The Altonevers (45 page)

One night I asked one of the dealers I
know to lend me a hand in a time of need. He cursed at me, beat me
in front of some other dealers to not look weak. In the fight I
stabbed him with my needle, bumping him with a day’s fix. He
stopped, slowed and fell to the ground convulsing. I ran for my
life, as fast I can. Hiding in dumpsters and climbing fire escapes
for safety from the hoods and from the law.

They found me laying in an alleyway,
my needle riddled arms looked like I had the chickenpox. I was
helpless in the fetal position. Lost in mind splintering pain, in
the depths of the skin burning living hell of dope withdrawal. I
was so scared and alone, freezing to my bones and on fire at the
same time. They took me to a program. I was broken, uncivilized,
lashing out at everyone and anyone around me, even those who were
trying to help me. I was deemed insane, so they put me in a psyche
ward. Heavily medicated, ironically giving me some of the same
stuff that was killing me to calm me. Anyway that's where I met my
sparrow,” Popper says tapping his fingers on Harley's
knee.

“
I heard her call you her
sparrow,” Anna says as a question.

“
We are each others,”
Harley answers.
The deep orange disk of
day peeks then pours itself over the horizon, soaking the right of
their faces in its rich neon glow. The moon and it's blue light
remains, wanting for more of the day’s light to bath in and beam.
Both solar objects are paused in the morning sky and staying at the
same height, directly opposite each other. Together splashing down
their neon glows to glaze each side of their four faces with their
light.

“
I was the daughter of a
drug dealer, a big one. It was a family operation from what I
know,” Harley says in her rasped way of speaking, “one night, when
I was eleven, still obsessed with pony’s and that sort of thing,
people kicked in the front door. My parents thought was a swat
team, it wasn't. From what I overheard the night before my uncle
messed up a drop, got caught and dropped a dime on their supplier.
They retaliated by sending a death squad to my house and killing my
parents. My mother snatched me out of bed and threw me from the
second floor window and I ran. They were both slain horribly, the
killers were taking their time in bludgeoning them to death. I
heard it all from my neighbor's yard, an hour until their screams
finally faded. I wandered around lost inside and out for days when
I was picked up by a squad car and they put me in the asylum. Where
I stayed for six years before I met him, my sparrow,” Harley says
resting her hand on Poppers knee.

“
Since the moment I seen
her I knew she was for me, it was as though she was the only thing
I could see after the day I met her. The only thing in my life at
all, everything else is, well...just to be around her was better
than any needle ever made me feel. It was serenity. She was my new
drug, my only drug. A love like ours in a place like that was
against the rules, though even most of the staff was enchanted by
our courting. They separated us thinking it would quell or swollen
hearts, so we passed notes through other patients. The janitor is a
good man.”

“
Here! here! to the
janitor,” Harley says pumping her fist in the air.

“
A believer in love,”
Popper says, then continues his and her story “for months the only
time we could see each other was during the daily recess. So we
took to dancing to get as close to one another as we possibly
could.”

“
Very close.”

“
To hold one another, to
feel her curves, her hips in my clean hands. To smell her hair”
Popper pauses, taking a deep breath and wrapping fingers on his
lover's knee.

“
To feel his hands on my
shoulder's as we stepped together, and know his sneaking whispers
and kisses. At first I had to stand on his feet as he lumbered
around. It was obvious we didn't know what we were doing, but they
knew, everyone knew what we we're doing-”

“
But you two lunatics,”
Cider laughs pausing the tale like skipping a record.

“
Ahem,” Harley clears her
throat and continues, “In no time at all we learned every dance you
could think out, the salsa, the samba, all sorts of line dances. We
learned them all in our excuse to hold each other tightly. One day
the janitor showed us a new dance, a dance that was irresistible
not to try. The Pan-Alto Hop, that to us was the most beautiful
dance of all we’d danced. Fast paced, upbeat, and about
improvisation in form. The dance seemed to us like a metaphor for
our love, our lives. Of being locked away in the regimented
confines of an asylum, and doing what we can to be together, to
feel free to express ourselves to the other. It was when I, we felt
most free, the only time in our broken lives that we could feel, be
alive.”

“
To feel free, free as the
sparrows chasing each other, courting each other through the trees
of the asylum’s courtyard,” Popper says picking up the tale, “The
nurses and orderlies, the Whitecoats, and the other patients were
our audience, applauding our dances, applauding our love after
every performance. I got into a fight with one of the counselors,
as retribution he ordered us separated. It was hell, cold and
empty, it was living devoid of life itself. We were trading notes
again, but it wasn't enough, nothing compared to the invigorating,”
he breathes, “soul elevating heights of our hopping, matching each
other arm in arm, foot to foot. Within days we crumbled, descending
back into our broken selves. I stopped bathing, wearing the same
clothes, even biting my nails again. Worthless, in deep psychosis,
and not the fun kind either. As was she, catatonic, despondent,
lost again in the depths of soul defiling depression. This lasted
for weeks, their medicines did nothing to us. They couldn't
understand why, scientifically anyway.

The janitor got it. We never actually
caught his name, but one night he came to our doors and put us in
an empty garbage can one at a time. He took me first, then I waited
at the dumpsters, in déjà vu of the days of needle floored alleys.
Watching the sparrows of the courtyard from the outside for the
first time, waiting for the greatest drug of all, my love. My
sparrow,” Popper says nodding to Harley.

“
I got there a half hour
after him, we climbed the outer fence and ran through the open
fields, hitchhiking as far away as we possibly could. Making it so
far from the asylum the sparrows we idolized from our windows as
being free, now seemed confined to their little trees. Just as we
were confined to that horrible place with it's cold clinical smell,
and the nonsensical wailing of the insane, never mind the one's
slamming against the walls vainly to alleviate their endless mental
anguish. They put an all points bulletin out on us. I was still
seventeen and he had just turned eighteen, they said we were both
insane. They said he kidnapped me from the asylum, that if we went
days without medicine we could become extremely volatile. The
janitor got us a month’s supply of mine and his.

The authorities were everywhere we
looked, looking for us. We hid in the alleyways and junkies spot’s
that he knew from his past life, before he met me. We used the only
things we knew, he was a skin popper, and my know how of my parents
stash spots to set up and rob low level dope dealers. Flying low
and off the radar. We got by, until one day we seen a flier on a
wall for a local dance competition, so we went and won, the
highlight of our young lives,” Harley says.

“
It was the week of
valentine’s day,” Popper says, “we drove around listening to the
radio station’s countdown of love songs for that day of lovers. We
put it on a pedestal, our first valentine’s day. The day of lovers,
and we were free as birds, freer, together. We were at a parking
lot of a gas station in a car we stole when they arrived, a lot of
them. Agents sent by the feds for the interstate kidnapping wrap,
such bullshit, damn pencil pushers. We had guns, my favorite was an
AK 47 that we found in one of the dealer's house's. They were
yelling at us through a loudspeaker, for us to surrender and
they'll show us leniency. That we'll go to different asylums but
not to prison. But I couldn't, she couldn't, we couldn't live.
Didn’t want to live that way, without each other.

I started shooting, and they shot
back, allot. I got hit first, dropping the gun. She, my lady, my
sparrow, picked up the gun and started shooting back, they got her
too. We died that day, in the mid morning the day before
valentine’s day. We met Alister, and now we live to dance, forever
hopping side by side, together. Though annually, reliving that
moment, the moment of the other’s death, our deaths together, on
the day before valentine's day, as long as we live.”

Anna see's in the shadows made by the
neon blue and light orange crossing between the duo in the front
seat, is growing into the shape of a spectral tree, then sprouting
leaves. Spawning small sparrows that follow each other through tiny
tangling leaves, flying away just to flap back to their miniature
nests.

WHIZZ crackle pop
whiiiizzzz crackle pop crackle. The static fuzz of the radio
breaks, popping in and out of a distorted signal. Sounding for a
second like a scrambled horse cry. Anna squints toward the sun to
see a herd of wild ponies, or mares, galloping past a radio tower
standing alone in the distance. Kicking up a dust trail a mile long
that rises into the figures of large mares with manes before fading
into the air.
The static breaks with a
whizzing and another pop crackles into a broken signal carrying
someone saying “And today we start the whiizzree day val en ines
day countdown….sounds of love for every beating heart,” the
baritone voice of a disk jockey comes in clearly as he completes
his sentence.
The sun and moon are now
stand in the sky at equal height and size, paused in the same place
facing each other. Keeping the four of their faces and the scene
lit in their neon glows for as long as the love songs are playing
through the lover's countdown.

“
Why are they staying in
the sky like that?” Anna asks.

“
You don't know? they're in
love, they adore the sight of the other. You haven't seen them
Anna? Chasing each other each day through the days and nights.
Enamored, until the moon crumbles or the sun explodes, and maybe
even after that as celestial dust” Popper says.

“
Maybe?” Harley asks
insistently.

“
For all eternity of
course,” Popper smiles tapping on his smiling sparrow's knee. The
car skids to stop in the middle of a small country town. The duo
jump up to stand on their seats.

“
Up we go,” Popper says as
he grabs his sparrow's hand and she hops over the windshield,
denting the bullet scarred hood of the car. They run off,
disappearing into the night for nearly two hours. Leaving the two
in waiting with the radio playing through the countdown of old love
songs. She scoots over to him, leaning in to nestle her head onto
his chest and he wraps his arm around her shoulders. in each
other’s embrace, dreamily drifting nearly to sleep, together to the
tunes of past loves.

Bang! then the crunch of metal as
Popper runs over the hood to hop in the driver's seat, startling
Anna's bed head of carrot hair up from Cider’s shoulder.

“
You guys ready?” Popper
shouts, banging on the side of the car to be sure wake the
two.

“
Awww, look at little Cider
with a dame drooling on his arm,” Harley teases.

“
Yeah, yeah,” he says,
dusting his shirt off flippantly. Earning a playful smack from Anna
to his arm, who then returns to rubbing her tired eyes. Popper's
already settled in the driver's and Harley's laces hang at their
place over the side mirror. Both well dressed from head to toe for
the occasion, him in a pinstriped cream and coffee silk suit. And
she's looking sharp in a new wave styled black pantsuit and wide
yellow tie. Each having a bit of lavender, he as his handkerchief
and she has her cufflinks. The convertibles bull of an engine blows
it's nostrils at the turn of the ignition key and rages when Popper
revs the engine.

“
Where'd you guys go?” she
asks.

“
Eh…” Cider shrugs and
Popper says, “Ice cream.”

“
And these suits,” Harley
adds.

“
Yeah ice cream,” Cider
laughs. They burn rubber. The torque and acceleration force their
backs into their seats, fishtailing, Popper turns into the angle to
slide almost perfectly to the side. The tires eventually catch to
tear through the streets, serenading the slumbering country town
with the sparrow's tunes playing as loud as the speakers can
shout.

“
Wanna get something to
eat?” Popper asks.

“
A last meal?” Harley
asks.

“
A diner, like we used to
dash from?” he asks.

“
Of course, don't we
always?” Harley says. they blow through town after town, each miles
apart. Some withered to ghost towns as their local industries
became antiquated. You can tell by the main streets lined with
antique stores filled with dusty objects, emblems of the town’s
memories collected. Otherwise entirely forgotten from time. Anna
thinking of how at one time, the antiques were new, freshly lived,
alive with the person who possessed them, now they’re gathering
dust as the only remains of those people, of just one of hundreds
of main streets along this rural roadway.