Interference

by S. L. LUCK

  A sudden slap of wind gusted against the side of the bus. George redirected the wheel. Again the wind pushed. Wiping the crust from the corners of his eyes, George straightened and focused on the road. Another blast of air now stirred the passengers and George tightened his spine, alert to the strange weather. The misleading sunshine toyed with the bus, threading it through wild mechanisms of pressure, thrust, and extraction until purses were tossed and wallets were thrown and eyeglasses were jostled. George switched his mic on again.

  “Looks like we’re going to have a bit of a rough ride today, folks. I don’t know where that came from, but I think we better tighten our belts. Please put your chairs u—”

  The bus rocked violently, its rear skittering across fresh leaf-litter into a lane of oncoming traffic. George yanked on the wheel. Rose Mayberry screamed. Prayers were thrust to the Lord, the sign of the cross was made in the front seat, the second, the third, the fourth. Passengers prayed to God, to Buddha, to the Creator. Ernie Stiles, a devout atheist, called for his cat, Domer, to somehow rescue him. With great effort, George clamped the wheel right, more right, left, more left, until the wind slowed and the bus once again settled.

  George adjusted his headset, which had almost fallen off his head. “You all right there, folks? I’m going to pull over and conduct a safety check. Please do not unbuckle until I have stopped the vehicle. I repeat, do not unbuckle until I have stopped the vehicle.”

  He glanced into the rear-view mirror. No major harm done, though behind him Rose looked green with nausea; the vomit bag Simone Gladriuk pushed at her was subsequently filled. George looked back to the road. Three blocks ahead, on the other side of the Callingwood Bridge, there was a gas station where they could safely stop.

  George said, “We’re going to stop at the Petro up ahead and see how everyone is doing. Sit tight and I’ll have us parked in no time.”

  Usually, George was fanatical about turning the microphone off. One wet sneeze on his second shift fifteen years ago had taught him the importance of inhibiting his communication, but his current anxiety scrambled his senses, and he inadvertently left the line open. Shaking, George brought the bus past the football fields on the left and began his trek over the Pacifica Inlet on the right. Wind patted the carriage, so George eased off the accelerator. They were going ten kilometers less than the speed limit, but George was a safety guy, and he was not inclined to risk another gust as he entered the bridge. Slowly, slowly, the bus advanced onto the platform and as they passed the first connection plate, George’s heart fluttered with apprehension. He did not know why this happened; only, there was a feeling that came to him, something like dread, something like foreboding, something like intuition. He shuddered, trying to shake the feeling away but as he looked down at the rush of water in the angry river far below, his stomach soured. Hands tight on the wheel, George took his guests further over the water. The short span of the inlet was of no consolation, for George felt the stirrings of an encircling evil so deeply that his bladder convulsed, and the sharp sting of urine caused him to gasp.

  “You all right there, George?” Bernard Clemmens leaned toward him from his front aisle seat.

  Before George could respond, wind lashed the carriage. Bernard hollered as an SUV smashed into the side of the bus. George veered left, left, left, anywhere but right, missing one car, two, three, speeding in their direction from the oncoming lane. Again, George brought the bus back into the lane, only to be slammed by another gust, another blast, another squall. The bus rocked. Rose vomited. Ernie shouted his cat’s name. Earl and Ginger reached for their granddaughter. Ned Chambers fainted. Spotting the end of the bridge just a few hundred meters away, George hit the gas pedal. From the opposite direction, a semi truck hauling three shiny new tractors suddenly veered into their lane. George swerved away. The semi swerved away. Wind thrashed from the left, from the right, down the center of the bridge, on all sides of every vehicle, of every cable. Then—just as George regained control—the semi hit.

  Terrible waves of inertia cut, sheared, rammed, sliced, and smashed glass, steel, fabric, bodies. If George had been looking, he would have witnessed the bus snap one of the bridge cables as it breached the guardrail. If George had been looking, he would have noticed the view of the road escape his windshield and the dark panorama of the Callingwood River bloom in its place. If George had been looking, he would have seen Ernie and Bernard slide down the aisle and hit the windshield as the bus tipped over the side of the bridge. George would have seen purses and wallets and jackets plummet and mount the windshield. He would have heard shrieks and wails and the sickening sound of bones breaking. He would have smelled the failure of bladders and bowels, the rupture of Styrofoam coffee cups, the expulsion of many stomachs, the first wisps of diesel. But George did not see, hear, or smell any of this before they hit the water. He was already dead.

  2

  Sylvia Baker adjusted the collar of her jacket. In the frigid corner of the guard shelter where she huddled waiting for the children to arrive, she shivered, regretting her decision to volunteer for another year. It always happened this way, though. When the freshness of spring softened the grievance of winter, and when the splendor of summer tempered the hardship of rainy months outside, Sylvia gave in. She was the best, they said. They needed her, they said. Westgate Elementary couldn’t do without the city’s best crossing guard, entreated Joan Meyers, the school administrator.

  Then came the cards from the children and letters from the parents and, this past year, even a letter and gift from Mayor Falconer herself, commending Sylvia for twenty-five years of volunteering. Their gift was strategic, of course. Presently, it was on her back doing its damnedest to keep her warm and the wind out, and as she pulled up her zipper and tightened her hood, she vowed this year would be her last.

  In the amber cast of the early morning, she peered across the street at a townhome, from which the glow of a television beamed between unclosed curtains. Three heads covered her view of the screen, but one shifted slightly as it leaned onto a nearby shoulder. Sylvia squinted, spying a breaking news report in an alarming red block at the top of the screen. The heads moved again. Sylvia stood to get a better view but felt a gentle tug at the front of her vest.

  “Morning Mrs. Baker,” a small voice said.

  “Good morning Charlie.” Sylvia nodded to the young boy and stepped out of her shelter, sucking in her breath at the sight of his red ears. “Shouldn’t you be putting your toque on, young man?” The boy shrugged indifferently. Sylvia plucked Charlie’s blue hat from his side pocket and stuck it on his head, patting it over his ears. “Now, isn’t that better?” she asked.

  The boy was too busy blowing breath clouds to answer her, so she squeezed his hand and told him to wait on the sidewalk while she prepared the road. Wind slapped her back, her face, the thin layer of her pants as she paused in the middle of the road where she held up her stop sign. Two cars slowed then stopped as they waited for Charlie to cross but his head was turned in the direction of the townhomes, all windows now bright and active with television broadcast. A third car stopped. A fourth.

  “Charlie Zabrowski, start walking before they run out of gas!” Sylvia called. The boy scurried past her and with an aimless wave, entered the school gate and disappeared beyond the front doors.

  Quickly, she turned back to the guard house, using her boot to sweep out an accumulation of leaves that had blown inside. The next twenty minutes went like that: sweeping, stopping, shivering, hustling kids across the breezy street. She recovered fallen mittens, hats, homework, hairclips, and even a shoe when Logan Biles followed too close and stepped on the back of Misty Heywood’s ankle. The littlest ones, Sylvia’s favorites, always came late, as the junior and senior kindergarteners were last to begin their day in the library at the front of the school. Sylvia was often invited to join them while they took turns reading aloud.

  She stretched her neck, rolling her head along her shoulders as the day slowly, slowly b
egan to warm. Down the block, she spotted five little heads bobbing toward her. At once, two broke out running, laughing, and racing each other. A mother called for them to stop. They ran faster. A father called for them to stop. They picked up speed, the wind devilishly pushing against their backs. Sylvia stepped out from the guardhouse. Her voice boomed through the wind. “Ronnie and Bobbie! You heard your parents!” The boys slowed, elbowing each other as the rest of the group caught up. Gusts swelled around her head, against her eyes, over the tight line of her mouth. It grew stronger, buffeting Sylvia from all sides as she waited for the last stragglers, two pairs of sisters, to join them at the corner. “Hold on to your hats!” she instructed the nine tiny faces squinting up at her. “And wait here.”

  The children shook with cold while Sylvia looked left, right, left again. Traffic picked up so the process was slower but then Sylvia’s legs began to tingle. Small pulses of numbness ran from her toes, then to her ankles, then her knees and to her hips. She felt a light prickling in her ribs, in the cartilage of her shoulders. There was something like the gentle touching of fingers against her brainstem and for a moment, Sylvia felt an intrusion akin to a stranger unlocking the door in the middle of the night. The faceless thing crawled inside her, first superficially, then scratched and dug and finally clawed into the septum that separated her physical self from her spiritual self.

  Sylvia sniffed, glaring down at the children behind her. Many cars passed as the children waited. The lingering parents exchanged looks. New heat began to rise in Sylvia’s body and as she took a little girl’s hand, the child recoiled at her touch. Sylvia snatched the girl’s hand back, pulling her into the busy road where cars now streamed steadily in all directions. The girl whimpered, trying to remove herself from Sylvia’s hot grasp.

  “Hey!” The father of one of the children called to them but Sylvia had lost that part of herself that could respond. “Hey!” The father cried again, running toward them while a mother held the other children back.

  A slow trickle of blood fell from Sylvia’s nose. The girl screamed as Sylvia dragged her further into the street. A horn blared. Another. Tires screeched. Parents shrieked. Sylvia’s head turned into the traffic.

  And then she collapsed.

  3

  Ed Norman cradled his cup of peppermint tea as he sat in his wheelchair and watched the giant maples shed great swaths of leaves onto the wide lawn of Southbridge Retirement. It had been his home for the better part of six years, and Ed enjoyed a comfortable camaraderie with the nursing staff and most of his fellow residents, who sat watching the leaves with him in the common area.

  From behind bifocals and glaucoma and cataracts, many sets of eyes rose upward, targeting the slow descent of leaves until they hit the ground. Teas were sipped, blankets were snuggled, and sweet biscuits were nibbled thoughtfully amid occasional expressions of delight or awe.

  The morning wind that had battered the windows and shook the veranda had abated as suddenly as it began, and now the residents gathered appreciatively as their anxiety returned to other parts of their psyche. Footsteps plodded up behind Ed, and then a flat hand found and cupped his shoulder.

  “Thought the roof was going to go there for a while,” Chester Collins said, his eyebrows cresting to the middle of his liver-spotted forehead. “What do you think that was? Sign that winter’s coming, or maybe we’re getting what’s left of that hurricane … the one by Texas, what’s that one called again? Xanadu?” He pushed a plate of cheese and crackers at Ed and sat down beside him.

  “Xavier,” Ed corrected him. “But we’re too far north for that, Chester. I think we’re in for an early winter. Wouldn’t be surprised if the lawn is white in the morning.”

  “Ah,” Chester said, slapping Ed’s shoulder. “I don’t feel it in my bones yet.” He rolled his shoulders, tested his knees, splayed his fingers, experimenting. “I think we got three or four weeks yet. Let’s hope you’re wrong, Eddie.”

  Ed’s own body was no weather gauge as Chester’s was. Unlike what many of the other residents experienced, he felt no pain in his joints with the changing of the weather. While the omens of snow and rain crept up and clung to their cartilage and tightened their tendons, Ed was physically unaffected. He could move as he wished without great effort or pain, though sluggishly, as expected. Seasonal difficulty was not seasonal at all for Ed since his affliction reposed inside him every day that he continued to live. It was inside his brain, had been there for twenty-three years and refused to leave. That nagging, disagreeable feeling that was so much worse than any physical malady: doubt.

  His first experience with heaven was seventy-two years ago, when he and Bessie were both fourteen and she had come charging at him in her new roller skates. Ed had just left Tucker’s with a bag of nails for his father when he heard screaming behind him. There, coming down the long slope of sidewalk in a rustling pink dress, hands flailing, knees buckling, hair swishing over her face, Bessie yelled for him to get out of the way. Her warning had the opposite effect, for instead of dipping away from the sidewalk, he stood captivated, clutching his bag of nails as Bessie barrelled toward him. Even from a distance, even with the brunette flag of hair across her eyes, even with her dress blown sideways and the ivory hem of her underpants perilously exposed, he thought he’d seen an angel.

  The instant Bessie smashed into him, they toppled together onto the sidewalk. His bag of nails flew and their knees and elbows were cut and their faces were rashed, but Ed saw in her the remaining years of his life. Her green eyes shone with tears, and in his stupor he went to brush away the wetness on her cheek, only to deposit a dark smear of blood under her eye from an unnoticed cut along his thumb. If she hadn’t worried over him, maybe he could have walked away and forgotten her. Maybe. But she fretted and fussed so much that by the time she had him back on his feet and a tissue on his bleeding hand, Ed knew he was in love.

  Bessie was all things good and all things right. Whereas Ed’s own family wasn’t of religious disposition, Bessie insisted on it. “God is all things good and all things right,” she would tell him, and that had stuck with Ed. He grew to understand that it was true. Like Bessie, God gave him purpose, gave him redemption, and prescribed a way of living that made sense to Ed. It was through Bessie that Ed found the Holy Redeemer Church, where he would first be parishioner and then administrator with what he came to believe was divine business acuity.

  For many years, Ed had no complaints, as God really was all things good and all things right. Then the church burnt down, with Father Pauliuk’s own wife Donna and his curate, Stu Kline, trapped inside. He tried to see their terrible deaths as Divine Purpose, but the rationale felt wrong, all wrong. It wrenched at him, loosening the convictions he thought had irrevocably tightened with Bessie’s gentle guidance over time. It made him wonder. It made him think. It made him sick. But Bessie, always stronger than Ed had ever been, insisted that understanding was not anyone’s to have, and that God had His way.

  He prayed for answers, got none. Even as his convictions receded, he talked to the Lord, invested himself in the church, in its people, in its doctrine. So it was that little by little, Ed felt his beliefs gather again, tightening with time and with the loosening of memory. Had Ed died before Bessie, he would have gone to God with open arms and with steadfast love. But three years after the Redeemer fire, God had taken Bessie in her sleep during a weekend with the grandchildren. In an instant, all the things that fortified Ed, all the things that made him what he was had gone, and so began his life of purgatory.

  “You okay there Eddie?” Chester squeezed Ed’s shoulder.

  Ed sniffed and sipped his now cold tea. “Huh? Yeah. Sorry, Chester. Was just thinking. Hey, you making the float again for the parade this year? I heard Miles Simpkon is bent on trying to outdo you.”

  A gravelly laugh erupted from Chester’s throat. “Ha! That guy, I’ll tell you, he’s never going to stop until he gets that ribbon, Eddie. Three years first place, but I’m goi
ng for four and, let me tell you, this one’s going to be a zinger, Eddie, the best one yet. We got hydraulics this year! My son’s been working on it all summer.”

  The glow of pride spread across Chester’s face, wide across the teeth and temples. For the next three weeks, this face would boast and pique and delight in the making of Southbridge’s annual float. Around every corner and at every gathering, this face would fill in even the smallest spaces of solitude with news of ingenuity and cunning and unimaginable grandeur. How Chester lived to hear the ladies gasp and feel the men nod on appreciatively, his stories expanding to fit the depth of their loneliness. So great was the buildup that Southbridge’s first-place achievement each of the last three years had been anticlimactic and secondary to the production itself. Ed now reflected that the three weeks leading up to the Garrett Fall Festival were the only three weeks of the year he could actually stand to be around Chester, which now made him say: “Can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with.”

  Chester leaned so close that Ed could smell coffee on his breath and see specks of crackers between his teeth and on his lips. Chester said, “We got a dragon this year, Eddie. Fire and ice, big-bang sha-boom type of stuff that’ll blow their socks off. Jeremy made it so the head and tail move. Fire as high as the sky! We’ll have to keep the kids back at least twenty feet or they’ll roast!” Chester’s hand went to his forehead. “Maybe we need a sign or something, huh? Yeah. A sign.” Chester’s eyes drifted in thought, then fell on the cluster of residents gathering around the television.