by Shane Jones
He knows Mom is ill, she’s mentioned it prior in letters, but he doesn’t know how bad it’s gotten, the layers of ache peeling up from her tiny screams, the rot expanding inside the tunnels inside her bones inside her body. If he could see her. If he could stand before her, he’d feel like a boy seeing her cry for the first time. How he watched hiding from the doorway his mother sob and shake under the bedsheets, and afterward, he realized while sitting on his bed and poking his stomach hard ten times, that she wasn’t invincible like he had previously thought. He wanted her to live forever after he witnessed her and the men in the mine that night, shortly after seeing her cry. He could have done something, but he didn’t. The men went back. You could have done something is a black mantra he repeats daily, an endless banner of You could have done something wrapping around his thoughts and getting tighter and tighter.
The cell door slams shut and distracts him from the memory. The guard tells him to believe in the power of god, the values of Sanders, and smooches his cross.
“Makes sense,” says Pants with a goofy grin.
“Inside your body is a number of crystals.”
“Not as ridiculous,” says Pants mimicking the size of the guard’s smile.
The guard wants to say something back, but decides to continue smirking, that’s his answer back, and he walks from the cell, whistling, strutting, but feeling a little defeated.
In his last sent letter Pants described eating crystal. Cold and sharp under my tongue before pressing it into my gums where it bleeds warm. Tastes pretty good. He discussed the need to jog in place, the gelatinous sweat that rings his neck, the stench of damp crystal mine dirt evaporating from his skin, all his childhood memories burned in amber then stretched into the present positive to make the universe and his life seem less awful. He often wonders why, when he was a boy and he fought endlessly with Dad and in return Dad and Mom fought, did no one ask anyone else one obvious and critical question: are you happy? Once, while on black crystal, he had a dream where he stood behind Mom’s legs as she stirred a cast iron pot rimmed in little green crystals on a stain-crusted stove. They were alone on a beach. The sand was cold. The delicate fabric of Mom’s gown against her calves, his hands. He could taste salt blowing in the breeze. When he began to leave the dream, when he became aware of where he was, prison, the space between his cell’s bars filled with waves.
I placed my tongue on a crystal I found in Remy’s room, Mom writes. A yellow. I was scared to try the black. A metallic taste, lemony, and I pulled the crystal from my mouth and wiped it clean by dragging it over her mattress which I now feel guilty about. I didn’t have the spitting cloth, but I wish I did because I vomited red and probably lost another, but you don’t need to worry about me, I’m not crazy, don’t you worry while you’re in there. Do you remember when you and Remy played the tapping game?
On the second floor a fight breaks out between inmates and guards over the heat. A bottle shatters. The comically high-pitched Al LaValle, says, “Shake me but don’t make me,” as he’s dragged to Jackson’s Hole. Pants sees LaValle’s limp body being wiped horizontally across the floor. Alarm bells ring and guards run. Some of the inmates are singing “Bye Bye Mr. Bad Guy,” and LaValle, still on his back, still being dragged by the guards, is waving both hands to the rhythm.
He replies in his letter that he once wedged broken crystals under his toenails. Each nail on his right foot shined a different color: yellow was the pinkie toe, then blue, red, green, and black for the big toe. Throughout the day he scrunched his foot inside his boot and walked on the tops of his toes in ten-yard clips. People watched him walking odd from shack to shack and they shook their heads, pitied his strangeness. He sprinted across a busy street of mining trucks pumping their breaks and screamed and laughed, the feeling of coming alive through pain and crystals, before collapsing against a store wall and shaking, his feet ballooning with liquid as the candle maker himself told him to hurry along while poking him with a stick.
He opens the second letter on the bed. It’s from Brothers Feast. He’s received these letters before, a kind of fan mail from those following in the footsteps of The Sky Father Gang:
1) What’s a jailbreak in reverse look like?
2) Would you like to leave the prison?
He grabs the white box from the closet and takes out the black crystal which is changing shape with use – in his palm it looks like two small intertwined pinecones. A passing guard who already appears maxed-out, eyes not looking like eyes, stops at his cell and stares. Pants picks off a crumb-edge that the guard takes. The guard smiles, places the crumb-edge under his tongue, and crab-walks away to the sound of ringing bells. Pants knows what’s going on because he’s seen it before: guards getting sky-high are messing with the alarms and jumping and laughing inside an office with bullet-proof glass. They are taking turns pressing their faces against the glass and blowing kisses until they pass out. The crab walking guard on his way back to the office is having too much fun, grinding his pelvis against the walls as he goes.
Pants sits back on the bed. With his front teeth he shaves off a layer of black dust from a flat side. He catches the dust on the top of his pointer finger, raises it to his nose, inhales, poof.
He writes back that a jailbreak in reverse would be criminals running into jail. Or no, a jailbreak in reverse would be criminals or people who belong in jail running into a jail and freeing everyone who doesn’t belong in jail and the criminals staying in the jail. He rips the paper with hand speed. He’s excited with the possibility of leaving as the thoughts, ideas, spin and tear at the You could have done something banner. He draws a square with arrows running in and bubble-lines running out. The arrows are labeled Brothers Feast and the bubble-lines The Sky Father Gang.
Answer to question two, this answer written with more control: Yes and I will help you. He’s heard the prison looks real pretty from the outside, and who knows how much time is left before the city moves in. Is it true the heat wave is only getting worse? From my window the sky looks faded from too much sun. Beneath this he writes Pretend to be inmates. One of you will play the role of a newbie transfer guard. Say it’s for a transfer to a holding tank called Willows Bay. I’ll leave with the others. Brothers Feast will remain inside the prison until they become legends in the village and then set free when the administration realizes what’s happened. They won’t, they can’t, keep the foolish innocent. If there’s a problem, just act insane. They never keep the crazies in here. If you can pull off breaking into the prison, you can later pull off breaking out of a psych ward. Just follow these guidelines…
Pants McDonovan dances with black crystal inside him and the thought of leaving the prison. He closes his eyes and pumps his legs and sees himself running from the beach with Harvak at his side. The family stove floats in the ocean. I’m going to see you again. I’m going to leave and get a chance to start over. At the horizon the prison melts like stomped mud and a ring of light expands outward igniting the ocean in shark-fin flames. Harvak barks looking backward and leaps to the side from the following light. Mom stands in the front yard holding the cast iron pot rimmed in little green crystals. When Pants looks up, the sky is a mirror of all this, and he sees himself and Harvak become encased in light.
28
When Mom was a child she had an imaginary friend named Tock Ocki who only appeared in the corner of the bathtub when she was in the bathroom. He had a toddler’s body and the head of a rabbit. Mom said the kids at school threw dirt in her eyes during recess and at lunch they said she would be alone forever. Tock Ocki told her that special people are destined to do special things. He stood in the tub, folded and unfolded his ears, and danced. She became so happy when he did this that she felt like she wanted to live forever.
27
It’s a brittle corner soon to be dust. Pants shoves a sliver under his big toenail until it knifes the flesh. Pacing in his cell, he bends his toe inside his sneaker, the crystal cracking and cutting, slitting
open skin. He prepares this way for the health meeting because he has to talk during the health meeting. It’s difficult enough to listen to hundreds of words exiting a guard’s mouth about god, but to return them sober among peers and the supervisor is nearly impossible. It’s hard to look at people who have faces. Besides, he thinks he’s leaving this place sometime soon and one last health meeting is doable.
The meeting takes place in the administrative wing, in the feet of the large L that is the prison. It’s been quiet lately, inmates on the upper levels succumbing to the heat and whispering rumors that the city is moving mysteriously toward the village. No one, not the guards, not the prisoners, not the administration, knows what to believe, so they wait and stick to their schedules, which include the meetings.
A table with a coffee urn, Styrofoam cups, a cube of napkins, and a box of donuts is placed against the wall in the meeting room. In the center – eight white plastic chairs with metal legs. The floor is a smooth and slippery cement. One wearing socks could run through the open door of the room, glide to the opposite side, and bump into the guard who stands ready for the meeting, arms crossed high and tight, his expression absurdly serious.
Pants is ushered into the room by a guard who tells him to get up on it. Pants faces the cement block wall so close he smells the crystal fungus of his own breath. He stands in a wide stance with arms reaching for the corners of the ceiling, fingertips pressed into the stucco’s dimples. Behind him, chairs arranged in a circle, the plastic boom of each put into proper place, metal legs scratching the cement, a guards keys jangling as he paces. The donuts are opened. A gravel-voice says, “Nice, donuts.” The urn’s orange tongue is flicked up, coffee rushes along styrofoam, and another voice, this one scary deep says, “Nice, coffee.” A guard states there is a strict two-donut limit. He repeats himself, holding two fingers in the air while pivoting back-and-forth 180 degrees, because Tony, with his massive hand grabs five at once. The guard signals with his eyes to put the extra donuts back but Tony manages in one bite to taste all five.
The other guard squats, and holding McDonovan’s calf with two hands, moves up his leg. His hair is inspected by a two-hand tousle that reminds Pants of Mom checking for lice – bugs they heard about from the city and never would have cared about but a panic ensued. They react to the policies of the city, especially if on television. He curls his big toe so the crystal touches the bottom of his shoe and the shard sinks in, hurts. When he extends the toe, blood and liquid crystal warms his foot, feels real good. When he closes his eyes, the guard’s hands patting his hips (ten times quickly, what are the chances of that), he sees a beach with Remy running into waves colored night.
Goon-bodies plop themselves into the chairs. Everyone settles in. Everyone gets ready.
“Turn,” says the guard who is the guard with the gold cross necklace, which appears several times larger than before, the gold cross now covering his chest and stomach.
“You got it, sexy hands,” Pants says with his now usual goofy smile. He wants to make the guard feel uncomfortable and “sexy hands” does the trick.
“Op-en,” says the guard. “Don’t sass me. I said it before, the lord will decide and speak through Sanders.”
“Touch me, hurt me, love me.”
He opens his mouth and it’s so clean that the guard takes a step back and peers up into the mouth. Those who eat black crystal are known to have black worm spirals rotting their inner cheeks. The tongue a block of coal. If the guard could see down McDonovan’s throat he’d see pink fleshy walls draped in sheets of watery fungus, a symptom of a capable body flushing out the black after each use. Pants shuts his mouth, swallows, and the watery fungus washes away. He smiles without showing teeth. Has the smile of his mother.
“Good to go,” the guard says. “Wait and see.”
“That’s what we’re all doing, right?”
“Move.”
“I mean, seriously, we’re all just waiting for something to happen, to end us? That’s what this life is?”
Sitting down, he rests his forearms on his thighs, slightly above the knees, and clasps his hands. He’s dressed in orange pants and an orange top with a flimsy collar and two white buttons. His arms are long and skinny and losing muscle. His legs are thin too, not much below the knees swimming inside the orange material. His chest hurts when he coughs. The lights in the room suck up all space.
The supervisor is a big white guy with a block head and a military crew-cut named Jugba Marzan, commonly known as Jug, who wears high-waist khaki pants and a white button down shirt with the sleeves twisted sloppy at the elbows. He smells like hot dog water and mouth mints.
Not a guy who is completely out of shape, but looks like he played football and juiced and then let it all go. Sad.
Jugba says they will speak in an open and non-judgmental forum. The rules are simple. Everyone needs to say something about their past. Jug is allowed to ask two questions, after which, he will move to the next person.
“You. Say what you want, anything at all, this is a safe place where everyone, everyone right, will keep their opinions to themselves until everyone has had a turn. Things should run smoothly today. I’m under supervision myself,” he looks up at a moving camera in the corner, “and the last thing I need is an incident like we’ve had here before. I’m in control. We’re going to learn.” Jug smoothes the chest of his shirt with two hands. He’s incredibly nervous.
“…”
Everyone wears orange with white sneakers, black Velcro straps replace laces. A man named Crumb – small, mean – pinches the ashy tattooed praying hands on his neck while leaning back in his chair until the front legs hover off the ground, his cheeks puffed with air, his eyes blue and distant. There’s Pete with his forearm tattoos inked in arial black – left arm: Everything I Kill I Fuck, right arm: Everything I Fuck I Kill – who chews watermelon flavored gum and crumples the tent of orange fabric at his crotch with a bouncing finger. Tony sits slumped, his arms larger than most men’s thighs, folded over his chest, his left shirtsleeve rolled up above the bicep revealing a rash of raised skin in the shape of a key. Others sit looking at their shoes waiting for the health meeting to just end.
Jug has donut powder on his face. “All right, gotta play,” he says, chewing his lips.
“…”
Pants shuts down when attempting to externalize emotion. This fact he’s learned from these meetings. Something about family systems or was it family of origin. He stares at Jug. He leans forward. His big toe rubs the bottom of his shoe and his entire foot feels wet, hot, but he can’t get moving. Not here. Not like this. He can’t enter the high because of their faces. The black crystal isn’t strong enough for him to escape this time even though he’s done it before on less. The obligation surrounding him is suffocating. Jug’s question is drawing him out. Reality has a way of breaking you.
“Donut,” says Jug. “Now speak.”
“…”
Two invisible chambers floating in the center of the room are this: Jug asking Pants to talk, his chamber filling up, and the reaction chamber is Pants shuts off, the chamber emptying. They are connected. He knows this. Things learned. Basic Distancer vs. Pursuer. His emotions are hidden under crystals. He wants to flip the chambers and come out with so much hiss and words that Jug will blow back through the wall and dissolve. The black crystal rushes through his veins and creates bumps on his skin. There are no bumps on his skin, Pants just imagines them, but he starts rubbing his arms. He needs to get on the beach. It’s getting stronger, he can feel it.
“Crystal shithead,” says Crumb. “Go and we get this over with.”
“…”
A guard circles holding a club in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. He’s eaten three donuts, smells like clean laundry, and has a chicken dinner waiting at home. He’s one of the few guards who doesn’t eat crystal and is against the other guards taking it. He’s friends with the guard who wears the gold cross and together they pray in a roo
m located in the prison used for nothing but praying. The praying room is labeled Praying Room. There’s an oil painting of an illuminated Jesus and a carpeted kneeling bench in royal purple. They really love to pray. The other guards who are hooked on the black crystal dislike them for what they interpret not as personal belief, but a moral judgment on their souls. The guard looks around the room for something to attack.
Everything looks weird to Pants. The guard’s eyes are a horizontal slit across his head which is a grape and the lights on the ceiling slither and drool. The air is pixilated. Tony’s arm rash is raised and jellied. His chair feels hot and alive.
“Holy shit,” says Jug.
“…”
“I think,” says Crumb. “I’d eat the village cold.”
Pants speaks. The story is this:
When he was nine years old he followed Mom into the mine. He thought she was a witch because she wore a black robe. Seeing her without her usual gray gown reminded him of seeing Dad for the first time without a mustache – a cruel trick with paralyzing aftershock for a toddler. He followed her. She was a shadow in that black gown floating over the truck-pressed roads, past the vegetable stands, poorly constructed leaning shacks, homes with crude metal roofs, the loud-lighted bars with street corners gorged with drunks vomiting count. He followed her into the mine, keeping his distance in the dark. She performed a séance. Knees bent, body bouncing from side to side, she growled as she reached for the sky. She placed an invisible towel over the head of the moon and cleaned it. Years later he’d find out many mothers conducted séances to increase their count when they felt sick. It was normal. But what’s not normal is her wearing a black robe instead of a gray gown. What’s not normal is what happened to Mom and his reaction after and his following guilt.