David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  But as the ball bored in, the glowing chains flashed, and inches from impact, the ball simply stopped, deformed like wax and clanked into a seven-fingered hand.

  A hand, the hunter realized, now squeezing the iron back into a ball.

  Intervention complete, the hunter backpedaled and ran.

  “Why,” Ana asked, her eyes going dim. “Why my son, why him, why—?”

  Distracted by motion, some flit past her face, Ana wondered if she was delirious, if the lights of her mind were all blowing out. Because how else to explain that thing buzzing past; was it really alive, were winter dragonflies white?

  “Your son will live,” the horror rasped. “But when I return—”

  Hanging on his words, Ana watched him open his metal mesh hand, an action attracting the dragonfly, whatever the winged-thing was. But after receiving some instruction or approval to proceed, it fluttered off, flew up through the snow.

  “When I come back for your son, then he will tell us, then we will learn. But if not—”

  Pausing a moment, he pulled the stick from her chest.

  “Fear not, Anastasia, we are merciful. We — have progressed.”

  And to prove it, he drove the crooked wood quick through her flesh and hard into ground.

  Done, her last flash of thought. Yet impaled clean through with her life running out, Ana still hoped, still clung to the prayer this desperate evasion had at least bought him time. Not much, but she did what she could, and as her last breath fell and the dragonfly soared, she wondered how he would live and where he would go, for what chance did he have, her son now alone.

  “Shots, they were shooting!” screamed Willy, now squeezing a payphone off Highway 41. “They shot the house windows, the TV inside, hell, they even blasted my rig!”

  A faint whine interrupted, turned Willy toward his truck. He’d left his driver’s door open, but the front seat looked empty, no one there.

  “Look,” Willy resumed, assuming some varmint or cat, “just send a cop before it’s too late, I—?”

  Another whine gave Willy pause; had a creature invaded the back of his truck?

  Steeling himself for a feral encounter, he set down the phone, then stepped to the tailgate and grabbed hold. Willy yanked it open with a forewarning shout, but instead of scaring some varmint or cat, he found only a horse blanket, an improvised bed for a nine-month-old boy.

  A shock, certainly, but so was the bug, some late-season freak that stung through the blanket and made the boy cry. And though Willy swiped at the insect, he missed; and then it was gone, then the white wings buzzed up toward the clouds, some dark rumble of haze.

  Chapter 2

  Swerve

  — October 2015, Somewhere in Detroit—

  An old man waited, sat alone before dawn on a bench.

  Unaware what happened nearly fourteen years ago — the Upper Michigan woman stabbed with a stick, her baby found in a truck — the man waited, in every sense, in the dark. And though sitting comes easy to most, requires little thought, he had to watch his balance because the battered bench tilted, sloped between the stuff that held it up, one sideways shopping cart and two broken chairs. A foundation of debris, they replaced the bench’s support frame, ninety-two pounds of steel stolen by thieves and sold for scrap for the price of a pizza, maybe a large.

  He adjusted his hat. A relic from some unnumbered anniversary or sale at Sears, it complemented his Timex, his always-wound watch he now checked once more. Should be here, he thought, but as he peered down the street, he saw no headlights, so sighing at the dark and turning away, he beheld, once more, the horror nearby. Nothing galactic, not a spectral malevolence draped in chains, this horror was simply his yard.

  Picketed by a many-wintered fence, ruled by creeper and weed, his fertile crescent of blight now, somehow, also grew trash. Porcelain and plastic, fabric and fiberglass and forensic bits of kitchen and chicken and shoe — splurges and essentials once Visa’d and wrapped now rotted or rusted under his hand-painted sign, a sagging No Dumping Allowed.

  A distant racket quickened the old man’s pulse. Strained and labored, bolts in a can incessantly shook, the noise of the bus both dulled and thrilled. So many hours riding alone, so many fights in the aisle and fogging perfumes — yet the quality of the ride, his safety, in fact, depended on the question now lumbering in, the crucial where will I sit?

  He rubbed his left knee. Rolled his neck. A boxer warming his joints, the old man readied for conflict, the three step climb into the mass transit ring. And missed right now, as he always did, his car. But as thoughts of his Dart lead back to his yard, to flowers planted with his wife and grass mowed with his boys, he wondered if anything remained, some rose or violet or ball under trash. Had they really all lived there, wasn’t everything just new? Had his friends and neighbors, wife and boys — had everyone really just left?

  Haunted by what happened and where it all went, the man on the bench never noticed the arrival, the great wheeled whale beaching the curb. Instead and as usual, he worried if his door locks would hold, if those plywood windows still deterred. Three bedrooms and a bath once loud with music and cribbage and rotary dial rings, his memories pushed back, just like his home, against the siege, the slow dissolve of East Detroit. But how much longer they both would last, he couldn’t tell, so as mornings came and every night went, he just waited for something to happen or someone to come, some sign from above saying good enough, old man, you’re done.

  “You ridin’?’

  The old man blinked, looked up at the bus.

  “I said, you ridin’ or what!” the driver called down.

  The old man winced, braced for the pain of ascent. He grabbed the shopping cart, pushed himself up, then climbed three steps to the striped rubber summit, the front of the bus.

  Same driver as yesterday, same prison guard cheer. Nothing had changed but the numbers, the new Mega Millions tickets stuffing the driver’s pocket. But before his new rider could wish him good luck, the great bus lurched, and while the old man staggered, the driver dreamt of Corvettes.

  His first big splurge when his Mega Millions hit, the driver imagined himself in a zero-to-sixty, three-second blast. But when he looked up, all he saw was a manhole missing its lid, a great black hole about to swallow his left front wheel. More steel stolen, another pizza sold, and for the driver, an unpaid suspension for one broken bus, so without warning, he swerved hard left.

  Losing his balance on two arthritic knees, the old man careened, pitched down the aisle unable to stop, and Sweet Transit, he was bound for the back. A wild frontier of piercings and shouts and pants clownish with crotch, he hurtled toward the iffy aft end, toward seats marked on eldercare maps with There be minors here. And when he tripped over a foot, then grabbed a rail, he traded velocity for turn and swung into a seat, an arrival that jostled a passenger, some head in a hood.

  The old man cringed. Expecting a cussing, likely a knife, he knew he’d never make it, wouldn’t see the next stop. But as the bus resumed its inexorable grind, the hood beside neither turned nor stirred. Which, after a moment, gave the old man pause; did he sit with the dead?

  A minute passed, then one more, then he couldn’t help it, the man had to know. So, pretending to wind his watch, he peeked: dark pants, darker boots — the rider beside dressed like a boy, but what was that in his lap, a book? Assuming he stole it, and suspecting, if swung, such a hardcover tome could break him in half, the man chose silence, just stared straight ahead.

  Then the bus turned, tilted through a crosswalk and passed a short skirt. Young again, the old man swiveled a bit, but then it wasn’t legs he noticed, it was the coat. An army surplus relic worn by the boy, its faded shoulder patch featured a big red ‘1.’

  “Matilda!” the old man cried. And though his outburst turned a few heads, the hood stayed put. “My brother wore that, this very same patch, and after a few drinks, he’d sing that crazy song, hah! You sing ‘Matilda,’ too?”

  No an
swer came, not at first, but then the hood moved, began to nod.

  “Yes? You know an old song like that? Well, I’m surprised, I haven’t heard it for years.” And as worry started to wane, the old man craned a little, eyed the boy’s book.

  “So what’s that, you like to read?” he asked, squinting at the title. “History, is it? Good, yes, good stuff. Learn the past, you’ll be grateful for today. As for me—”

  “Conant!” shouted the driver.

  “My history is here.” And as the bus slowed to a stop, the old man peered down Conant Street, a sleepy gray road anchored by a twelve-foot ice cream cone. “Down this street, this and the next, was the greatest factory ever built. We had our own foundry, hospital, electric plant — ever heard of Dodge Main?”

  Still no answer, yet the boy in the hood kept nodding, never slowed or stopped.

  “Yes? Well, again I’m surprised, because that was years ago, quite a few, back in the day when some called Detroit ‘Paris of the Midwest.’” Interrupted by new riders, three young women in black hijabs, the old man shifted his gaze. “And there, just to the south? That’s where I worked, where we built the best cars ever made, all of us; Poles, Germans, coloreds, a few Slavs — Did we always get along? Huh, what family does? But it wasn’t just cars we built, we made a town. Homes, churches, schools—” And as his voice trailed off, the bus lumbered on, left Conant Street behind.

  “But then it changed,” the old man sighed. “The riots in sixty-seven, fires and shooting, looting — then the big strike. Then, of course, then came the new rules, people in Washington who never built a car in their life telling us how to build ours, how far we must go on a gallon of gas; what? Who gave them such power, did I miss something? Did our presidents become kings?”

  “Campeau,” the driver announced.

  “Joe Campeau, yes, this was it!” the old man enthused, now eyeing the next street. “When I was your age, I’d jump the trolley and ride clear to the factory gate, oh! And you wouldn’t know it now, but this road was busy, so many trucks in and out — and there, see that?”

  He tried to point, but a boarding rider blocked his view with an expanse of pants, a rump of velour sequined, in understated class, with Juicy.

  “There!” the old man shouted, pointing toward a steeple and cross. “Saint Florian’s, that’s where I married the most beautiful girl in Poletown, and you know? Three months later, my brother married her cousin, hah! A crazier time you never saw, every weekend was friends, family, cards — But then my brother, instead of a honeymoon on Lake Erie, he boards a boat with a few thousand more for Korea. And sang Matilda. Then a few months later, his letter comes, but I could barely read it, his hand must have been shaking so much. He said it was cold there, that place called Chosin.”

  Then he said nothing, just stared ahead at the years behind. Returning moments later, he sought distraction, something familiar or warm, so he glanced at the riders beside, but every face ignored. So, he watched the passing stores, but the Bangladeshi lettering mystified and the abandoned houses with spray-painted scrawls reminded of a war, foreclosures at dawn. And with no place else to look, his gaze defaulted to the signage inside, to overhead placards about data plans and Unlimited Text!, exclamatory gibberish more cryptic than the scrawls.

  “We played catch,” the old man resumed. “And when the Tigers or Lions played, we’d throw in the yard, my boys — they called it our park.” He smiled. “But children grow, families move — and when homes go empty, people, some idiots, they dump their trash. And if you don’t clear it, they just dump more, but my knees are bad, so it just piles up and what can I do. And police? What police, where did they go? The last cop I saw, he arrested my wife!”

  “Oakland,” the driver called, now cranking a turn.

  “It’s true, I was there!” insisted the old man. “Just after they closed Dodge Main, the mayor cheated our friends, offered just pennies for their homes, that’s all! And sold or not, the city just smashed them all, even hospitals, and when my wife tried to save our church? She was handcuffed, it’s true! And then it was done, then we’d lost it all; jobs, homes, our town—”

  “Brush Street!” yelled the driver, and without a word, the boy in the hood unzipped a backpack and stuffed in the book

  “And now—” Oblivious to the boy, the old man rubbed his eyes. “These days, it’s not just laws and riots that take our jobs, now it’s machines. Push a few buttons and poof, whatever you want. And machines, they don’t strike.”

  “John R!” declared the driver, approaching another street.

  “Though you know,” the old man mumbled, now starting to smirk, “maybe I’m guilty as well, maybe we started a trend. You know we once made push-button cars?”

  Still quiet, the boy zipped his backpack while nodding his head.

  “You did? My, you are well read. But you’re right, fifty years back, we made cars so advanced, our slogan was ‘suddenly, it’s nineteen-sixty.’ Hah! The whole world buzzing about rockets and space and there I was, putting push-button shifters in cars, we had — what, five gears in a stack?” Trying to remember, he closed his eyes. “Let’s see, drive on top, then second — then first, neutral, and reverse, whoo! Just push a button and away you went, it was crazy, just—”

  “Woodward!” bellowed the driver. “Next stop, Woodward Avenue!”

  Hefting his pack, the hooded boy stood.

  “What, Woodward already?” Confused a moment, the old man eased into the aisle to let the boy out. “My, so fast, either the driver was speeding or you know, I think it was our chat. But if I could say a last thing, offer some very old advice?”

  Jostled by departing riders, the old man braced himself, held on to his hat. But when he looked up, the boy had left, was already hurrying toward the front.

  “It’s the same advice I gave my sons!” the man yelled. “So wherever you go, just remember where you’re from, we—?”

  Stopped in mid-sentence by the opening bus door, the old man watched an inrush of wind flip the boy’s hood. And as the boy stood there, as he waited for Juicy to step down to the curb, the old man stared, tried to read the unhooded head.

  Top of the bell curve, the melting pot mean, the boy’s features seemed diluted, no discernible tribe. Not quite Iberian, neither Asian nor Sioux, he brought to mind a mingling of continents, some hemispherical merge. And with brown eyes and medium hair, this boy of fourteen occupied the chromosomal commons, an Ann Arbor admissions nightmare without pigeon hole-able tint. But as for appeal, how it all worked? Hard to say, but the old man suspected the boy cut a swath quite like himself, a face unused to second glances, perhaps even a first.

  Yet something did catch the old man’s eye, a wire dangled from the boy’s right ear. Struck with empathy — a hearing aid? — the man wondered how many of his words this boy had missed; and that’s why he gathered his breath, why he now unleashed his very old advice.

  “Fight, Matilda!” the old man roared. “In Detroit, we fight!”

  The driver looked back, so did Juicy and the hijabs, and for a moment, so did the boy. But as quick as they looked, they now just ignored, and pulling up his hood, the boy ducked off the bus and ran to the next.

  The old man said no more, just watched the boy go. Why, he wasn’t sure, but he felt an odd anxiety, a gnawing unease. Was it something he said, his remembrance of the cars with the pushbutton shift? Did he muddle some detail, get it all wrong?

  Maybe so, his regretful thought. Hoping it didn’t matter, he found a new seat and tried to forget. But as the diesel groaned and the sway resumed, the days of Dodge Main returned, those push-button shifters so long ago installed.

  And despite all distraction, the Wayne State skirts and Woodward Avenue at dawn, his anxiety persisted, refused to release.

  Chapter 3

  Marked

  “Unable to hold Brooklyn, they escaped to Manhattan,” lectured the instructor, his years in Sudan imprinting each vowel.

  “Unable to ho
ld Manhattan,” he continued, now chalking “1776” on a blackboard, “they moved to White Plains, where, at Chatterton Hill, their right flank collapsed. So they left New York, but when the Hudson forts fell in November, they retreated toward New Jersey. Then came December, and with the British at their heels and now also the cold, many fair-weather patriots traded love of liberty for the comfort of the Crown. And so, losing most of their men, they fled to Pennsylvania at just ten-percent their original strength, America’s first army — had failed.”

  The teacher dropped his chalk into a tray and slapped the dust from his hands, but where residue remained, it highlighted ridges of scars. “Defeat-retreat, defeat-retreat, or in the words of Thomas Paine, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’”

  Turning toward his audience, Father Nkomo surveyed his high school class, twenty-six freshmen boys in white shirts and blue ties. And the boys stared back, sat upright and still with a concrete respect rebar’d with fear, for despite the Roman collar worn by this fifty-ish priest, his six-foot-plus frame displayed enough weathering to suggest a past less classroom and more clash, a knowledge of the Fifth Commandment acquired first-hand.

  “But Paine also wrote, ‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,’ so—” Glimpsing something at the back of the room, Father Nkomo ambled past his desk and casually, without pause, snuck a scissors into his palm. “Given the situation — hungry, freezing, vastly outnumbered — well, what if one of us were counseling General Washington, could we offer any advice? Mr. Lasky?”

  Lumpy and pasty, the pallor of potatoes buttered and mashed, young Mr. Lasky leaned toward the blackboard map, a chalk-drawn confusion of roads, a river, and stick-men troops. “Well,” Lasky waffled, “I don’t know, maybe just tell him to — negotiate?”

  “Surrender?” snapped Nkomo.