The Dog Said Bow-Wow (14 page)

The tokoloshe stumbled down toward the oni, shovel raised. His buddy followed after in similar stance.

So began a terrible and comic fight, the lesser creatures leaping and falling on the unsteady slope, all the while swinging their shovels murderously, and the great brute enduring their blows and trying to seize hold of his tormentors. I could not see the battle — no more than a few slashes of the shovels — though I managed to struggle to my knees, for the discards from Yoshi’s excavations rose too high. But I could hear it, the cursing and threats, the harsh clang of a shovel against Yoshi’s head and the fossegrim’s scream as one mighty hand finally closed about him.

Simultaneous with that scream there was a great clanking and sliding sound of what I can only assume was the tokoloshe’s final charge. In my mind’s eye I can see him now, racing downslope with the shovel held like a spear, its point aimed at Yoshi’s throat. But whether blade ever connected with flesh or not I do not know, for it set the trash to slipping and sliding in a kind of avalanche.

Once started, the trash was unstoppable. Down it flowed, sliding over itself, all in motion. Down it flowed, rattling and clattering, land made liquid, yet for all that still retaining its brutal mass. Down it flowed, a force of nature, irresistible, burying all three so completely there was no chance that any of them survived.

Then there was silence.

“Well!” said the vixen. “That was a tidy little melodrama. Though I must say it would have gone easier on you if you’d simply done as I told you to in the first place.” She was sitting on the roof of the cab.

I had never been so glad to see anybody as I was then. “This is the second time you showed up just when things were looking worst,” I said, giddy with relief. “How do you manage it?”

“Oh, I ate a grain of stardust when I was a cub, and ever since then there’s been nary a spot I can’t get into or out of, if I set my mind to it.”

“Good, good, I’m glad. Now, set me free!”

“Oh dear. I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“What?”

“Years ago and for reasons that are none of your business I swore a mighty oath never again to obey the orders of a man. That’s why I’ve been tagging along after you — because you ordered me not to be concerned with your welfare. So of course I am. But now you’ve ordered me to free you, and thus I can’t.”

“Listen to me carefully,” I said. “If you disobey an order from me, then you’ve obeyed my previous order not to obey me. So your oath is meaningless.”

“I know. It’s quite dizzying.” The fox lay down, tucking her paws beneath her chest. “Here’s another one: There’s a barber in Seville who shaves everyone who doesn’t shave himself, but nobody else. Now —”

“Please,” I said. “I beg you. Sweet fox, dear creature, most adorable of animals…. If you would be so kind as to untie me out of the goodness of your heart and of your own free will, I’d be forever grateful to you.”

“That’s better. I was beginning to think you had no manners at all.”

The vixen tugged and bit at the duct tape on my wrists until it came undone. Then I was able to free my ankles. We both got into the cab. Neither of us suggested we try digging for my bag. As far as I was concerned, it was lost forever.

But driving down out of the landfill, I heard a cough and glanced over at the vixen, sitting on the seat beside me. More than ever, I felt certain that she was laughing at me. “Your money’s in a cardboard box under the seat,” she said, “along with a fresh change of clothing — which, confidentially, you badly need — and the family signet ring. What’s buried out there is only the bag, stuffed full of newspapers.”

“My head aches,” I said. “If you had my money all along, what was the point of this charade?”

“There’s an old saying: Teach a man to fish, and he’ll only eat when the fish are biting. Teach him a good scam, and the suckers will always bite.” The vixen grinned. “A confidence trickster can always use a partner. We’re partners now, you and me, ain’t we?”

When the story ended, I stood and bowed. “Truly, sir, thou hast the gift of bullshit.”

“Coming from a dwarf,” Nat said, “that is high praise indeed.”

One of the marshals — the white one — stood. “Too much beer,” she said. “I have to use the powder room.”

Her comrade looked pointedly at the briefcase, and in that glance and the way the marshal drew herself up at it, I read that the two women neither liked nor trusted each other. “Where could I go?” White asked.

“Where in the regulations does it say that makes any difference?” Red replied. “The evidence case must remain within sight of two designated agents at all times.”

With a sigh, the white marshal freed herself from the briefcase and handcuffed it to her red-haired compatriot. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “All right, Short Stuff, I’m deputizing you as a representative of His Absent Majesty’s governance. Keep an eye on the case for the duration of my tinkle, okay?”

I didn’t think much of her heightist slur, of course. But a gentleman doesn’t go picking fights with ladies. “Fine,” I said.

As soon as she was gone, Nat Whilk said, “That calls for a smoke.” He held out a hand, twisted it about, and a Macanudo appeared between thumb and forefinger. He bit off the end and was about to conjure up a light when our duppy-man appeared at his elbow.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the duppy said firmly. “But smoking is not allowed inside the train.”

Nat shrugged. “Well, then. It’s the rear platform or nothing, I suppose.” He turned to his companion and said, “Shall we?” Then, when she hesitated, “I’m hardly likely to throw myself from the train. Not at these speeds.”

His words convinced her. A c-note laid down on the table, and Nat’s polite direction to the duppy to let me drink my fill and then pocket the change, made our two faces smile. I watched as he and the marshal stepped to the rear of the car, and through the door. Nat leaned against the rail. A wisp of smoke from the cigar was seized by the wind and flung away.

I watched them for a while. Then my second drink came. I had just taken my first sip of it when the white marshal returned.

“Where are they?” she cried.

“They went — “ I gestured toward the rear platform, and froze. Through the door windows it could be seen that the platform was empty. Lamely, I said. “They were there a second ago.”

“Sweet Mother of Night,” the marshal cried, “that case contained over twenty ounces of industrial-grade stardust!”

We ran, the both of us, to the platform. When we got there, we saw two small figures in the distance, standing by the side of the track, waving. As we shouted and gestured, one of the two dwindled in size until it was no larger than a dog. It was red, like a fox, and I got the distinct impression it was laughing at us.

The fox trotted away. Nat Whilk followed it down a sandy track into the scrub. Our shouts dwindled to nothing as we realized how futile they were.

The train turned a bend and the two tricksters disappeared from our ken forever.

OF ALL THE MANY THINGS
that this life has stolen from me, the one which bothers me most is that I cannot remember burying my father.

Give that log a poke. Stir up the embers. Winter’s upon us — hear how the wind howls and prowls about the rooftops, as restless as a cat! — and I, for one, could use some light and a little more warmth. There’ll be snow by morning for sure. Scoot your chair a bit closer to the fire. Is your mother asleep? Good. We’ll keep our voices low. There are parts of this tale she would not approve of. Things that I must say which she thinks you’d be better off not knowing.

She’s right, no doubt. Women usually are. But what of that? You’re of an age to realize that your parents were never perfect, and that in their youths they may have done some things which…well. Right or wrong, I’m going to tell you everything.

Where was I?

My father’s burial.

I was almost a man when he finally died — old enough, by all rights, to keep that memory to my dying day. But after the wreck of the
Empire
, I lay feverish and raving, so they tell me, for six weeks. During that time I was an exile in my own mind, lost in the burning deserts of delirium, wandering lands that rose and fell with each labored breath. Searching for a way back to the moment when I stood before my father’s open grave and felt its cool breath upon my face. I was convinced that if I could only find it, all would be well.

So I searched and did not find, and forgot I had searched, and began again, returning always to the same memories, like a moth relentlessly batting itself against a lantern. Sometimes the pain rose up within me so that I screamed and thrashed and convulsed within my bed. Other times (all this they told me later), when the pain ebbed, I spoke long and lucidly on a variety of matters, sang strange songs, and told stranger tales, all with an intensity my auditors found alarming. My thoughts were never still.

Always I sought my father.

By the time I finally recovered, most of my life had been burnt to ashes and those ashes swept into the ash pit of history. The Atlantis of my past was sunk; all that remained were a few mountain tops sticking up out of the waters of forgetfulness like a scattered archipelago of disconnected islands. I remembered clambering upon the rusted ruins of a failed and demented steam dredging device its now forgotten inventor had dubbed the “Orukter Amphibolus,” a brickyard battle fought alongside my fellow river rats with a gang of German boys who properly hated us for living by the wharves, a furtive kiss in the dark (with whom, alas, I cannot say), a race across the treacherously rolling logs afloat in the dock fronting the blockmaker’s shop, and the catfish-and-waffles supper in a Wissahickon inn at which my mother announced to the family that she was to have a fifth child. But neither logic nor history unites these events; they might as well have happened to five separate people.

There are, too, odd things lacking in what remains: The face of my youngest sister. The body of equations making up the Calculus. All recollection whatsoever of my brother save his name alone. My father I can remember well only by contrast. All I know of him could be told in an hour.

I do not mourn the loss of his funeral. I’ve attended enough to know how it went. Words were surely spoken that were nothing like the words that should have been said. The air was heavy with incense and candle-wax. The corpse looked both like and unlike the deceased. There were pallbearers, and perhaps I was one. Everybody was brave and formal. Then, after too long a service, they all left, feeling not one whit better than before.

A burial is a different matter. The first clods of dirt rattle down from the grave diggers’ shovels onto the roof of the coffin, making a sound like rain. The earth is drawn up over it like a thick, warm blanket. The trees wave in the breeze overhead, as if all the world were a cradle endlessly rocking. The mourners’ sobs are as quiet as a mother’s bedtime murmurs. And so a man passes, by imperceptible degrees, to his final sleep. There is some comfort in knowing that a burial came off right.

So I trod the labyrinth of my fevered brain, dancing with the black goddess of pain, she of the bright eyes laughing and clutching me tight with fingers like hot iron, and I swirling and spinning and always circling in upon that sad event. Yet never quite arriving.

Dreaming of fire.

Often I came within minutes of my goal — so close that it seemed impossible that my next attempt would not bring me to it. One thought deeper, a single step further, I believed, and there it would be. I was tormented with hope.

Time and again, in particular, I encountered two memories bright as sunlight in my mind, guarding the passage to and from that dark omphalos. One was of the voyage out to the Catholic cemetery on Treaty Island in the Delaware. First came the boat carrying my father’s coffin and the priest. Father Murphy sat perched in the bow, holding his hat down with one hand and with the other gripping the gunwale for all he was worth. He was a lean old hound of a man with wispy white hair, who bobbed and dipped most comically with every stroke of the oars and wore the unhappy expression of the habitually seasick.

I sat in the second dory of the procession with my mother and sisters, all in their best bonnets. Jack must have been there as well. Seeing Father Murphy’s distress, we couldn’t help but be amused. One of us wondered aloud if he was going to throw up, and we all laughed.

Our hired doryman turned to glare at us over his shoulder. He did not understand what a release my father’s death was for all of us. The truth was that everything that had gone into making John Keely the man he was — his upright character, his innkeeper’s warmth, his quiet strength, his bluff good will—had died years before, with the dwindling and extinction of his mind. We were only burying his body that day.

When he was fully himself, however, a better or godlier man did not exist in all the Americas — no, not in a thousand continents. I never saw him truly angry but once. That was the day my elder sister Patricia, who had been sent out to the back alley for firewood, returned empty-handed and said, “Father, there is a black girl in the shed, crying.”

My parents threw on their roquelaures and put up the hoods, for the weather was foul as only a Philadelphia winter downpour can be, and went outside to investigate. They came back in with a girl so slight, in a dress so drenched, that she looked to my young eyes like a half-drowned squirrel.

They all three went into the parlor and closed the doors. From the hall Patricia and I — Mary was then but an infant — tried to eavesdrop, but could hear only the murmur of voices punctuated by occasional sobs. After a while, the tears stopped. The talk continued for a very long time.

Midway through the consultation, my mother swept out of the room to retrieve the day’s copy of the
Democratic Press
, and returned so preoccupied that she didn’t chase us away from the door. I know now, as I did not then, that the object of her concern was an advertisement on the front page of the paper. Patricia, always the practical and foresightful member of the family, cut out and saved the advertisement, and so I can now give it to you exactly as it appeared: