Jim Shepard - Lights Out in the Reptile House

We are a rersle-rersle riesle, the crowd responded, tailing off.

There will always be a springtime for our greatness—

There will always be a ringtine rerer rateness, and they were past, a lot of the crowd following, with or without Holter, he wasn’t sure, and then there was only one more person, bringing up the rear: the mayor’s small son in army fatigues, sitting reverently on a tiny pony.

He had a last chance, though: the races and contests. He worked his way over and squeezed into a spot high on the largest temporary grandstand, feeling it tremble from the weight of the numbers scaling it. People near him were shouting at everyone else to stay off. Fights started at the bases of the aisles. The stands collapsed regularly and Karel remembered an engineer saying in the newspaper after one of the bigger disasters that as a people they just weren’t very good with wood.

Nobody could hear the opening. It was a reenactment of the Marta Siegler story. Siegler, played by a young girl, was seduced by a foreign grain salesman, killed him with a threshing machine, retired to a nunnery, spied for her country, and was stabbed to death resisting the advances of a crazed youth who was actually her half brother. She reappeared to her murderer in his jail cell with her arms full of lilies, offering forgiveness and causing him to repent. He then became a member of the Civil Guard. The three parts of the story were titled Purity, Forgiveness, and Repentance on easels beside the action.

Afterward the regional Party head gave a speech. Karel didn’t follow it. His palms still hurt and he figured with his luck they were probably infected. He tried to keep scanning the crowd. The speaker said that the great issues of the day were settled not with words or speeches but with iron and blood. The crowd’s applause had some sarcasm to it that the speaker didn’t seem to catch.

After that there were poetry contests — one of the Praetor’s most despised innovations — and races of cripples around the stages, which some in the crowd seemed uncertain about. During the pauses the Kestrels led them through the cardinal virtues. The stands swayed and creaked. On the main stage there was a boxing match between two women and then fireworks, and gifts were shaken down from nets stretched above the grandstands — fruit and papier-mâchè eagles — and hundreds of birds were released, pheasants and guinea fowl and smews and ravens, with a thunder of flapping wings from cages below the stage. In the uproar Karel slipped down from the grand stand and rushed around with lights booming over his head and birds exploding up before him like the bats from Leda’s cave. He slipped on plums and cherries rolling underfoot. He checked all of the light blue and near-bluejackets he could find, and never found Holter.

On the way home he looked in on the Schieles (still no lights) and then found himself staring blankly at his dark front door. Occasional fireworks were still booming in the distance. Mrs. Fetscher called him from next door. She was silhouetted against her lighted doorway. When he got there she nodded him into the house, something she’d never done before. He thought, She has terrible news about my father. But in the foyer he saw with a shock the uniformed man from the Civil Guard he’d seen in the café. The same supporting officers were with him. They all looked at Karel as if they expected him. The uniformed man was looking at him as well. Karel took a closer look, despite himself, at the badge with the nest of snakes and skull. They stood around Mr. Fetscher in a semicircle.

“You are—?” the uniformed man said.

“This is a neighbor,” Mrs. Fetscher said. “He can swear my husband was home yesterday, working in the garden.”

Karel blinked, not sure he could.

“That’s true,” Fetscher said. “I waved to him. I remember thinking, that poor boy.”

“Umm-hmm,” the uniformed man said. “My name is Kehr,” he said to Karel. “You are—?”

“Karel Roeder,” Karel said.

Kehr nodded. He said to Mrs. Fetscher, “Why is he a poor boy?”

“His father’s disappeared,” Fetscher said. “Though it might be anything—”

Kehr looked back at Karel. “What’s your father’s name?” he asked.

“Simon,” Karel said. He thought about the old man’s hand from the café and the cracking sound. “Do you know anything about him?”

“No,” Kehr said. “Mr. Fetscher, get your things.”

“But Karel can swear,” Fetscher protested.

“I’m not interested in what he can swear,” Kehr said. He was absorbed with his cuff. “You’ll only be gone overnight: Collect your things.”

Fetscher continued to protest and was led away by one of the supporting officers. The family dog, a small black-and-white mongrel with rumpled ears, followed them into the bedroom. The supporting officer opened a small suitcase on the bed and began to demonstrate how to put clothes in it. Fetscher relented and began packing, still pleading his case. The dog stood on the bed and unpacked things — folded undershirts, shorts, an eyeglass case — as fast as the harassed Fetscher could pack them.

“Stop that, Eski,” Mrs. Fetscher scolded.

There was a cautious knock on the door and the neighbor from across the street, Mrs. Witz, peered in.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Fetscher said. “Can’t you see enough from across the street?”

“I came to see if there was some trouble I could help with,” Mrs. Witz said, wounded. She had dressed up. Her five-year-old, Sherron, stood behind her and kept peeking around. “If you’d like me to leave—”

“Who is this?” Kehr said. “Is this your son?”

Mrs. Witz looked at Karel in horror. “Oh, no,” she said. “This is my daughter, Sherron.” She brought Sherron out in front of her, holding her by the shoulders. Sherron’s feet left the ground when her mother maneuvered her. “And you are—?”

“A servant of my country,” Kehr said. He stroked an ear with some weariness.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Mrs. Witz said.

“Would you please leave my house?” Mrs. Fetscher asked. Her voice was heading toward shrill.

“What’s going on out there?” Fetscher called. He was told to keep packing. There was the muffled sound and yelp of the dog being cuffed.

“Is there any sort of trouble?” Mrs. Witz asked.

“None whatsoever,” Kehr said. He looked at Karel briefly and turned his attention to the bookcase and two knickknacks, ceramic crocodiles with open mouths. One held stick candy and the other matchsticks. Kehr’s jawline and collar were perfect, and Karel felt shabbier in his presence.

Mrs. Fetscher asked if Mr. Kehr would like some of the sugared wafers she’d been making when he arrived, which, she remembered with a worried look toward the kitchen, were probably ruined by now.

Kehr declined. Mrs. Witz suggested Sherron might like some. Sherron looked toward the kitchen dubiously.

Sherron was fat enough as it was, Mrs. Fetscher snapped. Mrs. Witz glared at her.

“But this is some kind of mistake,” Fetscher called from the other room. There was the brisk sound of clasps being shut.

“We do not hunt for crime,” Kehr said. “I do not have the details.” His subordinate looked aimlessly around the room, arms folded.

Fetscher returned with a small plaid suitcase, trailed by the other subordinate and Eski, who wagged her tail festively.

Kehr checked a pad and repeated Fetscher’s name. Fetscher nodded. His wife touched his arm. Eski stood, with her front paws on his thigh.

The escorting subordinate asked if he was a salesman and Fetscher cried out, new hope breaking over him. See? he said. There was a mistake! He was a butcher.

“Do you often take walks, Mr. Fetscher?” Kehr asked.