The Travelling Show

This story is my humble submission to John Michael Greer's challenge to "write a short story set in the future in the wake of Peak Oil, and put it on the internet". It comes in at about 5400 words. I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I enjoyed the writing of it.

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As the Winnibego creaked and swayed up the shallow incline of the pockmarked old road, three bandits sauntered out from the bush at the side of the road, shotguns dangling from gloved hands. They planted themselves square in the middle of the cracked and buckled pavement.

Grampa hollered, "Whoa, girls." The big roan on the left hand whickered and bobbed her head as he pulled back on the reins. Annabeth pushed herself upright against the cracked brown naugahyde of the passenger bucket seat.

The tall bandit standing at the fore waved the muzzle of his gun in the general direction of the Larkin limo, spat a brown string of phlegm and announced, "this here's a lawful disposition of a bounty order 'gainst one runaway slave by the name of Lewis Carter, whom we have good cause to b'lieve you have in your possession. Release Carter into my custody and there will be no need for further disruption."

He lifted the battered ball cap from his head with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, scratched a red spot on his balding crown with the other three fingers, then settled the cap back in place with a tug on the frayed brim. A slightly darker patch on the brow of the cap silhouetted the missing sports team logo.

"Annabeth, Get back inside with your Uncle Ray," Grandpa whispered. Annabeth slipped down behind the fake woodgrain dashboard still attached to the firewall of the old Class C Winnebago camper-van. She gripped the vacant holes that once held the DVD player, the air conditioning outlets and the GPS screen in the dashboard.

"Grampa," she hissed, "I saw those guys hanging around the back of the show last night. He kept scratching his head like that every five minutes. I knew they were criffers."

Annabeth stared at the bandits over the top edge of the dashboard, fixing the week old stubble, the dirty clothes and the long stringy hair into her mind. They were the same three drifters she noticed on the bridge into Arlington when they arrived two days ago.

The leaves on the maples blazed red and orange along the roadside leading into Arlington that morning. The pair of docile draft horses plodded along, pulling the converted campervan along the rutted asphalt at a comfortable pace. Grampa reined the campervan left over the faded double yellow line to avoid a pothole the size of a bathtub. "Annabeth, every time I pull us over into the oncoming lane, I feel like a truck's gonna come around the bend and smack us one."

"Ha ha funny, Grampa. I don't think that's gonna happen today." They hadn't seen more than two other horse-drawn wagons on the road since setting out at dawn, both loaded high with hay. Every few miles, they passed a distant gang of red-capped laborers, mowing a field or stooping over rows of potato plants, watched over by two or three constables armed with rifles. Apart from the trees and the birds, they had the road to themselves.

Annabeth's Uncle Ray stuck his head through the hatchway in the wooden bulkhead fitted behind the seats. "Morning," he said, with a mock British accent.

"Morning," said Grampa in a falsetto British accent.

"What ya got, then?" chimed in Annabeth, stifling a giggle.

"Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam," said Grampa, rolling his eyes beneath his bushy eyebrows. Uncle Ray began chanting, "Spam, spam, spam, spam," as Grampa continued reciting the lines from Annabeth's favorite Monty Python sketch.

"Have you got anything without spam?" Ray complained. "Have you got anything without spam?" he repeated. By now she was laughing too hard to respond. Grampa and Ray carried on chanting "spam, spam, spam, spam," until Annabeth, scrubbing tears from her eyes, pleaded with them to stop. Uncle Ray gave her a friendly punch and disappeared back into the van.

As they approached the bridge over the Stillaguamish River, she noticed three men slouching against the chipped concrete barrier. Still wiping the tears from her cheeks, Annabeth's heart skipped a beat as they drew near the smallest of the three, who wore a green checked shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat tipped down over his face. "Tommy?" she said with a tentative wave. As the drew abreast, the man looked up, a crooked, toothless leer splitting the straggly whiskers sprouting under his flattened nose.

"No, darlin', the name's Buster, but I can be your Tommy if you like," he cackled. She slouched down into the bucket seat, her cheeks blazing as bright as the leaves on the trees. Grampa glared back at the trio, whooping and punching each other's shoulders.

"Goddam, Annabeth, you don't go calling out to strangers like that," he huffed.

"I thought it was someone I met at the spring planting, he has the same shirt," said Annabeth between sobs, "please don't be mad at me, Gramps."

Annabeth's Uncle Ray stuck his head back through the the hatchway curtains. "Everything alright up here?" he asked, reaching for the shotgun in the rack mounted above their heads.

"No trouble," said Grampa, "No need for that, yet."

Still slumped in her seat, Annabeth toyed with the bead bracelet around her right wrist. She raised the beads to her lips, thinking of the warm spring evening when Tommy had surprised her with it. No boy had ever given her a gift, never mind something so pretty as the bracelet. She had thrown her arms around him and kissed him square on the lips without thinking. Now she felt her breath shorten at the thought of seeing him again.

Grampa slowed the horses as they approached the high gate barricading the far end of the bridge. The guard standing atop the platform waved at them and called out, "Howdy, strangers."

"Yeah, howdy yourself, Stan," Grampa called back. "You gonna open that gate today, or do I have run it down?"

Stan chuckled as he pulled on the rope that slid the gate open. "With those two old nags? Thanks to Larkin, you got a fair bit less horsepower than your buggy once had."

"That's a fact, Stan," he replied, "but back in the good old days I couldn't find gasoline growing at the side of the road to make 'em go. Yeah, President Larkin had his strengths, but keeping the tar sands going and the Caliphate on our side wasn't among them."

Stan waved them through and started pulling the gate back into place. "Those boys out at the end of the bridge give you any trouble? I've seen them hanging around for a couple of days. Lieutenant over at the militia post says they're mostly harmless, but who knows."

"Naw, Annabeth thought she knew one of them. Mistaken identity. Well, we better get over to the school grounds and get set up. You'll let Mayor Chu know we're in town?"

Stan lifted up an antique candlestick phone from behind the barrier with a flourish. "We found a complete telephone switchboard in the basement of the post office. Been there in boxes for nearly a hundred and fifty years. Took a hell of a lot of scrounging to find enough three conductor wire. We got it hooked up over the summertime, now the guard stations, the militia post, the mayor's office and the town gates are all wired together." He rattled the hook then said, "Ellen? Put me through to the mayor, if you please."

On the way into town, they rolled past abandoned strip malls, supermarkets and gas stations gone to weed and rust. Young alder and cottonwood thrust up through the tall grass and bush encroaching on the cracked pavement of the deserted side streets. At the first intersection crossed by a connecting road, a red-capped road crew shoveled gravel from a small wagon into pot holes. Trios of laborers compacted the gravel fill by lifting and dropping six foot sections of old telephone pole, fitted with spike handles at waist height, singing a rhythmic dirge as they worked.

Not long after they pulled into the empty school parking lot and turned out the horses to browse the overgrown weeds amid the drifting autumn leaves, townsfolk stopped by to ask about the show that evening. Annabeth worked hard, dragging folding chairs from the old school auditorium and setting up rows of the chairs in front of the long side of the Winnebago. She did her best to scrub the chairs clean, despite the blooms of rust and mildew around the seats, stained by the winter rain leaking into the abandoned building.

Annabeth paused to take a drink of water, looking across the road at the store where she first met Tommy. At some point in the past, an enterprising owner had replaced the plate glass windows with clapboard siding and constructed a wooden porch along the front of the shop, transforming it into an old-time general store. The aluminum shell of the backlit sign above the door and the once-rotating sign on the post at the corner remained in place, proclaiming "Kwik-Mart" in heavy black letters on a faded orange and yellow field.

Under the shade of the original aluminum canopy, a half-dozen elderly men sat on wooden chairs and crates, spitting sunflower shells into the road and sipping from tall brown bottles. A couple of teenaged boys came out of the shop carrying sacks of grain. Neither wore a green checked shirt.

"Annabeth, I need you to go down to Chesko's to see if he's got anything new for us," Uncle Ray called down from the roof of the camper-van. "tell him I'm looking for any RNL connectors he can spare, doesn't matter male or female. He'll know what I'm talking about." He tilted up another of the solar panels hinged to the top surface of the campervan, angling it to catch the maximum sunlight.

"Don't worry, Uncle, I know what those are. I've been helping you set up that contraption all winter," said Annabeth as she lifted a black and green coaster bike off the back of the van, the tires patterned in a quilt-work of the reused automobile seat belts from which they were fashioned.

She passed a farrier's workshop as she rolled down Union Street, a thread of grey smoke streaming from the chimney that poked through the roof of the former auto body shop. Remembering Grampa had muttered something about Alice's left shoe needing replacement, she stopped outside the open bay door. She banged on the door to get the farrier's attention over the rhythmic clanging of his hammer on the anvil.

"Well, if it isn't Miss Annabeth. That must mean it's show time tonight," exclaimed the farrier as he scrubbed his forehead with his sleeve.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Leeman," she replied.

"Oh, none of this 'sir', business, Annabeth. My Katie's been asking for weeks when you'd be back in town. It's nice for her to have another young lady her own age to gossip with, anyways."

"Yes, uh, you can tell her we're setting up for tonight, right at dusk. I'll look forward to seeing her, too," Annabeth said, "but I was also wondering if you can have a look at Alice, maybe tomorrow morning? She's losing a shoe, Grampa thinks."

Leeman scratched his head. "I s'pose I can try to nail it back in place, but if the shoe's bust, I won't be able to replace it. I'm still waiting for a load of rebar."

"Alright, I'll let Grampa know he can bring Alice over in the morning," she said as she stepped onto the bike.

Further down the road, she skirted around a gang of red-capped workers loading lengths of steel I-beam onto a horse-drawn wagon. A constable outfitted in a dark blue uniform and high leather boots cradled a long rifle in his arms as he watched over the workers. One of the workers stooping down to lift a rusted steel bar, a gaunt man with a blond ponytail hanging down below his floppy red cap, looked up deliberately at Annabeth as she negotiated the corrugated surface of the pavement.

"Get your eyes back where they belong, stooker," barked the guard, who was not much older than his prisoner. The man's eyes held Annabeth's for a moment longer, then he heaved at the end of the steel beam with a congested grunt. Annabeth felt a wave of revulsion. Grampa hated the refugees from California, who raided fields, barnyards and orchards. Grampa explained they were called "stookers" because they often set fire to stooks, the stacked sheaves of grain lying out in the fields after the harvest.

She quickly pedaled the rest of the way to the plain storefront, marked by a simple hand-written sign in the window, one of a row of boarded-up industrial shops. A scruffy man standing outside opened the gated door for Annabeth, promising to keep watch over her bicycle while she was in the shop.

Inside the musty shop, Chesko greeted Annabeth with a smile. "If it isn't my best customer," he said, setting down a carton on the counter.

"Hi, Mr. Chesko. Have you got anything for my Uncle Ray?" she asked. "Oh, and he also wants any RNL connectors you can spare."

Chesko nodded and ducked behind a curtain, leaving Annabeth alone with two tabby cats stretched out on a dingy carpet amid boxes and cartons of old magazines and books. She picked up a small magazine. The front cover featured a scantily clad woman cowering behind a heroic man pointing an outlandish weapon at a giant furry alien space bat. She tossed it back in the box, then scratched the caramel tabby behind the ears.

The shelves along the one wall were lined with salvaged LED lamps, toasters and other small appliances that Chesko mended and resold to those folks who could still afford to buy solar PV panels or one of the bicycle generators Chesko built in the back of the shop. One stood in the middle of the floor, crafted from an old bicycle, a 12 volt automobile alternator and four high capacity batteries.

Chesko reappeared and handed a DVD, two Blu-Rays and a Holo-D remake of Gone with the Wind to Annabeth. She looked them over as Chesko rummaged in a bin under the counter.

"Hmm, the DVD looks interesting, but I think it's incompatible with Uncle Ray's equipment. I'll take it any way in case we come across a player." She flipped the Holo-D over and studied the notes. "Hey, this was engineered using Pixar's Realityscape Engine. Copyright, 2023. Let's see, stars Kira Knightley as Scarlett O'Hara, Clark Gable reprises his role as Rhett Butler, and Leo Seeves as Ashley Wilkes."

Chesko stood up, red-faced, and handed Annabeth a half-dozen silvery wafers. "That's all I've got for now. My boys will be back from Renton late today or tomorrow. They might have found some more."

Annabeth rattled the connectors in her palm. "This is fine. I think Uncle Ray's just being cautious. How much for all this?" she asked. Chesko added up the figures on a paper receipt, then said, "All in, I'll give it to you for forty bucks."

"Hm, the Holo-D's got some scratches, it might not play, and we can't really test the DVD. How about twenty?"

Chesko scratched his chin, then sighed. "Okay, I'll split the difference with you. Thirty. Good thing you're my best customer," he chuckled.

Annabeth congratulated herself on making a good bargain. Grampa would be pleased. She counted out the New Cascadian Bucks in coins on the felt mat on the counter, then stowed her purchases in her shoulder bag.

Back at the schoolground, Annabeth handed the disks and connectors to Ray. He held one of the Blu-Ray disks at an angle to the sunlight, inspecting it for scratches. "It's getting harder to find decent disks. You wouldn't know, kid, but back before the war, your Mom and I practically grew up watching movies. We both thought we'd move to LA and get into the business. Of course, everything was put straight into the cloud back when we were kids. I think I was about ten when the last Holo-D's went out of production. Now it's all gone, all the Academy winners for the last 30 years, after all the distribution moved online and they stopped making old disks like these."

Annabeth glanced up at the puffy white cumulus building over the mountains to the east. She still had a hard time imagining how the world was when her Mom and Uncle were little, when movies like these were available anywhere, anytime, and everyone carried devices around with them everywhere to talk and listen and watch. She knew, vaguely, that the armies and leaders in far-off Vancouver and Seattle still used some form of these devices, but around here, it was mostly talking face to face, or sending a letter home to her Mom in the weekly mail pickup.

As dusk gathered, townfolk drifted into the school parking lot in twos and threes. The majority were middle-aged or older, sometimes accompanied by children and grandchildren. Annabeth noticed the seniors tended to dress in old-fashioned clothes, the men wearing long, buttoned jackets over pot bellies, glittering baseball caps with long brims covering bald spots, the women trailing brightly-colored ruffled skirts over tall-heeled lace up boots. Some of the fabriclight effects still worked, painting ghostly washes of color, geometric patterns or even old advertising slogans across torsos and arms. Many of the younger folk wore knee-length brown or russet tunics, belted over leggings and sturdy boots, that Annabeth found more to her liking.

As the seats filled up, Annabeth helped collect town scrip, Cascadia bucks, bottles of preserves and even bolts of homespun wool cloth in payment. The first stars appeared in the sky. Grampa, Ray and Annabeth took their jackets from the back of the campervan. "I hope there's enough juice in those batteries, Ray," Grampa said tapping on a small LCD meter in a panel on the inside of the van.

"I replaced a couple of the connectors this afternoon, should have helped," replied Ray, "and I swapped out one of the old batteries for the one I reconditioned. We should be good for at least three hours."

Grampa stood upright, stretching with his hands on the small of his back. "I guess. We've managed okay on this tour so far. Marysville tomorrow, Snohomish on Thursday, then we head home for the winter. And school for you, young lady, one more year to go," he said, pinching Annabeth on her cheek.

"Ow, Grampa, I'm not a baby anymore," she cried in mock outrage putting her hand to her cheek. "Besides, I can apprentice to Uncle Ray when I've finished school. Lot more useful than math or reading old books."

"No, it's not the same as when I was your age. The world was far more complex. We had to spend at least ten more years, and maybe a hundred thousand old American dollars, just to get enough of a basic degree to enter the workforce. Then it took years to pay off the loans. I can't tell you how many of my classmates ended up working low wage jobs despite their education, forever shackled to that debt. It was a great travesty."

Grampa shook his head. "Well, that's not going to get the show on, is it?" He turned and trotted over to the small pool of light cast by an LED lamp attached to the side of the campervan. Annabeth could tell he was happiest when he played the showman.

"Good folks of Arlington, welcome to our humble show," he said, lifting his arms in greeting. The crowd responded with a rousing cheer. "I am glad so many of you could take time out to honour us with your attention. First, I think the Mayor wants to say a few words."

Grampa motioned for Mayor Chu to come forward. He thanked the townsfolk for their redoubled efforts getting the crops taken in this autumn, especially since the loss of twenty young men to the militia draft.

Annabeth shifted uncomfortably at the mention of the draft, scanning the faces again for Tommy. She knew Tommy was a couple of years older than her, maybe old enough for the militia to take him. She caught sight of Katie, the farrier's daughter, smiling at her. She made a little half-wave at Annabeth, then shrugged. Annabeth felt Katie knew what was on her mind.

Mayor Chu concluded his speech, waving to the applauding crowd as he took his seat. Annabeth moved over to the side of the red velvet curtain draped along the long side of the campervan. Uncle Ray, standing at the open back of the van, whispered, "Three, two, one, go."

Annabeth pulled a cord hanging from the curtain rail. Dramatically, the curtain dropped aside, just as the three meter wide screen lit up with brilliant color, and the Cascadian Anthem boomed from the speakers.

Most of the audience brought themselves to attention as the image of the Cascadian flag waved onscreen against a backdrop of towering mountains and rushing waterfalls.

A few of the older men remained seated, heads bowed. At the showing last spring, Grampa told Annabeth that many of the men had fought in the war, and mourned their lost comrades. Some still refused to accept the Cascadian flag, calling it a perversion of the Stars and Stripes, the old American flag. And some were just too lame from war wounds or farm accidents to stand for very long.

The crowd sat down quietly as the anthem reached its crescendo. After a moment, a familiar slap-bass guitar riff brought a cheer from the crowd. The screen lit up with an interior shot of an apartment. Kramer flung the door back and skidded into the room, yelling, "Jerry."

For the next three hours the crowd cheered and laughed to short cartoons, an episode of Barney, a highlight reel from the 2019 Super Bow,l and the feature film, "Along the Rio", winner of the 2027 Oscar for Best Picture, and the last feature Brad Pitt made before succumbing to cancer.

Many of the seniors sang along with the music, some of the sprightlier ones dancing on the side. Here and there a child would tug on a parent's sleeve, asking if people really did fly through the air in jet planes, just like the ones in the movie.

A couple of local entrepreneurs walked around the edges of the seating, selling bowls of popcorn and bottles of homemade beer.

After the show, one of the old timers asked Ray where they had found the screen. "I found this baby in an antique shop in Hudsonville, all wrapped in cloth at the back of the shop," Ray said. "The owner wasn't even sure if it would power up without a network connection to validate the ID code. But, I like to think of myself as one of those old-time hackers, so I fiddled a bit and bypassed the auth code. Yep, this is my pride and joy," he said, stroking the shiny black frame of the massive screen.

The next night, many of the same folks turned out again. Midway through an episode of Crimewatch: Miami, a band of robed marchers trooped up the main street, thumping on drums and chanting, "Return to the Mother, give back to the Earth."

A tall man with long brown hair and a full beard lead the procession. Ray paused the show as the leader stopped at the edge of the field, raised his hands in supplication and inveighed against the sins of the past, calling on the good people of Arlington to abandon the worship of the wastefulness of the old American Way.

Three oldsters stood up and yelled at the man, "Go on, Granger, take your Gaians back to your temple, we're trying to watch a show, here." A couple of them began throwing corncobs at the marchers. With a sad nod of his head, the leader turned his flock back down the road. A few of the young men in the audience trotted after the troupe. Annabeth wasn't sure whether they intended to join or harass the Gaians.

In the shadows at the back of the crowd, Annabeth recognized the three drifters from the bridge, standing behind the last row of chairs with arms crossed. She slipped into the crowd as Uncle Ray started the show again, found Katie and crouched down beside her chair.

"Hi, it's good to see you back again," whispered Katie.

"Yeah, it's not so bad being on the road. Most of the time it's just boring." Annabeth looked around at the crowd again, then said, "um, you haven't seen Tommy around today, have you?"

Katie looked down at her fingers twisted together in her lap, then back at Annabeth. "Tommy got drafted."

Annabeth sat back on the ground. "Drafted? Why? He isn't old enough, is he?" she asked, touching the bracelet on her wrist.

Katie nodded. "They lowered the draft age to seventeen a month after his birthday. My mom saw Tommy's father a couple of weeks ago. He said Tommy's gone south. They've had only one letter from him the whole six months, and he didn't say much in it."

Annabeth didn't pay much attention to the conversation after that, and wasn't much help cleaning up after the show.

The next morning, as she stacked the chairs in the auditorium, a middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway. "Hi, are you Annabeth?" the woman asked, a worried smile creasing her face. Annabeth nodded.

"I'm Tommy's Aunt Lilly," the woman continued. Annabeth clutched her braceleted wrist with one hand. "Katie came around this morning, she told me about you and Tommy. He was drafted back in late May, not long after you were last here. I haven't seen him since, but I did receive a letter a few weeks ago. Would you like to see it?" She held the folded sheet out to Annabeth.

Annabeth took it between two fingers, as though it might sting her. She read Tommy's neat block printing, addressed to his Aunt Lilly. In the third paragraph, he mentioned meeting Annabeth at the spring planting festival, and asked Lilly to give Annabeth his regards and regrets that he did not think he would be back in time to see her.

"Would you like to keep the letter?" asked Lilly. Annabeth folded it back up slowly, then nodded. "Thank you for coming to find me, Ma'am."

Lilly nodded in return and said, "I won't keep you from your chores. But you come find me next time you're in town, alright?" Annabeth nodded again, carefully tucking the envelope into her pocket.

Once the horses were hitched and the campervan loaded, two mounted guards from the town militia rode up along side and escorted them out the south gate. Annabeth and Ray began an impromptu performance of the Seinfeld episode from the railed roof of the campervan, Annabeth's perfect imitation of Elaine's nasal whine matched by Ray's take on Jerry. The escorts roared with laughter, nearly falling off their mounts.

The escorts pulled up short as they approached a towering tree leaning out over the road. "Folks, this is our patrol limit," said the earnest constable, tipping his cap to Grampa. "I wish we could take you along a bit farther. I don't think you'll have too much trouble from here on, see, the bandits don't bother too much between here and Marysville," he said, pointing up into the tree. A skeleton, held together only by sinews and faded rags, swung in the breeze from a rope tied to a high limb in the tree. "We make sure they get the message."

Grampa waved and slapped the reins. The Larkin limo creaked and swayed up the shallow incline of the pockmarked old road until the tree disappeared from sight behind a curve in the road.

The three bandits sauntered out from the bush at the side of the road, shotguns dangling from gloved hands. As the tall one in the baseball cap advanced on the wagon, Annabeth heard the faint sound of men chanting in rhythm. The tip of a banner pole appeared over the crest of the hill behind the bandits. The bandit in the straw hat and green checked shirt, the one Annabeth mistook for Tommy, turned slowly toward the sound. The moment the lead rider's head cleared the hill, he raised a horn to his lips and let out a triple blast.

The three bandits whirled in confusion. The lead riders broke into a gallop, quickly closing the gap to the bandits. The tall one in the baseball cap swore and brought his shotgun up at the riders. The gun thundered harmlessly into the air as a trooper's bullet caught his shoulder and spun him around. He crumpled to the ground with a scream. The other bandits dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, hands raised in surrender.

Annabeth felt the wagon lurch, leaning further and further toward the ditch at the side of the road. The horses reared and stepped backwards, frightened by the noise and commotion. Grampa struggled to maintain control, a wail of anguish rising from his throat.

The world tipped sideways, sending Annabeth tumbling into the weeds in the ditch. A tremendous shattering sound filled the air. Grampa landed next to her, clutching his stomach and gasping for air. "Grampa, can you breathe?" shouted Annabeth. She felt warmth on her cheek. When she touched it, her fingers came away stained red with blood.

Grampa sat up with a rush of breath. "Good God, I thought we were dead," he said. "You're bleeding, dear," he said, reaching up to Annabeth.

"It's nothing, it doesn't hurt," she replied. "Where's Uncle Ray?" she said, turning anxiously to the campervan. She climbed over the seat and pushed aside the jumbled cushions, boxes and clothing that hung from the hatchway to the back. "Ray," she yelled, "Ray, can you hear me?"

She heard a wailing from the interior of the van. Ray crawled out, clutching a jagged fragment of glossy black plastic. "The screen's busted. The batteries are split open. Acid's everywhere." He climbed out onto the verge and looked in dismay at the solar panels spilled across the ditch. "We're sunk. We can't carry on, I can't get another one of those screens for love nor money."

Annabeth swiped at the drying blood on her face. Ray helped Grampa stand up, and they went to unhitch the horses. She felt numb, oddly detached, as if she were sitting in a chair in the dark, watching her own life up on the big screen. She rested a hand against the side of the campervan. Someone kept calling her name, but it wasn't Grampa, and it wasn't Uncle Ray.

"Annabeth, Annabeth," the voice cried. She turned slowly to one of the soldiers running across the cracked pavement toward her. How did he know her name?

He tossed his cap aside, bristly brown hair standing up in short military style. For a moment, she was confused, as he wrapped his arms around her. "Tommy," she said. "Tommy." They sank back down to the soft grass together.

For a long while they said nothing, then with a kiss she freed herself from his embrace, stood and walked over to Grampa and Uncle Ray. "I know how we can save the show."

* * *

The spring shower stopped just as the sun burst from below the cloud bank, briefly lighting the school grounds before it sank to the horizon. The audience applauded, putting aside tarps and patched umbrellas.

Up on the stage, between the enormous screen and the LED lamps projecting the shadows of their puppets, Annabeth whined, "Well, Mister Seinfeld, I guess I'll just have to do it myself." She made the cutout Elaine march off the side of the screen, to the roaring of the audience's laughter. Ray winked at her as he turned the Kramer cutout to Jerry, and simply said, "Women."

The performance continued for two hours, Annabeth, Ray and Grampa cleverly incorporating the names of local townsfolk into the improvised performance. None of the old timers seemed to mind, and a few of the more prominent townsfolk had their ribs poked by their seat mates.

Out in the audience, Tommy sat with his Aunt Lilly, beaming with pride at Annabeth's performance. Lilly leaned over and asked, "So when are you going to propose to her?"

Tommy grinned at her. "I already did, after last night's show." His grin grew wider. Aunt Lilly gave him a mock shove, then kissed him on the cheek.