“Yo, dude!”
Down the street Tom saw underground comix creator Chuck Speedy heading toward the Blue House on his skateboard. With his wild, curly mop of brown hair and his round, John Lennon spex, Speedy definitely looked the part of a card-carrying Anarchist, which he was. Tom used several of Speedy’s comix in Random Times, and one series, Pissing Dog, had gotten quite popular. The strip featured a poor mutt taking a leak in various lethal places, such as on a rattlesnake, in the middle of the road with a car barreling down on him at eighty, onto a frayed electrical cord…
Chuck kicked his skateboard across the yard and jogged up to the porch. Tom handed him the other beer.
“Thanks, dude.” Chuck popped it open, took a swig.
“What’s up?” Tom asked.
“Going for a slice,” Chuck said. Tom’s house wasn’t far from Leonardo’s, a by-the-slice pizza operation across the street from campus.
Chuck took a seat next to Tom on the porch.
“Goin’ to the show tonight?” Tom asked.
“Hell yeah,” Chuck said. “There’s nothing else to do in this town.”
He was another one who talked ceaselessly about someday moving to San Francisco or New York or Seattle… Every day it seemed like a different city was the cool place to be.
“Pinhead said he’s moving,” Tom told Chuck.
“Yeah, I talked to him yesterday. Me too, I think.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
Chuck thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “I’m thinking about Hawaii, dude.”
“I don’t know that there are any jobs in Hawaii, Chuck,” Tom said.
“Fine with me,” Chuck said. “I don’t want to be a wage slave for some corporate monolith, trading my soul for good bennies. Give me a place to hang my head instead of my hat, a refrigerator full of beer and a freezer full of pot instead of Budget Gourmet microwave dinners. You know?”
“I hear you, man.”
Chuck sipped his beer.
“Hey, tonight, me and Sparrow are gonna be hangin’ with Lucy in the Sky,” Tom told Chuck. “You interested?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Let me think about it and I’ll let you know at the show.”
“Okay. Hey, man, I hate to turn into the editor troll,” Tom said, “but you got anything for my ’zine? I’m putting the next issue together now.”
Chuck shrugged. “I might have something. I haven’t done a Pissing Dog lately, though. Been working on some new ideas.”
“That’s cool,” Tom said. “Whatever you have, let me see it.”
Chuck downed some more beer and nodded. “All right, I’ll bring something by tomorrow.” He finished off the beer and set the empty on the porch, then stood up and jumped off the couch. “Thanks for the brewski. See you tonight, dude!” He kicked his skateboard onto the sidewalk and skated away, jumped the curb and pushed his board down the street toward Leonardo’s. Tom watched him go, and slowly sipped his own beer.
The Blue House was silent, and Tom finished his beer, then leaned back and closed his eyes. He loved sitting on the front porch of the Blue House because it seemed like the entire world revolved around it. The Blue House was the CPU of the Gainesville “alternative” scene, the hub of their little galaxy, a constant of the universe, the gravitational center of space and time. Most of the people Tom knew in Gainesville had lived in the Blue House at one time or another. Pinhead and Chuck Speedy were roommates there for a year. Emily had lived in one of the five upstairs bedrooms for almost five years. They still had keys to the front door. Tom had met most of his current crop of friends right there on the front porch when he lived in an duplex down the street as a sophomore at UF. He would walk past the house on his way to work nights as a dishwasher at the Coney Island Hot Dog Factory downtown. Most nights there’d be someone on the Blue House porch drinking beer, playing acoustic guitar, drawing, telling jokes, smoking pot, reading…
The Blue House felt safe, like nothing bad could ever happen there.
Tom got up, went to the kitchen for another beer, and just maybe to clean some dishes.
Sparrow ate the sandwich that Emily had made for Io. The kid never seemed to eat anything anyone made for her. Just candy, that was all Sparrow ever actually witnessed Io eating. And in the two years since finding her, Sparrow didn’t think Io had grown much, if at all. That couldn’t be good.
But, otherwise, she seemed healthy, was always lively and full of energy.
“This is a great sandwich, Em,” Sparrow said around a mouthful.
Emily smiled weakly and shrugged. “It’s just peanut butter and jelly. No big deal.” Sparrow knew Emily was hurt when Io didn’t eat what Emily made.
“Just peanut butter? Emily… you grind your own peanut butter from organically grown peanuts, you make your own jelly out of fresh fruit, and you bake your own bread. Girl, this isn’t just anything.”
Now Emily’s smile didn’t seem as forced. “It’s really not a big deal.”
Then the screaming started.
It was Io. Sparrow darted down the hall, and Emily was right behind her. They found Io crouched in a corner of the bedroom, still screaming, her arms protecting her face. At first they couldn’t see anything wrong, but they knew what to look for, and found it perched on the window sill.
It was a butterfly.
“I’ll get it,” Emily said, and moved quickly. She managed to scoop the butterfly into her hands, gently, not harming it. She took it out of the room.
Io stopped screaming, but huddled in the corner, whimpering.
“It’s gone,” Sparrow told her in a soft, almost-whisper. “Honey, it’s gone. It’s okay now.”
No response. Either Io didn’t hear her, or she was too far gone for it to matter. Emily returned.
“It’s gone. Maybe we should put her to bed. She hasn’t slept. A nap might help.”
Sparrow carefully lifted Io up in her arms, and carried her to the little bed on the other side of the room. Emily pulled the Cat in the Hat sheets back and held them up, and Sparrow slid Io smoothly underneath. She kissed Io on the forehead, then stepped back while Emily tucked the little girl in.
Io looked less traumatized, but her little eyebrows were furrowed and her mouth was bent into a deep frown.
“She’ll be fine,” Emily said, her hand on Sparrow’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
Emily turned off the light as they left the room. Sparrow couldn’t help but worry, but she was also curious. They had discovered Io’s fear of butterflies during a Krishna feast one spring on the Plaza. They’d been taking her out there every afternoon. The Plaza had been alive with color and activity, fresh air and sunshine, scantily clad bodies belly dancing or playing Frisbee. The Krishna vegetarian feast consisted of pasta, cabbage, potatoes, rice with raisins and peanuts, and fruit juice. Io still didn’t eat, except to pick raisins and peanuts out of her rice and drink some juice.
One afternoon two butterflies alighted on Io’s paper plate. She dropped the plate and screamed, and kept screaming as the butterflies fluttered around her, until Sparrow scooped her up and carried her off the plaza. She’d been watching Io, had seen her expression, the look of terror in her eyes when she first noticed the butterflies, so it was easy to figure out the source of her fear.
“They must trigger some horrific memory from her past,” Tom had theorized.
Sparrow tried asking Io about it, but Io never remembered a butterfly incident after it happened. She’d become nearly catatonic for a while, then fall asleep and awaken later and be totally back to her usual self again. Pictures of butterflies had no effect on her, and she even drew them sometimes, beautiful ones with rainbow colors. Tom had theorized that maybe it was something about the erratic pattern of a butterflies flight pattern, that maybe Io had been attacked by bees and had seen a butterfly nearby… or something. No one had a clue, really.
“Hey,” Emily said, bringing Sparrow out of her musings, back to the present. “Want to smoke a joint?
”
Sparrow nodded. “Sure.”
Emily hid her stash in a can of ground coffee in the freezer. She pulled out a pre-rolled joint, fished a Zippo lighter from her purse. She lit the joint and took a hit, then handed it to Sparrow. The sweet smell of burning ganja overpowered even the scent of patchouli.
“So is everything all right?” Emily asked.
Sparrow nodded as she took a drag on the joint, then blew out smoke. She handed the joint back to Emily, then closed her eyes as the calming effect of good pot relaxed her. “I’m fine. Why?”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem… a little out of it, that’s all.”
“I do?” Sparrow opened her eyes again. She definitely felt relaxed, even after just one good puff of marijuana.
Emily nodded while she took a long drag on the joint. She held it out for Sparrow, who waved it off.
“One hit’s enough for me, Em,” she said. She looked out the door, saw a mockingbird on the bannister of the landing. “I think I’m just feeling restless or something. Like I’m not really living, just existing, you know?”
“I understand.”
“That’s why I wanted to trip tonight. I always feel really… alive when I trip. If it’s good.”
“Then I hope it’s good,” Emily said with a kind smile.
Sparrow nodded. “Yeah, me too.” She looked at her watch. “Wow, I should go so I can get ready.”
She stood up, gave Emily a hug.
“Give the kid a kiss for me, okay?” Sparrow said as she walked out.
“Of course,” Emily said as she held the joint to her lips and inhaled.
Sparrow left.
She rode her bike to the Blue House and found Tom asleep on the porch, arms folded across his chest, rising and falling evenly, snoring slightly. Three empty beer cans stood off to the side, near the bannister.
Sparrow kicked him in the side, a little harder than she intended, and he awoke with a start.
“You were snoring,” she said as Tom sat up.
He rubbed his side. “I don’t snore,” he said, “and you didn’t have to kick me so fucking hard. Shit.”
Sparrow leaned her bike against the wall. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
She opened the front door and Tom followed her inside. Tom had done the dishes, swept the kitchen and living room, and wiped off the counters and stove top. The inside of the Blue House smelled of Murphy’s oil soap and Lysol disinfectant spray.
“I’m stunned,” Sparrow said as she surveyed the kitchen.
Suddenly the front door flew open and in walked Lena, looking haggard. “God, I hate slinging bagels!” she yelled. She walked into the kitchen. “Is there beer?” She opened the refrigerator, grabbed one, popped it open, took a long swallow, then noticed how clean everything was.
“Tom cleaned,” Sparrow said.
“Wow, Tom, you did a good job,” Lena said. She drank some more beer. “Did I mention how much I hate slinging bagels at Bagel Place?”
“Did I mention how much I hate washing dishes at Coney?” Tom asked sarcastically.
“Did I tell you guys how much I hate cleaning houses?” Sparrow chimed in.
“You hate everything,” Tom said to Lena.
“Not everything,” Lena replied. “Not sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll!”
“Especially sex,” Sparrow said with grin.
“No doubt about that,” Tom added. And he noticed the way Lena was looking at him… The same way he tended to look at Sparrow was she wasn’t paying attention. She caught him, once, in Bagel Place. Looking at her that way. She didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know that his thoughts were of the two of them making beautiful music together in sweaty harmony. She told him to stop it, that they were “friends” and she didn’t want to ruin that the way his fling with Lena had almost ruined that friendship.
The thing was, Tom knew that Lena still wanted them to be more than friends. And Lena knew that Tom felt that way about Sparrow. It was a soap opera, or it could have become one if they’d let it, but they chose not to let it. If it became a soap opera, then being roommates would be torture and the Blue House would become Hell.
“So what time should we drop?” Lena asked.
“We should eat, first,” Tom said. Hunger pangs while tripping were not fun. “Anyone for Burrito Brothers?”
Suddenly they heard the distant beat of the hospital’s medivac helicopter making its approach to the landing pad across the street. It got closer, and louder, rapidly, and within moments the windows were rattling in their frames as the Blue House shuddered. The helicopter’s flight path took it directly over the Blue House, and it couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet overhead at that time. The entire house shook, and once a candle holder was shaken right off a window sill.
It made Tom nervous. He’d lie there in bed and imagine the skids on the helicopter catching a power line and pitching forward, angling the blades down to cut through the roof and behead him… In another sense, though, they’d all gotten so used to it that when it was close, and so loud they had to raise their voices and practically shout to hold a conversation, they did so automatically. There were times when Tom realized only after the thing had landed and was winding down its engines that the helicopter had just flown overhead.
Still, though, most of the time it made him nervous.
Io was afraid of the helicopter, too. She didn’t go into catatonia when it flew over them, though, she’d just look scared, maybe cry a little, and say, “It’s bad.”
When the helicopter did finally land, Tom, Sparrow, and Lena rode their bikes to Burrito Brothers.
Chapter Four
The General’s face was red as he barked commands like a pit bull. Spittle and phlegm whipped from his mouth like asps. The Earth shuddered and sighed beneath the feet of Alice Company, spat up burning chunks as rockets slammed into the ground like a rapist’s violent thrusts, an orgy of mutilation, a spasm of birth pain, an orgasm of death. The General stood amidst it all, cold steel in the forge, until a cherry blossom erupted at his feet. His head flew from his shoulders, straight up into the blue-black sky. It turned end over end in graceful somersaults, the mouth still going, spit still spilling out, until it fell right back where it had started, square on his shoulders, but upside down. The General didn’t pause in his war rant as he grabbed his head with both hands and righted it. He snapped off a crisp salute to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.
The first dragon descended among the soldiers of Alice, it’s gaping maw glittering silver with rows of shark-like teeth, black smoke pouring from within, fire to spit. The mouth scooped someone up, someone Hanna didn’t know, someone she didn’t feel as part of her the way she felt the others. His screams were cut off by the sound of cracking bones as the jaws closed and the teeth crushed him, ripped him apart like tissue paper. Then the head with its slanted, reflective eyes, turned toward Hanna, and she saw herself, her image reproduced twice, shrink away, suddenly naked, her clothes burned away. The dragon lifted into the air, hovered for a moment, then slowly glided over to her, like a lazy leaf in the wind…
The highway snapped into focus as Hanna opened her eyes.
War dream. Asleep at the wheel. She wasn’t worried, though, because her sleep-self—the same sleep-self that had been some fat guy’s wife in Atlanta—had taken over the driving chores while she visited Wonderland. It was no Wonderland she’d ever heard of, though, nor Oz, nor any war she knew of. A war with dragons. She remembered reading, once, about Bengal tigers in Vietnam eating the occasional Marine… but no dragons.
She passed the first sign that said GAINESVILLE and felt a strong urge to turn off there, a psychic tug pulling her in that direction. She resisted. The second sign she saw said UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA… The urge to turn off was stronger, too strong to resist, so she followed a couple other cars off the highway, around a clover leaf exit ramp to stop at a red light. She knew to turn right, toward town. Hanna rolled the window dow
n and felt the subtropical heat, which had not let up at all. The scent of hot tar, from the cooked road, permeated the Jeep.
“We’re here,” Hanna said to the General, who had not moved at all since leaving Deuce. He’d become inanimate, just a thing, not a person.
“I know.” He opened his eyes. He still wore those mirrorshades, but she somehow just knew when those beady little orbs were focused on her. She felt it in her bones, a chill as if God were watching her exclusively.
“Now what?” she asked, a little afraid of the answer, even though she knew that she had nothing to fear. Not yet, anyway.
“You know where to go as well as I do, soldier,” the General said. “So go.”
“Is that an order?” Hanna asked sarcastically.
So she went, letting instinct or blind faith or whatever guide her.
At one corner, where the university campus stopped across the street from a row of shops, the urge to Turn Left became strong. She maneuvered the Jeep into the turning lane.
Then Hanna saw her.
The General saw her, too.
He sat forward in his seat and lifted his mirrorshades up, and light blazed from within his eye sockets. Hanna only partially noticed. Her attention was locked on what she saw outside, who she saw outside.
“There she is,” the General said. Total awe, and Hanna felt it, too.
The blonde girl was walking her bicycle across the street, accompanied by another girl dressed all in black and a guy wearing loose blue jeans and a t-shirt… The blonde girl looked disturbingly familiar to Hanna, but Hanna knew she’d never seen her before that moment. Who was she?
“Light’s green,” the General said. “Move it, soldier.”
“But…” The driver behind them honked the horn.
“Move it!”
Hanna hit the gas, tires squealing as the Jeep laid down rubber through the intersection. The blonde girl and her friends watched the Jeep, and Hanna got a sudden, brief, flash of deep blue eyes that showed her how all the beauty in the world would look if it could be seen in the eyes of one person.
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