Night at Leroy's (by guest blogger Jane)

Everyone who was anyone within a day’s journey of Leroy’s Foosball and Pool Hall had brought a homemade candle stub or a grasoline lantern. The place was lit up like a St. Agnes the Substitute pre-Seed carnival, and it wasn’t even February on this side of the Vertigo. Marylou crawled out of her makeshift tent just as the sun was setting, and was dazzled by the Main Street festivities already underway.

Both sides of the dusty thoroughfare were lined with travelers and locals from at least three circular miles out. It seemed everyone was making their way to Leroy’s, so Marylou fell into step with two grandmothers and a dirty toddler being pulled along in a wheeled contraption. Halfway there she spotted Medicine Dan emerging from the Moonshine Trade Shack and Hair Cuttery, so she stepped into the road and hailed him as an orange truck with two men and what looked like a large mammal nearly ran her over. They honked good-naturedly but didn’t slow down.

“What’s all the commotion?” asked Marylou.

Medicine Dan wiped a fingerful of lip snuff off a small piece of wood and then carefully covered it in a white handkerchief and replaced it in his back pocket. He rubbed the brackish mixture into his lower gum, then gave a satisfied grunt.

“George Conley’s a’readin’ a new poem tonight,” he said knowingly.

Marylou was struck dumb by her own good fortune. To have landed in Pouteau on the very day George Conley would be here was too much for her to have hoped for. Everyone knew of George Conley. He was the most eligible bachelor in all of the seven stops along the Vertigo that Marylou knew of, and his poems were immediately memorized and recited by all whenever he chose to bestow them upon the public. He was the closest thing to a celebrity that they had in these parts.

He was handsome, sure. Marylou chewed her own gums and considered this development. He was also known to be the foremost time traveler in all of Vertigo County proper. It was even rumored he had been as far back as the industrial collapse. He was also a bonafide romancer, and wore boots with real metal tips with his faded overalls.

As Marylou and Medicine Dan approached the doorway, she smelled the unmistakable smell of cheese fries and lentil beer. She felt heady and dreamlike. She adjusted her circlet and gripped Medicine Dan’s elbow. Despite the crowd that was packed as tight as gar fish inside the small building, Medicine Dan was able to proceed straight to the front of the line, and Marylou wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by her. George Conley was nothing to sneeze at, and besides, she reasoned, he might just know something about my father. Medicine Dan either didn’t notice or didn’t mind, and together they walked straight to the front of Leroy’s and took a seat on two carved out wooden stumps.

It seemed they were just in time. Thunderous applause erupted as George Conley himself stepped to the front of the makeshift stage and nodded to the crowd. He was bare-chested beneath his pale blue overalls, worn thin at the knees. He wore a railroad hat, and from where Marylou sat, it looked real.

Where had he gotten it? Marylou asked herself. Had he actually been back to the time of motors? She felt more convinced than ever that this was the man who could lead her to her father.

Beside them, the two men who had nearly run her over with the orange truck settled into two chairs with a table. She glanced over quickly, but even the mammal being cradled by one of the men, and which appeared to her now to be some kind of dog-like creature, could not hold her attention. She was riveted by the man in the overalls in front of her, who was now clearing his throat as the room quietened.

George Conley was a legend. Nobody knew where he came from, and many said that he was actually from the past. Others said he was from the future. Simply put, no one had seen his equal. He was larger than the average Real Time person, and his teeth shone white like an old-time photo.

A hush fell at last over the itchy crowd at last, and George Conley cleared his throat. In a quiet, almost whispered voice, he began.

It is so easy to weave a hook into a brain, he began.

The crowd erupted into stamping and clapping for five full minutes. George Conley did not break his concentration. He waited for it to get quiet, and continued.

It is no harder than the tapping of the sun into a working man’s forearms;

And I hook the unresisting, resting in the sun, insane,

I am nothing if not a ghost in Angela.

Angela had a dream about a fish

And it was I who embedded the hook into her soft brain.

She had nothing to say about it,

She rolled in the twisted bedding.

Angela is a different girl during the day

Than who she is when she is asleep.

I want to come into your room when are asleep, Angela.

I want to embed a fish hook into your brain.

Angela, do not squirm so, do not let your rigid limbs remain so rigid.

Angela, I am coming into your room to turn you into a fish.

You are under a sun as serious, as red, as commanding,

As you twist in your cold bed.

You turn yourself into a fish,

And you are deep.

I encourage you in this;

It is how I imagine you when you are asleep.

Can you not hear me tapping a reminder in code

Into your skin?

On your deep brain’s drum,

I etch.

I fear you do not know me, Angela, when I come.

The crowd was silent when George Conley finished. Marylou’s circlet had nearly slipped off as she listened, rapt. The poem would no doubt be repeated a hundred times by morning. Most everyone had acquired near perfect memories in the post-internet revolution.

A sharp crack suddenly broke the silence as the door to Leroy’s flew open wide. Leroy himself stood silhouetted in the doorway. His wide hips and ample gut filled the entire frame, and even the two strangers with the dog started.

“I’m giving everyone two minutes to get the hockey block out of my joint,” he belted, swinging a brick in a woman’s stocking. “Then I’m not bothering to take names.”

George Conley turned and scattered towards the door behind him, Marylou and Medicine Dan close on his heels. A stampede was ensuing behind him.

“Meet me at the boat,” cried Medicine Dan, as the throng separated them. Marylou, fearing being trampled, darted to the side of the building and flattened herself against the wall. People continued to stream out in every direction at full speed. It was pandemonium.

Medicine Dan

Medicine Dan was an old man, aged prematurely through excessive time travel. He ran the ferry from the Port of Pouteau to the other side of the river. His boat had a powerful outboard motor, and an anti-time device affixed to the controls. It looked like a jerry-rigged toaster with a clock face soldered on. The trip across the river seemed to take about an hour, but upon arrival at the far shore one could expect to have gained or lost up to a week's time. Medicine Dan spent a lot of time on the river, spent it like money thrown into the wind. You could never know when or where to find him. To get across the river, it was best to camp out on the pier and wait. He accepted barter for his services, and welcomed gossip. For these reasons, Medicine Dan was the go-to man when one needed information, or hard to find commodities like moonshine or tobacco. Due to the irregularities of both of their schedules, Marylou and Medicine Dan had never crossed paths, although each had heard tell of the other. That is, until Marylou ran into him at the Market. She recognized him from his distinctive suit and grey beard, and he noticed her golden circlet.

"You Marylou?" he asked gruffly, squinting at her.

"Marylou von Fixin de Hoolie," she said, "And you must be Medicine Dan. I've been hoping to meet you one of these days. I'm looking for someone in the future, my dad Hans Sneebum."

"How far you reckon he went?" Medicine Dan was no stranger to the future. He had contacts all the way from last week to the next century. 

"That's the thing we don't know," she sighed. "He got washed down the river about four years ago." She shifted her feet and looked plaintively into his wrinkled face. 

"Tell me this. What's the most likely thing he'd get up to? Did he have a reputation for something n'ruther?" Medicine Dan, a consummate tale-teller, needed a hook. Something to pass around, fish for information.

"Well, he was a card-carrying member of the Icelandic Doomsday Seed Traders Club...He collected seeds of all kinds, especially heirloom vegetables. I guess he'd be looking for seeds wherever he landed. That, and he had the bluest eyes you'd ever see."

"Gotcha."

"What do you know of the future, Medicine Dan?" 

"Well, 'bout twenty five years from now, Scrappers get kinda mean. Times are tough, no place for a lady. After that, there's a renaissance, and things get damn near bucolic. Hey, maybe your Daddy has something to do with that! Did he have any seeds with him when he got carried off?"

"My dad never went anywhere without pockets full of seeds...." Marylou thought for a moment. "What is it you want, Medicine Dan?"

The old man looked at Marylou carefully. He was so used to people asking him for things, he was taken aback for a moment. "More than anything I'd like a dog. Someone to replace Clarabelle, my beloved mule, may she rest."

After this fateful encounter, Marylou set off for Leroy's Foos Ball and Pool Hall. She liked to go there on her trips to town to play a game of foos ball, and have a plate of their famous cheese fries. Little did she know who and what waited for her there. 

Leroy's Foos Ball and Pool Hall

Alberto drove the pick-up truck, powered by switch-grass gasoline. They called it grasoline. He and Herald were headed for a place called Leroy's Foos Ball and Pool Hall, a dive in the Port of Pouteau. “It's there that I first heard about the golden circlet,” he told Herald. “Seems there's this girl who can travel up and down the Vertigo. I'm dead-set on finding out more.” They'd been making their way up the Mex-American Plains, documenting small mammals and looking for the elusive prairie dog. “They say she comes to town every month or so. (the girl, not the prairie dog) Here's what I say- we stake it out. Make ourselves useful, wait for her. And then...”, Alberto slowed the truck to look at a brown lump beside the dirt road. “Hot damn, if that ain't a dog!” Herald looked up from the book he'd been reading, The Book of Knowledge, volume seven, copyright 1923. The two men jumped stealthily from the orange truck and approached the dog.
It was a mutt, brown and matted, curled up on itself but still alive. Herald tenderly examined it, looking for wounds, while Alberto scanned the horizon for signs of other dogs.
“It's a female, malnourished, no outward signs of injury...Pregnant.” Herald stroked it's rough fur and exalted in the feeling. “A large mammal.” So used to small mammals like mice and rats that a full sized canine thrilled him deeply. It'd been a long time since he'd seen a dog. Generally, there wasn't enough wildlife to support larger creatures on the plains.
“No sign of her pack,” said Alberto, returning with the emergency care pack. He gave the dog some water, which she roused herself to drink. “This girl needs some peanut butter,” he said and put a generous dollop on both his and Herald's hands for the dog to lick off. The peanut butter was a rare commodity, more valuable than gold. In fact, “Worth its weight in peanut butter,” was a well-known axiom here in the Scrap Age. They gathered up the dog carefully, putting her with them in the cab of the orange truck, and continued on their way.

Marylou and the Golden Circlet

It was time to go to the Port of Pouteau, and Marylou did not want to go overland. The journey would be too long, and too full of unknown variables to make the trip by foot, and so she would take her boat. Traveling by river had its own dangers to be sure. The current was very strong, and a regular person would be swept away into the future, at the mercy of fate. But Marylou had three things that enabled her to go anywhere in time along the river. The first was a golden circlet, passed down through the family for generations. The second was a map, and the third, a boat. Her father hadn't had any of these things on the day the river carried him away.
It was a simple boat, a glorified rowboat really. She climbed in early on a February morning, placing her map and sword carefully in the bow, along with things for trade. On her head she wore the golden circlet. Hartmut and Troybilt came down to the shore to see her off. The fog hung over the swift grey water, and the sky crept to life above them. They bid her farewell, wrapping themselves tightly in their patchwork shawls. Marylou sat straight, her strong arms rowing, her brow softly glowing.
“Bring back something sweet!” shouted Hartmut, but Marylou did not hear. The river had already taken her.
It wasn't long before she reached the Port of Pouteau. She docked her boat on the pier and pulled off her jacket. The sun had long burned away any mist. It beat purposefully, grass growing weather. Marylou went directly to the Market, the place to trade goods. She had with her a few interesting things that her two younger sisters had pulled out of the river, things from who knows what time. A men's hat, a pocketbook full of pens and sodden cough drops, and best of all, a large pair of black rubber boots. They would bring a high price.

Eloise

Eloise von Fixin de Hoolie would not leave the river. She was waiting for her man to return, the father of her six daughters. He'd been swept down the river four years ago, and had never made it back. His name was Hans Sneebum, and Eloise loved him very much, but she wouldn't marry him. She didn't want to lose her family name.
“I told him that if any of our children were boys, they could have his last name. How was I to know that I'd only have girls. And so many of them!” With each year of his absence, Eloise turned more in on herself, like an Advent calendar in reverse. Small windows closing, hiding small treasures. “If only I'd given him one child with his name, then he'd have something to come back for.” Eloise lamented.
“If he doesn't think we're worth his time, then screw him,” Marylou said. Eloise looked aghast and turned away. “That's an ego thing, names. Who the hell wants to be called Sneebum anyway? How about you, Effluvia, you want to be Effluvia Sneebum?” Effluvia was the youngest daughter, eight years old. She nodded her head, black curls bobbing. “I'd be a Sneebum if Dad would come back,” she said.
“Anyway, we don't know how far down the river he went, he could be anywhere in the future.” That was the thing about the Vertigo River. The further down you went, the farther into the future you found yourself. Likewise, going up the river would bring you back in time, and if you kept going up the river, you'd find yourself surrounded by water, back in the time of the flood. The Port of Pouteau was only half an hour down the river, a few months in the future.  

When Marylou went there, she had to plan ahead, bring a sweater even if it was still summertime, for example. Maybe that was the other reason that Mother wouldn't let them leave, Marylou mused to herself. They were fixed there in time and space, and how else would he ever find them if they left? She didn't hold out much hope for his return. Still, on her next trip down to Pouteau to pick up supplies she'd ask strangers if they'd seen him, a man with dark hair and blue eyes, washed clean away from his own time.

Marylou takes a walk on the plains

As the oldest of six sisters. Marylou had certain responsibilities. She kept the boat in good repair, and organized expeditions up and down the Vertigo River with the next oldest sisters, Hartgutt and Troybilt. They were still teenagers, young in a sense, and yet they were all post-diluvial. Every one was. The great flood was over a hundred years gone, but still felt daily. For fifty years the lands were full of water, only people on the mounds had survived. That was the legend, and Marylou had heard it many times before from her mother.
“So what, who cares?” she asked, kicking at dried stalks of grass on her way up to the high plains above their home in the cliffs. She didn't care for talk at all. It didn't matter to her how long her family had been here on this land. It may as well have been forever. She knew nothing else, and neither did her mother or her mother's mother. The point was, they'd been here a long time, since way before the flood, and it was time that Marylou got out.
Everyone had their place out here. She was in charge of the boat and trading, Mother the cooking, Hartgutt and Troybilt the garden and fishing, and the younger three sisters fetched water, and cleaned the house. That was the order of things. She'd been going up and down this river for four years on her own, though never very far.
She'd walked out half a day and back again on the plains. Up on the plains, she walked fast. Partly it was just her nature. But out here, you never could tell what might be coming your way. She scanned the land, dried up mud and tall grasses. Her brow was just as straight as the horizon. She was wearing an outfit that her sister Troybilt had sewn for her from bits of cloth. Everything was handmade, there was no such thing as store-bought anymore. Well, you could buy clothes at the Pouteau Outpost, but those clothes were handmade too, just made by somebody they didn't know.
She was out for a walk, she just had to walk lately. Everything at home was so annoying. A mud house full of women, what a recipe. Also, it was part of her job to keep a look out and see what all was going on. Mostly not much.
“That's the problem,” she said to her companion, a talking cat named Javier. His long fur was orange, and his tail bushy, allowing for him to stand on hind-legs when the situation called for it. He accompanied Marylou most everywhere, running on all fours to catch up.
“Slow up a minute,” Javier said as he suddenly stopped and began licking his hindquarters. “What exactly is the problem?” he asked solicitously, and then resumed cleaning himself thoroughly.
“That nothing ever happens around here. Case in point, you're licking your bottom.”
“My darling child,” Javier said indignantly, getting to his feet. “Even the most seemingly mundane act, like licking one's own bottom, can attain profound significance when one is fully present.” And with that, he threw himself onto his back and began taking a dust bath.

So Long, by Hertmutt von Fixin de Hoolie

Vertigo River

Ever since the Fall of Industry, the Vertigo River was cleaning itself up. Along its banks, formerly the resting place of abandoned cars, kitchen appliances, and plastic bottles, now grew grass- tall pokey grass. The scavengers took the scrap long ago, picked clean the mud. A few years back the scavengers celebrated the three-hundred year anniversary that officially marked the end of the way things were, and the beginning of a new era. The so-called Scrap Age was born from the defunct factories of yesteryear. Ingenuity and thriftiness ruled, and the von Fixin de Hoolie household along the Vertigo River exemplified these noble attributes.
It's not that they kept a very clean house. How clean can a house made of dirt be, after all? They'd burrowed out a series of interconnected rooms in the tall banks of the Vertigo, packing the walls and floors very tightly with their hands and feet. No, it was their lack of stuff that was the saving grace of the von Fixin de Hoolie clan. They had a few things; Marylou had a knife, for example. She kept it in a pouch tied at her waist. It was rusty, but still sharp. Not bad for cutting root vegetables, or menacing would-be scavengers.
Marylou herself was impervious to pain and the cold and heartache. She liked it that way. In the winter she waded bare-foot through the water, at night she stood in the cold wind and felt the multitude of stars pressing down on her head like a crown of jewels. “Who gives a crap?” she thought to herself. She lived with her mother and five sisters, and the river was her highway and her home.

Alberto speaks of Animal World

Herald had heard rumors, everyone had heard them. They said there was a world full of animals. Not just rats and squirrels, such as they carefully cultivated at Yahweh's Mammalry Business College. Alberto Barcena Lopez, Herald's roommate, knew all about it.
"They've got owls, wolves, bobcats. I mean, they've got stuff we've never even heard of before." Alberto and Herald were having lunch on the school grounds. They'd just spent the morning with the other students, caring for a rescued mouse and her newborn brood.
"They got weasels?" asked Herald. He held Alberto in high esteem. He was a driver from the south, licensed.
"Forget weasels, man, they've got golden eagles and bears!" These were animals that the two young men had only heard of, having gone long extinct in their world.
"And not only that. I know of a way in." Alberto assumed a dreamy look, gazing out over the fields. His blue eyes were exactly the color of the faded blue sky. He smiled slightly and turned to Herald. "You ever heard of the golden circlet?"

Herald Walken

Herald Walken was born in 2224, one of three children of Saars Walken, a quiet Northern-born cat breeder living in South Mex-America. Herald was tall, a “gentle giant,” as the Old World Chronicler writer P.K. Plunke described him, “in constant danger of hitting his head on ceiling fans and door frames.” He left school at fourteen. He had marks on his cheeks from adolescent acne, which he rubbed fish and geranium oil into every night.
At fifteen, he made a visit to Animal World Junction, keeping an eye out for a “well-cared for building,” as he later recalled. He picked 98 Mammal Place, where he started at the first door and made his way down the halls, asking at every office “Need a tall fellow?” By the end of the morning, he had reached the offices of a small squirrel and water rat trading company. There were no openings. He returned to the traders the next morning. He lied that he was asked to come back, and bluffed himself into a job assisting the baby rat caretaker, for one hundred fifty Mexi-dollars a month. He used his height to lift down the cages from the tallest shelves. The trading company was called Goldfinch Serge.
From that point, Herald's rise was inexorable. Early on, he was asked to carry a package down the cracked pavement road of Main Street to the Serge's family cottage. The door was opened by Grady Serge, the grandson of the trading company's founder, and Serge took a shine to him. Walken was soon promoted to the storeroom, which he promptly reorganized. Serge sent him to Yahweh's Mammalry Business College in the riverside district, to learn how to “poop and pee” the babies.
By 2229, the company had bought Walken a wagon and a place at the Southern District Trading Post, a biannual event held at Eagle Rock. By 2230, he was part owner. By 2232, he was lead coordinator for all swamplands rat hunts and squirrel recovery operations in rural towns throughout the South. For the next ten years, until he sought refuge in Animal World, Herald Walken was the face of Goldfinch Serge, turning it from a floundering rodent trading outpost into the premier large rodent conservatory and brokerage house in all of Mex-America.