“Because I know it.” He shrugs. “Or at least I know you’ve got to try. Sometimes the bones deal you a bad hand. It happens. But the thing is, you’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to at least try.”
“I thought you said you’d made them up.”
“What? The bones?”
I nod.
“I did,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t work.”
He smiles, lifts a hand and walks off before I can say anything else. I sit there, fingers still working Buddy’s fur, and watch him go. I don’t know what to make of him. Half the time he seems a little crazy, the other half he’s making sense, but those eyes of his look to be laughing at you for taking him seriously. Those eyes. They always seem to undermine what he’s saying.
Then I realize he’s like the bones. It doesn’t matter if what he’s telling me is sometimes contradictory, sometimes too off-the-wall. Not if it makes me think. Talking to him must be like throwing the bones. It makes you focus. It makes you remember who you are.
I’m still watching him walk away when I realize there’s someone standing in front of me. I look up and she bends down at the same time. Blond hair as tangled and long as Zeffy’s, dark skin, but it’s from the sun. She’s wearing an Indian print dress that’s mostly blues, shading from robin’s egg to indigo, and thong sandals. Her eyes match her dress, leaning more to the indigo. She’s got a knapsack on the pavement beside her, bulging it out of shape, a small folding stool tied to it. Her elbow leans on the side of a closed-up card table for balance as she crouches to look at my carvings.
“These’re great,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“How much are you selling them for?”
I remember her now. She was selling silk scarves and blouses a little farther down the row. Leaving early, I suppose. I’m surprised at how many of the vendors pack up after lunch, but I guess experience tells them when they can make a buck and when they’re wasting their time.
“Whatever people want to pay,” I tell her.
She laughs. “You’re not going to get rich that way.” Her gaze lifts to meet mine. “I’m Jenna.”
“Max,” I say as I take her proffered hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” She smiles, gaze returning to the carvings. “My daughter would love one of these.”
She lays the card table against her knapsack and sits on the pavement, picks up one of the carvings, a long skinny figure, like a gnome that got caught up in a taffy pull. I found the shape in a cedar root. Kept the wild tangle of tiny roots and filaments for its hair and worked my way down from there, breathing deep its rooty odor while I carved out features, found shoulders, arms, torso, legs.
She lifts the carving to her nose. “This smells great.”
“Cedar’s got a heart of its own,” I tell her. “For some things, it just can’t be beat.”
She laughs. “You sound like Crazy Dog.”
“Who?”
She jerks a thumb in the direction Bones took. “You were just talking to him.”
“I thought his name was Bones.”
“Lord knows what his name really is. I’ve known him for years—before he got into the bones. I used to room with Cassie—his...” She gets that look people do when they’re trying to find a tag for a couple who live together, but aren’t married. “You know, significant other. He was so wild, straight off the rez that we started calling him that for a joke.” She smiles. “But the joke was on us because he goes, ‘That’s a pretty close translation to what my grandmother used to call me.”
“I haven’t met Cassie yet,” I say.
“Yeah, well she’s working the Pier, these days. Got lucky and copped a booth in the last license raffle.”
“It’s better there?”
She laughs. “You are new. You work the Pier, the tourists give you money, just for being there. All it takes is to look a little offbeat, a little exotic, and Cassie sure fits the bill.”
“She’s a character—like Bones?”
Jenna shakes her head. “Nobody’s like Crazy Dog. He give you his ‘get off the street while you can’ spiel yet?”
“He seems sincere.”
“Oh he is. It’s just...” She shrugs. “I don’t know how to explain him. I don’t think anyone can. He disappears every once in a while—for a couple of days, a few weeks, comes back with those wild eyes of his gleaming with mischief and...I don’t know. Something else. Like he’s gone walkabout right out of the world and there’s still traces of what he saw, sitting there, left behind in his eyes, glittering.”
I’ve never had so many conversations in one day about this sort of thing. “Where do you think he really goes?” I ask.
“Who knows? If you talk to someone like Bernie—you know.” She points toward the memorial. “The guy over there, selling rock T-shirts, the one with the glower? He says Crazy Dog’s doing time at the Zeb when he goes away, that the doctors have him loaded up on serious medication while he’s there, but they can only keep him so long. Once he’s on an even keel they put him back on the street, tell him to stay on his medication.”
I give her skeptical look.
“And of course, according to Bernie, as soon as he’s on the street, he just throws the pills away.”
“I don't think Bones is crazy,” I say. “Not like that. Intense, definitely. And...quirky. But not padded-cell crazy.”
“I don’t think so either. He makes too much sense. Has he done a reading for you yet?”
I shake my head.
“It’s scary how dead-on he can be. I mean, I always thought Cassie was good—she reads the Tarot—but Crazy Dog just seems to climb right inside your head and shuffle things around until your problems seem small and the future looks bright.”
“Sounds impressive.”
“But it’s not,” Jenna says. “Or it is, I guess, but it doesn’t seem that way.” She purses her lips. “And it’s funny. He doesn’t play on his heritage—never would. Dresses like the rest of us in jeans and a T-shirt when he could be doing the whole shaman bit—you know, leather and quillwork and feather, moccasins on his feet and beaded headband, shake a little painted gourd rattle. But all those people wanting to walk the Red Road, they zero right in on him. Figure what he’s saying is important—which it is—but for all the wrong reasons.”
“Keeps him in business,” I say.
“And pisses off some of the people back on the rez I’ve heard. They think he’s making like the bones are some ancient Kickaha oracle, but he doesn’t.”
“He told me he made them up.”
“He tells that to anybody who asks. Oh well. What’re you going to do?” She holds up the gnome carving between us. “I’ve got to get this for Kilissa. How much do you want for it?”
“Like I said. Whatever you want to pay.”
Jenna shakes her head and drops a couple of dollars in my hand.
“Can I give you a little bit of advice?” she asks.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Set prices for them. And fix yourself a little table of some kind. Put a nice cloth over it. Get the carvings off the ground and display them with a little pizzazz—which they deserve anyway. I guarantee you’ll sell more.”
I spread my hands, palms up. “You’re looking at everything I own—and even then the knife is borrowed.”
“I see where you’re coming from. Okay. Get a plank and some bricks, then. Come see me in the morning and I’ll lend you one of my scarves. I’ve got some nice ones at home, solid colors. I’ll bring a few with me and you can pick the one you like the best.”
My surprise at her generosity must be showing on my face.
“Hey, we’re not all assholes like Bernie,” she says.
“I don’t know Bernie. Everybody’s been really nice that I’ve met so far.”
Jenna smiles. “Then don’t make the mistake of talking to Bernie. It’ll ruin your day. Gotta run. See you tomorrow.”
She gathers her belongin
gs and heads off, knapsack bouncing on her back, the gnome carving held carefully in her hand. I look down at Buddy.
“What do you say, fella?” I ask him, ruffling his wiry fur. “Do you want to stick it out a while longer, or should we find ourselves something to eat?”
I swear that all dogs are born knowing certain words. Walk. Eat. Good dog. The important stuff. Buddy looks up when I talk to him, interested, tongue lolling, alert. Like he knows what I’m talking about.
“Okay,” I tell him. “We eat.”
I bundle up the carvings and the wood I haven’t used yet in my jacket and we head back into the park. I’ll find a safe place to stash them, clean up in one of the public washrooms—maybe see if I can’t make Buddy a little more presentable as well—then we’ll head over to the market and get some dinner. I don’t know where we’ll sleep tonight. I find I don’t really care. It’s such a beautiful day I can’t imagine the night being unpleasant. We’ll sleep under the stars somewhere.
But as we head deeper into the park, Buddy running ahead, stopping to make sure I’m following, then running off again, something Bones said earlier comes back to me.
You're getting comfortable in this new skin. Too comfortable.
He’s got it all wrong. I’m just getting my equilibrium back, that’s all.
But let me tell you, it's easier to slip into than out of again.
He was speaking metaphorically, I tell myself. But I can feel the chasm, lying in wait, somewhere close, just out of sight. I know there’s a long fall on these streets, creeping up on me, waiting to catch me off guard. I feel like I’m on the bottom rung right now, but at least I’m still above ground. I know I have to be careful. I have to fight the despair and everything that comes with it. I have to fight Devlin and get back what belongs to me. But thinking of Devlin only reminds me of my helplessness. It seems to bring the chasm closer.
I need a break from all of this.
Buddy comes running back to me and I realize I’ve come to a halt. I’m standing in the middle of a lawn, fists clenched in the fabric of my jacket, muttering to myself like some old rubbie. I hold the folded jacket against me with one hand, bend down to give Buddy a little loving.
“We’re okay,” I tell him. “We’re going to be okay.”
That’s all he needs. He buys the lie and goes racing off.
When we’re alone, he’s like a different animal from the nervous, mistreated dog that befriended me last night. It’s like the past just washes off him and only now exists. We’re happy. He’s a big goofy dog and I’m his pal. It’s only when there are people around that he reverts. Withdraws into those dark places he’s got to be carrying around inside him and remembers bad times.
He buys the lie, but I don’t. I don’t know if we’re going to be okay, if we’ll pull through this. I don’t know what’s going to become of us. If I can’t get my old life back, I’ll have to make a new one. And Bones is right. If I want a new life, I have to start at it now, before I get to the point where I can’t wash the street from me. But if I start a new life, I’ll never be able to get my own back.
I’m caught in a circle that's like the Ouroboros worm, swallowing its own tail. Not a feng shui dragon leaving lucky paths in its track, nor the Midgard serpent from whose body new life is born, but some dark monster that lives only to feed upon itself. I have to break the circle. I have to make a choice.
I don’t know if I can. I don’t know what to do.
10 ZEFFY
The café was quiet when Zeffy pushed open the front door. She carried her guitar case behind the counter and tucked it underneath, where it would be out of the way while she got herself a tea. The kettle was still warm and half full, so she merely plugged it in, then rested her arms on the counter and looked out the window at the traffic going by on Battersfield Road. This was one of her favorite times of day in the café, the usually busy room catching its breath during the midafternoon lull. For any of them working the lunch and dinner shifts, it was a chance for them to catch their breath as well.
Wendy came out of the kitchen while Zeffy was pouring hot water over a Bengal Spice tea bag, her blond hair bullied into tidiness by a half-dozen bobby pins and a barrette. Her initial smile at seeing Zeffy changed into a puzzled look.
“We did trade off this shift, didn’t we?” she asked.
Zeffy nodded. “I just came by to collect Tanya.”
“Ah, Tanya,” Wendy said.
“What’s she done now?”
“Nothing. You’re just late. She’s already been swept off and away by a rather scruffy-looking fiddler.”
“Geordie.”
“Geordie,” Wendy agreed. “I had no idea they were seeing each other.”
“It’s a new thing.”
“Well, I hope it’s a good thing,” Wendy said, “because I’d hate to see him get hurt.”
Zeffy smiled. “And not Tanya?”
“Of course Tanya, too. It’s just...” Wendy shrugged. “You know what I mean. Grim as she makes it out to be when one of her relationships falls apart, there’s always someone there for Tanya. I think there’s a waiting list, isn’t there? But Geordie’s not exactly the most worldly of fellows when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“You’ve such a way with words. Have you ever thought of becoming a poet?”
“Oh, please. Don’t you start, too.”
“Jilly been teasing you?”
“Mercilessly. I should never have told her about those greeting cards.”
“Well, they are rather Hallmarky.”
Wendy sighed. “But tastefully so. Aren’t they?”
“What’s tasteful?” Jilly wanted to know, coming out of the kitchen with a couple of plates of sandwiches.
“Your flashing eyes,” Wendy said, “That shine like stars come down from on high.”
“Oh, you’re talking about the cards again. Ah-ah,” she added as Wendy aimed a kick at her. “I have customers to serve.”
She swerved gracefully out of range and aimed her way through the clutter of tables to where the café’s only two customers sat by the front window. Zeffy smiled as she watched Jilly place the plates on the table. She didn’t know how Jilly did it, but she always managed to serve her customers with a casual intimacy, as if she didn’t really work here, they’d merely happened to drop by her loft while she was preparing a meal.
Zeffy turned back to Wendy. “I need to roll some change,” she said. “Do we have any of those coin-rollers left?”
“A bag full. I’m glad to hear someone’s been making good tips.”
“Hardly. But I did go out busking today and have stacks of change to count.”
“I’m in the wrong business,” Wendy said as she left to serve a young man with a severe haircut who came in and chose one of the tables in her station.
Zeffy collected her tea and the bag of coin-rollers and carried them over to the table in the back corner that the waitresses usually commandeered when the café wasn’t too busy. She took out her sweater and laid it on the chair beside her. As she began to transfer her change from her knapsack to the tabletop, Jilly slid into the chair across from her.
“Need any help?”
“Well, if you’re feeling up to it,” Zeffy told her, “I certainly wouldn’t turn you down.”
“It’s this or fill saltshakers.”
They both knew that the saltshakers would still need to be filled when this was done, as well as the sugar and pepper dispensers. Zeffy also knew how much Jilly hated doing it.
“I’ll help you with the condiments,” she said.
Jilly smiled. “Great. You know what they say, a job shared is a job halved.”
Zeffy raised her eyebrows.
“Or however it goes.” Jilly cupped a handful of coins and pulled them over to her side of the table, where she began to sort them. “I take it Wendy told you about Tanya and Geordie?”
Zeffy nodded.
“Do you think it’s serious?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know,” Zeffy said. She felt a bit of Wendy’s ambivalence about the whole thing. “I’d hate to see either of them get hurt.” She paused in her own sorting of coins to look across the table. “But it’s got to have more potential than either of their last relationships.”
“I can’t remember Geordie’s last relationship.”
“He was going out with that girl in The Tatters, wasn’t he? The one that played bouzouki?”
Jilly shook her head. “They were just friends.”
“I think Tanya could really blossom in the right relationship.”
“And Geordie’s no Johnny Devlin,” Jilly said.
“Ah, yes. Johnny.”
Jilly gave her a sharp look. “Don’t tell me there’s something new on the Devlin front.”
“New and stranger than ever,” Zeffy said. “It’s so weird I wouldn’t know where to begin with it.”
She fell silent, trying to understand the feeling that rose up in her when she now thought of Johnny Devlin.
“So give,” Jilly said, leaning closer.
“Well, for one thing,” Zeffy said. She reached over to where she’d set her sweater on the chair beside her and carefully unfolded it. Inside, wrapped up for safekeeping, was the carving she’d bought from Johnny at the park. She handed it to Jilly. “He made this.”
Jilly’s face lit up with delight. “I love it.”
She turned it over in her hands, then set it down on the table between them. Zeffy knew just what Jilly meant. She loved it, too. There was something at once innocent and worldly about the little carving’s features, a dichotomy expressed with only a few judicious cuts of the knife that still spoke volumes.
“He’s selling them over in Fitzhenry Park,” she said. “He and this scruffy stray dog that acts like it’s been surgically connected to him.”
Jilly’s gaze lifted to meet Zeffy’s. “Are we talking about the same Johnny Devlin we all know and don’t much love?”
“I really don’t know.”
Jilly got such a shivery look of anticipation about her at that pronouncement that Zeffy expected her to start rubbing her hands together.