9 Tales From Elsewhere 10 Read online

  The squeaky woman took this information and looked back to the fidgety boy while she questioned the grandmother, “Was he there when she died?”

  “The thing barely made it off the ground and dropped like a stone into a lake, Popcorn survived, but everyone else died. He was weird before though, he takes Ritalin, lots of it. I got to double the dose sometimes he’s so crazy,” the grandmother eased as she spoke.

  A few of the passengers crept to the windows to peek at the beasts. Snapping through bones, lapping the red puddle.

  The squeaky woman sat down next to the boy, “Popcorn, that’s a fun name.”

  “His mother was a hippy and finding his father would fill Maury’s schedule for a month.”

  “Popcorn, what happened when your mother died?”

  He stopped bouncing and looked toward the woman, “Just a crash, that’s what I’m ‘sposeda say.”

  “Just a crash?”

  “He used to talk about something, but his therapist fixed it. The government only covers so much and I didn’t ask for the burden, I shouldn’t to pay more than I do to keep him,” the grandmother said, defensively.

  Roddy stared down the beasts through the glass. The husky man was just a stain on the road. The beasts ate his clothing, shoulders to toes.

  “You should hurry up and get to the point. That man wasn’t enough for those things,” said Roddy.

  “But not just a crash, not like how I’m ‘sposeda say. Dream Mama says the therapy man is a dick-weed, he gots it wrong. Dream Mama wants me to ‘member the time doggies.”

  “Right, tell me what your dream mother says,” the squeaky woman demanded.

  “Oh don’t get him…”

  “Shut up lady or I’ll toss you outside and you can meet the fuckin’ doggies if they ain’t real enough for you,” the young man from Dornoch offered.

  Popcorn looked from his grandmother to the squeaky woman and back, he stuck his tongue out at his grandmother and started into his story.

  “It was icky and we was hurrying, Dream Mama says it was time in our bellies trying to keep us back.” The grandmother tutted at this, but the boy continued. “Mama said she didn’t trust the others and we waited a real long time. But Mama wanted us out, that was before. The time doggies bit her a whole bunch when we got out and then they dragged her on the lake. They didn’t sink or nothin’, but then it all went away.”

  The beasts turned back to the shade under the motel’s overhang. A shared release of held breaths left the chests of those had watched the feast.

  “What do you mean it went away?” the Truro mother asked.

  “I was right by the lake and the Mama was in the water where the time doggies dragged her, but she wasn’t on top no more, she was floating and then the chopter swung like a crazy birdie and went carploosh! It got me with a big splash. I was real sad, but the Dream Mama came and told me I wouldn’t need to live in grandma’s closet too long.”

  “You keep him in a closet?” the Truro mother barked, aghast.

  “Don’t be so high and mighty. It ain’t my fault the kid’s nuts and his whore mother died!”

  “You raised her, didn’t you?” the squeaky woman asked.

  The grandmother huffed and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Does Dream Mama say anything else?” Roddy asked, he got up and headed back to the conversation.

  “Dream Mama says I can’t be inside when time catches up, got to be outside, but don’t let the time doggies get me,” popcorn again bounced on his seat. “Gots to go away when it gets all smoky.”

  It sounded right and wrong at the same time. Time had a destiny for the passengers of the early bus from Owen Sound to Guelph, but time and destiny have nothing on the inherent need to survive. Humanity evolved into what they are by surviving. Fate and destiny be damned.

  “Is it timing, is that what he’s saying?” said the squeaky woman. “That’s what it was, right? You needed to be early. I thought I’d die if you were late, the thought made me sick.”

  “Right, yeah,” the bus driver nodded, fingers in his beard as he spoke. “But it’s not exact like the railroad. I have leeway. We were a couple minutes and change earlier than the earliest scheduled time, better than three minutes better than my usual time. It could be any time, now. My watch stopped.” Roddy looked at his watch, “No wait, it works! It’s slow but moving!”

  It had moved three seconds into the future since they’d stopped in Varney.

  “Does it matter if we don’t know exactly when we should be off the bus?” an Owen Sound woman asked, yawning.

  “No, but I can guess. I wouldn’t be earlier than the earliest possible boarding time, I mean, sometimes I’m a minute or two late by Truro, catch up some at the longer stop in Arthur after Kenilworth. Early trip Kenilworth riders are always late, always the same three or four passengers,” said the driver thinking back to the consistencies gone the way of the emperor rat.

  Conversations, arguments and the big questions filled the bus. It was all guessing at that point, the only knowledge source with a boy with a hippy name, a bloodstream laden with medication and the dreams he had about his dead mother.

  God help us, Roddy put his face in hands and slunk down in a seat, a middle seat. One of the emergency evacuation seats.

  Varney – Closer

  A woman slapped her face three times in quick succession, “Wake up!” she shouted.

  Everyone on the bus hoped she would wake and that all along they were nothing more than a part of her dream. She did not wake up. Instead, she grew sad and embarrassed, needlessly. To everyone on that bus, slapping her face and yelling seemed utterly reasonable.

  The spiked ball had departed Roddy entirely, leaving behind a sticky trail of worry and anticipation. Out the window, the shimmery heat bounced from the greyed asphalt onto the softened infrastructure of time outside time.

  They had been in this place for only thirty-nine seconds. Hours gone, a few of the mothers packed sack lunches and the children ate. The adults either ignored the eating or stared longingly at the PB&Js and cheese on crackers.

  All the windows opened a crack to let in fresh air. The heat was typical of Varney and getting hotter, also typical, no matter which Varney it was, it was hot in the summer.

  They asked Popcorn to repeat his tale twice, picked and questioned additional tidbits. Mostly, the trouble with the boy was slowness. He spoke excitedly and skipped subjects and topics without cease.

  Dream Mama was a key, but viewed through a murky veil.

  Roddy had asked, uncertain why, “What if Dream Mama is just a dream and not his mother?” There were no doubts in Popcorn. Popcorn went on smiling like the devout believers of Jesus Christ in the face of people that use science and history against God.

  “Dream Mama’s just pretending to be a dream.”

  There was no argument.

  Eventually, Roddy said, “That’s a minute.”

  There was a grumble, most held cellphones, praying a signal would connect and a hero could come to rescue them.

  “Hey, driver,” the squeaky woman said. She’d gone back to where she hid throughout the ride, the seat opposite the toilet.

  Roddy strode the aisle, his legs shaky and his head light, the back half of the bus was dark and the air seemed thicker, as if opening the windows did nothing and each exhale added to a layer of smog hanging on air between five- and six-feet, localized to the back half of the bus.

  “Yeah?” Roddy dropped into the seat next to the little woman. She had thin blonde hair that clung to sweat on her forehead.

  “You drive this route a lot?”

  “Sure, for yours now.”

  The squeaky woman had a finger pressed to the back window, “That chair, doesn’t it look small?”

  Varney is a strange place in the idea that it can boast anything it at all. According to an internet search (one boring morning in Goose Hill awaiting an elder man and his caregivers to arrive at the stop), the giant Adirondack c
hair in Varney is the largest Adirondack chair in the world. Varney also boasts the fastest quarter-mile in Southern Ontario, although that seemed more a marketing factoid than anything worth proving right or wrong.

  The bus driver followed the direction of the finger. The chair was a good distance. It was possibly smaller, but it was not the object of his attention.

  “There’s a house gone.”

  It was a change, a big change. It offered something, not hope and not terror, just a tidbit, good or bad, of what they understood of the oddity thrust upon them.

  “Huh?”

  Everyone noticed the big chair, it’s massive, something like fifteen-feet high, but unless you drove the route often, you might never notice the two-storey redbrick home, the long grey shed or the small privacy row of cedars offering the homeowners a reprieve from the traffic and the dust to the north of the chair.

  “There’s a house gone!” Roddy jumped up and squeezed between the toilet partition and the window on the opposite side. Varney sits in a dip, there’s a good-sized hill leading in coming from the north and a gentle incline heading southbound, out toward the speedway. Halfway up the hill, there’s another home, but it was gone. The stone home, a touch fancy for Varney, had disappeared and so had the home just down the hill, another two-storey redbrick with a shed. “There’s two gone. There were three cars for sale in the field and buddy’s transport truck, but they’re all gone too.”

  “It’s all catching up, do you think? I mean we’re like in this place, but it’s not like a place people live, it’s not like Varney anymore,” said the Truro mother. “I saw something like this on a movie once!”

  “I wish I could see over to the south,” said Roddy. Or east or west, his thoughts added, it was mostly trees and buildings on either side.

  “Why don’t you go do that, just take a walk and do that,” said a man from Owen Sound.

  Roddy frowned. The bus had lost its anger focal point when the husky man from Williamsford became puppy chow. It appeared the bus driver was next in line.

  “What, you think I meant to put us here?”

  “Don’t matter, you did it.”

  The driver, tired, stressed and scared stepped forward. No harm in pounding away some emotions.

  “How about you shut your mouth? Unless you want someone to do it for you.”

  The man turned and snarled at the driver, “How about I put my fist down your throat.”

  The man leapt and Roddy swung at him, grazing the man’s forehead before falling back. Angry men imagine the fights they wage look like big screen fights, they imagine taking dozens of punches before emerging underdog victor and earning the heart of an impressed damsel, but mostly it’s rolling around and discovering that the punches hurt hands as much as they damage opponents while women stand back rolling their eyes.

  “Break it up!” one of the dying Williamsford women shouted as she attempted to peel back the man from Owen Sound. He’d taken a momentary upper hand, but he’d also pulled something in his side wrestling around.

  He let the woman pull him away, only feigning an interest in continuing the fight. Roddy had a bloody nose and nothing else to show for his battle. Most of the passengers had resumed their conversations about realities and hope, gods and punishment. They split up the middle, shakily hopeful and certain in hopelessness.

  “This is God’s plan and we are not put on Earth to fight it. We need to embrace it. God blesses the faithful,” a teenager spouted to Popcorn’s grandmother.

  “That’s right. God’s plan ain’t about why or how, it’s about faith,” she nodded as she spoke.

  The squeaky woman stepped forward and collected the driver as if she were his trainer. Rather than taking him back, she pulled him forward to an emergency window at the centre of the bus.

  “Come on, we’re taking a look over that hill.”

  Roddy was happy to let the conversation about god fall secondary to the squeaky voice of the little woman.

  “We can climb out a window and look over the hill,” she added pointing at the window.

  Roddy brushed his nose against his shoulder, “No need,” he said and pointed back two paces. “Emergency hatch.”

  Those conversing God’s plan spied the action two rows ahead of them. The driver and the squeaky woman ignored them and after pushing the roof hatch open. Roddy climbed onto the seats and then pulled himself to the roof. Once he’d gained his bearing, he turned to tugged the woman up, but she had already climbed and was sliding forward on her dress so that her feet rested on solid ground.

  “It’s fresher out here,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and then stepped to glance over the edge, “Where do you think they went?”

  “I saw them run over…” his words stopped as he spotted all but one of the pack leap from a shady alleyway, “never mind them.”

  “Can you see anything?” she asked stepping back from the edge.

  The sun overhead came down hot, but indirectly. There was a cover of cloudy haze between the bus and the sun. Roddy put his hand to his forehead and looked out on the soft landscape. He and the squeaky woman walked to the front of the bus, the time doggies crept close, but understood the food items on the top of the bus were still out of reach.

  Looking around, Roddy was at a loss to tell if the hydro transformers that loomed down the highway had gone or were just too far to see in the hazy light.

  The squeaky woman was no more than five-feet at the top of her head, there was no way she saw anything either. Roddy had a funny idea, but didn’t think the little woman would go for it. To his surprise, she suggested exactly what he had thought.

  Minds steering the same route.

  “Put me up on your shoulders and then I’ll see.”

  Roddy smiled. She did not.

  “You can’t look at me when I’m getting up, or after, ok?”

  “Down on your knees and look over there,” the squeaky woman pointed south.

  Roddy did as told and waited.

  “All right, hold still,” she said and felt a hand on his shoulder, “Scrunch lower.”

  He did and a bare leg touched his cheek. It was warm and damp with sweat. Fine stubble brushed his cheekbone when the second thigh squeezed on his face. The tremendous heat on the back of his neck was impossible to ignore. It was like the door to a furnace. He allowed a moment’s thought, the situation virtually as it was, but of his facing the opposite direction, chin to the furnace.

  “You got me?”

  “Yes,” he croaked, wondering if the thought of his face to her vagina found its way to the shared tract. He fought to think about anything else, but the heat held his attention.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  He held the little legs just below the knees, they squeezed, not as tightly as they had, but still there and still with nervous rigidness.

  “I see some trees to the left and there’s that old restaurant on the right, but I don’t know. I’m not from here, I just moved to this stupid province last year. I wish I’d kept going west. Turn me,” she turned her hips and he understood the direction she wanted. Roddy wondered if it was how pack donkeys felt when a rider climbed aboard.

  Lonely donkey.

  Sweat streamed, he felt his shirt dampen around the collar and everywhere her legs pressed. For a moment, he felt faint and imagined teetering over the side and somehow falling into the pond.

  “You ok, I didn’t mean to be so cranky, but I’m not one for showing off,” she said and then added, “Just trees. Other way.”

  Roddy turned thinking about what exactly it was that she meant by showing off.

  Period panties probably… you old pervert.

  “I just see trees, ok you can…”

  “I want a ride!” Popcorn screamed as he attempted to climb onto the roof.

  “Hold a second, Popcorn,” said the driver who had suddenly become more horsey than donkey. Roddy knelt down, making certain he didn’t glimpse anything, and let the woman
off his shoulders.

  Popcorn had climbed topside and got to his knees. The bus driver watched him, without glancing in any other direction. A hand touched his neck and he looked back. The squeaky woman offered an awkward grin.

  “I want a ride!” Popcorn got to his feet and ran toward the driver.

  “Sorry, buddy. I’m too tired, maybe later,” said Roddy, sweat ran in the shape of the woman’s legs, around his neck and down his chest, stopping right about where her calves ended. “I think I need to go back down, have a drink.”

  The squeaky woman nodded and helped him to his feet. They took two steps each toward the hatch, letting Popcorn sneak by to check the front of the bus.

  “Come back, Popcorn,” the squeaky woman called.

  He didn’t, as she expected. She started to form a second demand when a ruckus from within the bus choked her words.

  What the fuck!

  Holy shit!

  Jesus Christ!

  Are you crazy?

  The string of voices from within the bus was collectively horrified.

  “Quick! Quick! Take her!” the Truro mother shouted.

  Roddy knelt down into the escape hatch and took a small girl, not yet understanding the situation.

  “Fuck you, Granna!” Popcorn flipped his grandmother his middle finger.

  She had opened the bus door and stepped out, her arms wide to receive the Lord.

  The time doggies rushed and the first two stopped over her body while three others continued toward the bus. The teen girl with Popcorn’s grandmother saw folly in her faith that God’s plan would deliver her should she let it and scrambled back toward the bus. She stepped up the stairs and crashed into the man who picked a fight with the bus driver. This time he ended up on the bottom of a pile.

  “Quick!” the Truro mother shouted again.

  Two of her children sat atop the bus, sobbing. Roddy grabbed onto the boy, the final of her kids, and pulled him up. The Truro mother turned away from the hole and shouted at someone.