Free We Are All Crew by Bill Landauer Page A

like they’re ready to climb out of themselves just to touch the wrinkly fat guy with the soda cans around his neck. Others seem to think the whole thing is hilarious, smiling and nudging one another. And others just look like they want to go back to their boxes, but they’re chanting anyway: “Shwo-Rez! Shwo-Rez!”
    Shwo-Rez looks like His Eminence on a campaign photo op. A big smile slackens his neck. He waves and points to people in the crowd. He stops and kisses a few babies, musses the hair of a couple of youngsters.
    “There he is,” Clarence mutters. “The king fruit nut.”
    The gray-haired guy I recognize from the palace is following him; Bob Schwartz called him Gray-Aide. When his sweeping eyes land on us in the cage, he looks away.
    “Friends of the great Eden!” Shwo-Rez shouts when he reaches the bonfire. The crowd falls silent. “Today is a monumental day in the history of our people. For we have proven that not only does evil exist—but that it walks among us.”
    A great roar erupts from the crowd. A couple of the hunters run to the cage and jab us with spears.
    “Tonight,” Shwo-Rez continues, “after our celebration, we will put these evil spirits to their death by lighting them ablaze on our sacred fire.”
    Well, that wigs us out something fierce. The crowd goes wild again, lifting their spears into the night and chanting, “Shwo-Rez! Shwo-Rez!”
    “Your devotion is truly super,” Shwo-Rez says, smiling. Then the crowd stops chanting his name and there’s nothing, no noise but the crackling of the fire and the sound of bugs fizzing. Some of the Shrub People look at their feet and toe the ground.
    The smile slips from Shwo-Rez’s lips, and he looks off past the tops of the trees. He stares at the city in the distance. “Super,” he mutters absently, as if he can’t get past the word. “Super . . . super . . .” His body seems to melt, and he staggers backward. “Super . . .” The crowd flinches.
    Gray-Aide leaps to his side and wraps his arm around Shwo-Rez’s shoulder. “The great Shwo-Rez is overcome by your worship in the face of such evil!” Gray-Aide shouts. “And tonight, he will reward us all by ridding us of this scourge!”
    The crowd goes nuts. Shwo-Rez blinks. Then the smile grows across his face again, and he lifts his arms above his head and howls at the sliver of moon on the horizon:
     
    “ I don’t wanna grow up
    I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid . . .”
     
    And they dance.
    It’s like a crowd of people having seizures. One woman tucks her hands into her armpits, leans forward, and does a chicken dance, then does jumping jacks with her feet and head flopping. Another man falls onto his back and thrusts his arms and legs into the air, shakes them like he’s doing the hokey pokey, sits back up, runs in a circle, then falls down and does it all again.
     
    “ There’s a million toys in Toys ‘R’ Us
    That I can play with !”
     
    “Here we go,” Esmerelda says. She’s sneaked up on the side of the cage where I’m leaning. Her breath warms my ear, and I smell her sweat. Female sweat is sharper than male sweat—a little more acidic, maybe, more alluring than man sweat but not much better smelling. I can only see her silhouette in the dark, but I picture her in designer hip-huggers and a belly shirt with her navel pierced.
    Then her shadow disappears and the cage inches upward.
    Shwo-Rez sits on a rotting La-Z-Boy recliner next to the bonfire and watches the dancers, smiling, the giant glow of the fire and the shadows from the thrashing Shrub People flashing red on his face. He doesn’t seem to notice us.
    “Coming?” Seabrook says to Clarence.
    “You’re dead,” Clarence hisses at us. “They’ll kill you for sure. Better to stay here and take my chances than to take a spear in the ass, it is.” He turns, goes to a corner of the cage, and sits X-ing his arms and legs and V-ing his eyebrows at us.
    “Follow me,” says a voice, but it’s not