A Simple Rebellion Read online

  Chapter 19

  THEY WORKED FOR HOURS, Bob steadying the ladder whether the mighty Thanos needed it or not, keeping an eye on Perri as they worked the gutters not far from her garden. When they needed to go around the house, Bob asked Perri if she would water the bushes and flowerpots on each side (Mary Angeline had placed flowers and plants all around the house, and she and Perri would take care of all of them together back when the world made sense). He checked on her often to ensure the little cutie was always in his sight.

  As they worked, the teenager sounded less like Marvel comics’ intergalactic tyrant and more like Merle Junior. Small talk relaxed him. The topic never mattered. What music was good these days. Which shows were worth checking out. Whether there was any actual meat in meatloaf any more. Which was funnier, when the Mexicans bombed The Wall with catapults full of feces or when Canadians built a wall of their own to keep out fleeing Americans?

  With each topic, the kid, tall and lanky at 16, became more a kid and less of whatever he was tossing up as a defense that day. While cleaning the gutter above Bob’s bedroom window, something caught Merle Junior’s eye. He stared through the glass for a long moment, and then glanced at Bob, nodding his head toward the

  window. “Was she righteous or a gold digger?”

  Bob knew the kid had seen the portrait. “Mary Angeline was as righteous as they come.”

  “How could you tell?”

  Relationship advice. That was new. Maybe Merle Junior had a crush. “First of all, I met her before anything happened for me,” Bob spoke truthfully. “As a matter of fact, she saved me from failing out of comedy.”

  Merle climbed down the ladder, stripped off muck-covered gloves, and looked Bob right in the eye, something he never did. “How?”

  “That’s a tale best told over PB and J’s.” Merle Jr. nodded. “Gotta eat.”

  “Gotta eat.”

  Chapter 20

  BOB HAD BEEN SAVING his peanut butter stash, but since they were going to talk about Mary Angeline, it was a special occasion. He spread a modest amount across wheat bread with just a hint of jelly, and poured a big glass of milk. For Perri he made six Ritz crackers each with a dollop of peanut butter, into each of which he pressed a dent where he carefully placed a drop of jelly. Mary Angeline used to make them so much better, but Perri accepted his sloppier versions with admirable grace.

  Merle Junior built a monstrosity. The bottom was a slice of seedless rye slathered with a thick spread of peanut butter. Next was a slice of pumpernickel bread covered in a diabetes-inducing blob of jelly, topped with a slice of wheat bread. He matched that mountain of calories with a pint glass of orange juice.

  Bob laughed. “You are the Salvador Dali of sandwiches, my man.”

  “’If you are lucky enough to have lived in peanut butter as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for peanut butter is a movable feast,’” the kid said, raising the sandwich toward his mouth.

  Bob raised his eyebrows. “Hemingway.”

  Merle Junior paused, pinkies holding up the corners

  of the sandwich so the jelly couldn’t escape. “Almost.” “You read a lot?”

  “An assignment at Hamburger High,” Merle Junior smirked. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Hamburger High was an apt nickname for his school. When Congress did away with public education funding in favor of for-profit charter schools, huge conglomerates and chain stores took them over as tax shelters and promotional vehicles. America’s Way Department stores took west coast high schools. Plark Auto snapped up Utah and surrounding state high schools. And a certain fast food chain snapped up all the high schools in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, thus the nickname.

  Merle Junior took a huge bite of his absurd lunch, chewed awhile, swallowed, and washed it down with gulps of OJ. After wiping his face with a napkin, using exceptional manners, he nodded to Bob.

  “Speaking of guarded secrets, check this out,” Merle Junior said, thumbing his phone. He opened some app, showed Bob two video clips. The first was of citizens, and the second was President Statler, both showed people getting True American Security Implants.

  “Yeah, saw this when it happened,” Bob shrugged. “They say they’ll get around to us by next spring.”

  “Watch again.”

  Merle Junior replayed both. The clip showed regular folk getting their True American Security Tracker Implants via an injection. As the shots were administered there was a “phmph” sound that made it seem even more painful. The other clip showed the president getting his in what had been a nationally televised moment. But in the Statler clip there was a

  beat and then the sound was heard.

  “Hear that? Fake sound effect dropped in with poor timing,” the kid announced.

  Bob shrugged. “Back and to the left. Back and to the left.”

  “Laugh it up, fur ball, but this guy didn’t get a tracker. He’s full of shit.”

  Perri shot her brother a frown. “Language!”

  “Sorry, Captain,” he said, looking at Bob knowingly. “And?”

  “Let’s take this global. Expose him. End his horrible presidency.”

  “You can. I am not rebooting All The President’s Men.”

  “Who’s gonna listen to me? Mr. Comedy Icon they’ll listen to. America loves you.”

  “America loves that guy in the movies, the young one with the quips. That’s not who I am any more.”

  Perri, focused on delicately picking up another peanut butter and jelly on a Ritz, seemed to be speaking happily to the cracker, “We are who we think we are.”

  “That’s right, honey, and I think I’m too old for your brother’s revolution.”

  Merle Junior stared at Bob for a long moment then maneuvered the triple-decker back to his mouth. Before taking another bite, he said, “You owe me a story.”

  Bob nodded, chewing down a sizable hunk of his own sandwich. He took a swig of milk, swallowed, used his own napkin, and then said, “This was back before the beginning of my career. I wasn’t cutting it at Second City. Been there a little while, got a few laughs, but nothing consistent and nothing special. There was some concern that Buck’s kid brother was turning

  out to be an untalented favor, that I was taking up a performance slot that should go to someone with real potential.”

  Perri wiped her lips with a napkin daintily, her feet swinging, quietly kicking the porch table. “I think you have potential, Uncle Bob.”

  “Thank you, bubalah.”

  “You are very welcome,” she smiled at him. “Please continue your story.”

  Bob chuckled, and then did what she asked. “This one night was more or less my last shot. We had this improv — that is a form of comedy, bubalah— and I was supposed to run with a particular scene, and I forgot the thread. Couldn’t remember my part. My line came up, and I just blurted something out, thinking, ‘That’s it, I’m toast.’

  “And then, snatching me from just totally dying onstage, there it was, one single laugh,” Bob said, smiling. “One sincere, real laugh.”

  He glanced at Merle Junior who sat with his sandwich in his hand, forgotten, jelly finally making a break for it onto the porch table.

  Bob’s face lit up, in performance mode. “And it was that one laugh from the audience that made all the difference. I said something else. That laugh came again, and brought friends. One of the cast members responded, picking up on this new direction, so I kept riffing. That laugh led a growing wave as the entire audience caught on to where we were going, and I somehow brought the house down. Roaring laughter, huge applause at the end. It became my first signature bit.”

  Perri’s enthusiasm broke in. “I knew you could do

  it!” This was exactly what Mary Angeline used to say to the little girl every time she planted a seed or watered a plant well. Delivered exactly in Mary Angeline’s cadence.

  Bob looked at her smiling face in wonder, savoring th
e oh-so-brief visitation of his wife’s essence; those embers glowed bright momentarily, and then he nodded and continued. “All because of a woman who would soon tell me her name was Mary Angeline.”

  Perri clapped. “Aunt Mary!”

  Bob would have bought that girl a house right then if she asked. He turned to her brother. “So is she righteous? Hell yeah, brother.”

  Merle Jr. nodded his approval. “Was that the Buttley Burgers bit?”

  “No, Buttley came a little later that season—”

  “Was it the one that goes, ’Sir, I love this woman even if she is your wife. I’ll give you $5.38’?”

  Bob laughed a little through his nose. “Yeah, that’s

  it.”

  “I have it on my hard drive,” Merle said, and then,

  with his mouth full, he said, “Bootleg. Sorry.”

  “Can’t get it any other way, I believe. Wish I could find a clip of that actual performance.”

  “I’ll work on it for you.”

  Now it was Bob’s turn to stare, sandwich forgotten. “Is that even possible?”

  “Back then, Harry ‘Mac’ McIntosh filmed Second City almost every night.”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “We would study them to see what was working.”

  “Remember the boxed set? Supposedly that didn’t even scratch the surface of what he had, and a lot of the

  rest has found its way online, so it is worth looking.” “I remember Harry,” Bob smiled. “Eventually he

  DP’d for us on Jail Broken. Is he still working?” “Dead. Prostate cancer. Last year. They discovered

  it early, too. Used to treat that easily in this country.” “Used to treat a lot of things easily,” Bob agreed.

  “Bastards.”

  “Language, young man,” Perri admonished, sounding a lot like a tiny sheriff.

  “My apologies, Perri, I am unfit to be in your presence,” Bob bowed.

  Perri giggled and danced in her chair, reaching for her last Ritz, quite delighted with the world.

  Bob was glad to see someone was.

  Merle Jr. continued. “His work is still out there. Tons of Second City stuff. I’ll listen for the one laugh.”

  Bob nodded at the kid, “That’s what I do every night.”

  Chapter 21

  LATER, AFTER FINISHING THE rest of the gutters and watering every plant on Bob’s property, his favorite guests departed, Perri holding Merle Junior’s hand and swinging his arm. The comedian considered dinner options. “Cheerios with blueberries or Cheerios without them, that is the question.”

  He glanced at Steve, but no sage advice was forthcoming.

  “With blueberries it is,” he decided, and opened the fridge where he found no such fruity delights. “Alas, the motion has been vetoed.”

  As he took out the milk, cereal, bowl, and spoon required of this culinary feast, a delightful bebopping sound came from the living room.

  Bob grinned at Steve. “Only two urchins in the whole entire world send me that sound. Come on, Steve, it’s Suzie-Kalloozie and RobbaDobba! Let’s sneak up on them.”

  Bob grabbed his phone, now alive with the incoming FaceTime call. He set it up so once he slid right to connect, the kids would see a close up of Steve, as if he had answered. “They’re gonna love this, Steve. Just stay right their, buddy.”

  He accepted the call, expecting to hear familiar high-pitched squeals of delight.

  Instead, what exploded from the phone were cheers and laughter and applause so loud that Steve bolted from the room. Bob turned the phone, looked at the screen and dropped it. Was the phone malfunctioning? What was writhing around onscreen? Where were the kids? Had they pranked him while he was pranking them? He lifted the screen to his face, and the cheers soared to a roar of approval.

  And then the chanting began. “BOB! BOB! BOB! BOB!”

  He looked closer. It was a wall of … faces.

  It slowly dawned at him that these were … fans.

  Long unused muscle memory kicked in and Bob’s signature smirk tugged his features to the right as he tilted his head slightly to the left.

  The crowd recognized the move from a dozen hit comedies and lost their minds.

  Bob laughed, thinking, where are my grandkids? How did they set this up? Maybe it was their school’s PTA fundraiser? If so, when are they coming onscreen? “Suzie-Kalloozie! RobbaDobba! Where are you crazy kids?” Bob spoke over the cheers, searching the

  crowd for his beloved nuggets.

  Then Winston Miller stepped into the foreground wearing a “WE MISS BOB” T-shirt over his shirt and tie. “Bob Murphy, everyone! Finally, we make contact with The All-Time Greatest!”

  Whatwhatwhatwhat? Bob’s mind raced. Miller? He had only told Jeremy he would think about it … Damnit, the kid had misunderstood him. Or jumped to conclusions. Or sold him out. He told himself to hang up. Just hang up… on at least a hundred very excited fans and potentially millions more watching on

  television? Pissed as he was, he owed them more than that.

  “Winston, you mischievous chimp you, what are all you crazy maniacs doing?”

  The crowds’ laughter drowned out Winston’s response. He held up a hand to get some control back, and then spoke for all of them. “We all have missed you so much, Bob, and we’ve been trying to get in touch just to make sure you are okay and to make sure you know we all love you.” He turned to the audience. “Isn’t that right?”

  The crowd roared.

  Bob made his smile scrunch up like they were all in on some delightful hijinks together. Inside, his thoughts about Miller had a very different tone.

  The crowd applauded wildly for this equally well- known expression.

  Miller held up that hand again, the jerk silencing the real people. “We’ve been told you won’t come on television anymore.”

  “That’s because it’s true, Winnie,” Bob said before he could stop himself. Don’t be rude to the fans, he admonished himself, and then countered himself with a reminder that Miller was not a fan, he was an incubus using Bob for his own pleasure.

  Miller smiled an empty LA smile. “Are you okay?

  Your health—”

  Bob blinked consciously and offered the pop culture pimp a mocking smile, both moves he made famous while facing down a giant stone possessed former President in Monster Cops. “I’m as okay as any of us are, Winston. Thanks for asking.”

  “You were the funniest, most outspoken voice we

  ever had, Bob,” Winston slipped into interview mode. “Monster Cops, which is being reissued this week in a deluxe package, took on old-time delusions about the so-called Washington elite. Jail Broken was hilarious and still spoke about the then-alleged racism in our criminal justice system. Between the gags, Our Only Boat commented on climate change — remember the climate change fad, everyone?”

  The crowd went wild.

  “Remember the Florida Keys?” Bob shot back though no one could hear him. Old-time delusions? Then-alleged? Remember climate change? He needed to get out of the trap this soulless pariah had sprung on him—

  Winston again quieted the crowd. “All that noise has long since been resolved, God Bless America. What do you do these days, Bob?”

  Bob heard his words take on an edge he didn’t intend to use out loud. “I stay home, Winston. I talk to people face-to-face, and I listen, really listen to their views whether I agree or not. It is called conversation

  — remember that fad? I shop at independently owned stores. I mind my own business. What I don’t do any longer is contribute to financing, condoning, or being complicit in the madness.”

  The crowd roared.

  Winston let them have their moment, then leaned in close to the camera, as if he were whispering to the comedian. “You used to do that gloriously, on an international stage. What happened, Bob? Did the Powers That Be get to you? Did the world hurt you?”

  This leech wanted Bob to give him an Oprah moment, an Emmy segment. He was pushing Bob t
o

  break down and commiserate about Mary Angeline. “I just stopped, Winston.”

  “But making us laugh, and making us think, that’s your job. Coming on shows like this, that’s your job.”

  “Well, Winston, if coming on your show is my job, then I’m calling out sick. Maybe more people should do that.” Bob hit the red phone icon, ending the intrusion. He stormed into his bedroom, not even knowing why until he started talking to the portrait, something he hadn’t done in months.

  “Can you believe him? Thinking he had a right to discuss you! He can’t pimp a person’s pain like that!

  “Hopefully, he’ll have a harder time getting guests after this stunt! That slime thought I’d discuss you with him? Really?”

  He looked up at the silent, calming portrait. After a few minutes, he sat on the bed. “That just wasn’t right. Only the kids use FaceTime … with … me. He found out and cloned it!”

  Bob lay back and kept staring up at the only one who had ever made jerks tolerable. “To defile the kids’ privacy … our special time … that’s just low….”

  His gaze continued, long after her smile slowed his pulse, calmed his anger. Finally, his eyelids lowered. “We showed that … creep….”

  Chapter 22

  BOB AWOKE PAST DINNERTIME. He fed the dog,

  but didn’t eat himself — the Miller call had spoiled his appetite. Instead, he scrubbed dishes from the afternoon with fervor, making sure each sparkled before putting it in the dishwasher. Then the kitchen counters and porch table were cleaned with equal energy, and Steve’s bowl was made to all but glow. Floors were swept and mopped despite the cleaning lady having visited just a few days earlier, and all the garbage containers were emptied, relined, and the bags taken out to the bins until tomorrow morning’s ride.

  Still not hungry, Bob dumped himself onto the couch and hit the remotes.

  “… be sure to see an exclusive tonight on Miller Time—”

  Click.

  “…the reclusive comedy icon has broken his long silence—”