I’m still technically on hiaitus, but every time it snows so much in DC, I’m reminded of this story I wrote after snowmageddon happened, around 2009… A really lopsided snowball fight brings two taciturn DC neighbors together. Totally a shameless re-post!
Dear Mr. Tannenbaum,
Please consider the following before you file criminal charges, or whatever…
Hi everyone,
Those lucky folks who are subscribed to my Randitty Newsletter know that I planned to post several new exciting stories, a webcomic about fashionista cats and dazzle you all with more Xena: Warrior Princess-style writing tips in 2014…
Father Dukensis unsheathed hands from up his green sleeves, snarled, and began just shooing people into their proper places. The other clans weren’t moving fast enough, were they? And they weren’t all wearing their robes properly, were they? No. And nobody was making their signs properly at the pentagram—of course they weren’t! Ugh! Urghrrrr…
“You all take your sour faces off, this is church, not some punishment… and the emerald duke should be up, up, over your eyes… then, it’s a finger raised at north, east, south-east, south-west, then true west… that’s it, five times. I wanna see that on each one of you when you enter the room.” He threw his hands up again. “Now—come on, now! How the young people s’posed to know it if the grown folk don’t even… urgh…”
All these black people who were about the same height, though among some clans, they were just evenly short—began to file neatly, raise their hoods with flicks of cocoa, honey or cinnamon wrists and bowed to the pentragram behind the altar. Fathers moved their daughters along to the benches, then stood behind them at protective watch. Mothers had each of their sons by the shoulders, guiding them to stand in five radiating lines around the altar. Then, each mother eased that one hand, resting it supportively at her son’s back. Sons raised their chins. Daughters in flat-ironed, twisted pigtails opened the prayer books.
The altar was a runed thing with dog’s feet, carved from jade.
As the procession finished, it swole up and enriched into a spiritual so mournful flowers could wilt at it—and so the morning glory vines going up the walls did. And, dogs would have bayed too, so of course all the animals in that great big place started to bark and howl with a deep regret that they also
felt but could not understand. Or, did they understand through that feeling?
The sound of it all, and the incense raised up past the green stained glass and caught in the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral.
Father Dukensis bowed his head, and when he raised it again, he carefully adjusted his hood with its symbol, the duke, so that it fell just over his eyes. “My people…”
The clans saluted him with a foot stomped and a fist in the air briefly, then let their arms drop with their voices into silence.
“One of our sons,” he eyed those making faces, “everyone’s son, has betrayed us. Or, it could become a betrayal, couldn’t it? If we let him keep running around outside in the Ow like he hasn’t got any gods-given sense–”
“No home training, no sir, Father Dukensis!”
Father Dukensis should have expected it, but Deacon Carrussis’ round, bottomless voice could always make a person brace themselves. People in the congregation also seemed to catch themselves at hearing it, as if they were naked to it and caught in a chill breeze.
“And I—”
“Oh, yes, sir, Father Dukensis!”
“Yes… Ah… my son. Here he lies, that liar. He has loosed Phobos Robobos, and he should pay for it, shouldn’t he? Help me! All of you help me to march this boy’s good-for-nothing black ass right back here, for all the grannies, and all the poppas, to set that boy straight! Wait—can you hear me? Can you see me and feel me, Dukensians?” He passed hands through the air over the person in robe laying still on the green altar.
Now, they were back in a fervor. The girls read loudly from the black-and-green books, the fathers shouted in chant, and the mothers stamped their feet and let their knees buckle as they rolled their heads over their shoulders, crying out at intervals that they had caught the energy.
The sons raised their daggers and pointed the power back at Father Dukensis on the altar.
And then the last son, laying on their altar, had been spoken of as a rude, silly boy. But, the body of a man was there. Robed in wealthy money-green like the rest.
“Oh, I see where you are now, Kashizaerian… death in the Ow is not even far enough away… I can haul you back here, ungh… ‘cause I brought you into this world, ungh… and only I can take you out, can’t I? Ungh!” Father Dukensis made fists in the air and pulled them to himself as he puffed up his chest.
“Yessir! Oh, Father Dukensis, you’ve got that boy now, pants fallin’ down round his ankles and evry’thang, you got ‘em now, father! Yes! Sir!”
An altar boy, his robes done in spiraling, sparkling lime designs came. Father Dukensis waved the incense smoke hanging between them. He selected a long pin from the many instruments in the box that was opened and offered up. He held this for all to see and scream their praises at.
One old woman and one little girl seated together among the fathers, because they were unmatched, stopped their worship.
“Mother…”
The old woman shut her eyes and looked away from him, got a hand on the little girl’s shoulder when she tried to get up. Leaned down, covered the girl’s mouth and cussed when she started to scream. Father Dukensis leaned over the altar on one hand, found the place he wanted, then struck the pin deep, into his son’s gut.
Emerald sparks of their conjuring united with the ash of the bonfires, braiding heavy smoke up through the highest turrets. Beyond, it looked as if there were real, vile green weather above Mount Duke.
Kashizaerian Dukensis sat with both his dirty boots hitched on the silver ring round his chair’s legs, an old dry hen’s bone in one greasy hand, and the other, cleaned, on the glass machine before him. He was amazed. A machine, but made of glass? Lights inside. No gears, no clicking anythings that he could see. Just lights and flickering bright panels. Sweet, shimmering music from inside there too. On the surface of the glass box, three reels with numbers and symbols painted on clicked and whirled in unison when he pulled the lever.
Star… Star… 13.
“Bah! Why is such a bad number even on the reel…” but, he smiled at it. Kashizaerian was so enchanted that the pain in his gut subsided some time ago. Though, he feared to get up from the machine again.
Kashizaerian was a thin young man when he didn’t mean to be, being a bachelor, but he filled out instantly into something even more handsome—this he delved into in pure innocence of himself—whenever times were good and he had more meals than usual. So, he was lithe and funny in one season, and then got brawny and warm enough to hug well in the next. And, he could dance. He laughed whenever he remembered how he could dance.
Kashizaeriean could smile like a winter’s dawn. Beautiful promise of warmth, but then he’d escape, so easily, if you didn’t know how to keep him. If you did not bundle yourself up against his cold ways, work fast to win him and keep him inside.
Well, his mother used to say so.
“What is a man?” he half sang to himself. He kept breaking up the song with ‘purburrs’ from his tired lips and bluffs of air sucked in and out from his cheeks, trying to make… what he believed was better off as prose. He wanted it to sound harder, like it was falling down a mountain side, as he once fell, or stumbling round creek rocks. A man wasn’t a kid with a-old chicken bone in his greasy hand, playing games like this all day through. “But then again, man? Here I am, man.” Another pull of the machine’s handle. “Eat that, you can.” He watched the reels inside the lighted box spin. “Make me…” bluff-bluff. Purr-purr, “…a better man, man.” He waited, “Man? Oh man!” then, “Damn!”
Star… Diamond… Raspberry.
“What a waste of this man’s beautiful, precious time.” But he pulled he lever again.
Akila, the only other person in the gambling place that was his age, spotted him eventually—of course she did. A handsome and almost tall fellow, with dark skin she rarely saw on people. He wore the robe of a rich man, or the color of a rich man’s royal bank notes. But, then again, this young stranger possessed the mannerisms of a fool. A sly fool who didn’t care what anyone thought. His pants were half down his bottom when he scooted up in his seat and the cape fell away a moment. The beautiful green hood he kept down, but those arms and legs looked so strong the way he sat in his half-angry hunch, she assumed his face must be just as good.
Akila raised her silver tray of beers in steins, and vials of shimmering libations over her shoulder and waltzed over with hips at full swing. Some rich boy run away on holiday.
“Sirrah, might I offer thou—”
He grabbed her bare leg. Akila’s skirt was short—shortened—by profession, but patrons making full use of the uniform was
never something one… expected.
Akila had dug her soft blue painted nails into the silver polish of the tray balanced on her shoulder. The same color over her eyes warmed up as her honey face blushed. She set her teeth against the anger rising in the pit of her chest. But, then again, found herself wondering… hadn’t he looked her over first?
The hen’s bone was now somewhere on the floor between them. The young man in the green hood, his hand really holding the meat of her leg, studied Akila’s eyes, and then her body for another time before he must have realized that there was also emotion going between them. Hers was not the same as his.
“…Well?” she fumed.
“I’m sorry… but it’s what you’ve got on.” He waited, then came up with, “You’re really sexy.”
Akila’s knees went right then, and she ended up offering him the drink she almost spilled on him to help cover for herself. Next, balanced on her heels a little, leaned and unfolded a cloth napkin over his knee where he might set down his drink while he gambled.
“I’m very… um… thank you.”
“Yeah… yeah, you definitely look great.”
“I’m Akila. I also, you know… I take a break for supper at—”
“This is a gambling machine. It is, isn’t it?”
Akila had been caught up in his eyes. “Oh, yes… that’s true. You’ve not seen many of these have you? I haven’t either, really… well, until I came here. There are others here in Searing City, and in Purvillion too. Every real big city with a gambling parlour is going to have these soon. They’re called slot machines. Money goes in, and so much beauty comes out. Aren’t mages brilliant?”
He smiled. “The hell.”
Akila thought there should be more, but that was the man’s whole sentence. She checked over her shoulder to make sure there weren’t any other customers that time of day, and that nobody was watching her from the bar.
“Look, this is really incredible, right? I’ve not seen another brown person in a really long time.”
He’d gone back to the machine. “Mhrm.”
“Where are you from? I thought we didn’t get way out here. Gods, it gets lonely… you know, I can cook a mean turkey leg, bake gold bricks…” he ignored her. She licked her lips quickly, “And, so, you’re a mage?”
“Kashizaerian.”
“Kashiz… Kash…shiz… air re-an? Kashizaerian.”
“Yep.”
“I’m Akila.” She waited impatiently for him to do more than pull the lever or grunt. “Okay. I’m just going to call you Kash.”
“That’s mean.”
“What’s mean?”
“To call a person out of their name. A-ki-la. That’s pretty. So, hey, what happened? I thought my name was pretty too.”
“I didn’t say—”
“No, it was the way you said my name. You want me.” And then he turned and smiled as if he was going to eat her. “Oh gods, and look what I did to you, poor thing. You poor, pretty thing…” and he used the napkin she’d folded in his lap to wipe her leg free of whatever grit and grease had been on his hand.
Akila froze.
“You gotta tell me, how does this thing work? It’s eating all my money.”
“Right, so then it’s working fine.”
Kash paused to put the heel of his hand on his forehead.
“Oh no, headache? Want me to get a potion for you?”
“Nobody can fix it. Playing helps it, I think it does. So, help me keep playing. Unless you’re offering for me to play with you?”
Akila did a half-good job of playing offended and smacking his shoulder somewhat.
Kash finally pushed his hood back. His coarse raven hair had been woven into about a hundred complex braids running over, under, into each other, branching into runes and symbols over his scalp. At the back of his neck, the ends of the braids were hidden underneath small golden panels. Three arrowheads that pointed into one another.
“Boy, do I love your hair. I haven’t seen hair done like that on a man in a really, really long time.”
Kash pulled Akila into his lap, the free drink finished. She set down her tray on the stool next to theirs.
“Now, tell me how this works.”
“Where in all the realm are you from? At first I thought you were… but, no, I’ve never met a man like you before. Not in my whole life.”
He shrugged and said, “I didn’t come from so far away, I walked here.” Then, “when I pass my hand over this stained glass portion here, the lily flower, I feel as if it’s coming to me. It wants to bloom, I’m asking it to bloom with my hand, and then good numbers come up on this reel. Even numbers, and powerful numbers… an eight, for instance. There’s some kind of conductor beneath this, isn’t there? And it knows how many times I’ve pulled the lever, over there, and how long I’ve been waiting. The lei lines inside must be exactly, exquisitely done.” He smiled, “I’m so mad at that!”
Akila put her arms around him instead. “Have you any idea how long I’ve been waiting?”
But all of Akila’s attempts at Kash failed after that. He was into the machine, and so she helped him with it. Kash was thrilled by the thing. He seemed more relieved of his headaches, the more she helped him to understand how it worked. She described how it looked on the inside, a dome within a dome of glass, or like a faceted jewel. She told Kash about the the last time the mage came by to service it. She told him how often gamblers won each day, and how much gold they won. She told him the patterns of the other machines, and that there were far better machines at the casino down the street where she also worked. Someone once won three thousand gold pieces there after playing the biggest machine for a day and a half, and then somebody else once sat at the same machine for three grueling days of bar-maid-ing (with no tips at all) and had to be thrown out when they were stinking and penniless and annoying the one barmaid assigned to him that whole time!
“Don’t let that happen to you, Kash.”
“You’re my lucky charm.” He kissed her arm.
Akila was delighted, until she realized that was a strange place to be kissed. It wasn’t very… focused at all… “My real kisses give the best luck.”
Then, she fell out of his lap. Kash had got to his feet. He raised his hands up overhead, waiting.
Diamond… Diamond… Diamond.
Akila swore and recovered for a solid moment before the orange glass machine went off in alarum. Enchanted music seemed to ring from everywhere. She told Kash she was sure it’d never done that before. “What did you do!”
“I won!”
“How much did we win?” she shoved him.
“The whole thing. I beat the machine.” He gazed up at her, beaming, “Everything evil, writhing and chirruping smile upon you—”
“What did you just call me?”
Then, Kash opened his arms. His fiendish smile set again. He came forward as Akila startled back, stepped out of her shoe and bent the heel. His lips did not move. His teeth were tight. But some sure unholy chanting spoke through him. Out and around the bared teeth, through the whites of his eyeballs… The voices billowed from behind his cape and cast the deep green hood over his braided head.
There were voices of women, men, children chanting in agony, “Kashiz, Kashiz, Kashizaerian!”
A black gale flew out from behind the green cape. Kash yelled, snatched arms around Akila and turned her around. He slammed them both down into the glass machine. The bright ambrosia shell burst. Its delicate stained glass innerworkings melted and crumpled around them.
The man she wanted was over her, shuddering, as beads of hot white light bounced and popped along invisible lei lines loosed overhead. The force of whatever it was had torn Kash’s wild hair from its braids. He gasped hard as sweat and blood slipped down the sides of his face.
“Kash… Kash?”
But the kind stranger had retreated far inside of himself, perhaps deep into another world.
So, at around 8:00 pm on a Saturday night, I was with my sister and a friend in a bookstore when, suddenly, a slightly disheveled, charming teenager speed-walked up to me, Dr. Who style, and eagerly commented, “I like the tardis you’re holding. I need that.”
Because, I was, in fact, holding a small box with a tiny light-up model tardis (English version of a blue police emergency phone booth) inside that I was very excited about. I’ve only been a fan of Doctor Who for a year or so, but I love it! The kid then went into a confident, flurry of a run-on sentence about how Doctor Who is the longest-running sci-fi TV show, that they will be celebrating it at exactly 7:50 p.m. on November 23, by showing the Day of the Doctor special — and so, if you were to travel through time to 2013 on the same day and at the same time they aired the first Dr. Who in the 70s… you wouldn’t miss it.
I’m still torn between the 10th and 11th doctors, as far as which regeneration of the iconic Doctor Who I’m most fond of… but, then again, I’ve not really seen any of the others.
If you’re also a fan or eager to become a fan, it sounds like BBC will be showing the anniversary episode on their website at the exact time I mentioned above. (Will you need to account for the time difference if you’re in the U.S.? I bet you will… unless you have a tardis. Or, a DaLorean would do too, I guess.)
Thank you, kind teenaged stranger with the black leather jacket and the glasses… maybe you weren’t time traveling, but then maybe you were, because you were hanging out in a bookstore (do they still have those in the future?), and soon after I repeated to myself, “7:50 p.m., BBC, 50th Anniversary of Dr. Who…”
You were gone. You also said something about having left your sonic screwdriver at home, which is an inconvenience I do understand. So, you’re forgiven for disappearing… for now. Or, until next the time?
Dun dun dun!
Just another healthy serving of geekdom I figured I’d share with you all. Anyone else here a Doctor Who fan? Anyone know what the anniversary episode will prolly be about?
A list of U.S. Screenings appears here: http://screenrant.com/doctor-who-50th-anniversary-us-screening-tickets-locations/
Never seen Dr. Who? Apparently, you can catch up on the last few doctors… if you wall all day long, all week long 🙂 http://www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/extras/takeover-schedule/
I swear, this is the BEST fandom ever…
Washington, D.C. A veritable paradise of government-funded natural spectacles. From the beautiful heights of pulpit rock, down the majestic hiking trails of her Rock Creek Park… those shallow, brown waters that eddy beneath the courageous rushing waterfall at Pierce Mill. And then, taking a swift bike down the trail there past deciduous trees of every species, cars eagerly shortcutting the worst traffic in the nation, and the ever-rare blackberry-checking federal worker-turned-fisherman in these hard times, the lucky traveler will eventually find his way to the National Zoological Park.
The Rock Creek, its trails and its trees were all completely closed, forbidden if you will, to the public until recently. What’s more amazing than how so many Americans survived the drama of Congress, is how nature’s wonders sallied-forth during the government shut down. Our brave and tiny paperclip friends went on an amazing journey through un-mowed zoo grass, starvation, rivalry, really, really quiet visiting hours and triumph.
This is the story of the silverback paperclip Titan, his Stripey Link Clan, and how they survived what paperclips nation-wide have begun to bend their tinny jaws in heralding, “Clippageddon Four.”
Nature does go in her cycles, and every now and then, as humans will eventually experience hurricanes and droughts they must recover from, the smallest of nature’s denizens are pushed to their own extremes in order survive catastrophes. It may be as simple as wild paperclips fleeing from Office Depot’s latest Black Friday sale, or in our case, the absence of countless tourists dropping crumbs that paperclips easily forage during what should be the period they fatten (well, they do) before hibernating in office buildings in wintertime. Washington, D.C. has gotten through much of the economic decline since the Great Recession of 2008 due to its many government agencies and government-funded organizations in the city. Paperclips who make their home in this city fare well, as there is always an abundance of government workers going down office aisles and leaving out lunches, dried coffee cups and the prized sugar packets left torn ope on coffee room counters. But, this October, the paperclips that usually migrate to their traditional feeding grounds, such as inside of the State Department, the FBI building and the various Smithsonian museums… all of these large, cubicle-bound human beasts who sow their dropped luncheon crumbs all over the carpet were furloughed at home instead, leaving many a silvery office supply starving.
The wild paperclips who draw to the Smithsonian National Zoo each Fall were especially hit—there is usually more than enough to feed upon, when there are animals on exhibit that must eat, zookeepers and office workers, and then there are children having birthday parties in addition to the tourists dropping popcorn, sticky cotton candy treats, and the like. What should have been a feast for the paperclips in 2013 rapidly degraded into bloodshed—very tiny, really, molecular and silvery bloodshed—as paperclip silverbacks stole from one another, little cliplings fought over a lone popcorn kernel here and there…
The females were often forced to abandon their cliplings in order to climb up tables and benches to pry whatever may be left, often hard, petrified gum (and gum is from the chicle tree… but that has nothing to do with today’s episode).
Titan, the silverback we’ve been following since 2010, was met with especial dramatic tension when he arrived at zoo hill—a place we’re exceptionally lucky to be positioned in, for it does appear the very scene for a primordial dogfight. The concrete “ZOO” letters, now gathering dirt and maybe even moss and spiderwebs during the two-week government shut down, tower in the distance above the morning mist, like ruins from some ancient empire. Grass, gone days-yet unmowed, wavers in broad, muted morning-blue leagues beyond. Titan, as tall as an acorn nearby, makes a tiny hop onto the scene. A pair of other males, much younger and with a familiar scent to him, are sparring in the foreground. He is prepared for an attack. Titan has been ready to confront these two fledgling half-sons of his for an age.
They all spread fangs and snarl. Titan approaches from the side, wanting the youngsters to see and know him first, to understand. Perhaps this is noble Titan’s attempt at letting them back away from his mate and cub hidden somewhere in the grass… or, he is expertly trying to avoid a match against two, healthy young males. One may never be sure with Titan, he is often more wise than he dares to be clever.
The juveniles lunge upon him. At first, the three look exactly as if some bored office worker has hooked them up and is flinging them about in an idle moment at his desk, but trust, these three are tearing each other apart. The juveniles each show faint stripes of red, or green on the other young male, where their silver coating has not fully grown in. At last, Titan unfolds himself, faster than any paperclip we’ve observed before, becoming almost a perfect straight cut of wire, and the two juveniles swing round him by the hoops, helplessly, until both fling free at the ends. They go flying through the tree–er, grass-tops.
Exhausted, Titan carefully bends one end of himself, and then the other round that, just as a tortoise unfolds himself from his shell after a confrontation… okay, so it’s the exact opposite of that. There aren’t too many other naturally-occurring things you can compare to paperclips, you know… and
Titan becomes whole and himself again. He cries out, and wild paperclips sound like small birds if you’ve ever heard them,
Kiweeweewoo… kiweeweewoowoo… woowoo…
Yes, go on and try it for yourself, it’s very refreshing. And, you won’t sound like an ass.
His mate, the flashing red strawberry hops out of the mists. These two have not seen each other in an age. They quickly embrace. The two juveniles, Joba and Boba were her own sons, and they had grown unruly, herding their mother away from Titan at their first opportunity some years back, finally hiding her here on zoo hill, when the pack came to feed.
What loyalty among office supplies that are truly bonded by love! Truly, they can stay hooked together in admirable ways…
 |
| The battleground: Here, it is easy to see the tiny Stripey Link Clan on Zoo Hill, fighting for their eensy weensy lives! |
But, something is wrong. We wait and observe. At first, the animated and distraught behavior of the parents is hard to decipher, but then the gestures ring true for any of nature’s creatures, be they human beast or tiny, metal anthropomorphized object. Yes, the two are, indeed, parents. And, their tiny clipling has gone missing!
Titan hops ahead. He has found tracks of the tiny clipling that should have been attendant Strawberry at their reunion just now… but these stop at a scuffle of more prints. Those same juveniles Joba and Boba returning, surely, but then the smallest one disappears, carried off—they have taken poor little
Pipa, Titan and Strawberry’s one true cub together!
Oh, what shame for a tightly-knit paperclip pack to be torn open and shaken carelessly all over the place, on the grass, in this way. Titan has long known that these two were not his own by blood. At Strawberry’s insistence, because their pair-bond was so strong, Titan restrained his silver fang and did not dispense with the young males as some patriarchs, such as lions, aught. So, Titan raised Joba and
Boba as his own.
Now, however, that these two rogues have vengefully absconded with his true progeny, Titan must make them feel, at last, how they were never his own.
Strawberry hops several dirt granules ahead of him. No. It is clear that they will both fight. Together. She bares her bright red fang, before giving the call and leading Titan on a bloodthirsty chase through the zoo.
Kiweeweewoo!
…Woo!
Chapters
Paperclip Wisdom :: 1 The Mighty Silverback Paperclip :: 2 The Stripey Link Clan :: 3 The Origin of Office Supplies Species :: 4 Paperclip Savers are Environmentalists Too :: 5 The Blackest Friday :: 6 Furlough Reloaded!
Freddy Gonzales had never before seen so many tangas in his life.
That is what Keeper Josh accused Freddy of, looking at the tangas, once they were seated for a while and the young man hadn’t said anything. Freddy had been staring all around at murals he’d seen plenty of times before, as a child. How long since his mother and father had last brought him to Don
Juan’s for home-cooked salvadorean food?
“I said, were you a kid the last time you were here, Freddy Guzman?” Keeper Josh was questioning him again.
“No, but after my dad got—wait, were you talking to me about tangas?”
Josh just smiled. He dressed the same when he wasn’t zookeeping. A polo shirt, cargo pants, hiking boots… well, his collar was popped up.
“You can’t say tangas, though—it’s weird on you!”
“Because I’m a zookeeper? You know, Freddy, deep in the Amazonian rainforest, there’s a rare species of golden frog, pretty endangered. As part of their mating call, they have to… wear thongs.”
“What? Haha!”
“Tangas, whatevs, YOLO… I got you, son. I’ll even whip my hair back and forth if I have to!”
“What hair?” Freddy couldn’t stop laughing. Josh was a riot outside of Amazonia.
At the other end of the table, Freddy’s mom Moenna and Katie Lynn’s parents ceased their furrowed-brow conversation and lightened their mood. Katie Lynn had gone to the restroom.
“Oops.”
“Freddy, you were saying something… your dad went back to El Salvador? Is that why you come here for all the home-cooked pupusas?”
“My dad is from Guatemala. He got deported when I was small.”
Josh put a hand over his water glass for a moment, “I’m sorry to hear that, man.”
“Pupusas are still good, though. This was his favorite place to get them. He used to work at the zoo, too. Did you know Eduard Gonzales?”
“Yeah? God, I know him—knew Eduard. He was the funniest guy—so you’re little Eduard? You were this whole time, and you never said anything.”
“Well, maybe… I didn’t know to say it… whether you knew him, really, because he was just a custodian.”
“You shouldn’t think like that, Freddy. That kind of stuff doesn’t matter. Or, it does matter, it does—your father was really good at his job, and he really liked Amazonia. Man, I didn’t know that’s why he went. But I guess, that’s good in a way… I didn’t think he’d just up and leave us. Well, Freddy Gonzales, I’m calling you Little Eduard from now on.”
“Aww, man, first you call me by the whole name and then…”
“Tell your dad I said that, too.”
Moenna leaned in. “I see my son’s not been getting in much trouble. At least, I hope he’s not been acting up.”
“Mom, I always say I’m good. I even get to carry all the heavy stuff, all the time, for Josh.”
Everyone at the table laughed.
Katie Lynn’s father was mostly quiet. Her mother, Anna, often spoke over him. “Josh… he lived in Mount Pleasant too, did you know? Katie told us that.”
“Wonderful! Really?”
“Yeah, I was over on Ingleside for a while…”
Katie Lynn returned. Freddy leaned over the table on his elbows. He tapped his sneakers fast at some bachata beat that always seemed to come to mind whenever he saw his girlfriend enter the room.
Katie had a nervous look, and she startled at all the beautiful women everywhere painted on the walls making tortillas, food that was deliciosa, rica. Tan rica que las tienen los manos llenos de tortilla y senos formado como platanos maduros.
She spied Freddy’s feet moving under the table and went to him instantly. Her eyes opened wide with her laughing smile. She danced a circle round the back of his chair, then slipped into the seat beside him and squeezed round Freddy’s middle with both arms.
“I’ll miss you…” she kissed behind his ear.
Freddy tried to relax and straighten up in front of their parents. He patted Katie’s back, for her to do the same. She really didn’t want to.
They all ate. Clearly, the parents decided earlier that they wanted to do something official after dinner. “Keeper Josh,” Katie’s father began over a row of empty tamarindo drinks. His voice boomed and Moenna flinched. “We’ve really got to thank you, Keeper Josh. You’ve been such a good influence on our daughter, and Anna and I hear you’ve been doing this for so many kids. Maybe a thousand summers…
“Es orgulloso… es lo que matado el perrito?”
Freddy tried to shush his mother’s whisper. “Máma, no—”
Katie Lynn went, “No, that was my other dad who killed the dog. And he’s dead.”
Everyone heard. Stopped.
Katie’s mother squeezed her husband’s arm. “Katie…”
“Mom, I don’t want to yell right now, so don’t embarrass me—Freddy’s right here, mom! And then that’s his mom, do you get it? This is so important, don’t embarrass me!”
“I’m sorry querida,” Moenna looked to Katie, “but it’s okay. It’s all fine. Freddy and I are fine. Just… listen to your mother right now, since she’s speaking to you.”
Anna snapped, “Excuse Katie. She thinks she’s getting married already, but you’re not her mother-in-law, that’s what I tell her.”
“Excuse me?” Moenna tried, but failed to recover from it, “Yes, my son could marry your daughter.
Why do you think he can’t? We may be on the other side, but we both do share Mount Pleasant street.”
Freddy leaned back in his chair as the parents argued. Keeper Josh had another long sip of tamarindo.
Freddy had been feeling beneath the back of his grilfriend’s shirt. Her face was flushed with anger.
Her heart was beating faster and faster. He bit his lip. The world around, Mount Pleasant outside, the women patting tortillas in here, on the beach, jungle trees, yes, tangas… titi monkeys, Esther the sloth, crickets. Their chirping raising… and frogs too… but Katie Lynn was screaming with them.
Freddy thought about his father. The picture of him on the beach at Monterrico.
“Ahorita, tenemos problema con el alma. Tu novia tiene una fiebre del espiritu—la necescita, de verdad, lo que constituta el bosque—su serenidad…”
“Katie,” though Freddy could barely be heard over the arguing, “You promised me that you would take your medicine today.”
“But you didn’t even hear her, Freddy—you hear how my mother is yelling at me, in front of you? And she thinks I took all those animals, but I didn’t. Josh, you found them all in the exhibit again, didn’t you?”
Josh drank even more from an empty tamarindo glass.
“K. L. , take your medicine, baby. It’s in your purse.”
Katie Lynn was red-faced.
Freddy put a glass of water in front of his girlfriend. Then, he swept his arm round to rest on her chair back after she sat down.
After a few trembling breaths, Katie sat, swiftly popped open an orange prescription bottle, placed a small white pill on her tongue then drank the water. She drank all of it while Freddy watched.
The adults got back in their seats too. Freddy leaned his chair on two legs.
The dinner ended gently. Somehow, they all got back to normal conversation while Freddy tipped his chair and held Katie’s hand under the table.
Where it was all going, and Moenna checked eyes at her son when Keeper Josh said he had to get going, was the silver wrapped box in a white plastic bag on the floor. Freddy ducked down near his mother’s purse to get it.
“Katie Lynn, before Keeper Josh goes… my son and his father and I, we wanted to meet you finally, before the summer finished, and this was always Eduard’s favorite place. So, he’s here with us too.
His dad and I both want to thank you for being such a good friend to our son. And, Josh too—Thank you, so very much, Mr. Braves. You have always been so good to the kids, I heard, from Eduard. You must have changed so many lives.”
Keeper Josh was waiting for the laughter, but it didn’t come. He nodded with genuine gratitude.
“Well, they didn’t squish too many crickets.”
Moenna continued over the kids’ laughter. “Katie Lynn, querida, you two have been very good to each other. Here, this gift is from the whole family. The end of summer may be hard, but there’s no reason why friendship between you and Freddy can’t continue. Though you’ll both be going away to college, we’re all still neighbors, aren’t we? We’re just on either side of Mount Pleasant Street, anyways…”
“Mom, you’re going on and on…”
“Yes.” Katie’s father stood another time. “We all have the pleasant mountain to share. And, the
Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park.”
Katie Lynn rasberried laughter at her smiling stepfather. Moenna clapped, charmed.
Freddy poked Katie Lynn with a finger until she finished opening the box. She brought out a black hoodie, a lot like the one Freddy used to wear. Embroidered across the hood were candied skulls, marigolds and the words “Cricket Queen”.
Instantly, Katie dropped it on the table. Like her fingers were singed.
“Does she like it?” Moenna worried loudly. “Freddy’s father did spend half the summer making it by himself…”
“No, I just… Mrs. Gonzales, this is so—” then, Katie screamed, “And it’s an NZP sweatshirt, an official one!”
Keeper Josh smiled big, cracked the knuckles of one hand. “Well, don’t get frog juice on that.”
“What are the crickets saying to you now, Katie, K.L. Killer? Are they still talking over at the zoo?”
Katie turned to Freddy, picked up the sweatshirt, smelled it, cried into it.
“Cheep, cheep, cheep.” Came her muffled voice. And, she kept saying that over and over. Freddy smacked his forehead while all the adults worried about her.
“No!” she stopped them. “That’s what crickets say. Cheep-cheep!”
Chapters
1, Busdriver Marlin :: 2, The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl :: 3, Love, After the Deer Apocalypse :: 4, Moises “Emperor Crush” Romero :: 5, Screaming in Spanish :: 6, His Hoodie :: 7, Amazonia :: 8, Behind the Waterfall :: 9, The Cricket Queen :: 10, Don Juan’s
Beyond the paperclip safaris, talking archbishop unicorns, bisexual dragons and, sea priestesses proselytizing Maury Povich-style, I have a lot of other projects in the wings.
“Promise me… promise me you won’t tease me, Freddy.” Katie Lynn swept blue fingers in latex gloves through large waves of short, blonde hair. Like a black and white actress Freddy saw once in an old TV movie… That’s how Katie always did it, like she was being careful not to put her fingers through white fire.
“Did you hear it?”
“Uh…?”
Now, Katie shivered. She checked again to see if they were the only volunteers in the cricket room, then squeezed the top edge of the glass tank with her nervous fingers. Freddy leaned in to listen as she’d asked.
“Please don’t laugh at me, Freddy. You do hear them too right? I know that you do.”
Freddy just nodded when she was so upset. Though, he was unsure…
“So, now you know. I am their queen, like you said. That day, you remember?”
“I was kinda… joking. Cause you like doing crickets, so you were the cricket queen or something, I dunno.”
“Freddy!”
He exhaled slowly. “You sure that you hear them?”
Yes, Katiebeth was being dead serious.
“And do you know what they told me yesterday, Freddy? In three days, all the animals here, each specie in Amazonia… they are going to die. Extinction.”
“Okay, K.L. killer, maybe you’ve been hitting that one of your books too hard.”
“The fate of an animal in a zoo, is really to die! What else can they do?” Katie Lynn got up on one of the green stools.
She raised her fist in the air, high above the cricket tanks, the spider webs, the pancake little baby sting rays in the aquarium behind tall Freddy. They swam over each other then, in a delighted, ignorant frenzy.
“Ki-ra! Ki-ra! Ki-raaaah!” screamed Katie. “For our crickets!”
A week later, and a sorrowful Freddy just sat down on the stoop in front of his apartment building, rather than go inside.
“My girlfriend is crazy.”
His mother was already there, a few steps up. She was finishing a cigarette. “Boy, calm down…”
“I didn’t ask to calm down, I just want to know how to say it… Es loca? Esta loca? She didn’t start out crazy…”
“Crazy is something someone has, who they are, it’s more permanent, so… Es loca. I think that’s how you say it. So, that’s
why you want to write to your father. You sure you’re not the one who’s crazy, being so hard on this girl you just met?”
“Mom!” Freddy lowered his voice. Two little old ladies with shopping carts passed by. He was distracted a moment too, seeing that they had mango slices and hot sauce for sale.
His mother waved and sang out, “Buenos tardes, Señoras Morenos…” the women smiled brightly and waved eagerly back in turn a brief moment before they went.
“It’s why I never tell you anything, Mom. You always accuse me.”
“Boy, where are you going now? Sit your butt back down when we’re not finished talking. And… I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about anything, because you already look so upset. Are you just… so sure that your girlfriend—thanks for telling me you had one, by the way—is she really crazy? Or, maybe she’s just crazy about you? I did raise a very handsome, very smart young gentleman. Told you I would.”
“Moooom…”
“Freddy, tell her to calm down the next time she acts weird. Don’t just dump her if she’s a good girl, you know? She’s not an empty Coke can.”
“Why do you say it like that, I would never do that to Katie Lynn. Why do you always accuse me like that?”
Another askew, “…Sorry. And, so, she’s a white girl? Katie Lynn?”
“Yeah, so…?”
“Does she live around here?”
“Over on Ingleside… on the other side of Mount Pleasant.”
“Oh. Okay.” Freddy’s mother drew a breath. “Just wanted to know. So, tell me what happened to you.”
Freddy gushed about Katie Lynn at first. His concerned mother gained a smile. She even patted his back a little, proud of him. But then, as Freddy began to explain about the crickets, how Katie crept around when no one was looking, then sneaked back suddenly and gave him “reports” about how the animals were all suffering…. And, she confessed to taking one of them home.
“I don’t think you should date this girl.”
“Mom! You just said she wasn’t a used soda can.”
“But you can’t help her with this kind of problem, Freddy.”
“She watched her father cut up their dog when she was little, okay? That’s what she told me once. He’s not living there anymore, but… well, he died. But her new dad is a lot nicer.”
“Freddy…”
“Moenna…”
Moenna snapped at her son calling her name like that. “Okay, alright… one last question, then I’ll tell you what I think you should do. What we should both do… Freddy, does this girl have… medicine that she’s supposed to take. I only ask because, it sounds like she was kinda normal before, and now she’s not. And before you suck your teeth, I used to. I used to have to take stuff to calm me down. It was a very long time ago, I hated taking it, but then went I went off of it, I’d act kind of funny.” Moenna had another drag of cigarette. “Or, maybe she smokes something… you know.”
“No, I don’t know, Mom. Katie doesn’t do drugs.”
“And you’re not smoking pot again, either, are you? Not with this girl?”
Rather than react this time, Freddy saw Josh’s stoic face in his mind. He didn’t know why he let himself see it just then, but it helped. “I’m Freddy Guzman.”
“That’s not an answer for your mother, Freddy.”
“Mom. I want to help my girlfriend. If they find out that she’s crazy, even taking animals, she’s going to get banned from Amazonia, and that would break her heart. She really loves the zoo. She really does, and she’s been through enough already. I know that I used to lie and stuff, but Katie Lynn says Amazonia is the only place where she feels safe.”
He went and sat next to his mother on the stairs. “I know I’ve lied and stuff before, but I stopped doing that. Look, I walk her home sometimes, and she’s just sad. She is so sad, and she is this really, really nice girl. She really is. I have to help Katie. Please, help me figure it out. I was gonna write to dad, but—you’re a girl, right?”
“You know, Freddy,” she smoked a moment, “I’m not sure what to do. I think I’m going to need help too. Alright, I know that I said you had to write to your father instead this summer, but let’s break the rule, okay?” she hugged him. “You’re going to college, you’re already a good enough writer, of course. Let’s go call him now.”
“Okay.”
“You can just practice your Spanish with him over the phone.”
“Aw man…”
Entiendo bien como sientes, hijo. Y cuando trabajaba en el zoo, y, trabajando en Amazonia especialmente, algunos de mis amigos, amigos muy simpáticos, y muy inteligentes—encantaban el espacio, los animals… lo que sentía come el Eden que no existe en ninguno lugar de DC… y con estrés de la familia y vivendo en un país nuevo… Amazonia era lugar virgen, perfecta.
Algunos extrañan mucho a sus países, y el campo, el bosque. Amazonia, proablamento parecía semejante. Es diseñado bien, no? Has visto.
“Yeah, Amazonia is beautiful. It’s really beautiful, Papa.”
Moenna snapped at her son, and he apologized, repeating his answer in Spanish.
Después de horas de trabajar, el bosque me recuerdo de Guatemala, también. Es poderosa, la naturaleza… sentía más comodo viviendo en esta país, entre la infuencia de Amazonia, y como segura y hospitaliario sientía el barrio. Y aquí, me extraño a mucho de Mount Pleasant, es curioso.
“Well, cause we’re here, and you miss us too. I didn’t know Amazonia felt that way to you dad? So, it was just like Mount Pleasant…”
Tenía suposición que los gringos no lo pueden sentir… lo que pasa con Amazonia…
“Dad, it’s weird, too. One time, Katie and I were going to the break room to have lunch with the zookeepers, but she made us stop. There were these creepy homeless dudes, you know, in the room with the videos.
Ay, si, a los me recuerdo…
“She was like talking to them and stuff.”
To those weird street guys? And in Spanish?!
“Sí, es que… she knows some. She’s good. She’s better than me, Papa.”
Moenna began laughing with Freddy’s father, through the phone. Their son grinned through it.
Visitaban el cuarto los jueves. Se sienten en la mesa, y visten el video mismo, cada vez…
“Yeah, Katie Lynn was saying that, she was asking them about that. She really wanted to say hello to them and find out why they watched the video. And you know what, they said it’s hard, sometimes, walking through the exhibit. They didn’t want to bother people, but maybe they didn’t want to get in trouble or anything like that… so they just liked to watch the video and remember a sus hogares. Como… Colombia, Brazil… es lo que se recordía, el bosque de Amazonia.”
Bueno, muy bueno, Freddy. Hablas bien conmigo cuando estas hablando sobre esa chica…
Another charmed round of laughter from Freddy’s mother. “I noticed the same thing earlier, Eduardo.”
Ahorita, tenemos problema con el alma. Tu novia tiene una fiebre del espiritu—la necescita, de verdad, lo que constituta el bosque—su serenidad, y ser convincente con su trabajo. Ya es biológa, zoóloga, algo asi… es frustrada, no?
“And she doesn’t fit in with the other girls, I don’t think she really does. Es sola, Papa.”
Freddy listened his father suck his teeth over the phone, and then his father was angry, asking for his mother. “Pero, Papa, la no haga nada—”
Moenna took the phone. “Yes, Eduardo?”
Freddy’s father delved into faster Spanish then, once his mother started listening. She nodded to most of it. His mother could understand Spanish well enough, if not speak it. At the end, they all said goodbye. Freddy worried.
“What? Do I have to tell on Katie now, too? I won’t do it. You guys would always talk in secret, before I got in trouble.”
“No, Freddy.” Then, his mother smiled, “We’re all going to Don Juan’s soon. For Katie. It’s what your father wants. You, me, Katie Lynn and her family.”
“Oh.”
Then, “Uh… I don’t know… if Katie’s parents are the kind of people who go to Don Juan’s?”
“Well, they will. You said this girl and her family live in Mount Pleasant, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if they chose to live here, then they’re going to eat at Don Juan’s and they’re gonna like it. I mean, I bet they will. Some of the best pupusas I’ve ever had…” then, Moenna disappeared into the next room.
“Also, I want you to invite that zookeeper you’re always talking about. What’s his name?”
“Please don’t be Josh, please don’t be Josh…”
“Josh.”
“Mom! Please, please, don’t!”
“Tsk.” She began to go through the cabinets, pushing pots and pans around to get dinner started. “Just make her put the crickets back before we invite him, and then you guys will be fine.”
“No, actually… Katie stole one of the poison dart frogs she found roaming free in the forest. A couple of those. And, a toad. And, one of the cardinals that got hurt injured that the zookeepers were looking for.”
“What? So, this girl stole the bird after it was already missing? Damn! She’s smart.”
Chapters
1, Busdriver Marlin :: 2, The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl :: 3, Love, After the Deer Apocalypse :: 4, Moises “Emperor Crush” Romero :: 5, Screaming in Spanish :: 6, His Hoodie :: 7, Amazonia :: 8, Behind the Waterfall :: 9, The Cricket Queen :: 10, Don Juan’s
Behind the Waterfall
There was also a fishkeeper, named Kyle. Ron was the keeper of the gargantuan reverse osmosis water filter, and what pumped fresh water through all the aquaria, and all the crazy building engineering. The man for the mammals was old Harry. He’d worked together forever with the bird keeper Ghini before they both went to birds for a time and then finally arrived at Amazonia together.
Freddy learned that it was okay to call them by their first names, but everyone always said to him:
“Good morning, Freddy Guzman.”
“That’s pronounced dendrobates pumilio, Freddy Guzman.”
“Get to work and stop flirting with the girls, Freddy Guzman.”
“Parrots have the personalities of violent two-year-olds, Freddy Guzman, so don’t get too close…”
“Get to work and stop flirting with the girls, Freddy Guzman.”
But, most often, it was, “Time to do crickets, Freddy Guzman.”
Crickets were Freddy’s favorite part of the day, because he got to touch bugs, and also because the volunteers got left alone in there, and they’d sneak and turn up the little radio, take their time. All the other volunteers at Amazonia were girls, which surprised Freddy.
Once, frog keeper Josh even said, “Freddy Guzman, I’m relieved to have a guy volunteering.”
“Yeah, I have to get the spiders and the hissing cockroaches, right?”
“No. There’s really heavy stuff, and it helps to have someone tall to get down the wall over pool two to reach those drains… You’ll have to ask the girls if you can switch one day and do the hissing cockroaches.” And a hard pat on the back, “Sorry, man.”
At least crickets were a big enough dirty job for everyone to have to take turns doing it.
Juana, Chloe and Rachel all went to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Katie Lynn had just graduated from Holton Arms (Freddy told KB a few times it sounded like she went to a school for assassins). And, then there was Freddy, the fifth kid… Oh, and Sam, a retired guy who drove all the way in from Germantown to volunteer starting at 8am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He was quiet except for when he did demonstrations for the visitors, and he never complained about anything. Ever. The girls sort of whispered above Nicki Minaj on the radio that they found out weird Sam played poker with all the zookeepers some Saturday nights. And, he kept winning.
What?
Freddy was curious, but never met any of the custodians, though. They either worked too late, or too early for a volunteer.
“Do you guys know their names, in case I seem them.”
“They speak Spanish.” said Chloe.
“So?”
Rachel, focused on scraping the bottom of the glass cricket tank with a small razor, distracted Freddy from saying any more when she waggled fingers in his face for a paintbrush. He leaned down beneath the table to get it.
Juana rolled her eyes at Chloe, with Rachel. “Anyways, you could still talk to people who speak
Spanish even if you don’t. Don’t assume. Just say hello.”
“Freddy, aren’t you Spanish?”
“I’m Guatemalan. And, black.”
“Are you?”
“Speak Spanish then.”
“Look Chloe…” Rachel finally spoke up, then she gave up. “Come help me make the water jars. I can’t carry all of them.”
Katie Lynn came into the cricket room right after they did. She was balancing cafeteria trays of cornmeal and fishflakes sprinkled on. “Mira, mira… se pone algo de papa en los dos… cortado de smiley faces.”
It quieted Juana and Freddy both.
“What?”
Juana laughed, “You’re like the blondest girl ever… but you’re good. You even have an accent. God, you make like A-plus, pluses in Spanish right?”
Katiebeth squatted, making a drama of trying to put both trays of cricket food down at exactly the same time on the low table near the baby stingrays. Freddy burst into laughter. “Es loca.”
“You love me ‘cause I’m crazy! Loca, loca, loca!”
“Oh God,” Juana set down her brush and scraper, “Now she’s singing and dancing like Shakira, oh God—”
“Look, lady, I come from Mount Pleasant, so I hear Spanish all the time. I love it. I love speaking it… yeah, I guess I do have an accent too.” Katie Lynn tried to get up the one-step step stool and hug Juana from behind, which made Freddy laugh harder. Then, she pretended to fall down on the floor, and when Freddy helped her up, she jumped up and hugged him too. She growled and kept trying to pull him back down on the floor.
“K.L.”
Silence. Probably even the crickets crawling around on upturned gray egg cartons inside the dusty, half-cleaned tanks hushed quiet.
Josh the frog keeper was there. Of all the others, he was the one who really supervised them, and they never forgot it. “K.L., you have too much energy today. Let’s talk about that a moment… while you empty the monkey pans upstairs.” And he beckoned her like a ninja clapping one hand at himself in some fight movie.
She stopped everything, bowed in half, and even got a smile from Josh before he spoke firmly to her safety in the cricket room.
“I got her in trouble, didn’t I? It’s my fault, I shouldn’tve let her fall down again…”
“Pfft—tienes miedo de Josh?”
A defensive no, “It’s just that he keeps calling me by my whole name, it’s weird.”
“Then you have a crush on K.L. Oooh! Racheeeeel, Chloeeeee… guess who’s like in love with and gonna’ marry Katiebeth! Haha!”
Freddy clawed hands down into his baseball cap and rushed out of there, saying he felt bad and was just going to go help with monkey pans, that’s all.
“Whateveeer, Freddy Guzmaaaaaan…”
“Whooooo000OOOO00ooo!”
When Freddy got upstairs to the rainforest part of the exhibit—mostly all were real trees and, an old sloth, Titi monkeys, one parrot and several more tropical birds—Katie Lynn, the sweet and crazy blonde girl, was carrying two heavy silver pans of monkey food, and some smaller bird food pans all by herself.
“Argh! I feel soo awful, K.L. Josh made you do all this?”
“No, but I don’t want to make him any madder, so I’m getting extra bonus points.”
“He might be mad if you take away some of the animals’ food before it’s the time to do it…” but took more than half of the clanging pans and helped her carry them. They both shuffled through the last visitors of the day who were standing in the paved path, aiming a camera. Then, Katie set down her stack of pans to reach a key at her belt, then lean over the green gate and unlock it. Both volunteers pushed it to behind them, then began to squeeze between monstera vines, brush and trees behind set up above the simulated Amazon river below. A pair of blue-bodied cardinals flew overhead. Two more silver pans set up on stands came into view as they pressed against the wall and rounded a corner. “Oooh, Doctor Livingston, I presume? Muahahahah….”
Freddy burst into laughter again. “You’re so insane.”
Katie Lynn stopped abruptly then, he tripped over her, then she turned and placed a hand on his belly to steady him. Katie smiled. Katie felt along his shirt, then squeezed his hip. “Are you mad at me?”
“Uh… no…”
“Good.” And then she went up on her toes and kissed Freddy’s lips, kissed him again. Behind the trees. Beneath the birds and the sloth and the white greenhouse sunlight gleaming hard around them. They held one another, after. Freddie looked down at Katie Lynn and behind her was a waterfall.
Then, she was gone.
Freddy freaked, out thinking about how the busdriver Marlin warned him not to do that, not to do anything with the girls at his first job, and how he’d messed that up, and worried that she’d disappeared and popped into existence on the bus by accident or something, or cursed or worse than that even.
Then, she was back. “I’ve got the last pan. You get that one over there. Now, let’s go, Freddy Guzman.” She pursed her lips and donned keeper Josh’s deep voice.
“K.L.?”
“Oweema weh, oweema weh, oweema weh, in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps toniiiiight—”
“What happened? Are you okay? Are you mad at me?”
“It was good.” She smiled up at him.
“What was?”
A whisper, “Your kiss.”
“Uh… wait, so it was okay?”
“It was spectacular! It was amazing and it was fireworks! Wanna come to the Fourth of July with me?”
“That already happened. It was last week!”
“Oh.”
When they got back to the green gate, Freddy stopped Katie Lynn. He grabbed a panicked look around the last bunch of visitors first, to make sure they hadn’t been seen. “You were the one who kissed me… are we… so you want to go with me…?” Freddy had a breath. He pulled himself together and smiled until Katiebeth’s worried look disappeared. “Would you like to go out with me, sometime? The Fourth of July is over, but… there’s a movie theater right by the zoo. Wanna go? Like, today or something?”
“No!”
“But you just now kissed me—”
“I gotta clean up and change first! I can’t go in my volunteer stuff, haha!”
“You scared me.”
She hugged him. Freddy rubbed her shoulders a moment, then made himself stop. But, the visitors had gone from the rainforest.
The movie was not what Freddy expected. There was only one screen and one choice. But, that didn’t matter. Katie Lynn wore a beautiful green sundress, and had a flower in her hair, and she smelled like… like honey, or something… and they whispered together in Spanish, making fun of the movie, one another, the volunteers, the animals at Amazonia, everything for the whole hour. Then, she let him kiss her again. Many more times.
“So… do you like being my girlfriend?” The walk home was a long one, back down the hill that
Freddy mostly only knew as the road the H4 bus always flew up or down. One bus passed them now.
The driver wasn’t Marlin.
Katie pulled on his hand, to get him walking again. “Freddy, you weren’t even listening to me.”
“What?”
The road had gone past an apartment building on the other side of the street and so many trees on a steep incline almost spilling over into the sidewalk on their side. Someone had actually built a house way up there? Two houses?
“I said yes.”
Suddenly, the sun broke ahead, all the trees opened up in an amazing green ring on hills climbing up either side. He knew, now, that the zoo was just over there, the creek flowed beneath the bridge ahead, and Mount Pleasant was waiting high, high up, past the beautiful mural, at the summit of everything. He could not see their neighborhood but he just knew. They’d really lived there together the whole time and never known one another? Always going up and down on the bus, but he’d never put his feet on the ground and just walked. Their home had always been this beautiful?
“Let’s always walk to Amazonia together, and back. Could we, Freddy?”
Freddy looked down at Katie Lynn. He felt his teeth chatter, a little, till he took a calming breath.
“Always, always, always.” He said.
Chapters
1, Busdriver Marlin :: 2, The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl :: 3, Love, After the Deer Apocalypse :: 4, Moises “Emperor Crush” Romero :: 5, Screaming in Spanish :: 6, His Hoodie :: 7, Amazonia :: 8, Behind the Waterfall :: 9, The Cricket Queen :: 10, Don Juan’s
“No, I’m seventeen.”
Freddy shook his head at the woman sitting at the desk. The Visitor’s Center at the National Zoo had two or three anterooms that were used for summer camps during the week and children’s birthday parties on weekends. Freddy could hear kids singing at some kind of animal game through the walls.
The classroom chosen for what had once been Marion Barry’s DC Summerworks orientation had little chairs, a teacher’s desk, everything. Freddy had been so nervous about working. Now he wanted to laugh.
“You’re nearly too old to do the program; we cut off at eighteen.” The old black lady said. Freddy raised his eyebrows. “And, you’re at Amazonia—that’s lucky.”
Earlier, while she explained basic job duties, showing up to work on time and that he should never forget his uniform, Mrs. Sanders added that it had been her husband’s project originally—it was his idea to help recruit local kids to work at the zoo. And, she’d met her husband at the zoo when they were both working together in the office, and how he used to be such a funny guy who really believed in watching out for the youth. Freddy knew by her intonation, a black elder’s sudden raised eyebrow, and hanging on the word “our” that it meant she and her husband were especially worried about the black children. Black and brown. Black and Latino. Going to Bell Multicultural High School, he’d seen teachers and grownups put them all together all the time. “Our” kids. Why? Because, sometimes it felt like Black and Latino kids needed the most help. Freddy appreciated it and felt a sense of pride now that he was finally old enough to understand everything. You graduate, then you get to college. Don’t get somebody pregnant. Don’t do drugs, don’t become a statistic…
Yes, Freddy had finally graduated.
“… Freddy Guzman, you just call me Miss Amelia if you need anything.”
“Yes, Mrs. Sanders.”
“No, I’m Amelia Sanders.”
Freddy confused, but before he’d left the Visitor’s Center, he learned what it meant. Camp counselors, kids, security guards, the guy at the front desk with even bigger glasses than she had—all of them nodded and gave “Miss Amelia” a real hello, asked about her own kids, asked if she needed anything. And then, their eyes flitted to Freddy if they had enough time, and congratulated him, for being in such good hands. “Miss Amelia” was a show of respect.
“You’re like the Don or something.”
“Go get to work, young man.”
And Miss Amelia Sanders held one of the black and glass doors open for him with one large arm and a tiny frayed rose-and-purple friendship bracelet someone little must have made for her.
Freddy had never heard of anything like that. If he worked at the zoo long enough, would he get to be Mr. Freddy? Wait, was the busdriver Mr. Marlin, then? Freddy was so nervous, he tried to forget about the flying H4 bus… flying H4 bus? Gah!
Stay calm. Amazonia is at the bottom of the zoo. Get there on time… and the more Freddy thought about it, he sensed the Miss Amelia thing was a girl-only thing. Well, a woman thing. Could Miss Amelia fly?
The rainforest exhibit called Amazonia was way at the other end of the zoo, where Marlin had offered to drop him off. Freddy had plenty of time to think of Miss Amelia flying through the air, losing her gold glasses, her little kid’s pink friendship unraveling apart, Marlin honking the bus horn, trying to lean through the window and snatch hold of her with one ashy arm, and how really fucking hot it was, and how nice it would have been if Freddy had known that Amazonia was on this end of the zoo, he could have asked Marlin to wait and drive him. Wait! No cussing…
 |
| Prarie dogs hug-a-lugging at the zoo. |
Olmstead walk took him past zebras, ostriches, pandas, some guy named Przewalski’s horses, an orangutan peeing on a family posed for a picture from stories above on the… O-Line? Haha! Cool! Then, round the corner and he read a sign for Lemur Island though there weren’t any lemurs he could see, then the coolest carousel ever and for real? He was fo’ sho’ going to ride the naked mole rat first chance, and then there was a random dinosaur statue for some reason, an empty prarie dog sandbox, lion tiger hill, a parked van with a zebra butt painted on—uh, what? Down into the Kids Farm, some donkeys, then Freddy let himself pet a brown cow, and then he walked a long path walled with bamboo bowing gently overhead. So green, so green… It smelled so fresh, like a commercial. Somehow, he knew the building must be… this building. This special one with the mysterious, unadorned walls right now, no sign yet. A drumroll in his heart.
Amazonia. At last, Freddy smiled at real jungle-looking trees pressed up against the glass of a greenhouse that took what became the entire face of the building. Were they real? He climbed up on a fake wooden boardwalk and dyed ropes next to the glass. He put his whole hand on the warm glass while he tried to see. Beyond a whorling puff of steam, leaves dancing as they were pelted beneath a bright waterfall, a pink bird with long odd legs and a long odd flat beak brought its head up and began staring back at him.
“Shit! So cool—”
“In ten second, you ‘bout to be late.” Somebody was saying. “…seven, six, five… Freddy Guzman, you wanna try running, man?”
Freddy looked up to see a tall, almost bald, lumberjack looking black man in a zookeeper’s uniform holding the door open for him across the way. This man kept looking at his watch.
“Oh shit again! Sorry—I mean… Good morning. Sir. So you’re—”
“I’m Josh.” And then, Keeper Josh surprised Freddy with a very firm handshake, like at his college interviews.
“So many black people work at the zoo!”
“Yep.”
“But what do you do? Do you clean the cages? Do you work with the commissary? We took a tour of that place, where they make animal food.”
“I helped them discover chitrid fungus, Freddy Guzman. It’s what’s been endangering frogs all over the planet.”
And Keeper Josh always called him by the whole name, Freddy Guzman, after that.
Chapters
1, Busdriver Marlin :: 2, The Quiet, Angry-Faced Girl :: 3, Love, After the Deer Apocalypse :: 4, Moises “Emperor Crush” Romero :: 5, Screaming in Spanish :: 6, His Hoodie :: 7, Amazonia :: 8, Behind the Waterfall :: 9, The Cricket Queen :: 10, Don Juan’s
Randitty 