Shadow of the Mothaship Part 3

"Thought we'd burn down the neighbours', have a cheery fire." Which is fine by me -- the neighbours split two weeks before. Morons from Scarborough, thought that down in Florida people would be warm and friendly. Hey, if they can't be bothered to watch the tacticals fighting in the tunnels under Disney World, it's none of my s.h.i.t.

"Sounds like a plan," I say.

We wait until after three, when everyone in the happy household has struggled home or out of bed. We're almost twenty when a.s.sembled, ranging from little Tiny Tim to bulldog p.a.w.n-Shop Maggie, all of us unrecalcitrants snagged in the tangle of Tony's hypertrophied organisational skills.

The kitchen at Tony's is big enough to prepare dinner for forty guests. We barely fit as we struggle into our parkas and boots. I end up in a pair of insulated overalls with one leg slit to make room for my knee/soccerball. If this was Dad and Mum, it'd be like we were gathered for a meeting, waiting for the Chairman to give us the word. But that's not Tony's style; he waits until we're approaching ready, then starts moving toward the door, getting out the harness. Daisy Duke shoulders a kegger of foam and another full of kerosene, and Grandville gets the fix-bath. Tiny Tim gets the sack of marshmallows and we trickle into the yard.

It was a week and a half after Hallowe'en when the vast cool intelligences from beyond the stars zapped away. The whole year since they'd arrived, the world had held its breath and tippytoed around on best behave. When they split, it exhaled. The gust of that exhalation carried the stink of profound p.i.s.sed-offedness with the Processors who'd acted the proper n.a.z.i hall-monitors until the bugouts went away. I'd thrown a molotov into the Process centre at the Falls myself, and shouted into the fire until I couldn't hear myself.

So now I'm a refugee on Xmas Eve, waiting for fearless leader to do something primordial and cathartic. Which he does, even if he starts off by taking the decidedly non-primordial step of foaming the side of our squat that faces the neighbours', then fixing it, Daisy Duke whanging away on the harness's seal with a rock to clear the ice. Once our place is fireproofed, Daisy Duke switches to kero, and we cheer and clap as it laps over the neighbours', a two-storey coach-house. The kero leaves shiny patches on the rime of frost that covers the place. My knee throbs, so I sit/kneel against the telephone pole out front.

The kids are getting overexcited, pitching rocks at the gla.s.s to make holes for the jet of kero. Tony shuts down the stream, and I think for a minute that he's p.i.s.sed, he's gonna take a piece out of someone, but instead he's calm and collected, asks people to sort out getting hoses, buckets and chairs from the kitchen. Safety first, and I have to smile.

The group hops to it, extruding volunteers through a non.o.bvious Brownian motion, and before long all of Tony's gear is spread out on the lawn. Tony then crouches down and carves a shallow bowl out of the snow. He tips the foam-keg in, then uses his gloves to sculpt out a depression. He slops fix-bath on top, then fills his foam-and-snow bowl with the last of the kero.

"You all ready?" he says, like he thinks he's a showman.

Most of us are cold and wish he'd just get it going, but Tony's the kind of guy you want to give a ragged cheer to.

He digs the snow out from around the bowl and holds it like a discus. "Maestro, if you would?" he says to Daisy Duke, who uses long fireplace match to touch it off. The thing burns like a brazier, and Tony the Tiger frisbees it square into the middle of the porch. There's a tiny *chuff* and then all the kero seems to catch at once and the whole place is cheerful orange and warm as the summer.

We pa.s.s around the marshmallows and Tony's a fricken genius.

The flames lick and spit, and the house kneels in slow, majestic stages. The back half collapses first, a cheapie addition that's fifty years younger than the rest of the place. The front porch follows in the aftershock, and it sends a constellation of embers skittering towards the marshmallow-roasters, who beat at each other's coats until they're all extinguished.

As the resident crip, I've weaseled my way into one of the kitchen chairs, and I've got it angled to face the heat. I sit close enough that my face feels like it's burning, and I turn it to the side and feel the delicious cool breeze.

The flames are on the roof, now, and I'm inside my own world, watching them.

They dance s.p.a.cewards, and I feel a delicious thrill as I realise that the bugouts are not there, that the bugouts are not watching, that they took my parents and my problems and vanished.

I'm broken from the reverie by Daisy Duke, who's got a skimask on, the mouth rimmed in gummy marshmallow. She's got two more marshmallows in one three-fingered cyclist's glove.

"Mmm. Marshmallowey," I say. It's got that hard carboniferous skin and the gooey inside that's hot enough to scald my tongue. "I *like* it."

"Almost New Year's," she says.

"Yuh-huh."

"Gonna make any resolutions?" she asks.

"You?"

"Sure," she says, and I honestly can't imagine what this perfectly balanced person could possibly have to resolve. "You first," she says.

"Gonna get my knee fixed up."

"That's *it*?"

"Yuh-huh. The rest, I'll play by ear. Maybe I'll find some Process-heads to hit.

Howbout you?"

"Get the plumbing upstairs working again. Foam the whole place. Cook one meal a week. Start teaching self-defense. Make sure your knee gets fixed up." And suddenly, she seems like she's real *old*, even though she's only twenty-five, only three years older than me.

"Oh, yeah. That's real good."

"Got any *other* plans for the next year, Maxes?"

"No, nothing special." I feel a twinge of freeloader's anxiety. "Maybe try and get some money, help out around here. I don't know."

"You don't have to worry about that. Tony may run this place, but I'm the one who found it, and I say you can stay. I just don't want to see you," she swallows, "you know, waste your life."

"No sweatski." I'm not even thinking as I slip into *this* line. "I'll be just fine. Something'll come up, I'll figure out what I want to do. Don't worry about me."

Unexpectedly and out of the clear orange smoke, she hugs me and hisses in my ear, fiercely, "I *do* worry about you, Maxes. I *do*." Then Bunny nails her in the ear with a slushball and she dives into a flawless snap-roll, scooping snow on the way for a counterstrike.

Tony the Tiger's been standing beside me for a while, but I just noticed it now.

He barks a trademarked Hah! at me. "How's the knee?"

"Big, ugly and swollen."

"Yum. How's the brain?"

"Ditto."

"Double-yum."

"Got any New Year's resolutions, Tony?"

"Trim my moustache. Put in a garden, here where the neighbours' place was. Start benching in the morning, work on my upper-body. Foam the house. Open the rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt, take in some more folks. Get a cam and start recording house meetings. Start an e-zine for connecting up squats. Some more things. You?"

"Don't ask," I say, not wanting to humiliate myself again.

He misunderstands me. "Well, don't sweat it: if you make too many resolutions, you're trying, and that's what counts."

"Yuh-huh." It feels good to be overestimated for a change.

Tony used to work in the customer-service dept at Eatons-Walmart, the big one at Dundas and Yonge where the Eaton Centre used to be. They kept offering him promotions and he kept turning them down. He wanted to stay there, acting as a guide through the maze of bureaucracy you had to navigate to get a refund when you bought the dangerous, overpriced s.h.i.t they sold. It shows.

It's like he spent thirty years waiting for an opportunity to grab a megaphone and organise a disaster-relief.

The neighbours' is not recognisable as a house anymore. Some people are singing carols. Then it gets silly and they start singing dirty words, and I join in when they launch into Jingle Bells, translated into Process-speak.

I turn back into the fire and lose myself in the flickers, and I don't scream at all.

f.u.c.k you, Dad.