by Terri Favro
“Shhh,” said Bum Bum.
Boot steps thundered over our heads. Fingers of light poked through gaps in the floorboards, feeling for us; Bum Bum’s face was suddenly visible, his eyes staring upwards, one hand holding the trapdoor chain taut. He looked weirdly calm. As if he did this every day.
I could see now that we were in a crawlspace at the mouth of a larger tunnel. Light continued to stab at us but we were too deep to be seen. Still, I cowered into Bum Bum; he pulled me into his arms and whispered close to my ear, “Calm, now.”
“Where the hell did he go?” a dead-sounding male voice demanded. I knew this voice: the policeman from the Pat Boone lie detector test.
“There was more’n one. They just disappeared,” said another voice. “Try out back, they must have made a run for it.”
“The Mounties should catch their own man,” a third voice griped.
Then, the policeman’s voice again. “No dicking around. Treat with extreme prejudice. Girls, boys, I don’t give a shit. We’ll pump them all until someone tells us where that Yammer went.”
Bum Bum, Kendal and I could see each other’s faces clearly now as the rosy pink lights of the cherry tops rippled through the crawlspace like a river of blood.
“Rocco,” I whispered.
Bum Bum shook his head as if to say, don’t worry. He began to move forward into the darkness, and Kendal and I followed. We wriggled on our bellies like three blind slugs. Pebbles ground into my hands and knees. Occasionally, I slid through something disgustingly wet and mushy, trying not to imagine what it might be.
Bum Bum whispered, “Stop.” His flashlight clicked on, revealing a solid wall of greasy bricks. When bits of dry earth crumbled over us, I felt a rush of claustrophobic panic: What if the tunnel collapsed and we were buried alive? What if no one ever found us? Would it be a slow death, suffocating in the ground under Cressie’s? Bum Bum’s face loomed out of the darkness.
“You got the box?”
Kendal coughed. “Sure.”
He pulled off the lid. Bum Bum’s flashlight illuminated the contents: no solenoid. Instead, the box held a postcard of a bombed-out building, a shuffling ragged mass of humanity staring vacantly at the camera. On the back, in script lettering, were the words: “I love New York.” But over the word love was a drawing of a heart with a slash through it.
“Duff left us a message,” said Kendal.
We sat crushed together, until the last shout and boot step vanished. And then, we waited a little longer.
“Okay,” said Bum Bum at last.
He pushed himself into a half-crouch and duck-walked into an alcove I hadn’t realized was there. We were facing a wooden door sunken into the brick wall. Bum Bum knocked hard three times, paused, then twice again. The door shivered and reluctantly opened, letting in a blast of fresh air, and Rocco’s head.
“What the fuck?” queried Rocco.
The three of us yanked at the door from our side and it gave way enough for us to squeeze through. Bum Bum turned to smile at me, his face covered in dirt.
“After you.”
Legs trembling, I crawled through the opening into a deep window-well made of brick. I looked up. Rusty grillwork divided the night sky into a grid of stars.
“What was that place we crawled through?” I asked, after we’d each got out.
“One of Harriet Tubman’s old tunnels for hiding escaped slaves. Shipman’s Corners is honeycombed with them,” said Kendal. “How did you know it was there, BB?”
“There isn’t a hiding place in this town I don’t know,” said Bum Bum.
“Who were those guys?” I asked.
“Cops,” said Bum Bum. “Canusa Mounties, most likely. Maybe some ShipCo MPs. They must have loved taking the boots to Cressie’s window.”
* * *
Bum Bum boosted Rocco, who pushed the grillwork aside, and lifted each of us single-handedly to the top of a brick wall that had once been part of a long-abandoned canal. One lonely ship’s bollard, the concrete cap cracked in half, squatted in a patch of weeds like an iron toadstool.
None of us was old enough to remember the days when ships unloaded at the docks of stores in downtown Shipman’s Corners, but we had all played beside the abandoned canal, with its rainbow of scum and dirty white foam. On warm days, the rotten egg smell drifted all over town. After a kid fell in and drowned under the thick froth, the town agreed to pump out the water and fill in the trench, but Cressie’s back alley still had the look of a place where sailors had once swung barrels and crates off ships.
We slid down the embankment below the wall and picked our way through what would have been the bottom of the canal but was now a scrubland of weedy trees, junked stoves and wrecked cars. Rocco led us to where he and Kendal had hidden the Swinger and the Cutlass, in a thick patch of wild raspberry bushes.
The boys and I agreed that Duff’s Cutlass had to go. Given what we’d just seen, there was probably an APB for it across Shipman’s Corners and the Greater Canusa Region. I was pretty sure the evil Mustang-driving nurse would be part of the force. Headlights off, we took a fast, short drive to an abandoned canal hidden on a slice of scrubland between a private golf course and an engine train factory. The relentless shrieking of the siren continued as we drove the back roads and veered onto a rocky path.
We all put our shoulders to the back fender of Duff’s car. It teetered on the broken concrete along the edge and finally tipped over the side into the frothy water below. Nose down, trunk in the air, the way you’d imagine the Titanic sinking, the Cutlass paused for a moment as it filled with water, then sank in a fizzy rush of tainted foam, like a giant Alka-Seltzer after a particularly nasty party.
Afterwards, as we walked toward Rocco’s Swinger, a flash of light illuminated the horizon. In the distance glowed what looked like a raging fire.
“What the fuck,” said Rocco. “Maybe it really is a nuclear war.”
“No, the fields must be burning out in the township,” said Kendal.
“It’s all vineyards out there,” said Bum Bum. “Those wood posts would burn like stink.”
“Sparkling Sparrow,” I whispered.
As we would later discover, someone had set all two hundred acres of grapevines alight.
* * *
Rocco pulled into the driveway at Nonna’s house just as the siren stopped. We heard later that the school caretaker had finally figured out a way to disable Duff’s solenoid: he took a blowtorch to it. It had been sounding for three continuous hours. Complaints of hearing loss and tinnitus would keep the Shipman’s Corners audiologists busy for years to come.
When we wearily staggered into the house, Nonna Peppy was holding the phone, her face white. She held it out to me without a word.
“Hello?” I said.
“Debbie, it’s Linda.”
“Where are you?”
“On our way west. Hitchhiking. We’re going to join those people going out in the boats to stop the Amchitka tests. Debbie, Duff says there’s a chance, an actual chance, that we could prevent World War Three. We could change the future and save all the people in those cities. Maybe even ourselves.”
“Linda, Duff’s crazy,” I said. “The cops are after him.”
The line crackled; I could hear the sound of truck horns and Duff’s muffled voice urging Linda to hurry up, hurry up, their ride was leaving.
“Listen, sweetie, I have to go. Tell Dad we left the station wagon at the Husky truck stop outside Sudbury. Tell him I’m sorry about the vineyards, but Duff said it had to be done or no one will sober up and see what’s going on. I love you all. I’ll come back, I promise, soon as we get this done. Tell me you believe me.”
“I believe you,” I echoed.
“Tell Mom and Dad that I’ll be fine.”
The boys stood watching me. Pepé the Seventh was there, too, presse
d against Nonna Peppy. Even though the siren had stopped, a residue of sound remained, a lingering noiseless echo of disturbed air, like thunder building up before a storm.
“I’ll be back, I promise,” Linda said again, and hung up.
* * *
Six days later, just before the real Cannikin thermonuclear underground detonation, we saw Linda and Duff on the news, part of a seafaring group going out into the Bering Sea to get close enough to Amchitka Island to stop the test. They said they were demanding a “green peace.”
On camera, Duff pumped his fist in the air. Linda mouthed a chant along with the others. Hell, no, we won’t go.
Mom, Dad and Nonna Peppy sat with their hands in their faces. Mom weeping, Nonna Peppy praying.
“Linda said they’re coming back,” I tried to reassure them. “She promised me twice.”
I never saw Linda or the Trespasser in Shipman’s Corners again.
I came to believe that all of it — the time hop, the lost eighteen months — had been part of my imaginary life. It was time to breathe the clean, fresh air of reality.
LAKE SUPERIOR PROVINCIAL PARK
August 2011, E.S.T.
Every August, I pack up my old telescope and take the ferry out to Toronto Island to watch the Perseid meteor shower from the beach on Gibraltar Point. I’m astonished by how few people in the city are aware of the galactic grand opera whirling over their heads.
I’ve always wanted to watch it far from the light pollution of the city, somewhere the nights are so dark it’s like being in outer space. That’s why I agree to Darren’s proposal of a week of stargazing on Lake Superior.
We discuss whether to use his all-weather tent or borrow his buddy’s nineteen-foot RV. I vote for the RV. I want a comfortable bed.
“For a wannabe astronaut, you’re not much for roughing it, are you?” says Darren.
“In space, you’re weightless. Here on Earth, I’ve got to consider my back,” I answer.
The RV is a minnow compared to the bloated whale motorhomes chugging along the highway. The cozy, cramped interior reminds me of a spacecraft. Darren’s pots and pans and bottles of Campari, vermouth and red wine are neatly stowed in cunningly designed cubbies. It’s kitted out with a tiny bathroom and kitchen and a bed that slides out from under the bench seat at the back when you press a button. It has hot and cold running water, a tiny pedal-operated flush toilet, sink, stove, fridge, microwave and speakers at the back where Darren plans to seduce me to the complete works of Vivaldi, AC/DC, the Allman Brothers and Holst’s The Planets.
“I’ll bet we have more space than they had on any of the Gemini missions. Impressive how they’ve made use of every scrap of space.”
“We have a better on-board bar than the astronauts did,” Darren tells me. “Did you not notice the split of champagne in the fridge? Tell me Neil Armstrong had anything like that to look forward to at the end of the lunar day.”
To mark the occasion, he presents me with a set of silk sheets printed with pornographic images of the signs of the Zodiac.
“If this van’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’,” he tells me with a grin.
The drive to Lake Superior is long, a full day and a half, but when we arrive, the view from our campsite alone is worth the trip: hard against a narrow rocky beach that lets out onto the endless expanse of the greatest of the Great Lakes, grey waves pound so close to us that I tell Darren to forget the AC/DC so we can listen to the sounds of the wind and water.
Darren drags a 30-amp electrical cord to an outdoor outlet that keeps our life-support systems functioning. We take our espresso out to the picnic table to enjoy the already-crisp air — “Summer ends a lot earlier up here than in Toronto,” the other campers tell us — and build a fire to warm up for the meteor shower, which gets going around ten p.m.
Unlike in outer space, when you’re stargazing from Earth, you have to contend with climate and weather. A storm front had trailed us north, socking in the night sky with cloud cover. A park ranger drops by our site and says, “You guys are here for the meteor shower, right? Conditions should be perfect by tomorrow night. It’ll be a chilly one though, so dress warm.”
We sleep in the next morning, preparing ourselves to stay up late and watch the sky. As we wait for darkness to fall, I go for a run. The slap, slap, slap of my trainers on the paved road between stands of trees out of a Group of Seven painting boosts my endorphins, helping me achieve the so-called runner’s high. Three motorcycles roll up, revving their engines, as I approach the camp store. Predictably, two of the bikes are Harley-Davidsons, one black, one cherry red. I am surprised to see that the third is a white Kawasaki with Massachusetts plates.
Jogging in place, I watch the two Harley men dismount and pull off their helmets before going into the store, leaving the third rider to keep an eye on the bikes. Still astride his Kawasaki, he pulls off his helmet. He looks like a typical road warrior, likely in his sixties, his grey hair pulled into a ponytail. The skin on his face is pink and peeling, as if he has a skin disease. Eczema, probably.
No, not eczema. Sunburn.
I stop mid-stride. The shock of recognition takes my breath away. I stagger to a bench next to the camp store, sit down and put my head between my knees.
“Are you okay? Can I get you a drink?”
I nod without lifting my head. I already know it’s the sunburned biker talking to me. His breath smells like cinnamon chewing gum.
I hear coins being pushed into the drinks machine and look up to see him twisting the cap off a Gatorade as he walks back to me. Even the decisive, cocky strut is familiar. He hands me the bottle and I take a sip. He sits down beside me, looking at my face with concern.
I finally catch my breath. “I won’t go with you.”
He frowns. “Excuse me?”
I see nothing in his eyes that signals recognition. He doesn’t know who I am.
“You’re not diabetic, are you?” he asks.
“No, I just — sorry. Thought I knew you.”
He makes a sound, halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “You thought you recognized me and felt faint? Should I take that as a compliment?”
“I mean, I thought I knew your face. It’s all sunburned.”
“That’s windburn from riding in this weather. Look, are you here with someone? Maybe I should find them for you.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine now. Really.”
“Sure?”
I nod. “I’ll walk back to my campsite. Thanks again for the help and have a good trip.”
“You too. Take good care now,” he says, and stands up, leathers creaking.
As he opens the screen door of the camp store, he smiles at me, his teeth white and straight in that red, ravaged face.
I lift my hand to wave my thanks. In return, he shoots me a peace sign and enters the store. His ring finger is missing above the knuckle.
It has to be Duff. Or, at least, the Earth Standard Time version of Duff. Which would explain why he doesn’t remember me. Wouldn’t be the first time I met someone from my non-existent past.
Despite what Sputnik Chick says, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.
Slowly, I jog back to the campsite. In the distance, Darren swings an axe, splitting kindling for the fire, his wheat-coloured hair flopping into his eyes. When I run up to him, he sets the axe carefully on the picnic table and leans down for a kiss. I oblige him but he pulls back and frowns. “You okay? You look pale.”
“A little dehydrated. I’m going to drink some juice and hit the showers.”
That night, Darren and I join a crowd of campers on the beach to watch the meteor shower. The air is clear and cold and we lie on blankets on top of the gritty sand, staring straight up at the avalanche of shooting stars. I point out Orion the hunter and Cassiopeia the seated woman, Aries the Greek god of war and all the ot
her familiar constellations. I connect the dots between stars to reveal images of gods and goddesses, real and mythological animals and ancient symbols like Libra’s scales of justice. My sign. The Milky Way spills itself over the western half of the sky, cracking open the edge of our galaxy to let us peek into countless others.
Later, curled beside Darren in the back of the RV, I wake in the middle of the night. Despite the large body beside me, I’m freezing. I also have a killer headache.
Tylenol, I tell myself, but when I try to wiggle to the end of the bed that fills the back of the van, I find that I can’t move. My head is strapped to a board.
Can’t talk, either: my jaws are clamped shut. I suddenly become aware of metal screws that have been driven into my cheeks, Frankenstein-style. The only parts of me that can move are my eyes. Two faces in scrub masks look down at me. Mom and Dad. Mom’s eyes are leaking. Dad pulls a sheet over my face. I try to scream but can’t make a sound. The world goes white.
I wake to Darren shaking me. “You were having a nightmare.”
This is the only good part of my recurring dream: waking up. Especially with someone there to comfort me.
“What was it about?”
I curl up into him. “I’m on an operating table. My parents are there. They think I’m dead. I keep telling them I’m alive, but they can’t hear me.”
Darren adjusts his position so that one arm drapes protectively over me. His face is warm and reassuring against the crook of my neck.
“I have a dream like that sometimes. I walk into a cave and meet this monster. Turns out he’s my real father.”
Coldness settles over me. As if I’m back in the dream. “What do you mean by your real father?”
Darren scoops me closer. He’s good at comforting me. It’s funny how so many things about him seem safe and familiar — even little mannerisms that on some level I realize remind me of Dad.
And a very little bit, I think with shame, of the Shark. His hands. The complexion. Something about the shape of his jaw. Sturdy handsomeness, absent the cruelty.