Coming and Going
My timing was bad. I’d missed the fact there was a wolf in the house. I’d walked around the corner, and there was Kara, standing on the porch looking tired and sad. It had been so long since I’d seen her, and so long since I’d been trying to find her, I just didn’t stop to think. I ran across the street just in time to have the door shut in my face. And when it reopened, there was a wolf staring at me over my sister’s shoulder.
I don’t know what Kara was thinking. I couldn’t read her expression. But something was different about her. I’d expected weakness, fear, or even anger. But my sister had changed. She was stronger, more sure of herself, and I saw that she knew what she wanted. Her eyes were tired, but clear and glad to see me. The “not yet” she wrote on my receipt pad was disappointing though, and I puzzled over it as I turned and jogged away.
The wolf in the doorway followed me, barking.
“Stop! You stop right there, young man. I’m talking to you.”
But I didn’t wait for the wolf to satiate her lust for power. She wasn’t the type to personally bite and rend, she was the kind who made it mandatory to kill-and-consume unborn babies from low income families, and managed to pay herself in hard cash for every human bought and sold.
So I jogged away, calling over my shoulder, “Sorry, got to go, or I’ll lose my job.”
She would be calling the Protector precinct and putting out a warrant for my arrest, so I only had a few minutes before I needed to disappear. It was just my luck that a garbage truck was driving down the street, picking up dumpsters and turning them over to be emptied inside of the truck.
The route of that truck was as familiar to me as the back of my hand. Such was the education of a street bum. So I ran ahead, rounded a corner, looked around myself to make sure I was alone, and then swung myself into the last dumpster on that route.
The truck arrived, and I felt myself being lifted, tilted, turned over and falling down into the truck and then being covered with boxes, stinky food and old junk.
My sister had said “not now” — but that left me without a “when”. There was nothing to do but wait a few days and then try to contact her again, under yet another disguise. Thanks to Karen Bristle, the pizza boy uniform was out.
I climbed out and jumped off the truck after we had crossed the tracks and long before we reached the landfill.
That was how I entered the city with another man
’
s ID and exited in a dumpster of trash.