David Ohle - The Old Reactor

The jellies came down the stairs yawning, unsteady, holding to the rail. When they shuffled into the brightly lit kitchen, they were almost blinded. Their eyes closed and they leaned against the wall. Ozzie said, “This is Brewster, who gardens; Lester, the mason; Charles, the plumber; and Frank, the painter.” The jellies smiled politely and rubbed their eyes. “And our guests are my old labor-organizing friend, Moldenke, and Salmonella, an orphan in his charge, or his companion, or girlfriend. I don’t know.”

“I’m a girl and I’m his friend,” Salmonella said, reaching for a handshake.

The jellies seemed to take pleasure in the act, holding her hand over long, and discharging drops of gel from their ear valves.

The mason said, “Hello. I’m very pleased to meet you. Sorry for the smell. We can’t help it. The valves leak.”

The gardener said, “Mr. Ozzie tells me you have apple seeds. That makes me very happy. We will start them in the greenhouse then plant the little saplings in the yard. We have a pile of compost out there and quite a bit of sawdust, but it will be years before we have apples.”

Salmonella beamed, fingering her sack of seeds. “I’m young enough to wait.”

Ozzie said to the jellies, “You’ll be sleeping in the shed tonight. Our guests need your rooms.”

“Guests?” Moldenke questioned. “This is my house.”

Ozzie poured Moldenke another shot of bitters. “Once we’re officially liberated, it’s just as much mine as it is yours. And these jellies will own it too. So we better learn to cooperate right now and be ready.”

“When will it happen?” Moldenke asked. “Is the liberation already underway? How do we know what to do or how to act?”

“It hardly matters,” Ozzie said. “We’ll do well here either way.”

“I’m going to bed,” Salmonella said.

Ozzie pointed to the stairs. “It’s the first one to the right at the top. I’ve changed the sheets. They get sticky with gel.”

Salmonella said her goodnights and went upstairs.

The four jellies held hands. Ozzie led them out the back door, saying “Good night, my friends.” When they had managed the steps down into the yard without falling, he shut and bolted the door. “There’s a radio in the shed and some cots. They’re perfectly happy to lie down and listen all night to rebroadcasts of Franklin’s best-played games. I’m telling you, Moldenke, under the circumstances, we have a good thing here. We’re practically self-sufficient.”

“I’m going for a walk,” Moldenke said. “I need to think about all this. Is the old Come On Inn still open?”

“I don’t know. Some taverns are staying open, some have closed.”

Moldenke walked a few blocks then caught a streetcar going to Broad Street. “I’m surprised the cars are still running,” he said to the conductor when he got on.

“No one’s told us to stop.”

“Do you take pass cards from Altobello?”

The conductor examined the Enfield Peters card. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Peters. Take any seat you want. There’s hardly anybody riding the cars tonight. They’re all staying home. Nobody knows what’s happening.”

“I’ll get off at the nearest stop to the Come On Inn. Are they open?”

“I’ve seen the lights on.”

The stop was within sight of the Inn. Moldenke saluted the conductor. “Thanks.”

“Good night, Mr. Peters.”

The Come On Inn was quite the same as it had always been, the air stale, the floor covered with a layer of sawdust, the bite of Julep smoke stinging the nose.

Moldenke sat at the long bar. “What have you got?”

“We got jelly-made bitters. None of the real stuff. Can’t get that anymore.”

“I’ll have a double shot. Do you take pass cards?”

“Till further notice.”

Moldenke showed the Peters card. “I’m just back from Altobello.”

“You’re Enfield Peters?”

“Yes, the actor.”

“I saw you in, what’s that one? Somebody puked in the sink? They tried to figure out who did it.”

“Yeah, I was in that. It was the dishwasher who did it.”

“You don’t look like you did in the movie.”

“I’ve been deformed. It changed my face.”

There were other patrons moving closer to Moldenke, thinking he was the famous actor. They wanted to hear what he had to say. He began to enjoy playing Peters. Letting go of himself, he felt as Peters must have felt — healthy, handsome, tall, imposing. He welcomed the attention and the respect, no matter how shallow.

Then one of the patrons said, “He looks like a guy used to live around here, used to come in here. His name was Molinski or something.”

At that moment, a jellyhead carried a five-pound rat by the tail into the Inn. “Anybody want to buy a rat?” the jellyhead asked. When the barkeeper ordered him out, he dangled the rodent near Moldenke and allowed it to sink its teeth into his shoulder. Later, others at the bar said the animal that attacked Moldenke was eighteen inches long from its snout to the tip of its tail.

“Look, it even bites,” the jellyhead had said as the animal attacked.

In the commotion that followed, the jellyhead dropped the rat and ran from the bar. Bar patrons killed the big rodent by stepping on it and sticking it with pocketknives.

Moldenke opened his uniform jacket and slid the undershirt off his shoulder. There were teeth marks and beads of blood.

“This guy’s not Peters,” one of the patrons said.

The bar keeper tore up the card and flung the pieces at Moldenke. “Get out of here you impostering son of a bitch.”

Out on the street, Moldenke wondered if there were clinics open, a doctor’s office, some place where he might have the rat bite looked at. Even in the best of times, there would be no doctors’ offices open this time of night. There was Charity Hospital, run by the Sisters of Comfort, way up on Broad Street. He would have to catch a streetcar. No, that would be too strenuous. And he might find the Hospital’s doors closed. The only thing to do was walk back to the house on Esplanade, wash the bite, and hope it would heal cleanly.

Photographers’ bulbs flashed as two hundred jellyheads stood in the mud of City Park Wednesday night awaiting a miracle. They watched a nine-year-old jellyhead, Joseph Vitolo, pray at an improvised altar banked with pissweed and dandelion flowers, statuettes and dozens of guttering candles.

It was the sixteenth night the boy had seen a vision of the future in the rain clouds. He later told the press that in the vision he had foreseen a miraculous eddy opening beneath him, swallowing him entirely and admitting him into the ranks of the great saints and healers. The crowd saw no miracle yet, but several invalids and one or two with gel sack rot claimed their condition had suddenly improved.

At seven p.m. the boy rode through the waiting crowd on the shoulders of a neighbor in a hard rain. Paralytics, others with crutches and bandages followed, trying to be near the visionary boy. The parade of soaked jellyheads went along in a semi-circle until the boy grew dizzy and almost fainted.

“Look! Look!” a rumor spread through the lot. “He is not getting wet. The rain doesn’t touch him. It is a miracle. This is the one who has come to save us.”

But those closest to the boy said he was as wet as anyone.

The streetlights along Esplanade were out for the night, but a half moon lit the sidewalk such that Moldenke could step over any holes or wide gaps. When he got to the house, the door was locked and it was dark inside. He went along the porch to the tall window and looked in. A candle burned on a table in the parlor. Now he could see three jellyheads sitting there drinking bitters. He knocked on the glass. All three turned toward the window.