Little Bastards in Springtime (39 page)

In the dense, breathing forest, I drag branches, whole trees, into a clearing. I blunder, I swear, I let the forest know I’m human. Animals and spirits have speed, instinct, sharp teeth, claws, invisibility. I have matches, courtesy of Jim. I light a roaring fire. Tree trunks undulate gold and orange, small branches shiver in the rising heat, thick white smoke plunges upward, fountains of sparks spray into the void.

It was wonderful, glorious, a dream
, Baka says, telling her story about the golden time, the one I missed by being born too late.
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun
, she sings. She must have heard it on the radio.
We were young, we were free, we were Marxists on TV.
Baka giggles. Sometimes she’s just a girl again, she can’t help it. The girl who built a railroad.
But the country that we made, was just dreaming out of time.

She sits cross-legged near the fire, poking a stick into the hottest part, her face weathered and creased, her eyes smiling as they look into the past.
The most wonderful communist nation on the planet. Dear Tito took everything that was good from both the capitalist and communist systems and put them together.
She lists off the pros by yanking on her fingers.
The borders were open. We carried our own passports. We read foreign literature and newspapers. We had consumer goods. The factories were owned by the workers. No fat-cat got rich by stealing the value of people’s labour. Everyone was looked after. Jobs, health care, education, cultural life. We were Yugoslavs, religion and tribe didn’t terrorize our lives …

She goes on and on. I know the list by heart. The fire is a creature, I see how it dances with itself. Baka talks and I follow her words like they’re shapes in the coals, remembering all the
good things of my life before, soaking in the heat. It’s so nice to have her here by the bonfire, the two of us happy and cozy side by side, she having a field day summarizing the past.

“Yes, I know all that,” I say finally. “But I want to know what comes next, what’s ahead. Tell me that story.”

How should I know, Jevrem? What’s ahead is up to you. Nothing is fated. That is what’s so nerve-racking and exciting about being alive.

I jolt awake, see only black all around me, except for a patch of glittering starry sky so close to my face I panic, turn my head, scrabble to my hands and knees. Baka? I say. The sky is falling, the fire has gone out except for a few glowing embers. My hands and feet have disappeared, my skull has no shape, my mind bleeds into tree trunks, catches on crooked twigs, runs down along roots into the densest earth and rock where humans end and the universe begins.

I stumble around on frozen stumps, trying to find my way out of the forest to open space where I can pull myself together and think like a domesticated animal. Instead, my palms, my face, press against the bark of trees that stand in my way, their dead tissue holding wastes and toxins, protecting against insects, animals, disease, fire, bad weather, cracking with growth, preventing evaporation.

And there he is. Dušan is waiting for me, and he says,
c’mon, Jevrem, let’s go
, and he disappears into the trees and I scramble to follow him. I can hear branches breaking as he goes, and him shouting,
c’mon, Jevrem, there’s this place we can go, you’ll see, it’s perfect.
And then I’m there and it is better than out in the open, it’s a nest in the hollow of a tree, lined with pine branches and needles and dry dead leaves.

I wake as the eastern horizon brightens, a streak of yellow, a streak of pale blue. I stand up like an old man, teeth rattling,
spine fused, ribs collapsing. I’m too cold to walk. I stare at the sky. All I can do is wait for the sun to rise.

A
ND THE
sun does rise. It sweeps upward, that’s how it feels to me. Precise, certain, unwavering, quick, and then it shines right on me. My head opens like an exotic flower and light pours into me and right through me into the spinning earth, way down to the fiery core.

I
WALK BACK ACROSS THE FIELD TO THE GAS STA
tion. In daytime, the distance is nothing and the lumps of earth aren’t treacherous at all. Five trucks are lined up in the parking lot. The pumps are busy with cars. I look for U.S. plates, because I’ve made up my mind. I’ve decided.

I head into the station to pick the shelves for edible food. I grab a couple of sandwiches out of their plastic boxes, several long thin salamis, a few packs of peanuts, and shove them all down my overalls into my filthy underwear. I push a small carton of milk up my sleeve. Then I walk out the door. Everything is fine for twenty-five paces, then I hear shouting from inside and a disturbance, the kind made by a running adult male, objects clattering to the ground, the thudding of heavy footsteps. The door bangs open and he’s yelling, “Stop him, stop that boy.” So I pull my loot up to my chest where I can hold onto it with both hands and take off at a sprint for the bush behind the station. The lumpy slacker from behind the counter doesn’t have a hope of catching me, but what I don’t see coming at me from the side is a guy in a black car. I’m running, and then I’m not. I’m running and then I’m flying over a hood, I’m rolling along the asphalt, I’m lying winded
several feet from the edge of the parking lot. I have a sense of a car braking a few feet from my head, of a car door opening. I hear more shouting, many voices, countless running footsteps from all directions. A hubbub. And I’m on my feet again, I’m tearing into the brush, I’m running for my life, I’m up over the embankment. I sense something alive and snorting behind me, I feel arms around my legs, and I’m down again. I’m on my stomach, face in the dirt.

The rest is a blur of flailing arms, flying spit, wild-animal grunting. Then I’m in the forest again, way deep in the forest. I’m lying face up, I’m panting, my lungs are burning, white clouds are sailing by above the treetops. I try to sit up, but I can barely move. I lie back, I watch the clouds. I close my eyes. When I open them again, my right hip is a vortex of pain, my right hand is swollen to twice its normal size. The knuckles are bloody.

Walking is hard, but I walk for hours through forest and fields parallel to the highway. I get as far away from the gas station as I can, keeping my eyes open for an abandoned building of some kind to lie low in for a while. Barns and sheds are all close to houses, so I pass those by. Then I see a high wire-mesh fence. Behind it are two long low buildings with a series of large orange roll-up doors. I climb the fence and nose around, looking for cameras. The garages are padlocked. In a large firepit fifty feet away from the end of the buildings, I see pieces of charred metal. I find a piece of a bedstead strong enough to lever apart the cheap padlock on one of the doors. I roll up the garage to find a whole home inside, all stacked up on itself. There are chairs, lamps, tables, a couch, a bedstead and mattress, rolled-up carpets, cardboard boxes and plastic containers. It takes only fifteen minutes to set up the bed, complete
with damp pillows and musty blankets. I roll down the door, fall into the bed, and sleep.

I
WAKE
with parched mouth, racing heart, crashing headache, burning face, nostalgic symptoms of siege dehydration. It’s night when I leave the storage locker. I head east. The moon is up and almost full, transforming the highway into a river of glowing silver. I jog along the yellow line, tuning out the pain, gazing up at the vast domed sky, the pale stars, like I’m a ghost on a planet that’s sighing with relief to be rid of its number-one pest. Occasionally a car or truck appears on the horizon with lonely headlights and a mournful roar to break my illusion, and when it does, I step down into the ditch and wait for it to hurtle past. After about half an hour, I see a gas station on the opposite side of the highway but it’s not open. It doesn’t matter, gas stations are no use to me now. Just beyond it, a rural road crosses the highway on an overpass and I scramble up the embankment and walk north along it for about a mile looking for a promising house. Because, there’s no way around it, I once again have to do what I have to do to make it through. I spot a rundown bungalow with a shabby porch and two derelict cars on the front lawn. Not much of a cash prospect, but it’ll have some food, and no lights are on, no car is parked in the driveway. I break a window at the back, the glass tinkling, as always, in the high notes of the piano on the stone below, and pull myself in slowly, carefully, trying not to twist my hip. It’s the same MO as always, but I feel no thrill, I feel no charge. It feels wrong to be in this house, depressing and grim, nothing more.

The house smells of cigarette smoke and air freshener and something else I can’t identify, something salty and greasy. Pet
food maybe, or unwashed pots. I find a poker by the wood stove, then creep along the hallway eerily illuminated by a Snoopy night-light at the far end. I silently open the doors to each bedroom, but find no one. The house is empty. I stoop over the sink and drink water for a long time, then I look in the fridge. It’s a mess of crap, but I manage to collect enough to keep me going for a few days. A packet of wieners, a packet of cheese slices, hamburger buns, mayonnaise, pickles, dip for chips, old pizza in its oily box. In the cupboard I find packs of juice crystals, peanut butter, jam, cans of meat, crackers, tuna, marshmallows, Campbell’s soups. I take a can opener from a drawer, then check the basement, which is a crawl space with junk in it and a small cat that’s cowering behind a stinking litter box. I find some cans of beer, old plastic bottles to fill with water, and a mouldy knapsack for the food. I search the house for a space heater and an extension cord but don’t find either. I take a winter coat, scarf, hat, and boots from the front hall closet and am looking around for a sleeping bag when I hear the unmistakable rattle of a Harley in the driveway. I feel true fear deep in my bones at that sound, so I throw the clothes in the bag with the food, haul the bag over my shoulder, my right hand fat and bruised and useless, and slip out the back door. I hear a woman talking and a man laughing loudly as they walk to the front door. I hear the front door open and slam shut again. I stand behind a tree until they’ve been inside for two minutes, then I walk into the moonlit countryside, heading west again, back to my nest in the locker.

T
HE CINDER-BLOCK
walls and concrete floor hold the night’s icy temperatures all through the day. I sometimes open the door
when the sun is shining, but mostly I bury myself in blankets, shiver, sleep, dream. Dušan takes me by the hand and leads me to the city-end of the Sarajevo tunnel, a house on a street. We sit side by side on a trolley and someone, maybe it’s Papa, maybe it’s Leo, maybe it’s Ivan or Mr. Duff, rolls us along the rails all the way through the cramped suffocating darkness to the other end, where we emerge, outside the city, next to a lonely bush, in the midst of open space, free to go where we want. We walk into the empty field. No one is around. I turn to ask Dušan, what next? But he’s not there. It’s just me in that field, looking in all directions, searching for clues.

Sometime during the afternoon people show up. I hear a car, a truck, voices, but I can’t tell what they’re doing. When they’re gone after several hours and silence reigns again, I emerge and crouch over the glowing coals of the garbage fire they left behind. I feed it with wood from the surrounding trees. I begin to warm up, I begin to feel my hands and feet again, and my face stings with the heat of the flames. I sense life beyond the circle of light, noises that belong to animals, and I stand facing out, holding a smoking stick, looking for the shimmering discs of reflected light that are their eyes. Then I hear wolves howling, or think I do, somewhere close by and get back in to the locker. I twist and turn on the bed, focus on the hot aching of my hand and hip, listen to mice scratching, think about how to find my way to a future I can’t yet see. Other kids just do what’s coming next, the next grade, university, a job. I try to picture one thing after another, in some place, any place, a job, any job, finishing high school, in any school, going to college in a nameless town, sitting next to nameless kids, studying whatever for a long life of doing whatever. And every scene I come up with has danger lurking in it, a shattered window, a soldier with a rifle, cops
knocking on the front door, wolves congregating in the park. Three days go by with me recreating those scenarios, over and over again, trying to imagine the danger away.

W
HEN
I leave the storage locker for good, it’s early morning. The sun has just risen, and a wispy mist is floating among the trees. I’m wearing the coat, I’m wearing the toque, I’m carrying the bag, so I’m in disguise as I walk along the shoulder of the highway with my thumb out. At this hour, there aren’t many cars so I just keep going, shoulders hunched, head low, trying to get into a rhythm, a flow, accepting the pain, keeping my mind free of police cars and red alerts.

Hours later, a car stops in front of me. It’s one of those cars that looks like every other car, and I walk up to it expecting a middle-aged dude in a tie and a rain jacket, but find a young guy in his early twenties looking wrecked and strung out. Worried frown, slit eyes, flushed cheeks, oily skin.

“Get in, bro,” he says, barely looking at me.

He accelerates hard off the shoulder, pebbles flying high behind us, and drives slumped down in his seat, chin resting on his chest. He doesn’t say a word, so I take the coat off, I settle in. The car is pristine, a small bouquet of straw roses dangling from the rear-view mirror, a box of tissues wedged between the seats, individually wrapped mints in one cup holder, change filling the other. This is a mother’s car, and the son looks oversize and sloppy in it, like he’s about to crush something delicate. At my feet is a dog-eared notebook, splayed open, the pages covered with cramped, smeared boy-writing and doodles. I pick it up.

“Sorry, I stepped on this.”

“No worries. Studying for an exam.” He grabs it and tosses it onto the back seat, then faces forward wordlessly again.