Calvaria Fell, page 2
—
Hound walked onto the street. It was different, being clean, with fresh, new plastics. People noticed him; they gave him space to move. You weren’t supposed to judge people by their smell but who could help it? That was how you assessed a person’s worth. His gang would find him soon, but for now, just for a while, he wanted to stand alone.
Hound closed his eyes and tried to imagine space, vast space. He tipped his head back, opened his eyes and stared at the sky. He wondered if it was quiet up there, or if the clamor of the earth reached as far as that.
Someone chopped his throat with a hand edge and he fell forward, choking.
“Dreamer,” Pooch said in his ear. “Dreamer dreamer, can’t be a breeder.” She winked at him but he ignored it. He’d never breed with her. He reached out to squeeze her belly bag, feeling a knife hard and sharp in there, and for a moment he was tempted to zip open the bag, steal the knife and use it on her, slice her up and be done with her teasing. Then he glanced over and saw a woman blinking at him, not reacting, just watching, and he knew she was a witness. Next to her, a child, and beyond that, a rolling gang of old men, staggering, blinking, shouting.
Witnessing.
“So, how was it?” Pooch said. “Because you kinda stink.”
Hound smiled. “I slept in a bed. I had a wash. They fed me. It was okay.”
Pooch shook her curls at him. “They should pick me!” She narrowed her eyes, staring into the distance. “I see everything. I’m good at it.”
“You can’t look on purpose. They told me it has to be subconscious. They said the witnessing is damaged by conscious thought. They can’t use it,” Hound said.
Cur cuffed Hound on the ear. “Shut up about it, all right? We’re going back to those Homebodies who killed Mutt. We’re gonna leave a message for them.” He held up a bag. “I’ve been collecting shit.”
Pooch turned her head away in disgust. “That stinks, you creep. It’s disgusting.”
Cur shrugged. “It’s meant to be. I’m not gonna give them a birthday cake. Let’s roll.”
—
Things had changed. Hound saw that as soon as they turned the corner. The Homebodies sat out the front of the building, piles of belongings at their feet. Others entered the building, carrying ratty boxes or torn bags. New residents?
Cur called a halt. “Looks like they’ve got theirs for killing Mutt, anyways,” he said.
Hound knew that his witnessing had affected this. He’d seen it, and it had been seen. Pooch rolled up to a woman with two children clinging to her legs.
“What’s happened?” Pooch asked her.
“Water violations. Someone witnessed it. So we’re kicked out.”
Pooch came back and winked at Hound. “Your work, I believe.” Hound noticed pipes down the side of the building, water dripping beneath. He didn’t remember seeing the pipes before, but he must have.
—
Two days later, when they passed a news screen, Hound saw a face he recognized. His foot tapped as he watched, “Keep on moving, keep on watching.”
Damn song.
The guy he’d witnessed on the fire escape had been arrested and charged with the rape and murder of eight women. The report said, “The man was caught through witness accounts, once again showing that every piece of information, no matter how small, can help to track violent criminals, terrorists and other lawbreakers.” The man claimed his innocence. He said he was a good man. “The witnessing doesn’t lie,” the report said.
“I did that,” Hound said. Pooch didn’t care; Cur didn’t. But Hound felt important, as if he had a say in the future. The gang’s existence achieved nothing. He could see that now. It was the power of his witnessing that lifted him, gave him strength.
Hound found an outlet when they paused for food, and entered his card. Credit in there. Enough for a night in a home. Enough for a week’s food.
He tucked the card back into his skate and kept on moving.
Kept on watching.
Some Kind of Indescribable
Cat Sparks
When Aloha Joe strolls through the gates, Mila takes him for an apparition. More practical than a blessed virgin, but folks round here aren’t as picky as they once were. Signs from heaven, signs from hell or signs from one of those things—whatever. With biological landscape patterns so distorted, you take your cues wherever you can find them.
Not him specifically, Aloha Joe—or whatever his name turns out to be. His type. Shufflers, travelers, moochers, spongers and freeloaders drifting from clave to clave, taking chances ordinary folks are no longer up for taking. Spreading gossip, knowledge, intel, edges of which have long past blurred and fused. Aloha Joes can tell you what they’ve seen—or think they’ve seen. About valleys cleft in two by impossibly big machines. Or cities melting into thick gray sludge. Other phenomena they don’t have adequate capacity for describing. Clave 53 is doing pretty well by contemporary standards. Clave 53 has, in fact, got its shit together. They grow food and they draw water and they make stuff and they have shelter, but perspective, well now. Perspective is something else entirely.
The big lug saunters in with his nekkid lady shirt and ratty dreads. Ukulele, flute and sturdy boots. Army issue—no armies anymore, but plenty army gear still in circulation. Heavy stitching suited to harsh terrain. He raises an open palm and fires aloha, namaste and greetings in a scattering of languages, waves to the ones on balconies and others scooting in and out of doorways. And they lean over, waving back because what the hell else ever happens out this way? Drifting freeloaders bring small treats along with their half-baked bullshit. Ganja, chop-chop, sugar candies, seeds. Leads and rumors of crisp fresh pharma trails. Trusty volumes for the pride-and-glory shelf. Older the book, the more valuable its words. Back in the days, predigital, was the time of checks and balances, when any old junk did not get printed. Inked words were verified and trusted. People got paid for writing them. Post-Net, well now, there’s no words at all aside from the spoken form in all its glory. Folks who sketch and scribble notes are the most unreliable of all—and the less said about ukulele songs, the better.
Mila stares at his nest of knotted, sun-and-salt-scoured dreads waterfalling down broad shoulders. She’s not tripping—dude’s a traveler all right and he’s seen some salty sun, not just the cruel, relentless scour that comes from meandering through parched and burnt-out scrublands; the wind scored decades of dusty topsoil leached and drifted barren. This man has stood at the ocean’s edge. Could have picked the shirt up from a station—threadbare palm trees, faded girls in grassy skirts—but his stance? The casual slanting leaning swagger, strolling in like he’s trying to remember where he parked his shaggin’ wagon. Maybe last night or the night before—try thirty years, mate. Thirty years too late.
Ol’ 53 don’t get too many visitors—and the ones who come aren’t encouraged to hang around. Most are running away from something; often someone too. Others are on the lookout for a score. But this clave has its secrets and firm policy of avoiding broad spectrum attraction. They’ve all heard stories of other claves well-situated and packing heat and smarts. Of what goes down when one of those big old Saints comes rolling in, law enforcement summoned by some hapless idiot or other who decides we all might need help sorting our problems. Our problems being the fleshy, human sort.
Aloha Joe knows what he’s doing, settling down on a dusty mat. Little kids tug on his hair. Laughing at tinkling bells embedded in waxy dreads. Digging a ukulele from his pack, threatening to sing ’em up a storm.
On the first few notes, Mila flashbacks with a shudder to a different place and time, when half the guys she knew looked just like him. Only younger, leaner and with fuller sets of teeth. Wave riders. Sunchasers. Losers anyplace but on a board, hypnotized by pounding ocean rhythms.
And before long Aloha Joe’s serenading loud about the perfect, longest waves and the water moving underneath and being healed and mended by the sun. About gnarly landings and insane swell and ocean people baptized in the barrel and how it’s all some kind of indescribable and man, the ocean’s only place I feel alive.
Kids who’ve never seen an ocean laugh and squeal and clap and cheer as Jed and Kina drag the biggest keg. And Mila smiles because Aloha Joe is right on point, about here now being the only thing. She is going to seize the goddamn moment—a moment she’s been waiting for since she let the last one pass, too scared to make her move and take a stand.
Aloha Joe chugs a mug of their fermented finest, fires up his uke again and sings some ditty she’s never heard before:
Moonlight shivers on the silent sea
Baby, baby, swim with me
Smell the sea and drink the sky
Adrift amidst the ocean’s gentle lies . . .
—
Acoustic thrum washes through the courtyard as the scent of ganja wafts and permeates. Night’s coming down, tools are packed and stacked and fires stoked and the courtyard fills with tired clavers hungry for tunes and company and news as much as beer and stew and bread.
Cross one new face with a couple of hours and pretty soon they’ll all be baked and slaked and powered down with nobody minding anybody else’s business. Simple three chord synergy; smooth blues with Aeolian grooves filling the gaps in between here and tomorrow.
Not the first time Mila’s grateful for the two small rooms she and Lily are allotted, close and quiet on the ground floor to the back of the residential slats. She could never have gotten Lily down a flight of stairs in secret.
She shoves aside the beaded curtain. Whispers, “Tonight’s the night, baby girl—it’s right now or never.”
Lily gives no answer, as expected. Hasn’t spoken for well over a year and Mila has moved on from counting days. From the point her daughter’s particular affliction presented clear and evident, there seems no further point in charting time. Time has nothing to do with their predicament. No cures, no answers and not much hope, save for the slimmest, craziest, most dangerous. Hope that will probably kill them both, but hell, it isn’t like Mila has all that much going on in the living sense. Not much to look forward to. Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, keeping clear of things they don’t understand. Things that baffle more than threaten. Not with her only child in this condition.
The human spirit and the will to live, to fight on in the face of bleak adversity, turns out those things aren’t as evenly distributed as folks used to consider—or have been told it is supposed to be by gods and angels and fools and blessed virgins. All those books and make believes, all those heroes on their journeys, fighting dragons, saving babies, waking princesses, kissing frogs, rebuilding on the burnt and battered earth, rising from calamity and ashes. Happy endings scream for happy lands to live your ever afters in and whatever lands are these days, they sure aren’t happy. Nor are they obliterated. Uncertain is the word she picks if ever she’s called to pick out words. Uncertain times and uncertain ground. Land that changes from week to week, resculpted by unseen, unknowable forces into structures claves like theirs can only guess at.
Meanwhile, Mila has been busy building too, cannibalizing a monstrous old wicker chair, a bicycle and small wheels from a busted pram. Bath chair is the name that fits her rough construction best, something she’s seen in one of their precious top shelf books, but also in a black and white movie she remembers vaguely from her childhood daze. An old man with rugged-up knees in a greenhouse atrium, his drunken daughter flopping all over, telling some suited man how he was cute.
Nothing cute about her darling Lily’s cramped and stiffened limbs which will never fit into a regular wheelchair—the Clave has three of those in working order—thank you Brenda, dearest heart, who has the knack for repairing anything human mechanical ingenuity once came up with—or has come up with so far, so good, touch wood, toss a pinch of salt over your shoulder. This bath chair is bicycle wheels and padded wicker, Mila can make that work all on her own. All she needs is Aloha Joe’s loud-mouthed distraction. Couple hours of drunken Beach Boys oughta do it.
She charted the pathway to the Dispensary half a year ago and walks it through—or almost through—once every month, making sure nobody tails her, that the trail is wide enough, kicking stones out of the way and slashing back the ever-growing scurvy weed and other hardy vines she’s never seen the point to recognizing—not natural foliage, that’s for sure and that’s enough. The final push over the crest leading down to the Dispensary doors—well, they’ll have to cross that bridge when they roll up to it. Just like they’ll have to deal with whatever barrier defense mechanisms the Dispensary facade has built into its structure. If any. And you never know—perhaps it is a harmless, good old-fashioned building proper, not just something that resembles one. A honey trap as Bern would say—yeah, well fuck you, Bern. Your daughters are alive and well and you don’t get to tell me what I can’t do.
“Now, come on girl, let’s hit the road!” She tries for cheery, unanswered questions hanging in the dusty air. Lily loved bright, shiny things, had a box in which she stored her treasures: flattened beer bottle tops, pink lipstick cases, coins and buttons and cicada wings. But it’s her singing Mila misses most, sweet melodies that linger in her head.
Not a whimper from her fragile daughter as Mila swaddles her in blankets and lifts to place her gently in the wicker. No whimper doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting. So hard to tell with no hints or clues. She hears of claves where folks who catch the plastic cancer get put down swift with deliberated mercy before it has a chance to spread. All very well, perhaps, but Mila cannot do it, cannot not go there, cannot even think of such a thing, which leaves the Dispensary her one and only recourse.
They slip out through the shadowed gardens, a near full moon drifting in and out of cloud. The handmade bath chair bumps and rattles. More than once, Mila swears she hears her Lily calling out Mama! Mama! Each time she stops and bends across, readjusting blankets, double-checking. Each time disappointed at the stillness of a face that does not change, day in, day out, has not changed and can never change—not without a cure. And there is no cure. Nothing left to try, except what she is trying now with the help of Aloha Joe, unwittingly, in his own sweet stoned and addled way.
—
The Dispensary is one of those places that wasn’t there before. That formed itself from a bed of coral—coral being the best word they can think of. A hard white bioceramic ooze that spills like lava from the broken ground to take on any shape it seems to fancy. She touched a bloom once, back in Civic, when she’d been a child and didn’t know. Touched it without consequence, only now maybe it’s Lily who’s paid the price. Or maybe not. There are no answers. No clear clues why or how the plastic cancer seeds.
The ground is stony, the bath chair difficult to push. Lily used to skip along the trails when they’d take the young kids out for exercise, thrilled by birds, rabbits and kangaroos. Collecting leaves, then tossing them into the air, so easily distracted.
Moonlight vanishes behind a patch of cloud and when it frees, she spies the unmistakable inevitable. Bern, Young Grigor and god-damn-not-you-too-Brenda, spaced evenly in silhouette so there can be no doubt. Blocking the path’s last bottleneck—the chair won’t make it through that choking scurvy weed. Must have left the clave ahead of her, must have known her intentions all along.
Bern sniffs, wipes his nose along the length of his sleeve. “Now Mila . . .”
“Don’t you now Mila me you sack of—”
“We can’t let you—”
“What gives you the right to try and stop me?”
He sucks on his teeth “You do know what happens if—”
“Of course, I bloody know,” she growls. “Go in and we don’t come out again. Got it. Bingo. Hole-in-one. A risk for sure, but I can’t take it anymore. Lily’s out of choices. And I’m out of my fucking mind.” She grips the wicker with hands like claws. Shoves. Expects him to step out of the way—or shuffle back, but Bern doesn’t move and he doesn’t blink and he’s not showing any signs of quitting. He stops the chair with a well-placed boot. Not army issue, she notices.
“Why are you picking on us?” Words tumble out of Mila, loud and sudden. “Why can’t you just fuck off and leave us be? Me and Lily never did you or 53 or the council any harm. We just want to get on with our business.”
“Can’t let you chance your luck in there now Mila—you know I can’t.” He turns his face, gestures with his chin. The entranceway, so bright-lit, glossy as lemon butter, only artificial light for miles. A different hue to their solar charged clave lights which tend toward a muddy, dirty ochre.
Birds call from somewhere far beyond the charcoal trees. Bern transfers the weight of his gaze to Lily, bundled cozy and indifferent in the wicker. Seventeen and dead to the world in all the ways that matter. He sniffs, shoulders drooping as he thrusts his hands into his pockets. “Push that girl in there, you’ll upset the balance. That’s why you’re creeping up here under cover of thieving darkness. A crime, no matter how you frame it. Stir them things up and you’ll set these lands a shifting and shaping—and we might not be so lucky as last time. And, it won’t help your poor girl any. You don’t know what their kind might do to ours.”
“You don’t know either!”
“Nobody knows!” cuts in Brenda, both hands raised with fingers splayed for emphasis.
Mila’s steely glaze adheres to Bern’s shadowy form. “It’s a dispensary, Bern. Says so on those letters above the door.”
“Used to say something like that. Ten years ago, maybe. More like twenty. Hand painted before things shook and settled and mountains started moving by themselves. But there’s no . . . if you take a closer look. No letters—more like blackness thick as tar that leads to god-knows-where. Or what. We done all right, Clave 53, nestled in between the rocks but don’t want to push our luck—I’m afraid that’s final.”
