T'aint even da nort

   That's what one of them said, "T'ain't even da nort."

  "So?" The older girl was forever flexing and squirming her leg muscles to be a showgirl someday.  She took two ladle-fulls of popcorn and squirm flexed over to the sofa.

  "So." A glance at mama.

  "Yeah, go ahead.  Catch us up."

  As the world turns.

  "So where the assholes put weights in that guy's boots so he'd land that way

  "Tell the story but don't swear

  "Okay but ALL the grownups swear and cuss.

  "You're father and I do not."

  "Okay.  That guy had a heart attack on account of freezing you know.  That's why he didn't move that time."

  "Who said?"

  "I can't tell names."

  "Then how am I supposed to check for fact?"

  "Maybe you're not duppised to since we're in a different phase now.". Some popcorn missed her mouth and stuck to her inside out sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off where there'd been a worn-hole.

  "I'll check with Ed about that."

  "Pain in the arse.". Everyone stood up and workers-for-free-but-not-slaves started to gaggle into the kitchen area.

  Our spot commander came out of the stove area in a frilly mama apron and bellowed, Welcome in Auckie-men, but before anyone could accept the invitation a closet door opened and a blur bull's eyed.  Body slammed a foreigner into the loveseat where I'd resat.  The loveseat moved to the middle of the room and me and the foreigner had had our teeth knocked together.  He'd put his arms above his head as the sofa came to rest and our spit hung between our mouths in a spider web string. Someone hollered, SNAP THE PITCHER.

  "I'd say you people need to settle down," the Commander said, " But until I know what the hell just happened here...." His voice trailed off as he hung his head and asked for God's help.  "I'll say it for you Reverend," Sherry put her arm on his forearm, pulled the hairbrush out of his shirt pocket, wagged it at everyone, and asked, "What the hell is going on around here?"

  People sat people around on the furniture and straightened up each others' hats and socks tucking work pants into wrecks of boots and sneakers.  Straighten up and fly right? Someone asked in a badly disguised Spanish accent.  "And you're all wanna be actors?" The Commander was asking a really short fresh-faced boyman.  Mama tossed the hairbrush onto the loveseat.  "Do your littlest sister in pigtails please."

  The landline phone finally rang.  Nobody got up.  The spot commander said, "Speaking of wearing many different hats.  Excuse me." He blushed deeply because Sherry had explained about accepting talents as from God and showed him right where it says that about gifts and discernment in the Bible.

  People were sort of dozing sitting up and a few were holding hot hands and twisting each others' clothing.  The girlwoman who'd been eating the popcorn was reading the one paperback we'd found in the place.  Mama gave me the stern eye, don't forget.  I was to tell Daddy she couldn't help that one.  And when I did Daddy lifted my chin and looked deep onto my tablet eyes and made sure I wouldn't forget to tell her, mama, that she'd never, ever, ever?ever, have to feel jealous or worry about him.

  Must've been a half hour later after a lot of aha's and yessirs on the phone some cars pulled into a sandy part of the "yard".  "Get your shoes on everybody," mama ordered.  Come hell or highwater us creatives were going to work again.

  Before daybreak we were deposited into the next safespaces in broad daylight.  Tending To Do lists mostly.  And staying alive.

  In those days greedy bad guys were stealing each others' treasure hunts, "family" was seeing where they might plant their asses on properties, and a few brave and decent citizens more referee'd than got killed by taking everyone to Court.  It really was a mad, mad, mad world.

  And then world events would cause changes in situation and conditions.  We'd all be dreaming up movie scenes and scores until airports couldn't land planes and more travelers would joun the ranks of people playing with surplus.

  Course, airpirts don't just turn away take offs and landings without it indicating disaster and crime, so the people on leave and not with a service day job were often put on the spot....get the convoy through; meet up with the eastern flank.  Flank?

  "Take the train through it." A general type ordered.  A man held his tongue in talking back.  It was almost an afterthought, the order to also haul the dynomite.  The man started to tick off inventory on a slipshod list.  Just staring at the clipboard for a couple minutes before he said to himself, I draw the line at dynomite.  He looked at the back of the general-type walking back to a jeep of others dressed like him.  "I draw the line at dynamite," he said allowed but not too loud.  Then he tucked the pen and chain into the clipboard and the whole clipboard into his waist behind his belt.

  "Whadya say chief?" A curly-haired man asked as he came up from under an engine.  "I draw the line at dynamite, but," he put his hand on the mechanic's forearm, "I don't need to tell them that." The curly-hair man's eyebrows went up and he removed the hand from his arm.

  So as not to bother anyone with the light when they were trying to sleep, Sherry would sit in a boxcar and sew on the parachute.

  Jealousy had been the death of more than one civilization we'd decided after a bizarre chain of events had ensued for the American team getting ready for the Olympics at that time.  Like some "new age" couples' therapy having mom and dad in their bathing suits duct taped to a water pump on a train deck.  Which the rumor of sent people from "village" and "camp" to see.

  By the time Dad was missing children from the station wagon leg of the road trip he didn't think much of it.  Some of the kids he did have with him weren't even his.  Yet, he got everybody over the age of six Kentucky Fried Chicken and walked over to some Golden Arches to get a couple hamburgers.

  Inside the stewardess front counter workers were asking if any of the names on telegrams were yours.

  In response to a dangerous world being a threat to the Republic, great threads and chains of citizens were helping the effort.  "It's not just about being numero uno Sister," a parent had explained to a Catholic school teacher about missing an awful lot of school.  "Plus, Father Patrick misses every one of them when they go on these trips." It was the Monsignor who prepared and blessed rolls of Communion which mama stashed in a Ritz cracker box.  It seemed like we were inch by inching our way in the station wagon towards some giant rainbow in the middle of the country somewhere.  Even Daddy let himself what better days were going to look like.

  I imagined a Scottish-accented handsome boy saying of our family, "Off on an adventure." And the class taking good notes so I could get caught up if we had a home to come back too.  There were and weren't real invaders.  Sometimes we'd catch a glimpse of their feet under curtains at airports and in curtained cubicles at hospital or plasticed off zones in office buildings.  Sherry would catch us noticing and ask a detective to confirm the criminal is captured.  The barrier between normal day and different would part and handcuffed wrists would be observed.

  It wasn't about looking for trouble or staying out of "it" but more like decency reaching a saturation point of an area of the country where the criminals just bubbled to the top of the barrel like corks.  Duty just came along with being involved with American society.

  "What was it like?" Our mother asked a brother through the little metal speaker reaching through thick plate glass.

  "Gross."

  Sherry scribbled a note forbidding her children to be returned to the field trip area.

  A suited woman shuffle-clicked her heels and stood before the window.  "They'll need all our clothing."

  Sherry shook her head no, super modest, "Not unless they give me a bathrobe or," she looked at some men walking by in athletic association jackets, "Or one of those." The other woman asked the gentlemen if they could borrow the jackets.

  A very studious bunch got back from the field.  Even the older man explained, He'd seen some things in his time, but his words got lost in a slow shaking of his head and tears welling in his soft eyes.

  Tendons as strapping to tap out false morse code from behind a little wall...the lists of "evidence" were macabre, dark moods hovered around the people charged with taking some guesses.  Big war crime words like torture and could be the connection were bean bagged on top of a blank legal pad on the side that wasn't serial killer.  Late, late at night someone asked, "What if it's both?" Around the table people had fallen asleep.  A man had white rice stuck to his cheek.

  It had to be west of the Cumberland Gap.  The train did not have to be stolen.

  A Marshall had unzipped a golf club duffel bag and seen for himself --inside was a very tiny woman.  His head sort of slumped toward her but his shoulders didn't waiver.  "Is she alive?" A white-haired man asked not loud as men stretched their legs and let numb feet ride up and down with the rumble over track.  The man with the sandy-colored mustache asked in return, "Is this train stolen?" He had a wild in his eyes.  The darker moustached man in a safari shirt and dark olive pants uncaught a gold bracelet from his arm hair.  "Did he show you the petrified one or a dolly?" He asked quickly on a lurch.

  "This one's still breathing," and the moustached men led and followed each others' eyes in the direction of a train car filled with people in instrument cases and trophy animals.

  Mama's lips were actually snoring as her head rested on an elbow holding down the crossword puzzle.  A "mini-maid" approached and my father's eyes droopily opened.  "Wake her up and I will shoot you," he said.  And smiled lazily like his tan arms.  He lifted the rifle with stuffed animals ribbon'd to it.  The bicycle horn end produced a goose honk when he squeezed the trigger.  Our mother had arranged him.  Yet, the mini-maid was a personal friend and used a butter knife to pry up Sherry's saggy-skin elbow and put the note there.

  Dad reached out of his trenchcoat, so it was obvious he had three arms and gently play handcuffed the dolly on the forearm.  "I'll take an OJ and she'll have toast with apple butter when she wakes up on her own." The mini-maid slid the handcuffs up and up under Swiss Miss cottony short sleeves before turning head to go.  Dad pushed his glasses up on the ridge of his nose and asked, "What does it say?" The mini-maid looked split-second scared under her thick mascara.  Dad said, "It's okay.  I'm sure you had to read it." Her one nod affirmative was pert.  "It's poetry from her Mister," was all she said and started to go before she stopped and said, "We've only pineapple left.  That okay?"

  "Actually, that gives me canker sores.  I'll take a Sprite if you can find one of those."

  The motley gang of people that had turned up on the highway had been rejected for work on both coasts and could not seem to outrun their petty crimes.  Even the stunts department of a non-Hollywood film crew had weeded them from the ranks of indies and as yet totally authenticated passports.  That's a shame, two muscle-builders were paid to say as people spit and pissed on one side of an open-air train car.  It had been screechily put in place at a non-fenced area of the area.  The place only had a few abandoned buildings that were cinderblock on the inside, painted a yellow-tinted ivory color.  Outside the bricks and green-tinted glass blended together as shadow even in the full sun.

  "How long?" An eager boy scout type law enorcement guy asked of suits and shade-hatted officers.

  One finally said, "Maybe a couple hours."

  "And we just guard that train car?" 

  "YOU guard the train car.  These Federal Reserve guys have to save their patience for the load of plates the Marshal's team had to reroute." 

  "Plates Sir?"

  "Go."

  People crowded the back door window of the train car to see "the contraption".  It wasn't really all that much to see, but there on the platform car was a catapult riveted to the old train deck and a biker riding stationary in front of it.  A brother called it "the flinger".  And there was Sherry in white baker's outfit pedaling and pedaling.  About every seven minutes the flinger flung little hobo bags of chalky powder to different sides of the tracks.  Whap, another brother ran to a window and confirmed we were leaving a trail.  A hand below the glass-windowed car but not totally on the platform car pitched another bag of color onto the catapult.  Sherry's shoulders and hair were getting sprinkled colorful but she would look up and smile, give the okay sign, and keep pedaling.

  Inside the third and only other car attached to the small engine, the good guys poured over old-timey maps looking for the connector tracks we'd been deposited on days and nights before.