A Magpie's Smile
by Eugene Meese
May 2
7:45 am
The job was taking too long. He had been at it for close to two hours. He should have been finished by now. He was supposed to be. He had been told to get the house on the ground and get out before any protesters could arrive. Yet here he still was, and there the house still was.
Again and again, like a giant, one-pawed mechanical bear clawing at the flanks of a cornered deer, his bulldozer had lunged, growling, at the boarded-up two-storey house in the Beltline district on the fringe of downtown. With each advance, the wide cutting edge of its heavy blade smashed through fading green clapboards and splintered studs and beams. The narrow house had creaked and groaned and let out gasps of dust. But it would not fall.
The structure was only the husk of a house now, stripped clean of anything of value. Gone, the leaded-glass panels on either side of the front door and the arched, blue, green, and gold stained-glass window above the upstairs landing; gone, everything inside, from the hammered-tin ceiling to the polished spruce floors—all pried loose, pulled up, and carted away. But if this was a skeleton, the bones were sturdy. The house was not so old, built at the end of the last century to last until the end of this, and the skill and strong timber of its construction were stubbornly resisting, as if the house itself were protesting its demolition.
But Clarence “Chip” Holloway was not given to such figurative thinking.
“Goddamn you!” he cursed from the plexiglass-enclosed cab as he yanked the machine back for still another assault. “Damn you to hell anyway!”
He had two other buildings—an abandoned service station a couple of blocks east and another derelict house in Eau Claire—to knock down before knocking off. And all he was thinking was that he was in for another long, dry day to go with the month of long, dry days that had just passed.
He backed the bulldozer nearly to the front edge of the property, where a gate to the front walk dangled from one hinge off of what remained of a once-painted-white picket fence. He raised the blade. Taking aim at what had been the far corner of the front porch, he gunned the engine and jammed the gears forward. The machine lurched ahead, a spume of white exploding from its exhaust pipe, its wide track chewing up the once-tidy, tiny front lawn. The cutting edge drove deep into the corner of the house.
It was a killing blow.
Holloway ground the bulldozer into reverse and, with some difficulty, backed away, withdrawing the blade, taking the guts of the house with it. The machine paused, still growling. For a few moments, the house remained standing. Then it groaned again, a deeper, more visceral sound, a death rattle. And, like a dying animal going slowly to its knees, it sagged to its side, almost, but not quite, collapsing.
“Got you now, you son of a bitch,” Holloway whispered to himself, gloating, sensing that one more strategic push would bring the structure down and get him back on schedule. “Got you now.”
He climbed down from the cab, took off his gloves and pulled a cigarette from the chest pocket of his red and black plaid shirt-jacket. He struck a match on the floor of the cab, cupped it in his palms at the end of his cigarette, tossed the match away, drew deeply, held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment, then exhaled audibly. He stretched, leaned against the track, tilted his head back and closed his eyes. His arms and shoulders ached, as if he had brought the house down with his bare hands. He was sweating, even though the early spring air still had a late-winter bite.
He missed spring, real spring, Ontario spring—true thaw by March, greening by April, lilacs in May, promise of summer. He hated this yellow, cold season, and this year so dry.
It hardly rained in April. The radio this morning said towns around the city—Olds and others—were already running out of water and holding crisis meetings. Down south there had been early dirt storms. It seemed nothing would ever green. The buds on the trees remained closed. The brown grass of his own lawn, new last summer, crunched underfoot. If the rains did not come soon the grass would die, and he would have to re-sod; and if the rains still did not come, the new sods would die too, because the reservoir would be too low by summer to allow for the watering of lawns. Funny, for him to think about lawns, to worry about watering, about chickweed and crabgrass and fairy rings. He had always hated yardwork, and got out of it any way and as often as he could, usually dumping the job on his mother. Now—
A single drop of rain hit him in the middle of the forehead. He opened his eyes. He looked around. Another few pitiful drops fell, exploding in the dust like miniature bombs. Then nothing. He looked up, into the grey but brightening sky. He cursed again, quietly.
“You stingy old mother.… That the best you can do?”
Holloway shrugged, flicked his cigarette butt into the mangled yard, and climbed back into the cab. He put on his gloves, revved the engine again, and prepared to finish the job.
Slowly, almost stealthily, he manoeuvred the bulldozer to the other, still-standing side of the house, stalking it. He raised the blade again, as high as it would reach, about forty-five degrees, the hydraulic cylinder straightening like a knee unbending. His gloved hand eased the gear forward. The machine moved forward, slowly. Then, when the machine was about ten yards from the house, he jammed the gear down hard and the bulldozer made one final lunge, the extended blade smashing into the building just below the window to what had been an upstairs bedroom, half-pushing, half-kicking the house to the ground.
As the house collapsed, the sheet of plywood boarding covering the arched window where the stained glass had been popped out like an eye from its socket. Through the cloud of dust and debris, Holloway thought he saw something tumble out of the uncovered window: shimmer of bright green, sheen of pale bluish-white, glint of gold, ugly gleam of reddish-black.
“What the f—?”
Holloway jumped down from the cab leaving, the low-growling engine still idling. He went round the back of the machine and moved toward the splintered window, tip-toeing over broken boards, loose shingles, and bricks from the tumbled-down chimney. He knelt down.
There was something hanging over the window ledge, something green, blue-white, gold, and reddish-black, something, not stained glass the salvagers had missed, something cold and stiff and staring, something … dead.
Holloway cringed, shivered reflexively, jerked upright, and turned to run, gagging. He tripped over the fallen boards, smashing his knee on a piece of shattered brick, driving a rusty square-headed nail through his thick leather glove into the palm of his right hand as he reached out to break his fall. He screamed, scrambling, half-stumbling, out of the ruins. He reached the bulldozer, collapsing hard on his extended arms against the side of the rumbling machine, knocking the yellow hardhat from his head, driving the nail all the way through his hand. He screamed again, and threw up violently on the wide, dusty track.
To read more of Eugene Meese's debut novel, be on the lookout for A Magpie's Smile in May 2009.