The Dead Town

Chapter 51

Nummy put his foot down. He said no to Mr. Lyss, who didn’t like anyone saying no to him. Nummy said no, no, no, the monster couldn’t come with them in the car. It happened right there in the living room, with the piano player standing beside the piano and Mr. Lyss holding the long gun. Grandmama taught Nummy always to be kind to people. But she also taught him not to let people take advantage of him, to put his foot down in the nicest way he could when someone insisted that he do something he knew wasn’t right.

The Xerox Boze said he wasn’t one of those things that gobbled up people. He said he wasn’t born out of a cocoon but instead out of a machine in a laboratory. Those cocoon things were called Builders, and he was called a Communitarian, and he couldn’t eat someone any more than he could kill himself.

Nummy didn’t believe a word of it. Monsters were monsters, they always did what monsters did, always disgusting, never anything nice, which was why Nummy wouldn’t watch their movies. If monsters killed people and ate people and did even worse things to people, then of course they would lie. Lying would be no big deal. Even a dummy knew that.

Mr. Lyss was no dummy, but he believed the monster. He said the monster saw what the Boze saw when the Boze died, and now the monster was broken somehow and couldn’t do monster things anymore. Mr. Lyss said you might call it a spiritual conversion, except the monster didn’t have a spirit and so couldn’t be converted. He said you also might call it a born-again experience, except the monster was never born in the first place, only manufactured, so he couldn’t be born again, only broken.

Nummy asked if the monster had seen the Lord, and Mr. Lyss said maybe not the Lord, maybe just Heaven, or maybe the Fiery Pit, depending on what the Boze saw. But maybe nothing like any of that, just something amazing on the other side.

So then Nummy wanted to know what the old man meant by the other side. The other side of what? Mr. Lyss said the other side of life, over where the dead go. Nummy said that was called either Heaven or Hell, it wasn’t called the Other Side. And Mr. Lyss said different people have different ideas about that. The Other Side might be far different from either Heaven or Hell. It might be this world again but you’re a new person, or even sometimes you’re an animal, what they called reincarnation. Nummy said that was silly, nobody would believe that, Mr. Lyss must be making it up. People couldn’t be animals, and they certainly couldn’t be a carnation, which was just a flower. Mr. Lyss said that if he was being called a liar, he would fry Nummy’s nose with some onions and fix him so he had to pee out of his left ear.

At that point, the piano player again asked Mr. Lyss to kill him, and right away. Xerox Boze begged for death so hard that Nummy found himself pitying him. Monsters probably couldn’t cry, crying wasn’t in their nature, and this one didn’t shed any tears, but he sounded really miserable. Nummy felt sorry for him. He wondered if maybe he put his foot down too hard.

Nummy said to Mr. Lyss, “I don’t want to be mean to him, not even a monster. Lots of meanness has come my way, so I know how bad it feels.”

“There’s an attitude Grandmama would admire,” Mr. Lyss said.

“But I’m scared,” Nummy said.

“Well, Peaches, haven’t you been scared pretty much all this dreadful day, and haven’t you come through all right? I’ve got my faults, one or two, but I’ve taken good care of you, haven’t I?”

“We’ve stolen a lot of stuff.”

“Tarnation, I did just say I have a fault or two. I didn’t make any claim to shining perfection. All I said is I’ve kept you safe. Haven’t I?”

“I guess so.”

“Guess so? You’ve got both feet to walk on, don’t you? You’ve got both hands to eat with. Your big dumb head is still on your shoulders, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” Nummy admitted.

“All right, then,” said Mr. Lyss. “Let’s go.”

Nummy had put his foot down, but now he found himself picking it up and doing just what he didn’t want to do, which was walk out to the stolen car with Mr. Lyss and the monster.

And when they got to the car, Nummy discovered that Mr. Lyss wanted the monster to drive.

As Xerox Boze got in behind the wheel, Mr. Lyss led Nummy around to the passenger side, where he opened both doors.

“It’ll be all right, Peaches. If I drove, I couldn’t keep him covered. This way, I’ll have a pistol aimed at him the whole time, though it won’t be necessary.”

“I don’t know what it is we’re doing,” Nummy worried.

“First it was alien bugs, which is just blind fate, no meaning to it. Then it was Frankenstein, which isn’t fate, it’s about how we try to tear apart the way things are, just to prove we can. It’s still Frankenstein, Nummy, but it’s something a lot bigger, too. Even a useless old hobo like me can see signs in the sky if they’re big and bright enough.”

Nummy looked at the sky, but he didn’t see any signs, just snow coming down.

Mr. Lyss smiled, which was a surprising thing to see, and he put a hand on Nummy’s shoulder in a way that made him think of Grandmama. “There’s big Evil in this town tonight, son, bigger than most people will ever admit exists. When it’s all over, they’ll just say it was these people machines, science run amok, which is true enough but not the whole truth. Anyway, there’s not just big Evil in Rainbow Falls tonight, there’s something else, too.”

“What else?” Nummy asked.

“From the start, things have gone our way when they never should have. We ought to be dead ten times over.”

“That’s because of you you’re so smart.”

“I’m smart enough for a hobo, but I wouldn’t be a hobo if I was as smart as I said I am. Things have gone our way for a reason, and I think I know what it is. I’ll explain that part later. But things went our way big-time when we found this broken monster, especially when you think about what broke him. He knows things about the monster-making machine only one like him could know, and in this war, that’s invaluable information. We have to find someone who knows how to use what this broken monster knows.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to look after you, and I’m going to do the smartest thing I know how, but I’m also going to say ‘Show me’ now and then, and just do what intuition tells me. Intuition is the little voice inside you that tells you what’s right and wrong, wise or foolish — which is different from dumb and smart. Do you feel better about this now?”

“No,” Nummy said. “Well, maybe a little better. But the Xerox Boze he’s still a monster.”

Mr. Lyss told Nummy to get into the backseat and slide over behind the driver. Then he put the long gun on the seat, barrel away from Nummy, and he said, “Don’t get it in your head to take that and go hunting rabbits.”

“I don’t hunt ever,” Nummy said.

“And remember it’s a stolen gun.”

“You stole it out of the preacher’s house.”

“That’s right. You don’t want to be part of that crime, too, considering all the other banditry you’re guilty of lately.”

“I’ll never touch it.”

Mr. Lyss closed the back door, got in front, closed that door, too, and handed the key to the Xerox Boze.

The monster started the car and said, “Where are we going?”

“Nummy,” Mr. Lyss said, “this right now is a show-me moment if ever there was or will be one.”

Mr. Lyss was quiet for a while. There was just the sound of the idling engine, and outside the snow sliding down the night, down and down, slanting in the wind.

Nummy sat staring at the back of the monster’s head, and the monster didn’t start humming sad music or anything, he just waited like Nummy.

After half a minute or more, Mr. Lyss leaned forward and clicked on the car radio.

A man on the radio was talking about a war somewhere. Then he said Rainbow Falls. Then he said people that weren’t people.

Mr. Lyss said, “Thank you very much.”