Strange Trades by Paul di Filippo Read Free Book Online

Why should he lie to poor Nerfball? Chances were he’d soon go out of business, owing all his creditors immense sums. Why compound his guilt by promising more than he knew he could give?
    Then, amidst his despair, in a blaze of inspiration he was to remember for the rest of his life, Honeyman had an idea.
    “Yes, Nerf, I do intend to pay you in funny money.”
    This got Nerfball’s attention. “Huh?”
    Honeyman scrabbled in his pockets for paper and writing tool, coming up with an old unpaid electric bill and a lime-green crayon. He tucked the flashlight between chin and neck, and began to scribble on the back of the bill, reciting aloud what he was writing. “This paper redeemable for ten sandwiches at Honeyman’s Heroes. Signed, Rory Honeyman.” For good measure, he sketched a rough sandwich on it. The drawing ended up looking like that of a book with loose pages. He offered the paper to Nerfball, who took it suspiciously.
    “Here, this will be one day’s wages. It’s worth about forty dollars retail.”
    “What good is this to me? You already give me free food.”
    Honeyman, still in the grip of his genius, rolled right over the pitiful objection. “Right, sure, but isn’t everyone in this dump always starving? Make them pool their money—whatever you can convince them this is worth—and give it to you in exchange for the ten sandwiches, which you can make up and bring back here at the end of every day.”
    “Gee, I don’t know—”
    “People will love you for it.”
    “Oh, all right.” Nerfball made tentative movements to emerge, and Honeyman stood up to give him room. Somehow the big man twisted around beneath the desk and began to back out. He said something that was muffled by his position.
    “What’s that?” asked Honeyman.
    “I said, ‘What’s this coupon called?’”
    Honeyman was stumped. “Does it have to have a name?”
    Nerfball was standing now, brushing dust from his clothes. “Yes.”
    Honeyman reached deep down into some mythic well of American vernacular and came up with a word he would have earlier sworn he didn’t know. “Spondulix. It’s called a spondulix.”
    “Is that singular,” quizzed Nerfball, “or plural?”
    Without hesitation, Honeyman replied, “Both.”
     
    2.
    Days in the Pantechnicon
     
    In Mexico City, in the middle of 1968, the Summer Olympics were taking place.
    Sometimes when Honeyman said that sentence to himself, it sounded like a bit of incredibly ancient history. In the year 753 b.c., the city of Rome was founded. In the year 1066 a.d., the Norman invasion of England took place. A fact lost in the mists of time, relegated to musty textbooks, unseen by living eyes.
    Other times, that period seemed as close as last night, separated from today only by a little interval of sleep.
    For Honeyman had been there. And afterwards his life had never gone as he had once innocently thought it would.
    Prior to the start of these long-ago Games, Black protesters had succeeded in denying South Africa the right to participate. The head of the International Olympic Committee, one Avery Brundage, had led those who would have allowed South Africa to take part in the Games. This man was also in charge of handing out the medals.
    When two American trackmen, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, won a gold and bronze respectively, they decided to stage a symbolic denunciation of Brundage’s role. On the victory block, wearing African beads and black scarves, their shoes removed as a symbol of poverty, they raised gloved fists and bowed their heads.
    They were immediately expelled from future events.
    Sitting in the stands during this bit of typical sixties theater was an eighteen-year-old member of the U.S. swim team, a diver named Rory Honeyman. A nice Iowa boy, he had never even spoken to a Black person before coming to the Olympics. Now, all at once, in the same kind of mental burst that would later engender spondulix, Honeyman experienced an epiphany of radicalization.