Down Jersey Drive-shaft

Chapter Twenty Six: Pincer Movement

"What?" He realizes right away the tone is vile. In the back, Gray begins to stir and moan in the cubby hole he's jammed into. "Sorry, Corporal. Yeah. Let's make like birds and fly out of this coop."

Stick shoved. Milkman begins to sprint. There's a lot of ground to cover.

***

I need Crank.

Fevered in the brain but not one to lose his senses, Roy hits La Donna's brakes hard. Rubber burns into the street as he makes a hard turnaround.
A hand fumbles for the radio handle.

"Fuse to Crank. Fuse to Crank! Come in!"

Radio buzzes. White noise hums calm normally, but today it infuriates. Without warning the channels do the Lindy Hop, skipping about every frequency.

...we take you now to the Great Atlantic Wall, where an unusual alliance forms. The Nazi regime is opening its gates to let in the Allied forces, desperate to rid France and the Fatherland of a threat much more severe...

...oosevelt believed to be hiding in a bunker at an undisclosed...

Roy supposes the propaganda pieces to calm the public are over. Every fidgety channel is about the effects of Motherville. No big bands to wash away the blues. No comedy acts or serial dramas. Doom and gloom.

"Crank! Come in, Crank!"

"I hear you, Roy Fuse."

Screech! La Donna jerks back and forth on the stop. She comes to a rest at the destroyed bridge, the still smoldering oil containers gone bye bye. Roy wants to kick himself. No bridge! How could he get to the antenna if he can't cross to Pennsville? Even worse, that response--

"Motherville." Roy mumbles it.

"Yes. I dreamt about you last night. You build. You know signals. You move them in waves and beams. A new signal tuning in to my show. Have you seen my growth?"

How can she hear me? Radio has no listening capability. He looks beyond the smoke and ruins to the hand antenna in the distance. Ah. Sending and receiving. And controlling...

"Growth? Yes, we've seen it alright." This invasiveness has caught him flat-footed. It makes him angry. "What is you want, besides killing some of us without cause and abusing others?"

...

"Well? You broke into my call. Answer me, you monster!"

"The signals are too good. They let me grow. Dreams. I dream here. What should I do with them?"

Choke on them! "Listen, why don't you find yourself a good psychoanalyst, and leave us alone! Better yet, crawl back down whatever hole you came out of!"

...

"But the signals are too good. You do not understand." A hollow click echoes from the radio. Its dull green-yellow light dies out.

An impassioned urge to punch the console is held in check by closing the eyes. As a boy, Roy's mother advised against rage. Her remedy for anger involved a close eyed, meditative dwelling on a peaceful locale. Since then, Roy kept calm envisioning the old family tea house out on the farm. Small but empty, simple yet secure, it was the sole representation he once had of perfection and peace. It got harder to picture it once neighbors tore down the 'Jap' hideout, shipped his folks off to the desert. Today, he needed that tea house of the mind to keep him on the up and up.

Come on. Come on.

Nothing appears. Just a once beloved farm field, tended to by stiff men in denim coveralls with eyes of one red lens, one green lens on absent faces. Black pills going into tilled soil.