Tinnean - Call Me Church.pdf - jessab

Chapter 1

L IFE during the Depression was hard. There wasn’t

much to be happy about, to entertain us, so when Church

“Chet” Chetwood, the renowned film director, returned

from the South Seas with what he claimed was the most

astounding find in ten thousand years… well, everyone

wanted to see it.

No one expected a throwback to the Ice Age to sud-

denly appear on Manhattan Island, and people stormed

the box office to buy tickets.

I’d wanted so badly to go see the creature that was

supposed to be extinct, but I couldn’t afford it. Well, I

could barely afford to eat.

For once God was on my side, although so many

others weren’t as fortunate. I wasn’t there when “Chet-

wood’s

Kitty”

somehow

managed

escape

from

the

theater where it was being exhibited.

The buildings along Forty-Second Street still bore

splatters of dried blood from the path the giant saber-

toothed tiger had taken. It had torn apart dozens of

homeward-bound workers. Bodies had been disem-

boweled, decapitated, literally torn limb from limb. Cars

had swerved to get out of the path of the infuriated

creature. They’d run over pedestrians and had crashed

3/89

into buildings, into the beams of the el, into buses, into

one another.

A few days later, while I was scrounging in an alley,

I’d come across the torso of a woman that had been

somehow overlooked in the cleanup. Razor-sharp claws

had shredded the shirtwaist she’d worn and the flesh be-

neath it, and the expression on her face revealed her pain

and terror. I’d wheeled around and thrown up, although

there had been little in my stomach.

The sabertooth had escaped to Central Park, and for

three days the city was under martial law. That hadn’t

helped the people who lived in Hooverville, in the

drained reservoir. Six of them had been slaughtered be-

fore the Army had tracked down the sabertooth and fired

enough rounds into it to bring it down.

I followed the story whenever I came across a dis-

carded newspaper. The Daily News , being just a step up

from a scandal sheet, had the juiciest stories. Its report-

ers told in gory, minute detail all the carnage that had

descended upon New York City in those three days.

The survivors, as well as those who had lost loved

ones, were among the many suing Church Chetwood,

along with the city, the state, and the federal government,

which was out to get him for bringing an unlicensed an-

imal onto American soil.

However, no one knew where Mr. Chetwood was.

4/89

I T was a damp, drizzly evening. The street lamps had just

come on, a faint glow misting like an aura around the

lights, dimming them. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d

slipped out of the men’s mission early that morning, hav-

ing taken advantage of the coffee and sinkers, but escap-

ing the sermon that went with them.

Too many days with too little to eat were taking

their toll, and hunger was gnawing at my gut again. All

the missions were filled, and I didn’t have the thirty cents

for a room for the night.

I didn’t even have a nickel for a cup of coffee and

three sinkers at a hash house.

As for the shantytown in the reservoir, no one was

going there these days.

The Depression had caught me, as so many others,

unawares—I’d only been sixteen in ’29—and now, four

years later….

I grabbed up a discarded newssheet, folded it

neatly, and stuffed it into my right shoe. The hole in the

sole was getting larger and larger. Pretty soon I’d be

walking on my uppers, and there’d be nothing I’d be able

to do about it, not with winter coming on. The rain and

snow would turn any makeshift patches to mush, and un-

less I was willing to roll a drunk—I hadn’t descended

quite

that

far—scrounging

decent

pair

shoes

5/89

would be impossible; everyone was holding on to them

until they were in the same condition as mine.

It had been too long since my last honest job, and I

found myself doing things I would never have thought,

dreamed possible!

I eyed the doubtful haven of the saloon and ran a

sleeve under my nose, mopping the blood that was still

seeping from it. The last place I drifted into had not wel-

comed me. The bartender was a bruiser of a man, and

when he realized what I was willing to trade for a meal

and a roof over my head for the night, I’d been lucky to

make it out of there with only a broken nose.

But I needed to get out of that November chill. My

old overcoat was threadbare and missing buttons, so no

matter how I hugged it to myself, I couldn’t prevent the

night air from slicing through to me. I was at the mercy

of the bitter cold. My hat was long gone, and while I’d

found a cap after the sabertooth’s rampage, it was

covered with blood and—something else—and I couldn’t

stomach wearing it.

I hunched my shoulders, trying to keep my ears

warm—my raised collar was no help at all—and shivered,

as much from tension as the cold. I hated what I was

about to do once again.

I slipped my hand into the pocket of my trousers

and ran my fingers over the handle of my shiv, the

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