“I’m sorry, Gar,” Sudharshan said. “Sometimes it happens that way.” The sky was blackish-gray now. “Pollution, toxins leach into the eggs. You know.” The air rushed, whooshed around them. “We look after you. All of you.” Looking up at the sun, Jerry’s dad gasped, put his hands to his mouth. Jerry didn’t dare look. The wind beat like wings.
“Yes, you do, O King,” Gar replied. “You extend the hand of charity to us broken ones, whether we’re any use to you or not.”
“Well I would, if you would take it. You don’t have to beg in the streets.”
“You don’t get it,” Gar told him.
Jerry, too unreasonably terrified to think, kept his gaze resolutely down. There, in the building lot; the tree with its swollen middle. The wrecking machine crouched over it, crane-like. As Jerry watched, a shadow washed over it, over half the city.
Out of the dusklight Gar muttered, “I could live with you and be fed serpents’ tongues and sweet water.”
“Amrita.”
“Whatever. Sugar. I could, but I’m not Rudy. I won’t die without your care. I don’t have to stay with you.”
Rudy screamed. It was almost full dark now. Whatever was arriving was big enough to blot out all the light, to eclipse the sun. Jerry’s dad cried out and crouched against the roof, cowering. “I believe you, I believe you,” he whimpered.
“It’s all right, Carlos,” Sudharshan shouted over the rushing wind. He pulled the disk out of his coat. It glowed with light. He held it high and twirled it, signalling.
There was a huge cracking sound from the construction site. By the light of Sudharshan’s disk of fire, Jerry could see that the swollen tree had finally burst at the belly and split apart.
Jerry refused to look at Sudharshan’s hand with its spinning circle. He felt the weight of air above them rush down. Something was coming. He threw himself over his dad. And finally, finally, he looked up.
Pinions wide enough to span creation. A keel of a chest, deeper than the oceans. A man’s body with the dimensions of a god. Backlit by the sun it eclipsed, the bird-headed man-thing swooped down, roaring. Talons that could grasp an elephant and bear it away. A raptor’s beak long enough to spear a sun. Jerry cried, but couldn’t look away. Small, he was so small. The thing swept past them, the wind of its passing nearly knocking them over. The sun peeked back out. The thing’s awful cawing stopped.
“Long time no see, Daddy!” Gar called out to the creature. Then: “Oh. Would you look at that? A healthy hatchling at last.”
Jerry’s dad mewed under him. Jerry hardly heard it. He had to know. He stood on noodle legs and looked over the side.
The massive bird-thing looked briefly up at them. Its deep gaze, absently hungry, sucked Jerry in. A pointed tongue the length of a car snaked out and licked a hooked beak. Then it looked back down. It had folded itself up to sit in the construction site like a brooding hen in a nest. The tree stuck out from among its breast feathers; the creature was nesting on top of it. If the skeleton building or the excavator were still there, they were hidden somewhere under its body. On the street, cars were gathering to ogle. As though it bit on a toothpick, the thing pulled the top of the swollen tree away.
A smaller, ugly head covered in pinny green feathers poked out from beneath the bird-thing’s breast. Crazily, Jerry thought of Rudy sticking his head out of Sudharshan’s—Vick’s—coat. The smaller thing opened its beak wide. It was all red inside there. The big bird-thing retched and vomited into the ugly baby bird’s mouth. Frantically, the baby gulped it down. The father fed his child.
“The long, thin scrawny ones stick between your teeth, and the short thick ones just squirm . . .” sang Gar. “Whaddya figure my new brother’s dining on, Vishnu?” Vishnu, not Victor. “Pre-digested cobras? King snakes? I remember how that tastes.”
“He can’t do it by himself,” Sudharshan murmured.
Jerry’s dad had stood up. He was looking down at the insane spectacle in the construction lot. Wonder made his features gentle. “That’s some growing boy,” he said. “How often will he eat?”
“About a ton of meat, every other day,” Sudharshan said. “Garuda will need to hunt down a lot of snakes over the next five years or so. I have to help him. The baby is my new mount.”
“So you’re going to go away after all,” Jerry’s dad said. “You’re leaving.”
Sudharshan looked exasperated. “I told you; not for long!”
“Five years isn’t long?”
“Not when you’re a god, it isn’t,” Gar told them.
Jerry looked at his father’s eyes filling, at his father bowing over again, shrinking in on himself again. He looked at Sudharshan, at the grief on the god’s face. He remembered the picture albums that his mother had shown him, of his dad as a little boy in khaki shorts, grinning for the camera, proudly holding up—
“Dad,” he said.
“He’s leaving me, Jerry.”
“Dad. Listen. Look at me.”
“I’m going to be alone again.”
“Dad.”
“What.”
“You used to hunt snakes, Dad,” Jerry told him. “As a boy. Remember?”
And through his gold-lined goggles, Jerry’s father looked at him, really saw him clearly. “My god,” Dad whispered. “I did.” He reached for Jerry and pulled him into an embrace, laughing, crying. Surprised, Jerry hugged back. His dad’s shoulders were broader than they looked.
Over Jerry’s shoulder, Dad said to Sudharshan, “I’ll help you with your Garuda. You and me, okay? It’s perfect.”
“No,” responded Sudharshan.
Stricken, Jerry’s dad released him. From the street below came the sound of sirens. Jerry glanced over the side. Two fire engines were converging on the construction site. As if.
“No,” said Sudharshan again. “It won’t work, Carlos.”
“Why not?” Jerry’s dad cried out.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t care. We’ll be together. I can protect you.”
The incarnation of an immortal didn’t even bother to point out the flaw in his partner’s logic. “You can’t leave your job.”
“Like they’ll miss one lousy bureaucrat.”
“Rudy, then. I can’t take him, he’s too frail. I need you here to look after him.”
And now, Jerry’s dad was at a loss for words. His face began to crumple.
Sudharshan was crying now, too. “Rudy’s my responsibility, Carlos. All the garudas are. I thought you’d help me take care of him. Please, lover.”
Jerry saw Dad’s broad shoulders bunch, the twist of his hip, before he realised what was happening. Dad turned, Sudharshan screamed, “No!” and Jerry reached his hands out to catch Dad, to hold him, but Dad was vaulting over the ledge before any of them could move.
“Fuck!” Gar cried out. Someone in the street screamed.
Dad spread his arms and legs. He plummeted, landed on Garuda’s broad back, rolled. Jerry tried to keep breathing. Dad fetched up against a boulder-sized shoulder. He pushed himself to a sitting position. Jerry could see the moon of his upturned face, looking at them. He waved.
Garuda turned its eagle’s head, peered down at its new rider. It opened its beak and struck. Carlos barely danced out of the way in time.
“Please, please,” Sudharshan whispered. “He’s my love. Please don’t hurt him.”
A god was begging for his father’s life.
“Hey, Dad!” Gar called down. Garuda met his gaze. “That’s Carlos! He’s gonna help you feed the little one there.”
Garuda closed its beak. Twisted its head sideways to regard Jerry’s dad with one eye. Carlos reached a hand up, stroked the tip of its mane of feathers, each longer than Carlos was tall. Garuda allowed the touch. Turned back to feeding his son.
Sudharshan threw his head back, eyes closed. He let a breath out. His shoulders relaxed. “Oh, you smart-mouthed monster’s son, you,” he said to Gar. “Thank you.”
> “Any time I can be of assistance.”
Sudharshan looked at him. Calmly, Gar gazed back. “Yes,” the god replied. “I’ll remember.”
“You do that.”
Sudharshan regarded the scene below them, his gaze fond. “Now, what am I going to do with that stubborn man? He can’t come with me. Rudy needs . . .”
Gar laughed. “Is that all? Don’t sweat it, Vishnu. I can housesit. Keep Rudy in birdseed and earthworms, yeah?”
Rudy skreeked.
Sudharshan glared at the two of them, the two failed garudas. He scowled down at the construction site, where Dad was stroking Garuda with one hand, and trying to wave the firemen away with the other. They had ringed Garuda and stood, uncertainly, holding limp hoses. Sudharshan sighed. “All right, then,” he said.
Jerry laughed. Sandor’d never believe this in a million years.
“Look, we’d better be going,” Sudharshan told them. “Those people down there could get hurt. We’ll send word.”
Vishnu didn’t so much jump as float down into the cushioning of Garuda’s feathered body. His dad and Vishnu pulled the ugly baby bird into a cradle between them on Garuda’s back. Garuda purred at them as they struggled. Its child was bigger than the two men combined. But they managed.
The police had arrived. They bullhorned at them to get down, pointed rifles. Dad shielded Vishnu with his body. Garuda roared again, and the people on the ground crouched and covered their ears. It gathered its taloned feet under itself and leapt into the air, its wings pumping. They flew. In seconds they were too small to see.
“You’ll have to care for the Monstera, too,” Jerry told Gar.
“What’s that?”
“It’s beautifully ugly. I’ll show you.”
Sitting in Gar’s palm, Rudy made a chirping noise.
“Yeah, but he never remembers,” Gar told his brother.
“Never remembers what?” Jerry asked.
“My dad. Garuda. We don’t like king snakes. They have this weird sweetish taste to them.”
Jerry laughed, trying to make out the speck in the sky. “He forgets, huh? Yeah, I know what that’s like.”
Snow Day
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation runs an annual radio event called “Canada Reads,” in which a jury has an on-air debate about five books by Canadian authors. Ultimately, the CBC chooses one book each year that they suggest all Canadians read and discuss. I was one of the jurors for the very first Canada Reads. (Who knew that becoming a writer would eventually mean getting to debate with our former and first female Prime Minister, Kim Campbell?) A few years later, CBC called me, as they did a number of previous jurors. They were running Canada Reads again, and they wanted to commission us to each write a story that incorporated the titles of that year’s five shortlisted Canada Reads novels. The only catch: we weren’t allowed to use the titles as titles. Once they told me what the five titles were, the idea caught my fancy so strongly that I had my story written within a matter of hours. “Snow Day” is that story. (The five titles and their authors are listed at the end of the story.)
The shovel bit through the foamy snow on the top stair of my front porch, then stopped with a clang. I scraped away the snow to see what was beneath. Ice. Served me right for not shovelling after the snow had fallen last night. It had thawed, then the temperature had dropped into the deep freeze, and now the steps and the sidewalk were frozen solid.
On the street, a few cars and a bus slewed through the slush. The city had declared a snow day, so there wasn’t much traffic out.
I sighed and began shovelling in earnest. I’d have to scoop all that snow into the road, then crack the layer of ice and start in on that. The small of my back was already twinging in anticipation of pain. I scooped the shovel under a big load of snow.
“You need to lift with your legs,” said a voice behind me. It managed to sound both squeaky and hoarse. I turned. No one there. Just a raccoon, perched on my green organic waste bin. Damned things had been trying to figure out how to open it for months. Almost every week the bin had new tooth marks.
“Scram!” I shouted. I dropped the shovel, clapped my hands together to frighten the raccoon away.
The raccoon jumped off the bin and hid behind it. It peeked out at me. “Jeez, no need to get snarky. I was just giving you some good advice.” Its mouth wasn’t moving.
“All right,” I said, looking around. “Who’s the ventriloquist?”
I couldn’t see anyone. Most of my neighbours were at work. And Granny Nichol, who usually spent the day at her window watching the world go by, had her blinds drawn today.
The raccoon stepped out from behind the bin and sniffed the air in my general direction. “Lady, it’s no fun being able to understand you, either. It’s creepy inside a human’s head. Got any scraps? It’s slim pickings out here in this weather.”
“Shoo.” I waved my shovel at it. If I could get it to go away, the prankster’s trick would be spoiled.
The raccoon backed up out of the way of the shovel, but stood quietly watching me, though I could see its snout twitching in the direction of the green bin. I’d had fish for dinner, and the bones and skin were in there, right on top. I thought I could smell them, and they made my mouth water. I could imagine how they would taste, how the bones would crunch in my teeth, how I would save the head for last, holding it in my little black paws . . . euw. As if.
Suppose the raccoon was rabid? Should I call someone from the City?
The raccoon went over to the fence, swung itself up onto the palings, climbed to the top and crouched there unhappily. “You’re just going to let them take that fish head away, aren’t you?”
I ignored it. I scraped the snow off the icy steps, trying to pay no attention to the way I hungered for the offal I’d thrown away, the splintery feel of the wood palings under all four of my paws, the way that my eyesight seemed fuzzy and the sounds of the cars too loud. I wasn’t thinking in raccoon, I wasn’t. When I was done, I stood at the bottom of the five steps and looked up at them. The glare from the ice coating them hurt my eyes. I turned my head, backed up a bit.
“Watch out!” came the smoky voice. I heard a scraping, screeching sound and leapt out of the way just as a car skidded up onto my sidewalk, missing me by inches. My front steps stopped it. The stairs shook, but held, although all the ice splintered away. No crystal stair, not any more.
A man leapt out of the driver’s side. “My god, I’m sorry!” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. But really, I wasn’t paying him much attention. I looked to the raccoon, still crouched on the fence. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” it growled. “Just consider it payment for the tomatoes.”
“That was you, then. You destroyed all my plants.”
The raccoon shrugged.
“Lady,” said the man, “I’m so sorry.”
By then, a teenager had climbed out of the passenger side. “It’s the brakes,” she muttered. “Your brake shoes just went.” She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “1999 Passat. The rotors are crap. I told Dad he’d soon be singing the Ancient Volkswagen Blues.”
“Never mind that,” her father said. “Look. It’s the same here, too.” He was pointing to my back yard. From out of it—from everyone’s yard, really—squirrels were climbing down from the trees and converging on the street. Raccoons came too, and the occasional deer. Mice. Rats. Cats and dogs. A moving carpet of snails and slugs. More bugs than I wanted to think about. Birds were massing in the sky, flocking to the electric wires and the lintels of houses. I saw a gazillion sparrows, a million pigeons and gulls. Even the hawks were flocking. Hawks don’t flock. “It was like this on our street, too,” said the man. “I got us out of there, but it’s the same everywhere.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Beats me, lady,” warbled a starling from the railing of my abused stairs. “And can you open that plastic thing, already? Some of u
s are hungry here.”
I heard a hollow crash and a tiny metallic tinkle. A bear had cracked the bin open with one swipe. Cautiously, the smaller animals near it moved in on the feast.
Now the people were showing up; in cars, on foot through the snow, in wheelchairs, on bicycles. They gathered by the side of the road, leaving the street itself clear. That was important; I knew it somehow.
Granny Nichol’s door opened. She let her dog Trevor out. “Good morning, everyone!” she said. She stepped onto her porch. She was carrying a bird cage. In it, a parrot shrieked and hopped from its swing to the floor of its cage and back again. “Shh, Billy, shh,” she crooned.
“Get me the bleep outta here, lady!” it cawed. “It’s time, can’t you tell?”
“Yes, I can, dear. Just hold your horses.”
Granny Nichol put the cage on the floor of her porch and creakily opened its door. The parrot leaped out. “Finally!” it hollered. Its wings were clipped, so it climbed, beak and claws, to join its avian cousins perched on Granny’s eavestrough. Pets were exiting from all the houses, freed by their owners, who were also coming out onto the sidewalk.
“What about people’s tropical fish?” the teenager asked. “They can’t come out into this cold.”
Nobody answered her because just then, the sky directly above us went dark. “Is it the Apocalypse?” cried someone.
“Don’t be an idiot,” replied someone else.
If it was the Apocalypse, it was taking the form of a row of lumpy, somewhat spherical objects, each about four storeys high, landing soundlessly in the street in either direction as far as the eye could see. You know when an orange goes bad, and gets this kind of pretty blue fuzz on it? They looked like that. Funny; I always thought spaceships would be shiny and metal. Like in the movies. These looked like something I’d throw into my composting bin.
A bulge appeared in the side of each object. I wasn’t scared. I don’t think anyone was. We all just waited. The raccoon kept gnawing on the fish head it had retrieved.
Falling in Love With Hominids Page 18