The Barkley Historical Society wasn't quite sure what it would do once all the cobblestones reemerged. After all, they were a sign of Spanish imperialism, as well as the subjugation of indigenous peoples. The head of the society thought the townspeople could pry them up and throw them at Antonio Banderas's car if he ever came to town.
A reed-thin woman in her early forties, she was picturing herself hurling a rock as a stunned Melanie Griffith looked on. The woman wore a glimmer of a smirk and a muumuu that looked as if it had been dragged through every historically significant ditch in town.
No one noticed the pleased smile on her face. The rest of those gathered in the small auditorium in Barkley's city hall were too busy discussing the two most significant things to descend on their hamlet since Fritz Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro made a campaign stop there back in 1984.
"How are things going with Buffoon Aid?" asked an overweight man who sat on the dais at the front of the hall. As he spoke, he continued to eat from the container of ice cream on the table before him. The man's own image was plastered across the side of the carton.
Before a hostile takeover that had cost him his business, Gary Jenfeld had been half owner of the famous Vermont-based ice cream company Zen and Gary's. His partner, Zen Bower, sat in the chair next to Gary.
After losing the company that still bore their names and likenesses, the two men had slinked bitterly across the country, settling in the socially conscious town of Barkley.
"Everything's cool, you know," drawled a black woman who sat down the main table from Zen and Gary. She pushed a string of dirty cornrows from in front of her dark glasses.
Yippee Goldfarb was an actress, comedian, producer and middle box on the syndicated game show "Tic-Tic-Blow!" For someone with not an ounce of discernible talent, her success was incredible even by Hollywood standards.
"I got my boys Leslie and Bobby comin' in tonight," Yippee said laconically. "Home Ticket Booth will be beaming us coast to coast via satellite for the next three days."
At the mention of the cable network, Zen offered a thin, knowing glance at the rest of the council. "Good," he said with an efficient nod. Zen began shuffling through his notes so they could move on.
"Uh...a little snag," Gary said. As he bit his lip, dollops of melting ice cream dripped down his coarse beard. "It's about Huitzilopochtli." He raised his hands to ward off the council's sudden worried looks. "The statue's fine," he said quickly. "You can see it if you lean this way."
Gary leaned far to the left.
Long windows lined one wall of the room. The dusty venetian blinds were twisted open. A dark, looming shape-taller than the city hall itself-could be glimpsed through the slats. Fat and tall and menacing, the slab of rock seemed to swallow up sunlight. A dark shadow cast from the huge statue fell like an ancient blight across the windows.
From this angle, a single black eye-as big as a small car and carved in angles of pagan fury-glared at the men and women in the crowded auditorium.
"Four stories of rock-hewn Aztec scariness towering over the main square," Gary winced, shuddering. Chunks of brownies were like brown grout between his yellowed teeth. "The statue's not a snag, per se. It's just that we got a call from Fox News about it this morning."
A ripple of concern passed across the stage. "How did they find out about it?" Zen asked.
"Don't know," Gary replied. "They didn't say. Maybe from some blabbermouth National Review reader over at the university. Anyway, they wanted to know if, since it was the Aztec sun god, we planned on sacrificing any hearts to it. I think they might have been yanking me."
Zen's face fouled. "That's ridiculous," he snarled. "We shelved the heart-sacrifice proposal months ago." His narrowed eyes found a few people in the back row who stubbornly mixed paper and plastic in their recycling bins. "For now," he added under his breath. More loudly he said, "I hope you told them the statue's just a link to the true, nonwhite, original gods of this hemisphere."
Gary nodded. "Then I steered them to the Buffoon Aid benefit. Oh, but I did mention how the kids of Barkley are pledging allegiance to Huitzilopochtli. But they're offering flowers, not hearts. I made that clear."
A hand shot up in the front row. It was Lorraine Wintnabber, chairperson of the Barkley Historical Society. As her dirty arm stabbed high in the air in an unintentional duplication of the Nazi salute, the woman scrambled to her feet.
"No flowers," she insisted.
Men on either side leaned away from the ripe smell rising from her exposed underarm.
Even Zen didn't seem to have patience for Chairperson Wintnabber. Thanks to her one-woman pothole crusade, he was on his tenth set of BMW shocks in as many months.
"What's wrong with flowers, Lorraine?" he asked with a sigh.
"They're living things," Lorraine snarled. Her filthy neck craned out of her muumuu. "'Pick' is just a euphemism for 'kill' when you're a flower. I for one do not think that it's good for the children for us to teach them horticide."
"I hadn't thought of that," Zen frowned. He bit his cheek. "I suppose we could use fake flowers."
Lorraine's arm Sieg Heiled once more. "Not plastic," she warned. "They have to be made from biodegradable paper."
Zen nodded reluctantly. "You're right," he sighed.
"Super," Lorraine enthused. A soiled notebook appeared like magic from the sleeve of her muumuu. "How many hundred should I put you down for?"
The next few minutes were spent haggling with the only woman in town licensed to produce handcrafted biodegradable flowers. It was finally decided that eight hundred was the perfect number that would satisfy the powerful Aztec god Huitzilopochtli without siphoning too much of the budget from the annual Kent State Reenactment and Flea Market.
"I'd better get started on this right away," Lorraine announced to the room when they were done. Notebook clutched in her grimy hand, she hurried from the auditorium.
At the back door, she bumped into a man who was just striding into the hall. Too busy at the moment to accuse him of contact rape, Lorraine scurried around him and was gone.
Far up on the stage, Zen noted the appearance of the new arrival with a flicker of approval. His lips curved to form the superior smirk common to political-science majors and devout Marxists.
The crowd failed to notice the stranger as he took up a sentry position near the door.
"Now, on to the most important item on the agenda," Zen announced from the stage. "I am pleased to finally announce that your council has been doing extensive secret work on the whole United States of America problem. I am sure that most of you had resigned yourselves to living under the oppressive boot heel of the fascists in Washington for the rest of your time on this polluted planet. I am pleased to report, however, that as far as Barkley is concerned, the American century is finally over."
There were sighs of relief around the hall, accompanied by a smattering of applause. "Thank Gaia that's over with," one man muttered.
Zen held up a staying hand and the noise died away.
"I can't go into all the details at the moment," he said. "But I can tell you that we have recently acquired the means by which Barkley can at last declare its independence from America. We will become the first socialist state ever to exist on this benighted continent. We will shake the pigs in Washington from their fat complacency, collapse their fragile police state and signal to the rest of the world that the Revolution has finally begun."
His voice had taken on the strains of a revival meeting preacher. Throwing his arms wide, he gestured to the back of the room.
"And though your council deserves most of the credit, a small measure of our newfound liberty must go to a true hero of the People's cause. My fellow Barkleyites, I give to you the man who will help deliver us to our utopian paradise, Barkley's supreme military commander!"