In-Between Spaces
an excerpt

In in-between spaces
And forgotten spaces
Mystery and magic dwell.

Janus pulled the door shut behind him as he stepped out on to the stoop. The air still had that warm orange smell of late summer, and the sun was warm on his face. But underneath he caught the sharp scent if cool autumn air and the bright blue of fall skies. He associated that smell with the beginnings of things – fall, a new school year, new friendships. It was the smell of a coming adventure.
He walked quickly along the gray concrete sidewalk of his North Philadelphia neighborhood, passing hundred year old brick row homes, some sagging tiredly, many painted faded shades of blue-gray, maroon and green. Why anyone would paint bricks he’d never known. Striving perhaps to add any sense of color and identity to the sameness of house after house, block after block of identical rectangular structures in the grid of a planned city. At each corner, the first floor units had been turned into commercial space – a deli, a chiropractor, a bar, a bodega. Feeling change in his pocket, Janus considered stopping to get a soda or a candy bar, but his parents’ recent argument about money still echoed in his ears. That was why he left the house.
His parents were in the process of getting divorced, and it seemed they were constantly arguing about money. Not arguing, they said. “Discussing.” Either way, Janus hated to hear it. He lived with his mother, who had gone back to graduate school after taking several years off to run a jewelry business with his dad. Now that she had no job, she depended on whatever handouts his dad would give her from the business profits. It made Janus angry to see her have to ask his dad for money that belonged to both of them, but he also loved his dad and wondered if she was exaggerating because she was mad. More than that, hearing conversations about money and seeing the tension in his mother’s face when she paid for the week’s groceries left him scared that maybe there actually wasn’t enough to go around. He sighed. He hated the divorce stuff.
So he walked down the block, quickly at first, putting distance between himself and the house. He liked the steady rhythm of his feet hitting the hard concrete, his breath coming with every fourth step. In his mind he counted, “One two three Breath; One two three Breath; One two three Breath” until it drowned out all other thoughts and sounds. The swirling masses of anger and fear that chased each other through his head and the deep dread that sat like a rock in his stomach began to fade, crowded out by his rhythmic steps and breath.
After a few blocks, Janus slowed down. Once the tension eased he began to feel that walking fast was keeping him anxious, rather than letting it go. He relaxed his hunched shoulders. He kept his hands stuffed down in his pockets, but he opened his fists. He also began to look around. Where should he go? It was too early to visit any of his friends. Sarah and James went to Catholic school and weren’t out yet. Kiko would still be at soccer practice, Alex had basketball. Janus was good at sports, but he didn’t like playing on teams. Competition made him nervous, and there was something unsettling about working with so many other people at once, having them depend on him, and trusting them in return. It made him feel on edge and slightly trapped. He preferred sports he did alone – running, gymnastics. He really liked yoga but he didn’t get to do it so much, now that Dad moved out. Dad was a yoga teacher sometimes and showed him dramatic new asanas, or poses, whenever they were together. Janus was also a great tree climber and loved exploring the woods whenever he and his mom went camping. That was different now too. Even though Dad never had gone camping – he hated it – Janus hadn’t been so aware of it just being him and Mom before. Or he had been, but it had been special time, different. Now just being the two of them was every day, and it felt lonely instead of special.
Without really meaning to, Janus found himself walking along Culverton St., a place he didn’t often come because it was so deserted. On one side was a row of abandoned factories with soot-covered chimneys and broken windows of thick yellow glass. Along the other, a steep trash-strewn hill led up to a gravel bed and rusted railroad tracks. The street followed the commuter rail tracks for a couple of miles. The track hill formed a barrier on that side of the street, cutting off sightlines to anywhere else, as if the raising of the railroad above street level had changed the geography of the city around it, making some places that were physically near one another impossible to get to directly. On the other side of the tracks was a wasteland of gnarled trees, brambles and trash leading down to the dirty river somewhere below. Beyond that, more weeds and trash til the next populated block backed against it. Janus hesitated to call it “woods” because that to him meant something natural and peaceful and clean. This was just space no one really looked at. To get around it, you had to go back or forward several blocks along Culverton to cut across on another perpendicular street.
And with no houses or businesses, Culverton itself was a no man’s land, a dirty nondescript street under leaky railroad overpasses and peeling billboards. Space that separated neighborhoods of kids who played together; space you just had to cross to get from one place to another, maybe looking over your shoulder to be sure you were safe. No one spent time here. It was a space of litter and dead weeds and crumbling blackened facades of buildings that might have once held stories and lives, but were now boarded and unrecognizable, left.
He sometimes wondered if anyone remembered when it was different. What had the buildings been? Who had worked there? What had they made? What did they talk about on their lunch breaks? Did they play with their children when they got home at night? Sit on vinyl chairs around the kitchen table with their families, eating roast chicken and pierogies or pasta?
The buildings looked to Janus like stories waiting to be told. Like the old books he sometimes saw in junk shops or on the back shelves at the library – worn almost faceless, but once important to someone. He wanted to read them, wondered if they contained secret information, magical knowledge, the answers he always hoped someone would tell him. Who was he supposed to be? What was going to happen next? How was he special? Was he?
But then if he opened the covers to see, the books inevitably looked less interesting than he hoped. No sparkles appeared, no calligraphic writing or runes of power, no deep voices or surges of power. Just words about business or politics or outdated ideas and people that history had forgotten. And besides, they were in the junk shop because everyone else had decided they were useless; junk. Put aside and left. And so Janus did the same, always wishing it would be different.
He hadn’t meant to end up here. It didn’t feel safe and it certainly didn’t help his mood any. His mother would be furious if she knew he was down here by himself. She didn’t even like to walk here together. And where was he going? The other side was definitely out of his neighborhood, and coming back would mean crossing this emptiness again, maybe when it was getting dark.
Taking a deep breath, Janus turned around. And as he was turning, he heard it. Not really anything particular at first, but something. A rustle? A snuffle? A whine? Janus stopped. He stopped breathing for a minute to listen. Please don’t let it be rats, he thought. Please don’t let me see them! He hated rats. He knew they were normal in cities, and that they lived in the wastelands and weeds and abandoned buildings and sewers. But he didn’t want to see them. He had heard too many stories about rats attacking children and eating their faces, swarming out of bushes and carrying rabies and bubonic plague. Did plague still exist? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to find out. Please no rats.
The rustling was close to him, in a heavy stand of weeds on the railroad hill. And definitely now there was a high-pitched whine with it. It sounded desperate, scared. Palms sweating, Janus took a step closer and peered toward the weeds. He couldn’t see anything but patches of brown and an orange potato chip bag caught on an upright stick. The rustling got louder and seemed to be coming from another direction. The whine got louder, more scared, and then erupted into a frightened high barking. Almost shaking with relief, Janus laughed at himself and stepped forward to see around the weeds. Beyond the weeds was a pile of deadwood. It looked like sticks and branches that someone had started clearing up at some point and left there. Over time, plastic bags, candy wrappers and what looked like a colorless old work shirt had been blown against it and gotten stuck.
A large mass of fishing line was tangled in the branches, forming a web of plastic thread a foot or two across. Caught in the line was a mongrel puppy, snagged in the net by the buckle of his collar. Two muddy rats were eyeing the dog from a couple feet away, their beady eyes watching his struggle as if deciding where to bite first. The mouth of one was open slightly and Janus could see the sharp cruel teeth nature gave its scavengers to eat anything and everything they could find. Aware of the danger, the puppy shook its head from side to side, frantically trying to free itself, but only became ensnared on more threads of the fishing line.
Janus looked around desperately for some kind of weapon, something to hit the rats with to fend them off. His hand closed on a brown beer bottle, half full of some liquid that sloshed on his leg as he grabbed and chucked it at the rat closer to the dog. It missed, but came close enough to startle it back. A crumpled cigarette box and a stray rock from the track bed came closer, and the rats retreated further, still watchful.
Janus stepped near the puppy, only at the last minute remembering that it might not be friendly and quickly withdrawing his outstretched hand beyond its reach.
“Hey boy, I’m here to help. I won’t hurt you,” he told it, his voice quiet and high, just like he heard his mom do when she talked to the alleycats she sometimes helped rescue. The dog growled for an instant, but then dropped its body slightly and wagged its tail weakly.
“That’s right, I’m going to help,” he said again. Pulling his Swiss Army knife from his jeans pocket, Janus started to cut the strands attached to the dog’s collar. The dog held still, not moving its head while he worked. Once or twice it began to growl again, and Janus turned to see the rats moving slowly closer, circling behind him. “Yah!” he yelled at them while trying to work at the net more quickly. He wondered for an instant if it would be better to just cut the collar, but then thought better of it because he would need that later to help find the dog’s owner. Besides, the thick strap would definitely take longer to get through.
“Come on, come on!” he muttered under his breath, praying not to feel sharp teeth on his neck or ankle. “Make you a deal, boy,” he whispered to the dog. “You watch the rats, I’ll get you free, okay?” The puppy whimpered agreeably. Was that a reply? He would have to trust it.
Janus stretched the last cord across the knife blade and half pulled and half cut it with a snap. It had cut a deep groove into the side of his pinky finger, which was already bleeding, but the dog was free. Janus stood up quickly and the dog leaped clear of the woodpile. Crouching down, the rats continued to watch them with glittering eyes as both Janus and the dog backed quickly down the slope onto the sidewalk. Once on the concrete, they were safe. Shaking, Janus let out a deep sigh and felt sweat run down the inside of his shirt. Glancing down, he thought the puppy did the same.
Now that they were on the sidewalk, Janus took a closer look at the dog. While it – he, Janus noticed – was scratched from his struggles in the woodpile and had bits of sticker bush caught in his fur, he otherwise looked fairly clean and well fed, not like a stray that had been out for long. He must have gotten lost recently. He looked up at Janus expectantly.
“Well, boy, since there are no houses around here, you might as well come with me. I’ll take you home and we’ll get you some food. Then we can find out who you belong to.” He reached down to let the dog sniff his hand. The puppy sniffed at him questioningly, then licked it. Janus patted his head and then his side. The little dog was shaking. Without thinking, Janus took off his flannel shirt and reached down to wrap it around the dog. He picked it up and hugged it close to his chest. He knew from Mom that many strays don’t like to be picked up, at least at first, but it seemed right.
“It’s okay, boy. Everything’s going to be fine now. I’m going to take care of you.” Still shaking, the dog licked his face and buried its head under his chin. “Okay, boy. Let’s go home.”