The Chaos (19 page)

“We’re currently working beyond capacity with rescue operations throughout the city,” said a tense recorded voice. There was screaming in the background. “Please leave a message stating your name, location, phone number, and the nature of your emergency—”

I put the phone away. “Okay, so that’s not gonna work,” I said. “All right, can you walk a little?” I asked her. “We have to find a taxi.”

She nodded. “Y-yes. Not far, though.”

I helped her up the stairs. Just three little steps, but by the time we got up them, she was panting and the little color that
had come back into her face was gone again. She wasn’t looking good, and the street was all the way at the other end of the parking lot. Maybe I could leave her here, go and get the cab, and have the driver come over here and pick her up? But I didn’t want to leave her alone.

Three or four white guys on skateboards came rolling over. “She okay?” one of them asked as he came to a stop and stamped on one end of the board to flip the other end up into his hands. He saw the two Horseless Head Men. “Whoa.”

One of the guys, a long drink of water wearing a parka and jammers, said, “Those things are everywhere, man. They creep me out.”

“She fell into the lake,” I told them. “She’s freezing.” Skateboards. Man, wouldn’t that be a sweet way for the Raw Gyals to come onstage to the battle?

“Bring her over by us,” the first guy said. He jerked his chin in the direction of the space beneath the overpass. “We got a fire.”

“Um, I dunno . . .” I didn’t know these guys.

Auntie Mryss decided for me. “Thank you, darlings,” she said, her voice all quavery from the shuddering. One of them took her other arm, and together we half-carried, half-walked her in the direction of the fire. As we went, the guy asked my aunt, “So, how’d you get in the lake?” By the time we got to the spot under the highway overpass, Auntie was chatting away with the skateboard dudes like she’d known them forever. She’d asked them all whether their families were okay and had already told a beefy guy in a well-worn leather jacket that his hair would suit him better if he kept it out of his eyes. I hoped she wouldn’t start asking them whether they knew Jesus. Though, come to think of it, that might actually be possible nowadays. Man, I was cold!

It was dark and damp under the bridge, and it smelled of
earth and wet cement and piss. There were blankets strung on lengths of rusty rebar as makeshift tents. There were empty junk food bags. Through a gap in one of the “tent” flaps, I could see overlapping garbage bags laid on the wet ground, and a stained, mildewed futon on top. There was a winter coat spread out as a blanket, and a rolled-up one for a pillow. Even Auntie Mryss was looking a bit doubtful now. The guys didn’t have just one fire, but a big circle of five of them in metal garbage cans, off to the side of their camp. I said, “Wow.”

Parka-and-jammers guy grinned. “Pretty cool, huh? You and this lady should go stand right in the middle. That’s what we do when the cold begins to get to us.”

“She’s my aunt.”

“No way!” He peered at me through the darkness. “But you’re black or something, right?”

I sighed. “Points to you for being able to tell.”

“So are you, like, adopted?”

“No, I am,” said Auntie Mryss firmly. She was messing with him.

“Oh,” said the guy, clearly confused. “Okay.”

Mryss winked at me. I smiled back. I could just hear Dad if he had caught her in a lie like that; “What a way you too liard, Maryssa!” He would probably have thought it was funny, though. Acting up like that was okay by him, so long as it wasn’t his children doing it.

I started to take Auntie into the circle. One of the guys leapt ahead of us. He was carrying a bright blue plastic milk crate. He put it down inside the circle. “So she can sit,” he said, brushing it off with his hand. “Want me to get you one, too?”

“No, I gotta go find a cab, get her back home.”

He nodded. “Sweet.” He ducked shyly away. The Horseless Head Men were frolicking into and out of the flames, just like
kids playing in the sprinkler jets in summer. They were fireproof, then. Handy.

I led Auntie into the circle of warmth. The heat felt like we were snuggling down under a blanket on a cold night. The flickering leaves of flame gave everything and everyone a glow. You could almost forget you were under a stinky old bridge in a city that had gone to hell in a handcart over the past day. I sat my aunt down on the milk crate. Her hands were still like ice, but her lips seemed to be less bluish. “What nice young men,” she said.

“I guess.” I rubbed her shoulders briskly, squeezed the water out of her hair. “We have to get you out of those wet clothes. I want to go hail a cab, but I don’t want to leave you alone with those guys.”

She patted my hand. “I’ll be fine.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the Horseless Head Men. “My little friends will look after me.”

I tried wave to down three cabs before one of them would stop, and I waved down another two before one would agree to stay put while I fetched my aunt. When I got back to where the skateboard guys were camped, they were all sitting on their boards in front of Mryss. Everyone was laughing and talking. Auntie Mryss was cradling a cup of something warm and steamy in both her hands. Her hair was dry and she’d put it back up into her usual bun. The two Horseless Head Men were nestled in her lap. She saw me. “Sojourner, my darling, come over here, nuh? Alan was just telling us about going fishing up north last summer.”

“Auntie, you changed your clothes?” I’d never seen her in jeans before. And under my jacket, she was wearing a different color sweater than she had been.

“I couldn’t stay soaked the way I was. I would have caught my death.”

“I’m so sorry! I couldn’t get a taxi sooner.”

“Don’t fret, child. One of these gentlemen lent me a sweater and a pair of slacks.”

“Auntie, they’re called jeans.” And they were probably nasty and smelly, what with guy sweat and these guys camping out in the dirt under a bridge. “Listen, we have to hurry. I don’t think the cab will wait long.”

Maryssa smiled at me. “You ever notice how people say, ‘The cab won’t wait’? As though it’s the car that’s alive, not the driver?”

“Yeah!” said one of the guys. He frowned. “Though I think I saw a living cab today. God, that was freaky.”

Auntie handed her cup to him. She stood, tumbling the Horseless Head Men out of her lap. They made surprised little squeaks and bounced right back into the air as they hit the ground.

“Those things really weird me out,” said one of the guys.

Auntie put an arm around me. She told them, “Sojourner is my favorite niece, and she is looking after me real well.”

“I’m your only niece. Or second cousin, or something.”

She kissed my cheek. “Sweeter than honey from the bee is the love of a thoughtful child.”

Yikes. She was about to bust out with the holy-rollering. Time to get her out of there. “Uh, bye,” I said to the skateboard dudes. “And . . . thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the chunky one with the blue hair.

“Cab’s this way, Auntie.”

When we reached the cab, I opened the car door, helped her in, and got in beside her. Good thing she was dry now. The driver was looking nervous enough already. I hadn’t been looking forward to convincing him to let a soaking wet person inside the car. The Horseless Head Men got in with us.

“Ladies,” said the cabdriver, “please, these animals are not coming into my car.”

“That’s all right, dear,” replied Auntie Mryss. “They will follow along behind.”

Gently, she shooed the Horseless Head Men out. They hovered near her window. I told the cabdriver the address.

“Yes, Miss.”

He pulled out, and drove around a woman with a shopping cart full of fur coats. Or maybe they weren’t fur coats. Was the furry pile heaving a little in its middle? Before I could get a good look, the driver had pulled too far away. I shuddered. The driver headed toward the highway. The Horseless Head Men came along with us, hovering at the level of Auntie’s window and moving smoothly sideways, in tandem. They would be a hoot on a dance team.

Traffic was backed up on Dufferin Street, where Auntie lived. Our car inched forward. I watched the charge on the meter add up. Auntie had left her handbag in Lake Ontario, so I’d told her that I would pay the fare. At this rate, paying for the cab would use up most of the money that Glory had lent me.

The driver said, “Pay no attention to the meter, Miss. There is no charge today. I only put it on out of habit.” He turned the meter off.

“But it’s such a long trip!” Auntie said. “We should give you at least some of it.”

He shook his head. “Thank you, no, Madam. Maybe the world is finally ending and maybe it isn’t. But there are people on the road today who have no way of getting home. This is something I can do.”

Auntie beamed. “Thank you, driver. God bless you.”

But something was bothering me. I asked him, “How did you know I was thinking about the fare?”

In the rearview mirror, I could see the quiet smile on his face. “Lucky guess, miss.”

I wondered.

Finally, the cause of the traffic jam was in front of us, in the middle of the road. People had been slowing to look. But we couldn’t tell what was going on; it was hidden by a knot of people, in cars and on foot. There were more oglers standing on the sidewalk, both sides, even though they probably couldn’t see a rass. But then the crowd made an “Ohh” sound and moved backward.

“Hai Ram!”
exclaimed our driver, stomping on the brake.

“Holy shit!” I said.

Auntie Mryss said, “Lord Jesus.”

It was a fight between a big black tumbleweed and a— “Is that an archaeopteryx?” I asked. Our biology teacher had told us that the first winged dinosaurs had been pigeon-sized. The one flopping all over the road was humongous; about the size of a bus.

It was still losing, though. The tumbleweed was only maybe six feet across, and it didn’t even have limbs, but it had the dino bird down on the ground, pinned by the neck and by one wing. The bird batted its free wing against the ground and tossed its head on its snaky neck. Aunt Mryss growled, “Always getting into mischief.”

“Madam,” said the driver, “is there a side street to get to where you are going?”

The dino bird tried to attack the tumbleweed with its sharp beak, but the angle was wrong. Instead, the tumbleweed started worrying at the body of the dino bird. The tumbleweed had serious teeth. And angry yellow eyes. Then it hawked up some black gunk that stuck to the bird’s feathers and started to spread. “Hey,” I said, “that kinda looks like—”

Aunt Mryss pressed the button to open the car window. She put her head through the window and yelled, “Spot!”

I said, “Oh, my god. One of those things is Spot, too? How many Spots do you have?”

“Just the one. A rolling calf can take different forms, you know.” She called out, “Spot, you stop that right now! Leave that poor thing alone!”

People in the crowd gaped at her. The tumbleweed stopped tearing at the bird and turned its yellow eyes our way. So now I knew which of the two of them was Spot. I resisted the urge to hide below the level of the window.

The taxi driver turned around in his seat to goggle at us. “What is she doing?” he asked me. “She is knowing that horrid creature?”

“I’m sorry, this is all new to me, too. Who knew Spot was real?”

Auntie Mryss said, “So what you thought Spot was all these years? My imaginary friend?”

“Uh . . .”

Aunt Mryss called out the window, “Bad girl! You go home right this minute!”

“What is that thing, Auntie?”

“Rolling calf,” she replied.

When we were little, Dad used to tell me and Rich scary stories about the rolling calf. About how it would hunt you down if it found you outside late at night, up to no good. The rolling calf’s fur—did you call a cow’s hair “fur”? Man, all this stuff was making me learn things I didn’t know I’d ever need to know. Anyway, its hair or whatever was black and threw off sparks. Just like it had when it had chased me, it was wearing links of heavy chain around it, like some kind of kinky harness. Looked like Spot and the dino bird had been fighting over a dead cat lying
in the street. I didn’t want to know what they wanted it for. Real cows don’t eat meat. Wouldn’t that be, like, cannibalism, or something? If they ate beef, anyway?

Auntie shouted, “Go home, I said!”

The rolling calf whined and dithered for a second. Then it left the dino bird and rolled off in the direction of Maryssa’s place, tumbling round and sometimes bouncing up into the air, just like a real tumbleweed. Its chains dragged behind it, making an almost clanking noise. Suddenly I wasn’t so eager to go to my aunt’s place anymore. “Auntie, are you sure that you want it to go to your house?”

“Don’t be silly, it’s her home, too. Besides, she’s harmless. Mostly.”

The taxi driver said, “My wife, she has a little wooden person following her. Since this volcano, you know? All kinds of bad things came out of that volcano. I would like to chop the little wooden person up to bits. It watches me. But my wife, she says leave the little wooden person alone.”

Maryssa gave him one of her looks. “Then you should leave it alone. Please to take me home now, driver. The traffic is clear. I need to feed Spot. Poor thing, she must be hungry.”

She was going home to feed a monster that could take down a giant winged lizard-bird. Oh, goodie.

The driver turned to face front in his seat again. As he was beginning to drive off, the dragon-bird moved weakly.

“Whoa.” I tapped Auntie Mryss on the shoulder and pointed. “It’s not dead!”

Auntie Mryss saw what I meant. “Pull over, driver.”

The driver grumbled a little about people who didn’t know whether they were coming or going, but he pulled over to the curb. The bird tried to stand, wobbled back down into a crouch. Its neck was bleeding, red soaking its white plumage. A Hummer
careened around it, honking its horn. I swear it missed the bird by inches. The Hummer was about half the bird’s size.

Auntie said, “Lord have mercy. And all because of Spot. You go and see to it, Sojourner.”