Temporary People
Page 17
Anita leaned her chin against Nick’s arm. “I’m going to stay. Can you stay?”
He touched her hair, slid his fingers down to the smooth warmth of her neck. The blast produced was much stronger than he expected, the roar and flames and pieces of sky raining down as he dove for cover. He lay in bed that night beside Anita, picturing again the man walking with shoes that hurt his feet. In disbelief, he remembered the poem, ‘Celebration:’
“At night/boys pick house sparrows/from traps; tie tiny/bombs to bird-packs/and let the sparrows go/ free, black silhouettes/against the haze of stars./The bombs explode in/swirls of burning feathers./The boys celebrate Independence./ Wings fly apart.”
Nick reached for Anita’s hands, found her fingers and tangled them around his own. “I’d like,” he said. “I want to stay. If you want me to,” and then he told h e r.
Katima in the backyard, brought with her planks of wood, nails and glue and tools. She carted up the wood and seaweed used at the cliffs as well, back when André was still in prison. The foundation was set from within, weighted by sand and blocks of cinder. The first pieces attached were photographs of André, and later Ali. The articles which followed were of Bamerita, and then as the tower grew, she attached all the other stories that moved her.
The sky turned blue as sapphire, smooth with brush strokes of white for clouds. Katima had a bottle of wine and sipped as she worked. Yesterday she saw the latest rushes of Leo Covings’ film, the American having shown her first as promised. The movie surprised her, the context and composition honest. Leo laughed as she told him this. “What did you expect?” He didn’t mention the rumors, reports of peculiar fragments in Teddy’s skull. As things were now, there seemed no reason.
Leo came again that afternoon to say goodbye. In the backyard, he placed his hand against the wood of the new tower. Katima felt the ground beneath her soft from the rains, all the rolling on the waters having slowed again. The shifting was tenuous, and once more routine, as Bamerita drifted by degrees. Katima looked at the photograph of André as shot a few weeks before the War of the Cameras. She ran her hand across his cheek, wondered then as she had for days and resigned herself to never knowing. All of this she thought again just as the blast at All Kings brought sirens and soldiers back into the street and four jeeps chased Kart as he drove away. There came in rapid succession more gunfire and sirens and another bomb exploding. Leo walking to his car, heard the blast as well and laughed. “Listen to that,” he cupped his ears. “I haven’t even released our film and already people are crying for a sequel.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the usual gang of suspects, my heartiest of thanks for their support: my friends and family at Dzanc Books and Black Lawrence Press, my partner and twin-son-of-a-different-mother Dan Wickett, the inimitable and sage gur u Steven Seighman, my great editors and colleagues Diane Goettel and Colleen Ryor. To Keith Taylor for lending me a quote and being always the patron saint. To Laura Snyder and Jeff Parker for faith. To my mom and brother, always, and to dad still watching. To my wife, Mary, and kids, Anna and Zach, thanks guys, truly. Without you, none of this matters.
Copyright © 2008 by Steven Gillis
Book design: Steven Seighman
eISBN : 978-0-982-62283-4
All materials quoted in the text are used by permission under the fair use rule of copyright laws (Title 17, section 107 of U.S. Copyright Laws.) or by the laws of public domain. These materials include references to the songs, Revolution (Lennon/McCartney), Mercy, Mercy Me, and What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye) , All The Tired Horses (Bob Dylan), Give Peace A Chance (John Lennon), The Battle of Evermore(Plant/Page), I Shot the Sheriff (Bob Marley), and Big Yellow Taxi(Joni Mitchell), as well as quotes offered from the public speeches and writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Theodore Roszak and Benjamin Franklin, and the poems of John Ashbery (Girls on the Run and Dream Sequence), Frances E.W. Harper (A Story of the Rebellion), Keith Taylor (Celebration), and Czeslow Milosz (Dedication).
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.