All Over Creation (9 page)

It was the first of December, and a cold wind blew off Erie. Frank pushed his skateboard into the wind, cursing it dispassionately, almost by rote so that the curses marked the rhythm of his momentum, driving him forward.
Fuckin' wind—, fuckin' wind—,
and on the
fuck
his foot hit the ground, and on the
in
' it kicked off and came back onto the board, and he was able to glide for the duration of the
wind,
sometimes drawing the word out longer when he hit a rare patch of smooth asphalt, clear of potholes and gravel. The frontage road was for shit, but at four-thirty in the morning, riding his skateboard under the hazy orange glow of the road lights, Frank had the whole place to himself, and the wind was freedom.

Over beyond on the highway, the big semis careened past with a whine that sounded like missile fire, and who could blame them for not stopping in this shithole suburb of Ashtabula? Like, how could you even have a suburb of nothing? Even his McDonald's wasn't twenty-four hours.

Mist from the lake dulled the golden arches. Frank ollied up on the curb, then, just for practice, he jumped and ground out against the cement pylon that supported the sign, flipping the board and coming down hard. The board got away from him. He caught it and tried again, making the landing this time. It was going to be a great day. When he rounded the corner to the service entrance, he stopped short, slamming his foot into the ground.

Something was parked way back in the lot, over by the Dumpster. It was centered in the circle of light from the security lamp, but shrouded in mist. Frank skated in closer. It had the unmistakable shape of a Winnebago, boxy and inelegant, but the body of the vehicle was covered with pop-riveted patches of tin and aluminum, like scales, while its roof had been shingled with some sort of dark, rectangular paneling. A conning tower rose from the roof. It looked like a robotic armadillo, a road-warrior tank, a huge armored beetle—it was the most radical thing Frank Perdue had ever seen.

He veered around to the front. The conning tower clocked around to follow him.

“Hey!” he called out, getting ready to fly.

A door on the side of the vehicle creaked opened, and a figure emerged. He was skinny, wearing army-surplus pants and a ragged sweater with a knitted vest on top. His dirty blond hair was matted into finger-thick dreadlocks that hung down the middle of his back. His ears were pierced with a cluster of silver earrings. Frank relaxed. The guy wasn't old. Not a kid. Maybe in his twenties.

“Hey,” the guy said. “Peace.”

Frank shrugged. Hippie retard.

“You work here?”

Frankie shrugged again.

The guy looked around, stomping his feet to keep them warm and blowing into his cupped hands. His gloves were missing all the fingertips. His breath turned the air into clouds. “I'm Y,” he offered.

But Frankie heard “I'm why?” and he couldn't answer that.

“Y,” the guy repeated. “Y's my name.”

Frankie shoved his hands in his pockets. Why's his name what?

“You know,” the guy persisted. “Y. Like the letter. Like the chromosome. What's your name?”

“Frank Perdue.” He heard the words of his name come out of his mouth.

“Frank Perdue! You mean like the chicken dude?”

Here we go, Frank thought, gritting his teeth. It usually ended in a fight.

But the creep wasn't laughing. “Way cool. You his kid or something?”

“No way,” Frank said. “My parents are dead. No relation to the chickens.”

Y nodded. “Too bad. That guy's a rich motherfucker.” His eyes narrowed, and he seemed about to say something more, but then he stopped. “Sorry about your parents. So you work here or what?”

“I'm the janitor.”

“Awesome. We've been waiting for you.”

He pounded on the side of the vehicle. The door opened again, and another guy stepped out. He must have just gotten up, because he was digging his fingers around in his eye sockets behind his glasses. The thick lenses bobbed up and down. A woman followed, wrapped in a long printed skirt and bundled like the others in layers of sweaters. She had wavy brown hair and a silver ring through her nose. “Hey,” she said, smiling.

“Well?” the guy with the glasses asked. “Have we reached an agreement?”

Y shook his head. The guy looked at Frank. “We want your oil.”

“Huh?”

“Your french-fry oil. The old stuff from the deep fryer that you throw away.”

“What for?”

“It's our fuel, dude. Biodiesel. We run off it.” The guy turned to the vehicle and raised his arm like a used-car salesman in a lot full of cream puffs. “This,” he said, beaming, “is the Spudnik!” He lumbered down the steps and stood next to Frank. “It's a common diesel engine, modified to run on vegetable oil. Quite elegant, if I do say so myself. Fuel's free. She gets twenty-one miles to the gallon on the highway, and on the interstates of America you're never too far from a fuel source. Seems to prefer Mc-Donald's to KFC, but she'll run on just about anything, even Dunkin' Donuts. Been across the country twice now.”

Frank blew air. “Awesome.”

“You said it.”

The guy held out his hand. Frankie shook it.

“Name's Geek, by the way. Kind of goes without saying. That's Lilith. You met Y. What's your name?”

“Frank,” said Frank.

“Not just Frank,” said Y. “Not just any old Frank. This here's Frank
Perdue,
but he's no relation to the chickens.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Geek. “So, Frank Perdue, how about the oil, then?”

“It doesn't get changed until tomorrow.”

Geek looked at Y, who cocked his head toward the door. Lilith banged on the side of the vehicle.
“Char, le rat, s'il tu plaît!”

A matted head poked out, covered with wild black hair that looked like it had been chopped with a hacksaw. Chunks of it curtained a small, pointed face. Dark brows. Large, animal eyes, liquid and quick. Looked to be about twelve or thirteen years old, Frank figured. Spooky.

“This is Char,” said Lilith.

The kid peeled open the seal on a plastic freezer bag and pulled out something fur covered and dead.

It swung back and forth from a stiffened tail. Frank watched it, transfixed. He didn't get it.

“We'll dip it in the oil,” said Lilith. “Then you can show your manager. Say you found it in the fryer.”

Frank got it. “Is it frozen?”

“Yeah, but you can defrost it in the microwave.”

“Where'd you find it?”

“Char sets traps down by the rail yards.”

“Hey, that's sick,” Frankie said.

The kid smiled shyly.

Frank hesitated now. “We never had a rat in the fryer before.”

“Hey,” Lilith said. “Rodents happen.”

He led them to the service entrance, unlocked the door, and flicked on the overhead fluorescents. The four of them filed in after him, carrying empty metal drums. Illuminated against the white tile, they looked mangy and sly. Frankie eyed them as he stashed his skateboard in the corner. He looked at the mud on the floor, dislodged from the deeply treaded soles of their combat boots, and he wondered if they were going to freak out and rob him and tie him up and stick him in the freezer, and if they did, would the police be able to trace them from the footprints? He'd heard about cults. Even hippie retards could lose it. They headed straight for the kitchen.

“Hey,” Frank called after them. “Just give me a minute, will ya?” He kept his jacket on and put on his cap. If he was going to get locked in the freezer, he wanted to be in uniform. By the time he got to the kitchen, they were draining the fryers. They even knew where the fresh oil was kept.

“You just go about your chores there,” Geek said. “We'll take care of this.”

The entire operation took less than half an hour. Frank held the door as Y and Geek hauled out three drums of old fry oil. Lilith followed, carrying two industrial-size wheels of toilet paper and a couple stacks of coffee filters. Char sidled up to Frank and handed him the rat in a Big Mac container.

“Char's already nuked it for you,” said Geek. “Just tell your boss you made an executive decision.”

Frank looked down at the oily rodent, curled in the hamburger container.

“Thanks, Frank Perdue.” Lilith handed the heavy rolls to Char. She rested her hands on Frank's shoulders, then reached up and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Spinning on her steel-toed combat boot, she waved and floated out the door.

“Sure thing,” he said to the empty doorway. He felt the blood, like wind-burn, redden his face. He heard a noise and spotted Char—the huge, dark eyes watching from behind the curtain of hair, the quizzical smile. Frank scowled and raised his middle finger, flipping the kid the bird, and in response the kid slowly stuck out a slim, red tongue. A silver ball lay on its spongy surface like a shiny offering, then, quick as a wink, the tongue was gone. The kid grinned and slipped out the door, past Geek, who was coming back in.

“You did us a solid, bro,” he said. “We'll be over in the Kmart lot. Come by after work. Have a meal. Char's an awesome cook.”

Frankie stood in the doorway like a hostess watching the guests leave the party. He sighed and closed the door. You do someone a favor, he thought, surveying the black boot prints marring the linoleum, and what do you get? A rat in a box and the privilege of cleaning up after. But heading back from school that afternoon, he decided to swing by the Kmart after all. Dudes like that didn't just show up every day, and anything was better than going home.

Not that it was a home. He lived with an asshole named Nuland, who injured his back in a factory accident and took in foster kids to supplement his disability. Frankie slept on a stinking couch in the living room, but Nuland kicked him off first thing in the morning so he could lie there all day and fart and watch the tube. It didn't matter. They were just killing time until Frankie was eighteen and out of the system. Nuland had made a pile off him for the last two years, and Frank lived rent free and did whatever he wanted. It was an okay arrangement, but it was not a home.

The Spudnik was different. When the mute kid opened the door for him and let him inside, it felt exactly the way Frankie imagined a home should feel. It smelled like old socks and french fries, young sweat and dander—smells that were familiar and alive, and his penis twitched in response to the burrowlike warmth. There were other smells, too, new and strange. Candles burning. Musty incense. Shampoo. Food. The lights had all been turned down, and candles flickered. Lilith and Y were sitting cross-legged in the corner with their eyes shut. They were meditating, Geek whispered. Frank sat down to watch. A videotape of the ocean was playing over their heads on a monitor set into the transom above the front seats—a long, low, continuous shot of waves lapping gently on a pebbly beach. The watery sounds drowned out the noise of the parking lot and the highway beyond. Frank closed his eyes, too. He had never felt so relaxed in his life.

When they were done meditating, Geek rolled a joint. Char was cooking dinner, stirring a stew pot. The kid's hair was damp, like a hedgehog who'd crawled out from a shrub into the rain. Warm, fragrant steam rose from the pot.

“Smells good,” Frank said.

The kid glanced up, then looked away, but not before the quick grin, like the beam from a moving flashlight, flickered through the mat of hair.

“Char's pretty nonverbal,” Geek offered. “Awesome cook, but not much of a conversationalist. From Montreal. Been traveling with us for a couple of months now.”

“What do you guys do anyway? Just bum around?”

“Not exactly. We're activists.”

“What's that?”

“You know. Political activists.”

“Oh.” Frank thought for a bit. “You mean, like politicians?”

“Oh, shit!” Y laughed, snorting smoke. “That's very amusing.”

Frank didn't get it. Or rather, he got it that Y and the others were laughing at him, and ordinarily that would have made him want to bust someone's head open, but now, with the pot and all, it really didn't matter. He figured eventually they would stop laughing, and then someone would explain. Frankie sat back and waited.

“You're not kidding, are you?” Geek said.

Frank shook his head.

“You're perfectly serious.”

Frank nodded.

Geek peered into Frankie's face. “Wow.” He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses. “Check it out,” he said. “We target a range of food-related issues. Right now it's genetic engineering. We drive around the country to communities and engage with the people and do actions. Basic biotech. Consciousness Raising 101. We're the Seeds of Resistance—that's our name. We also publish a 'zine and a Web site. . . .”

“Bio-what?”

“Oh, jeez. Don't you know anything?”

Frank shook his head.

“Biotechnology,” Geek said. “Robocrops. Frankenfoods. Fish genes spliced into tomatoes. Bacterial DNA into potatoes. Corn and—”

“Cool! You do all that stuff right in here?”

“What stuff?”

“What you said. Splicing, you know, whatever . . . fish genes and potatoes and—”

“No, Frank,” Geek said. “We're
against
that.”

“Oh.” Frankie was disappointed.

“You have a lot to learn,” Geek said.

“Yeah,” Frank agreed, taking the joint and inhaling deeply. “You can't learn shit in Ashtabula.”