The Grief Team

by Collins, David

  Mutt, no-last-name, born around the time that the last breath in the body of Dickie Donalato, the Father-of-the-Malls, exhaled in a harsh, abrupt gasp, was the bawling issue of a twelve-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy. Mutt’s parents had long since been removed by the Grief Team and, if they had remained free, no Wildkid ever outlived the radburns so, by his best guess, he knew they had to be dead. He had no idea what they looked like. The oldest WK whom he had ever seen had claimed to be sixteen, but his face had mostly been eaten away. That was only one of the dozens of repugnant sights which little Mutt had viewed, raised as he was by an ever-changing, rag-tag clutch of Kids on the Outside, who had little knowledge of what to do with live babies except to give them food when there was food enough to be spared or to use them as food when there was none.

  Though he should not have survived his first six months, Mutt did, and he continued to thrive despite the best efforts of man and nature to claim him. Passed hand-to-hand, sometimes abandoned for days, Baby Mutt was invincible, escaping death by starvation, death by Grief Team, death by freezing, death by...the catalogue of near-misses was extensive, even though Mutt himself was pleasantly unaware of his uncanny link with survival.

  On occasion, there was violence. Mutt had seen first-hand many times how the Grief Team managed their containment sweeps, arriving lightning-fast in their special buses, cornering the Wildkids before wading in with nets. They caught those they could, and shot those they couldn’t. Not many Kids got away, but Mutt had.

  Only four months before, he had been surprised by the net which descended on him and which had been impervious to his kicking and biting. Housed in the holding pens in the Dome, he proved to be a quick study. He had been numbered, catalogued, weighed, judged, tested, and otherwise officially dealt with until he had been released to wander through the pens, constantly exploring, always thinking of escape.

  His ever-present luck did not fail him. He discovered an escape route through the underground levels, some of which had been sealed as structurally unsafe after the fall of the C.N. Tower. Wraith-like, Mutt had slipped through cracks and fissures in the concrete, sometimes in total darkness until he emerged scratched, bloody but, most importantly, undetected outside SkyDome. Beholden to no-one, Mutt had not bothered to retrace his difficult route in order to tell the others. He was hap’ness again, that was all that mattered.

  In the hot afternoon’s red sun, Mutt’s stringy copper locks were plastered by sweat to his forehead. There was a sleek sheen visible on his dark skin as he crouched silently at the base of a wall of weeds which spanned two chunks of the remains of the collapsed Gardiner Expressway. For many long minutes he had been observing the boy and girl hiding behind the old support column. He had satisfied himself that he need only worry about having to fight the boy, who was taller than Mutt but looked pretty skinny. Mutt had a decent-sized lump of concrete in his left hand and he was 100% effective on a dead aim. The tall boy would get a taste of how dangerous Mutt could be if he was nastylike.

  On the other hand, the two strangers might be willing to share their food if they had any, and Mutt’s nature was not so insular as to assume that ‘lone was always a pleasant thing to be. Mutt’s eyes widened as the tall boy emerged from the protection of the support column and raised his right hand, pointing directly at... Mutt?

  The boy was waving now, signalling that Mutt should come out into the open. In his hand he was holding something...eat? Not a wet, flapping flapper, not even a dead stiff one.

  Gooder than all! Sam’wich!

  Mutt began to drool, spittle mixing with sweat and snot in a repulsive slime to which he was utterly oblivious. Keeping a tight grip on his chunk of concrete, he slowly rose to his feet, slipping out from behind his ineffectual cover, and taking tentative steps toward the boy and the little girl who had joined him. Again the sandwich was offered and again Mutt advanced a few steps, now close enough to see that the little girl was holding a big grey cat in her arms. Mutt gawked at it. He had never seen a cat before.

  “It’s all right,” said the little girl, breaking the silence. “It’s a good sandwich. Jason gave me one too and I ate it. It’s tunafish!”

  The grey cat meowed in agreement with what the little girl said, and Mutt pulled back, but…tunafish! Mutt knew that word and loved it dearly. Two months ago, the last time that Mutt had tasted it, he had stolen a tin from the Rations Centre in Yorkdown Mall, a desperate act that almost cost him his life. The angry red graze that a bullet had burned along the top of his scalp had taken weeks to heal completely. Three bangs of a sharp rock had pierced the tin and Mutt had had his feast, deciding that tunafish was better than anything he had ever eaten, including buttock.

  The smell was now strong enough in his nostrils to mask his fears but, as he stretched to take the sandwich from the dark-haired, solemn boy, Mutt’s fingers of his other hand were still curling around his chunk of concrete. When the tunafish sandwich was actually in his hand, he immediately retreated ten yards, pushing the sam’wich entirely into his mouth in one piece as he did so.

  Cathy couldn’t help gawking at this strange little boy whose ugly radburns stretched vividly on his ballooning cheeks, as yellow teeth laboured hastily, mascerating the food into a manageable paste. His freckles, scattered across his dark features like a handful of old pennies, seemed to dance as he chewed. Moments later, the lump of concrete fell forgotten to the ground.

  Jason was standing, thin arms at his sides, patiently waiting; his face calm and composed. Grey Kitty, however, was not of like discipline and he began to squirm in Cathy’s arms as the smell of tunafish became overwhelmingly important. He wriggled from her grasp and approached Mutt directly, no doubt working under the assumption that the generosity of his master and his new little friend would no doubt be repeated by this new arrival. There was also the matter of asserting dominance.

  Mutt, who did not like this bizarre, meowling creature, made ready to kick Grey Kitty. His torn running shoe swung back and was already moving forward when Jason spoke.

  “Cat is not yours to kick.” Jason’s words, resonating out of his chest with a perceptible wheeze, were enough to cancel Mutt’s intent instantly. His sharp eyes found Jason’s brighter ones and there was an unspoken message accepted. Mutt shrugged his boney shoulders as if to say that it was a simple mistake, no harm done. He passed a grimy fist across his mouth, removing flecks of tunafish and some of the sticky effluvia of mucous before he turned and scampered away from them. As he reached the wall of weeds, he turned and signalled that they should follow. Then, without looking to see if his invitation had been accepted, Mutt began to wend his way through the detritus, finding openings and passages which to the ordinary eye simply did not exist.

  Cathy followed first, her natural, open assumption being that Mutt was now trustworthy and was no danger to Grey Kitty or herself. With Jason behind her, she squeezed her way through Mutt’s collection of openings, gaps, and hidden entrances. Grey Kitty, tail high and meowing a futile protest, brought up the rear.

  Jason, Cathy and, finally, an aggrieved Grey Kitty, followed Mutt’s route which took them away from the massive, threatening presence of SkyDome and toward the lake, where they scrambled and scrabbled through the ruins of Harbourfront. Mutt, who had stayed well ahead of his followers since the beginning, eventually slowed, leading Jason and Cathy and Big Kitty through broken buildings, battered backyards, finally stopping at a weather-worn old boathouse.

  “Homeplace,” Mutt said, pointing proudly, not twenty yards from where the water lapped against the purple loosestrife embedded along the shore of the lake with all manner of infestations of other weeds. Built between two sets of concrete pilings, Mutt’s lair was a nondescript, squalid structure. Mutt was already inside when the others arrived, turning towards them when they entered and greeting them with a wide, gap-toothed grin.

  “Fish!” announced Mutt proudly. “Fish-‘n-spek’n.” Then he abruptly pushed past them and remained absent for qu
ite some time.

  Cathy, whose fascination with this strange little boy with the sweat-soaked red curls, freckles as big as thumbnails, and shining blue eyes, was nearly as intense as her need for sleep, happily sank onto a mound of foul-smelling blankets and was asleep in seconds. Grey Kitty meowed his objections at the entrance several times and then slipped inside as well, curling up in Cathy’s arms, and keeping one eye open.

  Jason remained outside Mutt’s hut, sitting quietly and waiting until Mutt reappeared, almost an hour later, carrying a large limp object in both hands.

  “Sam’on,” crowed Mutt, flashing his yellow teeth. He carried it into the small clearing in front of his home and dropped it beside a blackened, rusted Coleman stove. There he began slipping small twigs and pieces of dry wood under the metal grating which formed the cooking surface. He produced an entire card of matches, lighting the dry bits and pushing them deeper into the grate. With a fire established, Mutt proceeded to cook the salmon as if he knew what he was doing, placing the entire fish on top of the flames and leaving it.

  Later, with Cathy and Grey Kitty awake and in attendance in the small clearing, they ate while sitting on flat rocks, balancing hot chunks of salmon on leaves. They ate hastily and with relish, and not without a few yelps when too eager fingers touched too hot salmon. There was enough for all—even Grey Kitty eventually turned away from the tempting remains and set about cleaning himself—and it did well to fill their empty stomachs.

  “Eat-nicely!” announced Mutt, obviously pleased with his ability to provide for his guests and feeling a strong sense of not-alone.

  “Thank you,” said Cathy, remembering her manners. Then, by way of introduction, “I’m Cathy Latimer and I’m in Stage Two and this is Jason-no-last-name and his Grey Kitty. He’s Jason’s kitty, but I love him too.”

  Jason, thus introduced, smiled at his host. “Sharing is good.”

  Mutt’s face beamed happiness, his freckles ready to pop into 3D all over his face. He liked these two Kids and, though he didn’t know why, there was a sense of joy in his heart which came out-of-nowhere, fast, and enervating. It was, to be sure, entirely against his nature to be so open and relaxed with strangers, yet he found himself enjoying the experience so much that he leapt up and began speaking rapidly. Suddenly he spit a rather unhealthy-looking gob of saliva into his palm and then pushed it forward expectantly. He looked at Jason, then Cathy, his bright blue eyes sparkling, gesturing avidly when he finally perceived that his guests were not aware of the correct procedure for sealing friendships.

  Cathy, when she finally understood what Mutt was offering, was delighted to comply and she promptly delivered a healthy shot of spit into her own palm. Jason followed, a wry smile on his otherwise solemn features and, as Mutt directed, each mixed his-her-and-his own expectorant with the others, sliding palms without a glimmer of uneasiness. Mutt then slid his tongue along his palm and licked his lips, a part of the ritual which Jason did also; Cathy following reluctantly with her eyes tightly closed. There was now a palpable, if somewhat disgusting, communal sense that they had sealed the covenant of their friendship.

  As darkness fell, the three Outcasts moved into Mutt’s hut where, after some prompting from its owner, Cathy’s story of her tragedy was told, this time telling more than she had remembered or been able to remember through her tears when she had confided in Jason two days before. Even so, it was impossible not to feel her heartache or ignore her tears and Mutt, who understood most of Cathy’s formal Mallspeech but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) speak it himself, was visibly respectful, quietly picking at his radburns as his eyes scanned the perimeter of his homeplace. Cathy ended her story with a fervent declaration that “My Daddy is Outside right now looking for me with the Grief Team! When they find us, we’ll all be safe!”

  She was not prepared when Mutt suddenly jumped up and began shouting at her. Cathy screamed in fright and Grey Kitty became smoke-in-an-instant. Jason didn’t seem startled, but he slid quickly to Cathy’s side, speaking softly in her ear, calming her and, vicariously, Mutt. While he spoke, Jason looked squarely at their host whose freckles looked like they were about to leap off his face, but Jason’s non-verbal message got through and the freckles appeared to relax. Abruptly Mutt turned and made a show of checking his defences inside and out, listening for the soft whup-whup sound of the engines which always preceded the Grief Team. It was some time before he rather haughtily resumed his place on his stone in his open-air kitchen in his own fuknhomeplace…or so the expression on his face seemed to imply.

  Sometime later, when the silence finally became too much even for Mutt, he grunted a couple of times, spit a lengthy gob of something foul onto the wall behind him and gave every indication that he was going to speak.

  At first slowly and somewhat shyly, and then with more fervour as the excitement of his own personal dramas flowed within him, his body movements began to provide an energetic visual accompaniment, as Mutt told of his birth in someplacePic’ring. He then immediately skipped into a cacophony of exciting bits and pieces of adventures in which he repeated his role as the hero numerous times. Mutt clearly related the passing of time to his height and because he was obviously undersized for his age, it took some time before Jason and Cathy understood that Mutt had been very young when he had first struck out on his own. Three-quarters of the way along his trek—tired, hungry, and utterly lost—he blundered into a full-scale Grief Team sweep on the grounds where an institution known as Upper Canada College had once educated the scions of Canada’s wealthy.

  With wondrous dexterity, for he was a natural mimic, Mutt told the story of the net dropping on him and then of a sweet smell before he fell asleep, only to awake in the madhouse that was SkyDome. He began to mutter and grunt more vehemently, prefacing many of his exclamations with fukn-this and fukn-that, spittle flying as he told of the beatings he suffered at the hands of older, stronger Wildkids and the things that they did to each other (and tried to do to Mutt!) because the sexes were separated at all times. When he related his escape through the blockages in the sub-sub-basement, tunneling like a mole, cunning as a rat, to emerge into the bright red sunshine, Mutt happily mimed his metamorphosis into something very much like a new, freckled daisy.

  When he finally finished, it became apparent that Cathy was nodding off to sleep so Mutt, not the least bit offended that she might have missed some of his adventures, insisted on leading her across the floor to a pile of junk in a far corner where, behind a battered cardboard partition, were three foul-smelling, decrepit mattresses stacked on top of each other. There were two equally-foul blankets but no sign of pillows. It didn’t take but a minute before Cathy and Grey Kitty were snuggled together and, for the first time since she had been abducted, as the night lengthened into a blue-black blanket of stars, Cathy Latimer slept soundly and without crying out.

  Mutt was proud of his accomodations, possessing a number of amenities such as a microwave oven which lacked a door, a battered Coleman paraffin lantern now functioning as a candleholder, a round metal table on castors which still carried a tag from IKEA, and twelve boxes of compact discs. Pulling out Kiri Te Kanawa: Arias from La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, and Others and The Greatest Hits of Boy George and Culture Club, Mutt opened the jewel boxes and removed the disks. He palmed each neatly and, stepping into the doorway of his homeplace, made sounds like steam escaping, as he propelled them into the night. He made a sound like ‘thwak’ as he slapped his head and laughed.

  Mutt’s holiest relic, salvaged from an office on the top floor of Harbourfront’s main complex, proved to be a 14 inch Sony Trinitromitron TeleViewer with built-in VRS capability. Made in 2002, it had never been taken out of its original packaging until Mutt found it. It wasn’t until after he had been inside SkyDome that he knew what magic it could perform.

  “Taypsss! Taypsss!” bragged Mutt and he pulled another carton from under a nearby piece of canvas. It was full of brightly-coloured packages and Mutt reached inside, grabbing s
everal and holding them up to Jason. “Tay-psss!”

  Jason looked at the titles: Psychotic Flesh-Eaters From Omaha; Zogar vs. Megawrath; Robin Williams at Carnegie Hall; Dumbo. Pushing them aside, Mutt reached for another, holding it out to Jason with unexpected reverence. “Bes’!”

  Jason smiled.

  Charlotte’s Web.

  Jason placed the cassettes back in Mutt’s box as his host turned on the TeleViewer but, instead of inserting a tape, Mutt was playing with the remote control, punching buttons until, after ten or twelve tries, the screen filled with an image originating out of the TV studio inside Pickering Town Centre.

  “You have TV.” Jason’s solemn features were replaced by a pleasant grin. “How do you do it?”

  Mutt grinned, pointing to a cable emerging from the back of the set. Jason followed it with his eyes until it disappeared through a hole in the wall.

  Mutt laughed, a kind of caw that brought crows to mind. SkyDome! Mutt takesteal-lec’tric. See’cret watch.”

  The two boys hunkered down in front of the set as Mutt continued to fiddle with the remote trying to provide sound.

  “You found a way out of SkyDome.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Mutt stopped his attack on the remote and nodded anyway.

  “Will you show me when the time comes?”

  Mutt shook his head the other way, his features dissolving into visible fear. SkyDome fukn-grief-team, killdead WildKid, fukn-skyDome-no!”