by Sean Cullen
“Logic don’t enter into it,” Mimi drawled. “He’s just a mean fellar and mean fellars ain’t interested in makin’ things better fer anyone, even themselves. Heck, he already makes more money than he knows what to do with! He enjoys makin’ us suffer.”
They stripped off their face masks and grey overalls, hanging them on hooks that ran the length of the changing room. The stink of the cheese followed them into the room from the factory hall, clinging to their hair and coating their skin. In the hall the stench of the cheese reached dangerous levels, hence the face masks. Exposure to raw Caribou Blue fumes for an extended period was fatal. The smell clung to the children every moment of their waking lives, and even coloured their dreams. Their overalls were cleaned once a week and the masks boiled every other day, but they never lost that wretched stench of the factory.
The two meals they received each day were a respite for the orphans. While the food itself was barely palatable, they were allowed to sit down while they ate. To the children coming off shift who’d been on their feet all day, sitting down was like a holiday. They trudged into the cafeteria, picking up a bowl from the stack by the door and shuffling into line in front of the hole in the wall where Mrs. Francis ladled out the oatmeal gruel with a splash of whey that was their nightly ration.
The cafeteria24 was a place to steal the last warmth out of any beleaguered soul. It was furnished with battered aluminum benches and tables, scuffed and gouged by continuous use. The walls were painted pink, but not a happy pink. No, this pink was not the pink of delicate wildflowers in a waving sea of prairie grass or the glorious pink of a summer sunset after a cool rain. No, the pink Viggo chose to coat the walls of the orphanage cafeteria was the pink of slimy creatures that live under rocks and never see sunlight, or the pink found on the inside of an ailing goat’s intestine.25 Guards stood in the four corners of the room to make sure none of the children made any trouble.
Mimi glared at the guard who stood by the door. Three more guards worked in the factory itself. She’d tangled with all of them, singly and in groups. Mimi had regular run-ins with the powers that be, but usually in reaction to some cruelty or other the guards perpetrated on the orphans. Parveen was a favourite target for humiliation. The guard answered her glare by shifting his gaze to his left shoe. Mimi wasn’t worth provoking.
Mimi’s stomach rumbled as she picked up her bowl. She handed one to Parveen and they took their place in the line. She was so exhausted she almost didn’t notice the boy in front of her in the queue. What drew her attention to him was the whistling. A happy sound like whistling was totally out of place in the Windcity Orphanage and Cheese Factory. He wore new overalls, meaning he was a new inductee.
“Hey!” Mimi poked the boy in the shoulder.
The boy stopped whistling but didn’t turn.
“Who are you?” Mimi asked. “I ain’t seen you around before.”
“Mind your own business, lady.”
“Who are you callin’ lady?”
The boy turned around and looked at her, up and down. His eyes were strange, golden like no eyes she’d ever seen.
“My mistake,” he said, frowning. “You aren’t a lady. In fact, I’m not even sure you’re a girl.” He smiled at her sweetly.
Mimi planted her fists on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Are you tryin’ to make fun of me?”
“I’m not trying,” the boy said, squaring up to her even though she stood a few inches taller, “I am making fun of you.”
All the children in line gasped. Quick as a wink, the boy and Mimi stood alone in the centre of a circle of empty floor. Every eye in the cafeteria was glued to them. Hamish X looked around at the crowd of children with their faded grey faces and faded grey overalls. Then he turned back to the tall, raw-boned girl standing in front of him. He cocked his head to one side, studying her.
Here’s what he saw. Mimi was quite tall for a girl her age. She stood just over five feet and was thin as a fence post. And just like a fence post, one would certainly feel it if you ran up against her. Her skin was pale and her hair was black as coal, curly, and profuse, sticking out like a wiry cloud around her head. She had a sharp face with a hatchet for a nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. Not that she wasn’t pretty … Well, maybe she wasn’t exactly pretty, but there was something handsome about her face: there was strength in her brilliant green eyes.
The tension in the room was as thick as the porridge in Mrs. Francis’s cauldron. All four guards leered happily. They loved to watch a fight. Even more, they loved to punish those involved.
Mimi and the boy stared at each other for a few long seconds. Finally Mimi spoke.
“What’s your name?” she asked in a dangerously soft voice. “So’s I know who it is I’m beatin’ on.”
The boy stepped back and straightened his new overalls, ran his fingers through his hair, and smiled. “The French call me L’Orphan des Bottes. The Germans call me Der Wunderknabe mit die Grosse Schwartze Schuhwaren. The Chinese call me Golden-Eyed Booted Devil Child. The Russians, Rot Kid. In Spain, I’m known as El Niño con Grandes Botas Negras. In Australia, they call me Greg.”26 The boy stopped and looked straight at Mimi. “But my mother called me Hamish. Hamish X!”
The guards scowled and Mrs. Francis dropped her ladle into the porridge. A collective gasp went up from the children. “Hamish X?”
“He escaped from Orphan Island by building a raft out of inflated underpants,” one child whispered.
“He defeated the Emperor of Mongolia in a two-day ankle-wrestling match,” whispered another.
“He climbed Mount Everest and danced with the Yeti’s mom!” squealed yet another.
Parveen cocked his head to one side and looked at the new boy with frank curiosity. “Hamish X? But … how could that be?”
A flicker of uncertainty danced across Mimi’s face, but she held her ground. “You’re Hamish X?”
“Yes. You still want to fight me?”
Mimi sneered. “I ain’t got nothin’ better to do.” Parveen reached up and held her arm.
“It’s not worth it,” he said. “Let it go.”
Mimi shook him off and glared at Hamish X.
“Now that the introductions is over,” she snarled, “let’s dance!” She launched herself at her opponent.
Though she lashed out as quickly as a viper, Hamish X ducked easily under her. He rolled neatly through her legs, stood up behind her, and gently tapped the back of her knee with his boot. Mimi’s leg folded and she stumbled to her hands and knees.
Furious, Mimi leapt to her feet. She whirled around to find Hamish X standing, arms folded, looking smug. “Nice try! I’ve trained under some of the finest martial artists in the world. I’ve studied kung fu with the Xaing Xuo Monks of Ti Twa!”27
“I ain’t been trained by monkeys,” Mimi gritted, “but I kick like a mule.”
Mimi kicked out at his belly. He caught her foot with his free hand and turned it, dumping her onto her face on the floor.
The children were shouting and cheering now. They all wanted Mimi to teach the new boy who was boss.
“Oh dear!” Mrs. Francis was looking out through the serving hutch. She covered her hand with her mouth. While she didn’t want to get the children into trouble, she also couldn’t bear the thought of them hurting each other. She ran off to find Mr. Viggo.
Mimi was up again. She brushed the dirt off her overalls and glared at Hamish.
“Now tell me your name and we’ll just call this a draw,” Hamish said.
Mimi snarled and dove for Hamish’s feet. He leapt forward, tucked into a ball and tumbled, landing easily on his feet as Mimi skidded across the floor on her belly. Scattered applause greeted Hamish’s landing.
“I studied tumbling with the Flying Crimini Brothers in Italy,”28 Hamish said to the crowd by way of explaining his last manoeuvre. “They asked me to join their troupe, but I got bored with the circus. Too many clowns.”
He wheeled around
and ducked a roundhouse kick from Mimi, who had crept up for another attempt. Mimi’s momentum swung her around so that she faced away from Hamish. He grabbed a handful of her overalls and, falling backwards, flipped her over his feet so that she fell flat on her face again. Hamish bounced to his feet once more.
“Judo—I picked it up from a guy in Mexico.29 Not really appropriate culturally, I know, but there you are!”
Mimi pushed herself up onto her hands and sucked at the air. She’d had the wind knocked out of her. Raising her head slowly, she looked at Hamish.
“So,” Hamish said sweetly, “will you just tell me your name and we can put all this nastiness behind us?”
Mimi gritted her teeth and staggered to her feet. She was about to launch herself at Hamish again when a voice piped up.
“Mimi!”
Mimi froze and turned to glare at someone in the crowd. Hamish followed her gaze to find Parveen. “Her name is Mimi.” Parveen pushed his thick glasses back up his nose.
“What’s going on here?” Viggo’s voice barked out. Hamish and all the other children turned their heads to see Viggo marching through the swinging doors at the end of the cafeteria. Mrs. Francis trailed after him, a worried expression on her face.
“Ah, Mr. Viggo!” Hamish X said brightly. “We were just demonstrating some new calisthenics for the rest of the kids. Right, Mi—oof!”
Mimi took advantage of the distraction provided by Viggo’s arrival to plant a haymaker into the side of Hamish’s head. The blow struck him directly on the temple. His eyes rolled back and his entire body stiffened. Then he fell like a tree under a lumberjack’s axe, slamming full-length to the floor at Mimi’s feet.
“Yeah,” she huffed. “What he said.”
Chapter 5
Hamish awoke to find himself spinning in the wind. A harness similar to one a skydiver might wear was hooked to a rope which was in turn fastened to the edge of the factory roof.
“Enjoy the view,” a harsh voice called. The voice belonged to one of two guards standing on the roof, pointing and laughing. One of the guards was Pianoface. His face looked as though someone had dropped a piano on it. He was only marginally uglier than his companion, however, whose face looked as though it had merely been beaten with a tuba. He was affectionately known as Tubaface.
“You and your girlfriend have a pleasant evening,” Tubaface shouted.
“He ain’t my boyfriend!” Hamish X focused as best he could and saw that he was not alone. Mimi was dangling in the wind beside him. “When I git down from here, y’all are gonna be sorry!”
The two guards howled with laughter. “In’t that a fine pair of kites!” crowed Pianoface.
“Fine indeed,” cackled Tubaface, slapping his knee. “Grand night for a kite flight.”
Pianoface stopped laughing, a sudden look of wonder coming over his ugly visage. “Tubaface! That’s poetry,” he said. The two guards looked at each other for a moment then turned and went through the door, closing it behind them.
Hamish X and Mimi whirled on the end of their tethers at the mercy of the gusts.
“There ain’t nuthin’ worse than bein’ dangled. Nothing!” Mimi cursed.
Windcity, as pointed out earlier, is windy. Extremely so. There is no place on earth that is more reliably consistent in its windiness. On any given day, at any given moment, one could say, “I bet it’s windy in Windcity.” No one would take the bet.30 Therefore, it’s only natural that Viggo would devise a punishment that took advantage of this fact.
Hamish X and Mimi spun at the end of their tethers, whirling at the mercy of the blasting gale. The effect was quite disorienting. Hamish clenched his teeth and stifled the nausea he felt rising in his stomach. He stuck out his arms and discovered that he could influence his spin by angling his appendages. After experimenting for a few moments, he found that he could stop his spinning altogether. In fact, he could remain upright. He hung, spread-eagled, at the end of his rope. Beneath his feet the earth was fifteen metres down, dusted in drifting snow. He looked to his right and saw Mimi in the identical posture looking back at him.
“Well, ain’t this a treat,” Mimi declared. “It would be quite a view. Too bad there ain’t nothin’ to see!”
Hamish X agreed. The town of Windcity looked miserable from ground level. From the sky, it looked more desolate still. The houses, empty and dark, teetered in the wind on the verge of collapse. Hudson’s Bay, grey and ice-strewn, stretched out to the eastern horizon. The sun hung low in the west, painting the sky red, but it wasn’t a warm, comforting red. Rather, the sky looked inflamed and sore, like a dirty wound. Lights shone from the guard shack on the wharf. A cargo boat bobbed and heaved at anchor in the harbour. To the north and west, flat, barren tundra spread out as far as the eye could see.
“Well, I guess I owe ya an apology,” Mimi said. “Why?”
“It’s my fault we’s stuck up here.”
“Not at all. Anyway, I had no other plans for this evening.”
Mimi laughed. She looked at her companion and shivered in the cold and at the memory of his strange reaction to the punch. “I never thought I’d meet the great Hamish X.”
Hamish X laughed. “I never thought you would either. You’re just lucky I guess.”
“You think pretty highly of yerself.”
“If I don’t, who will?” he grinned. “I never thought I’d meet you either, but I’m glad I did.”
They hung quietly for a while. Hamish X broke the silence. “How long are we going to be up here?”
“Couple hours,” Mimi said. “Maybe till mornin’. Depends on how mean Viggo’s feelin’, which is usually pretty darn mean.”
Again they hung quietly for a while, listening to the wind whistle through the lines. Again, Hamish X broke the silence.
“How about we start again as if we never met?”
“Sounds good.”
“My name is Hamish X.”
“Mimi Catastrophe Jones.”
“Catastrophe?” Hamish laughed. “Your parents named you Catastrophe?”
“Yeah,” Mimi said sheepishly. “They just liked the sound of it is all.”
“It’s a Greek word.”
“How do ya know that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I learned it somewhere. Hmm. Catastrophe … It suits you,” Hamish nodded. “Anyone with a left hook like that ought to be called Catastrophe.”
Mimi tried to hide her delight. “That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me. Apart from my daddy, that is.” She frowned.
“You remember your dad?” Hamish asked. His strange eyes stared at her with a yearning, hungry look. “I don’t remember my mother at all. I know I have one and that she loved me, but I don’t have a clear memory of what she looks like. I envy you. I just know I have to find her.”
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember nothin’, y’know? I wish I didn’t have that sore place in my heart all the time. It might be a sight easier to stand livin’ here if I never knew nothin’ better existed.”
“Never say that,” Hamish X said gently. “Tell me about your dad.”
Mimi went quiet for a while. Then she looked over at Hamish X. His eyes were focused so intensely on her, so strange. They seemed almost luminous in the darkness. “I never told nobody my story before,” Mimi said, “’ceptin’ Parveen. And he don’t count.”
“I’ll make you a deal. You tell yours and I’ll tell mine as best I can.” Hamish shivered in the frigid wind. “It’ll take our minds off the cold.”
Mimi was quiet for a moment longer. Then, as the sun went down, she told Hamish X her story.
Chapter 6
MINI’S STORY
I was born in a little town called Cross Plains, Texas. Cross Plains is barely a bump in the road. You’d hardly slow down if yah drove through. There ain’t a stoplight or stop sign and if there were you’d be tempted to run right through it. That’s how miserable the town o’ Cross Plains is. Tornados loved it though on account of a
ll the trailer parks in the vicinity. Trailers seem ta draw tornados like honey draws ants. My daddy swore we’d never live in a trailer. We’d be sittin’ on the front porch after a dinner of boiled water and ketchup and he’d say, “No matter how lowly our house may be, at least we ain’t livin’ in no trailer. ’Cause if you’re livin’ in a trailer, you’re neither here nor there. It ain’t a house and it ain’t a home.”
We lived in a little house, a bit run down but Momma made it pretty. My daddy were a proud man. He worked ever’ day to make sure me and Momma had sumthin’ ta eat, even if it were only ketchup and boiled water. He could tell stories and they would make ya laugh so hard that you’d ferget about any problem you had or the rumble in yer stomach.
He did odd jobs as a handyman, tryin’ to make ends meet. When he was younger, he played baseball in the minor leagues. He was a pitcher. He’d take me out after he came home from workin’ and we’d throw the ball in the field out back the house. He taught me how to make the ball dance and swerve like it was on a string. He said I was a natural. That was just the best time, throwin’ the ball until it were too dark to see it no more.
My momma was a very beautiful woman and smart as a whip. She went to college and everything. She knew lots o’ stuff. She got a degree and she learnt to be a teacher. That’s how she met my daddy. He was workin’ at the school fixin’ a leaky sink and they got to talkin’. Before long, he’d charmed her so much she agreed to go out for a date with him. A year later they was married. Then I come along. With Momma’s teachin’ and Daddy’s handyman work we made it okay. I don’t remember her face too well. I were only young when she died. But I remember her smile and the feel of her hands when she put me to bed.
Things started to go bad after my fourth birthday. Momma lost her job. She was teachin’ at the local school until it was stolen one night. I ain’t kiddin’! The school was one o’ them portables, and durin’ one dark night some jokers hooked it to a truck and hauled ’er off. That’s how desperate poor people were.