No KYPC this week.  The Wordsman is otherwise occupied.  Try not to despair.

Day 234:

The thunder of chugging wheels, the rush of wind through the tunnel, the screech of over-used brakes.

5:19.  Time to get up.

The woman in Simon Park Station had no use for alarm clocks, with their revolutionary ideas and rebellious ways.  She got up at the same time every day, except Sundays.  At 5:19 the first train rolled in, its awful noise undampened by the sounds of human activity, for at that time—and for several hours before that—she was the only human there.  They say that people can get used to even the most horrendous racket, that soldiers in the trenches learn to sleep through artillery barrages.  The old woman could never sleep through the arrival of the first Downtown-bound Green Line train of the day.

She had a morning routine, like we all do.  When the angry noise forced her eyelids open, she would first make sure the train was not coming straight for her, as it often did in her dreams.  Then she would glance at the still-closed stands, in the hope that the mere memory of coffee might help to keep her awake.  Then she would lay her head against the cold concrete of the pillar and fall immediately back to sleep, because there was nothing to do in Simon Park Station at 5:19 in the morning.  On weekdays, the first Downtown-bound train was a sparsely attended affair.  On Saturdays it was completely pointless, deserted, a ghost train (yet another image that she did not need invading her fragile subconscious).

The real wake-up call came about forty minutes later, when the first Outbound train came in from downtown.  The 5:19 was just a train.  The woman did not care about trains.  She was only interested in passengers.  Unlike the crack-of-dawn Inbound train, the super-early Outbounds usually produced a couple.  Sure enough, here came a woman in her early 30’s wearing scrubs.

Here we go again, the old woman thought.

“Don’t you feel . . .”

With a shock nearly as strong as if that dream train had finally collided with her frontal lobe, the events of the previous day came back to her.  The new strategy.  The slap.  The handcuffs.  The boy and the Beherrschunglied.  The extremely mediocre flute.  Freedom.  And most importantly . . .

“. . . will you agree to help me?”

“Sure.”

The old woman experienced the joy of the worker who has just looked up and realized that her shift ended five minutes ago.  She didn’t have to do this anymore.  Her call had been answered.

“Don’t you feel,” she started again, smiling more brightly than any normal human should at just after six on a Saturday morning, “that it’s going to be a beautiful day?”

They walked over to what Peter considered the “entrance” but the woman could only think of as the “exit.”  The station was once again all but deserted—too late for most people coming home from work, too early for people to be heading back downtown for dinner.  While Peter scanned the area for anything unusual—trip wires, lasers, trick stones that trigger poison darts, ghosts—the woman retreated about twenty steps.  Then, with a “Here goes nothing,” she raced toward the staircase as fast as she could.  Peter was shocked by her speed.  And, for approximately four seconds, that was the only shocking thing about the run.

Most people think that Newton invented physics—or, if not him, the Greeks—but humans have always understood physics to a certain extent.  Nowhere is this fact more obvious than in our instinctual reactions when we see something violate the laws of nature.  One instant, Peter saw the old woman barreling forward with at least enough momentum to knock over a fruit cart.  The next instant, she was standing perfectly still.  In between, she had struck . . . nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  The whole thing lasted less than a second, but it still gave Peter a headache, and thirty seconds later he was still trying to figure out what had made her stop.

“You see?” she said, dizzier than when she had been doing her victory dance.  The woman appeared dazed but uninjured (another fact that made Peter’s brain wince).  “So,” she said loopily, “should we get started?”

“Not tonight.”  All good things must come to an end; Peter was hoping the same was true of bad things.  Though it seemed to be ending on a high note, he could not recall a worse day, at least not in the past five or six years.

“Okay.  Go home and get some sleep.  You don’t look so good,” she said, pointing about a foot to the right of where Peter was standing.

After he left, the woman returned to her pillar and sat down, adopting a position not that different from the one she had been trapped in for so many hours.  She let out a sigh of relief that had nothing to do with physical discomfort.  The search was over.  She wasn’t excited, exactly—seven-and-a-half months of waiting will do that to you—but she felt . . . something.  She felt like she was reading a series of books, and the first had been fascinating, but the second was a struggle to get through.  But she read the whole thing, driven on by the promise of wonder suggested by Book 1.  Now she sat there, staring at the cover of Book 3, unsure of what to expect when she turned the first page . . .

Peter walked up the stairs, crossed the street, opened the door to his apartment building, and realized that Rocky was still following him.  Since the woman had given him no helpful advice on how to end the effects of the song, he just shouted, “Be free!”  A fellow resident, on his way out, saw this curious communication and stared, but Peter didn’t notice.  He was too busy watching his former servant dash across the street and return to his unnatural habitat.

He took the elevator up, barely having enough energy to push the buttons.  He unlocked his door, pushed it open with the weight of his body, stumbled through the kitchen, and somehow managed to collapse on his bed before he simply collapsed.  He sank immediately into blissful, refreshing sleep.

Less than an hour later he was woken up by a telephone call from his mother, who demanded to know: 1. Why he wasn’t at dinner when he said he would be, and 2. Whether he knew anything about what had happened to her flute.

The old woman stopped spinning and took a couple moments to regain her equilibrium.  “You’re talking about the song, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“Well, let’s find out.  Run into that wall.”

He stared at her.  She stared back, seemingly watching for some kind of response.  She didn’t get one, though; he simply stared right back, wondering when his life would start making sense again.

The old woman broke the silence.  “Hear anything?”

“No . . .”

“Then I guess you’re free.”

He searched the corners of his mind, but there was no trace of the Song of Mastery.  Then, unable to restrain himself, he raised his flute to his lips, and there it was again—not a series of notes but a series of breaths and finger patterns.  He lowered the flute, and once again it was gone.

“There must have been a better way to test it than that.”

She shrugged.  “I still don’t know how it got you in the first place.  How am I supposed to know when it wears off?”

“I’m not really free, you know,” she said, while Peter was still trying to come up with an appropriate farewell.  “I’m not handcuffed to a garbage can anymore—and don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for that.  But I’m still stuck in here.”  She lifted her hands to encompass all of Simon Park Station.

“Show me,” Peter said, before his brain could catch up with his tongue.

“What?”

“Show me that you’re really trapped here.”

“You’re seriously asking a fragile old woman to throw herself against an invisible wall?”

It did sound cruel.  She had caused him a fair amount of suffering that day, but he wasn’t interested in revenge.  The woman was right: he had to see it to believe it.  “Just once.  And anyway, you just told me to run into a wall.  It’s only fair.”

“If I do, will you agree to help me?”

“Sure.”

More often than not, it is the shortest words that are the most life-changing.

The Wordsman is taking a sick day.  KYPC will be back next week.

“My hero.”

Peter grinned sheepishly.  “I think real heroes don’t need a police escort when they rescue the damsel in distress.”

“I was talking to the police officer, actually.”

“Oh.”  The grin disappeared.

Officer Escobar, standing at the same respectful distance from the woman as he always had, had not grinned sheepishly since he was fifteen years old.  Nor was he known as much of a blusher.  And, in fact, he did neither of these things.  But he still turned away, just to be safe.

CLICK.  The handcuffs were off.  The woman stood up, her unpleasant garment brushing past Peter’s face.  She stretched, causing her body to make a series of unpleasant-sounding SNAPs and CREAKs that were not entirely different from the noise it had made when Peter turned the key in the tiny lock.  No matter how painful the stretch sounded, however, the old woman appeared to enjoy it immensely.

Peter snatched key and handcuffs from the ground.  He wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible, and it wasn’t like he was busy being showered with praise.  He brought them over to where the policeman had posted himself and deposited them in his hands.  “Thank you.”

Escobar nodded gruffly.  He wanted to stay longer, to see what the woman would do.  But it appeared that she was fully occupied savoring her newfound freedom, and it didn’t look like she was going to do anything of interest for a while.  Besides, he had other things to take care of, such as figuring out how he would explain—or, preferably, not explain—the role he had played in setting loose the woman Officer Tang had called, “the Arrest of the Century.”

He tipped his cap, said, “Ma’am” in perhaps the most business-like voice he had ever used in his entire life, and departed.

Peter would have liked to take off, too, but he had no choice.  There was something he had to find out.

He returned to the pillar, where the woman was doing some kind of victory dance.  “So, you’re free.  Am I?”

He wasn’t big on revenge, really.  He just respected the System.  The System was what allowed him to get away with doing as little work as he did.  The System meant that the men and women in blue represented authority, and if you crossed them, then it was your funeral.  So people didn’t cross them . . . at least, not much.  But if you found a squirrel trying to scamper away with a set of police keys, and then, shortly afterward, a boy trying to catch up with it, and you let them go without punishment, then the System would start to break down.  If the System broke down, Officer Escobar’s job would get a lot harder.

“Sorry,” he said, and he truly was.  “But I’m going to need to take down your name.”

The boy sighed, as if he had been expecting this ever since he had been led into the dull yellow brick room with the fairly obvious two-way mirror.  “Peter Hamlin.”

Escobar froze.  It had been a day of remarkable coincidences already.  Could this possibly be one more?  “Is your mother . . . Joan Hamlin?”

The boy raised his head.  He had the look of someone who has told himself he isn’t going to let anything else surprise him that day but has just failed to not be surprised.  “Yes . . .”

Escobar became a scale.  In each hand, he held something that he believed he could not do without.  For a long minute, the hands remained in balance.

The scale tilted.  “You’re free to go,” Officer Escobar heard himself say as he passed the squirrel across the table.

The System was all well and good, but he could never cause Joan Hamlin to suffer.

Peter took the panicking squirrel and stood.  He walked to the door slowly, as if he thought one misstep could land him in trouble deeper than he had ever imagined.

“Wait,” said Escobar.

The boy’s eyes closed regretfully.

Escobar really wasn’t trying to be cruel; he was just wrestling with the decision.  He knew that it was against regulations.  He knew that Officer Tang might very well murder him for it (she would say it was justified).  But he saw an opportunity to truly help someone in need, and those don’t come along very often, no matter what your job is.

“Now . . . is there anything I can help you with?”

Officer Escobar was not having a great day.  Started too early.  Not enough donuts at the station (and those that were there were of criminally poor quality).  Too many actual crimes.  Not enough down time.  Too much heat.  Not enough fans.

Officer Escobar was not having a great day, but he was willing to admit the possibility that other people were having worse ones.  Take Officer Tang, for example.  She had burst into the precinct mid-morning demanding assistance in arresting someone.  That was astonishing in and of itself, for Tang never asked for anybody’s help for anything, but then when she started describing the situation, it got downright ludicrous.  A person that physically could not be moved from the scene of the crime?  Come on.  No one believed her, but that wasn’t about to stop her.  She tried to convince anyone and everyone she could find—sergeants, lieutenants, the captain, the coroner, homicide detectives, ballistics specialists.

Escobar, luckily, was lowly enough to escape her notice, so he spent much of the morning watching her running around the building yelling at people.  Last he heard she had gone off to the courthouse to try to get the judge to order her arrestee to be removed.

Then there was this kid.  Escobar had taken him into an interrogation room—not because he wanted to scare him, but just because that was where there was space—sat him down, and asked him to explain himself.  Finally Peter was in a position where he felt he had to tell the whole truth.  And I mean the whole truth.  He told him about pouring coffee in his cereal, the muted wrath of Mr. Abrahamson, accidentally stumbling on a couple of sites that may have been pornographic when searching the term “earworm,” being silently mocked by Sourdough for the decay of his musical talent, and stealing a nickel from a saxophone player.  Officer Escobar had heard of bad days before; he had participated in a number himself.  But this one stretched the boundaries of the imagination.

And yet he believed every word.  When the boy mentioned the old woman in the subway station, on the outside, Escobar simply nodded.  On the inside, he jumped out of his shoes.  He had kept his vow to avoid Simon Park Station all those months, but he had never truly forgotten the old woman.  So she had found her champion.  He looked like kind of a mess.  Escobar, in one of his more philosophical moments, supposed that real champions often do.

Even more shockingly, Officer Tang’s story all of a sudden made perfect sense.  In her frantic ravings, she had somehow neglected to mention the age, gender, or location of the person she was trying to apprehend.  If she had, she might have secured assistance sooner.

Escobar wanted to find out more about the woman, for the bits of information he picked up from Tang and the kid really raised more questions than they answered.  And he wanted to let the kid go.  He hadn’t done anything seriously wrong.  But there were some crimes that even Officer Escobar could not overlook.  If you did something to a fellow citizen, he might glance the other way—hey, maybe that person deserved it.  But if you did that same thing to the police, then you would be introduced to justice of the biblical variety.

He’s taking too long.

Peter was not looking at his watch, so he did not know that it had taken him less than five minutes to decide that the hastily laid scheme of squirrel and man had gone awry.

He was standing across the street from the station, trying to look nonchalant, and therefore assuming that he looked like he was plotting a crime no less serious than high treason.  Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds earlier, he had arrived outside the building and thought at the squirrel: Go inside, get the key, and come back here.  He even imagined a key as he thought it, just to be sure, though it was only after sending in Rocky that he realized he had no idea what a handcuff key looks like, or whether it would bear any resemblance to the common house key he had visualized.

Now he was plagued by regret, that uniquely horrifying blend of remorse and anticipation known only to a secret admirer who has dropped a letter with his name on it into the mailbox and immediately afterward starts trying to jam his arm into its depths, desperate to take it back.  He tried willing Rocky to return, but the squirrel would not appear at the open window where he had originally darted in.  Maybe he was out of range.  Or maybe . . . something worse.

“They can’t arrest a squirrel” was sounding dumber by the second.  He wondered what he might do if he stumbled on a small animal stealing his keys.  And what if they weren’t just keys to a house or an apartment, but something far more important?  What if the squirrel evaded capture and was out of reach?  What if I had a gun . . .?

Peter wasn’t about to run off and join PETA, but he still would have felt bad if the squirrel came to harm and it was his fault.  He felt a strange bond of kinship with the rodent; they were both being manipulated by the same evil song.  And then, there was always the risk that the cops would see Rocky and think the same thing Peter did: that no normal animal would come in to steal keys if it was acting on its own free will.  And then they would look out the window and see the guy across the street, with his hands in his pockets, whistling, as if whistling could make a person look innocent anywhere outside of a 1930’s cartoon . . .

His mind was made up.  He was going in after him.  Leave no ma—no squirrel behind.

The man at the front desk inside was thoroughly distracted by the telephone and might not have noticed Peter even if he shouted.  Peter considered this a stroke of luck.  He did not want to talk to anyone, because he could not imagine that conversation going well (“Excuse me, have you seen my squirrel?”)  He crouched down, both to avoid being seen and so that he could get a better view of the station as Rocky would see it.  Where could he have gone?

He crept past the desk and into a hallway, already preparing the defense that there were no signs explicitly telling him that he couldn’t go that way (at least, none that he could see from his squirrel’s-eye-view).  He may have been talking to himself.  When you’re sneaking around the police station looking for your lost squirrel, there really isn’t any point in pretending you’re not insane anymore.

A human can imitate a squirrel’s view of life by bending the knees and leaning forward, but he can only go so far.  The vast differences in stature remain.  Because it is small, a squirrel can be low to the ground and still look up.  Peter was all but forced to look down in that position, which was probably why he crashed into a pair of legs only a minute or two into the search.

After noting the unmistakable dark blue of the uniform pants, Peter looked up, past a respectable gut, into a wide, light brown face with receding black hair and a rather unruly mustache.  The face looked neither enraged nor pleased; it was simply weary.

Well, Peter thought, the 5% of his brain that wanted to remain optimistic somehow drowning out the 95% that wanted to run, at least that solves one problem.

“Does this belong to you?” the officer asked.  He was holding a frantic Rocky by the tail.

Peter glanced around to make sure no one was watching.  Then he bent down and whispered to the squirrel, “Run up that tree.”

The squirrel turned around and bounded up the tree like it was being chased by a rabid dog.  It settled on a low branch and looked back at Peter with that same focused stare.  It was almost eerie, like watching a swarm of gnats fly in a single-file line.

He refused to be convinced by this demonstration.  Running up trees was something that squirrels did all the time.  It was entirely possible that it had decided to race up there on its own, and that the timing was a mere coincidence.  In order to prove it, he would need to convince the squirrel to do something it would never do normally.  Since Simon Park already had one resident who had made a name for herself shouting at trees, Peter chose to think his next command rather than say it out loud: Sing the alphabet song.

The squirrel did not open its mouth and start belting out, “A, B, C.”  It simply continued to stare at him.  It may have just been his imagination, but he thought he could see it shaking its tiny head slightly, as if to dislodge a pesky insect . . . or piece of music.  But the test was a failure.  Peter assured himself that his mind was simply running wild, and that he had no ability to command small rodents to do his bidding.

Unless, he thought, now playing the devil’s advocate’s devil’s advocate (as only a lawyer can), it just can’t obey commands it can’t comprehend.

Peter wrestled for a while with the idea of a command that would be meaningful to the squirrel but still be something it would never do on its own.  After rejecting a number of possibilities as too cruel, he noticed one of his fellow street musicians a little ways along the path.  He was a saxophonist, but at the moment he was taking a food break instead of performing.  The man was eating a large sandwich and making an extremely slovenly job of it: scraps of lettuce and other vegetables, bits of bread, and slivers of meat were scattered around, in, and on his open case.

Run over there, jump into the case, and bring back a coin—one of those shiny metal round things, Peter commanded, before he even really knew why.

As the squirrel dashed off, he realized that there was probably more to the order than a subconscious desire to commit petty theft.  No ordinary animal, he reasoned, would ever run into a veritable feast like that and come back bearing one of the few items that could not possibly be construed as food.

He watched the squirrel—which he had decided to name Rocky—race over and leap into the case.  The musician was distracted trying to negotiate his way through a large meatball and noticed nothing.  A moment later Rocky bounded back, bearing in his (or her—Peter had no idea how to tell with squirrels) mouth a small, shiny metal round thing.  He reached down.  It was a nickel.  He felt a little sorry for the musician.

Then Peter laughed.  What a joke!  The song worked exactly as the woman said it would, but he was so bad at it that it only worked on small animals.  “What am I supposed to do?” he muttered.  “Have this squirrel break into the police station and—?”

It was then that Peter had the stupidest idea he had had all day.

He had had plenty of bad ideas so far, ranging from the inconsiderate (practicing the Speech before sunrise) to the harmless and silly (looking up old annoying commercial jingles on YouTube) to the downright suicidal (running across busy streets without looking), but none of those had been quite this stupid.

It started with a simple thought—They can’t arrest a squirrel—and ended with an image of Rocky bounding toward him, holding a key just as skillfully as he had held the coin a moment earlier.

Even stupider, however, was that he decided to go for it.  Those that knew him—family, friends, less-tipsy coworkers—would have never expected such as decision out of Peter Hamlin.  Then again, maybe it wasn’t really Peter Hamlin calling the shots.  After all, the real Peter Hamlin slept on a normal schedule, worked eight-to-four (three on Fridays), and was a law-abiding citizen.  This man, on the other hand, was manipulated by sounds that existed only inside his head, fraternized with undesirables who got in trouble with the police, had already broken several laws (most of them traffic laws) that day, and commanded the loyalty of squirrels.  Perhaps the stupidest idea of all would be thinking that these two were, in fact, the same person.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Peter—or someone who looked a lot like him—set off for the police station.

The saxophonist had finished his late lunch/early dinner and promptly returned to plying his trade.  He did not even bother to rinse his mouth first, causing woodwind teachers everywhere to wince at the damage he was doing to his reed (they may or may not have been comforted to learn that the reed was already well past its prime and smelled strongly of baloney).  While his attention had been elsewhere for the food break, during the performance his eyes were fixed on his case, which was why he saw a squirrel run up, drop in a coin, and sprint away.

“Damn,” he said, pausing in astonishment.  “I’m even better than I thought.”