The Toynbee Convector (28 page)

“Come on.”

Phones rang all across town and lunches burned on stoves, as the colonel strode forth to give the parade his papal blessings.

At the center of the mob was a horse-drawn wagon. On top the wagon, his eyes wild with discovery, was Tom Tuppen, owner of a half-dead farm just beyond town. Tom was babbling, and the crowd was babbling, because in the back of the wagon was the special harvest delivered out of four thousand lost years of time.

“Well, flood the Nile and plant the Delta,” gasped the colonel, eyes wide, staring. “Is or is not that a genuine ole Egyptian mummy lying there in its original papyrus and coal-tar wrappings?”

“Sure is!” cried Charlie.

“Sure is!” yelled everyone.

“I was plowing the field this morning,” said Tom Tuppen. “Plowing, just plowing! and—bang! Plow turned this up, right
before
me! Like to had a stroke! Think! The Egyptians must’ve marched through Illinois three thousand years ago and no one knew! Revelations, I call it! Outta the way, kids! I’m taking this find to the post office lobby. Set it up on display! Giddap, now, git!”

The horse, the wagon, the mummy, the crowd, moved away, leaving the colonel behind, his eyes still pretend-wide, his mouth open.

“Hot dog,” whispered the colonel, “we did it, Charles. This uproar, babble, talk, and hysterical gossip will last for a thousand days or Armageddon, whichever comes first!”

“Yes, sir, colonel!”

“Michelangelo couldn’t’ve done better. Boy David’s a castaway-lost-and-forgotten wonder compared to our Egyptian surprise and—”

The colonel stopped as the mayor rushed by.

“Colonel, Charlie, howdy! Just phoned Chicago. News folks here tomorrow breakfast! Museum folks by lunch! Glory Hallelujah for the Green Town Chamber of Commerce!”

The mayor ran off after the mob. An autumn cloud crossed the colonel’s face and settled around his mouth.

“End of Act One, Charlie. Start thinking fast. Act Two coming up. We do want this commotion to last forever, don’t we?”

“Yes, sir—”

“Crack your brain, boy. What does Uncle Wiggly say?”

“Uncle Wiggily says—ah—go back two hops?”

“Give the boy an A-plus, a gold star, and a brownie! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, eh?”

Charlie looked into the old man’s face and saw visitations of plagues there. “Yes, sir.”

The colonel watched the mob milling around the Post Office two blocks away. The fife and drum corps arrived and played some tune vaguely inclined toward the Egyptian.

“Sundown, Charlie,” whispered the colonel, eyes shut. “We make our final move.”

What a day it was! Years later people said: That was a day! The mayor went home and got dressed up and came back and made three speeches and held two parades, one going up Main Street toward the end of the trolley line, the other coming back, and Osiris Bubastis Rameses Amon-Ra-Tut at the center of both, smiling now to the right as gravity shifted his flimsy weight, and now to the left as they rounded a corner. The fife-and-drum corps, now heavily implemented by accumulated brass, had spent an hour drinking beer and learning the triumphal march from Aida and this they played so many times that mothers took their screaming babies into the house, and men retired to bars to soothe their nerves. There was talk of a third parade and a fourth speech, but sunset took the town unawares, and everyone, including Charlie, went home to a dinner mostly talk and short on eats.

By eight o’clock, Charlie and the colonel were driving along the leafy streets in the fine darkness, taking the air in the old man’s 1924 Moon, a car that took up trembling where the colonel left off.

“Where we going, colonel?”

“Well,” mused the colonel steering at ten philosophical miles per hour, nice and easy, “everyone, including your folks, is out at Grossett’s Meadow right now, right? Final Labor Day speeches. Someone’ll light the gasbag mayor and he’ll go up about forty feet, kee-rect? Fire department’ll be setting off the big skyrockets. Which means the post office, plus the mummy, plus the police chief sitting there with him, will be empty and vulnerable. Then, the miracle will happen, Charlie. It has to. Ask me why.”

“Why?”

“Glad you asked. Well, boy, folks from Chicago’ll be jumping off the train steps tomorrow hot and fresh as pancakes, with their pointy noses and glass eyes and microscopes. Those museum snoopers, plus the Associated Press, will rummage our Egyptian Pharaoh seven ways from Christmas and blow their fuse-boxes. That being so, Charles—”

“We’re on our way to mess around.”

“You put it indelicately, boy, but truth is at the core. Look at it this way, child, life is a magic show, or should be if people didn’t go to sleep on each other. Always leave folks with a bit of mystery, son. Now, before people get used to our ancient friend, before he wears out the wrong bath towel, like any smart weekend guest he should grab the next scheduled camel west. There!”

The post office stood silent, with one light shining in the foyer. Through the great window, they could see the sheriff seated alongside the mummy-on-display, neither of them talking, abandoned by the mobs that had gone for suppers and fireworks.

“Charlie.” The colonel brought forth a brown bag in which a mysterious liquid gurgled. “Give me thirty-five minutes to mellow the sheriff down. Then you creep in, listen, follow my cues, and work the miracle. Here goes nothing!”

And the colonel stole away.

Beyond town, the mayor sat down and the fireworks went up.

Charlie stood on top of the Moon and watched them for half an hour. Then, figuring the mellowing time was over, dogtrotted across the street and moused himself into the post office to stand in the shadows.

“Well, now,” the colonel was saying, seated between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the sheriff, “why don’t you just finish that bottle, sir?”

“It’s finished,” said the sheriff and obeyed.

The colonel leaned forward in the half-light and peered at the gold amulet on the mummy’s breast. “You believe them old sayings?”

“What old sayings?” asked the sheriff.

“If you read them hieroglyphics out loud, the mummy comes alive and walks.”

“Horse radish,” said the sheriff.

“Just look at all those fancy Egyptian symbols!” the colonel pursued.

“Someone stole my glasses. You read that stuff to me,” said the sheriff. “Make the fool mummy walk.”

Charlie took this as a signal to move, himself, and sidled around through the shadows, closer to the Egyptian king.

“Here goes.” The colonel bent even closer to the Pharaoh’s amulet, meanwhile slipping the sheriff’s glasses out of his cupped hand into his side-pocket. “First symbol on here is a hawk. Second one’s a jackal. That third’s an owl. Fourth’s a yellow fox-eye—”

“Continue,” said the sheriff.

The colonel did so, and his voice rose and fell, and the sheriff’s head nodded, and all the Egyptian pictures and words flowed and touched around the mummy until at last the colonel gave a great gasp.

“Good grief, sheriff, look!”

The sheriff blinked both eyes wide.

“The mummy,” said the colonel. “It’s going for a walk!”

“Can’t be!” cried the sheriff. “Can’t be!”

“Is,” said a voice, somewhere, maybe the Pharaoh under his breath. And the mummy lifted up, suspended, and drifted toward the door.

“Why,” cried the sheriff, tears in his eyes. “I think he might just—fly!”

“I’d better follow and bring him back,” said the colonel.

“Do that!” said the sheriff.

The mummy was gone. The colonel ran. The door slammed.

“Oh, dear.” The sheriff lifted and shook the bottle. “Empty.”

They steamed to a halt out front of Charlie’s house.

“Your folks ever go up in your attic, boy?”

“Too small. They poke me up to rummage.”

“Good. Hoist our ancient Egyptian friend out of the back seat there, don’t weigh much, twenty pounds at the most, you carried him fine, Charlie. Oh, that was a sight, you running out of the post office, making the mummy walk. You shoulda seen the sheriffs face!”

“I hope he don’t get in trouble because of this.”

“Oh, hell bump his head and make up a fine story. Can’t very well admit he saw the mummy go for a walk, can he? Hell think of something, organize a posse, you’ll see. But right now, son, get our ancient friend here up, hide him good, visit him weekly. Feed him night talk. Then, thirty, forty years from now—”

“What?” asked Charlie.

“In a bad year so brimmed up with boredom it drips out your ears, when the town’s long forgotten this first arrival and departure, on a morning, I say, when you lie in bed and don’t want to get up, don’t even want to twitch your ears or blink, you’re so damned bored…Well, on that morning, Charlie, you just climb up in your rummage-sale attic and shake this mummy out of bed, toss him in a cornfield and watch new hellfire mobs break loose. Life starts over that hour, that day, for you, the town, everyone. Now grab git, and hide, boy!”

“I hate for the night to be over,” said Charlie, very quietly. “Can’t we go around a few blocks and finish off some lemonade on your porch. And have
him
come, too.”

“Lemonade it is.” Colonel Stonesteel banged his heel on the car-floor. The car exploded into life. “For the lost king and the Pharaoh’s son!”

It was late on Labor Day evening, and the two of them sat on the colonel’s front porch again, rocking up a fair breeze, lemonades in hand, ice in mouth, sucking the sweet savor of the night’s incredible adventures.

“Boy,” said Charlie. “I can just see tomorrow’s
Clarion
headlines: p
riceless mummy kidnapped. rameses-tut VANISHES. GREAT FIND GONE. REWARD OFFERED. SHERIFF NONPLUSSED. BLACKMAIl EXPECTED
.”

“Talk on, boy. You do have a way with words.”

“Learned from you, colonel. Now it’s your turn.”

“What do you want me to say, boy?”

“About the mummy. What he really is. What he’s truly made of. Where he came from. What’s he mean... ?”

“Why, boy, you were there, you helped, you saw—”

Charles looked at the old man steadily.

“No.” A long breath. “Tell me, colonel.”

The old man rose to stand in the shadows between the two rocking chairs. He reached out to touch their ancient harvest-tobacco dried-up-Nile-River-bottom old-time masterpiece, which leaned against the porch slattings.

The last Labor Day fireworks were dying in the sky. Their light died in the lapis lazuli eyes of the mummy, which watched Colonel Stonesteel, even as did the boy, waiting.

“You want to know who he
truly
was, once upon a time?”

The colonel gathered a handful of dust in his lungs and softly let it forth.

“He was everyone, no one, someone.” A quiet pause. “You. Me.”

“Go on,” whispered Charlie.

Continue, said the mummy’s eyes.

“He was, he is,” murmured the colonel, “a bundle of old Sunday comic pages stashed in the attic to spontaneously combust from all those forgotten notions and stuns. He’s a stand of papyrus left in an autumn field long before Moses, a papier-mâché tumbleweed blown out of time, this way long-gone dusk, that way at come-again dawn... maybe a nightmare scrap of nicotine/dogtail flag up a pole high-noon, promising something, everything... a chart-map of Siam, Blue River Nile source, hot desert dust-devil, all the confetti of lost trolley transfers, dried-up yellow cross country road maps petering off in sand dunes, journey aborted, wild jaunts yet to night-dream and commence. His body?...Mmmm...made of...all the crushed flowers from brand new weddings, dreadful old funerals, ticker-tapes unraveled from gone-off-forever parades to Far Rockaway, punched tickets for sleepless Egyptian Pharaoh midnight trains. Written promises, worthless stocks, crumpled deeds. Circus posters—see there? Fart of his paper-wrapped ribcage? Fosters torn off seedbarns in North Storm, Ohio, shuttled south toward Fulfillment, Texas, or Promised Land, Calif-orn-I-aye! Commencement proclamations, wedding notices, birth announcements... all things that were once need, hope, first nickel in the pocket, framed dollar on the cafe wall. Wallpaper scorched by the burning look, the blueprint etched there by the hot eyes of boys, girls, foiled old men, time-orphaned women, saying: Tomorrow! Yes! It will happen! Tomorrow! Everything that died so many nights and was born again, glory human spirit, so many rare new daybreaks! All the dumb strange shadows you ever thought, boy, or I ever inked out inside my head at three a.m. All, crushed, stashed, and now shaped into one form under our hands and here in our gaze. That, that is what old King Pharaoh Seventh Dynasty Holy Dust Himself
is
.”

“Wow,” whispered Charlie.

The colonel sat back down to travel again in his rocker, eyes shut, smiling.

“Colonel.” Charlie gazed off into the future. “What if even in my old age, I don’t ever need my own particular mummy?”

“Eh?”

“What if I have a life chock full of things, never bored, find what I want to do, do it, make every day count, every night swell, sleep tight, wake up yelling, laugh lots, grow old still running fast, what then, colonel?”

“Why then, boy, you’ll be one of God’s luckiest people!”

“For you see, colonel.” Charlie looked at him with pure round, unblinking eyes. “I made up my mind. I’m going to be the greatest writer that ever lived.”

The colonel braked his rocker and searched the innocent fire in that small face.

“Lord, I see it. Yes. You will! Well, then Charles, when you are very old, you must find some lad, not as lucky as you, to give Osiris-Ra to. Your life may be full, but others, lost on the road, will need our Egyptian friend. Agreed? Agreed.”

The last fireworks were gone, the last fire balloons were sailing out among the gentle stars. Cars and people were driving or walking home, some fathers or mothers carrying their tired and already sleeping children. As the quiet parade passed Colonel Stonesteel’s porch, some folks glanced in and waved at the old man and the boy and the tall dim-shadowed servant who stood between. The night was over forever. Charlie said:

“Say some more, colonel.”

“No. I’m shut. Listen to what he has to say now. Let him tell your future, Charlie. Let him start you on stories. Ready...?”