Banjo and The Underground: An Absentia Story
A Turnstyle of Poison Frogs
The Wise Pigeon made a habit of whimsy, perhaps because he enjoyed it, or perhaps to thumb his beak at being labeled a nuisance bird his whole life. With a single mottled wing flutter and neck bob, he could turn a hundred missiles from Oceania into lollipops as they streaked across Absentia’s skies, wrappers flying off before impact and littering the sidewalks, streets, and steps down to the 86th Street subway.
The quarter-sized citizens of Absentia carried enormous umbrellas as they went about their business, so that a wrapper wouldn’t fall on top of them and make them hard to see by the Jack of Hearts as he came lumbering through. No one in Absentia no matter how small ever wanted to be crushed by accident.
Joseph kicked through the piles of fallen wrappers and pink paper mache tree leaves as he raced down the subway entrance steps. About to breeze through the turnstyles, he stopped upon seeing tiny poison dart frogs covering them, a spatter of red, purple, yellow, and blue.
“Abandon hope ye who enter here!” a purple one said in a high-pitched voice upon Joseph’s approach, perched on the middle turnstyle’s highest chrome spoke, his lookout point. They all began to repeat the warning, like small random raindrops of doom.
“Abandon hope! Abandon hope! Abandon hope!”
“Why should I?” asked Joseph.
The dart frogs quieted. “Interesting. Nobody has ever asked us that before,” said the purple lookout. “If I had to guess, I would say it’s to travel without the weight of expectation.”
“But wouldn’t it actually make me heavier to rid myself of hope?” asked Joseph.
“Wow. He has a point,” said a red frog hanging upside down on the left turnstyle.
“Great Dog told us to say it. THAT is why. To all who wish to pass,” said one of the yellow frogs.
“I know! I know! Me! ME!” vied a blue frog on the right turnstyle. “It’s so you don’t get disappointed. Without hope, everything terrible that happens will never surprise you.”
“And what kind of way to live is that?” asked Joseph, crossing his arms. “Look, I don’t have time to argue optimism into you. I’ve got to get home to my son at 100th street before his bedtime and the sky falls, understand?”
“HE’s the father of the boy king!” exclaimed a yellow frog with reverence.
“Right,” said Joseph. “So then you must let me pass without trying to poison me.”
“Lower the bar,” said the red frog. “Do as we say and you’ll be delighted by the smallest bit of good.”
“Sure. Yes. I have. Can’t you see? I’ve abandoned it.” Joseph scrunched up his face with a sour look, leaving a faint upturn of joy at the corners of his mouth. “Now may I pass?”
“Ah! Presto! It’s gone!” shouted the lookout frog with glee. “The hope is gone! Hooray!” They all began to repeat it. “It’s gone! It’s gone! Hooray! It’s gone!”
As Joseph pushed through the middle turnstyle, a very tiny blue frog leapt onto his shoulder.
“You’re going to see the Great Dog, aren’t you?” he asked with a voice much deeper than the others.
“Why yes I am,” said Joseph.
“May I come with you? There’s somethin’ I need to ask him.”
“Don’t see why not,” said Joseph.
“Okay then, let’s go kid,” said the frog.
“Kid?”
“That’s what I call everyone. I’m Frank,” said the tiny blue frog.
“Do you mind not calling me kid?” asked Joseph.
“Alright, pal,” said Frank. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
The Nut Cart
And with that, they descended another flight of steps to reach the deserted 86th street subway platform. Someone had placed a sweet nut cart between the benches. Inside the plexiglass box where the cashews and peanuts and almonds would roast in brown sugar, ten or so miniature vendors stared out, trapped there, looking downright miserable. On top of the cart’s small serving area, five hot dog buns danced together in a single row, turning left at the same time, then right, then left again.
“One. Singular sensation. Every little step she takes,” they sung. “One thrilling combination . . .”
In Joseph’s ear, Frank said, “Putinsie wouldn’t approve of this rigamarole. Too much play makes Absentia a dangerous place he says and don’t make him come down here all the way from his gilded room to give us a good talkin’ to. Putinsie and the Great Dog don’t see eye-to-eye, by the way. The Great Dog advocates for unbridled joy.”
“Thank you for telling me that, Frank,” said Joseph. “Time’s melting. Let’s make our way down onto the track and across these crates.”
The station’s track looked like all the others, packed with empty wooden produce crates, some broken, some on their sides.
“You’re just going to leave the vendors in there?” asked Frank.
“How’d they get in there in the first place?” wondered Joseph.
“You didn’t hear about the BLA,” Frank said.
“No, what’s the BLA?”
“Bun Liberation Army. Shortly after Absentia was founded and the Great Dog arrived,” Frank explained, “the BLA swept through the city and rounded up all the cart owners who seemed not to care a whit about safe food handling procedures. They got shrunk down and deposited for safe keeping into the nut bins. As part of their operation, the BLA freed the hot dog buns, so that they no longer had to live at the mercy of whatever was put upon them. And now look! They rejoice in a chorus line day and night. But like I said, Putinsie’s watching. He sees everything everywhere. He won’t like this treatment of the vendors and the buns gloating and acting like little children. He won’t tolerate all their fizzle, their refusals to take orders, them saying ‘we won’t be second fiddles to sausages!’ So I’m thinking, just so things stay fair . . . we let the vendors out.”
“Are you sure?” asked Joseph. “Seems like they’re in there for a reason. So maybe we should leave it alone. We can’t help if they’re miserable about it and besides, those buns do look like they’re having the time of their lives.”
“You sound like a bun apologist, kid,” Frank said. “Don’t they look full of a power they don’t really have? Joyful delusions!”
“Fine. Let’s do it quickly,” said Joseph. “I need to get home.”
Joseph approached the nut cart as one might approach a museum display. The vendors’ collective misery lifted somewhat as they wondered what he would do. One of them pointed to the pair of metal tongs hanging on a hook inside the cart. When Joseph picked up the tongs, the hot dog buns stopped dancing as it dawned on them what he was up to. They protested. They got in his face.
One of the buns turned itself into a projectile leaping off the serving area at Joseph’s ear, trying to bury itself there, only to end up bouncing off the side of Joseph’s head and landing on the ground with a good-sized divot taken out of it.
With delicacy, as if using a pair of tweezers to pick up cotton balls, Joseph plucked each of the small vendors out of the nut bin so as not to hurt them. He placed them down one-by-one on the serving area to the stunned horror of the buns. Once Joseph had freed the last one, the vendors formed a quick huddle, exchanged a word or two, then pounced on the buns behind them. It was a melee of vendors and hot dog buns, the small but powerful vendors keeping a firm upper hand throughout, chunks of soft bread flying everywhere.
“Putinsie will be pleased,” noted Frank, observing the chaos with his sharp beaded eyes, “now that there’s a tad less dancing in Absentia and a scrum to take its place.”
Rats Who Knit in a Crate Wasteland
When you climb over the remnants of wooden crates that once contained apples, oranges, and bananas on a track that has not seen a subway car in over ten years, you begin to think your life doesn’t mean as much as it once did, or else why would you need to crawl on your stomach to present yourself before the Great Dog, asking for his insights, his forgiveness for your spreadsheet error, his blessing for your safe transit to the Central Apartments in Absentia.
No certainty exists in the footing. You wobble and come down awkwardly. Frank acted as if he were sipping from a spring, no urgency or floating to worry about, his sticky padded feet anchoring him to Joseph’s shoulder.
“Doesn’t all this make you think,” said Frank, “that we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere?”
“Genius,” said Joseph.
He climbed through the crate wasteland with Frank along for the ride.
“All these boxes are empty because Princess Pitaya is locked in the great tower of Tick-Tick-Boom in the Southerly Lands,” said Frank. “If she’s ever released by the rats who guard it day and night, we will all receive gold-plated Etch-a-Sketches.”
“Is that so?” said Joseph, trying to fathom the use for a gold-plated Etch-a-Sketch.
“Yes, I think,” said Frank. “But I can’t be sure.”
They had cleared the piles of broken wooden crates, but the dark now consumed them in the subway tunnel making it impossible for them to see where they were going.
“This is the point we begin to crawl, so as not to trip over anything,” suggested Frank. “We can use the track as a guide. Great Dog is not far from here, so I’ve heard.”
They made slow progress in the dark, the only sound a slow drip somewhere. Joseph saw something small moving out of the corner of his eye..
“Did you see that?” he asked Frank.
They heard a creaking, perhaps a small unoiled hinge opening and closing.
“Yes! I think it’s them. Banjo’s keepers,” said Frank.
“What could be so special about a banjo that it needs to be protected?” asked Joseph.
Just then, a green light stick lit up the tunnel. Rats on tiny rocking chairs rocked back and forth on both sides of the tracks. This is where the creaking came from. On their chairs, they knitted and crocheted—tiny mittens and tiny sweaters mostly. One had cracked open a green light stick to announce their presence and let Joseph and Frank know that they had them in their sights.
“Doesn’t it seem unusual that none of them wear glasses?” said Frank, considering the strain all that knitting and crocheting in the dark must have placed on their eyes.
Joseph turned his head to face a row of them. “Well hello. Who are you making those for, if I might ask?”
A rat who called himself Ralsten answered, “No one. We just do it to pass the time in between requests from Banjo, for we are Banjo’s keepers if you haven’t heard and we spend much of our time bored down here.”
“That’s a shame,” said Frank.
“Except for now,” added Joseph, putting a positive spin on it. “We’ve brought something out of the ordinary to your day, haven’t we?”
The rats stopped rocking, put down their unfinished mittens, scarfs, and sweaters, and murmured to each other.
“Why yes you have,” said Ralsten amid their excited chatter. “Banjo will be happy for his big meal and we will announce you to him, since we are Banjo’s keepers.”
“Meal? Who’s Banjo?” asked Joseph, his nerves rising. This led the rats to point their noses at Joseph and snicker, as if saying would you have a look at this guy. Then Ralston whistled, starting a chain reaction of whistles that rippled around the curve in the track.
“Do you know anything about this Banjo?” Joseph asked Frank.
Frank said that Banjo was the Great Dog’s protector. They needed to make friends with Banjo’s keepers first and then they could talk to Banjo and maybe convince him to let them go on to Great Dog to ask their questions.
“If you announce us to Banjo with kindness,” Joseph said to the rats, “we will bring you a cheese wheel from Zabar’s. Would you rather gouda or cheddar?”
Ralsten along with a chorus of others exclaimed, “Cheddar!”
“Cheddar it is.”
A few rats hurried around the bend to spread a good word for Joseph and Frank. One returned, Rocco, and with a heavy New York accent declared that Banjo would see them now and would meet them in a somewhat benign mood and that was the best they could hope for, since living in a subway tunnel often put Banjo in the worst of all possible moods and his voracious appetite and perpetual hunger didn’t help one bit.
And Banjo Was His Name
As Joseph crawled around the track’s curve with Frank now clinging to the back of his shoulder, the tiny frog still as stone, an emerald green light from four cracked glow sticks illuminated cryptic graffiti bubble letters on the walls around them: WZVO.
Two large escort rats, Bronte and Deon, advised Joseph and Frank not to appear too happy in front of Banjo as that would put him in an even worse mood and, as a result, they would likely not obtain what they came for. Once they passed the halfway point of the curve, the reason for caution became obvious.
A spider web spanned the entire width of the tunnel from tracks to the ceiling. Banjo, a birdeater tarantula two feet wide and five feet long, hung at its center upside-down, red fangs parted and glistening, brown bristles of his fur electrified. The eight small glossy black eyes clustered above his fangs boasted a sleepless readiness to locate and deal with any web disturbances that might signal dinner.
“Sir, your guests have arrived,” said Bronte, “having paid the proper respect—as in they have respectfully asked not to be your meal this evening, but rather the thoughtful beneficiaries of your wisdom.”
“Thaat’s toooo baaaad,” said a disappointed Banjo in a long slow drawl. “I was hoping for something moooooore of note today than silly ques-tions. Like a goooood hearty meeeeal. I will beeeee the one to de-cide whether they are spunnnnnn up.”
“Mr. Banjo,” said Joseph. “I must gain passage from the Great Dog to rescue my son at 100th Street. Will you allow me to speak with him?”
“Youuuuur son? Youuuuuu meannnn the boy king.”
“That is what I’ve heard him called, yes,” said Joseph. “But his name is Trevor and I’m afraid he’s all alone and now prey to the strange comings and goings of things here in Absentia, like the lumbering and clumsy Jack of Hearts.”
“Why yesssss. Ab-sentia issss such an unpre-dictable plaaaaace,” agreed Banjo.
“And sir,” continued Joseph, “according to the Wise Pigeon, we have no more than two more chances to prove it is a place of extrahuman significance.”
Banjo’s fangs tightened.
“Uh-oh,” said Bronte, glancing at Deon.
Joseph asked if he said something he shouldn’t have, but before they could answer, Banjo boomed, “The Wissse Pigeon is nothing of the sooooooort! He only cares about himmmmself and seeks to keeeep his stature above the gooooood of all. He has banished Great Dog underground for fear he will reveeeeeal the truth about him. But the reckoning is commming. Won’t youuuuu crawl just a tad closer to my lit-tle web?”
Banjo lowered himself until all eight eyes gleamed into Joseph’s. They shone like black-green beads with severity in the light stick glow.
“Thank you, but we’re close enough,” said Frank. “In fact, I’d kindly ask that you back off or my friend here will bring out the blue flame.”
“Blue flame?” whispered Joseph.
“The blue flame he launches with the flick of his finger, that he carries in his pocket for times like these,” said Frank.
Banjo retreated halfway back up his web.
“Open a space for us to pass and we won’t send your web up in smoke,” said Frank, his tiny voice strong as steel.
“Finnnnnnnne,” sighed Banjo, disconsolate. “But wonnnn’t you first help me havvvve a more interesting time todaaaaaay? It’s al-ways soooooo dark and quiet and loooooonely down heeeeere.”
“Have you ever thought of crawling out of here?” asked Joseph. “You know, to see the other parts of Absentia. To meet new people, or at least other arachnids.”
Radiating sadness from deep within, an ancient place that echoed with the longing of almost every arachnid that ever lived, Banjo lamented, “Great Dog would not allow it, for whooooo would pro-tect Great Dog from those who would tryyyy to harm him. Then the whooooooole land would beeeee turned upon its head. And I would be to blame.”
“But sir, you are your own spider, are you not?” asked Frank. “Just as I am my own dart frog. And Joseph is his own human. Not wed to anyone or anything at our soul’s expense.”
Banjo gnashed his fangs in thought and turned himself rightside up to stare at the tunnel’s ashen ceiling.
“Youuuu make a gooooood point,” he said, “for being such a tiny frog.”
That made Frank feel very good, for no one ever paid him a compliment, and he attached a foot to the top of Joseph’s ear and said, “See that? I’ve got something real to offer, kid.”
“But still . . .” continued Banjo, forlorn. “I could neeeeeever leave Great Dog down here allll by himmmmself.”
“Banjo,” said Joseph, “what if we talked to Great Dog and explained the situation to him on your behalf and then he decided that you must go up and out into the world from this tunnel?”
“Thennnnn I would dutifully obeyyyyyy,” he said.
And with that, Banjo tore a large enough hole in the bottom of his web for Joseph to crawl through.
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” said Bronte to Deon. “Someone reasoning with Banjo like that and being let through like this without the smallest bit of struggle.”
Deon shrugged. “I guess that’s what happens when someone shows you your own heartache.”
He started back toward his rocking chair around the bend, Bronte following.
“But if I know Great Dog,” said Deon, “he will never let Banjo go up into the land of light and leave him down here by himself. We and Banjo are all he has.”
You can listen to the cinematic version of this story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and here on Substack.