Read The Best of Electric Velocipede Online
Authors: John Klima
The Best of Electric Velocipede (25 page)
“What you got?”
“Weddings. They
real
old,” Tey said. He held the book up for me. Lots of black and white photos with the bride and groom headin down the aisle. Next to each one was the announcement for the weddin from the newspaper.
A couple of tears slipped down my cheeks. Sugar Daddy was upstairs. Tey stared at me all wide-eyed. If I started cryin again, he wouldn’t be able to control himself, neither. I crawled in between the stacks lookin for the 50s and 40s. I pulled books out, and cobwebs flew in my face. We both sneezed. Sugar Daddy had articles for promotions and store openings and new partnerships and offices. Laundromats, and dress shops, and dime stores. Soda shops and diners. The clippings mentioned streets I never heard of before. There were photos of buildings I never seen.
“Keisha, I’m gettin sick.”
“Wait.”
Maybe he had a photo of my grandfather in front of his barber shop, maybe of my grandfather
in
his barber shop cuttin hair. Or my grandfather, whichever one, as a postman. Or Grandmommy’s weddin. I turned up more dust and cobwebs. They burned my eyes. Me and Tey coughed and sneezed.
“
Keisha
. . .”
Sugar Daddy had to have them here somewhere. Seemed like he had everybody else. I saw a group photo of a fraternity with a head in the back that coulda been a young Mr. Hughes. There were pictures of protestors watchin the interstate construction. I looked for my family there among those people with picket signs and banners. I couldn’t find them.
“Girl, I’m gonna puke all over you!”
“Okay! Okay! Okay!” I threw the book down and wiped the tears from my face with my sleeves. But my sleeves were covered in dirt, and my eyes only stung more.
In the backyard, I gathered all of the photos and newspaper cutouts I could find. I didn’t care if I got bit. I didn’t care if chiggers dug into my arms. The sun had gotten to some of the photos. Peoples’ faces disappeared behind fading colors the shape of cigarette burns. I could make out an eye, the side of a mouth, or hand, but the rest of em was gone. Houses missed roofs, or store windows had faded out. Tey was across the alley before he noticed I wasn’t followin.
“What you doin?”
“We have to save them!” I showed him my handful of photos and articles.
“We have to tell somebody there’s a old dead cat in that house.”
I went back to the porch and put the photos and newspaper cutouts in a neat stack. I put a rock on top of them to make sure they didn’t blow away. I gasped and ran farther down the creek, under the bridge where the train tracks went overhead. Way in the distance was the farm land on the TSU campus. I had no idea how far from home I was. There weren’t no buildings out here.
“Pick up everythin you can find.”
“Keisha, we gotta go.”
“Pick em up!” I yelled.
Paper clogged a drain. It was soggy and looked like it never had words or faces on it at all. We took up a few of Sugar Daddy’s photos out from the rocks and on the banks where the sun had baked some of em blank.
Tey sighed and rolled his eyes. “Keisha, come
on
! It’s all ruined.” He dropped the washed out photos back into the water.
I dug into the wet newspaper to see if I could make out any names, any faces. Put pages back together so I could bring the people back. There was nuthin that made sense. Just mush and clumps of black and gray. I crawled through the rocks. My knees turned up more drowned clippings and pictures the light bleached out.
“No! No! No!” I pounded on the rocks and cut my hands. I gathered all the photos I could and shuffled through them. “We have to save em all. We have to save em
all
! We can’t lose no more. We have to put em back where Sugar Daddy had em!”
“Keisha? You okay? Keisha?” I heard him comin up behind me. He put his hand on my arm and drew it back real fast when I screamed.
I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to scream at all, but it came roarin outta me til I thought my throat might bleed. I found a man I recognized in one of the photos. Sugar Daddy must have been on the opposite sidewalk when he took the picture on Jefferson Street. Maybe it was the day of TSU’s Homecoming Parade. Girls were twirlin their batons in the street. The man watched them go by with a little girl sittin on his shoulders. The man had water-wave hair, and he wore thick, black frames. Sometimes I couldn’t exactly remember Daddy’s face, even though I should have, even though it hadn’t been that long since I last saw him. But I didn’t forget his chin. This man had a chin like Daddy’s, and I sat on his shoulders with a big grin on my face, arms raised. The sun had gotten to this picture too. Some of the crowd had disappeared behind white spots. On my little arm, from the wrist and up to my elbow, I had been erased.
I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in air and screamed like I lost my mind, and maybe I had. I gasped and sobbed so hard my head fell in and I sucked up water. Tey pulled me out and wrung the water out my braid. He looked over my shoulder at the photo tremblin in my hand. Then he fell on his knees beside me. All we could do was listen to me wail.
We just sat there in the middle of the creek with dirt and newspaper clingin to our skin. The sun dried our backs. I wiped the photo dry against my chest and tucked it in my undershirt before any of the rest of me faded away.
The Bear Dresser’s Secret
Richard Bowes
E
arly one morning Sigistrix the Bear Dresser left the Duchess and her castle. He gave no warning before he slammed the golden tricorn hat, the sign of a Grand Master of the Animal Dressers Guild onto his head and picked up his suitcase.
He gave no reason, though as he walked through the gates he did remark to Grismerelda, the Duchess’ young maid, “A Bear Dresser answers to no one.” She watched the many snowy egret feathers on the Grand Master’s hat flutter in the breeze as he disappeared into the dawn.
The Duchess was having her hair done when they told her. “Faster, faster, silly girl,” she said. “Today is a disaster and I must look my very best.” Every morning Grismerelda spent hours getting her dressed and ready.
“It’s just like a Bear Dresser to leave like this. Dear Grandfather Fernando the Mad would have known how to handle him.” She enjoyed reminiscing about her distinguished ancestors; who among us doesn’t?
She summoned her chamberlain, her guard captain and her jester. “You see what must be done,” she told them. “The bears have no one to dress them and the Great Fair is one month from today.”
“Yes, your grace,” said the chamberlain.
“He never looked trustworthy to me,” said the guard captain.
“Take my life, please,” said the jester.
“We have entered our bears in the animal costume competition from time out of mind and with a few highly regrettable exceptions, such as occurred last year, we have always won first prize. And we will continue to do so.
“Sigistrix always dressed bears for me,” she said. “His father dressed them for my father. His grandfather dressed them for mine except for those times he escaped and had to be brought back in a cage. These things were much more easily handled in the old days before they had laws.
“I expect results from you three by his evening, or I will be most ANNOYED,” said the Duchess. “And you all know what that means.”
Indeed they did. The three were deathly silent for a moment. Then the chamberlain cried, “Gentlemen, to the bear’s house.”
Meanwhile the bears themselves, large and small, brown, black and white, were at home dressed in their natural fur.
“Good morning, bears. Always lovely to see you,” said the chamberlain and kissed several paws.
“Ten-hut!” said the captain.
“A funny thing happened on the way to my beheading,” said the jester.
But, though they worked hard all day and ruined several satin cummerbunds, a dozen pairs of silver slippers and a tailored tweed skirt, the bears were not dressed at nightfall.
“This will NEVER do,” the Duchess said. “My godmother, The Countess Freluchia would have had you all beaten soundly and hung up by your thumbs!”
For weeks the three men tried to dress the bears. Every morning after breakfast it would start. They begged them to put on elbow-length gloves; they tried to wrestle them into velvet knee britches and satin farthingales and did high step cake walks to show them how fine it was to wear dancing shoes. Each evening the bears still were not dressed. Everyone was very unhappy.
One day the Duchess decided to dress the bears herself. “I, her grace the Duchess, command that you all become dressed,” she said.
But nothing happened.
“I shall close my eyes and when I open them you will all be dressed.”
When she did, nothing happened.
“I shall give each of you a jar of honey.”
Nothing happened (though the bears liked honey very much).
“Uncle Rodney, of the Bloody Hand had an instinct for dealing with stubborn animals. He once had a pig put in the stocks for failing to bow to him.”
The bears wandered away.
“Just like bears! Come Grismerelda, I must go and dress for lunch.” And she stomped back to the castle.
That evening while getting the Duchess dressed for bed, Grismerelda asked a question that had bothered her.
“Your grace, how did Sigistrix dress the bears?”
“It was an old animal dresser secret, handed down in his family. Mind the comb, silly girl. It’s pulling my hair. You’re fortunate I don’t mind that as much as my dear mama did.”
Grismerelda hardly dared to ask the next question. “Your grace, might I try to dress the bears?”
“Silly girl, you have no experience dressing the bears. You have only dressed me.”
But next evening, when the bears still were not dressed, the Duchess remembered her maid. “Young Grismerelda wants to dress the bears. Let her try.”
So that morning, after dressing the Duchess, the maid set out to dress the bears. It was long and tiring work since bears are very hard to dress—shoes, for instance, even open-toed sandals—are extremely difficult because of the claws. And about silk stockings and bow ties it is best to not even speak.
By the end of the day she had managed to wrestle the smallest and most cooperative bear into a sundress.
“That,” said the Duchess, “is not good enough. I will give you one more chance. And if you fail, I shall be forced to do to you the very thing second cousin Honoria did to the footman who dropped the butter dish.”
Next day was the same. Although the bears were fond enough of Grismerelda who had sometimes brought them honey, they remained impossible to dress. She knew the Duchess would be displeased and her mother had told her the terrible tale of Tom the footman and the troublesome butter dish and how he had walked strangely forever after the thing that was done to him.
She took out a handkerchief and wiped away a tear.
Every bear picked up a handkerchief too.
Grismerelda stopped crying. She even started to smile. Oh bears,” she said. “Thank you very much.” And she reached down and picked up a hat.
By dinnertime, every bear, from the oldest in a battered French yachting cap, to the youngest in a broken propeller beanie was wearing a hat.
“Not enough, silly girl. Who ever heard of prizes for just wearing hats?” asked the Duchess. “The judges last year called the bears’ hats, ‘Lacking in presence.’ Still, I suppose it is something.”
“Your grace,” said Grismerelda, “I will have the bears dressed and ready for the fair. But I can do no other work. No one can bother me. No one can watch me. If you agree to that, the bears will be dressed. I promise.”
“One does not make ‘deals’ with me. Why I remember the presumptuous tailor who dared to offer me a dress so fine only one of my rank could see it. I could, of course, see it and was appalled at the shoddiness of the material. His thumbs still hang over the fireplace in the autumn parlor.” She paused then said, “Very well.” Only the next day did she wonder who would dress her.
Next day bright and early Grismerelda went to the bears’ house. She waited until she had their attention and then she picked up a shoe and put it on.
It took a while but by that evening, all the bears were wearing shoes.
Meanwhile the Duchess was dressing herself. Often she was surprised by the results. Her hair was a wild tangle. Birds thought to nest in it. In the ancestral closets, she found a turban. It had belonged to the Caliph Mustafa the Damned, a distant relative. He had lived in the castle briefly after he was exiled and before he was drawn and quartered.
She put it on her head. “Grismerelda bring me my mirror, silly girl,” she cried before remembering that Grismerelda was far too busy.
A week later her maid returned and said, “Perhaps, your grace, we would do better in the competition if the bears had better clothes.”
“Wherever would we find them on such short notice, you insolent child.”
Grismerelda pointed to the Duchess’ closets. Later that day as they opened the tenth or eleventh trunk, the Duchess gave a little cry of recognition.
“That sea shell embroidered four-piece bathing suit, belonged to Nadine the Neckless, Countess of Lethe, First Lady of the Towels at the Imperial Court.” The Duchess hesitated before handing it over then said, “She married my great-great-grand uncle and was an in-law so you may take that.
“And those very long-tailed shirts belonged to my father’s distant cousin Sir Douglass the Pantless—a disgraceful relic, take them.
“But you can’t have that tasseled silk strangling scarf. It belonged to my dear mother,” giggled the Duchess girlishly. “She used to threaten everyone with it. I will wear it in her memory, tied around my waist.
“Oh, and my dear Papa the Duke’s tiny branding iron! He would heat it over a candle and sear his crest into the behinds of people who fell asleep at dinner I’d forgotten about it!
“Those green galoshes with the frogs’ heads on the toes, on the other hand, look just right for a bear. Such a large size I can’t think who they were for.
“And a box of garter belts with the ancestral crest—an amorous gargoyle—on each. There are enough for each bear to have one.”
Bright and early on the morning of the fair, the bears were dressed in picture hats and silver cuirasses and silk tutus and velvet knee britches and patent leather slippers and flowing silk ties. Old father bear stuffed his feet into cowboy boots with silver spurs.
The most popular event each year was the animal costume competition. Every aristocratic house participated. That year the crowds were larger than ever and there were many contestants.
Among them were the elephants of Countess Barzuki with a new Celtic dance routine, the swans of the Marquise de Cruel on roller skates and last year’s winner, the lions of Prince Nasty wearing shoes with mirrors on them and wide brimmed picture hats lined with lighted candles.
But this year those seemed like vulgar gimmicks. Everyone agreed that the bears of the Duchess in their remarkable wardrobes were in a class by themselves.
The chief judge turned out to be Sigistrix. He smiled as he awarded first prize to the Duchess who seemed overwhelmed.
Then, on Grismerelda’s head, Sigistrix placed the copper tricorn of a master of the Animal Dressers’ Guild. It bore a single egret feather, the sign of a first place finish.
From then on in the bears’ house the bears dressed themselves.
And at the castle, the Duchess dressed herself.
The Duchess never learned Grismerelda’s secret.
“Uncle Phineas the Unwashed did something quite horrible as a lesson to a servant who kept secrets,” said the Duchess. But she was so busy trying on the many-armed hunting jacket that had once belonged to her godfather, the Elector Konrad who was nicknamed “The Octopus,” that she couldn’t remember what the horrible thing was.
