Little Bastards in Springtime (37 page)

And then, nothing but black roaring for unending time, a lethal, frothing highway below me, my hands and feet vibrating like jackhammers. My brain cuts electricity and there is no more thinking, no hoping, no wishing, no dreaming. Just hanging on. Nothing looms all around, and that’s all there is.

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T
HE TRUCK DRIVER STOPS HIS TRUCK, GETS OUT,
walks slowly but purposefully to the back. He stands, hand on hip, head cocked to one side, staring at the creature attached in several places to his vehicle. He stares as the creature moves its head an inch, tries to shift its limbs.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Ow,” the creature says. “Ow. Help.”

The truck driver moves closer, but hesitates, doesn’t know what to expect. He puts out one hand while holding his head back in case of snapping teeth or a Vise-Grip to the throat. Finger by finger he pries the creature’s hands off the handle, then steps back and watches as it falls to the ground in slow-motion, like a dead lizard from a cooling wall.

“Jesus Christ,” he says.

The creature lies on the dust and pebbles of the shoulder and praises the universe for inventing the earth’s crust, for giving it the illusion of motionlessness.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the truck driver says, finally. “It’s illegal to catch rides like that. Are you’re crazy? You’ll get killed.”

The creature notices that it’s still night. He’s happy about that. The highway is empty. The sky is a cocoon. He wants to crawl into the gutter with April’s weeds and sleep there until the world has stopped existing.

“Where are we?” he asks. He tries to get up, but can’t. “I can’t feel my arms or legs.”

“We’re just past Montreal,” the trucker says.

“Where?” the creature mumbles, spitting exhaust out of its mouth.

“Past Montreal.”

“That’s good.” The creature attempts to get up on his hind legs. His body is an alien object he’s trying to control with his mind, like a telepath. He makes it to his hands and knees in a few crablike moves.

“Jesus Christ,” the trucker says again. “You know I should call the cops. Another driver radioed me about you, otherwise I’d be going another few hours and you’d be … I don’t know, maybe the other driver called the cops already. He didn’t say.”

The word
cop
jars me into my body. I feel my skin like a burning shirt. I pull myself up and stand swaying in a new province far away from my pursuers.

“Are you a mechanic or something?” the trucker asks, but he’s distracted, he’s wondering what to do.

I look down, see that my detention clothes are smeared with thick, oily dirt, that my hands are black. I look like a mechanic, it’s true.

“You should know better, then,” the trucker says.

I understand his logic; mechanical types have a healthy respect for machines.

“You could have been killed. You could have been killed off the back of
my truck.
Goddammit.” He’s angry, he’s shaky. “Well, there’s not much to be done about it now.” The trucker wipes his forehead and shrugs his shoulders like he’s given up on trying to understand life. He strokes his moustache with thumb and index finger while he decides what to do with me.

“I’m going to take you to the nearest service centre. Next time, just knock on the cab door and ask for a ride. Jesus.”

The trucker trudges to his cab, I follow behind, a hobo mumbling thanks, pathetically grateful. Just ask for a ride, I repeat in my mind. It sounds so simple. The cab is warm inside. I sleep, my head tapping the window, my hands tucked into my underarms. The service centre is deserted. At Tim Hortons, an older woman, grey hair, tired eyes, is wiping down surfaces. The Wendy’s counter next door is bright as a casino but empty. I go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet for a long time, thinking about what to do next. Footsteps jerk me awake. I’ve slipped sideways, I’m sleeping with my head against the toilet roll.

“‘Allo,” a male voice says. Then something in French. A
hand shakes the door of each stall, one at a time. He’s moving closer.

“Yes,” I say. My voice is hoarse, too high.

“Oh, ‘allo, sir? I’m gonna clean now. You okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Just fell asleep sitting here. Tired.”

I charge out of the stall, suck some water out of a tap, walk fast out of the bathroom to the nearest exit. I don’t turn, I am a forward-moving machine, I can afford only what is in front of me. Outside, there’s a feathery early-morning mist. Tall sodium vapour lamps light a giant parking lot that doesn’t hold a single car. I walk to the far end, I sit on a derelict picnic table, I contemplate the signs around me. Cracked pavement, anemic weeds, flattened cigarette butts, shredded ice-cream wrapper, highway going two ways, and all around me bush and forest and farmers’ fields. I spot a pay phone and think of people to wake from sleep with my voice. Mama. Sava. But I know it’s too soon. They’d both give me up, for my own good, of course. And the rest of the Bastards, I can’t think of what they could say to me to get me to see what’s coming next. Only the wind in the branches of the tall trees behind me has a say in my life now. I think, will I have to walk into the forest, burrow in the underbrush, exist there for days, or maybe weeks, months, years, foraging for roots and berries, diving the service centre Dumpsters at the crack of dawn, disappearing myself until no one remembers me?

I sit for a whole day. Cars and trucks drive in and out, but I’m not motivated to move. I think about directions to travel, west back to Toronto, hiding among its neighbourhood streets, friendly alleyways, tidy corners, Saturday markets, leafy parks. Under the bridge near the harbour and ferry, in full view of
islanders and happy tourists. Looking over my shoulder, wearing hats, avoiding recognition on streetcars, in convenience stores, while eating roast duck in Chinatown, and every single other place I can think of to go. Hell, that’s what it would be, going underground, not contacting Sava, the others, and a thousand cops breathing down my neck every minute of the day. Montreal, avoiding Mama, Aisha, and their brand new lives. Calgary, Vancouver too, where could I work, where could I live, without some do-gooder giving me up? And in Halifax and every other little town between here and there, I’d open my mouth just one time to order a black coffee, no sugar, and every motherfucker in the diner would be on the phone to the RCMP in a minute reporting a skinny, shifty-looking boy with a prison haircut and a crazy-ass accent. And south, that’s a whole other scene I think about shrouded in ignorance. I don’t anything about it, what state is south of here, where would be a good place to go? There’s Ujak Luka, but what would he do with an illegal refugee delinquent teenage escapee relative like me?

When the sun begins to set, I still don’t know why I’d go in one direction not another, so I let chance take over, or whatever it is that’s going on when one thing happens and not another. The sky is neon pink as I watch two cars glide to a stop at the pumps. Two guys climb out, in mirror-image, unhook nozzles, stick them in their cars, stand staring at nothing. I get up, stretch, walk slowly toward them. They both turn their heads and watch me without curiosity until I’m right up close.

“Hi,” I say.

One nods. The other guy says, “Oh, hello there, fellow road-jockey.”

“Any chance I can get a ride?” I ask, trying to sound like a nice boy.

One looks in the opposite direction, then walks in to pay, careful not to make eye contact.

“Shit, do I look that bad?” I mumble.

The other guy laughs a long, savouring laugh. “Does a pig say hi to a cookbook?” he says. “Or a carrot to a carrot peeler? Or a baguette to a breadknife, for that matter?” He laughs again, high and broad. Then he looks me up and down. “Yup. You look like you have some rough-and-ready recipes in you. Old-world and new-world recipes.”

“What?” I say. “How about a ride?”

This guy is solid, with a tanned face, scraggly grey hair down to mid-back, eyes shining autumn-brown like chestnuts.

“If you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, what am I?” he asks.

“What?” I say.

“If you’re on the run from the zoo, what kind of animal am I? My name is Jim, by the by.” Jim is fiddling with the pump. He’s got his wallet out. “I have to pay,” he says. “Always a downside to this procedure.”

“Jevrem,” I say. “My name is Jevrem.”

“Well, wait for me here, Yevy, and we’ll see what we see when we see it.”

When he’s back at the car he looks me directly in the eyes. “The mother bird welcomes her chick back into the nest if it falls or jumps out, especially the ones ruffled by gales, the ones injured by eagles. This is the truth of the natural world.” He pauses. “But the world humans have invented has different rules, doesn’t it?” He laughs his huge melody of a laugh. “When human chicks fall out of the nest, for one reason or another, they often have to fend for themselves. Sometimes they’re even punished for getting mangled out there, poor sons of bitches. Get in.”

My brain feels soft, I don’t understand a word this guy is saying. His car is a shitty old Toyota. It’s packed full of stuff, but is surprisingly neat. I move CDs, a blanket, a couple of sweaters, a flashlight, and six jars of preserved tomatoes to the back seat, where I see a sleeping bag, shoes, a pile of books. Then I get in.

“Practical kind of boy,” Jim says.

“I have no money,” I mumble. “I left it behind.”

Jim looks across at me, says, tsk, tsk, tsk, like Mama sometimes does. He shakes his head. “Do fast-moving clouds haggle about expenses? Do sunbeams worry about the cost of tea in China?”

“I don’t know,” I say, “do they?”

Jim roars with laughter, spins the steering wheel, and skids around the pumps toward the exit.

On the highway, Jim cranks Neil Young, even I know who that raggedy hippie dude is, coaxes the car to the speed limit, then carefully presses it up to a bone-rattling, law-breaking cruising altitude. He sings along with a high, breezy, intricate voice, he harmonizes, he strums air guitar, he talks his own words over the instruments, over high-singing Neil. I watch the road, feel tranquilized by the vibration, wish we could drive forever, then, weirdly, begin to shiver and shake like a junkie. Jim turns down the music, looks over at me.

“You’re in fine shape,” he says, then scrabbles around behind his seat with one hand, in quick succession pulling out a bottle of water, a banana, a box of Timbits, a blanket. He passes them to me.

“This pigeon,” he says, pointing at me, “has flown its coop. Eastward across Quebec, I’m assuming, and then where? Will it ever turn back? Will there be a message to bring home?”

“What?” I say.

“You haven’t asked me where I’m going,” he says. “It’s a rare individual who has no opinion about his location on our fair Turtle Island.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess, I just assumed you’re going …” I look at the sky, then in the side-mirror. The sun has set behind us. “East.”

“Okay, I smell fish, so tell me your epic story, my trembling young European. A man, i.e., me, should know what laws he’s breaking. And why.”

I’m having trouble following this Jim. It could be my state of mind, or my English-as-a-second-language, but I’m pretty sure it’s him.

“What? I don’t know what you’re saying. Are we both speaking English?”

Jim laughs again, takes deep breaths in, lets vibrating trumpet calls out.

“There are many Englishes, my lean Caucasian. Your English,” he says, “is like fragrant, flagrant champagne around a late-night fire.” He reaches for the glove compartment and pulls out smokes. “Do you want a smoke? And I’m going as far as Rivière-du-Loup, if such trivial space-time info is of use to you.”

We both light up, he turns up the radio. He sings a loud burst of song.
Come a little bit closer. Hear what I have to say …
He drums the dashboard. Then he turns the radio down again. The highway is empty of trucks and cars. The sun has set, the eastern horizon is black as night. We are in a tin box hurtling through a far-off galaxy devoid of stars.

“Okay, let’s try this again, down at ground level.” Jim inhales from his cigarette as though smoke is beneficial to the
soul. “You’re on the run, I can smell it. You have the scent of the hunted, the haunted, the wanted. So tell me from what and to what. I am a fair-minded sinner, songwriter, storyteller, and dreamer, so I’ll give you a fair, wax-free listen. Do you understand me now?”

After a genius escape, I think, now this guy is going to pull the story out of me with nothing but words. But I have no choice. He has fox ears, and a feather in his breast pocket.

“My baka was a partisan,” I begin.

“Oh really? Is that so? Is that the truth? Is that what matters to you?”

He says this with interest. So much interest that his words feel like a prayer, and I feel, for the first time in a long time, like a fascinating little piece of creation.

“Yes,” I say. “She and I spent a lot of our war together in the basement.”

“Isn’t that something,” he says. “A miracle of miracles. Basements are very important at certain lunatic times in human history. It all makes so much sense. What war would that be? Chechnya? Yugoslavia?”

“Bosnia,” I say. “They—the leaders set the militiamen on each other, and there was nothing the rest of us could do.”

“Oh yes.” Jim nods. “‘When the leaders speak of peace …’ Well, they are the kind to do that, if you think about it. They are contracting when the universe is expanding. They’re contracting into deadly vortexes of death in a way that sometimes happens, unfortunately for the rest of us. Like lockjaw at a singalong, like penny-pinching at the charity ball, like salt in the birthday cake.”

“My mother stopped playing. She was a concert pianist. And my baka, tough freedom fighter, began to lose her communist
faith in humanity. Her heart gave out, she stopped wanting to live, she was disgusted by the next generations.”

“And so the light that lights up the firmament was extinguished.”

“Yeah,” I say. I’ve never heard it put so well. “And we moved to Canada.”

“
And
you moved to Canada.” Jim cradles his jaw in the palm of one hand and rubs his nose with his forefinger. “Hmm,” he says. “So, this is the beginning of your story? A grandmother, a basement, deaths in a time of contraction, the end of music, a broken dream for a better world, and a migration to a vast unknown land.”