Harsh Oases (11 page)

It was still going on. Show after show had been perverted, undermined, reconfigured to emphasize the worst aspects of modem life. I could sense my heritage slipping away from me, my past being chewed up and spit out. It felt as if I were standing on a pile of shifting sand.

In the middle of watching Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton blackball and humiliate a Jewish applicant to the Order of Raccoons, I boiled over.

“That’s it! We’re going straight to Zeiterion, right now!”

Without any objections, my wife got into the car with me.

As we approached the headquarters of the cable network, the traffic became unbelievable. It seemed as if the whole metropolitan area was converging on the offending studio.

Eventually, we slowed to five miles an hour. Then we ground to a complete halt.

After half an hour of no advance, my wife and I got out of the car and began to walk along the road’s grassy marge.

Within minutes, we were part of an enormous mob. I had half expected that all the people would be the same age as my wife and I, but they weren’t. Oh, most of them were of that particular generation that had imprinted on all these old shows, but there were young kids and older folks too. Anyone, I guess, who had ever enjoyed a laugh from one of these great sitcoms.

As we walked, silent and determined, helicopters chuffed over us, the news ones filming and the police ones broadcasting warnings to stay calm.

At last we stood in the parking lot outside the Zeiterion building, part of a vast crowd more melancholy than angry. In an effort to see what was going on, I climbed atop a parked car. Those already on top helped me, and then I pulled my wife up.

A stage had been erected outside the building, and workers were assembling the last of several of those huge monitors that sports stadiums use. When the workers were done, they left the stage empty. The crowd began to murmur and shift, but soon fell silent and still.

Out on the stage walked the spokesman for Zeiterion, a man whose every burlesque pratfall we had memorized, the beloved comedian of our youth, every wrinkle on his face visible thanks to the projections on the enormous screens.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said in his familiar amplified voice. “I just wish it could have been a happier occasion that brought you all here.”

He paused, then drew a deep breath before continuing.

“We have discovered the cause of the altered shows which you have all found so repugnant. In a word, it’s simply what the professionals call crosstalk, or leakage.

“Our technicians, in consultation with several noted physicists, believe that modem broadcasts have recently reached a certain critical mass sufficient to swamp any different signals in whatever medium. To put it simply, the airwaves are saturated with bad vibes. The sleaze, the killings, the gratuitous sex— Well, you all know what I’m talking about. As it stands now, any show from a simpler era is being warped into line with the overwhelming majority of current programming. And since we all seem to agree that modern television is acceptable and representative of our shared everyday life, there appears to be no solution to our problem.”

A stunned silence draped the crowd, as we all asked ourselves if it had really come to this. Then the spokesman resumed, a tear in his eye looking like a big crystal pillow on the screens.

“I will miss the old shows as much as you, if not more. But we must reconcile ourselves to the inevitable. There is no refuge anymore, for any of us. The Zeiterion Channel thanks you in advance for your continued patronage and understanding.”

Then the comedian turned and left, and the screens filled with the scheduled Zeiterion Channel offering.

But I don’t imagine you want to hear how Hoss came to burn down the ranch with his family inside.

This story owes its existence in large part to my admiration for Michael Bishop’s award-winning novelette from 1981, “The Quickening,” which posited a total and inexplicable sifting and intermixing of the Earth’s populations, and also to my enjoyment of John Calvin Batchelor’s
The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica
(1983), a somber novel that charts the fate of a boatful of refugees.

I certainly did not improve a heckuva lot on the tropes mashed-up from Bishop & Batchelor with this admittedly slight piece, but the visual imagery of suburbia flooded by Third World unfortunates still strikes me as worth having captured on the page, and unique to my piece.

EVERYWHERE IS NOW

It was a Sunday, and the wife and kids and I were out in the backyard having a cookout when the first of the refugees staggered by.

A black woman with a large colorful fabric-wrapped bundle on her head. Dressed in a long length of ragged cloth. Bare feet covered with some kind of red dust you’d never see around here. Skinnier than one of those waif-models and twice as vacant-eyed. She looked around in a daze, then slowly collapsed right into Lauren’s Radio Flyer wagon, her bundle falling to the patio’s flagstones.

I’ll give my wife credit. She didn’t hesitate a second, despite the oddness of the stranger, but rushed right over to the woman and tried to help her.

“What’s the matter, dear? Are you sick? Are you hurt? What is it? Is there anyone we can call? Are you visiting the Hendersons?”

The Hendersons were the black family on our block, so Shirley was just using common sense. But I had a weird feeling that this was definitely not a common-sense kind of situation.

I moved next to the woman too, and between us Shirley and I lifted her out of the wagon and got her into a resin lawnchair. I noticed she hardly weighed anything—less than any adult I’ve ever known. More like your average twelve-year-old. That kind of spooked me, and made the reality of her presence hit home.

“I don’t think she understands English, Shirl.”

“You’re probably right, Harry. In fact, I don’t think she’s even, well, an American.”

Lauren and Jimmy had inched up silently. My little girl was carrying a glass of Coke, and the boy had a hotdog.

“We think she’s probably hungry, Dad,” Lauren said.

“Well, let’s just see. Offer it to her nicely, kids.”

The kids held out their offerings, and the woman managed to focus on them. She made some kind of complicated gesture that conveyed dignity and respect, then accepted the food. She ate with restraint, but I could tell she was literally starving.

Well, I got kind of choked-up then, what with the kids coming forward like that, so instinctively good, and the woman’s pathetic yet noble response. You can say what you want about kids today, but if you raise them right they’ll turn out okay, and our two were little gems.

Just as the woman was finishing her hotdog, there was a lot of commotion from the street, and the four of us rushed out to see what was happening, leaving the stranger behind with hardly a thought as to what she might get into, which I would never have imagined doing just a few minutes ago.

Junemort Lane was filled with refugees. Dozens and dozens of exotic-looking black people who were obviously kin to the woman in our backyard. Young men and old women. Toddlers, babies and teenagers. Most were laden down with odds and ends, pitiful cheap possessions. Battered colanders, empty plastic jugs, tattered tarps. They were moving slowly, as if they had come a long way and were at the end of their energies. Stupefied and silent, they shuffled along, no obvious destination in mind that I could see.

Some of the refugees were wounded. Fresh cuts or scabbed-over ones, flies crawling over them. Some of the wounds were really bad. I didn’t really want the kids to look, but couldn’t quite figure out how to stop them from seeing.

The noise was coming from our neighbors. Everybody was out on their lawns or front steps, or peering from behind curtains, exclaiming and speculating about this strange sight. So far, no one was actually doing anything to help these people, and I was kind of proud that our family seemed to have been the first to offer any aid.

I assumed that someone must have called 911 by now, and that official help was on the way. It was probably best not to interfere with these people, whoever they were, wherever they came from. The authorities would know best what to do.

Still, I was glad the Rowan family had put their best foot forward. We’d probably end up on TV. I wondered if the woman was still sitting in our lawnchair, and if she had thought to help herself to some more hotdogs. There were burgers too.

Just then Emie Stultmeyer burst out of his house. He had obviously worked himself up into a tizzy. He was waving that rusty Korean-War-vintage .45 he likes to take out at parties, and shouting.

“You fucking jungle-bunnies! Stay off my grass! Go back to Africa! C’mon, go back where you came from!”

I felt ashamed. Even if the refugees—and as soon as I had heard the word “Africa,” I recognized them as actual Africans, their faces familiar from a hundred newscasts—even if they didn’t understand English, there was no misinterpreting Ernie’s hostility.

“Stay here, Shirl,” I said. “You too, kids.”

I crossed the street, threading my way among the shambling crowd. I thought I could smell an exotic scent rising off them, like the smoke from brushfires mingled with the sweat of exhaustion. But maybe it was just my imagination.

Maybe the whole thing was just my imagination.

But I didn’t think so.

Ernie was so nervous he pointed the gun in my direction for a second before he recognized me. I wasn’t scared, except maybe for him. That thing would probably misfire, even if he had any bullets for it.

He dropped the barrel as I got closer, and I took the chance to speak.

“That was kind of rough language, Ernie, don’t you think? The kids and all. And what if the Hendersons heard you?”

He looked sheepish, seemed to gain a little more composure. “Well, I guess maybe so, Harry. But I mean—Jesus, man! Look at them! They just keep coming!”

What he said was true. The throng was not thinning out, but actually swelling. Some of the refugees were fanning out now across the lawns. A family was kneeling, drinking from the grassy soup in a wading pool. I could hear sirens in the distance.

I thought it was best to get Ernie’s mind off defending his property.

“Whadda ya say we try to find out where they’re coming from?”

Ernie perked up. “Yeah!”

I got him to shove his gun into his waistband, and we started walking up Junemort against the flow. Other homeowners began following us, including Shirl and the kids. I didn’t object. It was probably no more or less safe at the head of the quiet column of refugees than it was back home.

We only had to go as far as Primrose Circle, the cul-de-sac where the Sarkley twins live. (They had just had a sleepover with Lauren last week.)

In the middle of the circle, a foot or two above the grassy curb-girdled plot right where the Harkleys had planted a rosebush, someone had cut a large hole in the sky. Its edges were ragged, like torn linen paper. Through the hole, I could see African savannah and clouds, a little slice of landscape anyway. Most of the view was blocked by people. Thousands of them, apparently. All coming through the hole three or four at a time.

As the whole neighborhood watched in absolute astonishment, a loud plaintive mooing could be heard above the rapidly approaching sirens. Soon, several head of emaciated cattle appeared in the portal. Leery of the small jump down, they had to be prodded from behind by their drovers before they made the leap. It was really a sight to see the skeletal herd clattering down Junemort

I felt a hand on my shoulder then.

It was Chief Tillmann. His blue uniform shirt was misbuttoned, so that it was rucked up around one ear. His men were equally disarrayed. None of them seemed to care how they looked though.

“Harry. Jesus, Harry. What the hell is going on?”

“It appears to me, Chief, that the Chamber of Commerce plan to attract more visitors is working.”

“How can you joke like that? This is a disaster! What are we going to do with them?”

“Well, I fed the one that stopped by our place.”

Chief Tillmann snorted in disgust. He turned to one of his men. “Bill, get the Guard on the radio. I wish I’d believed the first reports and called them sooner, but .…I guess we can try to round up any that try to stray and keep them all together until the reinforcements arrive.”

Jimmy and Lauren were tugging at my shirttails.

“Dad, what about …?”

“Yeah, Dad, you know—”

“Oh, right, gotcha. Chief, good luck. We’ve gotta run home. Left the charcoal going.”

The four of us returned to our back yard.

The woman had eaten everything in sight, then promptly vomited it up and apparently passed out. Luckily, she hadn’t choked. We got her inside. Shirley cleaned her up, and I turned on the news.

When the police came, I told them we hadn’t seen any refugees around, and they left.

Back in front of the TV, I soon realized that no one was going to bother interviewing us.

Holes just like ours had opened up across the country.