Classics Mutilated (16 page)

She carefully placed the little mechanism on the table in front of her and used the firelight to study it more closely. At first she had thought she'd wasted her time, but when she put the pocket watch beside it, she was able to compare the components more easily, and she could see they were of similar composition and size; they were just finished off differently.

Then she spotted it: the part she needed.

Using the precision that only an android could command, Anne very carefully detached it and transplanted it into the pocket watch within minutes. When the last part was in place, the pocket watch sprang to life.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Anne clapped her hands together in delight, an affectation she'd picked up from Diana. She knew that what she achieved that night was more important than any work she'd ever done on the factory floor—or at least, it felt that way to her. 

She looked at the part of herself she'd transplanted into the pocket watch, studying her handiwork, unable to find it lacking. The new part stood out from the rest of the components because it was free of tarnish and more rose gold in color than normal brass. It also appeared more refined in composition, and she wondered if Matthew would mind the discrepancy.

She resealed her access panel and relaced the top of her nightgown before methodically packing her tools back into the carpet bag. She considered whether she should clean the brass and restore the pocket watch back to its original condition. But the cleaning agent she normally rinsed through her copper hair was in the bathroom upstairs, and she didn't want to risk waking the Cuthberts.

She picked up the pocket watch again to take it back to the kitchen where Matthew had usually kept it, and walked straight into someone.

"Anne! Give that to me immediately!" Marilla barked, standing in the doorway with a lantern in her hand. "You have been told you are no longer welcome in our house, and that means you are definitely not allowed to touch our things." She looked at the android pointedly. "Especially ones you've already broken."

Anne didn't trust herself to speak after the trouble her mouth had gotten her into earlier that day, so instead she simply held out her hand. 

Marilla was taken aback by the silent acquiesce. She looked down to see the pocket watch still open on the dainty little hand, and she wondered what other heirlooms the android had played with while she and Matthew had been asleep at night.

She retrieved the pocket watch, inspecting it to see if it came to further damage—and her heart nearly stopped. 

The pocket watch was working again!

She couldn't tear her eyes away from it; she was so surprised. Then she spotted the gleaming new part at the heart of the clock mechanism, and her breath caught. "Where did you get that?" Marilla asked, looking up at Anne sharply.

The android raised her hand and placed it on her chest where a human heart would be. "Here," she said simply, her head tilting to the side.

She had used a part of herself to repair the watch!
Marilla realized what a huge gesture that was. "You didn't break the watch yesterday by playing with the clock mechanism, did you?" she asked quietly.

"No."

Marilla sighed. "Then why did you say you did when I asked?"

"You told me I couldn't go on the airship for Diana's birthday celebration next month unless I confessed to breaking it," Anne said, her big green eyes seeking Marilla's out in entreaty. "So I confessed."

"But that's lying, Anne," Marilla pointed out.

"You wouldn't believe the truth." 

Marilla sighed again. "So you thought you were giving me the answer I wanted. You were trying to please me." She looked back down at the repaired pocket watch. "Let us make a deal, Anne: I will forgive you for lying, if you will forgive me for not believing you."

"What is this about forgiveness?" Matthew asked, as he, too, walked into the room.

Marilla ate some humble pie. "You were right," she admitted, and without saying any more she handed over the pocket watch.

Matthew brought the timepiece closer to his lantern to study it. That it worked again was no surprise to him. He had a feeling Anne would try to repair it after watching her dedication while building his milking machine. But what he didn't expect to see was the glint of a new component in the clock mechanism that differed in color from the rest of the watch. He looked over to Anne in shock when he recognized its construction was far more refined than the rest of the watch's components.

Anne's green eyes twinkled. "I'll never be on time for school again," she said, and Matthew realized she'd used a component from her internal clock to bring his father's beloved pocket watch back to life. 

He knew what a sacrifice that must have been for the android, and his heart reached out to her, knowing that in a way he held a piece of hers within in his hand.

He walked up to her and kissed her on the forehead, much to her and Marilla's surprise. "You'll just have to learn how to tell the time like us average folks," he said as he stepped back, his voice a little gruff with emotion. 

"
I'll
teach you, Anne," Marilla stated. "If you learn from Matthew, you'll never arrive anywhere on time."

Anne had always thought that sailing on an airship would give her a sense of freedom unlike any other experience in the world.

She was wrong.

Yes, it was exhilarating. Yes, she felt on top of the world—quite literally—as she leaned over the bow of the ship, the wind lifting her copper hair as the vessel passed through another cloud bank. But she soon realized that she was just a spectator watching the world pass her by. There was some peace to be discovered in that, but she had no control over that journey; she just had to enjoy the ride.

She knew now that her first true taste of freedom had been when the Station Master had released her from the cargo trunk at the train station three months ago—she just hadn't been aware of it at the time. She had stepped out into a brand new world, with sensations she'd never even known had existed, let alone experienced, and for the first time in her brief life she had the opportunity to be accepted. Appreciated. 

Loved.

No longer was she being told how to perform her every action like an automated machine. She had to learn and adapt to the ramifications of her actions like everyone else, and deal with any consequences that arose. There was a great sense of freedom in being in control of her own destiny that she'd previously been denied until she'd met the Cuthberts. 

Her keen android eyes searched the fields far below her until she spotted Green Gables nestled along the treeline. As she gazed at it she felt a sense of belonging that she'd never experienced before. 

"We would like to adopt you," Matthew said quietly when she had hopped off the airship not long after, halting her excited rambles about how the journey through the clouds had given her such scope for the imagination.

"But you have already bought me," Anne replied, perplexed, as she considered Matthew's shy smile.

"That's true," said Marilla, "and what an expensive girl you were, to say the least." She brushed off her skirts briskly, and then looked directly at the android, who returned her gaze. "But we don't want to
own
you," she added, reaching over to take hold of Matthew's hand. "We want to know if you would
choose
to become a part of this family as the child we never had, and never knew we'd even wanted until you came into our lives."

Anne stared at both of them, and for the first time since they met her, she was speechless. 

In that moment she became Anne of Green Gables.

She had finally come home.

The Green Menace

By Thomas Tessier

I was weeding one of the flower beds out front when the black Cadillac came up the gravel drive and stopped just a few feet away from me. With its hooded headlights and the two huge chrome bullets mounted on the wide grille, it looked like some giant mechanical land shark. At the time—this was in May of 1955—I thought it was one of the most beautiful cars I'd ever seen.  

The man who got out of the Caddy dropped a cigarette to the ground and crushed it with his shoe. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt, not tucked in, and khaki slacks. He didn't look like someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. The skin on his face was chalky and I could see that he had office hands. It was still the middle of the afternoon and he already had a shadow filling in along both sides of his jaw. 

"Hey, kid," he said to me. "Give me a hand here."

I dropped the hoe I was working with and followed him around to the back of the car. He opened the trunk. There were two suitcases inside, one a little smaller than the other, as well as a black briefcase. He immediately grabbed the smaller suitcase and took that one himself.

"Get those other two for me, would you."

"Sure. How long are you staying?"

He ignored that, slammed the trunk shut, and stomped up the wooden steps to the veranda and through the front door, like he knew the place. Which he didn't; I was sure he'd never been to Sommerwynd before. Though I do remember thinking there was something vaguely familiar about him, like maybe I had seen his face on a baseball card a while back—not one of the keepsies.

My father was at the desk and quickly fell into conversation with the man as he signed in. I wasn't really paying attention, just standing there, waiting to find out which room he was given. But then my mother came out of the office, followed by my grandfather, and I saw the adoring look on their faces as my father introduced them. And then my father gestured toward me.

"And you have already met Kurt, our son. Kurt, this is our distinguished guest, Senator Joe McCarthy."

So that was why he looked familiar. I'd seen his face in a newspaper or on the television. But I was still a couple of months shy of sixteen at the time and had no interest at all in politics. The only thing I knew about him then was that he was a Commie-hunter and was loved for it by a lot of people, especially in our home state of Wisconsin. I nodded and mumbled something incoherent when McCarthy glanced at me and shook my hand. He had a so-so grip and cool, dry skin.

"Kurt," my father continued, "anything the Senator needs or wants while he is our guest, please see to it at once, or tell me or your mother."

"One thing," McCarthy said, raising a hand, his index finger extended. "I am here to get away from Washington and all that for a little while. So, I'd appreciate it if all of you would skip the ‘Senator' stuff and just call me Joe." He looked at me again and gave a thin smile. "That includes you, kid—Kurt."

He was in room number 6, the best of the nine guest rooms at the lodge. It had the widest view of the lake, its own little balcony, and the largest bathroom. He kind of exhaled when he stepped inside and looked around, like he was not impressed. I heard an odd clunk when he set down the smaller suitcase he carried. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a money clip, and peeled off a dollar bill. He handed it to me.

"When you get a chance," he said, pointing to the coffee table in the sitting area, specifically to the clamshell ashtray on the table, "I'll need a bigger ashtray. And a bucket of ice."

"Yes, sir."

cd                                cd

Knotty pine. He was surrounded by knotty pine, floor to ceiling on every wall, and it made him feel kind of edgy. Joe was fifteen minutes into his escape-from-the-rest-of-the-world, as he thought of it, and he was already wondering if he had made a mistake. Just one more in a long list of them, ha ha.

He was at Sommerwynd, a small fishing lodge on a small lake in a remote corner of northwestern Wisconsin. It didn't have a telephone, and the nearest town was twenty-odd miles away. It was the perfect place to go to ground for a while, to relax, recharge his batteries, and think about what he wanted to do next, to plan his next moves. If there were any. Billy O'Brien knew the Wirth family, who ran Sommerwynd. Billy had made the arrangements for Joe. Billy was a friend who stayed a friend—he didn't drift away, like so many others had. But now Billy had landed Joe out in the back of beyond, and Joe was not sure it was such a great idea after all. Still, give it a go. He could always leave whenever he felt like it.

Joe reached both hands behind him and up under his loose shirt to unhook the holster and the .22 clipped to his pants belt. He set them down on the bedside table. Then he pulled his left pant-leg up and unbuckled the holster and the snub-nosed .38 he wore above his ankle. He put them on the table next to the big armchair on the other side of the room. He'd never had to use either gun—yet. But Joe knew he had millions of enemies out there and he was not about to go down without a fight if any of them decided to come hunting for him.

He pulled the smaller suitcase close to the writing table, where he was sitting. He flipped the latches and carefully opened it on the floor. Inside, securely wrapped in cloth hand towels, were eight bottles of Jim Beam, along with Joe's favorite Waterford crystal whiskey tumbler. He put the drinking glass and one bottle of the bourbon on the desk, closed the suitcase, and set it down on the floor, right next to the night table beside the bed. He cracked open the bottle, poured a couple of fingers, and took a good sip. That helped. He lit a cigarette, then took another gulp of the whiskey, savoring the mixed flavors of bourbon and tobacco in his mouth. That's more like it, he thought, feeling a little better already.

I fetched a heavy glass ashtray from the supply cupboard and then went to the ice house, where I chipped off enough small chunks of ice to fill a large thermos. I wasn't expecting another tip, and didn't get one. He took the ice and the ashtray from me at the door of his room, muttered thanks and kicked the door shut with his foot. 

I saw him again that first evening when he came down to the dining room for supper. The season at Sommerwynd didn't really start until after the Memorial Day weekend, so the only other guests were an older couple, the Gaults, who visited every year. McCarthy nodded politely to them when he entered the room, and then sat as far away from them as he could. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind—more than once I saw him wipe his hand down across his face and give a slight shake of the head, as if he were trying to change the subject of his thoughts. 

My mother explained to me how McCarthy had been a kind of national hero, rousting out Reds who had infiltrated the American government, leading the fight to preserve the American way of life and protect our country from the threat within. But his enemies struck back and somehow managed to get the U.S. Senate to censure McCarthy in a vote the previous December. So that was what he had come to Sommerwynd to get away from. 

At the time, I didn't understand much of it and I wasn't curious to learn more. I just nodded as my mother went on about what a good man McCarthy was and my father chimed in to say how gutless, shameful, and treasonous the Senate was in their action against him. I remember trying to translate it into baseball terms. He was like a pitcher who made it to the big leagues, a rising star, but then his opponents figured out how to hit him, and beat him. Guys like that—if they don't learn a new pitch or change their delivery, they don't often make it back to the top.

It was a nice evening to sit out on the front veranda or back patio, or for a stroll down to the boat dock, but McCarthy finished his meal, skipped dessert and coffee, and went back upstairs to his room. I did catch a glimpse of him a little while later, about the time when the frogs start up their chorus. I was taking the day's food scraps out to the compost heap near the vegetable beds. On my way back to the house, I saw him sitting at the table on the small balcony off his room. McCarthy didn't appear to notice me; he was probably just staring off at the view across the lake and the rising moon. I saw a curl of smoke in the dusk light, and a sudden glow from his cigarette as he inhaled.

The frogs were having a party, somewhere down the right shoreline some distance from the lodge. They began croaking and thrumming away even before the sun's descent reached the high tree line on the far side of the lake. At first, Joe didn't mind listening to them. It was the kind of nature sound you would expect to hear in a place like Sommerwynd—frogs croaking, owls hooting, bats flapping in the night air, a fish jumping and slapping back into the water. Sounds that felt right.

But after an hour and a half of it, Joe began to wish they would just shut up. "Come on, give it a rest, guys," he muttered as he poured another drink.

It amazed him how loud they were. The frogs didn't appear to be close to the lodge, their ribbity croaking seemed to come from a fair distance away—and yet, the volume they produced was quite strong. And the numbers of them. It didn't sound like a group of six or eight frogs, more like dozens and dozens of them. As darkness settled in for the night, their noise and numbers actually appeared to increase. Maybe the sound just carried very well in the deep stillness of the location, with the lake surrounded on all sides by forest.

Joe finally had enough of it and went inside, shutting the door to the balcony. He could still hear the frogs, but their sound was greatly diminished. He fixed another drink and pulled out
Triumph and Tragedy,
the final volume of Winston Churchill's history of the Second World War. He knew he would need something to occupy time like this at Sommerwynd, and he figured that Churchill was a good man to read when you were in a tough spot. He had already tried the radio in his room, but the only station he could pick up faded in and out of static—he caught a bit of a song that sounded like Patti Page being electrocuted.

Joe read for a while, then set the book aside. It was one of those moments—occurring more frequently of late—when he felt he had little or no patience left for anything. Not the book he was reading, not the room he was sitting in, not the building or place he was in, nobody he knew or encountered, not the weather, the season, the time of day or night. Nothing, not even himself. 

He picked up one of his pistols and toyed idly with it in his hands. There was a certain comfort to be found in the kind of inanimate object that is simple in design and serves its purpose, and needs no other reason to be. A spoon, a fork, a knife, a shovel, a clay tile, a garden hose. A gun. Like this one. There had been moments in the past year when he was almost tempted to go that route. But his enemies would have loved it if he did, and he would never give them the satisfaction. 

He could still hear the frogs. Jesus Christ, didn't they ever stop? It was a low throbbing sound, boombadaboombadaboom in an endless beat. Fat, slimy creatures rumbling in the muck. Joe undressed, crawled into bed, and turned off the table lamp. He quickly fell asleep, but drifted back up very close to consciousness some while later, again dimly aware of the frogs—still going at it. 

Croak—you're croaked.

Croak—you're croaked.

Joe didn't turn on the light. In the darkness, he got out of bed, got a hold of his tumbler and the bottle of Jim Beam, poured one more large one, fumbled for a cigarette and the matches, and eased himself into the armchair. He did all this without opening his eyes, because to do so would make him more awake, and the whole point of getting up was to maintain this state of semi-consciousness, drifting along the edge of the one and the other, not quite awake or asleep. He knew without forming the thought that it would take two cigarettes to finish this drink. Then he would transport himself back to bed, and sleep would come again, and then it would finally hold.

Croak—you're croaked.

Joe made a kind of sighing, humming noise, not much more than a low, droning murmur within himself. It didn't sound like anything, but he knew what he meant by it. He meant:
Fuck you. Fuck all of you.

McCarthy didn't come downstairs for breakfast the next morning. He did just make it in time for lunch, but all he wanted was coffee, and a lot of it. Mom brewed up a fresh pot for him and he drank most of it while sitting on the front veranda, one cup after another, each with its own cigarette. 

I was nearby, working again on the flowerbeds, but I didn't say anything to him. It seemed pretty clear that he wanted to be left alone. He looked as washed-out and beat-down as anybody I'd ever seen. I tried not to keep glancing up at him, but it wasn't easy. Just knowing he was somebody important
,
or had been.

When he'd had enough coffee, McCarthy went back inside and I didn't see him for almost an hour. Then he came on the veranda again, this time with a little bounce in his step. He clattered down the front stairs and came over to me.