Cell

Clay was aware he was dozing as he often did when he drew inside his head. Coming uncoupled. And that was all right. Because he felt the way he always did just before picture and story became welded into one– happy, like people before an anticipated homecoming. Before journeys end in lovers meeting. He had absolutely no reason to feel that way, but he did.

Ray Huizenga had died for a useless cell phone.

Or was it more than one? Now Clay saw another panel. This one was a flashback panel, you could tell by the scalloped edges.

CU on RAY'S hand, holding the grimy cell phone and a slip of paper with a telephone number scrawled on it. RAY'S thumb obscures everything but the Maine area code.

RAY (O.S.): When the time comes, call the number on that slip. You'll know the time. I gotta hope you'll know.

Can't call anybody from a cell in Kaskwakamak, Ray, because Kashwak = No-Fo. Just ask the President of Hah-vud.

And to drive the point home, here's another flashback panel with those scalloped edges. It's Route 160. In the foreground is the little yellow bus with MAINE SCHOOL DISTRICT 38 NEWFIELD printed on the side. in the middle distance, painted across the road, is KASHWAK= NO-FO.once again the detail-work is terrific: empty soda cans lying in the ditch, a discarded T-shirt caught on a bush, and in the distance, a tent flapping from a tree like a long brown tongue. Above the minibus are four voice-over balloons. These weren't the things they actually said (even his dozing mind knew it), but that wasn't the point. Storymaking wasn't the point, not now.

He thought he might know the point when he came to it.

DENISE (VO.): Is this where they—?

TOM (VO.): Where they did the conversions, correct. Get into line a normie, make your call, and when you head on up to the Expo flock, you're one of THEM. What a deal

DAN (VO.): Why here? Why not on the Expo grounds?

CLAY (VO.): Don't you remember? Kashwak=No-Fo. They lined em up at the far edge of cell coverage. Beyond here, nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero bars.

Another panel. Close-up on the Raggedy Man in all his pestiferous glory. Grinning with his mutilated mouth and summing everything up with one gesture. Ray had some bright idea that depended on making a cell phone call. It was so bright he completely forgot there's no coverage up here. I'd probably have to go to Quebec to get a bar on that phone he gave me. That's funny, but what's even funnier? I took it! What a sap!

So whatever Ray had died for was pointless? Maybe, but here was another picture forming. Outside, Pachelbel had given way to Faurй, and Faurй had given way to Vivaldi. Pouring from speakers instead of boom- boxes. Black speakers against a dead sky, with the half-constructed amusement rides in the background; in the foreground Kashwakamak Hall with its bunting and cheap hay insulation. And as the final touch, the little piece of detail-work for which Clay Riddell was already becoming known—

He opened his eyes and sat up. The others were still in their circle on the carpet at the north end. Clay didn't know how long he'd been sitting against the door, but it had been long enough for his ass to go numb.

You guys, he tried to say, but at first no sound would come out. His mouth was dry. His heart was pumping hard. He cleared his throat and tried again. 'You guys!' he said, and they looked around. Something in his voice made Jordan scramble to his feet, and Tom wasn't far behind.

Clay walked toward them on legs that didn't feel like his own—they were half-asleep. He took the cell phone out of his pocket as he walked. The one Ray had died for because in the heat of the moment he had forgotten the most salient fact about Kashwakamak: up here at the Northern Counties Expo, these things didn't work.

8

' If it won't work, what good is it?' Dan asked. He had been excited by Clay's excitement, but deflated in a hurry when he saw the object in Clay's hand wasn't a Get Out of Jail Free card but only another goddam cell phone. A dirty old Motorola with a cracked casing. The others looked at it with a mixture of fear and curiosity.

'Bear with me,' Clay said. 'Would you do that?'

'We've got all night,' Dan said. He took off his glasses and began to polish them. 'Got to spin it away somehow.'

'You stopped at that Newfield Trading Post for something to eat and drink,' Clay said, 'and you found the little yellow schoolbus.'

'That seems like a zillion years ago,' Denise said. She stuck out her lower lip and blew hair off her forehead.

'Ray found the little bus,' Clay said. 'Seats about twelve—'

'Sixteen, actually,' Dan said. 'It's written on the dashboard. Man, they must have teensy schools up here.'

'Seats sixteen, with space behind the rear seat for packs, or a little light luggage for field trips. Then you moved on. And when you got to the Gurleyville Quarry, I bet it was Ray's idea that you should stop there.'

'You know, it was,' Tom said. 'He thought we could use a hot meal and a rest. How'd you know that, Clay?'

'I knew it because I drew it,' Clay said, and this was close to true—he was seeing it as he spoke. 'Dan, you and Denise and Ray wiped out two flocks. The first with gasoline, but on the second you used dynamite. Ray knew how because he'd used it working highway jobs.'

'Fuck,' Tom breathed. 'He got dynamite in that quarry, didn't he? While we were sleeping. And he could have —we slept like the dead.'

'Ray was the one who woke us up,' Denise said.

Clay said, 'I don't know if it was dynamite or some other explosive, but I'm almost positive he turned that little yellow bus into a rolling bomb while you were sleeping.'

'It's in back,' Jordan said. 'In the luggage compartment.'

Clay nodded.

Jordan's hands were clenched into fists. 'How much, do you think?'

'No way of knowing until it goes up,' Clay said.

'Let me see if I'm following this,' Tom said. Outside, Vivaldi gave way to Mozart—A Little Night Music. The phoners had definitely evolved past Debby Boone. 'He stowed a bomb in the back of the bus . . . then somehow rigged a cell phone as a detonator?'

Clay nodded. 'That's what I believe. I think he found two cells in the quarry office. For all I know, there could have been half a dozen, for crew use—God knows they're cheap enough nowadays. Anyway, he rigged one to a detonator on the explosives. It's how the insurgents used to set off roadside bombs in Iraq.'

'He did all that while we were sleeping?' Denise asked. 'And didn't tell us?'

Clay said, 'He kept it from you so it wouldn't be in your minds.'

'And killed himself so it wouldn't be in his,' Dan said. Then he uttered a burst of bitter laughter. 'Okay, he's a goddam hero! The only thing he forgot is that cell phones don't work beyond the place where they put up their goddam conversion tents! I bet they barely worked there!'

'Right,' Clay said. He was smiling. 'That's why the Raggedy Man let me keep this phone. He didn't know what I wanted it for—I'm not sure they exactly think, anyway—'

'Not like us, they don't,' Jordan said. 'And they never will.'

'—but he didn't care, because he knew it wouldn't work. I couldn't even Pulse myself with it, because Kashwak equals no-fo. No-fo-me-me.'