by SK Dyment
“What kind is she?” asks Mimi.
“What do you mean, ‘what kind?’ The fighting kind. What kind of shape?”
“I suppose.” Mimi bends to listen to the younger woman’s heart, laying her hand on her breast. “Four valves, and four cylinder, if you count both arms and legs,” she remarks.
“What’re you doing to me?” asks Jackie. “She’s dying.”
“No, she’s resting. She’s still alive.”
“Is she paralyzed?”
“Not at all. She’s trancing. She’s talking to someone. She’s angry with the man in the back of the Corvette. She’s talking to his spirit.”
“Will she come out of it? When will she be able to talk to me?”
“Rudy says all the mines have been detonated now by the heat of the fire,” Vespa murmurs, and she opens her eyes slightly.
“Tell him thanks for giving me credit,” says Mimi.
“He says he’s going to tell the police straight up what happened, and he’s not going to implicate us or get us involved,” Vespa adds.
“Tell him you have over forty shrapnel-type wounds on your body and the rest of us aren’t looking all that hot either. So, we’re already involved. But thanks for being so considerate.”
With a comforting rumble, The Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Fire Watch Service, in a vintage 1928 biplane, flies over the fire. The plane dumps a load of Perrier on the simmering wooded area and circles back into town.
“He says he’s a millionaire, so he’ll get in a lot of trouble, but he’ll find a way to cover it up. He says he thanks you for your understanding.”
A second Cessna passes by with volunteers of the Culinary Institute of America and drops a large mousse à la vanille onto the centre of the blaze, all but extinguishing the fire without polluting the forest with artificial creams.
Vespa’s eyes flutter. “He shot him,” says Vespa. “He shot the guy, Turner. He murdered him in cold blood. I’m not getting in the Corvette with him. He shot him.” She falls back into Jackie’s arms.
Ben returns to her side. “Well there’s a seat waiting for you in the Corvette. I think you better go to the hospital.”
She takes Jackie’s hands.
“What am I thinking? There’s no need for Vespa to ride in the Corvette. I brought the pickup! I must be a little dizzy in the head myself!” says Jackie. She slaps herself in the forehead as a gesture of forgetfulness and sees she is bleeding as she draws it away.
“Oh, crap.”
“I’ll drive the pickup,” says Mimi. “We’ll get her there that way.”
“Let’s get a move on then,” says Vespa.” Rudy says the Blue Mountain Volunteer Police Department will be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Okay, Mimi, you grab the pickup. Even though you probably don’t even have a license to drive a pickup. I don’t even know how you pulled through all this…”
“Sometimes rules get broken,” says Mimi.
Jackie fishes her truck keys from her pocket.
“I’ll come and see you as soon as all of this is over,” Mimi tells Vim. She runs to the truck.
She is glad to know that confronting her fears has given her the power to breathe life back into the dying. Vespa was a goner. She looks back and sees Jackie crumpled pitifully on the pavement next to her true love and she quickens her step.
Rudy had certainly played all the wrong cards—a hopeless case of a different sort. He has taught her everything he will never understand himself on the subject of evil—a mastery she will handle with care. Mimi is grateful that he took her there, and she knows how deep his terror is that he should be taken back. She understands the depths of the emotional suffering he has endured, the heat of the flames, and the sting of the weapons he constructed to keep away his fears.
There is still a part of Rudy that would like to lay the blame on shaggy Gus, soft-hearted Swan, on anyone else but himself. She realizes Rudy will have to own what he has done from the beginning. Mimi drops by the Corvette as she runs to the truck and leans into the back seat. “Don’t you hurt them, Rudy. Time to be honest. Because I’m on to you now, baby,” she tells him. “Don’t forget that I’m the one who can take you down. I can take you there anytime.”
“What a slut!” says Natalia. “Pay no attention to her.”
“That’s not what she meant,” says Rudy. “She means that she has the power. The power to fly me straight to hell.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank Connie Frey, Susan Mayse, Ursula Pflug, Heather Spears, and the Kootenay School of the Arts and the Victoria School of Writing for their editorial assistance and ongoing support.
Thanks also to Editor-in-Chief of Inanna Publications, Luciana Ricciutelli, to Inanna Publicist and Marketing Manager, Renée Knapp, and to cover designer, Val Fullard.
The author would like to acknowledge the following sources:
Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du Mal. Alençon: Auguste Poulet-Malassis, 1857.
Bergman, Ingmar. Autumn Sonata. Oslo, 1978.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Oedipus Tyrannus. London, 1820.
Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method. Leiden, 1637.
Diderot, Denis. Philosophical Thought. Paris, 1746.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Viking Press, 1957.
Lessing, Doris. Briefing for a Descent into Hell. London: London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. London, 1623.
Thoreau, Henry D. Walden, Or, Life in the Woods. London : Chapman and Hall, 1927.
Tsu, Lao. Tao Te Ching. 4th Century. Mawangdul.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, NY, 1855.
SK Dyment is a writer and visual artist with a love of political cartooning. SK likes take to the stage at open mic events to perform poetry, short prose, and stand-up work, and they have written several plays which were produced at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. Their illustrations were most recently published in Ursula Pflug’s flash fiction novel, Motion Sickness, which was longlisted for the ReLit Award. Their humour and cartooning work has appeared in a number of magazines including, Peace Magazine, This Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Healthsharing, Herizons, Kinesis, The Activist Magazine, Kick It Over Magazine, and Fireweed. Steel Animals is their debut novel.