The Adjustment League (36 page)

A pause. I nod in it. Something, someone, tells me to.

“I think Sandor Wyvern might have chipped in too. Maybe even some strangers. Like I say, there's something of a groundswell. It's touched off something, this case. And you… you've got some fans out there.”

Hand comes out, stops in time. Smart lady.

Out there.

She comes back one more time.
You could like her… if you were here.

“Something I forgot to ask. Everyone in ICU's been scratching their heads on it. A couple of office bets, even. Where'd you find the Christmas Music shots? How'd you get your hands on them initially? From Judy?”

I need a voice again and find one, finally.

“Old… Maude's keepsake…,” it says. Rust-thick, fading.

“Maude… Wyvern?”

A nod towards a nod. A single wing in flight.

§

Bombed backward after they go. Like the time after TAL, like every time since. Ruins, blacker than before. Rubble chunks, dangling wires. Not even a sign of smoke. Dresden '45.

Stone needs his time. He takes it. If he grants a window, he exacts its full equivalent in stir. Any unsanctioned movement back to operations, any unwarranted life in the world—he yanks the chain back, hard.

Like this episode with the officers. I didn't ask for it, they came to me. Still, it's a premature flit upward. A flap into adjustment territory—into life. Which isn't due to happen for weeks. Months maybe. An exchange with anyone, however passive and piecemeal, is reaching over my head. Living off the ranch. It's got to be countermanded by a spell in the depths.

Super-subtle in some ways, Stone's a brutalist in others. He keeps strict books.

Shut-down is shut-down. Closed means closed.

§

Vivian out there. Vivian and—who? Doing things. Making plays.

The thoughts come singly, far apart. Long sticky spaces between them. Reaching one feels like breaking free from tough elastic webbing—some determined insect, all mandibles. And a shiver of
wanna act
, itching of wing muscles slime-coated and pinned, meeting clean air.

Followed immediately by a Stone advisory.

Not your beat, son. That's window talk. We're post-window now. This is mine.

Work to be done.

Course there is. Always. But not till we're done.

Not till I say.

Stone's voice lazy, apt to drawl, when he knows he's got the floor.

And then almost gently at times, crooning as to a restless child.
You know how it works. Window's open, then it's boarded up. Settle into dark. Shh. We'll get there soon enough.

And webbing, soft sticky gauze, comes back in. Heavy and thick, like the first days. Soft, dark, impenetrable cocoon. Woman—women?—there again. There longer, there all the time it seems. Sometimes, opening my eyes in the dark, I see her reading in a chair pushed up against the kitchen counter, little lamp over her shoulder. She? They? I can't see to tell them apart. Just fuzzy blobs.

Close my eyes.

Waiting for a sign.

It comes from Stone—who else?—from the zone he runs and summons to. And who else would be speaking now? It's Stone's watch. Stone's time.

Except—it doesn't sound like Stone. Not quite. Stone-inflected. Stone-plus?

Waiting for a sign.

§

Rain at first. Just rain.
Soft sleepytime
.

A hard pattering. Skittering sounds, mice scurrying on glass. Seeds, grains thrown in fistfuls. Drifting in and out, lulled by the sound. In the chair, a blanket over me.

Harder now. Frozen pellets, slashing. Oozing thickly down, hardening in spots to glaze. Aquarium. Freezing over.

Ice storm.

Longest day. She said that earlier. Start of winter.

Calendar time. Clock time. Not yours. Not ready yet.

Stone's voice… but fading. His meter ticking too.

Awake again. The window ice glowing. That thick. Feel my forehead. Warm, not burning. Carefully, I stand. Get next to the glass. Hands and forehead on it, cool. The street bare. EMS, the Fire Station, wide open. All out. One car slewed up onto the sidewalk, clear-coated with ice. Toy dipped in plastic.

Hear it, behind the ice scatter. Tinkling, like a million chimes. Squinting, see them. The coated twigs, clear bells, jostling. The great trees leaning impossibly. Bulks straining to hold.

A long time. And then the first crash. A crack, a deep rending tear, long like a scream, and then the splintering rush. The thud. Immediately, the stoplights go out. Condo at the corner goes black.

Ice keeps coming down. Limbs, whole trees, sagging lower under the clear heavy hand. Strangled creaks and groans inside it. Lurches, then toppling, taking more blocks into black.

An area of darkness. And another. Joining to make a greater. Light streams trickling through, around. Another crash. Another chunk of darkness claimed.

The black, the dancing gleams.

And now, inside the striking chips, the tinkling and the crashes, a warmer, fainter sound. Drifting high wail of sirens, from faraway, from all around.

Singing of adjustments without end.

Singing of the long climb back.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the
staff at Biblioasis, particularly Grant Munroe, Natalie Hamilton, and Chris Andrechek.

Special thanks to Dan Wells
for his warm personal support and close, perceptive editing.

About the Author

Mike Barnes
, a
dual Canadian-American citizen, has published eight previous books across a range of genres: poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, and his stories have appeared twice in
Best Canadian Stories
and three times in
The Journey Prize Anthology
. He has won a National Magazine Award Silver Medal in the short story category. His collection of poems,
Calm Jazz Sea
, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; and
Aquarium
, his first collection of stories, won the Danuta Gleed Award. He has also published many essays, one of which, the photo-text collage “Asylum Walk”, won the Edna Staebler Award. His last book, a collaboration with the artist Segbingway, was an illustrated book of fairy tales entitled
The Reasonable Ogre
. He works as a private English tutor and lives in Toronto.