As it was, she and Tommy pretty much had the streets to themselves. Regular citizens had completely deserted the city by the end of the work day. With everything closed up, there was nothing to keep them downtown. The van drove past block after block of darkened marquees and signage, all of them shut. The clubs. Restaurants. Cineplexes. Concert halls. Restaurants. Theaters.
And it wasn’t simply the legal trade and its customers. With their Johns driven away by the weather, the Palm Street hookers had either called it a night or taken their business inside. The homeless—runaways, derelicts, bag ladies and all—had managed to find someplace to go as well, though the shelters weren’t overcrowded. Where had they gone? Holed up in Tombs squats, Ellie supposed. Abandoned tenements and old factories that would at least keep the sleet from them. Some of them had probably made their way down into Old Town, that part of the city that had dropped underground during the big quake and was now claimed by the skells and other unwanted. You couldn’t have gotten her to go down there on a dare.
Most people were going to be able to make do for one day. But what were they going to do if the storm dragged on throughout the week as predicted?
Wait until we start getting power blackouts, she thought.
Out in the country, most people had the option to heat with wood. Here, few had what might soon be considered a basic necessity rather than a luxury. The community centers would become makeshift shelters for all those good upstanding citizens who never thought they’d have to rely on the kindness of strangers to survive. Tommy had seen it happen before, out by the rez, and predicted it could easily happen here. Every winter, he told Ellie, there’d be at least one major storm that shut down this or that small town. Hazard. Champion. Even Tyler, the county seat.
But nothing like this. He’d never heard of anything like this.
With their regular clientele absent, Ellie and Tommy found themselves doling out hot coffee to the increasing number of rescue crews that were out on the streets tonight. Police. City workers. Ambulance drivers. Hydro repairmen. The pair were warned more than once to get off the streets for their own safety, but not even the police were prepared to enforce their advice as they munched on sandwiches and drank coffee provided from the back of the Angel Outreach van. With most of the all-night convenience stores and restaurants closed for business, there was nowhere else for them to go.
It was so eerie. Ellie had never seen the streets so quiet.
“How’re we doing for supplies?” she asked Tommy after she got back inside from yet another bout of scraping down the windshield.
He shrugged. “Maybe one urn of coffee left and half the sandwiches, but the doughnuts and cookies are all gone. We should probably get back to Grasso Street and stock up while we can.”
He pulled away from the curb, the rear of the van fishtailing, though he’d barely touched the gas pedal with his foot.
“And maybe switch over to my truck while we’re at it,” he added.
“I wonder if this is what your Aunt Sunday was talking about,” Ellie said.
Tommy shot her a puzzled look.
“You know, the dangerous times I’m supposed to protect you from.”
“What? Poor driving conditions?”
“The storm’s a little more serious than that.”
“It is,” he said, keeping his gaze on the street. “She was talking about something else.”
Ellie waited a moment, but he didn’t elaborate.
“So what was it?” she asked.
“Things you don’t want to know about.” He gave her a quick smile. “All that mysterious stuff that drives you crazy when Jilly talks about it.”
“Try me,” she said.
“Come on, Ellie.”
“No, seriously. After the weird day I’ve had, it’ll probably make sense.”
Now Tommy looked concerned. “What happened to you? It’s that house, isn’t it? I’ve never trusted the place. It just feels all wrong up there.”
“Now you tell me.”
He shrugged. “And you were going to listen?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “But I’m listening now.”
“First tell me what you were talking about.”
Ellie sighed. Did she really want to get into this? She still remembered Tommy’s parting shot this morning.
My family lives in another world from this one.
Meaning, he’d explained, the world of spirits. And Tommy was right. It wasn’t something she’d ever felt comfortable talking about with any seriousness. There were enough wonderful and strange things in the real world to capture her attention without needing to venture into some New Age fairyland. As if.
But wasn’t that what she’d seen from the window of Kellygnow? Bettina had given it some Spanish name, but it translated into the same thing. The spiritworld. And those men in their broadcloth suits and bare feet had been spirits, she’d said. The reason she could see them and Chantal couldn’t was because she had some kind of magic in her.
Feeling stupid, even though she knew he wouldn’t make fun of her, Ellie related her morning to Tommy—how it turned out that Bettina was supposed to be a witch or something; describing the odd men in the garden, why it was supposed to be that she could see them.
“What kind of thing would wake up magic in a person?” she asked. “I mean, here I’ve gone through my whole life, perfectly normal—”
Tommy snorted.
“Okay. Non-supernaturally inclined. So how come this is happening to me? Why now?”
Tommy shook his head. “How would I know?”
“I thought Native beliefs included that kind of thing.”
“Right,” Tommy said, smiling. “Like Indians are all one universal tribe. It’s not like being Catholic, or a Buddhist, you know. There are hundreds of different tribes on this continent, each with their own language and culture and beliefs. What’s sacred to one group, might be a joke to another.”
“But at that powwow you took me to—”
“Powwows are a culture unto themselves,” Tommy told her. “They’re a mishmash of everything Indian. The name’s borrowed from the Chickasaw. And what do you get at them? Mohawks doing Sioux sun dances. Crees weaving Navajo blankets. Kickaha frying up buffalo burgers. You can’t go to a powwow without smelling sweetgrass, seeing Haida, salmon and raven imagery, grass dancing, Hopi beadwork—doesn’t matter what part of the country it’s in. Remember Chief Morningstar in his big feathered headdress?”
Ellie nodded.
“Not a part of Kickaha culture. But it sure looks cool, right? And how about those dream-catchers? They’re a good-luck charm of the Lakota, but they’re like the symbol of Indian spirituality now, aren’t they? Everybody’s making and selling them. The damn things drive me crazy.”
“You’ve got one hanging from the mirror in your truck.”
“You bet,” Tommy said. “It’s better than the Club. Indian kids aren’t going to boost my pickup because the dream-catcher tells them I’m a blood, too.”
“I thought you liked powwows,” Ellie said.
“I do. But I like going because it’s fun and I get to see a lot of old friends that I wouldn’t see otherwise. Not because it’s some kind of pan-Indian evangelical meeting hall.”
He broke off as they rounded a corner to see some hydro workers removing a tree limb that was dragging down an already overextended power line. Pulling over, he and Ellie got out of the van to hand out a round of coffees and sandwiches to the grateful men. Returning to the van, Tommy took his turn at scraping down the windshield and then they continued on to Angel’s Grasso Street office.