Chapter Twenty-Two

Derrick had had enough. After all his threats to leave the caravan, he finally had. He got on a bus and headed home.
It wasn’t the same without Derrick. The convoy began to feel like a funeral procession. Ben’s poetry took on an elegiac quality, the flowers started to droop, and a sad feeling hovered.
One afternoon, they were drooping along a straight stretch of highway, vacant fields on both sides, the sun shining high overhead. Ben read The Mosquito King, his new poem which lamented the extinguishing of a citronella candle.
“The cold wind blew you out,” Ben recited. “A hot plague of insects swarms the naked convoy. Did you fall off the mountain, or did the mountain fall off of you?”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Big David Schweitzer’s voice blasted over the CB radio, “but there’s a motorcycle trying to pass us. Over.”
“A motorcycle gang?” Ben asked. “Over.”
“Negative. Just one motorcycle. Over.”
“You interrupted The Mosquito King for a single motorcycle?”
“It’s got a sidecar.”
Ben spun his head around to see this strange sight. A huge black motorcycle with black low-riding sidecar on its right side passed the desert greenhouse and came up fast on the rose-truck. The driver was dressed all in maroon: maroon leather jacket and leather pants, maroon boots, and maroon motorcycle helmet with a mirrored visor. The sidecar passenger was dressed the same except all in sky blue and his visor wasn’t mirrored, but darkly tinted. They both looked like astronauts.
Larry Shoemaker stuck his hairy, freckled, suntanned left arm (his right arm was pale as an Englishman) out his window and waved them past.
The motorcycle drew parallel with the gazebo truck and slowed to match their speed. The man in sky blue in the sidecar lifted a rifle and pointed it at Ben. Ben tried to drop to the floor, but his seatbelt bolted him down.
With his free hand, the man in the sidecar lifted up a megaphone and spoke into it. Then he noticed that the megaphone wasn’t turned on, awkwardly moved the switch with his gun-toning hand, and spoke again.
“Pull over!”
Elizabeth pried the CB receiver out of Ben’s frozen hand. “This is Grey Goose here,” she said to the convoy. “I don’t want anyone to panic, but we’re being hijacked. I don’t want anyone to try to be a hero. Especially you, Bobby. Just let them have the flowers. The flowers can be replaced. Your lives can’t. Over.”
“That’s a negatory,” Larry Shoemaker’s voice came over the CB. “What if they’re planning to crash the trucks? Didn’t you learn anything from nine eleven?”
“Now Larry,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t just never trust anybody ever again. Over.”
“Trust them? They’re trying to hijack us!”
“Just pull over, Larry! We don’t need another high speed chase!”
Larry slowed and pulled over. The rest of the caravan did the same, stopping on the shoulder of the road.
The motorcycle skid to a stop in front of the gazebo-truck and Sky Blue hopped out of the sidecar. He was short and fat and jiggled around in his tight sky blue leather pants. He dropped the megaphone into the sidecar, and ran, jigglinig and bowlegged, at the driver’s cabin, shaking his rifle at Larry Shoemaker.
“Get down from there!” he yelled in a nasally squeak. “Keep your hands where I can see ‘em!”
Larry opened the door and hopped down with his hands up. He landed hard and put his palms on the ground to stop from toppling over.
“I said keep your hands up!”
Larry put his hands up and glared hatefully at the short man in sky blue who had a rifle trained on him.
The man in maroon dismounted the motorcycle and strolled to the gazebo platform. He was tall and solidly built. He removed a handgun that was stuffed in his red leather pants.
“Get down from there!” he called in a powerful voice.
Ben and Elizabeth hopped down.
Ben saw his reflection in Maroon’s mirrored visor and noticed that his hair was windswept. He always looked good after riding on the gazebo-truck.
“Don’t shoot us,” Elizabeth said. “Just take the flowers. They’re yours.”
Maroon laughed deeply and shook his head.
“You hear that?” he called to Sky Blue. “She thinks we want her flowers.”
Sky Blue squealed and giggled.
Maroon turned back to Elizabeth and Ben caught a glimpse of his wind-swept reflection.
“We don’t want your flowers,” Maroon said.
“I told you so,” Larry Shoemaker muttered.
Maroon pointed at Elizabeth like Uncle Sam. “We want you,” he said. “Your rich husband’ll pa a hefty sum to get you back. Now get in the sidecar.”
“I’ve never been in a sidecar before.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there.”
“Before I get in the sidecar, would you like to see our flowers?”
“No,” said Maroon.
“Yes,” said Sky Blue.
Maroon turned towards his partner. Sky Blue straightened up and pointed the rifle more diligently at Larry Shoemaker.
“We’re not going to look at the flowers,” Maroon said.
“But I like flowers.”
“I know you like flowers, but we don’t have time for flowers right now. We’re on a tight schedule.”
“It won’t take long,” Elizabeth promised.
Ben knew what Elizabeth was thinking. If she could get them to look at the flowers, they would see the error of their ways, and decide not to kidnap her. They might even join the flower caravan.
“We could just take the flowers,” Sky Blue suggested.
“No.”
“We’re already kidnapping. What does it matter if we take a few flowers?”
“You can buy as many flowers as you want with your share, but we need to get the ransom first.”
“I have a chocolate tree,” Elizabeth said.
“Really?” Sky Blue sounded excited.
“She’s lying,” Maroon said. “Chocolate doesn’t grow on trees.”
“Yes it does,” Elizabeth said.
Maroon pointed his gun at her face and cocked it.
“No. It doesn’t.”
“You’re right,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a root. It grows underground.”
“That’s better. Now get in the sidecar.” He gestured with a flick of his gun-holding hand.
Elizabeth skulked towards the sidecar and shot Ben a meaningful glance that said, “Quick! Use a poem!”
Ben’s workingman poems were useless here, and would just encourage the kidnappers to believe they were entitled to Howard Roseman’s money. Ben had to use one of his sellout poems, one that reinforced the view that the rich had a right to their money. And Ben thought those poems were useless; he had been an anti-sellout-poem racist. He silently apologized to sellout poems for thinking badly of them.
He cleared his throat and recited:
The part of you I love
I can’t see empirically,
but the part of me in love
knows instinctively;
your particle of love
is a Higgs Boson to me.
A silence hung in the air for a few moments. The wind creaked by.
Maroon cocked his gun again.
“What was that?” he asked. “That think you just said.”
“A poem.”
“Yeah? Well, it sucks.”
Ben nodded. “That’s what I thought, but the truth is, every poem has its place and its purpose. Just like every person does. Even a kidnapper like you.”
“Every poem may have its place, but this is not the place. Neither the time nor the place for poetry.”
“I don’t just read poems in the ‘appropriate’ places where they want poems to be read. I’m a workingman’s poet. I’m bringing poetry to the people. I bring poetry everywhere.”
“So you’re one of those poets who scribble on the walls of men’s rooms?”
“I might have to. You’re stealing my patron.”
“You’ll get her back when the professor pays the ransom.”
“Let’s hear another,” Sky Blue said.
“No,” said Maroon.
“Why not?” Sky Blue whined.
“We don’t have time to listen to his poem.”
“But I like poems.”
“We’re on a tight schedule. Look, after we get the money, you can sit around on a bed covered in rose petals, and read poetry about lovely lily pads all day long if you want to. But right now we have to go. We don’t have time for this.”
“Let’s take him with us.”
“No. We’re not kidnapping the poet.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one’s gonna pay ransom for a poet.”
“Not for ransom. He could read us poetry.”
“No.”
“I liked his higgsy bo jean poem.”
“Just stop, will you?! I can feel a fit coming on! You’re gonna give me a seizure.”
One of the trucks in the caravan blared its horn, encouraging them to hurry up. Ben didn’t know which truck it was, but thought it might be David Schweitzer in the daffodil truck.
“See!” Maroon said. “Even they want us to get going!”
Sky Blue skulked over to the sidecar and got in with Elizabeth. Maroon mounted the motorcycle and started to rev it up.
“You better not go to the police!” he called. “If you ever want to see her again!”
“You’d better follow the Geneva Convention,” Ben said.
“What?”
“It covers the treatment of prisoners…”
“I know what it is,” Maroon said. “And it’s only for wars. It doesn’t cover kidnappings.”
Ben scoffed. “That’s what they always say: It doesn’t apply here, and then they can just do whatever they want, with no respect for human rights. You gonna tell me Elizabeth’s an unlawful combatant?”
“We’re not gonna torture her.”
“There’s more to the Geneva Convention than not torturing her. She has rights: tobacco rations and access to musical instruments.”
“I don’t smoke,” Elizabeth said.
“Do you play a musical instrument?” Sky Blue asked.
“No, but I’m willing to learn.”
“I can teach you the harmonica,” Sky Blue said excitedly.
“You wanna be quiet?!” Maroon screamed at his partner. “Quit giving them clues!”
“I’m not giving clues.”
“They know you play the harmonica. Keep talkin’ and they’ll figure out who you are!”
“Aren’t you at least going to give her a helmet?” Ben asked.
“Does the Geneva Convention give her one?” Maroon asked mockingly.
“It was written before helmet safety laws,” Ben admitted.
“Well, there you go,” Maroon said. “It’s out of date.” He looked at Elizabeth. “I’m sorry ma’am. I’d give you mine. I don’t mean to be ungentlemanly, but if I took off my helmet, you’d see my face, and then I’d have to kill you.”
Elizabeth nodded understandingly.
The horn blared again from back in the caravan.
“All right, all right,” Maroon shouted. “We’re going!”
He revved up the engine and they started to speed away.
“Don’t stop!” Elizabeth called over her shoulder. “Keep showing the flowers! Don’t let it end! It will go on without me!”
***
י''ב בתשרי תשס''ח
ירושלים
September 24, 2007
Jerusalem