Marshsong Read online

  The night was their trampoline and they were more than ready to bounce. They would skip and glide from the Calliope District to the District of Jed to the Pedigree, from the crotchety grottos of six-toothed maidens to the well-stretched high kicks of the Coriander Monks. Barrenwood was a smorgasbord of pleasures for them. Constantly they foraged the back alley cat calls for yet another clue into the elusive joys of this convoluted delirium. They shared a sweet tooth for manipulation and a soft spot for forensics. It was a natural inclination to dabble in the hackneyed trials and tribulations of the citizenry. What the twins saw as a poorly scripted comedy, the citizens took as true grit. The utter seriousness of such grim fantasies simply provided an irresistible backdrop on which the twins cast their wicked charms.

  Heading toward the rail station meant hopping a freight. It would be hopeless to argue the flaws of the rail because the twins were sold on its corrosive decor. As they waited for their train to come in, they arranged a row of soda bottles on the tracks and chucked rocks at them. Crash! Smash! Shards flew. Their aim was exact. Their prowess at flinging small rocks was well honed by countless years along the banks of the Aliber River. These urban Robin Hood hijinks tended to be a little too easy and as such the bottles were set up at a distance of two hundred yards; the bottles now small gleaming flecks in the distance. Even at such range, the twins were breaking the glass with veritable ease. In no time, they could hear the high-pitched whistle along the tracks. The train was coming. The sound of the engine built up as the train curved along the west bend.

  “Can’t get enough of that sound!” shouted Fennel.

  He ran toward the train along the center of the rails. Isabella waited. She watched as Fennel dexterously bounded out of the train’s path at the last second, caught the side ladder with one hand and was within the first boxcar. The train quickly approached. Fennel reached out his hand to help Isabella aboard. She grabbed it with a mean grin, launched Fennel off the train with one hand and hauled herself on board with the other. He went tumbling into the sage below. Dust and rubble. She was correct in assuming that Fennel deserved such treatment. His cocky shenanigans surely invited retribution and who but his lovely sister would be capable of dishing it out?

  Sure enough, within seconds he was back on his feet and bounding back into Boxcar 673. Even from a respectable distance, Isabella could see the formidable crease in his brow. She folded her robes about her and escaped into the darkness of the corner, her body thinning out like ink in water. He was soon springing inside her car, his hair dusty, his tailcoat a bit torn.

  “Oh, sweet Isabella!” he called out. “Oh, sweet sissy? Where are you?” Fennel carried a crooked stick with which he began to poke into the corners. Tap tap. Isabella lunged out from her hiding place and sprang upon him. They wrestled and tangled like cats in a shower. Cackling and growling they dug in their nails and attempted to pin each other to the metal floor. Sure enough, their combative escapade had them so enthralled that they scarcely noticed their joined bodies slipping out of the boxcar altogether.

  They went head over heels into the dirt. Thump a lump dump bump a rump skid—they finally halted. Panting and heaving, they took stock of their situation.

  “A fine mess!” Fennel said, dusting himself off and looking a little annoyed. A small cut on his forehead was bleeding. Isabella was relatively unscathed, her lip a little swollen where Fennel had given her an adoring sock.

  “Might as well throw this outfit away. Thank you so much. My allowance only allows for so many . . . oh my, oh my. Fortuitous for sure. Looks like we are in luck. If I am not mistaken, that is the home of our beleaguered shacker.”

  Isabella turned to see a ramshackle shack with a hovering lantern on a hunk of wood peg outside. The dozing Rottweiler with its saturated jowls lay ineffectively by the umber door. Yes, it was the home of the anarchist shacker. A small sign was hammered into the ground, which read: Not only are you not invited, you are abhorred!

  “Love that,” thought Isabella. Just by the anguished bend in the sign’s prop, she could sense his feverish existence. Rash and out of whack, this man was in hot pursuit of a paranoid joie de vivre. He spent his life alone in these bedraggled confines without a pal, without family, without witty conversation.

  “Dusty books, manuscripts and surrealist algebra,” she said to Fennel.

  “Huh?” Fennel was dusting himself off.

  “Nothing,” she said, wiping the blood off his forehead with her handkerchief.

  “Ow! That smarts! I swear you play too rough. I could have been knocked unconscious.”

  “I doubt that. Now, what’s the plan?” She combed his cowlick down. Her brother just was not himself if his appearance was left unattended.

  “Right. The plan, the plan.”

  They huddled close and in a cloaked whispered play-by-play, the evening’s antics were given a score.

  Isabella pounded her fist onto the peeling wooden door—its raw exterior crackling even under just the slightest pressure of her tiny little mitt. The Rottweiler outside kept snoring. Inside, they heard the shacker start with a tumble of books. Guests most assuredly came as a surprise.

  “What? What is it you want?” came a lonely, surly growl from behind the desiccated door. While Isabella knocked, Fennel petted the lazy canine and even lifted its lips to poke at its incisors.

  “What is wrong with this creature? Some sort of external hibernation? What purpose could this lumpen canine serve?” he laughed.

  “Please, sir,” said Isabella through the door in a wimpy British urchin accent. “Me and me brother, we need ya help. We could only think of ya. Only you would help us.”

  “I’m not a charity service,” the shacker yelled from inside. ”What are ya, ten years old? Get! Get or I’ll sic my dog on you!”

  “A fine threat that is,” Fennel whispered as he continued to pet the snoring pet.

  “Please, sir! You must hurry! We stole some bread to eat and now the police are crawling all over Barrenwood to get us. We’ll go to jail for sure. Please, please, help us!” Isabella continued to pound and pound on the door until, in a whoosh of stinkiness, the door finally opened.

  In his hands the shacker held a small musket and his eyes were bloodshot. He was a bald man in an ancient green double-breasted suit. His fingers were yellow from too many nervous cigarettes and from the room one could smell the musty odor of solitude. He shook the barrel in the twins’ face.

  “Hey, you! Get away from my dog. He’ll tear your head off without even waking. And you, get away from my door. I’ve used this gun before and I’ll use it again! I’m not against violence. Ya hear me? I’m no pacifist. I’ve sent them straight to the grave for less.” His arm was shaking and his legs were buckling. He was scared, almost coming out of a dream. His lips twitched, his bleary eyes blinked and Isabella could feel the pain in his shoulder from some long ago wound. Behind him lay a sprawling pile of books and the cluttered desk where he must scribble his resistance. A faded poster read: Never Forget the Haymarket Martyrs.

  “But, sir, I thought you were an anarchist. Surely an anarchist would have some sympathy for our situation? We’re just two orphans trying to get by. Surely, surely, sir, you can take pity on us.” Isabella pouted her lip and pulled the hood from her head.

  “You’re a girl? A girl and her brother on the run? From the pigs? Hey, I said get away from my dog.” Fennel stood up and pulled his finger out from the dog’s limp lips. He shrugged and saddled up next to Isabella. “So, you two are on the run, huh?”

  “That is correct, sir. On the run since we was born. Came all the way from Odessa when the high boots of the infantry were making their raids. But tonight, see, the police have got our number. If you don’t help us, we’ll be sent to one of those correctional children’s camps where they chain you to your bed at night and beat you for saying what ya be thinkin’,” Fennel said. He loved playing the part of the tawdry waif. He had even added some dirt to his cheeks and spoke with an affected
low caste slang.

  “Ah, come on in. But don’t touch nothin'! Berkman will scare off the pigs no problem.”

  He led them into his home. Fennel shut the door behind him. The shack was just a pile of dingy books with cigarette butts everywhere. There were several gaping holes in the ceiling and Fennel could see some of the books in the room were sopping from last night’s rain. His bed was a pile of moth-nibbled wool blankets on the floor. He pulled some books off them and offered the twins a seat. They sat down graciously.

  The shacker sat down on a wooden stool in the corner, lit a smoke and put his rusted musket on the dirt floor. He wrote in there day and night. Fennel could feel his trepidations from the piles of writing littering the room—the handwriting frantic, exclamation marks slap dashed madly throughout.

  “He he, so I’m an anarchist, am I?” the shacker inhaled. “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, you’re known in the circles of the vagabonds,” said Isabella. “There are older ones who say you are very wise, some sort of man with vision who was attacked for his views.”

  “And isn’t that the truth?” the shacker stammered. “But what do they know? And what do you know? An anarchist. Ha! What does it mean anymore anyway? I’m just a man in a shack. That’s what I am. Does that make me an anarchist? Huh, girlie? Huh?” He stood up and pulled on his vest, sat back down and dragged on his smoke.

  “I don’t rightly know, sir. I just know that you let us in your home when we were on the run. I know you gave us a place to hide and for that I am thankful. I have heard you described as the last anarchist. And from the little I know an anarchist is an enemy of the state and a friend of the vagabonds.” Isabella smiled her pretty smile while noticing his yellowish, rotting teeth. The shacker squinted skeptically then began to cough.

  “(Cough cough) Whatever you might believe, let me tell you right now (cough), I am no friend of vagabonds. Those slouching buffoons that just sit on their asses and piss their lives away. Who would be proud to be associated with them? Not I!” He stood up. “See, kiddos. Hey, stop pokin' around!" Fennel placed a book back. “See, I’m my own creature. I live on an antiquated attribute known as integrity. I’m self-sufficient. I’m my own master. What has that to do with vagabonds?”

  “I don’t know,” said Isabella.

  “Of course, you don’t. Why would you? You two, look at you, you’re growing up in a world of parasites.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Fennel.

  “What?” said the shacker.

  “I said amen, brother, preach it!” shouted Fennel.

  “Parasites, baby, parasites. People are weak with need just squirming around for a handout. My god, and it isn’t just the pitiful vagabonds. It’s those businessmen and those governmental pinheads! Livin' off the slave labor of the masses. Up in their perfumed roosts pretendin' their shit don’t stink! They work ya into the ground and speak of bootstraps! Pull yourself up, they say. Well, the only thing I need a bootstrap for is a noose for their loose goosenecks! Of course, lowest, lowest on the evolutionary totem pole are the sick ass pigs! Hey, of course, I took you in if you’re running from them. Think I don’t know about what it is to be on the run? Sheeoot!

  “Back when I was editor for Dare To Tread, I used to also run speed through Barrenwood in my suitcase. I lived a double life of narco-journalism. Muckraker and racketeer extraordinaire! I had it good for awhile! I gave those politicians ulcers with my editorials. The truth, baby, the truth! Not like they tell it anymore. Nope. Back when the truth was told and it sent waves out into the people 'cause they listened and they would get pissed and they would get drunk and blammo! Riots, baby, riots! People used to believe it so bad it hurt 'em. It hurt 'em and they had to get it out. They had to. They had to tear it down before they exploded. Self-preservation, baby. Pre-ser-va-tion! Yes!”

  “Amen, my brother, amen!” cheered Fennel. He could hear the sarcasm in his voice. His eyes glowed in duplicity. He would encourage every word.

  “In the beginning there was the word and the word was Liar! Cheat! Villain and thief! Without these words, a people just sit by and let their hard work go to not. And, and, and, become parasites. Just fighten for the scraps like a bunch of rats.”

  “Fighten for the scraps!” yelled Fennel, smiling gleefully.

  “Boy, don’t you get funny with me. I got a funny bone myself, ya know. Yes, I do. And my jokes are pretty damn hard to laugh at. But I’ll laugh. Oh, will I laugh. Back when I was editor of Dare To Tread, I used to make jokes so funny I’d get sent to the big house. Right on into the big house. I’d laugh so hard the constable would go crazy. Pound his gavel as he might, I’d laugh at 'em and tell 'em, what I’m tellin' ya—liars, cheaters, villains and thieves. But they just don’t have it in their hearts to laugh, so they locked me up. And they’ll try it again.”

  “They’ll do it again!” screeched Fennel.

  “I said, they’ll try it again! They’re not going to do it this time. Now boy, if you’re going to cheer me on, you better get the words straight,” he said, giving Fennel a wink.

  “Getting straighter!” Fennel barked with a smile.

  “You were sent to jail for writing what you thought?” asked Isabella. She wanted to get in his niche. In that part of his brain where the web tangled and the shutters were drawn. Where the synapses met like a superconductor and the thoughts wound about in a circular vertigo. Yes, though his heart was young, she felt that familiar knot in his brain—the knot that brought so many humans to their elder's knees.

  The shacker stood up again and moved to the door. He opened it and looked out over the sleeping Berkman into the dusty shrubs across the tracks.

  “Yes, yes they did. Those weren’t the charges, of course, but that was the reason. To silence me. To shut me down. To put the children back to sleep.” He turned around.

  “What were the charges?” Fennel asked.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  “I said what were the charges? You said those weren’t the charges, so what were they?”

  “Oh, right. Well, it was on account of my drug running. They busted me for narco-trafficking and threw the book at me!”

  “But you were running drugs. You said so yourself!”

  “Sure, I was and what of it? So, what? What are you supposed to do? You telling me you don’t know someone who sells? You telling me you didn’t steal that bread? I mean what are you supposed to do if you don’t want to work forty hours a week for some half-ass slacker, middle management loser? It’s called the informal economy, you little eggheads! I had to get my own and it wasn’t going to be through the charity of the man!”

  Fennel stood up and laughed his high squealing laugh. It was his bluff-calling screech that would never sit well with Isabella—the arc of its wailing sending shudders down her spine as it sounded like the squealing of a merciless pig.

  “Shacker, shacker, aren’t you just the most precious peach? I suppose you really believe that to be the story, don’t you? Oh, you’re such a martyr, aren’t you? I suppose some sort of Haymarket Martyr, is that it? Well, I wonder, I really wonder if those Haymarket Martyrs had dabbled in the goods you did?”

  Fennel was moving in for the kill. He had sensed the shacker’s weakness—the way his eyes had lit up, his forehead perspired at the mention of this narco business. A fiend. It had ruined him. The shacker stood there in dumb silence.

  “I wonder, Mr. Shackerific, if the man was really that concerned with your poorly distributed propaganda rag or if he was more concerned with your deteriorating life? Thought you were stronger than that white magic, didn’t ya?” Fennel gave him a wink. “Tut tut. Look, I think we both know who the real parasite was, don’t we, Mr. Shackadoodledoo?”

  The shacker yelled inarticulately and reached for his musket. It was gone. Isabella stood pointing it straight at his quivering brow. The shacker just froze there. He looked so lost. Resigned. Poor thing. He probably didn’t care if Isabella pulled the trigger or not.
r />   “Don’t be afraid, my good anarchist. My brother and I have no interest in your past crimes. We just thought we would remind you of any inconsistencies. That is fair, isn’t it?” She pushed the muzzle to touch his forehead. It stayed there and shook. “Fennel, please grab his manuscripts. I believe we must give them a copious analysis.”

  Fennel began to collect them under his arm. The shacker began to protest.

  “Please, no! I have been working on these for so long!”

  “Hey, shut shut. You need to let it go, bro. Fennel, ready? Okay, I wish you well and right. Do remember to muckrake your own life as well?”

  Isabella hurled the musket onto the bed and exited. Fennel gave the crumpled over shacker a quick kick to the head. It landed hard and the poor man lay prostrate on his moldy bed. The two little miscreants whisked out the door, past Berkman, over the rails and into the beyond. Behind them, they could hear the shacker sobbing in the shack.

  Tears ran, flowed out the door and into the night and entered their bodies with a taste divine. It was the sound they enjoyed leaving with—like grass peeking through concrete or bottle glass breaking on the tracks. It felt good to hear it, to feel it, to taste it. Fresh. Revitalized. It was the taste of the water. That liquid that let them know that people finally understood that life itself was a tragic unrelenting joke. The twins lapped up the tasty pain of that infinite wisdom, for it was their irresistible fuel. They left his home feeling accomplished.

  “It’s not right, you know,” said Isabella, making her way back toward the cave,

  Fennel smiled, staring wildly back at her. “Hitting a broke, weak old man when he’s down? I know. Isn’t it the best?” he laughed out loud and Isabella did as well.

  They made their way back to the cave and hoped for more nights like this one to land in their laps.