of the clock tower. The city walls were covered with these strange drawings and words. The words were indiscernible to Andrew, and Nick had no idea what language it was. Andrew thought it was German or something.
The colors of the graffiti lit up the town in the place of electrical light. Shades of fluorescent green and orange and pink radiated from the walls to light the boys’ way. Andrew had never seen such a colorful place in his whole life. His neighborhood in Nayreton got very dark at night, surrounded by the thick darkness of the forest. Here, however, the night was electric. Nick claimed the graffiti was written by oddly dressed people in the town.
“You don’t see them much ‘cept when they write on the walls,” the boy explained. “It’s a weird thing, but they talk like little kids and wear new clothing that only little kids wear. My aunt calls them ‘kid adults’ cause they never grow up, or at least they don’t want to.” Nick added that all of this was beyond him.
“They sound a bit like hipsters,” Andrew said. Nick didn’t know what those were, and before Andrew could explain he spotted a few hipsters. Except, they weren’t quite hipsters. They were certainly outstanding and strange looking though. They congregated outside of Joe Freedman’s tavern, looking up at a man standing upon wooden scaffolding. The hipster-looking people wore high multicolored socks and tunics that were as fluorescent as the graffiti on the walls. The men wore tight clothing that looked like it belonged to women. The women had their hair short and wore hats to look like men. Either gender wore large glasses without lenses in them. Andrew had seen oddly dressed individuals like these in TV commercials back home, advertising the new iPhone or something along those lines. Here were something like those people, except they looked like they’d come from a different century.
The man on the scaffolding was a tall lanky fellow with a patchy beard and sullen grey complexion. He wore an old patched suit, and Andrew thought the hipsters must have picked it out for him: it was bright yellow. Nick informed him this was Joe Freeman.
“Let’s watch from a distance,” Nick advised. He and Andrew stuck on their side of the street. “I don’t want my friends from work to see me, they’d want me to join up.” Andrew saw Tom Treeson gathered around some men who were not dressed as extravagantly as the hipsters, and knew them to be the maintenance men.
So Nick’s only just met me, and he’d rather stick with me than his friends? Andrew thought. It was a comforting and concerning thought. The two boys listened in to Freeman’s sermon:
“He has terrorized this city. He has made a mess of what Sunsetville truly is,” Freeman proclaimed. His eyes shone eagerly. His voice was high-pitched and nasally, cracking at every other word. “And what is Sunsetville?”
“Our home!” came the response from the crowd. Freeman surveyed them with a stern glance. He looked as though he had neither shaved nor slept in days.
“Let me tell you all a story, friends and neighbors,” Freeman said. He straightened. “My bar always brings in good business. I used to be a little fool, like all of you, thinking things were good here and all. Thinking that I could make it in this city. Well, I was wrong. Dead wrong! We’re all fools, don’t you know it? Well I didn’t, not til that saint came into the bar and played up a scene.
“He told me that night that he was tired of my ‘sin’ and ‘inhumanity.’ Said alcohol and the ‘harlots’ upstairs were turning the town into a mess. So I tell’s him, my bar’s just fine- it’s what this town needs, considering the drought and all. The dry and thirsty men can come to the bar to quench their thirst and such. So he looks me in the eye, and he’s tells me he’d show me a dry spell. So he waves his hand, and laughs real eerily. Real creepy, that laugh.” The listeners murmured in silent agreement.
“I told him to get the hell out of my bar, and he tips me a wink and tells me things will be real dry round here for a while. Then he leaves, and next thing I know all my beer’s gone!” The crowd raised an uproar at this. “All seventy barrels in the cellar, and not a drop of alcohol in ‘em! As if all the beer just vanished in midair!”
“Don’t forget the ladies, Joe!” a hipster cried. Joe looked down upon the listener and stared. But others affirmed this call, so Joe continued.
“And the ladies. I didn’t want to say anythin’, but if you insist I’ll say a word or two. Well that same night he came in and the beer vanished, the men upstairs with the girls come flyin’ out of the rooms all at once, screamin’ the damn same thing.”
“What’d they scream Joe?” the crowd cried.
Joe leaned in, his eyes bloodshot. “That there were crawlies in the ladies’ privates.”
The crowd was silent in shock. “All the ladies fled town!” Joe continued. “They don’t want to stick around with that kind of sorcery about. So the town’s dry now!” He lifted his arms in the air. “No ladies, no booze! What does it say then?” The crowd erupted in anger, but Joe lifted a finger in the air to silence them. After a moment all was quiet.
“We can jibber and flam about this all we went, but I’s been saying this past week somethin’ needs to be done about it. It’s time the wizard pays for it all, yeah?” The crowd began to shake their heads and stomp their feet. It was a scary sight to see, dozens of men and women thundering about.
“Then there’s one way to do it then!” Joe cried. He gestured to the scaffolding he stood on. “The door’s to the clock tower’s locked with his magic, sure. So build this fucking tower and let’s rise up to meet him! At the top of the clock tower! What do you say we burn ‘im down!?” Joe threw his arms in the air, his voice cracking with the words ‘burn ‘im down.’ The response from the crowd was tremendous.
“Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!” they chanted. Now the maintenance men moved to the base of the scaffolding where construction tools lay. They began to work. Andrew watched and said:
“They’re building it up. They’re making it into a tower.”
“With wheels,” Nick added, observing the tower’s base. “Come on Andrew. Let’s get out of ‘ere.” The two boys turned to leave. As they rounded the corner around a tall brick house, another hipster-looking fellow nearly crashed into them. The newcomer skidded by the two boys and called to them:
“Be here by two tomorrow boys! That’s when the wheels start turning and we burn ‘im down!”
VI
The two boys sat on Margaret Smith’s front porch, observing the street. It was nightfall at last; the sunset had dragged on for over an hour. Margaret Smith, a bumbling woman plumper than her nephew, treated Andrew with cordiality and kindness. Andrew had asked Nick to keep his guns a secret from his relatives. He also hid his gun in a small purse Nick had lent him once they entered the house. Part of Andrew, after seeing the riot today, wanted to break the entire gun charade, but he knew better.
There’s work to do here, he thought to himself as he sat down at the dinner table. I’ve never fired a gun aside from my dad’s rifle, but there’s work to do here. I’ve got to play this part, to myself and others.
So he played along and kept it all a secret, thanking Margaret Smith graciously for the food, which was delicious. Her husband, Theodor, was the town postman and apparently still working. At one point during dinner, Margaret brought up Joee Freeman and the riot.
“You’d be best to stay away from all that, Nickolas,” she advised. “I know they’re your friends and all, but what they’re doing is bound
