The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

After the First Death

Beyond the Chocolate War

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

The Chocolate War

8 Plus 1

Fade

Frenchtown Summer

Heroes

I Am the Cheese

In the Middle of the Night

The Rag and Bone Shop

Tenderness

Tunes for Bears to Dance To

We All Fall Down

T
HE
day that Barney Snow saw the Bumblebee for the first time (although he didn’t know it was the Bumblebee, of course) was also the day that Mazzo got the telephone installed in his room and Ronson received the merchandise for the Ice Age.

Barney was happy that he wasn’t involved with the Ice Age. The last merchandise had been bad enough, and he was still feeling the effects. It had made him dizzy—more than dizzy: nauseous, his stomach spinning as fast as the whirling room, the walls slanting toward each other, shimmering and willowy, giving the room a strange surrealistic dimension. He had clung desperately to the bed as if it were a raft on stormy seas, riding it out, waiting, clinging to the collapsed sails that were the bed sheets. His temperature, however, remained stable, and so did his blood pressure. Which made the Handyman happy. And when the Handyman was happy, everybody was happy, although happy probably wasn’t the right word. Finally, after eighteen hours, the dizziness abandoned him. The nausea also left. He lay weak and wan and listless on the bed, no strength at all in his body but filled with a sweet sense of having survived. Don’t forget, the Handyman
warned, there will be aftermaths. The Handyman always laid it on the line.

Still in the aftermath stage, Barney was glad that the Handyman had put him on the shelf and had decided to concentrate on Ronson next. The Handyman explained that Ronson’s merchandise—he did not use the word
merchandise
, of course—was a specific, calculated to produce an expected response. “This,” the Handyman said to Ronson, “will make you go cold all over. Like ice. It will turn your blood to icicles.” Ronson giggled in that way he had, but Barney did not respond, stayed on the sidelines. This one was Ronson’s baby. Barney merely watched as they prepared Ronson for his excursion into the Ice Age. They took Ronson to Isolation, where the heat had already been turned up, although it had been a warm springtime. They provided thermal underwear, which Ronson kept calling thermonuclear underwear as he giggled. They brought in special blankets, which looked like ordinary blankets but, the Handyman explained, had been treated with a special kind of cold-absorbent chemical. Then they began to connect Ronson to all kinds of wires and sensors and such. Barney called all the paraphernalia used with the merchandise
doodads.
Zip-pa-dee doodads. Otherwise they’d scare the hell out of him. The nurse, Bascam, rolled up the sleeves and legs of the underwear and applied more doodads. A hole had been cut in the underwear in the area of Ronson’s stomach. Bascam placed the final doodad right smack on his belly button.

Barney turned away. He had never watched a procedure before. The light reflected on the glass of the viewing window and he felt a little dizzy, a little woozy: the aftermaths. The Handyman hadn’t encouraged Barney to
watch the procedure and hadn’t discouraged him either. Free choice, the Handyman said, you have free choice here. A laugh, of course.

He left Isolation, left behind the spectacle of Ronson on the table, looking like some kind of giant insect, with strange antennae sprouting from him. And giggling away like mad. Ronson was tough, tougher than any of them, a fighter who’d won the Golden Gloves in Lowell two years ago, but he always giggled when it was his turn for the merchandise. A reaction, like the others. Allie Roon always wet his pants, which made it necessary for the Handyman to provide rubber underwear. Billy the Kidney whistled a soft tuneless birdlike melody. And Barney chewed the insides of his cheeks, his teeth gnawing at the flesh. Those first few moments of anguish always passed quickly, however. Allie’s peeing, Billy’s whistling, his own chewing stopped as soon as the merchandise began to work. Then you had other things to think about. Or sometimes, nothing. Depending. Sudden oblivion often waited after the needle plunged into the flesh: There was usually a needle where the merchandise was concerned.

Barney walked down the corridor, heading for fresh air. Bascam had said he could stroll the grounds today and smell the lilacs. Then she had blushed deeply and apologized. She had forgotten that he could not smell the lilacs or food cooking or anything else. His sense of taste had also been banished. Approaching Mazzo’s room, he saw a stranger at the doorway, an outsider, dressed in outsider clothes, blue pants, tan jacket. He was carrying a package. Strangers were rare in the Complex. As Barney watched, the stranger opened the package and pulled out a telephone, like a magician on a stage. A sleek streamlined telephone,
green, one of the fancy ones. The stranger stepped into Mazzo’s room. A telephone for Mazzo? Must be, Barney thought. Mazzo, the bastard.

Billy the Kidney came into view from the other end of the corridor. He was not in his wheelchair. He stood uncertainly, looking in Barney’s direction. Billy the Kidney began to walk toward him, legs wobbly, knees bobbing. Billy had trouble walking. Had trouble doing anything. He had orders to stay in the wheelchair but constantly defied the orders, even though it was painful for him to walk. He placed one foot carefully after another now, like a child taking his first steps. He was grimacing, his tongue sticking out of one corner of his mouth, as if he was trying to remember how to operate his body, this strange mechanism of bones and muscles and tissues.

“Come on, Billy,” Barney called. “Try to develop rhythm, for Christ’s sake.” Barney believed that rhythm was important. Tempo. Keeping time. Establishing a rhythm and letting it carry you. No matter what you did, it went easier if you placed your actions to rhythm. Like putting words to music. One-two, one-two-three.

Billy the Kidney had no rhythm. Or if he did, it was impossible for him to use it. He walked slowly and painfully, eyes wide with surprise, either at his ability to walk at all or because the pain was so startling in its intensity. Barney couldn’t tell which.

“Rhythm, tempo,” Barney called, clapping his hands. One-two, one-two-three.

Billy finally arrived at the spot where Barney was standing. His breath came in short gasps, his face was moist with perspiration.

“What’s up with Mazzo?” Billy asked.

“I think Mazzo’s having a telephone installed,” Barney said.

Billy nodded. His eyes flashed as he balanced himself precariously, as if he were standing on a tightrope. The flashing in Billy’s eyes was pain: Barney had seen it often enough.

Mazzo’s voice boomed into the corridor. “Beautiful,” he cried, “beautiful,” his voice unnaturally loud, as if he were addressing an audience in a theater. “That’s the most beautiful telephone I ever saw.” Drawing out the word: bee-you-tee-ful. For the benefit of Barney and Billy, of course, but especially Barney. He’d evidently heard Barney’s voice. He loved to shoot the works at Barney, even about a telephone.

“Jesus, I’d love a telephone,” Billy murmured.

“Hell, who would you call?” Barney asked, knowing Billy had nobody to call.

“A lot of people, a lot of places,” Billy said. “I had a phone one time.” He began to whistle, the whistle of the merchandise, tuneless and without rhythm.

“Thanks a lot for the telephone,” Mazzo called from inside the room, his accents exaggerated, the words drawn out in singsong fashion.

Billy saw the fury in Barney’s eyes. “Play it cool,” he said, touching Barney’s shoulder, the movement throwing him off-balance so that he almost fell. He placed his hand against the wall for support.

“Cool, Barney, cool. He could be dead tomorrow.” He pushed himself away from the wall with effort. Barney held himself ready to catch him if he fell.

“Let’s get out of here,” Barney said. “I’ll get your wheels and we’ll take a stroll outside.”

“Fine,” Billy said, balanced again.

Mazzo’s voice came to them once more.

“You mean I can call anywhere? Anyone? Anytime?” Loud, taunting, loathsome.

Barney ducked quickly past Mazzo’s room, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d heard him talking about the telephone. And he didn’t want to look back to see Billy the Kidney standing there like some kind of wounded bird who was caught between land and sky and belonged to neither anymore.

They picked up Allie Roon on the way, and the three of them proceeded to the Northeast Exit. The nurse who signed them out didn’t pay much attention to them. She was small, with delicate wrists and high fragile-looking cheekbones. Her pointed chin was set in determined fashion. She checked their names on the roster, avoiding eye contact. Like all the nurses and attendants outside their own immediate section, she seemed to pretend that they did not exist. Barney had been puzzled by that attitude at first and a bit angry. Until the Handyman had explained that it was difficult for some people, even nurses and physicians, to confront youngsters in a place like the Complex.

They signed their names, Allie Roon needing help as usual. Barney held the pencil while Allie did his best to move it, trying to control his fingers, his hand, his wrist. The signature was grotesque, covering three lines on the roster. The nurse looked annoyed.

“Allie Roon ought to be allowed to use an
X
,” Billy the Kidney said.

The nurse laughed, a startling sound of sudden merriment. The laughter transformed her face, softening the harsh angles, making the cheekbones glow. Old Cheekbones.
Billy the Kidney looked stunned: Had it been that funny?

Barney pushed Billy in the wheelchair toward the doorway. Allie Roon walked ahead of them. Or rather, jangled. Allie Roon always danced to some unheard melody, some unknown rhythm. But a depraved rhythm, ever changing, fast then slow then fast again, not at all like the rhythm Barney sought in his daily life. Allie’s every moment was spasmodic, especially his hands: His hands were spiders forever climbing invisible webs. He seldom spoke, and when he did speak he stammered, the words emerging torturously in a shower of spit. Allie was the youngest person in the Complex, just a kid, twelve or thirteen. But he had an old man’s face, wizened and worried, as if he’d lived a century or more. Barney knew about Billy’s rotten kidneys, but he did not know the cause of Allie Roon’s condition. Actually, he didn’t want to know. The Handyman was right when he said that it was best if they lived in separate compartments. Don’t become intimate with each other, the Handyman lectured, and forget about the past and future. There are no guarantees about the future even for the man walking down the street this morning in the best of health, the prime of life. And the past—forget the past; it is as dead as yesterday’s weather forecast. Concentrate on
now.
Remember, the Handyman said, you are all in transit. I hope it’s not rapid transit, Mazzo had said. Mazzo was quick: You had to allow him that much. But a real bastard, quick or not.