Free Asimov's Science Fiction - June 2014 by Penny Publications Page A

adjusting inside of him evened out, and his face relaxed into a smile. His eyes sparkled. "Okay! This is gonna be sweet! Let's go to Oklahoma City," he said decisively.
    I could feel the smile stretching my face. "Yeah. Okay. Totally. Why?"
    "It's Easter!"
    "It was Easter, like, three days ago."
    "It's Easter
season!
We've gotta go to OKC! But we've gotta make some calls first, and some more on the way."
    And so we drove to OKC.
    It wasn't hard to find this Murrah Federal Building Taylor was talking about, because someone had already tied helium balloons to every parking meter on the block, and plastered every light pole with
FREE EASTER PETTING ZOO!!!
flyers. It was drawing traffic. By the time we edged our way into the parking lot facing the building, a few families were already milling around, and a security officer had jogged out to argue with the clowns Taylor had called from Kansas City the night before. While the fattest clown got progressively more jolly with the cranky guard, the others fanned out, sculpting balloon cowboy hats and cutlasses. A pony trailer turned in behind us, and the cop swiveled around to watch it, dumbfounded. He immediately grabbed the handset clipped to his lapel and began yelling into it.
    Taylor was out of my Civic before I'd even set the parking brake, toting the mewling cardboard carton he'd had in his lap since Topeka, which he'd labeled using a mostly dry fat-tip marker:
FREE KITTENS! [NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION].
This left me with both the ducks and the goat.
    "Hey!" I shouted, but he was already calling out to the cop and Fatso the Clown.
    "Officer!" I heard him shout, "Happy Easter Week! My name's Taylor, and I'm from the Department of Ag extension office up in Tulsa! Didn't anyone tell you about the Federal Easter Petting Menagerie?"
    And then he was close enough not to be yelling anymore, and their debate was lost to me. Another clown car pulled in, oooga horn blaring, and I turned my attention back to the nanny goat in my back seat. The Honda was a two-door, and she'd given me Hell getting her in; I was expecting a similar fight to get her out. But I guess eating half a blue vinyl tarp and most of the foam out of the middle back seat chilled her out, because she was remarkably cooperative as I clipped the lead to her collar and urged her to hop down. The ducks, on the other hand, were having none of it. You wouldn't think there was room, but they'd somehow wedged themselves under the front seats, and I couldn't get my hands around them without getting wicked gouged by the rusty springs. Plus duck beaks pinch like a bastard.
    The nanny goat, now tethered to the side mirror, eyed me solemnly, bleated once, then shook her head fiercely, spattering my face with stinking blue-vinyl-flecked spittle.
    I stood and gazed in wonder at the beautiful chaos Taylor had created with nothing more then a couple of phone books, lots of quarters, and the promise of cash on the barrel head: The pony man had trotted out his two miniatures and already told a nearby mother of two, "Nope; all free—some sort of Easter Parade the city is putting on!" before a cop could get to him and shut it down. A one-man band launched into a pounding, discordant cover of that Hootie and the Blowfish song that was always on the radio, making any sort of police intervention all the more impossible. Security streamed in from the federal building, but they were no match for the two competing clown troupes jockeying for turf in the car-choked parking lot, drawing in children and families from every corner. I guess the building had a daycare or something, because cars kept pulling up with pop-eyed kids pressed against the windows, their mouths distorted with glee.
    It was hard, right then, not to love Taylor. I set my hands on the roof of the Honda and arched my back, relishing the sharp
crack
as everything popped back into place. We'd been up and driving at 4 A.M. Across the lot Taylor was smiling broadly, and the