Late afternoon sunlight slanted across the map of Djamala as the children began to tidy up in preparation for quitting. Sitting on a borrowed folding chair, I watched their small forms, dusted in gold, move along eccentric paths. My mind commenced to drift amidst wordless regions. The burden of my own body seemed to fall away.
At that moment, the city of Djamala began to assume a ghostly reality, translucent buildings rearing skyward. Ghostly minarets, stadia, pylons—
I jumped up, heart thumping to escape my chest, frightened to my core.
Memory of a rubbish-filled, clammy, partially illuminated hallway, and the shadow of a gunman, pierced me.
My senses had betrayed me fatally once before. How could I ever fully trust them again?
Djamala vanished then, and I was relieved.
* * * *
A herd of government-drafted school buses materialized one Thursday on the outskirts of Femaville 29, on the opposite side of the camp from Djamala, squatting like empty-eyed yellow elephants, and I knew that the end of the encampment was imminent. But exactly how soon would we be expelled to more permanent quarters not of our choosing? I went to see Hannah Lawes.
I tracked down the social worker in the kitchen of the camp. She was efficiently taking inventory of cases of canned goods.
“Ms. Lawes, can I talk to you?”
A small hard smile quirked one corner of her lips. “Mr. Hedges. Have you had a sudden revelation about your future?”
“Yes, in a way. Those buses—”
“Are not scheduled for immediate use. FEMA believes in proper advance staging of resources.”
“But when—”
“Who can say? I assure you that I don’t personally make such command decisions. But I will pass along any new directives as soon as I am permitted.”
Unsatisfied, I left her tallying creamed corn and green beans.
Everyone in the camp, of course, had seen the buses, and speculation about the fate of Femaville 29 was rampant. Were we to be dispersed to public housing in various host cities? Was the camp to be merged with others into a larger concentration of refugees for economy of scale? Maybe we’d all be put to work restoring our mortally wounded drowned city. Every possibility looked equally likely.
I expected Nia’s anxiety to be keyed up by the threat of dissolution of our hard-won small share of stability, this island of improvised family life we had forged. But instead, she surprised me by expressing complete confidence in the future.
“I can’t worry about what’s coming, Parrish. We’re together now, with a roof over our heads, and that’s all that counts. Besides, just lately I’ve gotten a good feeling about the days ahead.”
“Based on what?”
Nia shrugged with a smile. “Who knows?”
The children, however, Izzy included, were not quite as sanguine as Nia. The coming of the buses had goaded them to greater activity. No longer did they divide the day into periods of conventional playtime and construction of their city of dreams. Instead, they labored at the construction full-time.
The ant-like trains of bearers ferried vaster quantities of sticks and leaves, practically denuding the nearby copse. The grubbers-up of pebbles broke their nails uncomplainingly in the soil. The scribers of lines ploughed empty square footage into new districts like the most rapacious of suburban developers. The ornamentation crew thatched and laid mosaics furiously. And the elite squad overseeing all the activity wore themselves out like military strategists overseeing an invasion.
“What do we build today?”
“The docks at Kannuckaden.”
“But we haven’t even put down the Mocambo River yet!”
“Then do the river first! But we have to fill in the Great Northeastern Range before tomorrow!”
“What about Gopher Gulch?”
“That’ll be next.”
Befriending some kitchen help secured me access to surplus cartons of pre-packaged treats. I took to bringing the snacks to the hard-working children, and they seemed to appreciate it. Although truthfully, they spared little enough attention to me or any other adult, lost in their make-believe, laboring blank-eyed or with feverish intensity.
The increased activity naturally attracted the notice of the adults. Many heretofore-oblivious parents showed up at last to see what their kids were doing. The consensus was that such behavior, while a little weird, was generally harmless enough, and actually positive, insofar as it kept the children from boredom and any concomittant pestering of parents. After a few days of intermittent parental visits, the site was generally clear of adults once more.
One exception to this rule was Ethan Duplessix.
At first, I believed, he began hanging around Djamala solely because he saw me there. Peeved by how I had escaped his taunts, he looked for some new angle from which to attack me, relishing the helplessness of his old nemesis.
But as I continued to ignore the slobby criminal slacker, failing to give him any satisfaction, his frustrated focus turned naturally to what the children were actually doing. My lack of standing as any kind of legal guardian to anyone except, at even the widest stretch of the term, Izzy, meant that I could not prevent the children from talking to him.
They answered Ethan’s questions respectfully and completely at first, and I could see interest building in his self-serving brain, as he rotated the facts this way and that, seeking some advantage for himself. But then the children grew tired of his gawking and cut him off.
“We have too much work to do. You’ve got to go now.”
“Please, Mr. Duplessix, just leave us alone.”
I watched Ethan’s expression change from greedy curiosity to anger. He actually threatened the children.
“You damn kids! You need to share! Or else someone’ll just take what you’ve got!”
I was surprised at the fervor of Ethan’s interest in Djamala. Maybe something about the dream project had actually touched a decent, imaginative part of his soul. But whatever the case, his threats gave me a valid excuse to hustle him off.
“You can’t keep me away, Hedges! I’ll be back!”
Izzy stood by my side, watching Ethan’s retreat.
“Don’t worry about him,” I said.
“I’m not worried, Parrish. Djamala can protect itself.”
The sleeping arrangements in the tent Nia, Izzy and I shared involved a hanging blanket down the middle of the tent, to give both Izzy and us adults some privacy. Nia and I had pushed two cots together on our side and lashed them together to make a double bed. But even with a folded blanket atop the wooden bar down the middle of the makeshift bed, I woke up several times a night, as I instinctively tried to snuggle Nia and encountered the hard obstacle. Nia, smaller, slept fine on her side of the double cots.
The night after the incident with Ethan, I woke up as usual in the small hours of the morning. Something urged me to get up. I left the cot and stepped around the hanging barrier to check on Izzy.
Her cot was empty, only blankets holding a ghostly imprint of her small form.
I was just on the point of mounting a general alarm when she slipped back into the tent, clad in pajamas and dew-wet sneakers.
My presence startled her, but she quickly recovered, and smiled guiltlessly.
“Bathroom call?” I whispered.
Izzy never lied. “No. Just checking on Djamala. It’s safe now. Today we finished the Iron Grotto. Just in time.”
“That’s good. Back to sleep now.”
Ethan Duplessix had never missed a meal in his life. But the morning after Izzy’s nocturnal inspection of Djamala, he was nowhere to be seen at any of the three breakfast shifts. Likewise for lunch. When he failed to show at super, I went to D-30.
Ethan’s sparse possessions remained behind, but the man himself was not there. I reported his absence to Hannah Lawes.
“Please don’t concern yourself unnecessarily, Mr. Hedges. I’m sure Mr. Duplessix will turn up soon. He probably spent the night in inti
mate circumstances with someone.”
“Ethan? I didn’t realize the camp boasted any female trolls.”
“Now, now, Mr. Hedges, that’s most ungenerous of you.”
Ethan did not surface the next day, or the day after that, and was eventually marked a runaway.
The third week of October brought the dreaded announcement. Lulled by the gentle autumnal weather, the unvarying routines of the camp, and by the lack of any foreshadowings, the citizens of Femaville 29 were completely unprepared for the impact.
A general order to assemble outside by the buses greeted every diner at breakfast. Shortly before noon, a thousand refugees, clad in their donated coats and sweaters and jackets, shuffled their feet on the field that doubled as parking lot, breath pluming in the October chill. The ranks of buses remained as before, save for one unwelcome difference.
The motors of the buses were all idling, drivers behind their steering wheels.
The bureaucrats had assembled on a small raised platform. I saw Hannah Lawes in the front, holding a loud-hailer. Her booming voice assailed us.
“It’s time now for your relocation. You’ve had a fair and lawful amount of time to choose your destination, but have failed to take advantage of this opportunity. Now your government has done so for you. Please board the buses in an orderly fashion. Your possessions will follow later.”
“Where are we going?” someone called out.
Imperious, Hannah Lawes answered, “You’ll find out when you arrive.”
Indignation and confusion bloomed in the crowd. A contradictory babble began to mount heavenward. Hannah Lawes said nothing more immediately. I assumed she was waiting for the chaotic reaction to burn itself out, leaving the refugees sheepishly ready to obey.
But she hadn’t countered on the children intervening.
A massed juvenile shriek brought silence in its wake. There was nothing wrong with the children gathered on the edges of the crowd, as evidenced by their nervous smiles. But their tactic had certainly succeeded in drawing everyone’s attention.
Izzy was up front of her peers, and she shouted now, her young voice proud and confident.
“Follow us! We’ve made a new home for everyone!”
The children turned as one and began trotting away toward Djamala.
For a frozen moment, none of the adults made a move. Then, a man and woman—Vonique’s parents—set out after the children.
Their departure catalyzed a mad general desperate rush, toward a great impossible unknown that could only be better than the certainty offered by FEMA.
Nia had been standing by my side, but she was swept away. I caught a last glimpse of her smiling, shining face as she looked back for a moment over her shoulder. Then the crowd carried her off.
I found myself hesitating. How could I face the inevitable crushing disappointment of the children, myself, and everyone else when their desperate hopes were met by a metropolis of sticks and stones and pebbles? Being there when it happened, seeing all the hurt, crestfallen faces at the instant they were forced to acknowledge defeat, would be sheer torture. Why not just wait here for their predestined return, when we could pretend the mass insanity had never happened, mount the buses and roll off, chastised and broken, to whatever average future was being offered to us?
Hannah Lawes had sidled up to me, loud-hailer held by her side.
“I’m glad to see at least one sensible person here, Mr. Hedges. Congratulations for being a realist.”
Her words, her barely concealed glee and schadenfreude, instantly flipped a switch inside me from off to on, and I sped after my fellow refugees.
Halfway through the encampment, I glanced up to see Djamala looming ahead.
The splendors I had seen in ghostly fashion weeks ago were now magnified and recomplicated across acres of space. A city woven of childish imagination stretched impossibly to the horizon and beyond, its towers and monuments sparkling in the sun.
I left the last tents behind me in time to see the final stragglers entering the streets of Djamala. I heard water splash from fountains, shoes tapping on shale sidewalks, laughter echoing down wide boulevards.
But at the same time, I could see only a memory of myself in a ruined building, gun in hand, confronting a shadow assassin.
Which was reality?
I faltered to a stop.
Djamala vanished in a blink.
And I fell insensible to the ground.
I awoke in the tent that served as the infirmary for Femaville 29. Hannah Lawes was stitting by my bedside.
“Feeling better, Mr. Hedges? You nearly disrupted the exodus.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Your fellow refugees. They’ve all been bussed to their next station in life.”
I sat up on my cot. “What are you trying to tell me? Didn’t you see the city, Djamala? Didn’t you see it materialize where the children built it? Didn’t you see all the refugees flood in?”
Hannah Lawes’s cocoa skin drained of vitality as she sought to master what were evidently strong emotions in conflict.
“What I saw doesn’t matter, Mr. Hedges. It’s what the government has determined to have happened that matters. And the government has marked all your fellow refugees from Femaville 29 as settled elsewhere in the normal fashion. Case closed. Only you remain behind to be dealt with. Your fate is separate from theirs now. You certainly won’t be seeing any of your temporary neighbors again for some time—if ever.”
I recalled the spires and lakes, the pavilions and theaters of Djamala. I pictured Ethan Duplessix rattling the bars of the Iron Grotto. I was sure he’d reform, and be set free eventually. I pictured Nia and Izzy, swanning about in festive apartments, happy and safe, with Izzy enjoying the fruits of her labors.
And myself the lame child left behind by the Pied Piper.
“No,” I replied, “I don’t suppose I will see them again soon.”
Hannah Lawes smiled at my acceptance of her dictates, but only for a moment, until I spoke again.
“But then, you can never be sure.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Common wisdom has it that a beginning writer seeks to emulate his literary favorites. Only by so doing can he or she ultimately achieve a unique voice. While this observation is certainly, demonstrably true, it is also false, insofar as it seems to imply that there comes a point where a “mature” writer no longer has any models uppermost in his mind when starting a new story. Each writer is supposed to be a nonpareil, guided only his unexampled vision.
If so, then I am far from a “mature” writer. For I often choose to be inspired by the writers whose work I admire, deliberately modeling a story on what I perceive to be their style and virtues and concerns. (Heck, that’s what my entire collection titled Lost Pages is all about!) Like an evangelical wearing a “What Would Jesus Do?” wristband, I don and remove similar invisible wristbands all the time. “What Would Pynchon Do?” “What Would Faulkner Do?” “What Would Heinlein Do?” And so on.
Anyway, aside from the obvious inspiration to be found in the Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans disaster, the impetus for this story stems from wanting to emulate or borrow the admirable mind of Lucius Shepard.
As I once titled a review of Lucius’s work, “The Shepard is my Lord!”
SHUTEYE FOR THE TIMEBROKER
Three AM in the middle of May, six bells in the midwatch, and Cedric Swann, timebroker, was just sitting down to nocturne at his favorite café, the Glialto. He had found an empty table toward the back, where he would be left alone to watch the game.
The game on which his whole future depended.
He took a rolled-up Palimpsest flatscreen from his pocket, snapped it open, and the baby freethinker within the screen, knowing Cedric’s preferences, tuned to a live feed from Pac Bell Park. Shots of the stands showed that the brilliantly illuminated park was full, and that was good news, since Cedric had brokered the event. A timebroker was nothing if he couldn’t deliver warm bodies. B
ut the box score displayed in a corner of the screen held less happy tidings.
The Giants were losing 4-6 against Oakland, with only one more inning to go.
Cedric winced and crumpled, as if pitchforked from within. He had fifty thousand dollars riding on the Giants.
The bet had been a sure thing, intended to offset some of his debts from a recent string of gambling losses. But the fucking Giants had been forced to bench their best pitcher with injuries, just prior to the game. The lanky Afghani newbie had been moved up from the Kabul farm team to boost the fortunes of the San Francisco team after their disastrous ’36 season, and he had indeed done so. But now his absence was killing Cedric. And the club’s remaining players were stumbling around like a bunch of fucking sleepers!
The failure of his home team was most disappointing.
Especially since Cedric didn’t have the fifty thousand dollars he had wagered.
A window opened in Cedric’s Palimpsest, showing the facial of the Glialto’s resident freethinker. As usual, the restaurant’s freethinker wore the likeness of Jack Kerouac. On the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Kerouac’s birth, there had been a big Beat revival nationwide—but nowhere more fervently than in San Francisco—and the Glialto freethinker had adopted its avatar then, although the café’s personality was decidedly less bohemian than old Jack.
“Happy six bells, Cedric. What’ll you have this hour?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Jesus, I’m not even hungry—”
“C’mon now, you know what your mom would say. ‘Skip caloric nocturne, risk metabolic downturn.’”
“Yeah, right, if my Mom was the fucking NIH or FDA. Oh, all right, then, make it something simple. Give me a plate of fish tacos. And an Anchor Steam.”
“Coming right up, Cedric.”
The little window closed just in time to afford Cedric a complete panoramic view of an A’s player slamming a homerun out of the park.
“Christ! I am so drowsily boned!”
The Paul Di Filippo Megapack Page 51
