Buckingham cigarettes…’