The World Without Flags

I smile wider as he leads me into the backroom of their house. Most houses here are the same. It’s one big room without windows. Sometimes there are sheets hung up to separate one part of the house from the other. Sometimes, like at our house, there’s a loft. But it doesn’t change much from that. We’re not really the greatest at building houses yet. We don’t even put windows in them because winters are too cold. We learned that lesson pretty hard the first few winters. We’d much rather be warm than have a little bit of pale light.

Franky’s house is a little different. He built a wall that divides it almost exactly in two, a front part and a rear part. In the rear is his workspace. Diane and Amber are crammed into the front part. I think that’s why Diane and Amber spend so much time in other parts of the Homestead. There’s not much room for them here. It’s mostly beds and all the plastic junk we collect. I step over a faded yellow plastic duck and then through the sliding wooden door into Franky’s workshop.

I love this place. First off, I love the smell. It smells like grease and smoke and steel. To me, it’s the smell of creativity. There are shelves everywhere crammed with stuff from the old world: radios, televisions, mysterious black boxes, microwave ovens, chainsaws, little engines half-taken apart, toy cars, springs, screws, and nails, rubber bands, twist-ties, and ghostly plastic bags stuffed to the brim with other plastic bags. Then there’s shelves upon shelves of tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers of all sizes, tools I don’t recognize and tools that might not even be tools at all. Something in me takes a lot of delight in all that stuff. I love the idea of getting in there, seeing how things works, fixing things, making my own things. I get excited. It’s like pure inspiration for me in here. I must have drawn this place from memory like a hundred times.

“Come here,” Franky says. “Look.” He leads me over to his workbench, which he keeps surprisingly neat considering the rest of the place.

On the workbench is a weird contraption. I feel my heart jump inside me, even though I’m really tired. If there’s one thing I love, it’s a contraption, the weirder the better. On the lip of the table is a crank, just like the one Crystal uses to grind up deer meat. The crank is hooked to an axle that turns a rubber belt. Connected to the belt is some aluminum thing bolted down to the table. There are wires running from this to a turntable. There’s a record on the turntable. I see where this is going and my heart races with excitement.

“Go ahead,” Franky says. “Crank it up!”

I should have been tired form working all day, but I forget about that as I leap to the table. I start cranking and the record player starts spinning. I look up at Franky’s whose eyes are sparkling.

“Gotta go faster than that!” he tells me. “Really give it a spin!”

I put my back into it. Then I hear it. It’s faint, but I can hear it. Distant music, like it’s playing in another house. Another time even. Ghost music. The cranking makes more noise than the music and I’m starting to sweat, but I don’t care. Is there anything better than music in the whole world? Then I hear singing and words, distant, faint, beautiful…

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore
It’s getting dark, too dark to see
I feel I’m knockin on heaven’s door

I’m sweating and my arms are burning from turning the crank, and even though I’m trying hard, I’m slowing down. The music goes into slow motion and the notes start to stretch out longer than they should. It still sounds great.

“Here!” Franky cries. “Let me take a turn at it!”

I step back and Franky steps in and starts cranking. The music picks up speed and I get closer to the turntable to listen.

Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door
Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door
Knock, knock knockin on heaven’s door

I hear a flapping sound and the music stops. When I look over, I see the belt has slipped off the aluminum block. I look over to Franky and we both laugh, sweating from the exertion of cranking. We laugh for a bit before Franky starts coughing. When he stops, he smiles again.

“Well,” he says. “It ain’t much now. I got to figure out a way to amplify the sound and keep the power steady.”

“You need a battery,” I tell him.

“Don’t I know it,” he answers. “Batteries are hard to come by.”

“What is that?” I ask him, pointing to the aluminum block that the rubber belt was hooked to.