People Park (24 page)

Restri-fuggin-bution indeed, agreed Pop. Now let’s get our moves on.

Lower Olde Towne was devoid of life, the tourist shops and artisanal craft stores closed, the B&B’s along Knock Street seemed to be sleeping. From the station the trio pushed north, over cobblestones mottled with mats of hay masking paddies of horsedung. But the horses were stabled in Kidd’s Harbour, their drivers downtown for the big show — along with, it seemed, everyone else.

The trio assembled under the awning of an Islandwear boutique. Pop opened his duffel, removed a can of spraypaint, puffed a bright green burst onto the wall.

Fuggin yeah, said Havoc, that’
θ
a
θ
tart.

I’ve crafted a text, said Pop, removing a sheaf of papers from his pocket. He handed a section each to Havoc and Tragedy. I’ve divisioned it into chapters, one to each of us.

Tragedy leafed through the pages. Wow. We got enough paint?

Pop spread the bag open: it was full of cans. Absolutesimally, he said.

YOUNG PEOPLE
occupied the common’s eastern hillside. Most
were drunk. Voices hooted, ciders made the rounds, empties were pitched into the orchard, bottlecaps flicked and forgotten. A small group started a lethargic and half-ironic Ra-
ven
chant, abandoned to apathy. The booze had them grasping at heedlessness and rebellion, despite curfews and homework in the backs of their minds.

Edie shared a flask of schnapps with a boy from school. He got hold of a sparkler, wrote,
FUG
, and a mum racing by with her daughters shielded their eyes.

Laughing, Edie handed him the flask.

Where’s Calum, he said.

No idea, said Edie, I haven’t heard from him since yesterday. Though if he wants to ruin his life, whatever, it’s his problem, she said, watching the boy drink. He doesn’t care about his future? Fine. I tried to help him, but you can only do so much, right?

What? the boy said.

Nothing, said Edie, and reclaimed the flask, and took another drink.

LESS THAN A MINUTE,
said Wagstaffe, and Isa Lanyess neighed, The countdown’s begun!

Adine checked the phone again — no Sam, no one. From the
TV
, kettledrums rumbled and a brass section belched its way through a melody that suggested some imminent triumph. She imagined spotlights dancing, the crowd tensing, the conjoined anticipation of cuddled-up couples. With this came thoughts of Debbie — so Adine reached for the remote and turned up the sound.

Isa Lanyess said, What a magnificent celebration of twenty-five years of this beautiful space, and Wagstaffe clarified, The park, yes, let’s not forget — only thirty seconds to go!

Adine stared into the blackness of her goggles, images of Debbie
flitting in her mind’s eye: surrounded by friends, someone else holding her, an insipid snuggly orgy —

On
TV
the drums were intensifying. Isa Lanyess screamed, Ten seconds, and We-
TV
’s co-hosts roared in chorus, Nine, eight, seven, six, five
. . .

Four, shouted everyone in Cinecity.

Three, said Rupe and Cora.

Two, thought Adine, grudgingly.

One, whispered Gip.

The drums stopped.

The lights went out.

Every clock and watch froze at once: it was nine.

From somewhere a lone trumpet wailed a single, sad note. The Podesta Tower searchlights swung over the crowd, illuminating thousands of expressions of rapture and wonder. The videoscreens came to life in a grey mess of static, which organized into a shuffle of photographs meant to mimic movement. A ten-second, grainy loop played on repeat: the silhouette of a raven flapping across a colourless sky.

The trumpet paused. Into the silence pattered a drumroll, not just suspenseful but militaristic — a reveille. As it crescendo’d the birds on the videoscreens flew faster, faster.

Here we go, whispered Wagstaffe, and Kellogg, and hundreds of other dads.

The Podesta Tower searchlights, twirling like streamers in a gale, whipped together into a single spot upon the helicopter on the Grand Saloon’s roof. The fat white band dragged through the orchard’s drunk youngsters, down into the common, all the way up, slow as a sunrise, to the gazebo: the trunk opened and in this pillar of light stood Raven.

A roar rose up that Adine heard not just on
TV
, but through her windows, the whole island felt rocked by a seismic explosion. And the subsequent applause was the gallop of hot magma, thundering down.

Beaming at his public, arms wide to accept their adulation, Raven stepped from the trunk onto the catwalk. The stagelights came up. His tracksuit glowed, his baldhead was incandescent, he waved and blew kisses and grinned.

Yes, he cried into a headset microphone. Welcome!

Here he is, said Wagstaffe. Here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

Holy shet speak for yourself, said Adine, though no one heard her but Jeremiah.

WAY OUT IN
Whitehall all Debbie could hear was a droning roar, changing as she moved through it, as she bumped against and slid away from strangers who fondled her and now she was fondling them back, and when a pair of lips came out of the dark and pressed to hers what could she do but return the kiss? For a moment she felt guilty, what about Adine —

But these thoughts were too distinct, too literal: they skidded
away from her, lost in all that sound. She reached into the darkness
for someone to touch. Hands found and passed her, one set to
the next. And somehow the screaming began to disappear, to fold
inside itself, becoming at once somehow bigger and smaller than silence.

The other people began to disappear inside it too: Debbie became pure sensation, she tingled and shivered, she was hot and cold and awake and asleep, all at once, and she knew that everything anyone had ever known could be found trapped inside this moment, this sound that was no longer audible, but something else.

Everything was
here
, everything was
now
. How could there ever be anything but this?

She felt her voice welling up. She too could make this sound, she understood at last how to make this essential sound, this non-sound, it gathered and swelled inside her and she opened her mouth to give it life —

And that was when the power went out.

ALL THE LIGHTS
in People Park surged at once: the place glowed as if daytime had descended from the night sky. Kellogg reeled. Whoa, he said, that’s bright! But Gip stared into it, wide-eyed and trusting.

Look at you, laughed Raven, indicating the screens on either side of the stage.

Upon them appeared the crowd, alive in that blaze of light. And from the crowd hundreds of cameras pointed at the screens, and cameras shot the people shooting themselves shooting the screen and on the screens everyone saw themselves and roared in one voice: Ra-
ven
, Ra-
ven
, Ra-
ven.

Look at you, said Raven, you’re beautiful, thank you!

ADINE TRIED EVERYTHING:
when the remote failed she felt her way to the
TV
and twisted the volume, changed the channel, turned the set off and on — nothing. She picked up the cordless phone, hammered the buttons, listened
. . .
It was dead too.

THE LIGHTS DIMMED.
Raven compelled silence. And so there was silence.

People! he said, speaking the word as an imperative. Tonight we have come to bear witness to something truly spectacular. I must admit I have never attempted anything this ambitious before, and I am honoured to try it, here, in your city — not great, indeed, but well built.

This elicited a dubious and scant ovation.

But, people! What is most important is that I have discovered a truth manifest in this land. By means of your solitary situation I fear you are to yourselves unknown, apt enough to think there might be something supernatural about this place. Am I wrong?