The Return of Captain Conquer. Mel Gilden

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СКАЧАТЬ Each member of the Commission moved very slowly, as if he were older than anything. Each one stood at attention watching the roadwork and completely ignoring the difficulty the next Commissioner had getting out of the car.

      Soon all five of them stood there in a row, like some kind of military unit. Each of them wore a black suit and a gleaming white shirt. On each head was a big slouch hat that flopped down around each set of ears. Each of them wore big impenetrable dark glasses. They folded their arms and watched the man with the jackhammer line up his next cut.

      “I wonder why the Planning Commissioners al­ways come out to watch the construction personally,” said Watson.

      “Don’t trust anybody, I guess,” said Mr. Johnson. “Maybe not even each other. Which is only one of the things that makes ’em look like the kind of bad guys that Captain Conquer might tangle with.”

      The Commissioners looked that way to Watson too. And oddly enough, if there was anything in the world to make him wish that Captain Conquer really existed, it was these five sinister men.

      They had decided what the design of the city should be, what changes could and should be made. They seemed to be all-powerful, even when they made strange decisions, such as that a power pole should go in the middle of Mrs. Ferguson’s back yard. The pole had been planted, wires had been strung, despite Mrs. Ferguson’s logical protest that there was a perfectly good power pole already in use just fifteen feet away in the alley.

      The jackhammer started again, so Watson just nodded. He waved at Mr. Johnson as he continued on his rounds. Watson went back inside the store.

      Watson walked around the store, straightening things, sorting things back into their proper bins. It was his thirteenth birthday, and he suspected that his father would throw him a little party when that day’s episode of Captain Conquer was over. There would be cake and ice cream and probably a present or two. Boring. Boring. Boring.

      Watson stopped and looked into the display case that held some of the Captain Conquer toys his father had made from clothespins and cardboard and paper clips and string when Mr. Congruent was a kid. The cellophane tape was yellow and cracked, like a snake’s shed skin, and the cardboard was dis­colored in spots. Mr. Congruent had never outgrown his interest. He was still a fan.

      Watson shook his head. If Mom were there, she would never have let Dad indulge himself that way. Maybe Watson shouldn’t either? No. As strange as this Captain Conquer stuff was, working with it made his father happy. And he wasn’t really hurting anybody.

      The dying dinosaur noise began again. It com­peted with the jackhammer noise from outside. If Watson was inclined to get headaches, this two-part musical invention for motivator and jackhammer would certainly give him one. Watson stood behind the counter with one hand on the cash register.

      Suddenly, both noises stopped at once. In the silence, Watson heard somebody knocking ener­getically on the door, but not the door to the shop.

      The Captain Conquer PX was located in the house where Watson and his father lived. There were two doors at the front of the house—one for their living quarters and one for the store. Big signs pointed out the store. Most people were not confused. The fact that the wrong door was being knocked on tipped Watson off as to who was doing the knocking.

      Watson walked to the door of the shop and looked out. There, knocking with increasing anger on the door to their private living quarters, was a short man puffing on the stub of a cigar. He wore a coat and pants of conflicting plaids, and a bow tie that looked like an Amazonian butterfly. He stopped knocking for a moment to push his black-rimmed glasses up on his nose.

      “In here, Mr. Algae,” Watson called.

      Alvin Algae looked at Watson in surprise, then strutted to the shop door, waggling his finger at him. “I don’t know how you expect to do any business if you keep your front door locked.”

      “That’s the door to our private living quarters. This is the door to the store.” Watson attempted to speak patiently, though he had told Alvin Algae, Webb Washington’s agent, which door was which many times.

      Alvin Algae bustled past Watson as the street noise started again. It was soon joined by the sound of Mr. Congruent’s experiment in the back room. Alvin Algae stood in the middle of the shop tapping his foot, looking around as if he’d just bought the place and was thinking of turning it into a parking lot. “Can’t you stop that noise?” Alvin Algae shouted.

      “I’m not making it,” Watson shouted back, trying to be troublesome without being impolite.

      Alvin Algae walked nervously around the room, picking up things, then putting them down without looking at them. He stopped under the Chocolatron sign and said, “Did you get any signatures?”

      “A few.”

      “Let me see.” He held out his hand and waited.

      Watson picked up the petition and walked across the floor to hand it to Alvin Algae. Algae took it and glared at it as if it were an enemy. “Only fifteen,” he said angrily.

      “Some people don’t want to sign because nobody knows where Webb Washington is and they can’t imagine anybody else playing Captain Conquer.”

      “I’ll find him when the time comes. I told you that.”

      “A lot of people think that if you could find him, you’d have done it by now.”

      “Excuses!” Alvin Algae cried. The jackhammer stopped, leaving the odd cry of Mr. Congruent’s ex­periment hanging in the air like a torn scarf. “Excuses,” Alvin Algae said a little more quietly. “I want to talk to your father.”

      “Sure,” said Watson, and then called out, “Hey, Dad. Somebody wants to see you.”

      “Heck of a way to treat your father,” Alvin Algae said.

      “We understand each other.”

      Soon the noise coming from the back room stopped, and seconds later Mr. Congruent pushed the dull green curtain aside and entered the shop.

      Watson’s father was a small man with a small protruding tummy that made him look as if he’d swallowed a basketball. He had short sandy hair that stuck out every which way from the top of his head. But his face was pleasant, and usually wore a smile. He put out his hand to Alvin Algae and said, “Nice to see you again, Alvin.”

      “I wish that I could say the same, Sherlock. Your son tells me that you’ve collected only fifteen signa­tures since I was here last.”

      “Then I’m sure it’s true. Watson wouldn’t lie.”

      “I’m sure he wouldn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that more signatures will be needed to convince Harve Fishbein to make the movie.”

      “It’s difficult to get signatures when nobody knows where either Fishbein or Webb Washington is. Per­haps the man with forty pounds of brains in his nose could be of help. If you’d like to come with me to the retirement party that Channel Fourteen is throw­ing for him on Monday, you can ask him. When he’s no longer working for the TV station he should have plenty of time.”

      “Ha,” said Alvin Algae. “Forty pounds of brains, indeed. Money will get you through times of no brains better than brains will get you through times of no money.”

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