Christopher Kloeble: Almost Everything Very Fast

I’d like to hold on to the point before the bus attacked the bus stop. So that it never moves on, and the bus never comes. But time is not something real. Time isn’t like the Speedster, or my encyclopedia. You can’t touch time. You can’t hear time. You can’t smell it, either. Or taste it. Or see it. Not really. A clock is a clock, it isn’t really time. So a person can’t hold on to time. But I can take it apart into little pieces. And that’s what I did, too, when the bus attacked the bus stop. And if I close my eyes, I can do it again. Then I see everything, I see all the little pieces of time. I see the bus coming toward me very slowly, even though it was really going very fast, its wheels spinning and its windows gleaming with rainwater and its headlights much brighter than normal. I see the picture where the clown’s mouth laughs as if it’s swallowing air. I see how the bus wobbles so strangely left and right. I see Frau Winkler clutching her stroller, but she can’t push it out of the way because the man in the overcoat slams into it as he tries to run off. I see Herr Strigl shouting at the man in the overcoat as loud as he can. I see many black birds in the sky. I see Frau Winkler’s little baby in the stroller, making his hands into little fists. I see the bell tower.

It’s only at the beginning that I think I might have to make someone go dead. That’s a feeling that’s very far from ambrosial. There really isn’t a word for that at all. The man in the overcoat shoves Frau Winkler so he can run off. Herr Strigl grabs Frau Winkler and pulls her away. The bus is already twice as big as a normal bus, and its headlights as bright as a sun and another sun. The man in the overcoat runs away from the bus. Behind the bus’s window sits Ludwig, who I used to play with when I was little. The clown on the poster looks so real, like a nasty man, and laughs, and says nothing but words that you mustn’t ever use. The hands on the bell tower haven’t moved yet. There’s a terrible taste in my mouth, and my belly hurts. Herr Strigl makes a face that doesn’t look like him, because Frau Winkler doesn’t want him to pull her away, because she’s trying to get to the stroller. The man in the overcoat runs into the wooden house. The bus makes a noise that’s almost so high that only dogs can hear it, but I can still hear it. The words that the clown is saying are very bad, they give me a hard feeling in my belly, one like I’ve never had before, and his eyes are gleaming completely black. Frau Winkler’s baby no longer has fists, it’s fidgeting like usual. The birds in the sky are still flying. Herr Strigl won’t quit pulling at Frau Winkler. Where it comes from I don’t know, but I hear Mari or Marine or Mina. I feel sick. Frau Winkler’s eyes are red and wet from the rain, but maybe she’s crying, and she punches Herr Strigl because he won’t let her go.

Now I want to do something, like my dad would, I don’t want to be nothing, I want to tell Frau Winkler and her baby and Herr Strigl that they have to run away, and tear down the poster with the clown, and I even want to help the man in the overcoat, but I know I can only do very little, because the bus is much too fast, and everything is already much too late.

But I notice that I’m not wearing my poncho anymore, it’s lying beside me, and then I think that maybe without the poncho I can be faster, and then I start running. With the hand he isn’t using to hold Frau Winkler, Herr Strigl tries to grab my shirt, and I really believe he’s just trying to be nice. The clown goes Harr-harr-harr , he goes Harr-harr-harr , and he sounds like Peg-Leg Pete. The black birds are acting as if the bus isn’t attacking the bus stop, they’re circling like they always do because, Mama says, they’re waiting for more birds. I punch Herr Strigl in the face, so that he lets Frau Winkler go, and I feel all my fingers, and feel very briefly ambrosial, even though I know that you’re supposed to feel very bad when you do something like that. Frau Winkler is free now, and falls to the ground. The bus’s window breaks and Ludwig flies through it, as if he could fly, and all the tiny shards of glass glitter beautifully. Herr Strigl’s eyes are huge. The bus is much slower now, and little pieces of fire spray from where its wheels are, but the bus is still much too fast for a baby and for me and for Herr Strigl and for the man in the overcoat. I think I see the big hand on the bell tower move a little. The man in the overcoat hides himself in the wooden house. I take Frau Winkler’s baby out of the stroller and it screams so hard my ears hurt, and it feels like a little dog, and I wish, I wish my dad was here to help me, to carry us away. It’s so hard not to be nothing. Ludwig flies into the pipe on the wooden house where the water from the roof flows through, and all the little shards of glass from the bus’s broken window that no longer exists look like hail. Herr Strigl just stands there staring at the bus and he looks like a tree that doesn’t know what is going to happen when the bus will hit it. Harr-harr-harr , goes the clown. I scream to Herr Strigl that he should run away, but he just stands there as if someone has done something to him, like that thing men with turbans do to snakes. Frau Winkler, lying on the ground, stretches her arm out to me. The man in the overcoat is in one corner of the wooden house, and I shout to him that he should run away. Man in the overcoat , I shout, go away , I shout, the bus is coming , but the man in the overcoat doesn’t move. The big hand on the bell tower moves a little. Ludwig falls to the ground beside the wooden house, and his throat looks as red as real blood, but there’s a big smile on his face. I feel like I don’t have any strength left, and I imagine that it’s not me who’s inside me, no, my dad is inside me, and with all of his muscles he has plenty of strength, so much that he can save everyone, before the big hand on the bell tower stops moving. And then I am my dad, and that’s a very terrible feeling, because I realize how little my dad is here, and then I jump, and the bus blows thick air, which pushes me to the side. The bus comes and falls crookedly and takes Herr Strigl with it, and the stroller, and hides the man in the overcoat. A squealing bashes me in the ears, and now the bus attacks the bus stop, and the clown, and that Harr-harr-harr finally stops, and the bus breaks the wooden house and gets stuck there, and it stinks like at the gas station, and the wood makes a noise like it’s not doing too well, and then it collapses onto the bus, because it’s completely kaput, and then there’s still a kind of snake-noise, and then it gets softer, and I hear Frau Winkler, she’s crying, and I give her her little baby, and I look at the bus and the wooden house that isn’t there anymore, and Ludwig and Herr Strigl and the man in the overcoat aren’t there anymore either, and I’m sorry for that, I’m sorry, I’m not like my dad at all, I’m nothing, that’s very true, I’m nothing and that’s the whole story, that’s all, that’s all I saw, and I’m sorry about it, I’m sorry, and I never want to say any of these things ever again, and also not tell them to anyone, no.

When Albert read the report today, as a nineteen-year-old, he recognized in it some of what bothered him about Fred: most of all, the way he exaggerated, describing things so that you could never be quite sure if his mental disability was responsible, or his character, or some combination of the two.

But as a child he remembered he had loved Fred for this more than anything — that people called him a hero. Back then he’d seen Fred as an even greater hero than He-Man or Raphael, the turtle with the red bandanna, named for some other Raphael that Sister Simone was all gaga over. At Saint Helena, Albert bragged about Fred, thereby drawing the envy and hostility of all the other orphans who not only didn’t have heroes for fathers; they had no fathers at all. Why did he live in Saint Helena if Fred was so great, they asked him, and shook their heads maliciously. Albert ignored that. Sister Alfonsa had prepared him for such situations; he followed her advice, didn’t stick his tongue out at the other kids, and told himself that because they didn’t have anyone, they wanted to be like him, they were just being jealous, petty. And that helped Albert, who was the only one of the younger kids in the orphanage who knew what petty meant. At Saint Helena, Albert favored the lower mattress in the bunk bed, on the one hand because he was no lover of heights, and on the other because he could decorate the underside of the bed above him with what he wanted to be the last thing he’d see before falling asleep: Fred’s newspaper report. Even back then he had never called Fred Father. As a one-year-old he’d called him Ped , then Fed at two, and a few months later he was proudly gurgling Fred. Anni had told him to. And after Anni’s death, Sister Alfonsa wanted it to stay that way. Which confused Albert. Often he wanted to call him Papa , with an elongated second a that opened the throat and cleared the mind. Whereas Fred curled his tongue and sounded like an out-of-tune doorbell. Yet he trusted the nun, for in spite of his precocious mind, he was still small enough to believe that adults, among whom he counted Fred, knew everything, and always did what was right.