It had been moving, searching, since the beginning of days. The first subject of graffiti, marked well before the art in the Caves of Lascaux was painted. Styles changed as miles and ages passed, from the obscene clerical metaphors of Sumeria to the elegant nightmares of ancient Greece, the shit-smeared transcendence of India, and, especially, the bald obscenities of Rome. But wherever, whenever, the varied eloquence described its foul cargo.
Its appearance changed, blending into whichever world it moved through. Traditionally it had been a lumbering cart, always threatening to spill its precariously over-packed load upon crowded paths; a constant frustration for other wayfarers, taking up more than its share of the road and moving slower than other traffic. All who saw it wondered how the mad jumble was held together, ignorant of the powerful wards holding chaos at bay.
Some few mystics recognized it for what it was. Shamans and priests of myriad faiths would return, shaken and incoherent, to their sanctuaries, their faith become desperate, praying to any god that would hear them that the key never be found.
She was six when her mother first said to her, “Taylor, you’ll be the end of me.” She’d climbed the big oak tree again. Not an unusual defiance, but this time she’d done it because the neighborhood boys had accused her of being too chicken to jump into a pile of leaves from the third big branch up. It was a haphazard pile that they’d gathered into a culvert beside the gravel road.
She’d proved them wrong, but they’d been careless with their collection — it had contained many branches, some splintered and broken.
One of these went through her calf.
Taylor sat in the pile of leaves and stared at her leg, shocked at the sight, at the thick well of blood around the wound that was trickling down her leg into her socks and sneakers. The boys also stared, transfixed.
And then the pain hit her in a burning red flare that seared her vision. She screamed.
The boys scattered like the leaves and the earth rumbled beneath her. She turned towards the sound that was the epicenter of the tremor beneath her and her scream dropped, suddenly, into an animal panting.
It was a junk truck, both vast and vastly overloaded. It had stopped to idle just beside the pile of treacherous leaves. Its muffler, near level with her head, gave off an oily exhaust that nauseated her but also seemed to smother her pain. Her breathing calmed and she gained a sick clarity, like those brief respites in an illness, between fever and chills.
And she waited, expecting the trucker to hurry out and get her safely home. After all, why else would he have stopped?
But he didn’t.
Eventually, the fumes began to make her feel worse than the pain, and the apathy of the driver began to anger her. Frustrated and scared, she reached up and grabbed the rear wheel to pull herself to her feet.
A jolt went through her as soon as she touched the truck, a recognition of horror, and for the first time she noticed the graffiti covering the truck, in that moment understanding more than any young mind ever should.
She staggered back, somehow on her feet, staring at the truck as she retreated backwards. She screamed once more, when her good leg clipped the branch still embedded in her leg. Then she turned and hobbled home as fast as she could. Four blocks, stepping wide around the branch with every step.
Her mother was typically, acerbically, horrified. Old Doc Kim was little better, sighing and shaking his head.
He gave her one children’s Tylenol and waited an impatient five minutes, muttering all the while about how little girls in Canada knew nothing of discipline or propriety. Then he removed the stick.
