Dreams Underfoot

That Explains Poland

1

Maybe that explains Poland.

Lori’s mother used to say that. In the fullness of her Stalinism, the great hamster (as Lori called her) was convinced that every radical twitch to come from Poland and Solidarity was in fact inspired by the CIA, drug addicts, M&Ms, reruns of “The Honeymooners” (“To the moon, Alice!”) ... in fact, just about everything except the possibility of real dissension among the Polish people with their less than democratic regime. It got to the point where she was forever saying “That explains Poland!”, regardless of how absurd or incomprehensible the connection.

It became a family joke—a proposito to any and all situations and shared by sundry and all, in and about the Snelling clan. You still don’t get it?

Maybe you just had to be there.

2

“Listen to this: BIGFOOT SPIED IN UPPER FOXVILLE,” Lori read from the Friday edition of The Daily Journal. “Bigfoot. Can you believe it? I mean, can you believe it?”

Ruth and I feigned indifference. We were used to Lori’s outbursts by now and even though half the clientela in The Monkey Woman’s Nest lifted their heads from whatever had been occupying them to look our way, we merely sipped our beer and looked out onto Williamson Street, watching the commuters hustle down into the subways or jockeying for position at the bus stop.

Lori was an eventful sort of a person. You could always count on something happening around her, with a ninetynine percent chance that she’d been the catalyst. On a Friday afternoon, with the week’s work behind us and two glorious days off ahead, we didn’t need an event. Just a quiet moment and a few beers in la Hora

Frontera before the streets woke up and the clubs opened their doors. “Who’s playing at Your Second Home this weekend?” Ruth asked.

I wasn’t sure, but I had other plans anyway. “I was thinking of taking in that new Rob Lowe movie if it’s still playing.”

Ruth got a gleam in her eye. “He is so dreamy. Every time I see him I just want to take him home and—”

“Don’t be such a pair of old poops,” Lori interrupted. “This is important. It’s history in the making.

Just listen to what it says.” She gave the paper a snap to keep our attention, which set off another round of lifting heads throughout the restaurant, and started to read.

“The recent sighting of a large, hairy, humanlike creature in the back alleys of Upper Foxville has prompted Councilman Cohen to renew his demands for increased police patrols in that section of the city. Eyewitness Barry Jack spotted the huge beast about I A.M. last night. He estimated it stood between seven and eight feet tall and weighed about 300 to 400 pounds.”

“Lori ...”

“Let me finish.”

“‘While I doubt that the creature seen by Mr. Jack—that a Bigfoot—exists,’ Cohen is quoted as saying, ’it does emphasize the increased proliferation of transients and the homeless in this area of the city, a problem that the City Council is doing very little about, despite continual requests by residents and this Council member.’”

“Right.” Lori gave us a quick grin. “Well, that’s stretching a point way beyond my credibility.”

“Lori, what are you talking about?” I asked.

“The way Cohen’s dragging in this business of police patrols.” She went back to the article.

“Could such a creature exist? According to archaeology professor Helmet Goddin of Butler University, ‘Not in the city. Sightings of Bigfoot or the Sasquatch are usually relegated to wilderness areas, a description that doesn’t apply to Upper Foxville, regardless of its resemblance to an archaeological dig.’

“Which is just his way of saying the place is a disaster area,” Lori added. “No surprises there.”

She held up a hand before either Ruth or I could speak and plunged on.

“Goddin says that the Sasquatch possibly resulted from some division in the homonid line, which evolved separately from humans. He speculates that they are ‘more intelligent than apes ...

and apes can be very intelligent. If it does exist, then it is a very, very important biological and anthropological discovery.’”

Lori laid the paper down and sipped some of her beer. “So,” she said as she set the glass back down precisely in its ring of condensation on the table. “What do you think?”

“Think about what?” Ruth asked.

Lori tapped the newspaper. “Of this.” At our blank looks, she added, “It’s something we can do this weekend. We can go hunting for Bigfoot in Upper Foxville.”

I could tell from Ruth’s expression that the idea had about as much appeal for her as it did for me.

Spend the weekend crawling about the rubble of Upper Foxville and risk getting jumped by some junkie or hobo? No thanks.

Lori’s studied Shotokan karate and could probably have held her own against Bruce Lee, but Ruth and I were just a couple of Crowsea punkettes, about as useful in a confrontation as a handful of wet noodles. And going into Upper Foxville to chase down some big muchacho who’d been mistaken for a Sasquatch was not my idea of fun. I’m way too young for suicide.

“Hunting?” I said. “With what?”

Lori pulled a small Instamatic from her purse. “With this, LaDonna. What else?”

I lifted my brows and looked to Ruth for help, but she was too busy laughing at the look on my face.

Right, I thought. Goodbye, Rob Lowe—it could’ve been mucho primo. Instead I’m going on a gaza de grillos with Crowsea’s resident madwomen. Who said a weekend had to be boring?

3

I do a lot of thinking about decisions—not so much trying to make up my mind about something as just wondering, eque si? Like if I hadn’t decided to skip school that day with my brother Pipo and taken El Sub to the Pier, then I’d never have met Ruth. Ruth introduced me to Lori and Lori introduced me to more trouble than I could ever have gotten into on my own.

Not that I was a Little Miss Innocent before I met Lori. I looked like the kind of muchacha that your mother warned you not to hang around with. I liked my black jeans tight and my leather skirt short, but I wasn’t a puts or anything. It was just for fun. The kind of trouble I got into was for staying out too late, or skipping school, or getting caught having a cigarette with the other girls behind the gym, or coming home with the smell of beer on my breath.

Little troubles. Ordinary ones.

The kind of trouble I got into with Lori was always mucho weird. Like the time we went looking for pirate treasure in the storm sewers under the Beaches—the ritzy area where Lori’s parents lived before they got divorced. We were down there for hours, all dressed up in her father’s spelunking gear, and just about drowned when it started to rain and the sewers filled up. Needless to say, her papa was not pleased at the mess we made of his gear.

And then there was the time that we hid in the washrooms at the Watley’s Department Store downtown and spent the whole night trying on dresses, rearranging the mannequins, eating chocolates from the candy department .... Ifit had been just me on my own—coming from the barrios and all—I’d’ve ended up in jail. But being with Lori, her papa bailed us out and paid for the chocolates and one broken mannequin. We didn’t do much for the rest ofthat summer except for gardening and odd jobs until we’d worked off what we owed him.

No muy loco? Verdad, we were only thirteen, and it was just the start. But that’s all in the past. I’m grown up now—just turned twentyone last week. Been on my own for four years, working steady. But I still wonder sometimes.

About decisions.

How different everything might have been if I hadn’t done this, or if I had done that.

I’ve never been to Poland. I wonder what it’s like.

4

We’ll e’ll set it up like a scavenger hunt,” Lori said. She paused as the waitress brought another round—Heinekin for Lori, Miller Lites for Ruth and I—then leaned forward, elbows on the table, the palms of her hands cupping her chin. “With a prize and everything.”

“What kind of a prize?” Ruth wanted to know.

“Losers take the winner out for dinner to the restaurant of her choice.”

“Hold everything,” I said. “Are you saying we each go out by ourselves to try to snap a shot of this thing?”

I had visions of the three of us in Upper Foxville, each of us wandering along our own street, the deserted tenements on all sides, the only company being the bums, junkies and cabrones that hung out there.

“I don’t want to end up as just another statistic,” I said.

“Oh, come on. We’re around there all the time, hitting the clubs. When’s the last time you heard of any trouble?”

“Give me the paper and I’ll tell you,” I said, reaching for the Journal.

“You want to go at night?” Ruth asked.

“We go whenever we choose,” Lori replied. “The first one with a genuine picture wins.”

“I can just see the three of us disappearing in there,” I said. “‘The lost women of Foxville “

“Beats being remembered as loose women,” Lori said. “We’d be just another urban legend.”

Ruth nodded. “Like in one of Christy Riddell’s stories.”

I shook my head. “No thanks. He makes the unreal too real. Anyway, I was thinking more of that Brunvand guy with his choking Doberman and Mexican pets.”

“Those are all just stories,” Lori said, trying to sound like Christopher Lee. She came off like a bad Elvira. “This could be real.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked.

“No. But I think it’ll be a bit of fun. Are you scared?”

“I’m sane, aren’t I? Of course I’m scared.”

“Oh, poop.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not up for it.”

I wondered if it wasn’t too late to have my head examined. Did the hospital handle that kind of thing in their emergency ward?

“Good for you, LaDonna,” Lori was saying. “What about you, Ruth?”

“Not at night.”

“We’ll get the jump on you.”

“Not at night,” she repeated.

“Not at night,” I agreed.

Lori’s eyes had that mad little gleam in them that let me know that we’d been had again. She’d never planned on going at night either.

“A toast,” she said, raising her beer. “May the best woman win.”

We clinked our mugs against each other’s and made plans for the night while we finished our beer. I don’t think anyone in the restaurant was sorry to see us go when we finally left. First up was the early show at the Oxford (you didn’t really think I’d stand you up, did you, Rob?), then the last couple of sets at the Zorb, where the Fat Man Blues Band was playing, because Ruth was crazy about their bass player and Lori and I liked to egg her on.

5

By now you’re probably thinking that we’re just a bunch of airheads, out for laughs and not concerned with anything important. Well, it isn’t true. I think about things all the time. Like how hanging around with Anglos so much has got me to the point where half the time I sound like one myself. I can hardly speak to my grandmother these days. I don’t even think in Spanish anymore and it bothers me.

It’s only in the barrio that I still speak it, but I don’t go there much—just to visit the family on birthdays and holidays. I worked hard to get out, but sometimes when I’m in my apartment on Lee Street in Crowsea, sitting in the windowseat and looking out at the park, I wonder why. I’ve got a nice place there, a decent job, some good friends. But I don’t have any roots. There’s nothing connecting me to this part of the city.

I could vanish overnight (disappear in Upper Foxville on a caza de grillos), and it wouldn’t cause much more than a ripple. Back home, the abuelas are still talking about how Donita’s youngest girl moved to Crowsea and when was she going to settle down?

I don’t really know anybody I can talk to about this kind of thing. Neither my Anglo friends nor my own people would understand. But I think about it. Not a lot, but I think about it. And about decisions.

About all kinds of things.

Ruth says I think too much.

Lori just wonders why I’m always trying to explain Poland. You’d think I was her mother or something.

6

Saturday morning, bright and early, and only a little hungover, we got off the Yoors Street subway and followed the stairs up from the underground station to where they spat us out on the corner of Gracie Street and Yoors. Gracie Street’s the frontera between Upper Foxville and Foxville proper. South of Gracie it’s all lowrent apartment buildings and tenements, shabby old viviendas that manage to hang on to an old world feel, mostly because it’s still families living here, just like it’s been for a hundred years.

The people take care of their neighborhood, no differently than their parents did before them.

North of Gracie a bunch of developers got together and planned to give the area a new facelift. I’ve seen the plans—condominiums, shopping malls, parks. Basically what they wanted to do was shove a high class suburb into the middle of the city. Only what happened was their backers pulled out while they were in the middle of leveling about a square mile of city blocks, so now the whole area’s just a mess of empty buildings and rubblestrewn lots.

It’s creepy, looking out on it from Gracie Street. It’s like standing on the line of a map that divides civilization from noman’sland. You almost expect some graffiti to say, “Here there be dragons.”

And maybe they wouldn’t be so far off. Because you can find dragons in Upper Foxville—the muy malo kind that ride choppeddown Harleys. The Devil’s Dragon. Bikers making deals with their junkies.

I think I’d prefer the kind that breathe fire.

I don’t like the open spaces of rubble in Upper Foxville. My true self—the way I see me—is like an alley cat, crouching for shelter under a car, watching the world go by. I’m comfortable in Crowsea’s narrow streets and alleyways. They’re like the barrio where I got my street smarts. It’s easy to duck away from trouble, to get lost in the shadows. To hang out and watch, but not be seen. Out there, in those desolate blocks north of Gracie, there’s no place to hide, and too many places—all at the same time.

If that kind of thing bothered Lori, she sure wasn’t showing it. She was all decked out in fatigues, hiking boots and a khakicolored shoulderbag like she was in the Army Reserves and going out on maneuvers or something. Ruth was almost as bad, only she went to the other extreme. She was wearing baggy white cotton pants with a puffed sleeve blouse and a trendy vest, lowheeled sandals and a matching purse.

Me? That morning I dressed with survival in mind, not fashion. I had my yellow jeans and my red hightops, an old black Motorhead Tshirt and a scuffed leather jacket that I hoped would make me look tough. I had some of my hair up in a topknot, the rest all low, and went heavy on the makeup. My camera—a barato little Vitoret that I’d borrowed from Pipo last fall and still hadn’t returned yet—was stuffed in a shapeless canvas shoulderbag. All I wanted to do was fit in.

Checking out the skateboarders and other kids already clogging up Gracie’s sidewalks, I didn’t think I was doing too bad a job. Especially when this little muchacho with a pink Mohawk came whipping over on his board and tried to put the moves on me. I felt like I was sixteen again.

“Well, I’m going straight up Yoors,” Lori said. “Everybody got their cameras and some film?”

Ruth and I dutifully patted our purse and shoulderbag respectively.

“I guess I’ll try the Tombs,” I said.

It only took a week after the machines stopped pushing over the buildings for people to start dumping everything from old car parts to bags of trash in the blocks between Lanois and Flood north of MacNeil. People took to calling it the Tombs because of all the wrecked vehicles.

I’d had some time to think things through over a breakfast of black coffee this morning—a strangely lucid moment, considering the night before. I’d almost decided on getting my friend Izzy from the apartment downstairs to hide out in an ape suit somewhere in the rubble, and then it hit me. Lori probably had something similar planned. She’d have Ruth and I tramping around through the rubble, getting all hot and sweaty, and more than a little tense, and then she’d produce a photo of some friend of hers in an ape suit, snapped slightly out of focus as he was ducking into some rundown old building. It’d be good for a laugh and a free dinner and it was ust the kind of stunt Lori’d pull. I mean, we could have been doing some serious shopping today ....

My new plan was to head out towards the Tombs, then work my way over to Yoors where I’d follow Lori and take my picture of her and her pal in his monkeysuit. Mama didn’t raise any stupid kids, no matter what her neighbors thought.

So I gave them both a jaunty wave and set off down Gracie to where Lanois would take me north into the Tombs. Lori went up Yoors. Ruth was still standing by the stairs going down to the subway station by the time I lost sight of her, looking back through the crowds. My pink Mohawked admirer followed me until I turned up towards the Tombs, then he went whizzing back to his friends, expertly guiding his skateboard down the congested sidewalk like the pro he was. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

7

When you’re a nina—and maybe twentyone is still being a kid to some people—it’s not so weird to be worrying about who you are and how you’re ever going to fit in. But then you’re supposed to get a handle on things and by the time you’re my age, you’ve got it all pretty well figured out. At least that’s the impression I got when I

was a nina and twentyone looked like it was about as old as you ever wanted to get.

Verdad, I still don’t know who I am or where I fit in. I stand in front of the mirror and the muchacha

I see studying me just as carefully as I’m studying her looks older. But I don’t feel any different from when I was fifteen.

So when does it happen?

Maybe it never does.

Maybe that explains Poland.

8

All things considered—I mean, this was Upper Foxville—it wasn’t a bad day to be scuffling around in the Tombs. The sun was bright in a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. Good thing I hadn’t forgotten my shades. Broken glass shimmered and gleamed in the light and crunched underfoot.

What’s this thing people have for busting windows and bottles and the like? It seems like all you need is an unbroken piece of glass and rocks just sort of pop into people’s hands. Of course it makes such an interesting sound when it breaks. And it gives you such a feeling of ... oh, I don’t know. Having cojones, I suppose. What’s that song by Nick Lowe? “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass.” Not that I’m into that kind of thing—okay, at least not anymore. And better it be in a place like this than on the sidewalk or streets where people have to walk or go wheeling by on their bikes.

I was feeling pretty punky by the time I’d been in the Tombs for an hour or so. That always happens when I wear my leather jacket. I may not be a real machona—or at least not capable of violence, let’s say—but the jacket makes me feel tough anyway. It says don’t mess with me all over it. Not that there was anybody there to mess around with me.

I spotted a few dogs—feral, mangylooking perros that kept their distance. The rat that surprised me as I came around a corner was a lot less forgiving about having its morning disturbed. It stood its ground until I pitched a rock at it, then it just sort of melted away, slinky and fast.

It was early for the junkies and other lowlifes that were out in full force come late afternoon, but the bag ladies were making their rounds, all bundled up in layers of coats and dresses, pushing their homes and belongings around in shopping carts or carrying it all about in plastic shopping bags. I passed winos, sleeping off last night’s booze, and hoboes huddled around small fires, taking their time about waking up before they hit the streets of Foxville and Crowsea to panhandle the Saturday crowds. They gave me the creeps, staring at me like I didn’t belong—fair enough, I guess, since I didn’t—obviously thinking what the hell was I doing here? Would you believe looking for Bigfoot? Didn’t think so.

Did I mention the smell? If you’ve ever been to a dump, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a sweetsour cloying smell that gets into your clothes and hair and just hangs in there. You could get used to it, I guess—it stopped bothering me after the first fifteen minutes or so—but I wouldn’t want to have to be sitting next to me on El Sub going home.

I guess I killed an hour or so before I worked my way west towards Yoors Street to look for Lori. It was kind of fun, playing Indian scout in the rubble. I got so involved in sneaking around that I almost ran right into them.

Them. Yeah, I was right. Lori was sitting on what was left of some building’s front steps, sharing a beer with a guy named Byron Murphy. Near Byron’s knee was a plastic shopping bag out of which spilled something that looked remarkably like a flat ape’s arm. I mean the arm was flat, because it was part of a costume and there was nobody in it at the moment. Come to think of it, that would make it a flat ape, wouldn’t it?

Byron worked at the sports clinic at Butler U. as a therapist. Like most of Lori’s old boyfriends, he’d stayed her friend after they broke up. That kind of thing never happens to me. When I break up with a guy it usually involves various household objects flying through the air aimed for his head. You’d think I had a Latin temper or something.

I backed up quickly, but I shouldn’t have worried. Neither of them had spotted me. I thought about trying to find Ruth, then realized that I’d have to wait until later to let her in on the joke. What I didn’t want to do was miss getting this all down on film.

Byron putting on the apesuit. The two of them setting up the shot. I wanted the whole thing. Maybe I could even sell my photos to

The Daily journal—“BIGFOOT HOAXERS CAUGHT IN THE ACT”—and really play the trick back on her.

Circling around them, I made my way to an old deserted brownstone and went in. After checking around first to make sure I was alone, I got comfortable by a window where I had a perfect view of Lori and Byron and settled down to wait.

Gotcha now, Lori.

9

The best kinds of practical jokes are those that backfire on whoever’s playing the trick. Didn’t you ever want to get a camera on Alan Funt and catch him looking silly for a change? I didn’t get many opportunities to catch Lori—and don’t think I haven’t tried. (Remind me to tell you the story of the thirtyfive pizzas and the priest sometime.) The trouble with Lori is that she doesn’t think linearly or even in intuitive leaps. Her mind tends to move sideways in its thinking, which makes it hard to catch her out, since you haven’t a clue what she’s on about in the first place.

She gets it from her mother, I guess.

It might not explain Poland, but it says volumes about genetics.

10

I had to wait a half hour before they finally pulled the gorilla suit out of the bag. It didn’t fit Byron all that well, but did an okay job from a distance. I figured Lori would put him in the shadows of the building on the other side of the street and move the camera a bit while she was taking her shot. Nothing’s quite so effective as a slightly blurry, dark shot when you’re dealing with whacko things like a Bigfoot or flying saucers.

Me, I was wishing for a telephoto lens and a decent camera, but I was pretty sure the Vitoret would work fine. We weren’t talking high art here. Anyway, I could always have the prints blown up—and no, smart guy, I’m not talking about dynamite.

I got the whole thing on film. Byron putting on the costume. Lori posing him, taking her shots. Byron taking the costume off and stashing it away. The two of them leaving. All I wanted to do was lean out the window and shout, “Nya nya!”, but I kept my mouth shut and let them go. Then, camera in hand, I left the building by the back, heading for the Tombs.

There were no steps, so I had to jump down a threefoot drop. I paused at the top to put away my camera, and then I froze.

Not twenty yards away, a huge figure in a bulky overcoat and slouched down hat was shuffling through the rubble. Before I could duck away, the figure turned and I was looking straight into this hairy face.

I don’t quite know how to describe him to you. You’re not going to believe me anyway and words just don’t quite do justice to the feeling of the moment.

He wasn’t wearing anything under the overcoat and the sun was bright enough so that I could see he was covered with hair all over. It was a fine pelt—more like an ape’s than a bear’s—a rich dark brown that was glossy where it caught the sun. His feet were huge, his chest like a barrel, his arms like a weightlifter’s. But his face ... It was human, and it wasn’t. It was like an ape’s, but it wasn’t. The nose was flat, but the cheekbones were delicate under the fine covering of hair. His lips were thin, chin square.

And his eyes ... They were a warm brown liquid color, full of smarts, no question about it. And they were looking straight at me, thinking about what kind of a threat I posed for him.

Let me tell you, my heart stopped dead in my chest. It was all a joke, right? Lori’s gag that I was playing back on her. Except there had been that article in the newspaper, and right now I was staring at Bigfoot and there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I had my camera in my hand. All I had to do was lift it, snap a shot, and take off running.

But I thought about what it would mean if I did that. If there was a photo to really prove this guy existed, they’d be sending in teams to track him down. When they caught him, they’d keep him locked up, maybe dissect him to see what made him work .... Like everybody else, I’ve seen E.T.

I don’t want to sound all mushy or anything, but there was something in those eyes that I didn’t ever want to see locked away. I moved really slowly, putting the camera away in my bag, then I held my hands out to him so that he could see that I wasn’t going to hurt him.

(Me hurt him—there’s a laugh. The size of him ...)

“You don’t want to hang around this city too long,” I told him.

“If they catch you, nobody’s going to be nice about it.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking at me with those big browns of his. Then he grinned—proof positive, as if I needed it, that he wasn’t some guy in a suit like Byron, because there was no way they’d made a mask yet that could move like his features did right then. His whole face was animated—filled with a big silly lopsided grin that made me grin right back when it reached his eyes. He tipped a hairy finger to the brim of his hat, and then he just sort of faded away into the rubble—as quick and smooth as the rat had earlier, but there was nothing sneaky or sly about the way he moved.

One minute he was there, grinning like a loon, and the next he was gone.

I sank down and sat in the doorway, my legs swinging in the space below, and looked at where he’d been. I guess I was there for awhile, just trying to take it all in. I remembered a time when I’d been camping with my brother and a couple of friends from the neighborhood. I woke early the first morning and stuck my head out of the tent to find myself face to face with a deer. We both held our breath for what seemed like hours. When I finally breathed, she took off like a shot, but left me with a warm feeling that stayed with me for the rest of that weekend.

That’s kind of what I was feeling right now. Like I’d lucked into a peek at one of the big mysteries of the world and if I kept it to myself, then I’d always be a part of it. It’d be our secret. Something nobody could ever take away from me.

11

So we all survived our casa de grillos in Upper Foxville. Ruth had gotten bored walking around in the rubble and gone back to Gracie

Street, where she’d spent the better part of the day hanging around with some graffiti artists that she’d met while she was waiting for us. I got my film processed at one of those onehour places and we made Lori pay up with a fancy dinner for trying to pull another one over on us.

Some reporters were in the area too, we found out later, trying to do a followup on the piece in the Journal yesterday, but nobody came back with a photo of Bigfoot, except for me, and mine’s just a snapshot sitting there in the back of my head where I can take it out from time to time whenever I’m feeling blue and looking for a good memory.

It’s absurd when you think about it—Bigfoot wandering around in the city, poorly disguised in an oversized trenchcoat and battered slouch hat—but I like the idea of it. Maybe he was trying to figure out who he was and where he fit in. Maybe it was all a laugh for him too. Maybe he really was just this hairy muchacho, making do in the Tombs. I don’t know. I just think of him and smile.

Maybe that explains Poland.