Mark Dunn - The Age Altertron

“What do you mean?” asked Rodney.

Before Davy could answer, a man holding a megaphone stepped up onto a wooden citrus crate. Everybody turned to look at him. The man looked about seventy-five or so. He also looked like Mr. Toland, Sr., the owner of the store.

“May I have your attention please! Quiet, please!” shouted the man through his megaphone. “For those of you who do not recognize me, I am Henry Toland, Jr. As you can see from this door, we had a break-in last night.” Mr. Toland, Jr. drew the attention of the crowd to the door in question with an exaggerated nod of his head. The door was not easy to miss. Its shattered pane of glass had been replaced by cardboard and duct tape. “We are still open for business, and you are free to enter, but you must know that there are certain items that are no longer in stock. You will not find them here and you will not be permitted to hound my store clerk Miss Choate about it. She has far too much to do, since all of my other clerks cannot make it in to work due to advanced age.”

A woman raised her hand. “Please give us that list of unavailable items if you would.”

“Yes. I have the list right here.” Mr. Toland, Jr., pulled a small piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He took a pair of eyeglasses out of a different pocket and put them on. He cleared his throat. “Oatmeal, Cream-of-Wheat, and other soft cereals.”

A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

“All Jell-O products. All gelatins of every kind. All custards and box puddings.”

“Even Tapioca?” asked a man in the back.

“Yes. Tapioca and every other kind of box pudding. Also Postum. And Malt-o-meal. That goes under the heading of soft cereals. Let me see — oh, and all soft fruit that can be easily gummed.”

Another gasp. A different woman raised her hand.

“Yes, Miss Edwards?”

“But that leaves nothing for my mother to eat. She is now 104 and has no teeth!”

“I am sorry Miss Edwards, but it is out of my hands.”

“When will you get in more soft foods from the warehouse?”

“There are no more soft foods in the warehouse. They have also been taken, and no one knows when they will be replaced with a new shipment.”

Now Davy Rockwell raised his hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Toland, but what about the other stores around town? Do you know if they have soft foods in stock — foods that are easy on the digestion and if necessary may be gummed rather than chewed?”

“I have spoken with the managers and owners of the other food markets in town — or, rather, I have spoken with their sons and daughters who are now running their fathers’ stores, and I am told that each of those stores was also robbed last night. As I understand it, there is no more soft food available for purchase anywhere in the town of Pitcherville.”

Rodney and Wayne turned to each other and exchanged astonished looks. “What about Aunt Mildred? What will she eat?” said Wayne in a low voice.

“And the Professor too? And everyone else who will now require a soft and mushy diet?”

The two boys shook their heads worriedly. It was a sad state of affairs for a town without blenders.

(Pitcherville had no blenders in the year 1956. Craft Appliances had begun to sell them right after they came out in the 1930s, but then an accident involving an overly-curious, careless customer whose name is not important to this story — but who could easily be identified by a deficiency in the number of fingers on his right hand — motivated Mr. Craft to send all of his blenders back to their manufacturers and to order no more for the sake of other customer fingers.)

Davy Rockwell raised his hand again. “Can this really be true? Can it really be true that there is no soft food available for purchase anywhere in the town of Pitcherville?”

“Of course not! That is ridiculous!” Davy’s question was answered by a tall man, whom Rodney and Wayne could not quite see at that moment except for the back of his head, which had a prominent bald spot in the middle of it. “I know where there is plenty of food matching that description.”

“Let him through!” said a man.

“Yes, let him speak!” shouted a different man. “He knows where soft food can be had.”

The crowd parted so that the tall man and a shorter man standing beside him could move to the front. Mr. Toland, Jr. stepped down from his crate and offered it to the tall man.

“Get a load of that !” said Wayne under his breath. “It’s Jackie. And lookit! Lonnie’s right with him!”

“I’ll bet those two had something to do with all the robberies last night,” said Rodney.

“Hello, my good friends and neighbors,” said Jackie, speaking in a loud and overly-formal speech-giving voice. Maybe you don’t recognize me and my business partner here. So allow us to introduce ourselves. I am Jackie Stovall — yes, your ol’ friend Jackie Stovall. And this is Lonnie Rowe.”

“You mean the same Jackie Stovall and Lonnie Rowe who turned over my Fluffy’s doghouse?” shouted Sharon, bristling.

“The same Jackie and Lonnie who let all the air out of my father’s tires?” yelled Davy.

“N’est pas? N’est pas?” asked Virgil.

Jackie lowered his outstretched palms to silence the murmurs of the small crowd of people glowering in front of him. “No, no, my friends, that was the old Jackie and Lonnie. Standing before you here today are the new Jackie and Lonnie. We have turned over a brand new leaf. For we are in the midst of a terrible crisis, ladies and gentlemen, and we must come together as one community.” Jackie joined all of his fingers together to show how a town of people could come together, provided that they all looked like fingers. “Someone, and we do not know who, has stolen all of the soft food that was for sale in the town of Pitcherville. A tragedy! An offense against nature! But I ask all of you on this dark day: will we stand idly by and allow the oldest of our citizens to starve? No, we most certainly will not!”

A woman started to clap her hands in support of what Jackie had just said but was so strongly frowned upon by the people standing around her that she immediately stopped. You see, most of the people standing around the woman had been victims of Jackie and Lonnie’s pranks and other acts of youthful vandalism, and were not yet convinced that the two had actually turned over a brand new leaf.

“So here is what Lonnie and I will do. Because we predicted that this thing might happen and prepared for it — because we had— had — now, what is the word?

“Head lice?” snickered someone in the crowd.

“No,” said Jackie, glowering at the person.

“Foresight?” offered someone else.

“Yes, foresight. Because we had the foresight, Lonnie and me, to scrape together as much money as we could to spend the last several months buying up a large quantity of soft food — food which is now sitting safe and sound in a secret location — because we have done this, ladies and gentlemen, we can now stand before you and reach out a helping hand.” Jackie reached out his hand to show how easy it was to do such a thing. “We have searched our souls, friends and neighbors, and decided that we have no right to keep that soft food to ourselves. No sir, we do not. So we will be rationing it out to all of those in need.”

“How much do you plan to take us for?” called out the man who had said “head lice.”

“Take you for?” Jackie seemed greatly offended by the question. He placed his hand on his chest to emphasize how offended and hurt and generally taken aback he was by such rudeness. “Perhaps you won’t believe me, but I don’t intend to charge you a single penny. Why? I will tell you why. Because we will use the barter system. I will give you, say a cup of Cream-of-Wheat, in exchange for something that you give me. Now, for example, I have made a bargain with my very own father, the Mayor. He has no teeth. He had teeth — false teeth, that is — but someone, regrettably, has stolen them from him.” Jackie shook his head dolefully over how such a terrible thing could happen.