I was in my flying, fake woody '68 Ford station wagon, pushing down the gas pedal. Faster, faster. Put on that flying magic 'cause Sally Who Lives Under The Porch was in her 4x4 beaver all-terrain vehicle and was coming up fast. A mean machine made up of aluminum tubes held together with teeth enamel (the kind that falls off every six months), deep throat phlegm (the type that starts down in your lungs and goes in a straight line to your tongue), and, of course, beavers the size of elephants.
“Beavers the size of elephants,” I said to Sally. “Who ever heard of beavers the size of elephants in a car?”
“Hey, a Greaser puts everything she can find into her car,” said Sally, “and at least I am not ‘Jesse cheat boy.'”
“Hey, I can fly. Like I am not going to do it,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I bet you the Bucktoothed Beaver Mobile can beat your flying Ford any day,” she replied.
“A ground vehicle beat a flying one? How much?”
“$3,000 in new auto parts,” she said.
“Done.”
No Greaser has $3,000 to just throw around. I make the dumbest bets.
We were racing through the “bamboo forest;” she through it, and me over it. I was a little ahead but she was coming up fast. An inch-that's a spark plug.
Another inch-that's a hubcap. Big beavers biting down on the bamboo, that's my financial freedom.
“Who ever heard of beavers the size of elephants in a race?” I called to Sally. Distract her, slow her down.
“Who ever heard of a whiney boy who could fly?” she said, trying to distract me.
Who said she could distract me? “Yeah, well, this whiney boy is going to beat you.”
“No, what the whiney boy is going to do is buy me brand new spark plugs, a supercharger, and a…”
I could just see it. She would be in her good jumpsuit waving her ass at me as she put down my money on her parts. “Kiss my parts,” she would say. I wouldn't be able to because I would be choking over the amount of money that I would have to spend. Greasers live to drive, to race, not to get a job to pay for auto parts. That's what junkyards and wrecks are for.
I was coming in fast on the Neon Steakhouse, which was at the end of the forest. It is on a balcony that juts out from the thirty-fifth floor of the Richmond Palace. You know those palaces, giant complexes where the rich have supermarkets, pharmacies, food courts, and, of course, their massive apartments (that are bigger than the biggest assembly line at Ford) on every floor, so they never have to leave home and touch the poor, unless it is to tease them. I was flying so close to the restaurant that I could see, and hear, these couples in tuxedos holding fat over the side of the balcony saying: “Jump. Jump for fat from prime meat 'cause we know scum like you only get choice.”
Just a little more. “Now!” I turned and banked perfectly. I gained a few seconds on Sally and had caused those rich piggies to drop the fat over the balacony's edge. Take that. I gave them the “Double Crankshaft,” the Greaser's salute.
Places like the Richmond Palace, well, the only way Greasers would be allowed in is to cut off our kneecaps and use them as drain stops.
I took a moment to look at Sally's car. I was a few seconds ahead. All I had to do was continue my climb up the Palace and fly over the roof which was a branch of the Chase After A Dollar National Bank. If I made it past the end of the bank, I would be free and off the hook.
No job for me, Sally girl. No, you are the one who is going to have to put your leathers away and work in one of those hell holes, dragging your butt around in a pharmacy at two in the morning because some rich creep has to buy his prime fat flavored floss. When he falls asleep standing in front of you, Sally, you will have to wake him up “just so” 'cause, well, you're scum, and scum exists only to serve those monsters.
I was so distracted thinking about Sally in employment hell that I didn't notice “it” when it happened. I certainly heard it though.
Boom!
“What was that?” Sally and I yelled.
“Did your engine blow up?” We asked each other.
“No, I'm fine. It wasn't me,” we said as we checked our gages, not to mention our noses. I didn't smell chicken soup so I knew that my engine had not blown.
But my freedom was, because I lost the race.
Lost. I would have to get a job. Working in a fruit stand on the 69 th floor of the Richmond Palace.
Some guy will come in at 4:30 in the morning, tuxedo askew, and shout at me. “Hey you!”
“Good morning, sir,” I will say, “how can I help you?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Tell me something. Are the tomatoes fresh?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“The tomatoes, moron. Are they fresh?”
“Fresh as a daisy, sir.” So fresh it would make a nice splat on your face were I to throw it at you, but, of course, I couldn't do that. The masters and their prime meat must be respected (jump for fat).
I made a 360 degree turn. I was going to congratulate Sally even though I was royally screwed. A Greaser can never be a poor looser. That's the first line in the Greaser Code (engraved in really, really, tiny print on the Holy Studebaker Hood Ornament). I was going to present Sally with the Greaser congratulatory demitasse (Greasers love to have a demitasse; we keep a supply of the espresso in Moishe Mouse thermoses) when I saw it. A flying 68 Chevy station wagon was hovering by a big gaping hole in the bank. A woman held a hose coming from her trunk and was vacuuming up the bills that were floating to the ground. Falling to the ground…financial freedom.
“Should I do it?” I thought. It was illegal. Greasers try to stay away from cops if we can help it, but, I would only grab 3,000 dollars. I didn't want to sell tomatoes forever! But if I got caught, I would be hit in the face with a Billy the Kid club and not a tomato. But it wasn't my fault the bank had a hole in it.
“Attention, terrorist! Stand down or the bank won't be the only thing with a hole in it!”
Slowly I turned…
There they were, the flying dreadnaughts. One hundred-foot-long red, white, and blue tubes, but mostly red, because we must remember forever. At the end of the things were their giant engines, each one burning a ton of hydrocarbons. “A ton of freedom,” the top secret press release said. “They may burn foreign fuel, but they burn it for our freedom. Freedom to never forget!” Yeah, that's right, the top secret press release that's pasted all over the high school.
“You are flying,” said the dreadnaughts in their manly Republican voices.
Of course I was, and so was the bank robber. We had magic.
“The terrorists flew,” the dreadnaughts said. And they had no magic at all. “Therefore, you must be terrorists.”
“Jesse, get out of there!” screamed Sally.
The dreadnaughts turned. The “terrorist,” a sweet girl in the Bucktoothed Beaver Mobile (a thousand of which you could fit in a dreadnaught engine and still have room for a family of four) did not stand down. Instead, she warned her friend that his life may be in danger, and so the dreadnaughts did the only thing they could. The true thing. The proud thing. The American thing. They fired upon her.
The dreadnaughts dropped their bombs, the infamous “Freedom Fries,” on her. Oh God.
I flew down after them. I dove into a maelstrom, but Sally was down there, though she was as good as dead. But what if she wasn't? Well, she would be if I didn't help.
At the base of the Palace, the ketchup stains were everywhere. They must have flattened more than Sally. That'll teach the rich to live in a palace. Maybe Sally could have taught them because I saw the Beaver Mobile rise out of a ditch over some ketchup stains. The bombs missed their target and hit everything else.
“Sally! Thank God,” I said.
“How dare you!” shouted the dreadnaughts. “Terrorists don't have God. Only Americans have God.”
The dreadnaughts' guns opened fire on me. My 1975 CB radio antenna went. My fuzzy dice got shot up so much that they lost their fuzzy. I had to do something.
“Get small!” I shouted, “Get small!” The car grew small, real small, about the size of a fly. So did I. “Get small,” I kept shouting. The magic only works if I kept my mind on it. There is no magic cruise control.
I dove down to the ground, among the grass. If I could get my car near Sally I could briefly increase my size, grab her out of the Beaver Mobile and into the Ford, and we would shrink again and vanish.
The cargo holds of the dreadnaughts opened up and out dropped troopers in American flag togas. On their chests were tattoos of the burning towers and under the towers were the words “Made in America.”
I was able to determine this because there was an endless supply of troopers dropping from the dreadnaughts. All gunning for Sally. I panicked, so I lost my concentration, and grew big again. The togas saw me gain size and opened fire on the Ford.
“My country t'is of thee…,” they sang as they blew the roof off the Ford. Then the left door was turned into metallic Swiss cheese. I became small and flew in the opposite direction from the troopers.
Sally was still there and I was turning away from her! If I didn't do something, she would be dead. I did something and was hit by a machine gun bullet. The Ford shattered and I fell unconscious on a dandelion.
###
I woke up, got big again, and went to the Greaser's camp in the wetlands.
God, what was I going to tell them about Sally? Would they think it was my fault that she would be strapped down in an uncomfortable foreign chair made by that Swedish company? They don't know how to fit American posteriors 'cause they are not an American company. But the one that makes the needles is. The 1776 needles stuck into her body, 911 in her eyes alone.
“Now tell me, miss terrorist,” the torturer in the leather Uncle Sam outfit would say, “what don't you like about the Constitution?”
“Uh, I love the Constitution,” Sally would say, “especially the part about me being allowed to see my lawyer.”
“Humph,” the torturer would reply. “Never read the thing personally, but I know that terrorists don't get lawyers. They get needles in the eyes!”
How could that be my fault? 'Cause I should have done something to prevent it. But what? Not go unconscious for one thing. Not to mention, losing my car. What is a Greaser without his car? I was born in that car.
I got to the Greaser's camp. The various cars were arranged like a cross, so there would be no blind spots. I saw Bob Who Lives In The Attic (Sally Who Lives Under The Stairs' brother), the head of the Greasers. He was packing parts of the hydraulic lift that we “liberated” from an old American Motors plant.
“What's going on?” I asked as I walked up.
“We're bugging out,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“No, we are going,” he said, pointing around the camp. “Where you go, I don't care.”
“What?”
“You are out, Jesse. Go away before you bring them down on our heads.”
“What do you mean I'm out?” When I am in shock I tend not to be eloquent. “If this is about Sally…”
“If this is about Sally?” Bob shouted. “My sister is dead, or possibly worse. And it's your fault.”
“My fault? My fault?” I screamed. People who are being thrown out of their tribes should not scream. It just makes matters worse.
Bob glared at me. “Yes, with that flying car of yours,”
“Can I help it if the government is a bunch of idiots?” I said.
“Look around you, Jesse. Everyday the wetlands get smaller for that secret base they are building. You know they are fly crazy and yet you still fly that Ford.”
“I'm a Greaser. It's my car.”
“You're not a Greaser.”
“How am I… Bob, I've been a Greaser for…since my parents died.”
Bob came way too close to me and poked his finger in my chest.
“Stop that,” I said, while pushing his hand away.
“You never ran away from home,” he said as he poked me in the chest again.
“My parents were dead; I didn't need to,” I said as I pushed his hand away again.
“You are shockingly heterosexual,” said Bob, “when every one of the Greasers is at least bi.” And then he poked me in the chest again.
“So is your sister,” I said, pushing his hand away, again.
“And, look where your affair got her. She is either dead, or in their hands, which is worse. If I had time I would be in my white mourning leathers (Greaser's normal leathers were always black).”
They were going to kick me out. I was going to be alone. I had to do something. “And what do the rest of you think?” I asked. Oh yeah, that was brilliant. My fellow Greasers looked at me for a moment and then turned their backs to finish packing.
I grabbed the arms of the nearest person who wasn't Bob. “Carl. Say something,” I pleaded.
“I'm sorry, Jesse,” he said.
“Phil Who Dangles From A Cross Beam, help.”
“Oh, look at the time,” Phil said. “I've got a lot of packing to do, Jesse. Uh, excuse me.”
What could I do? Demand they take me back? Greasers “don't take demands from no one.” Hell, they only listen to Bob because he is the oldest and has the coolest car (a 1936 Cord).
I was lucky they didn't whack me on the head with a tire iron, tie me up, and drop me off in a monster truck's tire at the front door of the secret base, with a note pinned to my chest saying they would trade “the terrorist” for Sally. So I did the only thing I could do. I let them go and prepared to go after the real “terrorist” and her vacuum cleaner myself and hoped I could exchange her for Sally.
###
There is a street in Staten Island called Sunnyside Street. It is a throwback to “the real America.” The kind that's broadcasted on the dreadnaught's giant TVs.
When all men were white, had no beards (The terrorists had them. Bad! Uncle Sam must be undercover to infiltrate their organization), wore suits, and walked their kids, Bud and Princess, to the ice cream parlor.
Naturally this paradise, where you are never threatened, is where white boys buy their illegal guns. And behind the ice cream parlor, I bought a .45.
Conversely, there is a street in Brooklyn that has no name and is always dark. It is in sight of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge that leads to Staten Island, the suburbs, and freedom. But there is no freedom on the nameless street, except the freedom to work in giant skyscrapers sewing suits for Princess and Bud's dad. Freedom to make a dollar an hour sewing in a room of 117 sewing machines but only one light bulb. Freedom to work eighteen hours a day until you fall asleep, or go blind, or your hands get too close to the needle and you are sewn into a suit. If you are lucky, you die. If you are unlucky, the suit owner continues to feed you and you live out your miserable existence as a sweat rag for some guy on Wall Street, or your local congressman “who cares about the little people.” He especially cares about them if they are sewn into a nice, dark blue gabardine.
Finally, there is that final freedom. The freedom, after your shift, to trudge up the stairs (elevators are not for the workers), to the rooftop banks to deposit your earnings. If you are caught with money after dark, the kids who lost their parents to suits will first rob you, and then eat you, because the last thing that their mothers told them, before they became the latest fashions “out of Milan,” is that it is a sin to waste food. Especially, if it is fresh and free.
As Staten Island has only one rooftop bank, which the “real terrorist” hit (though she had to leave without her money), I bet that she would be hitting the banks of the nameless Brooklyn street. They were lightly guarded because no one would be dumb enough to rob them. You would never leave the street alive. Of course, if you were a flying robber and went over the hungry orphans…
I faced the bank and sat on a gargoyle. I rested the gun across its head, hoping I could get a quick shot off, drop “the terrorist”, and then drop her body off at the military base. It was late at night and the sounds of screaming and eating were dying down. It was a perfect time to rob the bank. So I wished the bank robber would show up already!
I did not want to be alone anymore. Two days I spent without my car, without my friends, and without Sally, in one of those cheap hotels where the walls might as well be cardboard. I only left to get a job and buy the gun.
At every garage I went to I heard: “I don't know. Our mechanics started hanging out at the gas station when they were six. Why should I hire you, stranger?” They didn't, and I did not, not, want to go work in the Palace. I am not a warm body to be worked into a cold one. I am a Greaser, despite what they said. It wasn't much better when I bought the gun.
“Gee, mister, you look lonely. Gonna hunt you a wife?”
“Something like that.”
“Hey Bud, sell the gun to that mook and come on. Look's like Dad's suit is going to hurl.”
“Coming, Princess.”
Was this going to be the rest of my life, without the Greasers?
Finally, the Chevy flew up to the bank wall. The bank robber flew out of the car and placed her charges on the wall. As it is really stupid to fire a gun at someone who is carrying explosives, I decided to bide my time and watch her.
A flyer, another actual flyer. I knew we were supposed to be rare, but I never actually saw another one before in my life. Just me. Me, who was forced to play outfield cause I could fly up and catch a ball. A ball that was never hit to the outfield.
Me, who was always left out of the car on road trips because I could fly along side. Oh, I was told not to worry because I wouldn't miss much. Wouldn't miss much, the car's occupants would have the greatest conversation of their lives. The kind where you find God and he points out to you your place in the universe, which might as well have been in that car, because whenever I had asked the car pilgrims what they talked about, they would say to me, “You had to be there.”
Finally, when I found my team, my place in the universe, the Greasers and their cars, I got kicked out because I am the only person who can fly. And now, when I find another flyer, I am going to have to shoot her in the small hope that there will be something of Sally to get back.
The other flyer took her piggy bank shaped plastic explosives out of the Chevy and laid them in a circle on the bank's wall. As she worked she sung the old “Moresuck” vacuum cleaner song:
“Does your life suck, suck, suck?
Floors covered in muck, muck, muck?
Enough to fill a dump truck, truck, truck?
Well the Moresuck will clean it up, up, up.
Not causing your wallet to erupt, erupt, erupt.
Cause its Moresuck. For less buck.”
My parents and I used to sing that song as we drove to the drive-in movie in the Ford. We would always end the song with a made up line: “Such cleaning will make you want to say an ‘f word' that rhymes with luck.” I had such cool parents.
The explosives blew, the money flew, and she started the vacuum up. She was so excited (I'd be excited too; that money could buy a lot of car parts.) that she didn't hear me fly over to her. She heard the cock of the gun's hammer though.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“What?” I said.
“Can I help you? You are pointing a gun at my head so I presume you want something. What is it?”
When I practiced this moment, making sure that I didn't shoot my own foot off (you can't fly when you are in pain), I never imagined it would happen like this.
“Uhm, stick ‘em up?” I said.
“Oh please,” she said.
“Lady, I have a gun pointed at your head. Doesn't that frighten you?”
“No, should it?”
“Yes! I…”
“Have never fired a gun in your life.”
How could she know that? How could she possibly know that?
“How do you know that?”
“Well, since you are not wearing a jet pack, you are a flyer. If you ever had a problem, you would just fly away from it.”
If I had a problem? I was kicked out of my tribe. Sally is probably meat. I can't get a job as a mechanic, which means that I am probably going to have to get a job selling tomatoes to rich Palace dwellers, and this woman has the nerve to tell me that if I had a problem I'd fly away from it?
“Hey, a flyer's life is not all paradise,” I said.
“Aw, sometime I have to pull myself up by my soul chord. Poor me,” she “sniffed.”
I dropped the gun to my side (which was probably a mistake). She knew about soul chords? The chords are connected from every person to the earth. I could see them but I thought I was the only one. Sometimes in midair, when there is no wind, or I am tired, or I turn wrong, I have to pull myself hand over hand on the chord. And If I was in the Ford I would have to get out and push it along the chord. Pushing a multi-ton Ford in neutral in mid-air is about the same as trying to do it on the ground. And when I had been late for a Greaser event, like an Arbor Day party (Arbor Day is very important for Greasers), they would always yell, “How could you be late?” When I told them about slipping and sliding with the Ford on the soul chord they would scream at me, “Greasers run away from society's fictions; we don't need you making new ones.” But she…
“You know about the soul chord?”
“You know, people who want to shoot guns shouldn't ask their victims stupid questions.”
Stupid questions? One of the mysteries of my existence and she knew about it? Was it because she was a flyer? She really understood me. Questions to someone who actually understands me are not stupid questions.
“But you know about the soul chord?” I said to the “terrorist” who did the most amazing thing. She turned her back on me, and hence, the gun.
“Look fella, are we done?” she asked. “I've got a bank to rob and I am way behind schedule.” She turned on the Moresuck and went to get some floating twenties.
“Stop that!” I kicked the switch on the top of the canister to the “off” position.
“I've got to turn you in,” I said, “to the dreadnaughts' secret base to get back Sally, so I can bring Sally back to the Greasers, so they will take me back.”
“Do you love her?” the woman asked as she turned around and faced me.
“What?”
“This Sally person, do you love her?”
“Well, we fool around a lot,” I answered, again lowering the gun to my side.
“Not good enough.” She shook her head. “If you love her, I could understand you committing suicide over her.”
“I'm not going to commit suicide!”
“A flyer going to the secret military base? They will shoot you down before you get within a mile of it. And this Sally person you are telling me about, if she is in anyway connected to a flyer, she's meat.”
Clearly the woman had dealings with the dreadnaughts. Was this because she was a flyer? Did she loose her “Sally” too?
“Was she a flyer?” I said.
“What?”
“The person you lost to the dreadnaughts,” I said. The “terrorist” looked at me and laughed.
“Person? I lost my whole tribe! We were the Christmas Tree Flyers. We made money putting up Christmas lights on tall buildings. The only reason I'm alive is that I was out buying bulbs at the time.”
“So this is?” I said, pointing to the bank with my gun.
“Financing my escape to Mexico,” she replied.
I held up the gun and put my eye on the sight. If I didn't take her down I'd never get back in my tribe. Take down a flyer who lost her tribe. And for what? Sally was probably meat. But what if she wasn't? So I would have to make this woman meat. A Greaser was a Greaser to get away from society and its cruelties.
I couldn't do it. I pointed the gun away from her. I gestured with the gun. “Go.”
“But the money?”
“Just go!”
She did. I watched her fade out of sight. It was after she was gone that I said to myself, “What are you, nuts? Another tribeless flyer and you let her go!” I gathered all the money I could and flew in her general direction.
I caught her over New Jersey trying to push the Chevy over her soul chord.
“Can I help?” I said.
“And what could you possibly do?” she said as she pushed the bumper with all her might.
“Give you this,” I said, showing her the money.