PART I 2022
RALPH
The Sick Woman. The Good Samaritans of Bird Street. There’s No Place Like Home.
3 NOVEMBER
The woman looked like she wanted to die. She looked like she was going to die anyway, even if they didn’t help her this afternoon. But here she was, in the hands of the Bird Street neighbours, as they took her into the woods.
Her name was Ann Olsen Dickinson and the most important thing, according to Ralph Lewis, was that she seemed at peace. There had been plenty of conversations between Ralph, his neighbour Elizabeth Aikman and Mrs Olsen Dickinson over the past few weeks, but Ralph knew that most people’s true motivations wouldn’t be apparent until the final hour. Sometimes they felt they were a burden to their families. Especially the elderly and chronically ill. If their eyes revealed anything but self-determination, Ralph would deem the operation ethically flawed and call the whole thing off. Last-minute if he had to. He was a judge for the King County Superior Court in Seattle, but you didn’t have to be a judge to see it. You had to be human.
Ann Olsen Dickinson’s case was clear as day: she was ready. The proof was not just in the ravages of her devastating disease – the white fuzz on her scalp, her scrawny claw-like hands or her shrivelled, sunken face, submerged in her woollen scarf like a deflated moon. As they carried her palanquin between the larches in the pouring rain, Mrs Olsen Dickinson was in a state of bliss.
She couldn’t stop talking. ‘Oh, would you look at that,’ she said, her voice a crow’s. ‘All those lights. And music! Did you do all this for me?’
Elizabeth smiled from beneath her dripping yellow hood. ‘Of course, Ann. Everything has to be absolutely perfect. We wouldn’t settle for anything less.’
‘It’s wonderful.’ Ann took a wheezing breath which erupted into coughing. Elizabeth put a hand on her back, waiting for the fit to subside, then poured hot tea into a thermos cap and handed it to her. The sick woman brought it to her mouth and managed to slurp some of it down. ‘You’re an angel,’ she rasped. ‘You’re good Samaritans, all of you.’
Ralph’s scalp itched, a juncture of nerves sending vibrations of unease through his body. Yes, everything had to be perfect. Elizabeth hadn’t lied about that. They wanted to offer those they took into the woods a final flash of transcendence.
This part of Snoqualmie National Forest – the reserve bordering Lock Haven, Washington, which was surrounded by a tall, overgrown chain-link fence and was the property of the McKinley clan – spanned miles of the western Cascade Mountains. There was only a single trail in, known locally as the South Sunday Trail. It started on the far side of the McKinley estate, behind a rusty iron gate in the wall that was locked year-round. Last week, Graham McKinley Jr and his brother Maurice (‘Ugh, such dicks’, was Luana’s usual reaction to hearing their names, and Ralph fully agreed with his wife) had unwound giant reels of power cable from the generator shed at the gate, hiding them in bushes along the trail. Marc Wachowski, from across the street, helped decorate. Some three hundred LED lights were strategically placed on either side of the trail, gently glowing and dimming to the rhythm of meditative soundscapes played by dozens of speakers in weatherproof casings. They had systematically worked their way into the woods from the gate to the Quiet Place (which Maurice McKinley insisted on calling the Execution Place – ‘One of the reasons,’ Luana would say, ‘though certainly not the only one, for his dickishness.’) And finally, they had suspended over twelve hundred clustered electric jar lights from the trees. The result was magical: spanning its entire two-mile length, the South Sunday Trail was a journey amid enchanting lights,
pulsating pink, blue and green to the music. If you shut your eyes, you could imagine yourself walking down a tunnel of will-o’-the-wisps.
Ralph found that so many twinkly lights together fooled the senses. You could almost unhear the pouring rain.
You could almost unsee the grim, stark November branches swaying like skeletal arms on the edge of your vision, or what scurried beyond it.
You could almost ignore the stench of undergrowth and underground.
They were a procession of six.
Ralph and Harry Aikman lugged the palanquin between them, with its covered seat carrying Mrs Olsen Dickinson. Harry at the front, Ralph at the back. It wasn’t heavy – the woman was skin and bones – but it was an uphill trek, and Ralph’s hands were numb from the rain. Harry’s wife Elizabeth scampered alongside the sick woman like a faithful Pomeranian, but the narrow trail forced her to swerve around trees or go knee-deep through the bracken and she had slipped more than once. Juliette McKinley, the intolerable McKinley brothers’ tolerable sister, led the way with a lantern. Her wife Olivia Davis was last in line and Ralph could hear her nervous breathing. This was Olivia’s third year on Bird Street, and she was obviously ill at ease. No blame there.
Ann Olsen Dickinson had been a healthy woman in her sixties when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2019. Surgery and subsequent radio- and chemotherapy did what they were supposed to, and Ann was given two relatively good years, albeit within the limitations of the pandemic. But last September, the doctors had discovered metastases in her lungs and lymph glands and told her further treatment would only alleviate the symptoms. Extend her time a little.
The Bird Street residents knew this because Elizabeth Aikman was her voluntary homecare-giver, assigned by the University of Washington Medical Center. She had administered the morphine that, besides freeing her from pain, had also removed any inhibitions. In Elizabeth, Ann had found a ready ear.
‘Stanley found out I inquired after the DWDA. And guess what? Damn idiot had me certified incompetent! Can you believe it? Fortyone years of marriage, and that’s what you get! Just because we go to the same church as that turd of a doctor!’
Oh, the band of neighbours knew a thing or two about Washington State’s Death with Dignity Act. So they understood how Ann’s husband, so overwhelmed with grief he had sought counsel from God instead of his wife, had expertly used the law to cut off her path to a dignified, self-elected end.
‘And he isn’t even there. He takes these long walks, all the way to the Sound, because he can’t handle it. Poor man, I feel so sorry for him. But I don’t want to wait until it crawls inside my bones. Until my body cannibalizes itself, screaming in pain. What kind of a life is that?’
No kind of a life, Elizabeth had agreed.
But maybe she could help.
Now Mrs Olsen Dickinson was so high on morphine she felt no pain at all. As the neighbours led her away from civilization, she gleefully regaled them with her life story. Elizabeth did the ooohs and the aaahs. Ralph sympathized, more than he would care to, but his position behind the palanquin made him focus on the physical exertion rather than the emotional, allowing his mind to drift.
He thought of whales. Of the orcas and humpbacks they and the children had seen romping around Puget Sound, three weeks ago. Talk about ooohs and aaahs. That was on one of the many Sunday trips he and Luana planned every October with nearly grim determination. Others took them to the High Trek Adventure zipline park near Paine Field, the MoPOP and Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, the Washington Serpentarium in Monroe, and the Mini Mountain Indoor Ski Center in Bellevue. At ten, Django still thought everything was dope, especially the iguana they’d let him hold in Monroe: ‘Maybe it will poop on me!’
For Kaila at fifteen, however, it meant suppressing catastrophic boredom. She argued that the mandatory family outings distracted her from her routine at the King County Aquatic Center. Kaila Lewis da Silva
was a platform diver. Her coaches were prepping her for the ’24 Paris Olympics, and right now all the stars seemed to be aligning for her to qualify.
‘And besides,’ she said one October night, ‘you’re just trying to buy off your guilt, and I have no intention of catering to that.’
Kaila was an angel, an absolute wonder of a child, but even in her good times she could still be a brutally blunt teen. Luana had raised her voice and sent her to her room.
‘Fine!’ Kaila yelled. ‘I was going there anyway!’ Slamming the door behind her.
It was Django who broke the silence. ‘Crazy, huh?’
But Kaila was right. Weren’t the family outings a rather corny effort to redeem the unredeemable? An afternoon of whale-spotting or snowboarding on a rolling carpet did little to alleviate the memory of the Crisis Ward at Fairfax, the Psych Ward at the Seattle Children’s Hospital, or the three weeks in Stillwater, two years ago.
Duh, Kaila would say.
After a brief time-out, Ralph had gone upstairs.
‘I don’t want to go back into lockdown,’ she told him as they sat on her bed. ‘Not when my friends don’t have to, for a change.’
‘I know, honey. But we’ll get through it. Like we always do. Know why?’
‘Because we love each other. Blah blah.’
‘Exactly. And hey, you can’t let your brother zip down those lines all by himself. He won’t shut up about them for the rest of the week.’
‘He’ll probably write a song about them. Shoo-ba-dee Zipline.’
‘Bebop Parkour Blues,’ Ralph agreed. They laughed. ‘What do you say? Should we start upping your lithium a little?’
Kaila had nodded dejectedly.
The compromise was that she could bring her boyfriend, Jackson. Kaila could often be swayed eventually. Sometimes because of Jax. But mostly, Ralph suspected, because she knew that after this, there was only Halloween. Their last chance for some fun.
After Halloween, all the kids on Bird Street went into lockdown.
Then came November.
Ralph listened to the rain pattering on the hood of his poncho. The
vibration of unease on his scalp now crawled down his back. The Darker Days were upon them.
Each time, you think you can escape it. Each time, you think it won’t be so bad. But it always is. And now it’s too late to brace yourself. It’s started. God help us.
Suddenly, he had an almost painful desire to be home. Hunker down, play Ticket to Ride with the kids, munching on nachos supreme and Luana’s pão de queijo behind the shutters that locked out the rain and the Snoqualmie Woods and everything that dwelled there.
Juliette McKinley stopped, and the procession came to a halt.
On the trail before them was a pile of branches.
It blocked their way.
‘Can we go around, with her?’ Elizabeth asked. When she glanced back, Ralph saw that her face was ashen. Harry tilted his head, giving her a clear were-you-born-stupid look.
‘We’ll leave the trail,’ Olivia decided. She strode past the palanquin and grabbed Juliette’s free hand, pulling her away from the heap and looking for a place to deviate. The left embankment was too steep. The right wasn’t much better, with gnarls of slippery larch roots, but there was no other option.
‘Is everything all right?’ Ann Olsen Dickinson asked when Harry followed Juliette, tipping the palanquin backwards. He slipped on a root, but Olivia caught him, and Ralph braced himself when most of the weight was suddenly on him. The sick woman cried out, then roared with laughter. ‘What are you doing to me! Wouldn’t it be easier just to remove the branches? There aren’t that many.’
‘There’s an easy detour right here,’ Juliette lied.
‘My, my, so much trouble . . . sweethearts, you really don’t have to do this.’
‘Yes, we do,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You’ll see why in a moment.’
‘And in such weather!’ The woman wheezed. ‘I’ve seen my share of heavy rains at Olympia and Pacific Rim, but boy, is it coming down here!’
‘It’ll be all right, Mrs Dickinson.’ That was Olivia. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Worry? What’s the worst that could happen? I fall and die?’
Most of them joined her laughter, but Ralph thought, No, it can be worse.
They passed the pile, circling the first row of larches then returning to the trail. Mrs Olsen Dickinson was right: it would have been easier to remove the branches. The stack was only knee-high. But none of them had wanted to. There seemed purpose in the way they were piled across the trail, too artificial to be a work of nature. But none of them had put them there.
And they hadn’t been there this morning.
Ten minutes later, they reached the Quiet Place. Elizabeth Aikman pressed her hands against her lower back and said, ‘Look, Ann. Why the trouble, you ask? Here’s why.’
It was a clearing underneath a cluster of tall hemlocks and maples. Here, music relegated the sound of the rain to the background. Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘It’s Only A Paper Moon’. And believe it or not, it was dry. Upon closer inspection, you could spot the tarp Marc Wachowski and the McKinley brothers had spanned between the treetops, but in the twilight of the woods the eye was drawn instead to the hundreds of atmospheric lights, twinkling like a starry sky. Lower down, fires burned in braziers. A large projection screen showed a portrait of a married couple with three daughters. Ralph recognized a younger, much healthier Ann Olsen Dickinson.
Amid it all stood a splendid, bright white canopy bed.
Mrs Olsen Dickinson cupped her hands over her mouth, and even though Ralph could only see her back, he knew she was crying.
‘Oh, this is wonderful . . .’ she whispered as they slowly carried her inside the circle of braziers. ‘The bed . . . and Ella!’ In a surprisingly clear voice, good enough to be a variety singer’s if it wasn’t for the cancer, she began to sing along the part about the canvas sky and the muslin tree, and how it wouldn’t be make- believe, if you believed in me.
Ralph and Harry stopped at the silk curtains draping from the canopy’s frame, where Juliette and Olivia were waiting like gatekeepers. Elizabeth supported the sick woman as she disembarked, even though it was evident she was able to stand on her own. Sunken in her robe
she had looked like a mouse skeleton wrapped in napkins, but Ralph could tell she wasn’t so close to the edge yet that her body had given up. Annie Dickinson simply had no intention of letting it get that far.
They lowered the palanquin. Ralph, rolling his shoulders, joined the others around the bed, where Elizabeth helped Ann take off her robe and settle under the down comforters.
‘This is lovely, guys,’ she said. ‘So beautiful. How can I ever thank you all?’
‘Gratitude is the last thing we need, Ann,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We’re happy we can do this for you. Is there anything you need?’
‘I could do with some more tea.’
‘I have something better,’ Juliette said. From a storage trunk next to the bed she retrieved a tray, upon which she displayed six small shooters and a bottle of crème de cassis.
‘No, a Gabriel Boudier!’ Ann clapped her hands. ‘For our honeymoon, Stanley had booked a chateau overlooking the Saône River in France, and that’s what we drank every night! Just like Hercule Poirot, he’d say. He was so sexy in his suit, my Stanley . . .’ Worried, she looked up from the memory. ‘But I’m not supposed to drink any more, am I?’
Now everyone laughed, even Olivia. ‘If there ever was a time to ignore doctors’ advice, this is it, don’t you think?’
She did. Juliette poured and made her rounds with the tray. Ralph’s mouth went dry when she reached him. Juliette saw his hesitation, but insisted. As soon as he smelled the alcohol, saliva flooded the corners of his mouth.
Ann raised her shooter to the good Samaritans of Bird Street. ‘Well, cheers, then. To life.’
They clinked glasses. Ralph felt a droplet trickling down his temple – not rain this time. If he drank now, he’d go home, straight to the garage, and sit in the Forester’s driver’s seat. He’d fish up the bottle of Smirnoff and the glass hidden underneath. The glass was superstition: Ralph didn’t drink from the bottle. Fuck ice, fuck lime. Hell, fuck tonic . . . but you didn’t drink from the bottle.
Ralph Lewis was prepared to swear under oath that he wasn’t an alcoholic, and he’d be telling the truth. But it was November. Everything changed in November.
After downing one glass tonight, another would follow. There would be no Ticket to Ride. No munchies, no warmth or homeliness with the kids. They would fight.
Suddenly, he upended the glass over the forest floor.
He had resisted.
This time.
‘I didn’t expect to be afraid,’ Ann said. The rasp was back in her voice, and Ralph had to strain to hear her. ‘But I am.’
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Ann,’ Elizabeth said.
Ralph shot her a glance. Then he knelt beside the bed and took one of Ann’s bony hands in his. ‘You know you can always change your mind.’
She waved his words away, as if that wasn’t the point. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
That question came sooner or later, and they were prepared. ‘Because there are plenty of cases in which the DWDA doesn’t cut it,’ Harry said. ‘Look at yourself. You suffer, and the last thing you are is incompetent. But they only give you two options: either you wait out the ride, which is bound to be agonizing, or you hurl yourself off it.’
‘You mean eat a bullet,’ Ann said matter-of-factly. ‘Stanley keeps a gun in his safe upstairs. I’ve never cared much for guns, but if I hadn’t met Elizabeth, I’d probably have used it.’
‘See? We think that’s wrong. We feel that patients should have another way out. A more peaceful way.’
‘But enough about us,’ Elizabeth intervened, clapping her hands. ‘We have another surprise for you.’
The slideshow. ‘It’s Only A Paper Moon’ made way for ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’, and with one push on her clicker, Elizabeth started a photo carousel of Ann’s life. Ralph felt a sudden wave of razor-sharp anger blowing through him like a cold wind. She’s going too fast, he thought. She’s not listening to her any more.
Had it been any other month, mere annoyance would have been all it was, but now he felt actual, unfettered anger that turned outwards, shocking him with its intensity. Oh, the Darker Days . . . they spread like a virus, unnoticed, but since everyone was going around with the same red spots, you never realized how they got a hold on you. And you resisted them a little less each time. The Darker Days were what made Elizabeth push Ann, and the Darker Days were what fuelled Ralph’s heated response. Already.
Ralph stepped away from the circle of fires and closed his eyes. Counted to ten. When he opened them again, he felt a bit calmer. Elizabeth had taken Ann’s hand. There was real compassion in that gesture, making Ralph a little ashamed of his reaction. Elizabeth was under the same influence as he was – that shouldn’t be ignored.
The screen now showed Ann’s three daughters on swings. A young Ann looking across her shoulder, luxurious hair spilling like sunlight. The chateau in France, and yes, her Stanley had been easy on the eyes. If she hadn’t been so enchanted, Ann might have asked how they’d gotten these photos, but she wouldn’t. They never did.
Ralph listened to the rustling beyond the first row of hemlocks, deliberate enough to be heard over Ella and the rain. Here, outside the circle of light and practically in the cold, wet forest, Ralph felt vulnerable. He quickly rejoined the others and pretended he hadn’t heard a thing.
Ann was crying again, and now Olivia was the one who held her hand. For the first time, Ralph saw real sadness in the woman’s eyes. ‘Stanley must be so worried . . .’
Yes. Even if his walk had taken him all the way to the Sound today, Stanley would likely be back home in Mill Creek right about now and find his terminally ill wife missing. He had probably called their daughters by now, and the police, and yes, he would be deeply worried.
Once it was over, they had told Ann, they would leave her in the same strip of woodland where, several hours earlier, wrapped in her
cloak and hunched over her walker, she had gotten into the anonymous car waiting for her beyond the eye of the neighbourhood’s CCTV. They had promised to leave her in the middle of the track, so she’d soon be found. Stubborn as she was, she must have gone for a stroll, which Stanley had expressly forbidden. In her state, a fall would soon lead to hypothermia and death. What about the meds? Don’t worry, Ann. Chances of an autopsy, with her condition, were close to zero. Especially if the narrative was so clear.
‘I feel so bad it has to be this way,’ Ann had said. ‘But with Stanley set in his ways, what is one to expect?’
Now, in the hour of her death, Olivia comforted her. Then Elizabeth approached the bed, carrying a red satin pillow. On it were two hypodermic needles.
‘This is it, Ann. This one’s the sedative, and this is the muscle relaxant. You won’t feel a thing. You’ll fall asleep in seconds, just like any other time, and then you won’t wake up.’
For a long while, Ann gazed at the needles.
‘I’m almost afraid to say this,’ she finally said, her voice unsteady.
‘What, Ann?’ Olivia asked.
‘I keep thinking about our honeymoon. The chateau had a courtyard, where the guests would wine and dine. There was a chansonnier singing songs, and a pianist who was older than I am today. And you know what Stanley did? He took me by the arm, pulled me from my chair and danced with me, all around the courtyard. Everyone was laughing and applauding. I was so embarrassed! But not Stanley. He was like that. All he had to do was look at me, and I felt at ease.’
‘That’s lovely, Ann,’ Olivia said.
‘I remember we saw The Wizard of Oz at the Pacific Crest Theater, before they tore it down. When Judy Garland said, “There’s no place like home”, I knew I’d be with Stanley for the rest of my life.’
Teary-eyed, she looked at each of the good Samaritans of Bird Street individually, pushing the satin pillow away. ‘Stanley’s my home. I don’t think I want to do this, guys.’
There was a strange, charged moment, and Ralph could feel the implications of Ann’s words hanging almost palpably between them. It lasted but a second, but still Ralph pictured a grotesque image: Elizabeth
snatching the first hypo from the pillow and cramming it straight into the sick woman’s sleeve, ignoring her panicked screaming.
Instead, Elizabeth stepped back and put the pillow on the storage trunk. ‘Ann, darling, but of course,’ she said. ‘This is entirely, unconditionally, explicitly your choice.’
‘I’m terribly sorry . . .’
‘Hang on,’ Juliette spoke up suddenly. ‘We’ve come this far. Are we really sure this is for the best?’ She saw Olivia’s face and added, ‘For her, I mean?’
‘Mrs Olsen Dickinson knows what’s best for her,’ Ralph said, turning to the sick woman. ‘And there’s no need to feel sorry.’
‘But look at the effort you’ve put in. The risks you’ve taken! And who will take all this down?’ She hoisted herself up as if she wanted to do it herself. But she moved too fast, provoking another coughing fit.
When it was over, Harry said, ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs Dickinson. We’ll take care of it.’
‘Can I at least give you something? For your trouble?’
Elizabeth leaned in and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘No, Ann. We won’t accept it. We’re doing this for you, and for you only. And that’s why I must ask you this.’ She exchanged a glance with Ralph, who was too late to intervene. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Because Juliette has a point. You know the reason you’re here. You know what’s coming if you abandon this.’
‘I know, sweetheart,’ Ann answered. ‘But I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life. I’ll be able to face it, with Stanley by my side. I want to see the daffodils bloom one more time, and if I do, I’ll have you people to thank for it.’
Harry put his left hand on his wife’s back and his right hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so happy we were able to help you find your way back into the light, Mrs Dickinson.’
It wasn’t that he pulled his wife away from the bed, Ralph thought, but it was close.
As for Ralph . . . was he relieved?
He didn’t know. But he was suddenly beyond tired.
In February, Elizabeth would receive an anonymous postcard that they’d recognize immediately. That turd of a doctor gave me six weeks, but I lived long enough to see the daffodils! Though I do feel the end is near now. Thank you all for the time you have given me. Now, as they prepared her for the hike out of the woods, Ann Olsen Dickinson said, ‘It bears repeating. You are good Samaritans. All of you.’ Ralph got his phone out. There was a message from Luana. How did it go? Love you. He sent a reply. Bailed. Can’t wait to see you. And the kids. Home soon.
None of the neighbours worried that late afternoon. There were always other takers. And they still had time. They did then.
DJANGO
Prodigy. Halloween in Bird Street. Kaila and the Knife. What Happened with the Steinway.
29 OCTOBER
django lewis da Silva knew Bird Street like he knew the keys of the piano. There were places you didn’t go often – the very lowest and highest notes, the overgrown wire fence at the end of the yard – but this was his home.
At ten, Django was aware he was a prodigy. He would never put it like that, because such qualifications didn’t interest him. But others did, like the baffled committee at the Puget Sound School of Music he had treated, in his own opinion, to a rather stiff performance of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ by Fats Waller. Still, they had enrolled him as the youngest student ever in their excellence programme on Wednesdays. Principal Green at Carnation Elementary, glowing with pride, had granted him dispensation.
Besides, when you lived on Bird Street it was more or less expected you excelled at something. Django’s best friend across the street, Liam Wachowski, had built the Space Needle in his attic. Over six feet tall. Before that, the Golden Gate Bridge, spanning all the way from Mrs Wachowski’s writing-room door to the laundry room. Dad said Liam would be an architect. You could tell by how impressive his creations were. Django knew Liam didn’t want other kids to know he still played with K’nex, but the only other thing the Wachowskis had in such great supplies were signed copies of his mom’s diet books, piling up around the house waiting to be shipped. It didn’t help that New Day Northwest
had done a story about Liam’s K’nex constructions. Amity Addrisi called him a ‘true prodigy’.
But Liam didn’t aspire to be an architect. He aspired to be a centrefielder with the Angels. Liam was no Mike Trout, but he played Little League for Redmond Ridge and was batting .387.
Django instinctively knew his friend would realize his dream. When you lived on Bird Street, you just did. Just like Django knew he would one day be a pianist in smoke-filled rooms of swinging crowds. Only this morning, upon hearing the news of The Killer’s death, he’d watched a YouTube video from a 1964 black and white British TV show called Don’t Knock the Rock, in which Jerry Lee Lewis drove a crowd of students thronging around his piano to a whole lotta shakin’ madness. It was a bonus he and The Killer shared a last name – but that was how Django pictured his future.
It was the last Saturday before the Darker Days, and Dad let him ride shotgun on the way to Mr Hendrickx in Lakewood.
Mr Hendrickx was waiting in the doorway of his ranch home. ‘Come on in, youngsters!’ he said in his creaky voice that smelled like the Virginia Slims his wife said he smoked all day, though never while they were around.
Django thought it was funny that he called Dad a ‘youngster’, but figured it made sense. Mr Hendrickx was ninety-six and nearly blind. He was even older than Jerry Lee had been. Tall as Dad, Mr Hendrickx was stooped and bent. As he shook his hand, Django imagined shaking a yellow-nailed claw, stiff and hard and inflexible. He was sorry the man didn’t have normal hands any more.
‘It’s arthritis,’ Dad said when Django asked about it once. ‘Remember last November, when your fingers hurt so much you couldn’t play? Mr Hendrickx feels that pain all year round.’
‘But he can still play. How’s that possible?’
Dad shrugged. ‘Old habits die hard, I guess.’ Which wasn’t much of an answer.
Mr Hendrickx’s old Knight, which he tuned himself, was at the back of the parlour. That day, Django played ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing’. As always, he didn’t exactly know what he was doing or where the music would lead him. He just followed the skipping
bass line, free to insert the melody into the rhythm of Mr Hendrickx’s big, shiny black shoe tapping along on the slates. That tapping – it ain’t got better than that. Django wanted polished shoes just like him, because they tapped and snapped way better than his Nikes.
After the piano stopped, Mr Hendrickx triumphantly clapped his hands. ‘Incredible. Such timing! And he’s ten. Ten! Can you believe it?’
Dad laughed modestly, but Django didn’t. It hadn’t sounded the same as Duke Ellington on Spotify. Or like Mr Hendrickx, for that matter. ‘I want to play it like you do.’
Mr Hendrickx put a gnarly hand on Django’s shoulder and sat down on the stool beside him. ‘Put that out of your mind right now, boy. I want you to play it like you do. Lemme tell you one thing about jazz. And I’m talking about thirties swing, not bebop and the other nambypamby shit that came after, which is just an endless yammering on two chords.’ He aimed a twinkling eye at Dad, who gestured for him to continue. This was why Django was so fond of the old man. Mr Hendrickx taught him everything he wanted to know. He told him about the war and about Hitler, who murdered Jews and gipsies and who didn’t like jazz. About how he’d fought the front lines as a young soldier in France, and danced with local girls at night, and joined local bands at secret parties as the cities were burning. About bombs dropped from Kraut planes hitting in the distance, and how closely death and joy were linked. Django listened breathlessly to his stories.
‘Before the war, my mother wouldn’t let me have those old 78s by Coleman Hawkins and The Duke, because she couldn’t stand them. And in Europe, they were strictly prohibited by the Germans. The only way I could teach myself jazz was by listening to the British radio and practising at the dances. Just repeating it. Same thing you’re doing now.’
Django was seven when he first heard Mr Hendrickx play. On his album, published alongside his war diary. Mom had put it on while she cooked dinner. She swayed her hips to songs Django would later come to know as ‘Lady Be Good’, ‘In The Mood’ and ‘Honeysuckle Rose’. Django stood in the doorway, unable to move. But he wanted to move. Every fibre of his body.
Finally, Dad’s old keyboard took away his inability to put his feelings into words – but not entirely. That came only when Mom and Dad
recognized his talent and got him the Steinway in the back room for Christmas, which would soon become an extension of not just his fingers but his soul. Pop didn’t interest Django, and he didn’t give a hoot about American Idol. But swing had zing.
That’s how they ended up with Mr Hendrickx.
‘What I’m tryna say,’ the old man continued now, ‘is that when you repeat these songs, they’ll never sound the same twice. The music pours from your soul. You let the chords lead the way and you improvise from intuition. Do it right, and the music depends solely on your mood and the temperature in the room. And you’re doing it right, Django. You’re making a statement. If they don’t listen, you got to make a statement. Jazz carried people through the war because it was liberating. Jazz is freedom with a groove.’
On the way home, Django tried to pluck raindrops from the car window, but they were unreachable on the other side of the glass. Dad’s playlist blasted the Stones and Pink Floyd.
‘Old farts’ rock,’ Django scoffed.
31 OCTOBER
The weather was unseasonably mild for Halloween. Still, Django felt the dark cloud of November pressing down upon him. He hated it. Why should everyone suddenly feel like crap? Why was the back yard suddenly off-limits, and why did everything you loved suddenly turn against you, for no good reason?
Throughout the rest of the year, Django was a carefree child who rejoiced in whatever life threw at him. But there were things he didn’t understand, things that were beyond him. Like the Darker Days. Mom had explained there was a good time and a bad time. The Darker Days were a bad time. Fortunately, they lasted just a few weeks. But for Django it seemed like an eternity. You couldn’t talk about it in school, or there would be consequences. And you couldn’t fight it. You better make the most of Halloween, because it all went downhill from there.
The day before, there had been heated debate at the Wachowskis’ about parental supervision during trick-or-treating.
‘We’re almost eleven!’ Liam yelled.
‘You’re ten.’ Mrs Wachowski threw her son a smile that showed she wouldn’t take nothing from nobody.
‘But the Darker Days only start after Halloween,’ Django said. ‘So what’s the big deal?’
Dad would have none of it. ‘There’s no excuse for stupidity, Django.’
It was decided that he and Liam could go alone, on the condition they didn’t enter anyone’s house and would stay ‘more or less close’ to Mr Wachowski, whatever the hell that meant. Mr Wachowski would escort Liam’s baby sister Harper and her friends.
Kaila, and Liam’s fourteen-year-old brother Ethan, were going to a classmate’s Halloween party in Carnation. Kaila was dressed as a witch. Not the kind with a pointy hat and long nose, but with her arms chained against her body and stitches painted across her eyes and mouth. She’d read about it in some book, she explained. Django offered to get a needle and yarn to make it look more realistic.
‘So what are you? Light from Death Note or something?’ she asked.
‘I’m Undead Jerry Lee Lewis,’ he said indignantly, turning around to show her the papier-mâché stool dangling from his butt.
‘Oh, obviously. Everyone is going to get that, bro.’
Django was pleased with the result himself: his hair Brylcreemed into a pompadour, open shirt, jacket, crooked mouth and, of course, bloody zombie stitches. Who else could he be?
Mom was wearing a brown Afro wig and a beard. Dad looked even sillier. With some sort of woollen fleece around his waist, he was . . . a sheep?
‘I’m Bob Ross,’ Mom declared.
‘And I’m a Happy Little Cloud,’ Dad added. They could barely contain their glee.
‘The . . . wut?’ Kaila said.
Mom grabbed a painting palette and brush from the table and returned to pose next to Dad. ‘See, like this?’
‘They’re too young,’ Dad said. ‘I bet the Wachowskis will be in stitches.’
Indeed they were: the Wachowskis screamed with laughter when they brought Liam over. ‘You’re hilarious! Marc, look at that!’
Joyce Wachowski was Miss America (‘Figures,’ Django overheard Kaila tell Mom that night as they were brushing their teeth) and Marc was a pine cone. Liam had already told him what he was going to be, but it exceeded expectations. He was a Seattle Mariners Demogorgon. Baseball attire, face-mask like a burst flower, teeth everywhere. Harper was a creepy ballerina, spinning silent pirouettes around the room, never breaking character.
‘And you, Ethan,’ Mom laughed. ‘Aren’t you that dog from Paw Patrol ?’
‘Marshall-gone-Cujo,’ Ethan confirmed, growling to reveal the blood and foam around his jaws.
‘Django Lee Lewis, you look terrific,’ Mrs Wachowski said. ‘And what a nice homage. Please, play something for us.’
‘Mom, we need to go-oh,’ Ethan whined.
‘Oh, we’ve got time for one song, don’t we? Come on, Luana says you and Liam sound amazing.’
Django didn’t know about amazing, but pretty good, sure. So they went into the back room, where he removed his papier- mâché stool to sit down on the real thing, as Liam put his Demogorgon mask aside on the Steinway. Django produced a razor- sharp intro, his fingers cutting across the keys from high to low with breakneck speed. Then he cut it up with a thundering riff from his left hand and sang how he shook his nerves and he rattled his buh-brain. Liam pitched in how too much-a love would drive him insane. They echoed each other through the intro, and Django let the piano answer between each line. Arms spread, the highest and lowest keys, he wanted them all. His midriff shook. His feet stomped. His teeth bit a grin on his lips and after that, goodness gracious, it was ‘Great Balls of Fire’.
It was impossible to sit still. Liam’s shoulders shook like a scarecrow’s. Django kicked his stool away from underneath him, because that’s what he had seen Jerry Lee do on YouTube. And man, the glissandos – when he could rip his thumbnail down the keys. Dive- bombs , Mr Hendrickx called them, which was a way cooler
name, of course. He had shown him how to do it. He said his fingers no longer had their former speed, but give him Albert Ammons, give him Lux Lewis or Jimmy Yancey, and old Mr Hendrickx whooped it up.
Django whooped it up, too. Dad and Mom and the Wachowskis danced around the back room. Even Kaila and Ethan had smiles on their faces. Jazz might have been freedom, boogie-woogie was fun. The word alone said it all.
‘You sounded really good,’ Dad said later, as Django clipped the papier-mâché stool back on his belt. ‘You two should form a duo. Or a band.’
‘Maybe.’
But Django instinctively felt that these songs were not meant to be sung by children. You needed a voice that was raw, smoky. A voice rich with life. Like Mr Hendrickx’s.
‘Remember,’ Mom said as they left the house, ‘home by nine, on the dot. That’s when we’re closing the shutters.’
‘And the same goes for you, Ethan and Kaila,’ Mrs Wachowski said. ‘I’ll be outside the Remlingers’ door at eight forty, and I want to see you come out. If I don’t see butts in the seats by eight forty-two, I’m ringing the doorbell.’
‘Lame,’ Ethan sighed, rolling his eyes.
‘Down, Scooby-Doo.’
Liam and Django started at the Aikman bungalow. Mr and Mrs Aikman’s porch was decorated with carved pumpkins and spiderwebs, and they gave them Hershey’s Kisses, Hot Tamales and Tootsie Rolls.
Bird Street curved through an open patch in the woods, with five houses a good space apart. Three on the mountainside: the Aikman bungalow, their own home, and the giant McKinley house. On the Lock Haven side: Liam’s house, the playground and the villa owned by Gray Jr and Laura What’s-her-name. Vaxxer-something. Mom and Dad still called it ‘the old Nyholm house’. Django never knew the Nyholms,
who’d moved out when he was young. But he could vaguely remember the house. The way it stood empty and dark. Liam said it was torn down because it was haunted. Django didn’t believe that, but he was glad there was now a modern villa where it once stood. One creepy house in the street was enough.
The greyhounds started barking as soon as they rang the doorbell, and they heard Gray roar, ‘Down, Helmut!’
That was another thing: their dogs. Their names were as weird as their looks. The other was called Schwarzwald.
Laura turned out to be trick-or-treating in town with Aurora (who was six) while Gray stayed home with baby Ricky. Their house was undecorated, but he gave Django and Liam a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup each, so that was cool.
They crossed the street to the manor belonging to the rest of the McKinley clan. That needed no Halloween doodads to be scary. Django always got the heebie-jeebies when he saw it, large and silent, looming at the end of the driveway. The ivy on the walls made it look like the woods were swallowing it.
Django had never been inside, but he knew the house had parts that Dad called wings; one where the old McKinleys themselves lived, one for their youngest son Maurice, and one for their daughter Juliette. Juliette was a lesbian, which meant that she had a wife named Olivia, and Django liked Olivia very much. Besides, she was the only other person of colour in Bird Street besides Mom, Kaila and himself. They had attended their wedding, a few years back, in the gardens behind the manor. It had been springtime then, with the cherry trees blossoming like white puffs of clouds.
Liam banged the heavy iron doorknocker three times, but no one answered. Still, he swore he saw movement behind the curtains.
‘Let’s break in,’ Liam said. ‘Come on, it’ll be neat.’
‘You’re bluffing.’
Liam considered that. ‘True. But we can rub mud on the windows.’
‘No,’ Django decided. ‘I don’t want to.’
When he got home, a fierce wind had picked up and a big yellow moon hung low above the woods. Dad and Kaila were putting up the shutters at the back of the house. They let Django help with the ones on the back door. With that bolted, he could hear the wind making them rattle. The back door key disappeared inside Dad’s pants pocket. Later, he would hang it from a small hook at the back of a cabinet in his study. Django knew this, because boys always knew where their parents hid stuff they wanted to keep out of sight.
Dad told them to gather in the kitchen, where it smelled like fresh apple pie. Django was the first to arrive downstairs.
Wrong – Mom was there. Wandering around the living room like a ghost, lighting candles to create a nice atmosphere. She was singing a song, perhaps so she wouldn’t hear the wind. She had removed her wig and beard, and her face looked tight. If she saw him, she didn’t let on.
Mom and Dad had taken down the mirrors. The glass doors of the display cabinet were also gone. Probably stored in the garage, along with the mirrors from the bathroom, shower and hallway, stuffed underneath the yard cushions with cardboard in between. The framed picture on the mantelpiece – the four of them on holiday in Italy – was replaced by a painting Mom had made years ago of Kaila and Django with the old rocking horse. The large, framed wall mirror in the living room was too heavy to take down, so they had wrapped it in a sheet and adorned it with Django’s drawings and Kaila’s ribbons.
In the front room, Django peeked around the curtain. Bird Street was quiet. From the glass, a pale, hollow-eyed face stared back at him. Mom’s cold hand fell on his shoulder. She quickly drew him away. Closed the curtain.
In the kitchen, Dad put the pie on the table and pulled the dishtowel from it. ‘From now on, we’re going to take extra good care of each other.’ He picked up the kitchen knife. ‘We all watch out for each other, and we’ll try to be extra nice.’
‘Kumbaya,’ Kaila sighed.
Dad cut the pie. It was nice and gooey inside. Django kneeled on his chair, leaning his elbows on the table.
‘Will Kaila have to go?’ he asked.
She smacked the back of his head. ‘Dork, for real . . .’
‘Kids . . .’ Mom warned.
‘Nobody’s going anywhere,’ Dad said. ‘Not even you, Django. Together, we’ll make it through the Darker Days like we do every year.’ He served Django a nice big piece. They ate with the bamboo forks instead of the reflective steel cutlery. ‘So, whose Halloween house was the scariest?’
They chatted for a long time, and it was fun. Still, everything felt messed-up. Something had changed inside the house, something besides the shutters and the mirrors. But no matter how much he looked around, Django couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The same furniture, the same wallpaper, the same familiar kitchen. Kaila. Dad. Mom. But still.
He looked at his cake fork and suddenly understood. It was him. He wasn’t looking at things the same way as before. How could he, with the eyes he had seen staring back at him from the window?
They had been two deep black pits in a distorted mask that no longer resembled his own face.
1 NOVEMBER
Behind Liam’s house was a patch with two alpacas. Django and Liam went there after school, chasing the animals, playing miss-the-spit.
‘Come on, Seepy,’ Liam yelled, slapping his thighs with his hands. ‘Psssh. You’ll miss me anyway! Psssh.’
They were strange creatures with stupid sheep faces, donkey bodies and long necks. Django always laughed when he saw their crooked front teeth, which made them look really dumb. The alpacas were tame and didn’t spit often, but if you stood right in front of them, swaying up and down and blowing at them, they would get nervous. The trick of miss-the-spit was to duck in time. That’s exactly what Liam did when Seepy suddenly pulled his head back and spat.
‘You missed!’ he jeered, cracking up Django. Laughing, Liam made to hug Seepy, scaring the animal and sending both alpacas off.
In the far corner of the field you could climb a fence, behind which a trail circled Gray Jr’s property, leading back to Bird Street. They had
just made it there when across the street, Dad came running down the driveway. He smiled at the boys, but his face was stern.
‘Django! Something’s happened to Kaila. I have to go to Fairfax. Stay with Liam until Mom gets home, will you?’
‘Can’t I come?’ he asked.
Dad slung Kaila’s bag on the back seat and shook his head. She was under supervision; she couldn’t leave. And Django couldn’t visit. ‘She needs rest. These people know what they’re doing.’
Django knew what Fairfax was: a psychiatric crisis centre. These people did know what they were doing, because Kaila had come home the last time. Dad said more, but Django looked at the Forester and, in his mind, played The Duke. Mr Hendrickx was right: it didn’t sound like before. The melody seemed to float around him, slipping away like the raindrops outside the car window when they had driven home on Saturday.
‘Liam, tell your parents I’ll call them.’
The boys passed the Aikman bungalow, where the forest grew denser. It smelled nice: earth and wood and a wisp of smoke because someone, somewhere, had lit a fire. Some distance from the road, at the far end of a piece of woodland where they would build treehouses in summer, was the wire fence. You couldn’t see it just yet, but further down it got closer to the road.
‘Keep moving!’ Django barked. ‘Walk! Or I’ll shoot you right here.’
They marched single file between wet ferns slapping their pants. Django poked a branch between Liam’s shoulders. That was his rifle.
‘Dude, they wouldn’t tell them they’d be shot. They would never go along with it if they did.’
‘Move!’
Mr Hendrickx had explained how Kraut soldiers made the Jews dig holes. Holes on the edge of which they would be executed, efficiently making them tumble down into the earth. Poof. That image had deeply disturbed Django. He would never admit it to Liam, but he’d even had nightmares about it. During their next visit, Dad had asked the old man to tone down his war stories.
When they reached the fence, Django ordered Liam to turn around. He shouldered his rifle and pulled the trigger. Liam flew backwards
against the chain-link, making a show of sagging to his knees. He moaned as he died. Died like the rat he was, Django thought. On the dirty forest floor.
After that, they sat with their backs against the mesh and took turns playing Minecraft on Liam’s Samsung. It had an anti-reflective screen protector, so his mom and dad had considered it safe. The fence yielded a little. Seven feet tall, topped with barbed wire – that was all it was. You shall not pass.
When Django looked up, he was appalled to see twilight had anchored underneath the trees. It crept up on you unnoticed at this time of year. Mom might be home already. ‘We gotta go.’
Liam swiped Minecraft away. ‘I’m not afraid to climb the fence,’ he said. ‘Easy, watch.’
He started up, wedging his fingers and the tips of his sneakers into the diamonds between the wire. It was slow going. Django clenched his fists and felt a tingle of unease. Higher and higher he went, until his pale hands closed around the top, underneath the barbed wire.
I’m never crossing the fence, Django thought. Your hands will get caught on the barbed wire, and it’ll cut your fingers off if you fall. You can hear them drop on the forest floor, plock-plock, but you’ll have nothing left to grope for them in the dark. I’m never crossing the fence.
Liam pushed off and jumped back to the ground. Django looked at him, heart pounding. ‘Another time.’
Back home, Mom made pancakes. No one made pancakes better than Mom.
‘I hope Kaila comes home tonight,’ she said. ‘We’ll save some for her, that will lighten her gloom. Come on, eat.’
Her eyes were red. She must have cried, but she made a big stack, golden-brown with banana and cinnamon. Django poured a big dollop of maple syrup on his. Normally, Mom would tell him not to use so much, but today everything was fuzzy, and she didn’t even comment. Django used the opportunity to grab a Cherry Coke instead of milk. This too went unnoticed.
‘I feel so bad for her,’ Mom said. ‘We just didn’t see it coming. So early, I mean. You feel OK, don’t you?’
‘Which knife did she use?’ he asked.
‘Django, what difference does it make? That’s not something you ask.’
‘But did she mean to kill herself?’
‘No, that’s very different. She had no intention of hurting herself. Sometimes people like her have a psychotic break. That means they lose control and no longer know what they’re doing. Kaila said it felt like she couldn’t feel her body any more, and that she was really scared. That’s why she cut herself: to feel something.’
Kaila cut into her belly, Django thought. With a knife. Mom’s creepy kitchen knife? The apple peeler? You only cut into a belly to get rid of a baby you don’t want. Or if you want to murder someone. Not if you want to feel something. Why doesn’t she listen to jazz, if she wants to feel something?
‘Had enough?’ Mom said. ‘Finish your milk. I’ll clear the table and maybe you can play something for me. Then you can game until Dad calls to let us know if she’s coming home.’
It was the bread knife. The one with all the teeth. Was there a lot of blood?
2 NOVEMBER
Kaila was bipolar. Mostly, it was fine, but sometimes it was real bad. Especially during the Darker Days. She’d gotten home from Fairfax late last night, and today they were letting her skip school and lie on the couch. But because they were all shaken up, Dad said, Django didn’t have to go to school, either. Mom had called in sick at work. Dad wasn’t working anyway: he was on his sabbatical.
Over lunch, Kaila sat at the kitchen table in her robe, hair dangling around a pale face. Django stole glances at her belly.
‘Eat some more, Kaila,’ Mom sighed. ‘You’ve already skipped breakfast this morning.’
‘Mom, it’s seriously annoying when you hound me like that. Jax is the same, he’s texting me every ten minutes to tell me that he loves me. Aaarggh!’
‘Honey, he’s just worried about you,’ Dad said. ‘We all are.’
‘I’m not going to kill myself, OK? I’m fine.’
But she wasn’t. If you no longer knew what you were doing, you weren’t fine. The meds made her feel better, Mom had said, but they didn’t cure her. She ‘stabilized’. But it wasn’t so bad that she had to move out, like two years ago. That time, she had to be ‘committed’.
Django wasn’t sure what to say to Kaila. He was afraid to ask if he could take a look at her bandages, because then he would see how big the hole was that she cut in her belly.
Mom put her fork down. ‘Ralph, are you sure we can go tonight?’
‘Of course,’ Dad said. ‘Kaila’s staying at Jax’s, his folks know she’s coming. And Jax will keep an eye on you, won’t he?’
Kaila rolled her eyes. ‘Putting it mildly.’
‘Oh, I don’t know . . . I wish we could cancel . . .’
‘Mom, seriously, go ! I can’t wait to shake off the depressive murk around here.’
‘All right, then. But you call us, OK? And I’ll tell Jax to call us as well.’
Tonight was Mom and Dad’s dinner with the neighbours. Django and Liam would sleep over at Noah’s, which was cool, because Noah’s Xbox ran Psychonauts 2.
When Django emerged from the piano in the back room later that afternoon, Kaila said, ‘Were you playing “Sorry”?’
He turned beet-red. ‘It was just improv.’
‘It sounded pretty cool, bro. Especially in your style. Because that’s the lamest song ever.’ And she smiled at him. Lightheaded, he went upstairs. He had made Kaila smile. He could do it. He was her medicine.
The Duke or The Biebs, play them with the right groove and they both slapped.
3 NOVEMBER
Dad shut the curtains and kissed him goodnight. Light from the hallway spilled across Django’s bed. As soon as Dad left, the light went with him.
He sat up. Ducked underneath the curtain. Now he was in another world. A secret world: the world of Bird Street, where the wind whispered and the trees swayed. Across the street were the lights of Liam’s house. To the left, Mr and Mrs Aikman’s porch light. To the right, nearly invisible behind the larches, the lampposts on the McKinley driveway. But the street was dark. So dark you could dance or die amid the leaves in the gutter and go unnoticed.
Not tonight, though. Standing between the swings on the playground across the street was Joyce Wachowski, Liam’s mom. A black shape with long, dangling arms. Hard to recognize in the dark, but it was her. She stared straight into his room. Django’s scalp crawled.
Don’t duck. Don’t move. She can’t see me.
But on second glance, she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring to the left, past the house. She didn’t move. Why was she standing there?
Yet there was nothing odd about this picture: all the neighbours of Bird Street had secret lives. Liam’s mom wrote diet books, but at night she was a spy for the Gestapo. She would hunt for Jews and hidden jazz records. Mr and Mrs Aikman collected antique books and artefacts but were actually SS officers. They marched down the street in shiny jackboots, dragging along a chain of naked, emaciated prisoners with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Maurice and Gray Jr’s day jobs involved software and money, but at night, they shouted orders in German – ‘Helmut! Schwarzwald!’ – and did the dirty work. And then there was their dad, old Graham McKinley Sr. He was the worst. Graham McKinley was Hauptsturmführer. Django didn’t know exactly what that entailed, but you didn’t want to run into him at night.
These were the neighbours of Bird Street. Behind their houses rose the tall fence with the barbed wire. But were they on the inside or the outside of what the fence was supposed to stop?
Django didn’t move until Liam’s mom slowly walked away, twenty minutes later. She disappeared into the shadows. Probably tired, Django thought.
Come to think of it, what was Mom and Dad’s secret life?
4 NOVEMBER
Straight out of school, he went to the Steinway. Opened the lid. Sat. He gently touched the ivory and, making no sound, slid a finger across the sharps and flats. Floored the pedal. An explosion of resonance made the strings whisper, like the echo of a distant storm.
In spring, the windows looked out across a flourishing back yard. In summer, the morning sun fell through the drapes like lights in a concert hall. Now he was facing dark wooden panels. What was out there that couldn’t be seen?
Django started playing ‘Mood Indigo’. Mr Hendrickx had played it for him last week and Django tried to remember, tried to copy his movements, his sound. Somewhere inside the melancholy tune were hidden treble clefs and minor scales, but Django had never discovered them. He couldn’t read music. How he did play, he wasn’t sure. An outsider might think he seemed deep in thought when he sat behind the piano, but the truth was his mind seemed to float halfway up the room, and it felt as if someone else took control of his fingers. Normally, he would just let it happen, but today it felt eerie. He, Django, had to take control. Every time the song wanted to flow in another direction or threatened to derail, he tried to remember the proper sequence of his finger positions. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes, had to know exactly where the arms led the fingers and the wrists obediently followed. But the freedom he pursued didn’t come. His fingers cramped. The rhythm turned erratic, the melody bitter. Nothing else but this song existed, but it wasn’t ‘Mood Indigo’.
Jazz could carry you through the war, but would it lead you out of the Darker Days? How could he make music when everyone acted so strange ?
‘It’s too dangerous out there,’ Dad had said. ‘The fence, too. Stay away from it. Remember last summer, on Vancouver Island? When you play too close to the edge of the cliffs, you could fall off. You just don’t do it, because deep inside you know it isn’t safe.’
The woods behind the house were too dangerous. The back yard was too dangerous. Django knew deep inside it was true.
It would last just a few weeks, until the Darker Days were over. Until then, they looked out for each other.
He tried to reawaken the song, but his arms were stiff. His fingers had a will of their own. He tried to imagine dancers swirling around the room, accenting every first and third count, but what his mind conjured up were rows of people bound with iron chains and soldiers barking at them. He broke out in a sweat. The song crescendoed into aggression, an obscenity that Django kept hammering out mercilessly, the tempo pressing dangerously close to the point where he could no longer curb it. If only he could, he would stop seeing those terrible images in his mind. But the procession kept going, unrelenting, tight-faced. Whoever protested, the soldiers sicced their greyhounds on them. The soldiers, wearing the faces of the McKinleys. The Wachowskis. The Aikmans. And Mom and Dad.
This was here, in the woods behind their house. Was that why you couldn’t cross the fence?
Stop. I have to stop, while I still can.
But he couldn’t.
A new image shimmered through the haze before his eyes. He was driving Liam through the forest. They reached the fence behind the Aikman plot. On the other side were people, though you could hardly call them that. He could count their ribs. They thrust their fingers through the mesh. When Django fired his gun, Liam flew backwards against the fence, but this time a circle of blood appeared on his stomach, rapidly growing. Liam gazed up at him with incredulous eyes. This wasn’t right, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. It had just been a game. But when Liam fell down, he fell down on the other side of the chain-link. The skinny people groped for him.
The music pouring out of Django’s fingers wasn’t ‘Mood Indigo’, nor was it jazz. It was virtuosity, but it was blaring, it was frightening, it was haunting. It knew no resignation, no forgiveness. Only a pitch-black passion that refused to be tamed. Stop it! His head was pounding. His eyes unseeing. The pain in his fingers screamed a dissonant ensemble with the blind urges they produced.
