The lake had swallowed Budai Beach, Lakeside Drive was three feet underwater: out in Perint’s Cove the Islet, reduced to peaked roofs and scraggly treetops, resembled some strange forested tanker run aground on its way to port.
Despite the sun Gip’s teeth chattered, Olpert tucked him under an arm. With a purple, trembling finger he pointed to the top of the bluffs. Let’s go, he said.
Up they went, slowly. Halfway Sam stopped, palms pressed to his eyes.
Hey, said Olpert, come on, we’re taking you to hospital. Get up. You can’t stay here.
Sam knelt, tucked his head into his chest. This is as far as I can go okay, he said.
Down below waves slung the armoire’s door against the bluffs. The water was rising.
Go, said Sam. I’ll be okay.
You’ll be okay?
I’ll be okay. But this isn’t the work. The work’s different.
Right, said Olpert, and tucking Gip against him they left Sam behind. Each step stung, his bare feet were swollen and the colour of veins.
I’m so cold, said Gip.
We’ll get out of these clothes, said Olpert, and get furs, they’ll keep us warm —
Fur: his stomach dropped. He felt for his hat — miracle, it was there. Within its folds he found Jessica, an icy nugget, little jaws frozen in a cry of anguish. She’d chewed holes in the wool, evacuated her bowels in a greenish dribble.
Gip said, What’s that.
Jessica.
Is she dead?
Olpert pocketed the hat. Twenty steps down, Sam had gone foetal.
Hey, Olpert yelled, the lake’s coming up, you can’t just lie there. Sam?
Sam didn’t move.
Gip tugged his sleeve. Should we help him?
No, said Olpert, turning. We have to go.
At the top step, Olpert looked back a final time: no sign of anyone. The water sliced the stairs in half, steadily rising.
TRAIN 2306 had the look of something discarded or forgotten, sitting there inertly in 72 Steps Station. Below in Mount Mustela things were bustling, the NFLM ensured order and joy, while other Helpers performed random citizenship checks and marched those without papers off to the park. Along with placards (RAVEN, RETURN! and WE NEED CLOSURE and THIS ISN’T MY TRUTH, I WORK AT THE AIRPORT, etc.) people lofted glowsticks and sparklers, a jaunty music played.
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.