Fair enough.
On his porch, Charlie unslung a guitar and began to sing, pouring revelations over a twelve-bar blues. Adoring faces looked up at him, red-fringed by the firelight.
From the movie camp came an answering wail.
Not coyotes, but stuntmen—led by the raucous Riff, whose singing had been dubbed in West Side Story—howling at the moon, whistling over emptied Jack Daniel’s bottles, clanging tin plates together.
Charlie’s girls joined in his chorus.
The film folk fired off blank rounds, and sang songs from the Westerns they’d been in. ‘Get Along Home, Cindy, Cindy’. ‘Gunfight at O.K. Corral’. ‘The Code of the West’.
Charlie dropped his acoustic, and plugged in an electric. The chords sounded the same, but the amperage somehow got into his reedy voice, which came across louder.
He sang sea shanties.
That put the film folk off for a while.
Charlie sang about mermaids and sunken treasures and the rising, rising waters.
He wasn’t worse than many acts Leech had signed to his record label. If it weren’t for this apocalypse jazz, he might have tried to make a deal with Charlie for his music. He’d kept back the fact that he had pull in the industry. Apart from other considerations, it’d have made Charlie suspicious. The man was naive about many things, but he had a canny showbiz streak. He scorned all the trappings of a doomed civilisation, but bought Daily Variety and Billboard on the sly. You don’t find Phil Spector wandering in the desert eating horse-turds. At least, not so far.
As Charlie sang, Leech looked up at the moon.
* * *
A shadow fell over him, and he smelled the Wolf Man.
“Is your name George?” asked the big man, eyes eager.
“If you need it to be.”
“I only ask because it seems to me you could be a George. You got that Georgey look, if you know what I mean.”
“Sit down, my friend. We should talk.”
“Gee, uh, okay.”
Junior sat cross-legged, arranging his knees around his comfortable belly. Leech struck a match, put it to a pile of twigs threaded with grass. Flame showed up Junior’s nervous, expectant grin, etched shadows into his open face.
Leech didn’t meet many Innocents. Yet here was one.
As Junior saw Leech’s face in the light, his expression was shadowed. Leech remembered how terrified the actor had been when he first saw him.
“Why do I frighten you?” he asked, genuinely interested.
“Don’t like to say,” said Junior, thumb creeping towards his mouth. “Sounds dumb.”
“I don’t make judgements. That’s not part of my purpose.”
“I think you might be my Dad.”
Leech laughed. He was rarely surprised by people. When it happened, he was always pleased.
“Not like that. Not like you and my Mom... you know. It’s like my Dad’s in you, somewhere.”
“Do I look like him, Creighton?”
Junior accepted Leech’s use of his true name. “I can’t remember what he really looked like. He was the Man of a Thousand Faces. He didn’t have a real face for home use. He’d not have been pleased with the way this turned out, George. He didn’t want this for me. He’d have been real mad. And when he was mad, then he showed his vampire face...”
Junior bared his teeth, trying to do his father in London After Midnight.
“It’s never too late to change.”
Junior shook his head, clearing it. “Gosh, that’s a nice thought, George. Sam says you want me to do you a favour. Sam’s a good guy. He looks out for me. Always has a spot for me in his pictures. He says no one else can do justice to the role of Groton the Mad Zombie. If you’re okay with Sam, you’re okay with me. No matter about my Dad. He’s dead a long time and I don’t have to do what he says no more. That’s the truth, George.”
“Yes.”
“So how can I help you?”
* * *
The Buggy Korps scrambled in the morning for the big mission. Only two vehicles were all-terrain-ready. Two three-person crews would suffice.
Given temporary command of Unit Number Two, Leech picked Constant as his driver. The German boy helped Junior into his padded seat, complementing him on his performance as noble Chingachgook in a TV series of The Last of the Mohicans that had made it to East Germany in the 1950s.
This morning, Junior bubbled with enthusiasm, a big kid going to the zoo. He took a look at Chocko, who had recently been sloshed with red paint, and pantomimed cringing shock.
Leech knew the actor’s father sometimes came home from work in clown make-up and terrified his young son.
The fear was still there.
Unit Number Two was scrambled before Charlie was out of his hammock.
They waited. Constant, sticking to a pre-arranged plan, shut down his face, covering a pettish irritation that others did not adhere to such a policy, especially others who were theoretically in a command position.
The Family Führer eventually rolled into the light, beard sticky as a glazed doughnut, scratching lazily. He grinned like a cornered cat and climbed up onto Unit Number One—actually, Unit Number Four with a hastily repainted number since the real Number One was a wreck. As crew, Charlie cut a couple of the girls out of the corraclass="underline" the thin and pale Squeaky, who always looked like she’d just been slapped, and a younger, prettier, stranger creature called Ouisch. Other girls glowered sullen resentment and envy at the chosen ones. Ouisch tossed her long dark hair smugly and blew a gum-bubble in triumph. There was muttering of discontent.
If he had been Charlie, Leech would have taken the boy who could fix the motors, not the girls who gave the best blow jobs. But it wasn’t his place to give advice.
Charlie was pleased with his mastery over his girls, as if it were difficult to mind control American children. Leech thought that a weakness. Even as Charlie commanded the loyalty of the chicks, the few men in the Family grumbled. They got away with sniping resentment because their skills or contacts were needed. Of the group at the Ranch, only Constant had deal-making potential.
“Let’s roll, Rat Patrol,” decreed Charlie, waving.
The set-off was complicated by a squabble about protocol. Hitherto, in column outings—and two Units made a column— Charlie had to be in the lead vehicle. However, given that Junior was truffle-pig on this expedition, Unit Number One had to be in the rear, with Number Two out front.
Squeaky explained the rules, at length. Charlie shrugged, grinned and looked ready to doze.
Leech was distracted by a glint from an upper window. A gush of dirty water came from a pipe. Janice Marsh’s fish-face loomed in shadows, eyes eager. Stranded and flapping in this desert, no wonder she was thirsty.
Constant counter-argued that this was a search operation, not a victory parade.
“We have rules or we’re nothing, Kaptain Kraut,” whined Squeaky.
It was easy to hear how she’d got her nickname.
“They should go first, Squeak,” said Ouisch. “In case of mines. Or ambush. Charlie should keep back, safe.”
“If we’re going to change the rules, we should have a meeting.”
Charlie punched Squeaky in the head. “Motion carried,” he said.
Squeaky rubbed her nut, eyes crossed with anger. Charlie patted her, and she looked up at him, forcing adoration.
Constant turned the ignition—a screwdriver messily wired into the raped steering column—and the engine turned over, belching smoke.
Unit Number Two drove down the track, towards the arch.
Squeaky struggled to get Unit Number One moving.
“We would more efficient be if the others behind stayed, I think,” said Constant.