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.