From the Ashes

by Jesse Thistle

  When our shoes touched the sidewalk outside, he pivoted toward the trash bin and dragged me until I almost fell flat on my face. The bell on the door rang as it closed behind us. Josh hurried by with a bunch of gum in one hand, and licorice and more pepperettes in the other. He directed us to a cedar bush a couple of feet behind the bin. We nestled under the cover of the branches and waited for Dad.

  When he emerged from the store, he was flailing his arms and arguing with the storekeeper. The storekeeper screamed back, waving around a mop, pointing back into the store. Dad skipped backward a few steps then took off toward the park.

  No one noticed us watching through the bush’s boughs.

  I thought, This was fun. I was happy to be working together with everyone. And we now had tons of food.

  A FATHER’S LOVE

  I dreamed of my birth, all wet from the womb

  Blinding light overhead, emergency room

  Behind newborn cries, my little hands grasped

  “A son!” called the doc, while my tiny lungs gasped

  “Oh, happy day,” my mother did cry.

  “Come, let me hold him,” a tear in my dad’s eye.

  The strength of Father’s arms tight around me

  He swayed back and forth; his love did surround me

  Then, out of nowhere, Dad yanked with a dash

  Swung by my legs, he chucked me right in the trash!

  “Don’t need that.” He laughed and slammed down the lid.

  He dusted his hands. “Who the fuck needs a kid!?”

  THE RED BARON

  “DAD DIDN’T COME HOME AGAIN last night,” Josh said as he jumped off the top bunk, thudding down on the wooden floor. He began rocking the lower bunk. Its rusty springs squeaked with each push. Jerry groaned and pulled the covers over his body, exposing my legs. The chill of the morning air through the holes in my Mighty Mouse PJ bottoms jolted me wide awake. Jerry took up three-quarters of the bottom bunk, which I shared with him, but that was okay, even if I only got the outside sliver of the mattress to sleep on, because his body was warm and soft and reminded me of a teddy bear. I yawned and rubbed my stomach.

  “I know,” Josh said. “That’s why I’m trying to get you up. Dad took off with all the change when he woke up. He said he’d come back with food but hasn’t.” He shoved the bunk again, this time hard enough to wake Jerry, who let out a fart. He lay on his side, still curled into a ball, his mouth and chin covered in drool. A pool of it drenched the pillow below.

  Jerry’s crusty eyes blinked open and he looked toward the living room. “Where’s Dad?” He sounded angry and annoyed.

  “I don’t know.” Josh threw up his hands. “And we’ve got no food again.”

  I could hear Jerry’s stomach grumble as he sat up slowly with the blanket tight around his shoulders. It looked like a cape. I watched as the World War I airplanes that decorated its fuzzy surface folded and contorted and collided into one another. I imagined mid-air explosions all across his back. I knew they were fighter planes because Dad told us they were. He said the ones with the black crosses on the tails were Germans, the bad guys, and the ones with the blue, white, and red bull’s eyes were the British, the good guys.

  Me, posing for the camera, 1980.

  I loved the story of the Red Baron and always imagined myself in his three-winged plane shooting down Canadian ace Roy Brown. The Baron’s plane was cooler looking than Brown’s by a long shot. Both the Baron’s red Fokker DR.I triplane and Brown’s Sopwith Camel buzzed around Jerry’s neck when he stood up and shuffled into the kitchen. He slammed the cupboard doors in frustration and collapsed on the floor crying.

  “I’m hungry,” he wailed repeatedly.

  Josh abandoned me. “Don’t cry, Jerry,” he said, going to him and rubbing his back. “We’re going to go over to the store and get some food, like last week.” He looked over at the window I knew faced the convenience store. “With all three of us out there, we’ll get all kinds of stuff. It’ll be fun.”

  Josh went to the fridge and grabbed one of the half-drunk beers and gave it to Jerry. “Brown pop. Drink it.”

  Jerry dropped the blanket and took the bottle with both hands. He scrunched up his face, put the bottle to his lips, tilted his head back, and swallowed.

  I pictured him drinking a magic potion. Jerry is the toughest of us all, I thought.

  “Gross,” Jerry let out. He hated brown pops and never drank them when Dad gave them to us, but he knew it would fill him up. He handed the empty back to Josh, who went to place it under the kitchen sink with the others. When he opened the door, cockroaches scurried into the darkest corner of the cupboard.

  “We also got this,” Josh said as he walked back to the fridge, a glimmer of enthusiasm in his voice. The turnip he pulled from the crisper was as big as his head, and the thump it made when it hit the floor shook our apartment. It sounded like a bomb went off. Josh rolled the clumsy boulder over to the edge of the warplanes, hitting Jerry’s foot.

  “Dad said we could eat this. I know we tried before, but we gave up too easy,” Josh said.

  I waddled over to the vegetable wondering how it’d fit in my mouth. Josh pulled a knife out of a drawer and sat down and began to hack at the turnip. Flecks of white and hard yellow the size of pennies flew in all directions as Josh whacked away at it. I put one of the white pieces in my mouth and bit down, but my teeth couldn’t meet all the way. I chewed away. It tasted like nothing, but I swallowed anyways. I rubbed my fingers along my bottom teeth—they were covered in a waxy film.

  Jerry picked up a yellow piece and chucked it in his mouth. The click of his jaw told me the yellow parts were way harder than the white ones. He folded his arms and spat the piece out onto the ground. “It’s worse than brown pops. It’s like a rock. I can’t eat that.”

  Josh’s blade paused a second as he took a big yellow piece and placed it in his mouth. He tried to look like he was happy eating it, but we could tell it was torture. The muscles on the side of his head flexed and bulged. He spat it out and agreed with Jerry: totally inedible.

  There was a loud knock on the door.

  Josh gently placed the knife on the ground and put his hands over both our mouths. “Be quiet,” he mouthed and made a shush shape with his lips. The battle-scarred turnip rocked back and forth, threatening to give us away.

  Another knock assaulted the door.

  “Open up,” a voiced boomed. “It’s the police. We know you boys are in there.”

  Josh’s eyes widened, and he grabbed my shirt and pulled me toward the wall, as if he didn’t know what to do or where to go.

  Jerry shot up, tossing the blanket on the floor. “Come with me,” he said as he launched me and Josh into the bedroom. We skidded over to Jerry’s hiding spot, a large air vent in our room that he’d discovered when we first moved in. When he showed it to Dad, he was impressed with how much room there was inside. Jerry told him how he’d used a penny to turn the screws at the corners to take off the grate, and how the shaft went straight twelve feet and then turned right.

  “Smart lad,” Dad said. He’d tied a string to the back of the grate. “Now, when someone comes—and I mean anyone—you all pile in here and just pull this string. It’ll close the vent cover behind you. Got it?”

  Jerry nodded and tried it out. The first couple times, the cover went on crooked, or sideways, or not at all. Eventually, though, with enough coaching from Dad, Jerry could pull it closed in a second or two. From the outside, it was hard to see the string or that the screws weren’t holding the grate on.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The knocks at the door turned into what sounded like powerful kicks. It was only a matter of minutes before the door gave way.

  “Hurry. They’re coming,” Jerry said as he pulled the grate off and rammed my head through the vent opening. He kicked my bum to hurry me up. A wall of warm, dry air slammed into my face and arms as I flew down the shaft. Josh was right behind me, pressing his face into my
ass. He shoved me farther down the shaft toward the darkness.

  “Go—go—go,” he commanded in a frantic but hushed voice. “Faster, Jesse, crawl faster.”

  The more we wiggled forward, the more our bodies dented the tin walls. It sounded like thunder all around my head. I began to cry. I looked back and could see Jerry pull the string closed. The grate slapped into place in one shot—perfect, just like Dad taught him. We covered our mouths to silence our breath, dust settling all around us.

  Boom. Boom. BOOM!

  I could hear the front door burst open and footsteps stampede into the living room. It sounded like the herds of bison stampeding that I’d seen on nature shows.

  “Look at this,” I heard one man say. “The kitchen is full of trash.”

  “Hey, look,” another called out from the bathroom, his voice echoing off the tiles, “there are rigs and gear in the tub. Check it out.”

  One voice stood out from the rest. I could tell he was in charge. “Yep. Just like the neighbour described. Dope and children. Find them.”

  The violent sound of crashing cupboard doors was followed by the clanking of empty beer bottles. “Jesus,” a deep voice said from near the kitchen, “they’ve been hacking up this turnip. They got no food.”

  I heard them go into Dad’s room and then more noise. “Nothing in here but skin magazines.”

  A pair of black boots appeared in front of the vent, and someone bent down to look under the bed. It was a police officer. I could just see his uniform past Jerry and Josh’s bodies. “Nothing in here,” he said, as he shone his flashlight into the vent. His voice was higher and younger than the rest. “But the pillow is wet. They must’ve just left.”

  “Not possible,” the voice in charge said. “The lady next door watched him leave last night at 10:30 and the kids were inside. She saw them herself when she peeked in from the door across the hall. She said they beg for food in front of the store or the arena—we checked both locations, and they weren’t there. That means they’re still here. Look harder.”

  “I don’t know, Sarge. We checked everywhere. It’s a tiny apartment, where else could they be?”

  Jerry’s arms were shaking as the pair of black boots readjusted in front of the vent. A radio chattered as Josh squirmed. The tin made a muffled knock under his arm.

  “Wait a minute,” the high voice said. “I think they’re in here.” The front of the vent shifted as he dug his fingers under the grate and tried to pull.

  Jerry gritted his teeth and held it tight with all his might.

  “They’re in the vent. I can see them! But they’ve got it locked off somehow.” The herd of black boots entered the room as the young officer’s eye peered in to get a better look. “Yup.” He smiled and put his palm up to the vent holes.

  I was shaking, and I could feel Josh was, too.

  “It’s okay, fellas, nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Move outta the way,” the lead voice barked and the grate was ripped off.

  A huge meaty hand with hair on it reached in and pulled Jerry out, then Josh and me, my Mighty Mouse PJs ripping on a screw in the opening.

  Jerry and I were shaking and crying. I couldn’t speak. The string had rubbed Jerry’s palms raw as it was torn from his grasp. Blue-and-red lights flashed against the ceiling of our bedroom.

  Dad is going to kill us, I thought. Josh began to cry. He was probably thinking the same thing.

  The officer who found us bent down and smiled. “Which one are you?” he asked Josh as he dusted the lint off my brother’s shoulder and wiped his tears. Josh just glared at him and kept his mouth shut, the dust on his face now smeared back to his ear.

  A kind-looking black woman with a clipboard emerged from behind the young policeman. I could smell her fruity perfume—it made me hungry. She knelt in front of Jerry. “We’re going to take you somewhere safe, there’s no need to be afraid.”

  Jerry pushed her away and crossed his arms.

  She nodded to the police, and they scooped us up.

  As the officer carried me out of the apartment, I looked over his shoulder and saw my blanket sitting on the kitchen floor. It half-covered the turnip and some empty bottles. I could see the edge of the Baron’s triplane, and I imagined myself flying it higher and higher into the sky, up near the sun.

  THE PACT

  THE NICE BLACK LADY AND the young police officer took us to a large red-brick building with lots of windows.

  “You boys will be safe here,” she said.

  She took Jerry by the hand from the squad car. Jerry didn’t put up a fight, neither did Josh or I. We walked through a pair of giant steel doors that guarded the front entrance and down a long hall, into a large room with rows and rows of bunk beds. It smelled of bleach.

  There were other kids there. They sat on their bunks and checked us out as we walked to three empty beds at the back of the room. Josh and Jerry got bottom beds, I got the top. I noticed two black kids and a few older boys who had dark skin and hair like us. They looked like our Indian cousins in Saskatchewan but different. The covers and sheets of the beds were done up perfectly, corners tucked tight under the mattresses, the pillows flat and smoothed out. I’d seen Mom make a bed that way before, but we’d been with Dad for months and he never did anything like that for us, and he couldn’t afford these kinds of pillows.

  I was relieved at the order and cleanliness of this new place, whatever it was.

  “This is Children’s Aid,” the black lady told us.

  Through the tangle of bedposts I saw a red-headed boy looking at me. He flashed me a smile and a tiny wave. I ducked down and buried my head in the black lady’s leg.

  “That’s Johnny,” she said. “He’s a nice boy. No need to be shy.”

  Jerry and Josh peered over, and the boy again smiled and waved. They stared at him until his hand fell by his side.

  The place was way bigger than our apartment or any of the places I’d ever been.

  “Where’s Dad and when’s he coming to get us?” Josh asked.

  The black lady just gave us something to eat and then tucked us all in and left, turning the lights out.

  I wasn’t scared and fell asleep, my belly full. I dreamt about the black lady and wondered what her name was. When I woke in the morning the place buzzed with activity, and we were ushered in lines into a hall where we had oatmeal and bananas. I stuck by my brothers as the other kids checked us out. Josh did all the talking, telling everyone that our dad was away and that we’d be going home as soon as the police found him.

  “I used to think that, too,” one kid said. “But we’re orphans now—don’t cha know?”

  I didn’t know what that meant.

  We became good friends with Johnny and the other kids. Jerry said Johnny was like our red-headed brother, that he was part of our tribe, too. Johnny told us that his parents couldn’t afford Cheerios one day, had a big fight over it, and then dropped him off here. He said he felt like it was his fault, that he never got the chance to tell his parents that he didn’t even like Cheerios and that they’d be okay without cereal.

  I was sorry for him. I thought the same about why my mom and dad had left us. I’d been a bad boy and had asked for food too often. We’d eaten Dad’s secret food too many times, and he’d probably gotten so mad over it that he’d up and left us. I gave Johnny a hug.

  After a few days, strange things started happening.

  The black lady and other people who worked in the big building started taking kids out of the large room one by one. They asked them all kinds of difficult questions. Doctors examined them for any bugs and sicknesses, checked their hair and tongue, in their underwear, and under their arms—or so we were told by the kids when they returned.

  Some were taken out and never came back. That was the scariest. It was like they’d been eaten by monsters. No one knew what happened to them, but the older kids said they were the lucky ones because someone wanted them. I didn’t understand that; our mom and dad wa
nted us, why didn’t theirs want them, too?

  When they came for Jerry, Josh rushed over and bit the lady on the hand and I ran and kicked her foot as hard as I could. We screamed and screamed, fought and fought, our faces getting redder than fire engines. Johnny joined in, stomping her toe until she let go. We four scurried to the back of the room and nestled in a corner. Josh grabbed hold of our necks and pulled us in close. We locked arms and brought Johnny in, too, holding tight to one another, gnashing our teeth. We did exactly as Dad had directed—protected each other from strangers.

  The woman left the room to get help.

  “We gotta stick together,” Josh said, panting. We all nodded. We made a pact, then and there, to take care of one another no matter what. We squeezed each other with all our might and shut our eyes, sealing the deal.

  Five minutes after the pact was struck, a team of workers came in and wrestled Johnny from our circle. We tried fighting back but they held us down and took away our red-headed brother—they were just too strong. We never saw Johnny again.

  I thought of him when they came and got us three brothers a few weeks later.

  MONSTER RESCUE

  “YOU BOYS ARE LUCKY,” THE black lady said to me after I’d been checked over by the doctor and placed in the hallway with my brothers. “We’ve found a foster home that will take all three of you.”

  Josh stood on defence between the front entrance and the door of the large room. Jerry milled about. He was silent, biting his nails.

  “Take us?” Josh asked forcefully. “Where? What about our mom and dad?”

  Jerry’s face went blank and he stopped pacing. He moved behind Josh, as if to back him up.

  What does “foster home” mean? I’d never heard that word before. Who is going to take us? I wasn’t sure, but I knew my brothers were uneasy.

  The lady hesitated, and I could tell she was thinking hard about what she was going to say next.