Canni

by Daniel O'Connor

  Peach, plum, lemon, a hint of jasmine. Vanilla and patchouli were also present. And leather. Probably too much leather. The aroma of the leather seats was even overpowered by the lingering cowhide of the lathered leather. Not so much like the safety of grandpa’s old recliner or the excitement of a new car. This scent was more reminiscent of having one’s face shoved into the pocket of a sixth-grade bully’s weathered baseball mitt.

  The bus driver had been pretty good. No sudden stops or herky-jerky reactions. Almost never ran over those reflective warning bump lane dividers. That was one way that he judged the abilities of most drivers.

  “My Lord, I have such terrible gas,” whispered the woman to her companion, two rows behind him. Not only did he hear her hushed confession, he already knew about her digestive issues. He was willing to bet she had some microwaved White Castle burgers for lunch.

  Thud!

  He froze for an instant. But there was no follow-up scream, no panic, no stampede for the bus doors.

  No canni.

  Just a piece of dropped luggage four or five rows ahead, most likely.

  He hadn’t seen it fall. In fact, he hadn’t seen anything.

  Ever.

  Blind since birth, he was often asked what he saw. Shapes? Light and shadow? Black?

  “Nothing,” would always be his polite response. “I see nothing. What do you sighted types currently see behind you? That is what I see in front of me.”

  People always had a hard time with that. Couldn’t get their minds around it. Sometimes insisted he saw black.

  “Nope. Not black. I see nothing.”

  He ran his fingers across his braille magazine, taking in Emeril Lagasse’s tips on the use of citrus and sea salt. Nothing he hadn’t read before. He liked a bit of repetition. It ingrained things in his memory. In days past, he’d surely have had some heavy cups on his ears, most likely enjoying the talents of Weather Report, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, or Return to Forever. If he’d smoked a bowl, he might listen to the ones he called The Charlies, Parker and Mingus.

  But now, in the new America, he had to listen to the world beyond the headphones.

  Always listen.

  The sun was almost down. He could tell by the angle it hit his neck through the side bus window. He was waiting for darkness. In many ways it could be the great equalizer, should he need it.

  The seat beside him—the one vacated by Ms. Leather—creaked. He heard the air escape from it as his own chair shook. Between all of that, and fact that he perceived a hardy exhale from an angle above his own ear, he’d deduced that a rather large person had landed next to him.

  A brief, deep throat-clear and a scant rub from rock-sturdy triceps told him there was a physically formidable man in the next seat. The new neighbor might require a scant reapplication of deodorant, but his breath had been recently freshened.

  “Mind if I set myself here, my man?”

  “Oh, not at all,” he answered. From the voice, the inflections, and trace of accent, he figured the fellow to be African-American, probably not directly from the South, but likely a generation removed from legit Southerners.

  “I think my prior seat was about to surrender, man. This one seems stronger, ya know? There I was,” said the big guy, “thinking I’m all gangsta for riding a non-security bus all by myself, and I see you sittin’ here, calm as all shit, with a blind man’s cane by your side.”

  “Well, I could be Matt Murdock,” he grinned.

  “Huh?”

  “You read comics? That’s Daredevil! My dad used to read them to me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Never read the comics, but I saw the movie and the TV show. Brother was a blind bad ass.”

  “That’s me. Either that, or I desperately wanted a ticket on a pricey security bus, but they were all sold out and I sheepishly settled for this.”

  “Ride at your own risk, right?” laughed the large fellow.

  “Had to sign a waiver.”

  “Same here.”

  “I messed with the guy and told him that, for the document to be legal, he had to read the entire three pages aloud to me, since I can’t read it myself.”

  “He did it?”

  “Started to, but I let him off the hook.”

  “Well, Daredevil, my mama raised me to look out for others. Big believer in karma, my mama. So, if someone on this bus flips, I’ll make sure you get out alive. I was an O-lineman at UCLA. I can handle myself. The name’s Willie.”

  The blind rider was about to introduce himself when he heard the commotion.

  “Outta the fucking way!” yelled a cigarette-ravaged voice toward the front of the bus. There were some scurrying sounds barely more than two feet away. He grabbed for his cane and awaited word from his new friend.

  The feet pounded up the aisle, toward the back of the bus.

  “It’s nothing,” said Willie. “Looks like a couple of bros had too much to drink.”

  The foot traffic hurried past them and to the rear.

  Willie continued, “One of ‘em is taking the other to the head to hurl. Seem to be gettin’ their Vegas on before actually gettin’ to Vegas.”

  Exhale.

  “You can snooze if you want, or listen to some jams,” said Willie. “I promise I got you covered.”

  “That is very reassuring,” he answered. “My only issue is, Willie, what if you flip?”

  LAS VEGAS

  Cash, Rob, and Paul were twenty minutes into their black tunnel when they heard the scuffling. Every argument Cash had made for avoiding the tunnels had been shot down by the men. Their answers sounded idiotic, yet completely plausible. She marveled at the thought that when the best chance for a safe, relatively normal life rested in the damp bowels beneath Sin City, the world had finally turned into the shit pile we’d long been warned of.

  “Okay, what the fuck is that?” whispered Cash, as she spun the head of the Maglite toward the sound.

  The noise in daylight might not have been particularly noteworthy. Here in the moist darkness of the unknown it was terrifying.

  They called them equalizers. Basically large holes in the side walls of some of the tunnels, used to facilitate overflow.

  The scuffling came from the other side of the wall, beyond the first equalizer. Paul walked toward the hole. He could easily climb through it, should he desire.

  “Wha . . . What are you doing?” asked Cash, keeping her voice hushed.

  “Going to see what the noise is.”

  “No! We should keep moving. Quietly moving away from the noise.”

  “We have to see if it’s an actual threat, then deal with it.”

  “What are we, Navy SEALs? If it’s a canni, we should avoid it until it flips back to human.”

  Paul ignored her and stuck his illuminated head through the hole, miner’s helmet-first.

  “Rob,” she pleaded, looking over at where she knew her boyfriend stood. She couldn’t see him in the blackness because her light was trained on Paul, and the hole.

  No answer.

  “Rob?”

  She swung her light to find him. She saw the luggage. No Rob.

  Her body grew cold.

  “Paul, I don’t see Rob,” she said.

  He didn’t respond either. She swung her light back to the equalizer. Paul was gone, likely through to the tunnel beyond the hole.

  Now there was more noise in the adjacent drain, where Paul might be. She had no choice but to gravitate toward it. Her body felt like ice. She wanted to be near Paul since Rob had vanished. She dreaded each step she took toward the hole, but anything was better than standing in the middle of the black tunnel alone.

  Her foot stepped on and audibly cracked a hypodermic needle near the wall. She ignored it and approached the equalizer. She sensed a slight breeze coming through from the next tunnel. She wasn’t about to climb through without peeking. The flashlight went through first.

  Scanning the darkness with her shaky spotlight, she could see a figure up ahead. The figure
also held a light, though not nearly as bright as hers. It was illuminating something on the ground. It looked like a long puddle, or small stream, of sorts . . . but it appeared to be moving. The distant light source initially blinded her from identifying the person holding it.

  She squinted as she stepped through the equalizer.

  It was her missing boyfriend. The light was coming from the flashlight app on his phone.

  “What is it, Rob?” she asked, no longer bothering to whisper.

  “Come here, Cash,” he answered. “Look at this.”

  She hurried toward him, her body warming a bit. Puddles splashed beneath her. This tunnel was oddly wetter than the one from which they’d come.

  “Where is Paul?” she asked, on her approach.

  “Down there,” he said, pointing vaguely into the black behind him.

  Cash saw no sign of Paul’s miner’s light.

  “Down where?”

  “Further down somewhere. Look at this, baby.”

  Cash followed the light app’s glow to the wet ground and trained her more powerful Mag on the area.

  Crayfish.

  Lots of ‘em. Scurrying through the shallow puddles and thin streams. Tiny lobsters living not in the Louisiana bayou or the swamps of Madagascar but in manmade caves below the Vegas Strip.

  “Okay, that’s weird,” said Cash. “But those creepy crawlers weren’t the ones making all that noise. Why are we wasting time here, Rob?”

  “It’s fascinating,” he replied. “Paul’s looking around for the source of the noise. If he needs me, I’m right here.”

  Footsteps. Splashing.

  Both lights left the crayfish and swung down the tunnel. Here came the bouncing light from the miner’s helmet. Cash exhaled, relieved to see Paul.

  Wait. That is Paul, isn’t it?

  It was surely a light from a helmet. The helmet was certainly on a head, but the glare was too much.

  I’m just being paranoid. Of course it’s Paul. I think.

  He was coming faster.

  “Paul?”

  He was almost on them.

  “Paul?”

  “What’s up?” he answered, just as he reached them.

  Cash placed a hand on the damp wall to steady herself. Her heart felt like a kick drum.

  “You freaked me just a bit, Paul,” she said.

  “Sorry. Fucking crawfish!” he replied. “There’s a joint nearby called ‘Hot n’ Juicy’ . . . ”

  “The noise,” interrupted Cash. “Did you find whatever was making that noise?”

  “Nah. Probably just a dweller. Most of them are as harmless as those craws.”

  Cash slid her head into Paul’s view, appearing washed out in the bright beam from his helmet. She squinted.

  “Nobody is harmless anymore.”

  “You’re right,” he replied. “But there is also something I call storm drain paranoia. I had it when I broke my tunnel cherry. And that was before anyone could kill you at any time.”

  It was then that Cash peered into the shadows behind Paul. There stood a figure; pale and unshaven, with a thick old jersey scarf around his thick old Jersey neck. Cash could hear faint rumblings of the traffic above their heads and the occasional clunk of a manhole cover, when pummeled by the tires of an especially weighty vehicle.

  “Yous like da mudbugs?”

  “Fuck!” screamed Cash, as she and Paul spun around.

  “Interesting little bastards,” said the man, as he was hit by all three light sources. “Sometimes I watch ‘em like they was in a fish tank. They’ll lay on their sides, crawl out of their entire skin, and then eat da fuckin’ thing. Oh , I’m sorry, miss. Forgive my language. Then again, you just said basically da same word. The root word, anyway.”

  “Dude, sneaking up like that is not cool,” said Rob.

  “Sorry. Wasn’t sneakin’ up. I just move around quiet, I guess. I’m Joe.”

  Paul moved toward him, “Hey, Polish Joe! It’s me, Paul Bhong.”

  “Oh, yeah!” he answered. “Ain’t seen you in a while. How’s things?”

  “Well, you know. These are my friends, Rob and Caroline.”

  “Pleased to meet yous. Yous exploring da tunnels or movin’ in?”

  “Not sure,” said Rob.

  “It ain’t so bad here, all things considered. Polish Joe,” he said, thrusting out his arm for a handshake.

  Rob found himself studying the man’s hand for filth, but there was none. Just callous—both on Joe’s big palm and maybe in Rob’s trepidation.

  “Hello,” said Rob, as he shook hands. “Nice to meet you. This is Caroline.”

  “Hi,” said Cash, not willing to cross the handshake barrier just yet.

  “So, you’re Polish?” asked Rob, trying to make conversation.

  “Nah.”

  Paul laughed as he spoke, “Polish Joe is from back east. New Jersey, right?”

  “Well, Jersey, by way of Long Island,” he answered.

  “My friends here come from Brooklyn. They’re your neighbors, Joe.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “That’s true,” smiled Rob.

  “Well,” asked Joe, as he took something from his pocket and approached the crayfish puddles, “are yous da expensive coffee, vegan, Arcade Fire, MSNBC, Brooklyn people, or da old school, egg cream, Roll n’ Roaster, stickball-playin’ Brooklyn people?”

  “We’re the kind who don’t need to validate ourselves to random tunnel-dwellers,” answered Cash.

  “Okay. Old school Brooklyn. That’s good. Though a simple ‘Go fuck yourself, hobo’ would’ve been more authentic. Yous might be a mixture of old and new Brooklyn.”

  Polish Joe sprinkled some granules over the water.

  “Shrimp pellets,” he said. “Da mudbugs go nuts for ‘em. Of course, they’ll eat anything at all. Seen ‘em consume each other when times are tough. That’s why I try and feed ‘em when I can. Of all da creatures, from man to mouse, they’re da only ones I truly care about down here. They don’t bite ya like da rats, steal from ya like da people, or crawl all over ya and also bite ya like da roaches and da black widows.”

  Cash tapped Rob on the shoulder.

  “I’m ready to sleep in a dumpster, gas station bathroom, or the freaking House of 1000 Corpses, as long as we are above ground.”

  “Big picture, Cash. Bugs and mice are the least of our problems. I’ll figure something out.”

  Rob turned to Polish Joe, hoping to bring something positive to the moment. “We hear that people aren’t flipping down here, underground.”

  Joe kept his eyes on the crayfish as they bumped and clawed their way to the pellets.

  “Well, that’s some horseshit straight outta Yonkers. I seen an old timer go batso by da double barrel drain under Excalibur. Tore da place to hell. I took off in da other direction and slammed my head into a pipe. See here.”

  He pointed to a scabbed-over gash on his forehead, before concluding, “They found him dead in da Flamingo Wash.”

  Paul responded. “The people in the bunker say no one has gone canni in their community.”

  “Canni?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they’re calling it now.”

  “Hmmm. Ain’t heard that. Anyway, you mean them brainwashed souls in Archie Bunker?”

  “Well, they call it Artsy Bunker, but yes. Word is that everyone there has remained fine, and that they are very secure with self-policing, or whatever.”

  “That could be true. I don’t go down that way. I take the long way around, just to avoid them. Could be a big fuckin’ lie too. More brainwash shit. I got no love for that Don Russo nutcase. Craziest bastard I ever seen and I seen everything the five boroughs and Palisades Park had to offer. Also, steer clear of da old witch in da big pipe.”

  With that, Joe took a handful of the dried pet store shrimp pellets, and ate them. Through falling crumbs, he added, “And fuck Lindenhurst.”

  Rob, Cash, and Paul watched Polish Joe head back into the shadows.
They couldn’t see a thing without their lights, yet he wandered away as if he had the sonar of a Smoky Mountain cave bat. They climbed back through the equalizers into their original tunnel.

  The luggage was gone.

  “Of course,” said Rob. “Why would the suitcases still be here? Everything else has been stolen.”

  “Sin City,” replied Cash.

  Rob scanned his phone flashlight around the tunnel.

  “Save your battery,” said Paul. “That light is the only reason to have a phone down here. Don’t expect any service.”

  He shone his miner’s light to assist Rob. Cash folded her arms. “Do you two actually think someone picked the luggage up and moved it eight feet across the tunnel? It’s long gone.”

  “Maybe they rummaged through it and discarded whatever they didn’t want further up the drain,” answered Rob.

  “It’s gone,” she repeated.

  Paul trained his light far down the tunnel. It seemed endless.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  They had been trudging through the dank cavern for twelve minutes since the luggage went missing. It felt like an hour.

  “You mean there is no faster way in or out of this place?” asked Rob. “We have to do this whenever we come and go?”

  “There are faster ways,” said Paul. “I’m not too familiar with them, though. Also, the way we came is the way I’ve always come, and it seems safer.”

  “One whacked-out crank who consumes pet store pellets and some luggage thieves. That’s the ‘safe’ route?” groaned Cash.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Cash felt cold again.

  “This ‘bunker’ we’re going to . . . ” began Rob.

  “Artsy Bunker,” said Paul. “If you are accepted there—and I am owed a huge favor—you should be safe from the common dangers of the tunnels. Nobody fucks with Don Russo, or anyone who has his blessing.”

  “This Russo dude, if he is so powerful and feared, why does he live down in this shit? You wouldn’t find Vito Corleone living like this,” said Rob.