by Katie French
“Then what do we care what happened to their men?” Pa says, still squeezing.
Johnson’s face is white with pain. “Ah. Ah! You’re hurting me!”
Pa laughs. “I know.” He stands up, releasing Johnson, who scurries out the door. Pa watches him, smirking, and then turns to Clay.
Clay readies himself. Pa won’t catch him unawares this time.
Pa takes a breath and straightens up to his full height. His paunch belly and beefy arms make him twice as big as he is. Clay’s eyes find his father’s. He meets his gaze with his chin up.
“Boy, you went on a mission without your pa, and you came back. You shot, and you won. You earned yer guns.” At this, Pa reaches down and undoes the gun belt around his hips, holding two beautiful matching revolvers with long, silver barrels. He takes them off and hands them to Clay.
Clay grabs the soft leather belt and slides it through his fingers. His father’s revolvers. It’s what he’s wanted ever since he knew what to call them. He looks at the guns and then his father. “I can’t take these.”
“What?” Pa says.
Clay holds the guns out to Pa. “I’m not gonna wear these if it means I have to be one of your lackeys. I wanna be deputy. I wanna have a say in what the hell goes down around here.”
Pa narrows his eyes.
Clay grits his teeth and keeps going. “I got ideas. I got the trainin’. I sure as hell can shoot better than anybody out there.” He waves a hand toward the batwing doors and the town beyond. “And I can reach the people. I can make ’em listen. You do it with fear. Let me do it my way.”
Pa blinks, still frowning. He studies Clay’s face. “Your way. What’s that?”
Clay nods. “My sissy way with words. People will listen, make you stronger. Together, we can make this town the best north of Mexico City.”
Pa tongues his toothpick, bites it, and nods. “We’ll see how it goes.”
As Pa is leaving, he claps Clay on the back twice. It’s the most affection he’s shown him in years.
Clay takes a deep sigh. Lies that help. He straps on the gun belt, tugging it snug around his hips. He has no intention of following Pa blindly, but he’s too bloated in his own self-interest to see that Clay’s lying through his teeth. He’ll do what he can to help the people of this town, and damn Pa’s ideas. Damn them to hell.
THE END
Plan B
A Breeders Story
Nolan
The men waited silently at the gates, their eyes on the hospital doors. They could almost taste the fear in the air.
Nolan stood rigid, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. Beside him, his father’s breathing was audible—the ragged rasp of lungs filled with fluid. The sound had long stopped registering in Nolan’s conscious mind, but in the pre-dawn stillness, it embarrassed him. He loved his dah dearly; he was the reason Nolan had swallowed his fear with his morning’s weak tea and walked the dark mile to the glowing beacon in the center of the city, his father laboring beside him. He’d done all this with terror riding him like a hell-bent harrier, so couldn’t his father pretend to breathe normally for a few minutes? Every man in the crowd didn’t need it bill-boarded how desperate they were.
The gates gave a metal clang and began to draw back. The crowd shifted nervously. When the chain-link gates drew back, the crowd moved forward in unison. Nolan moved with it, his father at his elbow, sucking at breath like a sea-plucked fish.
God, let me be picked for my dah’s sake, he prayed silently. And let the tales about the Breeders be lies.
Stories of the Breeders’ cruelty, their vicious killings, had circled his boyhood like a swarm of flies.
“They eat babies,” his friend Herry had said over a campfire when they were ten and sleeping under the stars. Their father’s cramped shacks were too hot and, truth be told, the boys loved their moment under the star-strewn sky. With the campfire light playing devilish tricks on Herry’s face, his friend leaned toward Nolan and flashed his teeth. “They pluck the babes from their ma’s cracks and gnaw on their arms and legs. Suck the marrow outta their bones.” Herry leaned forward on his bed roll, a curtain of snarled black hair falling across one eye, and made a sucking sound with lips. Then he fell back, cackling.
“They do not,” Nolan had insisted. His eyes were drawn to the shaft of light piercing the night sky a mile north. The hospital’s electric lights burned into the darkness like someone had left a light on in hell. It was the ever present beacon of their superiority. Their ominous symbol of both prosperity and fear.
When the crowd had slipped past the gate, the six-foot high chain-link fence topped with concertina wire trundled closed, snapping together with a sound that vibrated Nolan to the bone. Locked inside the Breeders’ compound. Hadn’t he always pictured this moment? Pictured it and dreaded it.
The parking lot was an unending stretch of blacktop. Unmarred by pot holes or broken-down vehicles, it looked like the surface of a smooth black lake. Past the blacktop, the hospital’s nine stories of concrete and glass rose up before him. The windows, intact and perfect, reflected the pink dawn. Each window, ledge, and wall was a perfect rectangle. In a world where the elements rounded everything, a building of sharp edges was amazing and Nolan looked up with new eyes. Awe—that was the correct word for it. Nolan had always been a purveyor of words (purveyor was another term he’d picked up from a traveling shoe salesmen who’d hocked re-purposed sneakers and steel-toed boots from the back of a pick-up truck. I am a purveyor of shoes, young man, he’d said.).
All the men looked in awe as a set of glass doors slid open on their own.
“’Lectric doors,” his dah mumbled and gave his son a tight-lipped smile. With his prematurely gray hair and sunken, wet eyes, his dah looked sixty instead of forty-two. He was a skeleton in his baggy denim coat and slacks, though they’d just swapped for a smaller size at the bazaar two months ago.
He’s wasting away, Nolan thought and felt tightness in his throat. No, “wasting away” was inaccurate. His dah had never wasted a breath in his life, working sixteen hours a day as a garbage hauler. He’d pulled a trash cart from sun up to sun down with that same open smile on his face for as long as Nolan had memory. The job had ruined his lungs from years of inhaling decaying building material. The occasional cough became a daily cough and the daily cough became so severe his dah could barely rise out of bed without gasping. Nolan took on more odd jobs, eventually finding the position with Chef Cartagena for table scraps and the occasional barter slip. They could eat, but his father’s condition worsened.
The Breeders, his dah’s friends had whispered in Nolan’s ear when they came to check on him. Only a job with the Breeders will get you food and medicine to keep him alive.
Nolan’s thoughts fell away as a figure stepped through the open doors. Nolan stood on tip-toe (the man in front of him was six feet and with poor hygiene judging by his smell) and watched a woman (a woman!) walk toward them, flanked by two giant guards in white uniforms. The rifles in their arms were black as cast iron.
The men stirred. Most of them had never seen a free woman in their lives.
The woman’s red high heels clomped on the concrete as she walked. Her expression said this morning’s interviews were the most boring event on her agenda. She was dressed in a business suit the color of blood, with fingernails to match. Her auburn hair was slicked back severely, making her features stark and angular. Yet it was her eyes, an unremarkable blue and yet so cold, so calculating, that both repelled and drew Nolan. He bumped into the man in front of him and got a Back up, pal and a shove. His poor dah shot him a look that said Are you alright? Nolan answered him with a nod.
Alright for now, but good God don’t let me have to talk to her. Nolan straightened his posture and waited.
The woman stopped in front of the crowd and scanned it. She snapped her fingers and one of the guards produced a large white device that looked like a gun with a cone for a muzzle. She aimed in at the crowd. Nolan
cringed.
Instead of a shot, a loud whine sounded from the device. Her voice boomed over them.
“Gentlemen,” her amplified voice said, “you are here for one of the most prestigious and well-paying occupations in the world. I hope you are up to the task. We will be taking three,” she held up three sharp-nailed fingers, “three applicants. The rest of you, I’m afraid, will go back to your lives with nothing but a breakfast and story to tell.”
There was a general mumble of disappointment. At least two dozen able-bodied men stood in line. Only three applicants? Nolan dropped his head. A hand squeezed his forearm and he looked up. His father’s wet, sunken eyes peered kindly into his.
“You’ll be one of ’em, my boy,” he wheezed. His dah’s smile was cut short by a cough that rocked his body. Nolan patted his dah’s back and turned his eyes to the blacktop.
Dear God, let me be one of the three. You’re given my dah wet-lung. At least give me this.
The armed guards herded the men into single file along the hospital’s yawning shadow. The woman sat at a desk near the glass doors, hands clasped together, a steaming mug of something… coffee?… near her right hand. Across from her sat a rigid plastic chair. Nolan looked at it and swallowed. To get this job he’d have to sit across from his woman and look her in the eye. Worse, he’d have to answer her questions.
“What’s this?”
Nolan looked up and the guard, a bear of a man with hair curling out of his uniform’s v-neck, peered down at his father. “What’re you doing here, old timer?”
There was a mocking quality to the guard’s voice that Nolan didn’t like. He stepped between the bear-guard and his frail father.
“He’s my d— my father,” he said, disliking the wavering quality of his voice. (Another collected word. To shake or waffle. Nolan didn’t want his voice to do either of those things.) “He came with me.”
The guard kept staring with cruel eyes.
“He wanted to see me off.” Nolan cleared his throat and tried to look confident. Inside his stomach was definitely wavering.
“See you off?” the guard mocked. “See the wee babe off.” The bear guard pinched Nolan’s cheek between a finger and thumb and gave it a savage tug. “Wee babe,” he repeated, snickering. “Not even a shave yet, eh?”
Nolan dropped his eyes and waited out the jokes. Let him pass us by, he thought, not kick us out.
“Carlton!” It was the woman at the desk. Her blue eyes narrowed as he turned toward her.
“Yes, doctor?” All humor dropped from the bear-guard’s tone. Carlton snapped his heels together and stood like a tin soldier.
“Get them in line,” she said, smoothing a hand over her slicked hair. “Now.”
“Yes, Dr. Vandewater, ma’am.” Was there a note of fear in the big man’s voice? The guard’s fear sent Nolan’s nerves quaking.
In the end, they seated his dah in a chair in the building’s thick shade. The rest of them stood on their feet, squinting into the dawn, waiting for their turn.
Nolan’s came an hour in.
He’d watched in near-terror as each man before him walked up and sat across from Dr. Vandewater. He’d overheard their stammered responses and apologies. He’d watched as most were handed a paper sack and told to exit out the gate.
Two had been chosen. That much he’d figured. Their exit had been marked by a slip of gold paper and entrance through the grand glass doors, into the hospital.
Two down. That means only one spot left. Nolan looked behind him. At least ten other men, all older and more broad-shouldered, waited behind. He began to pray.
“Next,” her voice called and Nolan snapped his head up. Somehow he was at the front of the line. He fumbled forward, his own feet betraying him at the moment of need. He stumbled like a man waking out of a dream, grabbed the chair, scraping it loudly against the concrete, and fell into it.
She lifted her blue eyes and looked unamused.
This is not the start I pictured, he thought, dropping his hands into his lap.
He glanced back over his shoulder. His dah’s hunched frame was small in his plastic chair. His old man raised a thumbs-up for encouragement, a big grin on his sunken cheeks.
“Your father?” Her voice reminded him of the hospital windows—strong, smooth and completely opaque.
Nolan whipped around. “Y-yes, ma’am.” He fiddled with his shirt tail. His heart thumped against his rib cage.
Her calculating eyes slipped toward his father, then back to Nolan. “Not usual for a boy your age to have kin. Most”—she gazed at the waiting line—“are alone since puberty.”
“My father’s a kindhearted fellow,” Nolan said over the knot in his throat. Speaking about his poor sick dah would only weaken his nerve. He hoped she’d ask him about something else. Anything else.
“By law, fathers are only required to rear their sons until thirteen. Yet, yours did not send you out.” Her slender fingers folded together, red nails standing out against pale skin. She raised her cold eyes to his. “Why?”
“Why’d he keep me on?” Nolan asked. He had no idea where this was going. Didn’t she want to ask about his health? His previous employment? Her eyes sought an answer. He shrugged. “I guess… he loved me.”
“I see.” She dipped her head and he got another glimpse of her beautiful auburn hair. It was pinched back with an ivory ankh-shaped clip, the Breeders’ symbol. When she looked up again, she was holding a gold slip of paper.
“What’s this?” he asked, reaching for it. The black letters read, Entrance slip. Occupation: Maintenance.
“I’m in?” He held the paper tenderly and looked up at her.
She nodded once and began folding up her things.
He stood, his legs as weak as if he’d been running the better part of a day. “Ma’am?”
“Yes?” She pursed her mouth into a small, red bow.
“Might I ask why?” He pressed the golden slip close to his heart. “Why me?”
“Because,” she said, not even looking up from her papers. “I like an employee with something to lose.”
Nolan waited in the tiny basement room in darkness as the minutes ticked by. His supervisor was late. He’d been told this by an entrance guard, ushered into what seemed to be a broom closet and told to wait. Now he stood amongst the mops and buckets and tried not to touch anything.
His nerves were raw, yes, but an undercurrent of real pride was still tripping along beneath. He pictured his dah’s face when he’d told him he’d been hired on. Overjoyed was the right word for it. Overjoyed and proud. Nolan had never felt better.
But now, with the strong smell of chemical sickening his stomach and with the minutes ticking by, he began to wonder. What if they’ve changed their minds? They got one look at my scrawny arms and holey boots and changed their minds. How would he face his dah?
The door burst open and a big-bellied man pushed in. Nolan jumped and then locked his knees and elbows in an imitation of the guards’ saluted-stance. “Sir,” he said before he really knew who he was addressing.
“Don’t sir me,” the voice grumbled. It was a broken concrete voice, full of age and annoyance. A switch flicked on and an overhead light buzzed to life. “What in heaven’s heels are you doing in the dark?”
The man must be his supervisor, wearing an identical outfit to the one Nolan had been handed thirty minutes ago, a tan coverall with a name badge stenciled over his heart. Samuel it read. With thin arms and legs, Samuel rounded out in the middle, the perfect paunch of a well-fed Breeders’ employee. The top of his head was bare and shining in the light, but a ring of gray-brown hair clung to the back. His most distinguishing figure was the tan eye patch slung over his right eye.
Samuel eyed Nolan up and down. “Not much of a boy, are ya?” he asked, pushing into the closet. Samuel grabbed a mop and bucket from the back corner and wheeled it forward. He stopped at the doorway and turned to Nolan who was standing stock-still with his jaw dropped. “If you�
��re waiting for an invitation to this ball, princess, you’re gonna miss the dance.”
Nolan threw him a questioning look. Samuel sighed painfully. “Jesus, just get moving!” Then he bumped the bucket over the door jamb and out of view.
For four days they scrubbed, polished, hauled, scraped and plunged with barely a word exchanged between them. The few times Nolan had tried conversation—the second day while they were eating their cafeteria-provided lunch of fish and limp greens and the third day when they’d paused in the closet to look for a case of light bulbs—Samuel had grunted and turned away. It was a lonely way to pass twelve hours, but payday was mañana. The look on his dah’s face when he brought home his sack of food and barter slips would supply enough sunshine to get him through these dim days.
Payday was Friday and Friday was floor day as Samuel put it. Floor day meant scrubbing until blisters formed on his palms, until his knees ached like an old man’s. Nolan threw himself into it, knowing that on the other side of this day his prize was waiting.
He scrubbed the last of the polished black and white tiles on the first floor. He’d just learned a new technique of twisting the mop head on the last pass for a streak-free shine. It had taken him four hours and two blisters, but this time when Samuel came by to inspect the floor, he might harrumph in approval instead of disappointment. Nolan was finishing his last turn when his back bumped into something. A solid, windowless set of double doors blocked the end of this hallway behind him. He realized he’d never seen them before.
In four days of cleaning, he’d been all over the hospital. He’d cleaned the giant swimming pool deck with the girls (that he was not allowed to talk to under any circumstances) bobbing up and down like seals in the frothy water. He’d cleaned the staff cafeteria on the first floor, the nannies’ cafeteria on the second floor and even the girls’ cafeteria on the sixth floor, after dinner hours of course. Here, on the main floor, he’d cleaned storage rooms, offices and labs with equipment that boggled his mind. Yet, he’d never seen the inside of this particular room. He looked down the long hallway for Samuel. His supervisor had disappeared, as he was known for doing. He was likely resting his bones in a storage closet somewhere while Nolan busted his hump. How many years would he have to slave before he could get a youngster to do all his work for him? Far too many, he suspected.