TSI, synopsis

[Michael Perez]

  The story opens on a gloomy and rainy October 1, just as Tim Santora
is about to visit Dr. Slothrop in order to have a wart removed.  The
doctor performs a bogus procedure that is intended to “suggest” the
wart away, which Tim overhears the doctor explain to Tim’s mother.  Tim
tells his friend Grover Snodd, boy genius, about the visit to the
doctor and Grover explains suggestive therapy, adding that now that Tim
knows, the therapy will surely be ineffective.
  However much a genius he is, Grover doesn’t always get things right. 
Sometimes there’s a bit of the Wile E. Coyote about his inventions,
like his sodium grenade.  He does, though, like to “interfere with the
scheming of grown-ups.”  All the boys in what Grover calls “the Inner
Junta” enjoy playing jokes, especially Etienne Cherdlu (or as he
sometimes identifies himself “80N”).  Some of their jokes though have
been a bit more than mere mischief.
  Etienne shut down the local paper mill by stirring up the silt in the
creek that the mill used.  When the Northumberland Estates (where the
remaining Junta member, Carl Barrington, now lives) were being built,
Tim and Etienne used to play on the dirt mounds there, but would also
steal lumber, drain the gas tanks of the construction vehicles and
break windows.  Now they are robbing houses there in order to fence the
loot in Pittsfield, where Carl used to live.  Carl is “a colored kid”
whose family recently moved to in the new development and the grown-ups
in the “older part of Mingeborough” very upset.  Tim catches his mother
threatening the Barringtons on the phone and Grover’s mother has made
similar calls.
  The boys are now in the midst of planning this year’s (the third)
“Operation Spartacus” stunt, which have been rehearsals for a still
undetermined “Operation A.”  Other kids are recruited for these
maneuvers as operatives for specific duties.  These other kids give the
Junta their milk money because, Tim tells Grover, “They believe in us.”
 Grover doesn’t want to arouse suspicion, though.  He also thinks the
phone calls to Carl’s parents are because of Operation A.  Carl calls
thinks that they're just jokes.  They end their meeting and head for
their hideout in the “Big House” of an estate formerly owned by King
Yrjö, “a European pretender who’d fled the eclipse then falling over
Europe and his own hardly real shadow-state sometime back in the middle
Thirties.”  The ghost of the king’s aide, a seven-foot tall cavalry
officer, was said to haunt the house, but has never bothered the Inner
Junta.
  The previous year, Dr. Slothrop’s son, Hogan, one of Etienne’s
friends, was supposed to set off a smoke bomb at a PTA meeting, but was
called by Alcoholics Anonymous to help a fellow alcoholic.  Tim
accompanied him, much to Grover’s dismay, to the hotel where they found
Carl McAfee, an African American jazz bassist down on his luck and
wanting a drink.  Hogan didn’t know quite what to do, but he and Tim
talked to the man and eventually got to trust him enough to tell him
some of their secrets and McAfee shared some of his stories.  McAfee
was in such bad shape he ordered liquor from the hotel’s front desk. 
Grover and Etienne show up after the paper mill attack because Etienne
thought he needed a place to hide.  When the bell boy arrives, McAfee
only has a dollar and wasn’t able to pay for the booze or the room. 
The police were called and McAfee was taken away to Pittsfield despite
the boys’ protests.
  That year’s Operation Spartacus idea came from another of Etienne’s
friend, Nunzi Passerella.  They got car batteries from Etienne’s
father’s junkyard, some surplus spotlights and green cellophane to rig
up a display along the railroad tracks.  The plan was to get a bunch of
kids in monster masks and outfits and when the train came turn on the
spotlights shining through the green cellophane.  Not too many kids
showed up.  However, the display was effective enough that the train
screeched to a halt.
  The following spring, Tim and Etienne “hopped a freight train for the
first time in their lives” to go to a joke shop in Pittsfield.  There
they bought fake mustaches and blackface make-up in order to “resurrect
a friend.”  In the summer, the Barringtons moved in, but according to
the very agitated grown-ups at the PTA meeting that Hogan was sent to,
they had no children.  When they went by the Barrington house the next
day, though, they met Carl and he has been a member of the now
integrated Inner Junta ever since.
  The story jumps to the present and the boys are returning from their
meeting in the secret room in King Yrjö’s Big House.  When they got to
Carl’s house there was garbage all over his front lawn, which the other
boys recognized to be from their own households.  They began to clean
up the mess, but Carl’s mom yells for them to stop.  Tim says “But
we’re cleaning it up. We’re on your side.”  She says, “We don’t need
your help.  We don’t need any of you on our side.  I thank our heavenly
Father every day of my life that we don’t have any children to be
corrupted by the likes of you trash,” and sends them away with the mess
intact.  Carl says she was just mad and he doesn’t know if he should go
in.  He decides to go back to King Yrjö’s place and lay low.  It is
then revealed that Carl was their “‘imaginary playmate’” and he
vanishes in the rain.


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