by Katie French
Samuel looked up from the cigarette he was rolling. Not tobacco though. The smell was much stronger, and tangy like the cayenne pepper Chef Cartagena used in his chilies. “Did one of the girls say something?” He narrowed his good eye and leaned in.
Nolan leaned back, his head beginning to spin. “Yes.”
Samuel pushed out a breath, nodding. He went back to rolling his cigarette, drew a match and lit the end. The paper flamed, throwing a smell into the air like burning sage or was it…devil’s spine. Rumors of its addictiveness, its hallucinations had given it that moniker. You only smoked it if you were crazy or wanted to die slowly, sucking on the devil’s teat as the saying went. Why would Samuel, who had a good job and enough barter slips to live fat and easy, do a dumb thing like smoke devil’s spine?
“I’ll say my piece and then I’ll ask you kindly to step outside while I finish this,” the old man said, blowing smoke away from Nolan. Still, the boy’s head felt heavy and his legs weak. He tried not to breathe too deeply. “I’ve heard girls mumble too. Dreamlike and far-away. Doesn’t mean they’re alive, lad. It just means some part of them is still…reaching. But they’re vegetables. Rocks.” He kicked a heavy toe at a rock resting by the base of his crate, the motion already sloppy. “You can’t think they’re alive, or it’ll eat you up. It’ll make you wanna do this.” Samuel took a big drag of the spine, the tip flaring red in the dark. Samuel coughed and peered at Nolan through the smoke. “You should leave now. Sleep outside by the door ‘til I’m done and the smoke’s cleared. Then you can sleep here.” He pointed to the bedroll. “I won’t mind the ground by then.” He voice was sad, resigned as if he had no choice in smoking. As if he’d already handed over his life.
Nolan’s smoke-filled brain felt caught in a whirlpool, but he waited a moment longer. “If you really believe they aren’t alive, then why smoke? Why slowly kill yourself over it?”
Samuel slumped against the wall, the smoke ringing his head. His eye patch had shifted, revealing a bumpy, red scar running toward his socket. His good eye had grown glassy and it drifted closed. “’Cause I failed.” His fist clenched and released just like the girl’s. Samuel’s voice drifted out in a dribble of smoke. “I can’t make myself believe.”
Next Friday Nolan came prepared. The scene with Samuel had scared him. All week he’d steeled his will not to go near the girl. Angel, as he thought of her, was on the left side of the room. He’d clean in a circle, keeping as far away from her bed as possible, and clean her area last. Then he’d get the hell out.
He scrubbed in quick circles, the mop squeaking across the floor with a sound like old brakes. Nolan liked noise. It was better than beeping monitors and hissing oxygen tanks. The room’s awful symphony often swelled until Nolan felt he might scream just to hear something other than the slow march of decay.
But when the girl murmured, it set his heart pounding. As if he’d been both fearing it and anticipating it all day.
Don’t go to her, he thought. You promised yourself. You promised Samuel.
“Heeee,” her voice said. Even from this distance he could see the pink swell of her lips as they circled around the word. “Hel…” Her airy voice trailed off. Her golden hair rippled as she tossed slightly on the pillow.
Was she saying hell? As in, get me out of this hell? If she was, it meant she was aware…
No, he was jumping to conclusions. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog that crouched around him. Forget cleaning the floor. He needed to get out before he did something stupid.
“Heeelllppp,” she whispered, her head shifting again. One hand rose off the bed and then lowered.
His heart throbbed into his ears until his head was a kettle drum. He took a trembling step toward her. Then another. His legs were foam, his chest a vise. The room seemed to tilt. Soon he was standing over her bed, looking down. Her golden hair was the same color and texture of the silken scarves the traders sold for more barter slips than he made in a month. Her pale skin still had blooms of roses in her cheeks, though they were fading. Was something wrong with her? The veins on her wrist were blue vines creeping up her skin. Her cheeks were hollowing. What was happening to her? His fingertips floated toward her cheek. What would her skin feel like? Buttermilk? Rose petals?
“I wouldn’t,” said a voice behind him.
He whirled around. Dr. Vandewater stood, fists on hips, in the doorway. And her look—in a word—unamused. As she stepped towards him, her high heels clicked on the tile.
“I…I,” he stammered, stumbling back.
“I saw you. No need for explanation.” She stopped, clasped her hands together, and fixed him with a narrow frown. Her perfect bun shone in the dim overhead lights. “You’re not the first to become” —she paused and looked up at him— “enamored.”
Enamored. It means caught up, captivated by. Nolan collected the word, even in his terror. Somehow the act of filing the word away calmed him. A lie formed easily enough on his tongue. “I was removing a spider from her face. I know I’m not required to clean the… bodies,” (he prided himself on the word choice— bodies, not girls), “but it was spinning a web.” He swallowed, hoping.
Her eyes narrowed. When she crossed her arms over her tight fitting blouse, Nolan tried not to look at her chest. “What’s your name again, boy?”
“Nolan,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “Nolan Stein.”
She nodded, her eyes still calculating. “The one with the father who walked him to the interview.”
“Yes.” He hated that his dah had to be brought into this. His dah who’d begun to cough blood into his rags. This morning when he’d left, his father had barely raised a hand in parting. He was so weak. Nolan planned to use every barter slip he got tonight and beg the apothe for medicine.
She pursed her lips. “Do you know, Nolan, what happens to boys who breach protocol?”
He clenched his hands together at his sides to keep them from trembling. “Removal from the hospital and removal from the city.”
She tilted her head slightly as if to agree, but then she stopped. “Not just for the offender,” she said, intoning every word. “For the families as well.” She took a step closer, her pale blue eyes zeroing in. “For your father, Nolan. Imagine your delicate father out on the road.”
“I won’t breach protocol, ma’am. You can count on me.” His voice trembled, though he tried every trick he could to stop it.
“That,” she said, turning to stride out of the room, “is still up for debate.”
After their pay was doled out, Nolan walked with Samuel to the bazaar. His barter slips rubbed against his skin as they followed the crowd toward the torchlight and music. Nolan hadn’t told Samuel about his conversation with Dr. Vandewater or what the girl had murmured. He didn’t want his mentor angry. Plus, an unease had taken hold of him ever since the doctor had stalked out of Plan B. She’d threatened his sick father. The girls, the job, this whole thing seemed more than he could bear. His father had raised him, gone hungry to feed him and kept him on when everyone of his dah’s friends had called him a fool. It’s the natural order of things, they’d said. A boy needs to make his own way, they’d said. Yet, what every one knew was that half the thirteen-year-olds died before their next birthday. Nolan’s dah had given him everything and here he was jeopardizing it. He felt sorry for the girl, terrible even, but there was nothing he could do.
Nolan walked beside Samuel, barely aware of the throng of men drinking, eating, grabbing old whores and dragging them into perfumed tents. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands in his pockets. Eyes on the prize, his dah would say.
Before they entered the apothe’s lean-to, he tugged Samuel aside. The old man looked up to him with a flash of anger. He was jonesing for his drug and the shakes had set in.
“Listen, Samuel, you’re old enough to decide your own fate, but I think you should get off the spine.” Nolan’s eyes flicked up to the old man’s. The eye patch had slipped and Samuel hadn�
��t bothered to fix it.
Samuel pushed Nolan aside. “Been smoking spine too long. Nothing to be done ‘bout it now.”
Nolan grabbed Samuel shirt and pulled him back. He was surprised at how easily he over-powered the man. Samuel banged into the lean-to and his eye went wide. Nolan saw his supervisor’s hand drop to the knife on his belt. Then his expression eased a bit.
“I know you think it’s for my own good,” Samuel said, straightening up, “but it’s too late. Quittin’d kill me.”
“It’ll kill you anyway.” Nolan was surprised at the lump at his throat. Besides his father, no man had ever taken an interest in him. Losing his father and Samuel at the same time might be enough to bury him. He raised wet eyes to Samuel.
The old man’s hard face softened. He put a hand on Nolan’s shoulder. “Ah, lad, I’m not going anywhere.” Then he turned and strode into the lean-to.
The apothe’s shack smelled strongly of smoke tonight. As they walked in, he was selling a baggie to a decrepit, hunchback, wearing nothing but a stinking potato sack and hole-riddled boots. Nolan shrunk back as the man slid past him.
“Sammy-Sam-Sam, Dr. D’s been expecting you, brother.” The apothe swung his long hair over his shoulder, grinning wildly. Nolan hated the apothe at that moment with his slippery smile. The man took joy in handing others their death. Still, Nolan kept his fist shoved in his pockets. He needed the apothe tonight, no matter how slimy he was.
Dr. D reached into his shelves, removed a few pots and lifted a false bottom off one of the drawers. He pulled out a package of spine and danced it in front of Samuel like a strip of bacon in front of a dog. Samuel followed the package hungrily, his mouth hanging open.
Samuel took the bag, stuffed it in his pants and held out a handful of trembling barter slips. When the apothe took them, the old man turned to go. “Come, lad.”
Nolan pulled out his wad of barter slips and watched the apothe’s eyes grow wide. “I need a cure for wet-lung. You can see that I can pay.” He rustled the bills slightly and the apothe followed the slips just as Samuel had done with the spine.
“That sure is a wad of cash, sonny,” said the apothe, stroking a thumb and finger down his chin. “But I told ya, there’s no cure.”
Nolan reached behind and pulled out even more slips. All of his savings. Now he waved the impossibly large stack in front of the apothe. Behind him Samuel breathed, “Jesus, kid, put the slips away before we’re all killed.”
Nolan pressed the bills into the apothe’s hand. “Please.” Tears gathered behind his eyes. This was his dah’s last chance. If the apothe turned him away, he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t ask the doctor to help after what she’d said to him.
The apothe closed his fist over the bills. Then he turned and slipped behind the lean-to’s back wall.
Samuel strode up. “Holy Mary, what’re you thinking? Now he’s gone!” Samuel shook his head in regret. “All those slips for nothing.”
Nolan’s heart began seizing. That lying son-of-a… He strode toward the back as anger flared in his brain.
The apothe slipped back in, his hands clutching a large ceramic jar. He thrust the jar into Nolan’s chest.
“This is my last and only jar of ointment. It was sanctified by the blessed father of Santa Marcos himself. It should stop wet-lung. Rub it on his chest three times a day. It should draw out the infection.”
Nolan inspected the jar—heavy, ceramic, painted with a bronze and pink glaze. He pulled out the large round cork and saw the amber balm inside. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”
The apothe crossed his heart, an old gesture, but it still held meaning for Nolan. “Money back guarantee.”
“There better be,” Nolan said, turning. “Come on,” he said to his supervisor who stood, jaw agape. “I need to get home.”
By the time Nolan got Samuel home, the old man had already rolled his spine and was sucking madly on it. As Nolan watched from the doorway, his supervisor stumbled into his shack and fell onto the disheveled bed roll. His cigarette stubbed out against the floor.
“Dammit,” Samuel moaned from face down on the roll. With his legs folded underneath him, Samuel’s flabby, old-man buttocks were on full display and Nolan felt another surge of embarrassment.
He stomped in and rolled Samuel over. “Sit up,” he snapped. “You look like a stupid old fool.”
Samuel pushed up, his eye half-lidded. His hands still shook, but the drug had deadened the palsy. “I am a stupid old fool.”
Nolan’s anger burned hotter. “Yeah, you are! Here I am tending to you when I should be home helping my dah. Least he didn’t give himself wet-lung! He didn’t choose that. You throw away a good life because you’re a… a coward!”
His ring of disheveled gray hair trailed wispily up and down as he nodded. “You’re right, my boy.” Samuel sniffed. To Nolan’s horror, the old man started to cry.
“Don’t,” he murmured, placing a hand on the old man’s shaking shoulder. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You did mean it and you’re right.” A stuttering sob hitched in Samuel’s chest. He pressed a trembling hand to his coveralls. “I’m a coward. All those years seeing the girl. All those years doing nothing.” His hand shot out, gripped Nolan’s shirt and hauled the boy forward. “Don’t be like me!” Nolan tried to pull back, but the old man clutched his coveralls like a man slipping off a ledge. “Don’t be a coward!” Then Samuel fell back on his bed roll, his eyelids fluttered and then shut.
Nolan stumbled out of the shack, shaken and tense. Get away, was all he could think. Get home.
He ran through the night like a drunken man. When he finally burst into his dah’s shack with the bronze jar of balm in his hands, he was shaking. How had the night grown so cold so fast?
“Dah.” He scooted into the shack, carefully set down the jar and knelt beside his father on the bed roll. Every bit of cloth they owned was piled onto his frail father. He grabbed his dah’s shoulder and shook it lightly. “Dah.”
His father’s arm was stiff. Nolan yanked his hand away, a tightness circling around his throat. “Dah!” Nolan tugged off the layers of clothes and blankets until he uncovered his father. Glassy eyes stared up into Nolan’s. Lifeless. Unseeing. Nolan staggered back and struck the shack wall. The world shook. A horrible drumming pounded in his ears.
This couldn’t be happening. Nolan stared at his dah’s body. This could not be happening.
He reached for his dah again, but the minute his fingers touched the stiff, cold arm, Nolan’s stomach clenched. He stumbled out of the shack and fell to his knees on the ground. For a long while he sat, hunched over, his stomach clenching and threatening to revolt. Then he lay down on the ground with the cruel, cold moon lording over him for what felt like hours. Like lifetimes.
His dah was dead. He’d died while Nolan had been at the night bazaar while he was begging for a cure. Where was the jar of balm? Nolan found the jar at the shack’s door, tipped over but intact. He took the smooth ceramic in his hands. It had looked so beautiful an hour or two before. Nolan clutched it to his chest, his heart hammering against it. What if it had helped? What if the apothe had the balm all along and only now sold it to him? Nolan stood, tears streaming down his face, and hurled it into the night. When it shattered, the sound did nothing to sooth his jagged wound of a heart. He dropped his head and sobbed. Then he went inside and lay down beside his poor dah and fell asleep.
When daylight first woke him, he thought he’d overslept. He rolled toward his dah to ask the time. The stink of decay brought his memory back. His father’s skin was paler, his flesh colder. Nolan squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to remember his dah before he had wet-lung, smiling at him at his catechism, throwing an arm around him at the bonfire while they cooked their dinner. The wave of memories brought with it a sadness so thick it could’ve buried Nolan. Fresh tears trailed down his cheeks as he picked up his dah and began carrying him to the burial mound.
Nolan plodde
d to work three hours late. When he stepped up to the glass doors, he knew he might be fired, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His one reason for living now waited in a pile of stinking bodies to be dropped into a hole and covered with dirt. More tears pricked at his eyes. How had this happened?
He wandered into the supply closet and slowly took out his equipment. Where was Samuel? Normally the old man would be all over him by now with questions. Pushing his mop bucket in front of him, Nolan went out in the hall to look.
He made it down two long corridors before Samuel came barreling around a corner, his good eye wide.
Warning bells began to toll in Nolan’s head. Had the drug finally cracked the old man’s brain? “What’s going on?”
Samuel grabbed Nolan by the sleeve, dragged him into the supply closet and locked the door. Then he stood with his back against it, panting.
“Is something wrong?” Nolan asked.
Samuel nodded, his tongue ringing his lips. The old man gripped Nolan’s arm and pulled him close enough to whisper in his ear. “Your girlfriend’s coding.”
Nolan pulled back. “What?”
Samuel’s eyes flicked back and forth as if scanning the small storage closet for intruders. “The Plan B girl. She’s coding.” Nolan shook his head and Samuel gritted his teeth in frustration. “The baby died. The treatments aren’t taking.” He squeezed Nolan’s arm and peered at him with his good eye. “They’re going to kill her. Today.”
It felt like a boulder slamming down on his heart. “What? Why? They can’t.”
“Oh yes, they can.” Samuel licked his lips and drew an object out of his coverall’s pocket. The handgun trembled in Samuel’s grip when he raised it.
Nolan staggered back. “If they find you with that, they…”
“They’ll shoot me,” Samuel said, nodding, his wild hair fluttering like scraps of cloth in a breeze. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. We can redeem ourselves.” Samuel lifted his wrinkled face to Nolan’s, smiling, a manic look in his eye. “This is how we save our souls.” He lifted the black handgun and tapped it on his heart.