The army held the baby in chains. It broke free. It was quite easy. At 158 feet high, it towered over the army and its tanks. It tore the metal wrapped around its wrists and legs with its eight baby teeth.
The baby wobbled toward the freight train yard, as it liked trains, liked the sounds made by trains.
Dion sat against the wire fence by the train yard. He liked reading to the sounds of trains. He liked to read books about the evolution of canid brains. On the afternoon he met the baby, he’d been reading a story about a girl raised by eastern coyotes. Her coyote brothers and sisters tackled her, slammed their bodies into her hips, and licked her face before biting her ears. “Careful,” she’d growled. “I’m digesting a raccoon.”
By the train tracks is where Dion saw the baby playing. It lay on its stomach, moving a diesel locomotive on the tracks. He was frightened of the baby, but he was lonely and had nobody to talk to since his father fell into a tub of F.D.&C. Red No. 40 food dye at the maraschino cherry factory. Since then, his mother was always at the casino with the man who’d replaced his chest with a mechanical bird cage. Dion had felt sorry for the house sparrows trapped inside.
“Hey,” Dion said approaching the baby. “Want to see some drawings of my dog?”
The baby regarded Dion curiously. He crawled onto a patch of warm grass and gave a nod. They sat together looking at pictures of Dion’s hound dog.
The baby soon fell asleep. It tossed its head in its dreams, and its eye movements too were so frequent, Dion thought they looked like eye storms.
At the sound of sirens, Dion slapped the baby’s big toe to rouse him.
“You better wake up, there’s war happening,” Dion said.
The baby’s knees creaked as it steadied itself on its feet. It gurgled with joy and pointed up at a white rainbow that had just started to form between the morning fog.
A helicopter with its blades nearly touching the arc of the white rainbow hovered at a constant altitude over the fence. It made a circle around the baby, sent a stream of machine gun bullets meant to topple it to the ground. The baby reached its arms over its head and plucked the helicopter blades like daisies, grinding them into a thick powder.
Dion filled his pockets with broken helicopter pieces. “I’ve got huge pockets. I can fit lots of things in them,” he said. From his right pocket he emptied a half-eaten apple, lifted it toward the baby. The baby gave the apple a hard eye, let out a series of bird sounds. Dion was sure the baby would make a good house sparrow.
“It’s alright,” Dion said. “You have to look at the apple or else it’ll rot.”
The baby marched toward the city. Dion trailed at its bare feet.
“You’re like a kid brother to me now,” he said. “I want to hear your tragic life story.”
Currently reading:
I’m usually reading several books at a time. I’m currently reading The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell, Otherlands by Thomas Halliday, Becoming Wild by Carl Safina, and Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo.
