Our son in the back seat. He has a booster, sits in the middle, between the girls. We wait in line at the drive-thru.
I ask the speaker: What does a Happy Meal come with?
Pay at the first window. At the second, a lady hands us bags of food, a tray of drinks.
He holds up his hands and says, I am free, right? I am free and I live in Dark Myth.
Not paying attention.
Yes, I say. That’s right. You’re free. That’s nice.
But his big sister shakes her head.
Not free, she says. Look at him, you big duh head.
I turn around. He is trying to make his thumb touch his pinky finger.
Not free, she says. He means three.
He is three. He is three and he lives in Dartmouth.
Oh, I say. Okay. I get that. Yes. Three and Dartmouth. That, too.
Line from Zinsser: “The louse — like man — has, for one reason or another, failed to develop the highly complex civilization of the bee or the ant.”
Seething quiet in the front seat almost all the way to Toronto. Her head against the window. Half her reflection looking back. I punch the seek button. Look for reliable radio signals to carry us through. Approach the city. Buildings rise and lanes crowd. Condos overlooking the 401. Backlit windows. A single guy watching a hockey game on a big screen TV. Bag of chips in his lap. Bottle of beer. Feet up on the coffee table. He sits in the sky as we pass.
Everybody on their way. Express and collector. Keep your distance. A two-car-length minimum. Exit for the 404, Exit for the 407. Don’t get trapped by the QEW. Don’t go to Hamilton. My right blinker. My right blinker again. The polite wave. Adjust to the pace. Small openings where someone will let you in. Tight margins. Sweat on the steering wheel.
Her hand comes gentle on my shoulder. Fingers pressing the back of my neck.
You’re doing great, she says. A single, real smile. Once we get through this section, we’ll be fine.
I touch her leg. Rub my hand against her jeans. Friction and warmth. The thin bone of her kneecap. Tendons holding it in place. We are moving over asphalt. 130 kilometers per hour. A used Toyota Tercel. More than 250,000 clicks on the odometer. Thin doors. Rust. All-season tires. No air bags. Baby-On-Board sign suction-cupped to the back window.
Guelph and Cambridge. Woodstock and London. Dark snow on the windshield. We run out of washer fluid and have to refill. A bottle of bright blue-40 glugging into the reservoir. Skull and crossbones. Symbols for explosion and corrosion. A phone number for poison control.
Then the long, long hypnotizing flat. Sleepy last sections. Chatham and Tilbury. Gas stations that were shut down five years ago. See the Bridge rising, the Renaissance Center like a mirage though we are still half an hour away.
We pull in three hours late. Tired, but home. The house is lit up. Christmas tree. Everyone waiting. My adult brothers and sisters, my parents. We move around each other in the living room. What we were and what we are.
The baby makes the rounds. First grandchild. New generation. Sleeps through her introduction.
Isn’t she big?
And all the hair she’s got.
The little fingernails. Look at the little fingernails.
Couldn’t I just eat her up?
My mother puts her hand on the baby’s cheek.
She feels very hot to me. Do you think she feels hot?
Yeah. She’s been sick. Pretty bad. A high fever for two or three days.
That’s not good, she says to me. You need to be very, very careful with them when they’re this small. Anything could have happened out there on the road.
My wife’s breathing. Out hard through her nose. She slumps in a chair. Closes her eyes.
Lice killed thirty million people after World War I. Typhus. Jails and slums and soldiers’ barracks. Fever and stiffening joints. The rash, raw coughing, fast fall into delirium. The word typhus comes from the Greek for fog. A mist settling in your brain. Poor people first, then anybody forced to live too close to anybody else. Impossible to contain. How does it spread? A mystery at first. Some see a curse or a plague. Punishment for something done wrong. Absolutely inescapable once it entered your house. The chain of events. Your sister’s dementia leading to your father’s fade. No small significances lost. The first moment you feel a little warmer than you did before. The first time you cough.
On TV. The same thing for weeks. So, so boring. A map of the world and a map of the country. Hot spots. Outbreaks. The global pandemic. Be afraid. A brand new bug. Unexpected mutation. Completely unforeseen. Only the elderly, people who lived through the Spanish Flu of 1917, will be able to fight it off. Antibodies they do not even know they have. The peak of the second wave. The approach of the third. Surgical masks and latex gloves. Vials of vaccine. Bad orders, expired shipments. The government, people say, the government. Ridiculous panic in the eyes of people who always, always panic. Protesters. Who will be saved? In what order? Teachers and firemen and front line workers. Who should get it first? Letters to the editor. A woman interviewed. She is hysterical. But I work with people, she says. I work with people. Adjuvanted and unAdjuvanted. Pregnant women and kids under five. People with underlying medical conditions. The twelve-year-old hockey player, the forty-two-year-old mountain climber. There was nothing wrong with them.
Our son says I don’t want to get shot. Don’t take me to the place where I get shot.
No, honey. Nobody is going to shoot you. Just a needle, a little pinch so you won’t get sick. They have stickers and orange juice. You get a sticker when it’s over.
A needle?
Yes, just a little pinch and that’s it.
I don’t want to get needled. Don’t take me to the place where I get needled.
INOCULATION.
If you get up early and wait in the line, I’ll bring the kids around at eight. That way they won’t have to stand out in the cold for hours.
You know this is nothing, right? Mass hysteria. TV makes them do it. In two weeks, just you watch, no one will care anymore. They’ll move on to the next thing. You know that, right?
Yes. All crazy. Yes. All crazy until one of them gets sick because we didn’t get them a dose of free vaccine from a free clinic. Then what is it?
Okay.
So you line up and I’ll bring them over at eight.
Good.
STAND IN THE DARK with the others. Young fathers with cellphones and the same idea. Teenage girls and their strollers. Minus ten and four hours to go. Limited options. A dozen Dora the Explorers sleeping on the sidewalk. Thermoses and donuts. Reliable grandparents picking up the slack, covering the bases. Lawn chairs and blankets. Half-conscious snow-suited toddlers. We are close enough. Front of the line. The door is there and it will open at eight.
A kid completely coated in the white goop from a cinnamon roll.
My thoughts. That stuff is going to jam your zipper, my friend. No way around it. His mom is pregnant. She looks at my jacket and my boots. Takes a deep, slow drag on her cigarette.
Your wife is going to come with the kids just before they open the doors, isn’t she?
Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking.
Thought so.
She sucks back the last heat from her cigarette. Flings the filter against the wall. Nods over to her son.