People Park

by Pasha Malla

  Hush now. We can see everything fine at home.

  But this wasn’t true: the picture was too small, identifying faces was akin to picking out raindrops from a monsoon.

  Do you think Calum’s there?

  Hush.

  If he still hasn’t come home, Ma, don’t you —

  Cora swatted at him. I said hush!

  Ma? Is that him? There! Is it —

  There’s just so many people, said Cora softly. There’s too many people to tell.

  THE NEXT DAY, said Olpert, the walk to school was the saddest walk of my life.

  Yeah?

  The whole way from Bay Junction I thought about that apple, the way it just exploded, and I thought — and don’t laugh at me here, I was a kid — that my heart felt the same way. Like it had just . . . shattered. But with such a soft little tap.

  Fug.

  And, Starx? Is love like that? I figure it’s that stuff, that steaming stuff, and you soak your heart in it, and then someone pulls out a hammer and smashes everything to pieces. And then you feel so so so so so so small.

  Starx stared at him. He didn’t say a word.

  The light inside the boathouse clicked off. Raven didn’t emerge. Instead, moaning: a mantra or a dirge.

  Olpert turned back to his partner. Am I crazy?

  Love’s crazy, Bailie. Though Starx seemed to be talking to himself — No, thought Olpert, more a memory of himself. Love’s a fuggin punt to the grapes for sure, he said.

  BY QUARTER TO NINE People Park and its adjacent neighbourhoods were filled to capacity, there was nowhere else for anyone to go. And while Gip focused unwaveringly on the illustrationist’s trunk, spotlit at the front of the stage, Kellogg was more interested in the shifty guy with the thing on his face, who emerged from the shadows every so often to examine the crowd. And each time he did Kellogg drew his family a little closer.

  Everywhere people trained video cameras on one another. Eyebrows lifted, fingers pointed, lenses reflected lenses to infinity. There you are, people said, waving, Good to see you — Say something to the camera — I don’t know you but hi! What boundless cheer, thought Kellogg, how good and decent a city could be. He wrapped his arm around Pearl, who hoisted Elsie-Anne on her hip, and she hugged him back while Gip chanted Ra-ven under his breath — what a champ! Had the Pooles ever had such a perfect, happy time? Not as a family, together, never. And the show hadn’t even started yet.

  NFLM Helpers moved through the crowd handing out sparklers. Go on, Annie, said Pearl, and warily Elsie-Anne shouldered her purse and took a sparkler and held it at arm’s length, hypnotized by the flaring tip. That’s not how you do it, Dorkus, said Gip. He snatched the sparkler and whirled it through the air: RAVEN, RAVEN, RAVEN. Easy now, said Kellogg. I just wanted to show her, said Gip, though he’d already lost interest. The sparkler was discarded, it fizzled on the ground into a dead tin stick.

  IN MATCHING BLACK outfits Havoc, Tragedy, and Pop descended from Knock Street Station into Lower Olde Towne. At the station’s entrance Pop removed his balaclava and glared into the security camera. I am whom I am, he howled. Envision me!

  Tragedy elbowed into the shot, wonky eye shooting off lakeward, to shake a masturbatory gesture at the lens. Restribution, he said. Right?

  Restri-fuggin-bution indeed, agreed Pop. Now let’s get our moves on.

  Lower Olde Towne was devoid of life, the tourist shops and artisanal craft stores closed, the B&B’s along Knock Street seemed to be sleeping. From the station the trio pushed north, over cobblestones mottled with mats of hay masking paddies of horsedung. But the horses were stabled in Kidd’s Harbour, their drivers downtown for the big show — along with, it seemed, everyone else.

  The trio assembled under the awning of an Islandwear boutique. Pop opened his duffel, removed a can of spraypaint, puffed a bright green burst onto the wall.

  Fuggin yeah, said Havoc, that’θ a θtart.

  I’ve crafted a text, said Pop, removing a sheaf of papers from his pocket. He handed a section each to Havoc and Tragedy. I’ve divisioned it into chapters, one to each of us.

  Tragedy leafed through the pages. Wow. We got enough paint?

  Pop spread the bag open: it was full of cans. Absolutesimally, he said.

  YOUNG PEOPLE occupied the common’s eastern hillside. Most were drunk. Voices hooted, ciders made the rounds, empties were pitched into the orchard, bottlecaps flicked and forgotten. A small group started a lethargic and half-ironic Ra-ven chant, abandoned to apathy. The booze had them grasping at heedlessness and rebellion, despite curfews and homework in the backs of their minds.

  Edie shared a flask of schnapps with a boy from school. He got hold of a sparkler, wrote, FUG, and a mum racing by with her daughters shielded their eyes.

  Laughing, Edie handed him the flask.

  Where’s Calum, he said.

  No idea, said Edie, I haven’t heard from him since yesterday. Though if he wants to ruin his life, whatever, it’s his problem, she said, watching the boy drink. He doesn’t care about his future? Fine. I tried to help him, but you can only do so much, right?

  What? the boy said.

  Nothing, said Edie, and reclaimed the flask, and took another drink.

  LESS THAN A MINUTE, said Wagstaffe, and Isa Lanyess neighed, The countdown’s begun!

  Adine checked the phone again — no Sam, no one. From the TV, kettledrums rumbled and a brass section belched its way through a melody that suggested some imminent triumph. She imagined spotlights dancing, the crowd tensing, the conjoined anticipation of cuddled-up couples. With this came thoughts of Debbie — so Adine reached for the remote and turned up the sound.

  Isa Lanyess said, What a magnificent celebration of twenty-five years of this beautiful space, and Wagstaffe clarified, The park, yes, let’s not forget — only thirty seconds to go!

  Adine stared into the blackness of her goggles, images of Debbie flitting in her mind’s eye: surrounded by friends, someone else holding her, an insipid snuggly orgy —

  On TV the drums were intensifying. Isa Lanyess screamed, Ten seconds, and We-TV’s co-hosts roared in chorus, Nine, eight, seven, six, five . . .

  Four, shouted everyone in Cinecity.

  Three, said Rupe and Cora.

  Two, thought Adine, grudgingly.

  One, whispered Gip.

  The drums stopped.

  The lights went out.

  Every clock and watch froze at once: it was nine.

  From somewhere a lone trumpet wailed a single, sad note. The Podesta Tower searchlights swung over the crowd, illuminating thousands of expressions of rapture and wonder. The videoscreens came to life in a grey mess of static, which organized into a shuffle of photographs meant to mimic movement. A ten-second, grainy loop played on repeat: the silhouette of a raven flapping across a colourless sky.

  The trumpet paused. Into the silence pattered a drumroll, not just suspenseful but militaristic — a reveille. As it crescendo’d the birds on the videoscreens flew faster, faster.

  Here we go, whispered Wagstaffe, and Kellogg, and hundreds of other dads.

  The Podesta Tower searchlights, twirling like streamers in a gale, whipped together into a single spot upon the helicopter on the Grand Saloon’s roof. The fat white band dragged through the orchard’s drunk youngsters, down into the common, all the way up, slow as a sunrise, to the gazebo: the trunk opened and in this pillar of light stood Raven.

  A roar rose up that Adine heard not just on TV, but through her windows, the whole island felt rocked by a seismic explosion. And the subsequent applause was the gallop of hot magma, thundering down.

  Beaming at his public, arms wide to accept their adulation, Raven stepped from the trunk onto the catwalk. The stagelights came up. His tracksuit glowed, his baldhead was incandescent, he waved and blew kisses and grinned.

 
Yes, he cried into a headset microphone. Welcome!

  Here he is, said Wagstaffe. Here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for.

  Holy shet speak for yourself, said Adine, though no one heard her but Jeremiah.

  WAY OUT IN Whitehall all Debbie could hear was a droning roar, changing as she moved through it, as she bumped against and slid away from strangers who fondled her and now she was fondling them back, and when a pair of lips came out of the dark and pressed to hers what could she do but return the kiss? For a moment she felt guilty, what about Adine —

  But these thoughts were too distinct, too literal: they skidded away from her, lost in all that sound. She reached into the darkness for someone to touch. Hands found and passed her, one set to the next. And somehow the screaming began to disappear, to fold inside itself, becoming at once somehow bigger and smaller than silence.

  The other people began to disappear inside it too: Debbie became pure sensation, she tingled and shivered, she was hot and cold and awake and asleep, all at once, and she knew that everything anyone had ever known could be found trapped inside this moment, this sound that was no longer audible, but something else.

  Everything was here, everything was now. How could there ever be anything but this?

  She felt her voice welling up. She too could make this sound, she understood at last how to make this essential sound, this non-sound, it gathered and swelled inside her and she opened her mouth to give it life —

  And that was when the power went out.

  ALL THE LIGHTS in People Park surged at once: the place glowed as if daytime had descended from the night sky. Kellogg reeled. Whoa, he said, that’s bright! But Gip stared into it, wide-eyed and trusting.

  Look at you, laughed Raven, indicating the screens on either side of the stage.

  Upon them appeared the crowd, alive in that blaze of light. And from the crowd hundreds of cameras pointed at the screens, and cameras shot the people shooting themselves shooting the screen and on the screens everyone saw themselves and roared in one voice: Ra-ven, Ra-ven, Ra-ven.

  Look at you, said Raven, you’re beautiful, thank you!

  ADINE TRIED EVERYTHING: when the remote failed she felt her way to the TV and twisted the volume, changed the channel, turned the set off and on — nothing. She picked up the cordless phone, hammered the buttons, listened . . . It was dead too.

  THE LIGHTS DIMMED. Raven compelled silence. And so there was silence.

  People! he said, speaking the word as an imperative. Tonight we have come to bear witness to something truly spectacular. I must admit I have never attempted anything this ambitious before, and I am honoured to try it, here, in your city — not great, indeed, but well built.

  This elicited a dubious and scant ovation.

  But, people! What is most important is that I have discovered a truth manifest in this land. By means of your solitary situation I fear you are to yourselves unknown, apt enough to think there might be something supernatural about this place. Am I wrong?

  He quashed a Ra-ven reprise with an impatient wave.

  No, no indeed. What I need from you, from everyone in your fair city, is to know you are the right sort of people — are you? Are you the right sort of people?

  They were sure about this: Yes! hollered the crowd.

  Raven’s eyes widened. Are you really? Do you believe?

  Yes! (Really! misspoke Kellogg.)

  Because this will not work without the right sort of people — people who believe, people who are willing to open their eyes and look. None of us knows what the fair semblance of a city might conceal. Is it no better than a brushed exterior? A white sepulchre? Or perhaps rather illustrative than magical?

  Cheers.

  What you will see tonight will not be deception, nor an illusion, nor some spurious trick of the light.

  More cheers.

  It will be the truth! That is why I am here, that is what I plan to illustrate to you — humbly, of course. For many such journeys are possible. This is only one.

  Again, in a single voice, the crowd performed on cue.

  I’ve spent now two full days in your city. When I arrived I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. But, fortunately, I had some excellent guides who showed me around, and taught me some important lessons as well . . .

  Backstage, Olpert felt a twang of anxiety that the illustrationist might mention him by name. He actually felt faint, swooned a little. But Starx caught him — Whoa there, Bailie! — and guided him pondside into a deckchair branded Municipal Works. You okay, pal? Starx asked, kneeling. If you’re going to barf again, at least do it in the water.

  Raven continued: But here we are! And what a perfect opportunity to reveal something deeply fundamental to what — I think, at least — this city is all about.

  The crowd was buzzing now.

  Wagstaffe said, Raven’s making hints about what’s to come, though at home in Laing Towers Rupe and his mother didn’t hear this, Cora was smacking the TV to coax a picture back. But the set was out. The whole Zone was out.

  What sounded like a bomb went off on the common. Olpert nearly fell into the pond.

  Easy, buddy, said Starx. No war on yet.

  Right, said Olpert. Just the show.

  You want to go watch?

  Do you?

  Hey, said Starx, you make the call. We’re B-Squad, right? Can’t split up B-Squad!

  B-Squad, agreed Olpert. Then: Do you mind if we just stay here, Starx?

  I do not.

  They gazed out over Crocker Pond, a sheet of glossed ebony.

  I should pitch a fifth pillar, said Starx. Fidelititum, or something. Because isn’t that what’s most important, Bailie?

  Fidelititum?

  Exactly.

  From the common, another roar. The illustrationist’s voice echoed: Yes, yes!

  So here’s my story, said Starx, pulling up a deckchair. I told you I used to be married?

  You did.

  Well. So. My wife, my ex-wife, she ran this bookshop in Mount Mustela — Bookland.

  She ran that?

  Still does. Inherited it from her parents. Anyway she’s working late one night. Just doing inventory or whatever. And man, I told her I don’t know how many times it was a bad idea to be there all alone so late. Even though it’s east of the canal.

  I work alone late.

  I know you do, pal. Listen for a sec though? So this one night she’s there, this is two years ago, it’s probably midnight or something, and she looks up and those people are doing that thing where they paint the windows black —

  In Mount Mustela?

  My lady, god love her, she’s a tough bird, she goes right out front and is like, what are you doing to my store, I’m right here! There are maybe a dozen of those fuggin animals. And, sure, they stop painting. But then they just close in on her.

  Oh no.

  Starx stood, started pacing. I would have killed them, he said, wheeling at Olpert and brandishing one of his little fists. If I’d been there, I mean. You hear me?

  What happened?

  What the fug do you think happened?

  I don’t —

  What happened was that she came home and told me, she’s crying, and I’m — Bailie. I don’t know what to do. I can’t even describe this feeling. Not even angry. It’s something way beyond that, like having some crazy evil part of yourself open up. Your brain starts shooting off in all these directions. I’m picturing finding these people, these animals, and tearing them apart with my bare hands. Just ripping them apart. You know?

  From the common the Ra-ven chant started up again.

  Starx continued: This lady of mine, Bailie, she was a fuggin spitfire. Lakeview-raised, the whole bit. But after this, after they interfered with her, she’s half that person. I don’t know what to do, so I c
all Griggs. He tells me to bring her right away, but she wants to take a shower. She goes into the bathroom and locks the door and I’m out there screaming we have to go, she can’t do this — so what do I do? I break the door down.

  Olpert thought, Interfered. What did that mean?

  My logic is that we have to preserve all the evidence, so the HG’s can do what they need to, so I can’t let her shower. Right? And, Bailie, this is not a woman who anyone lets do anything. Nobody didn’t let her do anything, ever. She just did or didn’t. But now she’s barely there, she’s limp, there’s nothing in her eyes. So I pick her up and carry her outside and — Bailie, it was horrible, horrible. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

  Starx stopped pacing. He stood at the pond’s edge watching the water, his back to Olpert. Telling Starx about Katie Sharpe and the frozen apple seemed a terrible mistake now, so indulgent and pointless. The big man’s whole world seemed coiled around that singled word — interfered — and when he’d spoken it everything had come unspooling: he appeared now smaller, drained, and spent.

  From the common came another roar. Raven cried, Who will help me, who will help me, who among you will join me onstage and help me, here, tonight?

  POP HANDED HAVOC and Tragedy a can of spraypaint each. He zipped the duffel, slung it over his shoulder, and flapped his manifesto. Restribution, he said, saluted, and crossed Knock Street at a low scuttle. While Pop stole around the side of the Temple, Tragedy pulled a radio from his jacket, held it to his face, and spoke: Griggs, it’s Pea and Dack, the squab’s in the oven. A reply came crackling back: Good lookin out. Bring him in.

  KNEELING ON THE RUG by the dead TV Adine became aware of a stillness that extended beyond her apartment. A blackout, she said, aloud. She moved to the window, opened it, listened. Her neighbours were pouring onto the streets, Adine was struck by how many they seemed. Their voices were loud and curious, almost bold, and amplified as though seeking echoes. You without power too? asked someone and someone else replied, Yeah, right in the middle of the show, and Adine thought, Me too, but didn’t call down to them, just listened as the two of them decided to head together to Cinecity. Adine closed the window, sat in the nook, pulled a pillow onto her lap and stared into the goggles. As always, everything was dark. But in a blackedout world, she wondered, what if anything did being blind mean?