Authors: Jack Womack
"That history'll content them, you think?" he asked,
pointing to the orange book I'd bought.
"Copyright's 1948," I said, opening the pages. "The text
begs excavation. Give ear: `The United States leads the
struggle for democracy. It has faced problems, and met
challenges. It leads those people of the world who believe in
freedom-' "
"It whitens and brightens," said John, recalling an ad's
demand.
"It's bonedry and simplistic. Authors seem as brainchal-
lenged as their readers. `Agents of the worldwide Communist conspiracy have been active and are active still in the
United States. Some have been trusted officials, and there is
no telling who may be one-' "
"Paranoiacs," said John. Without vocalizing, I continued to read: " `Under Trotsky, the Soviet Union's weakened state
has not put a halt ...' "
"What's the newsheet hold?" he asked.
"Indecipherables," I said, glancing over and rereading
the Mirror's lead for Saturday, May 8, 1954: "GO AX YER
MA"-HE DID. "Conrad and Weber can patholinguistic as
desired. It's a New York pub, it turns out, not global. I've
gleaned a page or two. It's all illiteracies."
John's copy of Knifelife protruded from his jacket pocket;
he'd packed his own read. As the road ahead unshuttered
anew, penetrating Baltimore, he switched on the dash recharger, replenishing half the batteries as we cruised; we'd
kept such pace as to drain power at twice the rate expected.
Slouching against the seat's thick padding, I vizzed those
passing us; all others, drivers and passengers alike, appeared
cheerful, well-fed, and uniformly caucasoid. Their look
bored; I eyeshut, and dozed for what seemed a second or so;
when John awoke me I saw by the clock I'd been out fifty
minutes.
"Washington," he said. "A Siamese, as evidenced."
No ads blocked the capital's vista; the obelisk and dome
appeared as our own. The highway riversided the Potomac
as its sixteen lanes obliterated Georgetown. "Nearly," I said.
"No Lincoln Memorial." No Lincoln, here; Mora had informed us that his assassination in 1861, in this world, was
seemingly the initial pebble in the pond, rippling our histories thereafter. Here, Luther discovered, there'd been no
Civil War, no emancipation of enslaved people until 1905.
But if they'd let my people go, where had they gone? I'd seen
none of color in New York; saw none but snowbirds during
the several hundred kilometers thus far traveled. By all accounts segregation in this America was more elaborate and
overt than it had been in ours; how far had they refined their
methods? Recalling my perception of the store proprietor's
unreasoned dislike, I worried if perchance my false skin
didn't incog so well as I thought it should; wondered if through some technique unknown to our world, my ethnicity nonetheless showed its signs. It displeased me to think
how easily I'd become a racialist toward myself.
As the road crossed the river south of Arlington's leafless
trees ads reappeared, blocking our view of what semblanced
as the Pentagon, though theirs appeared twice the size of
ours. Another of those tall directionals stood to the right of
the bridge's exit; attached to its steel was the greeting, Welcome to the Old Dominion. Interstate Bus Check Next Exit.
"Hunger building, Iz?" John asked. As we passed the exit
I looked to see what might be getting checked; a long line
of buses parked before a low building were surrounded by
uniformed men. "We should stop soon and feed you." As
the haze at last thinned I saw, distanced, shimmering pools
appear and disappear on the roadway.
"At a suitable place," I said.
"Particular suitables."
"Where we can minimize interaction," I said. "We'll stop
long enough to eat and then depart before we're uncovered."
"You're enhancing, Iz," he said. "We're round pegs in
round holes here. Fretting overmuch'll show you all the
sooner, it's a given. I know the game. When undercovered,
go as if the world is yours. It is ours, for now."
"My dress is wrong," I said. "My skin too, mayhap."
"Your skin?" John asked. "You're specterish. An X-ray of
yourself."
"It's the absence bothering me most," I said. "I miss me."
"You're unchanged but for your skin," he said. "And hair
and eyes."
"That's me. My skin's me. I mean I'm more than that, but
it's me all the same, it is-"
"Iz," John said, keeping the road eyed while showing his
concern as he could. "It's known you're still you. I know."
"I'm addling," I said, calming anew; was paranoia pathogenic, over here? "Never mind."
"Reassure yourself that we own this world, presently," he
said. "Facted true."
I smiled; wished I could have settled myself with such ease
as he'd settled me. A sign much larger than the others hove
to view at roadside. A comic-balloon spouted from the
mouth of a gaptoothed boy; his mien suggested lead poisoning at an early age. Within the balloon were the words:
THEY'RE HERE, PA! NEXT EXIT DIXIELAND.
"We can lunch there," said John. "Scan the natives close."
"With minimal contact," I reminded.
"Reaction time'll improve if their actions are observed
beforehand."
"All right," I said, wondering why I'd agreed so readily,
why action observations essentialled if John was unable to
action in return. As we eased into the exit lane we saw
Dixieland appear; the ramp sped us directly into the parking
lot, a sunglared ocean over two kilometers wide. Dixieland
appeared as an agglomeration of two-story log shacks spread
across the middle of the concrete flats. To the left of the
shacks were pens aflocked with animals; to the right, roller
coasters, ferris wheels and smaller amusement rides. Entering the lot, we drove beneath an aluminum archway neonblaring the motto, Where Folks Are Friendly; at its crest spun
a house-size jug insigniaed with three Xs. We slotted our car
on the lots' outskirts; as we stepped out, the humid air
sponged us.
"This heat's assaulting," John said. "Let's threshold."
I saw my first elephant in the Dixieland Children's Zoo.
The ones in the Bronx Zoo were killed when I was young,
before my mother could take me there. Elephants' visuals
preserved in my head faded against pachydermic reality. The
beast was but a baby, and badly treated; as it limped toward
its onlookers it showed a great sore on its back. Two young
men flicked cigarettes at it sides. I stilled all the same, confronting extinction.
"These animals," John said. We stared at cows and pigs and sheep, freeranging as if they'd never be called on to
reproduce. There were also birds and animals never seen
before on screen or in life, and whether they'd once existed
on our side was unknowable. "They're gone, Iz."
"Known," I said, and we continued walking toward the
main buildings, passing the last cage; there were three oversized wingless birds within, so large as turkeys though considerably uglier. At close range the buildings' logs showed as
metal siding. The entrance's doors were simulated wood as
well, set in concrete painted to resemble stone; they parted
as we trod upon a red rubber carpet leading up to them. The
AC flashfroze us as we stepped inside.
"It's a bazaar," I said.
"A madhouse, more like." On all sides were cubicles of
varying size, topfull with bounty being pawed over by milling
hundreds. The peddlers offered quilts of Met quality and
stuffed animals for children or adults; dishes and glassware,
plaster statuary cast in the form of gnomes; smoked meat,
small jugs similar to the one spinning above the entrance;
oversized hats and eyed hoods, American flags, guns of every
caliber, cheap cotton dresses and Coca-Cola. Three-quarters
of the crowd smoked cigars and cigarettes, and the air was
so poisonous as the open road's.
"They're dressed as if for bed," I said, eyeing the crowd
between my coughs.
"They're butterballs," said John. "A plane couldn't carry
more than two per load--
"Quiet-"
"Five-figure daily calories, certain-"
"Bestill!" I said, hoping that none heard. The fattest wore
the tightest clothes, as if through such display they could
reveal the wealth of their folds. Farther down the aisle I
sighted a cubicle whose goods appeared, at distance, rather
more attractive. "That's not so innocent. Let's viz."
Fabulous Fifties sextoys were so unenlightened as I expected, though in not the relentlessly misogynist style, say, of Nasty Nineties pop. The rapebait photoed on the material
wore diapers, or corsets or pants tourniquet-tight; printed
messages were subtexted solely through double-entendres.
There were as well simulated anatomies in every type of
plastic, hard and soft. I lifted a thin rod to which plastic
breasts and buttocks were loosely attached, and wiggled
them before John's nose.
"Nipply goodness and bottomy treats," I said, laughing.
John kissed my cheek; I marveled at the warmth of his lips.
"They've postcards of Dixieland in this next booth."
"I'll gather added visuals," I said. "Leverett'll appreciate. "
After selecting various ones depicting the buildings, the
rides, and the zoo I paid the cashier, a thick-necked man
wearing a white tee. Sweatbeads dropped from his prickly
roof of hair. "What are these?" John asked, noting represen-
tationals arrayed along the side counter.
"Those're banks, folks," the cashier said. "We sell a lotta
that one. Try one and see for yourself."
The plastic tableau depicted a black man standing on a
box beneath a single-limbed tree. A thin bar ran between his
neck and the branch. John slotted a coin. The box dropped
into the bank's base; the figure's wide eyes shut, and a red
metal strip emerged from the white lips. soRRY, SAM was
stamped along the bank's rim. The hair on my neck lifted,
as if in an electrical storm I felt lightning ready to strike me.
"Iz?" John asked, noting my distress, taking my arm.
"What is it?"
"Let's eat," I said. "Now. Come on, John."
"That bank?" he asked, once we'd stepped out of the
cashier's earshot.
"Horrible," I said, trying to slough away what I'd seen, as
I'd assured Luther I could do with such confidence; each
time I eyeshut I saw the figure's face again. "There's a place
to eat across the way. Leaving essentials, after. Come."
We entered Dixieland's Oldtime Country Kitchen through a doorway bracketed by statues of bonneted women
wielding rolling pins; the room could have sat five hundred.
Short-skirted waitresses scurried around the space, balancing plastic trays overbrimmed with glassware. We sat ourselves in a booth near the entrance, one along the hallwall,
which was glassed through so that we could watch the place's
goings-on while eating. A waitress greeted us; her hemlength was so high and her heels so lifted her feet that her
goosebumped legs looked genetically stretched. She handed
us meter-length menus.
"Hi, folks," she said, smiling so rigidly as to suggest she'd
had facial nerves cut. "Figure out what you all want and I'll
be right back."
We unfolded the plasticked pages and examined the offerings. Before either of us had read even half of the list our
waitress returned, her heels clicking against the worn
wooden floor.
"Made up your minds yet?" she asked. "Everything's
good."
"I'm hep," I said. "Recommendations?"
"Lookin' to have breakfast or dinner?"
"Neither," I said. "There's chicken in a Big Cluck Deelite?"
"And a whole lot more. You want one a those?" I assented.
"Anything to drink?"
"Mug us with joe," John said, startling me as he appeared
to startle the waitress; I hadn't thought he'd soaked a single
phrase during our training.
"Coupla cups a coffee, you mean?" our waitress asked.
"That's right," I said. "Unmilked. I mean black. I'm lactose-intolerant."
"Egg me," my husband added. "Deyolked and mashed."
"You mean scrambled?" the waitress annotated her pad,
forbidding confusion from affecting her smile.
"It matters that yours are the whitest eggs on the Eastern
Seaboard?" John asked.
" 'Scuse me?"
"That's what's claimed," he said. "I wondered why?"
"Oh, that's just somethin' they put on there to make it
sound good," said the waitress. "You all from up north?"
"Vacationing," I said. "Taking the low road."
Taking up the menus, her smile so fixed as it had been,
she walked back to the food prep area; her skirt bounced up
and away from her hips with her every step. The phrase
Sweetiepie was woven onto the seat of her pink unders.
"Let me communicate, John," I said, leaning across our
formicaed table. "Multivoicing'll disrupt them."
"Two can game at this," he said, smiling. "AO, Iz."
Through our booth's window I looked out into the building's central artery, at the setup of the initial attraction of
the amusement room across the way. Players stood before a
low counter, throwing balls at a wooden wall three meters
distant. At intervals a boy would thrust his head through a
hole in the fence, pulling it back as quickly. Glimpsing him,
I thought at last I'd seen one of my people here; but as he
reappeared I sighted his shock of blond hair, and noted that
for unknown reason this white boy had painted his face
black. The areas in the wood around the holes were gouged
and chipped, as if heavier projectiles had been hurled in the
past.
The waitress returned with our order. "May we pay now?"
I asked.
"If you'd like," she said. "That'll be two dollars. Ma'am,
can I ask a question if you don't mind?"
"I'm mindless," I said, moneying her. "Ask."
Her attendant's smile was supplanted by a genuine grin.
"Don't y'all ever get out in the sun up north?"
"What's meant?" I asked; as I looked around the room it
occurred to me that I was so pale in comparison to all others
as to appear dead. "Oh. A family affair. Nothing contagious."