Pasha Malla - People Park

Debbie searched the crowd for familiar faces — Pop maybe, safe and sound and back to his old tricks. Instead, climbing atop a Citywagon appeared Loopy, instantly recognizable in her beret and caftan. With rhythm, perhaps trying to provoke a corresponding chant, she pumped a sign demanding, WHERE’S MY ART? But she was ignored, the parade headed up Mustela Boulevard, steered by Helpers across Paper Street toward People Park.

There they go, Debbie said, and sat down again across from the mother and son.

The woman nodded — not quite an affirmation, her chin dipped robotically. There was nothing agreeable in her eyes, nor even camaraderie, just resignation. She seemed accustomed to being abandoned: at the mercy of forces beyond her, as always she waited patiently for the world to have its way.

Debbie wanted to say something to either breach or access this, such faith seemed both admirable and sad. She said, Maybe we’re being held here for a reason?

Maybe.

Sorry, said Debbie, leaning in, I don’t even know your name.

The woman blinked.

I’m Debbie. This is Rupe, so I’ve heard. Hi there, Rupe. And you’re?

Me? Cora.

Cora. Hi. I’m Debbie.

Yes.

Hi. And you’re looking for —

Look, said Rupe, someone’s coming up the bluffs.

Debbie joined him at the window. Directly beneath the station two people, a man and a boy, both barefoot, were summiting the 72 Steps. The man took the boy’s hand and led him up Mustela, behind the last few stragglers trailing the parade.

Where’d they come from, said Debbie. A boat?

No boats, said Rupe. But look.

Perint’s Cove extended emptily to the horizon. It took Debbie a moment to realize what was missing.

The Islet, said Debbie, did it flood? It just seems. . gone.

Maybe it sank, said Rupe.

I have a friend who lives there, said Debbie.

Maybe they sank too, said Rupe, and grinned.

But those people, said Debbie, they would have been taken to safety, right?

You’d hope, Cora said.

A chirp, the vents whooshed, the lights came on. The train hummed and shuddered and began to move.

There, said Cora, patting Rupe’s knee, see? We’re off.

The PA announced: Next stop, Bay Junction. Bay Junction Station, next stop.

And Debbie, rocked gently down into a seat, watched the swollen lake slide by, with no place to go but wherever the train was taking her.

THE PEOPLE EMERGING from the poplars were a shabby, shaggy crew that didn’t seem cityfolkish to Kellogg, nor the sort of countryfolk he was used to back home. They seemed wild, the children had a feral affect, the sight of them felt anthropological somehow, ten of them standing atop the park’s southern hillock with the look of captured prisoners of war. Last to appear were a bearded man and a headscarfed woman dragging a rowboat jacked up on axles that bumbled over the roots and rocks. At the slope’s edge they halted, but the boat kept coming, the mooring lines tautened and dragged them a few steps before they let go and the boat crested the hill — down it came, ropes flailing like tentacles.

Safely on the far side of the pond, Kellogg and Elsie-Anne watched: the crowd on the common’s southside scattered, the wheels hit an exposed gnarl of treeroots, the boat lurched free, out spilled cardboard boxes, a TV, which smashed, a suitcase that split and gushed clothes, a pair of chairs, a tricycle, machines, boots, sheaves of paper, food in tins and boxes and jars. The axles bounced off in opposite directions, the boat kept coming, sliding down the hill on its keel and across the mud-slicked common, hit the concrete banks of Crocker Pond with a ripping sound, pitched on end, cartwheeled twice, and came crashing into the water, where, remarkably, it righted itself and glided out over the surface with almost defiant serenity.

A miracle — or something like it. Everyone save the hilltoppers broke into applause. Wowee, yipped Kellogg, Annie, did you see that? A handful of Helpers dispatched to the poplars ordered the boat people into a tidy line to be counted or ID’d — but the man who’d been hauling the boat refused to line up. He shook his head, indicated all their ruined things strewn down the slope. His partner took off her yellow bandana and wagged it in the Helper’s face.

Let’s not worry about that, Annie, said Kellogg, and he lowered his daughter and pointed at the boat, sailing calmly into the middle of the pond. Hey, he said, wasn’t that amazing? And turning to confirm this with the student couple Kellogg discovered that he and his daughter had lost their spot in line.

In front of them was a huge man in a too-tight T-shirt (Back-2-Back Champs, it bragged) and coveralls meant for labour but, flopping from his waist, possibly misworn for style. Where’d he come from? And how could the NFLM ignore such recklessness? This sort of behaviour might ignite chaos, this was all it took: one instance of defiance and another person saw it and thought it was okay, and then another, and that was how order became anarchy, how a peaceful gathering degenerated into a frenzied mob.

Kellogg stared at the back of this interloper’s neckless head: the man feigned an ornithologically nonchalant gaze toward the treeline, where sparrows twittered and chirped. Did this bullish renegade assume he could do as he pleased unpunished? Was he brainless or bold? His presence was like a massive flaming boil bloomed suddenly upon clear smooth skin. He was immense and strange, smelled of mildew and sawdust. He had, Kellogg noticed, for his size, alarmingly tiny hands — and this was emboldening.

Clearing his throat, Kellogg tapped the man’s mountainous shoulder and said, in a voice of authority, Hey. The guy didn’t even turn. And the young couple offered no solidarity: their position hadn’t been compromised, they watched Helpers wrestle the bearded man and bandana’d woman to the ground and kneel upon their backs.

And so Kellogg was alone — but no, he had Elsie-Anne! He set her down in an illustrative way, as per the humanity-eliciting properties of small girls, or as though she were a bomb. Hey there, excuse me, Kellogg said, my daughter and I —

The big guy muttered something about it being no fuggin cataclysm, though he addressed Kellogg over his shoulder, as one might a drunk begging for change. How wrong! What about the protocol of women and children first, and if not women then certainly children, and alongside them their guardians? Such as Elsie-Anne and Kellogg, for example. But wait, was the big guy singing now? He was, gently, under his breath: Drag you down, drag you down, drag you something-something down . .

Rage simmered through Kellogg’s body. And yet it was a trapped rage, a rage without outlet, an impotent rage that festered and fed upon itself, and now Kellogg was shaking. The line advanced. Kellogg rolled their luggage forward and enthused, Here we go, Annie! Though it came out choked. He stared at the point where the interloper’s weirdly bullet-shaped cranium sloped down into his shirt, imagined striking the top vertebrae, the spine snapping, the man crumpling, dead. . But he couldn’t. This was how life went: in exchange for his dignity Kellogg was so often handed something putrid and fecal, he grinned and offered thanks while the mess of it oozed over his fist. I’m a good dad and husband, I’m taking my daughter home, he wanted to scream — to whom? Who would listen or care? No one was even looking.

And then with a nod to a nearby Helper — acknowledged, Mr. Summoner, good lookin out — the big man insinuated himself between an elderly couple stooped over matching walkers. Who, aside from a brief flutter of disconcertion, said nothing, did nothing. What could they do?