The Noble Square Stampede

The machine hobbles forward, creaking with every movement. Rust coats its joints as it rattles its way across Chicago, knocking against glass towers without conviction.

Kate stands at my side, transfixed, as we watch it from the roof of our apartment. It wobbles over screaming citizens, past news and police helicopters, toward where we stand in Noble Square. Beyond the tar that marks the edge of our building, the expressway boasts three or four new lanes, formed out of panic and scrambled together, now full of vacated vehicles, cyclists, and stampeding Chicagoans.

Reporters named it the “Space Spider” on the news before they stopped broadcasting. It was a good name for a giant alien bug made out of metal, I thought. Kate disagreed. She thought it looked more like a scorpion. As it twists north, gutting the blocks in its path, I know I she is going to lose this one.

“See? In person, it looks just like a spider,” I point out.

“Can you say ‘in person’ about that thing?”

One leg plunges into the river and the whole beast sways. It looks ready to fall, but catches itself by slamming another leg into one of the corn-cob shaped towers on the other side. The structure crumbles at the bottom and crashes into its twin.

They both topple, sending up a cloud of concrete dust, foam from the river, and shrapnel.

“That tail is more like those things that make the web, like an extra finger on its butt.”

“It’s longer than that, and it moves.”

“Those spider things move too.”

She furrows her brow. She hates this argument, because she knows that I am right. It does not look anything like a scorpion. A mechanical stub protrudes from the back, bending at two joints, now rusted still. Instead of the claws that a scorpion boasts, this spider possesses two rotating floodlights, and only one of those works. The other blinks on and off intermittently, showering sparks the size of softballs.

It is only fair that I win this one. Two days ago, when the spider trundled through Valparaiso, down in Indiana, we fought over which way it would go. She thought it would come our way. I theorized that it would stomp right into the lake and make its way to Canada.

“If it could go through water,” she argued, “it would head east through the Atlantic, straight toward Japan.”

“Wouldn’t West be faster, through the Pacific?” I countered.

We never settled that sub-argument, but she took the round.

That was her second win in a row, but I should have been right about the weather.

Since the thing appeared out of the desert down in Nevada after all the UFO sightings, she said that it probably wasn’t equipped to handle rain. I said that UFOs had been sighted on cloudy days, so they should know about water and its effects on metal.

“Come on, Dave! What are the odds that they know about rust? All the Midwestern and East coast sightings are bullshit. None of the Nevada sightings were in rainy weather, either. Even if the UFOs had seen rain, wouldn’t they travel fast enough to dry off? And what are the odds that they would use the same metal to build that thing? And can rust even form in space?”

She was right, but I still cannot comprehend how the aliens overlooked this. During the month of April, as it trundled up through Kansas into the Ozarks, rain hammered the space spider. At first, everyone hated the rain. It made our bombings more difficult, and rendered our satellite imaging practically useless.

Then, between St Louis and the border of Illinois, the rains cleared, and we saw the first pictures of the rust.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” I proclaimed from the bed, slamming my fist against the mattress.

“What?” She called from the bathroom.

“Rust! It’s insane!”

“I knew it!”

She did not know it. She is not a specialist on UFOs. She just guessed and came up with a bunch of reasons. It was luck.

Now the creature pivots like a lazy Suzan atop the platform that holds its legs. It pulls all of its limbs together and rises like a drunk from a barstool, unsure of its surroundings. Even from here, on a roof across town, I hear the screech that announces that something is about to break. An explosive crack rips across the skyline and a bolt the size of a car shoots out of the same leg that plunged into the river.

The bottom two segments of the leg detach and tumble. The spider rests on its other legs, and the remaining floodlight turns our way. It crouches back down, ploughs its monstrous feet through the city away from its body, and takes a tentative step Northwest. The movement works, despite protest from all the moving joints.

“It’s coming this way,” I tell Kate.

“No way. What’s up here? Swank Frank closed down last year. There’s no good reason to hit this neighborhood.”

“Look at it. It’s coming this way!”

It twitches, emits a barrage of screeches mingled with static, and begins broadcasting a college radio station at a deafening volume. Its sound system, which initially blasted ethereal warbles across the desert, caught a mix of rain and snow on its march northeast. A few circuits shorted out, and now an undergrad student with slurred words introduces a Skip James song, “Jesus is a Mighty Good Leader,” and the spider sends the tune out over Chicago as the city crumbles.

Katie cringes, unimpressed. She hates this song, which she says is too preachy and out of place in Skip’s catalogue. I think he earned the right to preach about whatever he wants to, and that this song creates a beautiful contrast with his darker material. I am right about this too, and she knows it, which is why she refuses to comment.

Over the next few minutes, as the creature staggers forward, we see that I am correct about its trajectory. It declares my victory with a startling shriek and a second radio broadcast. Now a thumping hip-hop beat pounds out against Skip’s mournful falsetto. The report of heavy feet cracking concrete grows nearer.

I turn to Katie, smiling. She looks up and takes a step backward, then screams. I did not expect this sort of response, but it’s fair enough. I have taken the lead.

The shadow falls over us and the thing teeters over our heads. It sways back and forth, displaying a spotless silver underbelly, and even the legs seem flawless at the top until they reach the point where the shelter from the body ended, and the decay begins. One sway brings it to the verge of falling, and a leg shoots from its location, ploughs through our building, and stops halfway between the alleyway and our neighbor’s kitchen.

I watch the structure collapse, and I reach out for Katie as the roof gives way under her. I catch two fingers, then clutch the wrist with my other hand. She sways back and forth, watching her ankles swing over rubble three floors down. One of our cats hobbles away from the wreckage of our couch. I lie on my belly now, feeling myself sliding toward her.

“At least Edward is okay,” She says weakly, panting at the knowledge that I will either release her or we will both hit the concrete. She tries to laugh about the observation, but I see a tear crawl from the corner of her eye. My toes skid atop the roof again. I am at the tipping point, and I close my eyes as my fingers spread.

I can’t watch. Her fingers brush against me and then a sickening silence precedes the snap of her body against the jagged pile beneath us. Paralyzed by the sound, I squeeze my eyelids closed and wait for the giant leg to make its next move.

I know that she was trying to say goodbye to me, and that was why she joked about Edward being alive. But I saw the cat, and it was Francis. Edward was probably still back in our bedroom licking his gut when this happened. It had occurred to me to correct her, to win one last round before she was gone, but I let it pass. It was the least I could do for her, which was always what I did until I had to her go.

Regarding Mandy Annis and Passing Time

It is not easy to remember. I would prefer to hide, but on some mornings like this one, when I am left to my memories, I think of the accident that took Mandy from us. I do not view myself as a friend to her, since we grew so distant before her death, but I think of her as a friend to me.

She wrote a note on my Facebook wall a few months before she died, asking how I was and sending a friendly greeting. I meant to get back to her, but there was so much to catch up on, so I let it sit, and then I forgot. I learned that it was too late when Tad called me on my way home from fixing a fish tank.

"One of our old Moody friends died."

"Who? Is it someone I would know?"

"Mandy Annis."

I choked on the thought. The impulse came over me to smash my cellphone against the dashboard. I gaped into the mouthpiece for a while before responding.

"Oh shit."

Over the next few days, I learned the details of her life that I had missed. She was engaged to James Bausch, a friend with whom I had also lost touch. He had shouted to me from his bike on the day that she left the greeting on my wall.

There was a rich and touching article about her published in the Chicago Tribune. A photo showed her in the classroom where she taught, smiling. My friends Jesse Nellis and Jonathan Kotulski knew James well, so they arranged for the three of us to visit him.

While I waited for that visit, I searched the internet for images of Mandy. I looked at every photograph of her on facebook. I retraced my time with her. I remembered the beginning of our friendship during international student orientation. Mandy befriended many of us, and we explored Chicago under the care of Kacie and Evangeline and her, and I don't remember who else.

Another missionary kid fell in love with her, but her heart was elsewhere, and we all just shifted around until we found a comfortable distance to blend in with the other students. I chose not to stick with the crowd from orientation, partly because of the way Mandy and the other girls were treated. The guys tended to be mean, playing pranks and mocking, and I hated being party to it, so I pursued individual realtionships, but remained detached from the group.

I spoke with her in passing when she worked behind the counter in the student dining room, and conversation came easily. She was open, with big eyes and a way of listening that made you feel understood. She remembered that I was looking for a job, and when she left her position in food service, she gave the spot to me. I saw her at Johnny Rocket's, working as a waitress sometimes. She told me stories about the famous people who came and went, and Ruthie and I stopped by for milkshakes on occasion.

I remember the way she said, "Mary McLeod Bethune," to me when we were talking about sociology class. It was such a distinct way to say the name, with a cadence that made me laugh. I don't know why this is one of the few things that stayed with me.

The last time I hung out with her was after we both left college. She traveled with the Andersons and me, and I rode in her car on the way back home. She told me about her new job as an elementary teacher and her new boyfriend. We joked about our old friends. I talked about why I had left Moody without graduating, and she told me how she had survived.

I remember at that point thinking that she would be a great friend to run into whenever God allowed. I saw her on her bike here and there after that, but never got the chance to catch up. I think it was three years ago.

I saw and read about the changes that grew her as I clicked around online. I also learned more about the accident. One news story chose to focus on the collision and bike safety. Instead of images of Mandy and accounts of her life, they showed her bicycle, bent and lying on its side. They showed the spiderweb that she left in the windshield. I left the computer to throw up when I saw this.

We went to see James in the house where Mandy's family was staying, and there was a feeling that everyone there had been kicked in the mouth. Everyone was wobbly, unstable, throbbing with pain. I had never seen a group of people respond to a death like this. When James arrived, he fell on the floor and wept loudly. Jesse held him, and I felt sick and out of place.

I felt as if I had no right to mourn. James tried his best to be caring and to address my pain, but this made me feel sicker, because he was in no position to offer comfort, and I felt at odds with my own grief.

This is the way death has always been for me. It waits at the fringes of my life and grabs friends who I lose sight of. Their loss hits me like a train, but I stagger forward, feeling that the distance robs me of the right to rest and address the wounds.

I wrote a song for Mandy in the following days. I wanted to leave home during that time, and to refuse the security I had been building over the years. I wanted to teach myself that no one would be around for much longer. I cried all the time, and I couldn't sleep.

I found little comfort at the funeral. There were beautiful moments, but I felt disgusted by the sermon, which jumped from this tragedy to an evangelistic call for conversion. I believed that Mandy went home, and that was worth stating, but it just seemed a little too forced to me.

Time went by. That's all I can say for the end of the story. James turned down my later offers to spend time together, I went back to cleaning fish tanks and eventually started sleeping again. We all went on without her.

I heard from her family about the trial of the driver who hit her. The cycling community in Chicago was calling for blood. An idiot I met at work alluded to her death as part of his tirade against cyclists, without knowing that she was my friend. I left because there was no room for my response.

I don't know or want to know what happened to the guy who hit her. I would hate to be on his end of this miserable accident.

I feel like Mandy would forgive him if she could, because her grace was what made her passing so jarring. The gap that she left will not be filled. Today, I thought of her again and cried again in the same way I did when I learned of her death.

She wrote a blog entry about the death of a squirrel, and the way it interrupted an otherwise beautiful day, and how people responded to it. It seemed relevant to me for a reason I can't quite place: Dead Squirrel

Crooked Scent

Baby claws that gut the wall
Ants and flies in bathroom stalls
Pots and cans beat like drums
Wear that bandage round your thumb

And watch yourself around here

Lady Slossman cracks a smile
That grates like teeth under a file
Crooked gums scatter like hay
In a shot-up western fish filet

Just watch yourself around here
Just watch yourself around here
There's a crooked scent in the air
Just watch yourself around here

A bullet in the bull's charade
Longhorns lock the masquerade
A little lady on the promenade
A crook in the corner with the maid

You got to watch yourself around here

Stinks like sweat under every door
Death is a table set for four
You got the guns upon your hips
She got red bullets disguised as lips

Just watch yourself around here
Just watch yourself around here
There's a crooked scent in the air
Just watch yourself around here

Sunset for the glamazons
Leopard skins with feeling gone
Prostitutes with broken wills
Stale like whiskey rotting in stills

You better watch yourself around here

Slossman loved a dying man
Then unfolded like a fan
He chewed on her like a stick of gum
She sent him out with his own gun

Just watch yourself around here
Just watch yourself around here
There's a crooked scent in the air
Just watch yourself around here

Just watch yourself
Just watch yourself
Just watch yourself around here

Chicagotham

Eric sat next to me in the theater, and felt me bounce every time I recognized something. That big clock, the Christian Science building, Navy Pier, Caribou coffee. The Dark Knight was awash with specific images of Chicago. They were mostly in the loop or along the gold coast, but I recognized them, and I felt homesick.

The Joker even mentioned Cicero, where I used to drive to pick Ruthie up when she flew in from Georgia. They showed the towering, rust colored beams on bridges over the Chicago River, where David and I flew from the railing and plunged into the icy water.

Ruthie and I used to sneak kisses on the catwalks under those bridges, and watch party boats slide under the grates. The beats from their speakers would drift up and it seemed that all these people in their suits and backless dresses were inches from our toes.

I saw the street that stretched from the hospital where Tad and Stephanie had their first baby down to the Fannie Mae building across the river. I saw that old clocktower that Tad and I used to race by on our bikes in the hours after the business district becomes a ghost town.

Batman's motorcycle emerged from the wreckage of the street underground, where Jonathan and I got lost, relocated, and then lost before finding Michigan Avenue and blasting past the buses on our way back North.

Most of the scenes were shot in the loop or in the gold coast, which are parts of my city that I avoid when I can. Ruthie took me to the hospital there after I tried to kill myself. I walked across the loop in shiny shoes with a briefcase, feeling like an imposter in this world. I drifted to bars feeling isolated and uptight.

Now we live out west a bit, where buildings shorten into neighborhoods, and children play in the street. Most of the year, the cold bites through my cheap coats, and I feel as if I will not survive one more year of this. I have felt this for six years, and a resignation has crept into my fingers, then into my arms, then right up through my chest, and I wanted this city to be home.

When Mandy died, I watched a news clip of the dent in the windshield of the car that sent her away. I saw her bike folded on that sidewalk in my city, and I decided that I would no longer claim a home. When Ruthie brought up the idea of leaving to go back to Atlanta, I knew that if I did not go, I would poison my feet with these streets.

So I will go back to the South, where I was last at war with the church. Where they laughed when I told them that Stephen died because they thought his name was funny. Where they always took my sarcasm to heart. Where I knew they did not want to know, but had to tell them anyway. I hated that place, and I fear returning, but it is next, and it must be done.

But this city, Chicago, tells you what it thinks of you and it sees you. It paints you in tones that drive you to grace or make you lose your mind. It is the perfect place for a dark knight, and it was the closest thing to a home I ever knew.

Mom picked me up from work today and brought me out to Wheaton. Eric bought our tickets to the movie, and we sat and watched. The plot went on as plots always do in movies, and the ideas were harped upon, although they barely hung together. We left talking about the Joker and arrived at my parents' apartment talking about why I would miss Chicago.

My friends will ask me what I thought of The Dark Knight, and I will answer them with a mixed review. If they ask me how I felt about it, that will be a different thing. I will tell them that I spent the movie composing a eulogy to the only place I ever felt at home.

Upon a Stone (Regarding the Untimely Death of Mandy Annis)

Upon a stone I'll rest my head
Until I find that death is dead
I'll rest my head upon a stone

Amanda left a mark in glass
Twenty four years, a moment past
I'll rest my head upon a stone

She flees our grip in memory
We groan until we too are free
I'll rest my head upon a stone

I will never claim a home
Until my love unthreatened grows
I'll rest my head upon a stone

Queen of the Crows

Down old fifty one by the side of the road
The beaks of six crows clutch a flat toad
They squawk and they squabble and hop on their toes
They pull it apart and they chew on its nose

At the sound of an engine, they take to the air
They flock and they scramble and scatter from there
They weave through the fields and into the trees
To lay that toad down at the feet of their queen

Hail now the queen of the crows
The ghost of my bride in the land of shadows

I see her in darkness drift by the window
She blinks out my vision then off she go
The outline of my love, the color of night
Her dark lover's wings hide her from light

I lost her years back to his nightmare scheme
He clawed through the window to darken her dreams
When she woke and cursed him, I thought I had won
But he took his time and she took my gun

Hail now the queen of crows
She rode a bullet to the land of shadows

Her casket closed, I saw her shape in the trees
As we stood around and wished her soul peace
I covered my eyes and prayed her away
Then cursed my fear and asked her to stay

The sun moved down and the first prayer was heard
She was lost in the sunset and the caw of a bird
That dark winged beast, he troubled my love
Then clothed in darkness my little white dove

Hail now the queen of crows
She took to the night and left me alone

If she tastes what dies at the side of the road
May her crows come for me like they came for that toad
May I fall in pieces at her majesty's feet
From old fifty one to a nightmare feast

In the town square, an old church bell rings
On a bright Sunday morning, the kinder birds sing
My ma goes to church and she bids me to come
But I wake up in a shadow and instead clean my gun

Black Cat

A little black cat with a broken back
It crossed my path just yesterday
I heard him cry out from under my tire
Poor boy, he just wanted to play

I wrote a dirge by the dumpster
Where I tossed his twisted tail
I don't know why I started crying
Boy was skinny as a rail

Swing, swing low sweet chariot
Comin to carry me home
Swing, swing low sweet heavenly host
I feel so alone

Dropped from the sky down to Chicago
On Heaven's lonely path
I left the love of a young lady
And the Southern church's wrath

Shadows on the pavement
Mark where I went off the tracks
And my baby found me bleeding
In the alley with a broken back

Swing, swing low sweet chariot
Coming to carry me home
Swing, swing low sweet heavenly host
I feel so alone

Out, out on the Pacific
Where I dove on down that line
I saw a monster's massive shadow
Whose shape was undefined

Sixteen hundred dollars away
Where the snow falls fast and cold
I call out to that bastard
To find the fear that I sold

Swing, swing low sweet chariot
Coming to carry me home
Swing, swing low sweet heavenly host
I feel so alone

Heaven's in the dumpster
And the black cat's gone on home
Heaven's in the ocean's surge
And I follow it down this road

Swing, swing low sweet chariot
Coming to carry me home
Swing, swing low sweet heavenly host
I feel so alone

Heaven's down this long, cold road
Oh baby take me home