CHAPTER 1
He knew by his mother’s walk that she had given up trying to make him happy. Now, except to assure herself that he was in tow, she would ignore him, deliberately force him to string along and be the dinghy bumping after her and her interests until, eventually, the two of them would find themselves washed up on the same shore, castaways and complicit.
This was a familiar game.
The boy slowed his pace and searched for an excuse, a place to pitch the mothership upon the rocks. The shop windows reflected pink,
yellow, silver, green, for by that time of the afternoon the sun had begun to recede and slip over the edge of the great wall of mountains standing to the east. Simultaneously, the electrical bud of the city relaxed and opened, tentatively at first, then gaining in confidence and warmth. Although it was a city of millions, it was also a city at the beginning of the world. That’s what the boy said to himself, for he’d seen the eternity of savage garden on the plane coming in. Fifty thousand miles of river in that jungle, his mother’d told him, pointing out the window, most of it still officially unexplored.
As the city of light spun around him, he imagined that he was the explorer just back from two, three years of living in a dugout. He slowed for a moment and swayed left and right. It was strange, the unmoving earth, stranger still the people so unaware of him and the dangers he’d faced. Only last week, there’d been the anaconda that swam up in the night to his lightly dipping canoe. Anchoring its tail in the muddy river bottom, it raised its massive head above the gunnels and began to pour silently aboard. When he’d awakened at first light, he was eyeball to eyeball with the monster—and the little boy who’d called the river snags was gone, swallowed headfirst, poisoned and asphyxiated, then devoured, inch by inch. He pulled his knife from the sheath at his waist and sliced open the stupefied snake from beneath its jaw to the end of the swelling. The child was there all right, but gelatinous, pupa-like, dissolving into formlessness in the reptile’s powerful acids.
That’s when he’d decided to return to civilization. Enough was enough. He had his maps; he had his gold and precious stones. It was a hard and thankless life and he craved a little distinction. The explorer looked around and let himself be dazzled by electricity. What a marvel after all those months and months of dense black swallowing skies. He put his hand in his pocket and fingered his gold. There’d be a decent meal tonight, and a soft bed with soft sheets.
Something wet splattered on his forehead. He wiped at it with his hand and felt the stuff in his hair as well.
It happened again. He stopped, looked up. Was it raining? Was it pigeons? What was falling on him?
An old woman, short and round with an apron tied loosely over her belly approached him clicking her tongue and pointing at the row of dark windows above them. She laughed and jabbered as if it were all a silly mistake, then taking a large handkerchief from her pocket, she wiped at his shoulders and the collar of his jacket. He smiled vaguely and tried to get out of her way, but she continued to coo, sorry, sorry, sorry.
He noticed that all the teeth on the top of her mouth were capped in gold and he wondered… But suddenly, she’d disappeared and his mother was there. It all happened so fast. He was surprised to see her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, gripping his shoulder and scanning him from head to foot. She was only an inch or two taller and he was suddenly sick of it.
“Nothing,” he said, brushing her off. “I don’t know. Something fell on me and that lady…”
“Check for your wallet.”
He stuck his hand in his pocket and found it empty. Panicky, he patted his jacket, his shirt, his pockets, again, but he knew she’d taken it. She’d robbed him of his gold and precious jewels.
He stood for a moment, glaring at his mother, and then he began to howl.
Excerpted from Smallfish Clover by Heather Shaw
