Things Will Never Be the Same Read online

  The floor filled up fast. Everybody moved toward the music. Out of the corner of my eye I saw old Mr. Stoat asking someone to dance. Other teachers moved towards the sound.

  Then I was too busy moving to notice much of anything. I was dancing, dancing not with myself but with Sharon, with Bob and Penny, with everyone.

  All five hundred people danced. Ginny Balducci was at the corner of the floor, making her chair move in small tight graceful circles. I smiled. We all smiled.

  The music got louder; not faster, but more insistent. The playing was superb, immaculate. Lizard Level’s hands moved like they were a bar band that had been playing together every night for twenty years. They seemed oblivious to everything, too, eyes closed, feet shuffling.

  Something was happening on the floor, people were moving in little groups and circles, couples breaking off and shimmying down between the lines of the others, in little waggling dance steps. It was happening all over the place. Then I was doing it—like Sharon and I had choreographed every move. People were clapping their hands in time to the music. It sounded like steamrollers were being thrown around in the ballroom.

  Above it the music kept building and building in an impossible spiral.

  Now the hotel staff joined in, busboys clapping hands, maids and waitresses turning in circles.

  Then the pattern of the dance changed, magically, instantly, it split the room right down the middle, and we were in two long interlocking linked chains of people, crossing through each other, one line moving up the room, the other down it, like it was choreographed.

  And the guys kept playing, and more people were coming into the ballroom. People in pajamas or naked from their rooms, the night manager and the bellboys. And as they joined in and the lines got more unwieldy, the two lines of people broke into four, and we began to move toward the doors of the ballroom, clapping our hands, stomping, dancing, making our own music, the same music, more people and more people.

  At some point they walked away from the stage, joining us, left their amps, acoustic now. Morey had a single drum and was beating it, you could hear Andru and Craig on bass and guitar, Cassuth was still playing the keyboard on the batteries, his speaker held under one arm.

  The street musicians had come into the hotel and joined in, people were picking up trash cans from the lobby, garbage cans from the streets, honking the horns of their stopped cars in time to the beat of the music.

  We were on the streets now. Windows in buildings opened, people climbed down from second stories to join in. The whole city jumped in time to the song, like in an old Fleischer cartoon; Betty Boop, Koko, Bimbo, the buses, the buildings, the moon swaying, the stars spinning on their centers like pinwheels.

  Chains of bodies formed on every street, each block. At a certain beat they all broke and reformed into smaller ones that grew larger, interlocking helical ropes of dancers.

  I was happy, happier than ever. We moved down one jumping chain of people. I saw mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, dinosaurs, salamanders, fish, insects, jellies in loops and swirls. Then came the beat and we were in the other chain, moving up the street, lost in the music, up the line of dancing people, beautiful fields, comets, nebulae, rockets and galaxies of calm light.

  I smiled into Sharon’s face, she smiled into mine.

  Louder now the music, stronger, pulling at us like a wind. The cops joined in the dance.

  Up Congress Avenue the legislators and government workers in special session came streaming out of their building like beautiful ants from a shining mound.

  Louder now and happier, stronger, dancing, clapping, singing.

  We will find our children or they will find us, before the dance is over, we can feel it. Or afterwards we will responsibly make more.

  The chain broke again, and up the jumping streets we go, joyous now, joy all over the place, twenty, thirty thousand people, more every second.

  As we swirled and grew, we would sometimes pass someone who was staring, not dancing, feet not moving; they would be crying in uncontrollable sobs and shakes, and occasionally committing suicide.

  AFTERWORD

  Ah! The Reagan Years, when the country was as asleep as the President.

  Do you really remember them, or was it all just a blur between Carter and somebody’s dad?

  Reagan was a senile moron in office, but compared to the one there now, he seems a flaming Einstein, doesn’t he?

  Somehow we got through what I refer to as the Salt Water Taffy years to get to these New Horrors!

  This one took me a fairly long time (it’s a fairly long story)—from September 10-November 2, 1987.

  I got to thinking: what would the 20th high school reunion of the Class of ’69 be like? What a world to celebrate it in. They didn’t stop a war and get rid of a paranoid bastard in the White House to get in other wars, prop up the same set of dictators worldwide, still live out John Foster Dulles’ wet dream of containment and Empire 30 years on, to be 38 years old in The Pudding Years. Did they?

  And then Reagan came up with SDI, “Star Wars”, another boondoggle sci-fi weapons system to make his fat-cat defense contractor friends rich. I said then, and I say now—you want a global satellite killer-ray anti-missile system—show us the pictures of the Greys from the Roswell Crash and say you’ll point the lasers out, rather than at other countries on Earth; That we’ll buy.

  Anyway; this is my Sixties story, and, so far, my last rock and roll story.

  One of the things people don’t realize is that I had to think four years younger than I am (Class of ’65 which already had a book of its own by others)—in the four years between my graduation and 1969, things had loosened up quite a bit. For instance: my school said choose any song you want, and it’ll be played at graduation. We chose “Wooly Bully” by Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs—we could see ourselves doing the Freddy coming down the aisle to the tune in our gowns and mortarboards.

  Word came back: choose any song you like from this approved list as your class song: Rodgers and Hammerstein II, other (yawner) show tunes, the sappy, the sentimental, etc. In the Old America, graduation wasn’t for the students; it was for the parents. In the New America, it still is.

  By 1969, they were lucky if they could keep the schools from burning down and made (to their way of thinking) cowardly compromises with the students to keep that from happening.

  By the way, on the grocery expedition: Everything in 1969 costs exactly what I say it does: that money would buy that stuff. I researched 6 months of 1969-1970 the old Austin American-(now Real Es-) Statesman.

  I remember the first time I and my housemates saw a 3-bedroom house for rent at more than $125 a month: we laughed and laughed and laughed.

  $4000 a year just doesn’t go as far as it did in 1974. . . .

  Another thing: If I tell you the colors of the sweatsuits on the Yuppies in the bakery in the 1989 scenes that the protag. meets are those of the first three knights who challenge Gawaine in Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, you’ll think I’m telling you that to make myself look cool.

  You gotta watch me every minute.

  WILD, WILD HORSES

  Up on the platform, Ambrose was preaching against the heathen, in Latin, to a crowd largely pagan who spoke only Greek.

  The spectacle of a man wailing, cajoling, pleading and crying in another tongue had drawn a large gathering. “Go it, Roman!” some yelled encouragingly.

  The man on the raised boards at the edge of the marketplace redoubled his efforts, becoming a fountain of tears, a blur of gesticulations, now here, now there. Such preaching they hadn’t seen since the old days when the Christians had been an outlawed sect.

  Then another man in the crowd yelled at the onlookers in Greek. “Listen not to him!” he said. “He’s a patripassionist. He believes God Himself came down and took par
t in the suffering of Jesus Christ on the Cross! He denies the accepted Trinity of Father, Son, Holy Ghost! Come across the creek and hear the True Word, spoken by followers of the True Church. And in a language you can understand!”

  With a snarl, Ambrose flung himself over the railing and onto the other Christian. There was a great flurry of dust, growling and coughs as they tore at each other’s faces and clothing. The crowd egged them on; this was better than preaching anytime.

  “What’s all this, then?” asked an ædile, on his morning inspection of the roadways. He began beating with his staff of office at the center of the struggle until, with yelps of pain, the two men separated.

  “Heretic!” shouted the second Christian.

  “Whining Nicean dog!” yelled Ambrose.

  With his staff the ædile rapped Ambrose smartly on the head and poked the second man in the ribs in one smooth motion. Two of the local military reservists hurried up through the crowd.

  “What’s this, your honor?” they asked, grabbing the two panting men.

  “Christians,” he said. “Since the new emperor Julian let all the exiles and fragmented bishops return, there’s been nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble with them. It would be fine if they killed each other in private, but they endanger decent gods-fearing folk with their idiotic schisms. They cause commotion in the reopened temples and trouble at public ceremonies.”

  “Quite right,” said the reservists, who both wore fish symbols on chains around their necks. They each punched and slapped the man they held a few times for effect.

  “Don’t think it doesn’t do my heart glad to see officers carrying out their civic duties in spite of their personal convictions,” said the ædile. “There’s hope for this empire yet.”

  “Sorry you had to deal with this, sir. We’ll take care of them,” said one of the reservists, saluting with his forearm across his chest.

  The crowd, grumbling, dispersed. The minor official continued on his way toward the rededicated Temple of Mars.

  The four talked among themselves a moment, then the two policemen and the second Christian grabbed Ambrose and frogwalked him up a narrow alleyway.

  The marketplace returned to its deadly dull normality.

  P. Renatus Vegetius had been on his way to the house of his retired military friend Aurem Præbens when the fight had broken out just in front of him.

  He shook his head. Surely the new emperor knew what would happen when he allowed all the exiled misfits and disgruntled Christians back. There was already talk that Julian was helping the Jews rebuild their temple in Jerusalem, that he would take state funds away from the Christian churches, that he would renew the imperial office of Pontifex Maximus.

  This small town, Smyrnea, fifty miles from Constantinople where the new emperor sat after his march from Germany, was supposed to have the Emperor’s ear. It was in this town he had spent his childhood and youth in exile, watched over by the old emperor’s spies, before going to Rome and Athens to study in his young manhood. Well, only time would tell what would happen with Julian’s plans to revitalize the increasingly disparate eastern and western provinces.

  Statecraft for the statesmen, thought Vegetius. He was on his way to Præbens’ house to consult manuscripts in the library there so he could put the finishing touches on his work, de re militaria, a training manual to be read to officers in the army. It lacked only a section on impedimenta and baggage-train convoy duties, of which Præbens had once written copious notes while accompanying Constantine on one of his eastward marches.

  P. Renatus Vegetius had himself never been in the army. He had held minor offices (he had once been ædile of this very town, twenty years before, but that was when the job consisted of little more than seeing that the streets were swept; the Christians, after their big meeting at Nicea having brought pressure on Constantine and his sons to close down all the temples and call off public spectacles). Not like today where an ædile got real respect; a broad-shouldered job fitting for a man. Still, Vegetius was glad the present troubles hadn’t happened in his times.

  Across the street, hurrying toward him, was Decius Muccinus, nomenclator to his friend Præbans. He was moving faster than Vegetius had ever seen him do, almost at a flat run. Unseemly in a slave, even one his master had promised freedom in six months. He was a young man with a beard of the Greek cut.

  “Salve, Muccinus!” said Vegetius.

  The slave jerked to a stop. “Sir,” he said, “forgive me. I was hurrying to your house, sent by my master to fetch you. Astonishing news, if true, which I am forbidden to tell.”

  “Well, well,” said Renatus Vegetius, hurrying with the young man toward Præbens’ town home. “Surely you can tell me something?”

  “Only that you will be highly pleased.” He leaned toward Vegetius, whispering. “Approaching: Singultus Correptus and Sternuus Maximus. Correptus’ wife is Livia, Maximus’ son is due for a promotion in the army.”

  “Salve, Singultus! Sternuus!” said Vegetius, stopping to shake their wrists. “How’s the lovely Livia, Singultus? And Sternuus, that son of yours has done alright for himself, hasn’t he?”

  After a further exchange of pleasantries they hurried on. “Thank you, Muccinus,” said Vegetius. “You needn’t have done that for me.”

  “Old habits die hard,” said the slave.

  “Great news, great news!” said Aurem Præbens. “One of your dreams came true! (And I’m not talking about that damned book of veterinary you want to write.) Sharpen up your javelin, you old fart! A lion’s been seen here in Thracia itself. Less than twenty miles away!” He waved a letter around. “Someone, anonymous, says I and my friends should know before the news becomes general!”

  There had supposedly been no lions this side of the Pontus Euxinus since the end of the Republic four hundred years before. One of Vegetius’ secret wishes was to hunt lions from a chariot in the old style and to write a treatise on the subject. He had been planning a trip to Libya the year after next (gods willing) once he had finished this book, and the one on the diseases of mules and horses, to engage in such a hunt. But here, now, in Thracia!

  “I’ve called on Morus Matutinus (who served in Africa) and Phœbus Siccus (who owns an old hunting chariot) and have sent for three teams of swift coursers for our use!” said Præbens. “How does that grab your testicles?”

  Aurem Præbens was beaming. Vegetius was beside himself. Sometimes the gods were kind.

  Sometimes they weren’t. The party had been out for two days; thirty men and slaves, twenty horses, two impedimenta wagons and fifty yelping, fighting dogs.

  As a scent they had brought with them a lion’s skin that had hung on one wall of Morus Matutinus’ atrium. By the second day of the dogs milling around and biting each other in uncontained excitement, the slaves were betting among themselves that the hounds would soon strike a trail and follow it the twenty miles straight back to Matutinus’ house.

  Phœbus Siccus, an old, old wrinkled man, was decked out in his armor from fifty years before. He could turn completely around in the worn leather and metal breastplate before it began to move with him.

  “Either these are the sorriest dogs I’ve ever seen, or there’s no lion closer than Mesopotamia. Who the Dis’ idea was this, anyway?” asked Siccus through his lips which looked like two broken flints.

  The dogs had run up a wisent, two scrawny deer and an ass in forty-eight hours. Each time the houndsmen would kick them howling away from the cornered animals and then stick their noses back in the lion’s skin.

  “I’m going over to the brook yonder,” said Renatus Vegetius. He mounted his horse.

  “May I go with him, master?” asked Decius Muccinus. “I should like a swim.”

  “The last thing I need out here,” said Præbens, “is a nomenclator. The guys who own these hounds all answer t
o ‘Hey, shithead!’” He turned to Vegetius. “Sorry. I wanted this hunt for you. We’ll take the dogs back north, then home. Follow the wagon tracks. If you miss the lion, though, you’ll hate yourself.”

  “If I don’t cool off, I will die,” said Vegetius. “Good hunting.”

  “Hah! I’m going to find out who sent that letter and turn the dogs on his butt,” said Præbens.

  It was a stream straight out of Hesiod, pure, pebbled and cold. Vegetius sat on a rock with his swollen feet in the gurgling water. Muccinus, who had stripped naked and swam back and forth a few times, was now asleep on the grass. Upstream tall rushes grew; to each side of the stream banks lifted up and hung over, shading the western side of the waters in this early afternoon.

  Their two horses stopped their grazing. One backed up whinnying, its eyes growing wider.

  “What is it?” he asked the horse, reaching out to calm it. Then his blood froze. Oh gods, he thought, looking upstream and scrambling for his javelin, what if the lion’s found us?

  He kicked Muccinus with his bare foot.

  “Mmmph?” asked the slave, rolling over. Then he jumped up, seeing Vegetius trying to put his sandals on over his head. He pulled a dagger from his lump of clothing on the ground.

  “What? What?”

  They looked upstream. Something moved along the tall rushes. The green fronds parted.

  The oldest man they had ever seen stood at the edge of the reeds, naked from the waist up. He might as well have been clothed; his hair and beard were pure white and hung in waves down his back and chest. He looked like a white haystack from which a face stuck out. They couldn’t tell if the hair reached the ground as the reeds covered all below his waist.