A Cleaning

“What’s next?”

The boy was wearing fingerless gloves, and his nails were already cyanotic blue. He’d catch cold if he wasn’t careful.

“The ice needs to start melting. But we’ll leave that for now. Let’s move on.” Jack pulled the boy along, by the sleeve of his coat, around the snow banks. Winter in the city was more grey than white, and the slush soaked through the toes of their boots as they walked.

The park had become a blur of white and grey and colour only really appeared ten feet from a person, before it faded into the flurry of snow. Strollers and dog-walkers hardly seemed to notice the boy and the elderly gentleman, each carrying a torch that occasionally spat copper-green flame.

Only the children paid any attention, and they ceased their snow-angel-making or snowball-throwing for seconds to squint through the wall of snow as if they were looking through a smudged glass window.

The boy nudged the elderly man’s elbow. The man’s torch scattered green sparks. “The kids keep making me nervous,” he said.

The man didn’t look at them. “The kids see us, but don’t worry, they’re not doin’ any harm. They just don’t know yet that they aren’t supposed to see us. They’ll grow into their parents. They’ll think they made us up. When they learn.” He made an inelegant sound, like a snort. “Seems that’s all their parents teach them, to be blind.”

The snow here was deeper. The elderly man motioned for them to stop, then adjusted the shoulder strap of his torch. He pointed the torch and fired.

Around them green flames erupted, like a ring of summer trees. The snow began to melt, quickly, collapsing like a deflated cloud after a rainstorm. It was beautiful and very dangerous.

Then there was a noise like the ticking of a broken clock. The boy’s torch sputtered a few small flames, then ceased firing and emitted a thin curl of green smoke.

“Oh, bother,” he said, shaking it. The elderly man set aside his own torch and watched the boy as he shook, cursed, and shook some more.

“Let me,” said the elderly man, and took the gun. His cold-bitten fingers fumbled with the latches. It was some complicated design, something from after his time. The boy had the stunned look of one who just finished training. He stayed silent as the elderly man fixed his torch, then handed it back to him.

“Thanks. Have you been doing the Cleaning for a long time?” he asked.

The elderly man hefted his torch and pointed it at the snow again. There was noise like a gunshot and winter erupted into green light again. “Depends what you mean by a long time,” he shouted over the din.

The boy looked sideways at a couple huddled together, walking on what they assumed was a path. They came within inches of the green flames, close enough that sparks fell on their coats and sparkled like spangles.

“Aren’t they going to notice?” the boy asked asked, squinting through the snow.

The old man sighed. “Nope. Doesn’t happen overnight, the cleaning. And look at them, they don’t notice nothin’, do they?” He pointed. “That one’s got her nose buried in a book.” He pointed again. “That one’s busy with his blackberry or what have you.” He nodded to a passing man with a steaming bakery bag. “That one can’t see past his next lunch. Nobody notices anythin’ unless you give ‘em a reason to. And we don’t. So that’s that.”

“I mean, how do they think spring comes? Do they think it just happens? That winter just shoves over and makes way?”

“They likely do think that. ‘Cause they don’t see anyone prove otherwise.”

“What about all the stuff we do?” The boy asked.

“The little stuff we do? We don’t take care of the big stuff. Those are the guys upstairs. We just handle the little stuff. Cleaning the ground and all.”

The boy stopped again. His eyelashes were caked with snowflakes. Her wiped his face. “What big stuff?”

The old man looked up and gave him a look. The boy held back a sigh. He was getting tired of being the recipient of looks.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you, lad?”

The boy nodded. His cable knitted scarf fell over one should and into the snow bank. The old man handed it to him as he straightened with an audible creaking of joints.

“See that?” he pointed a gloved finger over the boy’s shoulder. The boy turned and caught sight of a woman’s outline in the snow. She shivered and breathed on her gloves hands. Her face was obscured by her white cloudy breath.

“What?”

“The breathing thing. That’s the big man’s job.”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

The old man watched the lady trudge on, until she faded like a shadow in the grey distance. His eyes were piercing blue, milky at the edges with the beginnings of blindness. “When they breathe, they’re breathing out just a bit of their soul. It’s white, you see, so they don’t think nothin’ of it. But it’s their soul.”

The boy blinked. “That’s not- why? Why would anyone want them to breath out their soul?”

The old man turned his face up. Snowflakes glittered like embers falling from the sky. “Because you can’t carry around that much soul all the time. You’ve got to get rid of all the bad things. The bad deeds, the broken promises, all those things that make you feel awful. Imagine rememberin’ that, year after year. That’d be the death of a person. They’ve got to be cleaned out too. To make way for the new year.”

The boy breathed out. His breath was clear, no white puff of air, just heat.

He wrinkled his nose.

“What now?”

“It just seems – wrong. Is it really right to just forget?”

The old man took his finger off the trigger, produced a rag from his pocket, and wiped his brow. “No. It wouldn’t be. But they don’t forget it, exactly. It’s like – it’s like a wound that they’ve inflicted on themselves. If we don’t take care of it, if they spend the rest of their lives rememberin’, it’s just goin’ to fester and hurt them. So we make them forget – but only a little. Some part of ‘em will remember, and that’s like a scar. Still there, but not a nuisance. They can get on with their lives, see?”

The boy nodded. He pictured the park in April, when the trees would shiver away the last of the snow, and green shoots would impale the thawing earth, and the view would be a spectrum of greens and yellows and blues. There was no room for sorrow and guilt.

He felt the touch of a gloved hand on his sleeve. He opened his eyes.

“We’re one here. Call it a day?” the old man asked.

“Sure.”

They slung their torches across their backs, barrels pointed away and down.

“Does the cleaning get easier?” the boy asked.

“Doubt it. Seems to be getting harder, actually.”

The elderly man looked sideways at the boy. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just keep breathing the way you are. You don’t want to get cleaned, do you?” He laughed, and just the tiniest hint of white appeared in front of him. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay