Inspection

by Josh Malerman

  But did any of them…reinvent natural law, as he had?

  Richard shook snow from his beard and hair. He had to be patient, he knew; they were only twelve years old. Where had Richard been at twelve?

  “Distracted,” he said. He spit in the snow.

  This thought, not voiced often, was much too serious for the day. Richard let it vanish into the snowy mist, where it might freeze and break into unexamined pieces.

  His boys had no idea how powerful they could be. How focused. The Effigy Meet was meant to reveal their deepest psychologies…not his own.

  The Effigy Meet, Burt told Richard, represented the communal understanding of life (creation, by their own hands) and death (even the most spectacular sculptures eventually became puddles). Richard, Burt said, relished this, for it forced the boys to consider their own mortality. Their genius, Richard believed, would inspire the boys to figure out a way to prolong it. Immortality by way of eliminating distractions. For, if a man has no one else to live for but himself, might he not spend his life combating death?

  At the Parenthood, snow was good for serious thinking.

  Never were the boys as curious about the meaning of existence as they were in the winter. Burt found this fact endlessly fascinating. The Alphabet Boys expressed as much self-analysis as men living in the hub of a big city, surrounded by thousands to bounce themselves off, myriad ways of life, various styles and moods. It was senseless to Burt, impossible to think that the homogenized world of the boys could harvest the same results as those of a child from Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles. Yet annually the winter Inspections showed the boys contemplating metaphysics as complex as that which Richard himself had devoted his life to. More complex in some cases. The emotional questionnaires procured odd answers and fresh questions of their own, ranging from what it meant to be embarrassed to determining the finite number of heartbeats a man has in his lifetime.

  Death was a striking topic when discussed by boys who knew nothing of being born.

  All this in mind, always, Richard watched them now, his boys, working, carving, creating. But he couldn’t quite stop his train of thought.

  Richard knew there were recent whispers among the boys, attempts at trying to understand the purpose of the Parenthood. He equated this with their changing philosophies and expected some degree of tumult and even mutiny along the way. His (now legendary among his staff) absolute dismissal of video cameras, while counterintuitive to his end goal, was proving more right by the year. The boys didn’t need to be spied on. The boys needed to be trained to come clean with their transgressions, their concerns, their worries. For was there really the possibility of a boy being spoiled so long as the Parenthood stood guard over the grounds?

  The boys ought not to be watched but watched over.

  Here, observing this year’s Effigy Meet, watching the boys cleaving and cutting, the chips of ice collecting like beliefs at their winter boots, Richard felt as confident as the storm.

  Hands ever-folded behind his back, his hair white now with winter, he strolled the Yard like a general, the specter lieutenant, his black boots crunching the packed snow, leaving evidence of his having been there, having observed the work of his boys. His boys! Oh, how the air felt crisp against his skin! How the sound of the ice picks danced ballet in his ears! The click click click of so many doors opening! So many minds unlocked!

  A curtain of sleet caused him to shield his face, and when he opened his eyes again, Y came storming through the snowfall upon a carriage of ice. W and F pulled him, sled dogs for the moment. Tandem. Teamwork.

  His boys.

  Richard called to them, encouraging them to ride, ride, ride into the winter.

  And never from it.

  G worked hard on a road, wide enough to circle the tower, level enough to carry Y’s coach.

  S sat upon the early-draft stages of a rocking chair.

  P polished a mirror of ice.

  “Excellent work!” Richard hollered. “Excellent work!”

  X seemed to be working on a stage. What for? Richard would have to wait and see.

  I built a room. Four walls and two doors. What for? He’d see.

  Q had begun a ladder.

  What for?

  “Will you help me test how much it holds?” Q asked him. “It could certainly use a dry run.”

  Richard eyed the seven rungs, the top leaning flush against the Turret bricks.

  “I’d love to,” he said.

  He climbed Q’s ladder, finding a perfectly solid base with the first rung. His implicit trust, his faith in Q’s precision and practicality, moved him, and soon Richard was standing above the Yard, looking down upon his pupils, his sons, his boys. A full story high, the wind cut even deeper.

  String music flowed from the Turret speakers above him. His boys in perpetual motion below.

  “And it’s going to go even higher!” Q called, cupping his mouth against the distance and snow.

  “I believe you!” D.A.D. called back. “I believe you could reach the roof!”

  After climbing down, Richard continued his Zen trek through the spectacle in snow, applauding each boy he came to.

  “This is wonderful, P! Wonderful stuff!”

  L had built a cold pendulum of ice. D.A.D. knew well the craftsmanship necessary for executing this task, yet, in the midst of a true storm, the boy had done it single-handedly.

  Richard continued, shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back. Hair bone white. A waltz through his own winter parade.

  B showed him the likeness of a man whose frozen organs could be removed, the torso swiveling on ice hinges.

  N paved a patio deck for Richard’s quarters.

  Still a few steps from D, Richard paused. D, of course, had shown irregular signs in his recent Inspections. Suggestions, Burt claimed, of a boy about to revolt. And here the boy had carved a door of ice into the ground. Down to the knob. As if he might open it and descend into the earth.

  Or beneath the Turret.

  A simple design?

  A thing to make?

  A way out?

  “Tell me, D. To where does this door lead?”

  D did not hesitate when he said, “The Corner. As I’ve always imagined it to look.”

  For the first time today, Richard was surprised.

  “And why have you decided to make that?”

  D weighed his words. “I don’t know. Maybe because I feel that, if I build it here, outside, I’ll never actually see it…in there.”

  D.A.D. placed a hand upon D’s shoulder. “Let’s call it a door to the future,” he said. “And let’s hope that you do see it…in there, out here, always.”

  He held D’s gaze as falling flakes passed between them.

  “I like that,” D said. Were those tears in his eyes? And what for? What feelings had the boy been keeping in? “A door to the future.”

  * * *

  —

  A COLD SMILE and D.A.D. continued. D watched him go. And when he looked down at the door again, when he tried, sincerely, to see it the way D.A.D. had described it, he could not. For, no matter what angle he adopted, no matter how hard he tried to smooth over the cracks and splinters he’d added, the door refused to have anything to do with the future.

  “Unless that future is…” D began. But he did not say the Corner.

  Time Enough at Last

  J hadn’t got the feeling entirely back in his fingers yet. So the book felt a little odd in his hands.

  Back in his rooms now. His body thawing out. That book open before his eyes. The warmth of the bedroom, the comfortable black couch beneath him, the snow falling outside.

  Page 1.

  Needs

  Written by a man named Warren Bratt (what a name).

  This was much better than unpacking.


  The tip of Q’s ladder leaned against the glass of his living room window, and J felt as if it was his good friend, his brother’s way of making contact, even with the floors between them.

  J read.

  From the very first line, the book felt different from any Luxley book J had ever read. It was, in a word, forceful. He wasn’t sure if he liked that. Lawrence Luxley painted gorgeous pictures of the Orchard and the Yard, the tower and its many floors. But this man Bratt was talking about a place called…Milwaukee?

  It sounded silly. Too silly. A completely imaginary place the author referred to as a “city.” There were many towers in Milwaukee. Too many to comprehend.

  J closed the book.

  The wind outside took the ladder, then set it against the glass again. J spun quick at the sound of the tap, half-expecting to see Q at his window.

  The wind. The storm. Still going.

  He got up off the couch and went to the glass, looked down to the many sculptures below. The Turret lights illuminated the scene and J was able to see details, from this angle, that he hadn’t been able to when down in the Yard.

  He looked back to the couch. To the book.

  “Milwaukee,” he said. He shook his head. Whatever this book was, it wasn’t very good. It made him feel…weird. Almost as if the one or two pages had actually scared him.

  A second strong wind lifted the ladder and set it back again. Tap. Sounded like knuckles.

  J looked to the pines. Saw nobody there.

  “City,” he said. Again, the idea of so many towers (and how many boys, then, huh? How many boys in so many towers, Mr. Bratt!) overwhelmed him. He looked to the book. He went to it.

  Sitting up now, he opened to where he’d left off.

  Milwaukee. City. Bar. Cars. Cigars. Alcohol. Some of the words in the book J knew. But he’d never seen them used this way. One word that particularly stuck out, that chilled him, was:

  Alley.

  More specifically, J read about men discussing something in an alley. From what he could gather, they were standing between two towers, surrounded by trash bins. Warren Bratt wrote a lot about the smell of trash. The smell of machine exhaust. The smell of the city.

  It didn’t sound like a good place to be. J looked to his bedroom door. Should he and his floor mates get together and talk about this? Like…right now?

  But no. The note. D.A.D. had expressly told them not to discuss the book until they were done. J was discovering how hard that was going to be.

  He closed the book. He got up. Despite the cruel cold outside, his rooms felt hot. Too hot. He took the small hall to the bathroom and washed his hands. His face. He wanted to feel the cool water. Needed a change, any change. That book…

  He looked down the hall to the couch.

  “That book is not right,” he said.

  He thought of D.A.D. and the blue notebooks. Thought of a lot of things. The new feelings he’d been having. The new ideas and fears. Was this book some sort of experiment? Surely D.A.D. would eventually be asking him and his brothers about it in the coming Inspections. What questions might he have?

  “You gotta finish it first,” he said.

  But could J finish a book like this one? Would he make it through it? Leaning against the sink, as though trying to get as far from the book as possible while still keeping his eye on it, J didn’t think he could.

  When the wind took Q’s ladder again, then set it back, J yelped with genuine fright.

  Milwaukee. Alley. Trash.

  He hurried back to the couch. He thought about Q. Q would read it. All of it. And he’d have a hundred brilliant things to say.

  “Don’t be so scared! It’s just a book!”

  He tried to laugh about it. Tried.

  What did D think of it? What did L think? J was sure of one thing: L wasn’t going to talk about it until he was done, because the Parenthood had told him not to. But D? D might. D might say something on purpose just to break the rule.

  D had also carved the Corner door out of ice. Certainly a topic of gossip among the Alphabet Boys.

  J went to the window and eyed the sculptures below. Y’s carriage. I’s one-room home. D’s door.

  J was worried about D. The Corner. Why? Why had D decided to make that?

  He looked to Mister Tree. To Q’s ladder.

  Back on the couch, he picked the book up and started reading where he’d left off. He had half a mind to skim it, if only to spare himself the weird feelings it gave him. Already. Yet, J had to admit, whatever Bratt was doing, it was effective. Here he was, scared to open a book! Never before had J experienced that kind of power with a pile of pages. Oh, Luxley knew how to thrill. No doubt about that. And the textbooks could be daunting…but this. This was different. This was as if someone was in the room with him. Like Mr. Bratt was crouched behind the couch, listening to J as he read, waiting to pop out, to grab him, to say, DID IT WORK? DID I SCARE YOU?

  Yes, J thought. Already.

  He read on. Read about a man who drank so much whiskey that he was on his hands and knees in the alley, throwing up blood. He read about another who watched people walking in the street below his studio apartment. The man had bad thoughts about these people. Very bad. He read about another man who had bad thoughts about himself. Very bad.

  But the man who interested J most was the one named Robert, who sought inspiration in the form of a person, someone with whom he might build something deeper than a basement with. Someone to love. Someone to tell the truth to.

  J looked to the ceiling.

  Someone to tell the truth to.

  It all sounded so strange, so foreign, so utterly creative.

  He read on.

  Seemingly against his own will, he started liking it. Partly. Like when one man punched another in the face and blood sprayed out like he’d sneezed red. Or like when one man stepped in a puddle of puke.

  It was all completely incredible. Every word. There wasn’t a familiar sentence in the book.

  Outside, the wind howled what sounded like an actual word, and J watched the ladder settle against the glass again. He had a sudden shocking vision of Q’s creation smashing the glass, allowing the bad weather in.

  And more.

  Like Milwaukee. Maybe Milwaukee would get into his rooms.

  He imagined the characters of Bratt’s book entering through the broken window. The men with pockmarked faces, red boozer noses, and sad watery eyes. Slack skin and frowns. Bad breath and greasy hair.

  Each Bratt grotesquerie filing into his rooms. Crowding him on the couch, forcing him to drink gin. To talk loud. To confess.

  Confess what? What did the man Robert want to confess?

  Needs

  What a terrible title for this book! What was Warren Bratt thinking? Using such a title while describing everything a boy didn’t need!

  The thought made J smile. As if, by way of dismissing it, he’d somehow gotten the joke. As if, by seeing how ridiculous it was, he somehow understood what Warren Bratt was trying to say.

  But did he? Could he or any of his brothers ever understand this book?

  He read on.

  Robert was walking down one of the many streets of Milwaukee when he saw someone (a slim figure, long hair, sunglasses) enter a corner bar. J could hardy keep up with all the made-up stuff, the imagery, the names of the places, and the way Warren Bratt wrote about it all as if the reader, J, was supposed to get it without an ounce of explanation.

  Gibberish.

  But what interesting gibberish it was.

  After a very long internal monologue in which Robert wondered if the man he saw walking into the bar might be the one he could confess to, Robert entered the bar, too. J wondered if D had read this far. Q, L, X, anybody. Had any of the Alphabet Boys read this far? Had any a
lready finished this book?

  The thought made him surprisingly jealous. Like when J had to use the bathroom while the movie was playing on Film Night and he’d missed a scene that D or Q later cited as one they liked.

  What did Q think of Robert? What did Q think of the neighborhood bar? And had he already read far enough along to know what happened to Robert when he entered the place?

  J read on.

  The description of the bar was so Bratt. Smoke and vomit. Stale air and whispers. Round cushioned seats called booths. Stools lined up at a long wooden counter (also called a bar, odd to J). Mirrors and bottles. Lights, but not the bright kind apparently, as Bratt’s description was very dim, gloomy, dark. Music played, but Bratt didn’t describe it the way J knew music to be. J thought of the violins and drums, cellos and flutes, that came through the speakers in the halls of the Turret during school hours. D.A.D. said it was all in the name of enhanced study, but J didn’t think there was any studying going on in this neighborhood bar in Milwaukee. There were a lot of men inside (at least three people to a booth and sometimes two to a stool), but there was no mention of any books. In fact, it was more like an unsettling combination of the Body Hall and the cafeteria; everybody was either making a speech or drinking…something. And what exactly were they drinking? That was hard to say.

  Bratt kept using the term booze, and his description of how it smelled (something rancid, something sweet) had J thinking he’d smelled it before on D.A.D. On the few occasions D.A.D. was, as Q said, not himself. L once suggested D.A.D. had endured mild cases of Vees through the years, moments when he smelled like someone else.

  Or maybe, J thought now, what they’d smelled was booze.

  J was getting excited. The bar, dismal as it was, sounded like an adventure. As if the shadowed booths harbored entire worlds where anything was possible so long as you felt it, spoke it, drank it.