Chapter 9

  We were lined up at the Renaissance Festival gates at five minutes to ten, yesterday had been a sitting day, today we were all going to be on our feet doing the things that we weren’t supposed to do. Willow was going to try and get behind the small stage to see if any stage crew could be a suspect. Amy was going to try and snoop around the mainstage backstage area, hopefully Paloma wouldn’t be standing guard as she was yesterday.

  I was going straight to Phoebe’s Tent. I had questions that I hadn’t asked, that I needed answers to. Anais was to say she is lost, if stopped. Otherwise she was just to walk behind the food trucks to see if any prepworkers were back here that couldn’t be seen from the artist's alley proper.

  If anyone discovered any new information they were to come to artist’s alley and look for either Anais or myself or text us they were here and if we could, we’d text back and meet up in front of the archery game. I warned Anais to be sure not to walk behind the archery game. Yesterday I had seen many wannabe Robin Hoods shoot wildly inaccurately, completely missing the targets. I don’t think a target arrow would necessarily kill her but it might kill me as I’d never hear the end of it from her. Naturally that went double for the axe throwing game next to the archery range.

  I ducked my head into the tavern to see if there were any old people about. Jack Weber waved me in and I ducked in only long enough to beg off.

  “Jack, I hope to be back later, but I need to take a calligraphy class. If I don’t get to speak with you again, I hope you call in the fall and come up for a tour of the collective. But we talk about it when you call. I’m going to ask you a weird question and I can’t at this moment tell you why I’m asking, because it is not my story to share. I won’t be offended if you feel like you can’t answer. Like I said, it's a weird question.”

  “Go ahead, I think we were pretty honest with each other last night. I haven’t told, but a handful of people in my whole life that I was a draft dodger. I always thought that people would think I was a coward. Yet I told you after only knowing you for a little over an hour. I thought about it afterwards. Why would I do something like that? I just decided that I knew you were honest and not at all judgemental.”

  “Full disclosure, I’m judgemental as hell, about the current lineup of clowns that are running this country. A lawyer in charge of a health agency, what the hell does he know about medicine, only that he had a worm eating his brain. I have to say it must have starved the poor worm. Then a woman in charge of security for the whole country that shot her own dog. Did the dog have rabies? No, but maybe she does. The head of the war department doesn’t understand the concept of taking prisoners, nope just kill them all. That doesn’t even count the clown in charge of this clown show, who wanted a nobel peace prize so bad he took it from the woman who actually won it. Then threatened to invade another country because they failed to give him the prize originally. But the country he threatened isn’t the country that hands out the prize. So no way am I not judgemental.”

  Jack laughed and said, “What I meant was I didn’t think you’d be judgemental about me dodging the draft.”

  “No, Jack you were right about that, I wish everyone who went to Vietnam had dodged the draft. Most especially the ones that died over there for nothing. I wish that all the ones that are signed up now would just walk away, resign. But I need to go, but I still have that weird question to ask so I’m just going to ask it. Could you tell me how many people seventy and over are traveling with the festival and their names if you know them.”

  “You are right, that is a weird question, but since I don’t think in any universe you would hurt anyone, not even those clowns that are running our country. I’ll answer to the best of my ability. Let’s see we have Oliver Maguire our king, then we have Phoebe Oskarsson she teaches calligraphy. Next would be Carla Marchand, our fortuneteller.”

  CM, is that our extortionist?

  “The costumer, her name is Paloma. Nice English lady, but I’m afraid I don’t know what her last name is.”

  “Yes, I met Paloma, a nice lady whose last name is Evans. Are there any more seventy somethings?”

  “Just me Jack Weber.”

  “Yes, nice man Jack Weber, I hope I get permission to tell you the story someday, but this is one story you’ll have to just tell yourself. Thanks I’ll try and get back but if I can’t please call anytime.”

  “Bye, Laura.”

  I walked out of the tavern and began to ponder. So either Carla Marchand was who we were looking for or someone was setting her up. How can I know which, well for a starter. I just ask her what I’ve asked all of the others, have you ever been in Chicago. No, I have an even better idea. I knew right where her tent was. It was only bad luck that she had a client yesterday when I was down here looking for old people.

  So I walked down past Phoebe’s tent which was strangely closed up, it was well after ten. I must have talked to Jack for ten or fifteen minutes and it was time well spent. Madame Marchand's tent flap was open so I walked right in.

  “Good morning Madame Marchand, how about a little bartering, I will tell you your past in detail and you tell me my future. Let’s start with you were in Chicago in August of nineteen sixty eight.”

  “Yes that’s right but I don’t barter for fees.”

  “Fine, you were caught up in the police riots, you were a yippie.”

  “Right on both counts, I was dating one of the leaders.”

  “Was his name Bobby?”

  “No, it was Lenny, you were pretty good up until this last one. How did you ever come up with my ancient history? I never told a lot of people about this. You aren’t some kind of real mind reader are you?”

  “How about Cazzy, did you know a Cazzy?”

  “No, I haven’t ever heard a name like that before. Is it a first name, last name or a nickname?”

  “It’s a last name.”

  “No I’d remember a name like that, what’s this about?”

  “Are you saying that you are not trying to extort someone that lives here in town?”

  “Absolutely not, are you some kind of cop or something.”

  “Ms Marchand you can’t extort someone from a jail cell. You can’t threaten someone and leave a hand written note with your initials on it. The paper will have your fingerprints and DNA all over it so you better think, long and hard before you go public. Because if you do I’ll turn the note over to the police. You might not even get out of prison before you die.”

  “Lady, you must be crazy, but that’s fine. Take your note to the police, it can’t have my prints or DNA all over it because I’m telling you the truth, I didn’t write any note whatsoever. So please get it tested, that will prove you are wrong.”

  She was a fortuneteller, the very essence of a swindler, or severely self-deluded it could go either way. Many hippies turned from activism to spirituality. If we can’t save the world through politics and economics let’s try it through religious ritual. I’m not sure at this point were they still trying to save the world or just themselves. Maybe they were just yuppies in a spiritual guise. I thought everyone under thirty and definitely everyone under twenty five was a hippie. I didn’t understand there were Young Republican Societies all over the place. I was very naive.

  So the question is, Carla, are you a great swindler or is someone setting you up. I was always suspicious of the initials. I can’t let my bias against religion affect my judgement. Because belief in fortunetelling is very much a religious concept, it strikes at the very heart of free will. Preordained by who? Believers will claim God of course. But if any of that is true we are just cogs, turning round and round. God wound us up then set us on our path and everything that happens every action that we take is not within our control.

  But that must include thoughts being preordained, if any of that were true it would prove one that there is some kind of god, an evil god and we are all just puppets on a string, but instead of unfeeling wood. Flesh and blood and suffering. But none of this train of thought is helping me solve my problem. So ask more questions.

  “Is anyone else here a yippie, or former yippie?”

  “Why”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Because Ms Marchand, whoever is doing this was at the Chicago riots, which would put them in their seventies.”

  “Couldn’t they have told someone else and that person is doing the extortion?”

  “No, because while you could easily describe the events of what happened to someone else. You couldn’t describe what the individual looked like to the degree that someone could positively identify them fifty six years later. People’s looks change a lot in fifty six years and while you might recognize an old friend it would be almost impossible to just describe them. Even if you happened to have a picture it would be very hard for someone to identify someone they didn’t know based on a photo fifty years later. We didn’t have as many photos as kids do now, we didn’t carry cameras in our pocket, nor was film and development free like today’s digital photos.”

  “So I’ll ask again, Ms Marchand was anyone else here at the Chicago riots?”

  “Yes”

  “Who?”

  “Lady, I’m not about to tell you so that you can go and accuse them. I might not have lived up to my yippie ideals, I might have aimed a little too high. But I’m not about to sell out someone else, just to get you to stop annoying me. If I wanted to do that, I could just call security and have you tossed out. Which you notice I haven’t done yet.”

  “No Ms Marchand, but you wouldn’t if you were an extortionist either. Extortion works best in the shadows and the more people that know about it the less likely it is to succeed. If what you are saying is true, and you are innocent, is something that I considered before I even spoke with you. But if you are innocent consider this. Someone left a threatening note, demanding payment and then they signed it with your initials. So if I’m wrong that means that someone is trying to set you up, to make you take the blame for something they are doing. So whoever you are protecting may well be the person who is setting you up. I’ve also dealt with my fair share of dim-witted police recently. They will always go with the solution that is the least amount of work for them. Right or wrong, true or untrue.”

  “Just because someone is trying to hurt me, doesn’t mean I should hurt them right back. If I’m meant to be falsely accused I will be. There is nothing I can do about it.”

  “Yes there is, you can tell me who it is and we can stop them from hurting someone, A very special someone who never lost his hippie/yippie ideals, who lives them everyday. While helping yourself at the same time.”

  “You don’t get it, you can’t change fate.”

  “No, I can change fate. Fate is always involved in grand epics, The United States was fated to expand westward, it was our manifest destiny. Bull, it was what the politicians wanted at the time. So they did things to help make that happen. I don’t believe in fate, it’s a figment of the human brain. Our brains are constantly making up stories. We want stories to go in a particular way, that is our brain directing the story. Fate is just a convenient aid to a story. Bilbo was meant to find the ring. Yes in the story he was. But just because we make up stories doesn’t make them true. If human life is to have any meaning at all then fate can not be true. Nothing we do or say, or anything that happens to us. We have no responsibility for our actions or inactions. I should carry a pair of percentile dice at every intersection I should roll. One to twenty five turn right, twenty six through fifty turn left, you get the idea. Then when your boss calls and asks where the hell are you, you were due to work hours ago. Sorry boss fate put me in Schenectady, I keep walking but for some reason I keep going in the wrong direction. You were a Yippie, you should realize that chaos beats fate every time. But our brains don’t like that so we make fate the thing that controls what happens, when it’s actually chaos. Humans hate chaos, we want order, we want to be able to predict that I will go to bed tonight, and I will wake up tomorrow morning. But look I don’t have time to debate you about anything, if you are not the extortionist, then it doesn’t really matter. But if you are and you follow through on your threat you will sit in prison for a very long time as you will be committing two felonies. Then you can think over your belief in fate in detail. Just because you want something to be true doesn’t in fact make that true. I want to live healthily forever. Every human does the very first story, Gilgamesh was about a man who want immortality”

  “It wouldn’t be chaos that put you in Schenectady, it would be fate as fate would control every aspect of the dice rolls.”

  “Why do I even bother arguing with true believers? They have faith in their heart and not an iota of sense in their head. Just remember two felonies make for a really long time in prison to work out my argument, try and nudge fate in the right direction.”

  There really is no arguing with zealots, I’m not sure what else I can do with her. Does her blind belief in fate make her immune to my mutually assured annihilation? When they came up with that as a defense strategy they assumed that two sane men sat opposite each other and that if one turned the switch, the other would turn their switch. Killing both sides. But what if you put a christian who believes the rapture is a good thing, in charge of the switch. Might they not flip that switch just to advance the timetable. Why is no one talking about nuclear disarmament any longer?

  Maybe Pappy could talk to her, find out just what she meant by ‘don’t pay up’ just exactly how much does she want? If you pay her once, won’t she just keep coming back everytime that she needs money, maybe it’s not even a need, maybe it is a want, pure and simple greed. If that were true then she will be back for sure. I better find Willow and talk this over with her. She’s the one that would need to convince Pappy to come here and confront Carla.

  I texted Willow to please meet in front of the archery range as soon as she could. I left Carla's tent and was really surprised that Phoebe was still not open, but then I grabbed the schedule to confirm that she was due onstage in about fifteen minutes. After I spoke with Willow about Pappy, I would head over to the small stage and catch the end of her demo and finish questioning her about her aversion to Chicago and to try and determine if she would set up her artist’s alley neighbor.

  I mindlessly watched the archers practice their skills while I waited for Willow to arrive. Which she did pretty quickly.

  “Laura, can I help with something?”

  “Yeah, Willow I found Carla Marchand…”

  “Our CM, that's wonderful.”

  “No, it might not be her, she denies it, but she also is a zealot that believes Fate exists and controls our lives. My plan on mutually assured destruction only works when you are talking to two reasonable people. Zealots are far from reasonable in fact I might venture to argue that zealotry is the opposite of reason. That may be why she signed the extortion note. She wanted Pappy to know who was inflicting this on him. So if reason won’t work, I thought emotion might.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. So do you want me to go plead with her for Pappy’s life?”

  “No Willow, we only have about seven hours before our forty eight hours are up, I think we need Pappy to come here and talk this out with her. He can’t agree to pay, even if he could afford it. If he pays, she’ll come back time and time again. Until she bleeds him dry. While you are gone getting Pappy, I’ll try to finish questioning Phoebe. She is the only other viable suspect we have. I’m ninety five percent sure that the king and the storyteller are innocent and Pappy didn’t know any British women and she had no reason to lie about ever being in Chicago. So it has to be either Carla or Phoebe. I’m hoping it’s Phoebe, I really like her and would prefer it if it wasn’t her, but she is at least reasonable and we could deal with her. But I also just think that it is getting too late to wait until something happens, we really need to be proactive.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave right now, I’ll try calling Pappy but you know who that goes. I hope we can be back here within the hour. If I have trouble finding him, I’ll text you right away.”

  “Great that sounds good, Willow, we will figure this out. Don’t give up hope, have faith in the hippies/yippies. I do.”

  She left to get Pappy, while I pondered if I really have faith in the hippies, an awfully lot of them sold out for the comforts of capitalism. Once the threat of being drafted ended, their own lives were no longer in jeopardy. I checked the clock in my phone and it was almost eleven thirty. Phoebe should be just about ready to come on stage. So I went over to the small stage where her demo was meant to begin. The puppet show had just ended and families were streaming out of the seats. I waited before most were gone and went up toward the front and took a seat in the second row. The first row had already filled up.

  I had no idea that calligraphy was so popular. But it wasn’t Phoebe that walked out on stage, it was the strapping blacksmith. I grabbed my schedule to make sure I hadn’t misread it. I hadn't, it was Phoebe’s time slot that the blacksmith now filled. I stood and made my way around backstage. It wasn’t long before security arrived to inform me that I was out of bounds.

  “Phoebe asked me to meet her this morning, but she never showed up at her tent, and now I see that the blacksmith has taken up her timeslot on stage. I just came back here to make sure that she is all right. Nothing has happened to her has it?”

  “No ma’am, she’s fine. She just had a minor personal matter that she need attend to, she will be doing her demo, it’s just delayed not postponed. So if you go back out front and have some patience you’ll get to speak to her later this afternoon. But you really can’t be back here, liability insurance issue, you see.”

  So there really was nothing else I could do, but instead of watching a blacksmith hammer metal. I instead went to the arena to watch the live chess match. I arrived in time to see a pawn battling with a knight. In a real fight, a pawn couldn’t take a knight. But by the rules of chess he easily could. In live chess the two had to battle it out until the knight was stabbed by the pawn and then after falling dramatically with a clatter from all the armour. He stood back up and made his way to stand with the other taken pieces.

  I hope that armour is well padded inside, because it must hurt falling over like he had done when the pawn vanquished him. Black was in serious trouble, his queen was pinned by the white bishop. He had no pieces that could be used to block the pin nor could he threaten white’s king or queen. He might just as well resign. But that probably wasn’t an option, as acts needed to run to a certain length or the entire schedule would be thrown off. The kids still seemed to enjoy the mock battles between the pieces but anyone who had played the game of chess before knew that this game was over.

  Black could hardly defend themselves as white concentrated on taking all of black's pieces off the board before trapping the black king and forcing a checkmate. The kids groaned when they realized the fights were done. The two chess players walked to the center of the board and shook hands.

  While I waited for Pappy and Willow, I walked back over to the small stage in hopes that Phoebe had appeared. She hadn’t, in place of the scheduled blacksmith who had already taken Phoebe’s timeslot, there was a Roma storyteller telling tales of the wandering lifestyle. It sounded interesting and I would have loved to stay and listen to a story tradition that was entirely new to me. But time was growing short and as our deadline neared I felt more and more pressure to wrap this up. To make sure that Pappy stayed safe and Willow was happy. As we got closer to the deadline, I began to think more and more about calling Eve and having her fly down here and through some legalistic maneuver to save the day.

  The little known law that only Eve knew was still on the books, if you have lived peaceably in New York for over fifty years you can’t be extradited to Chicago unless you are eighteen or over at the time of the offense. I have a lot of faith in Eve but even she can’t solve a case with a law that I made up in my head.

  Then I thought that possibly Phoebe had opened her tent for business while I was up here waiting for her. So I walked back to the artist's alley. In effect I think what I really was trying to do was burn off nervous energy. I also texted Anais and Amy asking them to text me if they caught sight of Phoebe. By then I was standing in front of Phoebe’s still shuttered tent.

  A text came in from Willow, she had located Pappy and were headed back to the Renaissance Festival, she thought they’d be here in about twenty minutes. I told them I’d meet them by the front gate.