by Shane Jones
A man with a square head with hair like a bed of needles takes a plank of wood, a section of his bedframe, and thrusts it between the bars, stabbing Ricky in the shoulder who falls into the net attached between the ceiling and the metal railing. When the net tears, two guards catch him and pull him back. Inmates cheer.
The Brothers forget everything they’ve learned. This wasn’t supposed to happen, maybe it’s another game by Karl, but no, this is different, this is pure violence, and Z. rescans all the letters, and the plan, the red underlines all over his bedroom walls and comes up with nothing.
Z., breaking out in a full body sweat, overwhelmed with what he’s gotten himself into, the prison a place of terror, nothing like the pamphlet leads one to believe, taps Jug on the shoulder and says the paper specifies what inmates he’s taking.
“I know,” says Jug.
“McDonovan,” says Z. standing on his toes, aiming his words over Jug’s shoulder. “The Sky Father Gang.”
“I’m a counselor, well, a supervisor, so I understand people. We have these health meetings. I’ve learned things. I know what you’re telling me. Hey, I get it.”
Z. looks behind him and everyone is gone except Bobby T. who is on his knees and surrounded by guards holding batons high. One of the guards is wearing a giant gold cross and telling Bobby T. to pray, instructing him how to properly bend forward, where to place his hands on the floor which the guard guides with little kicks. Bobby T. keeps pulling his hands back toward himself because he’s being kicked. One baton moves.
“Jailbreak in reverse,” says Jug.
“What?” says Z.
“Amazing.”
Z. is covered in sweat and his clothes feel heavy, like they are pulling him to the ground. His legs are sore with the panic settling into his flesh. He wipes his forehead with the torn piece of green robe tied to his wrist and his hair is soaked. He pulls the sleeve of his shirt back over the piece of green fabric. He’s not sure what to say. He’s not sure what to do. What would The Sky Father Gang do. What would his grandfather do. What would anyone who doesn’t want to die do.
“Karl put you up to this? Keeps getting us.” Then village Z. coming out, the man who once jumped from a table in the street to a moving truck’s hood: “I’m leaving.”
“No joke,” Jug says, who opens an empty cell.
Z. considers running. Guards approach from either end of the hallway. More inmates cheering and bells going off and guards telling inmates to be quiet because there’s nothing to see. Sharpened spoons flung from cells. When Z. gets a good look of the prison from where he stands all he sees are dark boxes with bars, stacked side by side and on top of each other. A guard is picking up the spoons as more spoons are thrown.
“Come in,” says Jug. “I need to ask you a favor. You don’t know it now, but this will work out for the best, for both of us.”
Inside the cell Jug appears fatter. His face is doughy and his neck is red from shaving. He has the general appearance of a man once in good shape and in control of his life, in Younger Years, but is now someone uncomfortable with the body he’s in. He moves as if he doesn’t fully understand it. He hates the size of his shirts. When he showers, he stares not at the size of his dick, but his stomach.
“Black crystal,” says Jug, sitting down on the cot. “We’re addicted.”
“My job is to bring them in,” says Z., going back on script, still trying to pull off the impossible. He knows a black crystal doesn’t exist, so what Jug says about it doesn’t register. He moves back and forth from terror to strength and back again.
“You guys acting like kids, smearing shit on your faces to mess with others, putting a table in the middle of the road, I mean.”
“What?”
A guard locks the door. The clang raises Z.’s shoulders.
“Basketball accident,” says Jug wincing, reaching for his ankle to tie his shoe. “We have a court here. Half a court. Was going in hard when Little Karl, who will be happy to know can mark up his book when I’m done here, decides to take a charge. I sort of pulled back,” Jug leans backward with his right arm swan shaped, “and pulled off this beauty of a one-hand floater. That didn’t stop my body from toppling over into Little Karl. Damn, it hurt. Never felt pain like that before, like my whole body was shook-up inside. I didn’t make the shot.”
Z. backs up against the cell bars, cold. He’s four feet from where Jug sits but it feels like inches. He breaths in the prison and listens to the ugly sounds from within it.
“I,” says Z. “T-t-t-this place –”
Sweat and urine and men kept in vomit-filled boxes they decorated but are never cleaned have been molded in the heat for weeks. The prison isn’t like Z. was told. The prison isn’t like how it’s promoted to everyone outside it. The prison is a place worse than any part of the village. And since the heat wave was noticeable, since the black crystal has been depleting and getting scary low, things have only gotten worse.
“When it gets hot in here, right at peak late afternoon heat, it smells like a pig farted through a cigarette,” says Jug. “Is that an image or what?” Jug smiles way longer than anyone should smile after saying something so disgusting and then gets serious, smoothing the chest of his shirt, the professional version of himself coming on. “And every few months a group not totally unlike yourselves tries to rescue someone. Usually over-eager city folk with some messed up relative the system got wrong, should have been placed in Willows Bay, right. But everyone likes it here. Okay, not everyone, I see the way you’re looking at me, but why leave something that takes care of you? For example, you could have the worst mom in the world who brings home retards, but she feeds you chicken and buys you jeans and washes your bedsheets, and you forget how she yells and screams and drinks too much and makes the retards breakfast in the morning while they sit slumped, but not you, you don’t say a word because you have it easy with a mom like that, you’re taken care of and you don’t leave it.”
Z. senses bodies behind him. He’s lean and muscular, sure, a little belly on him, and he’s always prided himself that he can take care of himself in a fight, but now, he’s terrified.
“There’s been a mistake,” he says. “You said something about black crystal.”
“It’s tricky to reseal an envelope and not have the receiver be suspicious. What you do is use steam from an iron,” says Jug, and he runs an imaginary iron over his thigh.
Through the bars a hairy hand massages the back of his neck and Z. tries to walk forward and the hand squeezes. A hush of male voices blends with the concrete echoes and metallic sounds of the prison. Z. imagines crawling through the crystal mine dirt as a child, licking it, then getting yelled at by Mom, her hand gripping his neck.
“You don’t want to see what’s behind you,” says Jug. “I figured you’d want to free him. He’s a good one. That black crystal does all sorts of stuff. Makes you feel superman. Problem is we’re about to run out. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, that’s why I let you in here in the first place. All this is going to turn out for the better, you’ll see.”
“It’s a m-m-m-myth,” says Z.
“I’m afraid, good sir,” says Jug, so confident now, not like the previous health meeting, “that you’re incorrect.”
“It’s just dark-colored red,” says Z. “You’re living a lie.”
“Not sure that matters because really, we’re running out,” says Jug. He reaches his hand into a pants pocket and scratches himself.
“Then walk in and steal some. Send Mob of Mary’s.”
Inmates cheer in a rhythmic sing-song way and Z. wonders what’s happening. Is Bobby T. dead? The prison is evil. Arnold is probably saying something offensive. His arms will be torn off by dogs.
“I’ve read the letters. You’re smart,” says Jug, “and also dumb. My sister is like this. She’s the smartest dumb person I know. She has two college degrees and when we get together with Mom she always makes the last point, always breaks people down. She
’s unemployed and has never held a job for longer than a month she’s so smart.”
“I remember looking for them,” says Z. “Everyone digging around like crazy in the rain because someone said they thought they saw one.”
From his pocket where his hand scratched, Jug pulls out a tiny twisted branch of black crystal. He holds it up in the dull light between his thumb and finger, turning it and rolling it between his fingers. It’s about two inches long and in its thinness looks breakable. The blackness is undeniable, and without realizing what he’s doing, Z. reaches out to touch it and the hand on his neck digs in deeper and pulls him back. In the jerking-back-to-reality motion Z. thinks the crystal has to be a fake, a set-up, no way, how is it possible.
“They exist,” says Jug, carefully placing the black crystal back in his pocket. “It’s very simple what I’m asking here. No bullshit.”
Z. says it’s just a dark-colored red, you’re being fooled, total bullshit. Everyone is eventually fooled into believing in something that doesn’t exist. Give meaning to your existence no matter what. Z. remembers this passage from one of the books, and he’s proud of himself for being able to recite it, it seems so powerful, it sounds so good, but it has no effect whatsoever on Jug who just sits with a neutral facial expression. And the more Z. thinks about it, the more he thinks maybe it is a black. He too wants to believe.
“You’re perfect because you live there. Spending time in the mine won’t be odd compared to, you know, Mob of Mary’s, or someone from here going in that deep.”
“It does something to your insides?”
“Yes,” says Jug, kind of looking at Z. with a half smirk and general disbelief. “You’re not like my sister, no, not at all. You have things at stake and you’ll work hard to make sure everything works out.”
“It’s not supposed to happen like this. This place, in here, isn’t like how people think it is.”
“If one exists,” says Jug, “more exist.”
Z. getting anxious and self-conscious: “H-h-h-how am I s-s-s-suppose to f-f-f-feel about this?”
“Feel good.”
Z. races back through memories of Younger Years but can’t find a black crystal. Generations have looked and failed. Some believe that a combination of rain and heat bring them up, but this has never been proven, only rumored. It will be impossible to find in hours, days, what has been worked at for years. Z. feels lightheaded, like he might pass out with the next breath. Everything – the heat, the sun, the stress of the jailbreak in reverse, what his life is or isn’t – is killing him. He imagines his count as salt in a half circle around his boots.
There’s a long pause. More bells ringing. Someone from the second floor throws a shoe filled with rocks at a window. Jug shakes his head, rubs his face with two sweaty hands. “Go into the mine and bring back more black crystal. That’s it.”
Z.’s shoulders feel like they are arching around his head. The hand is still on him. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“We don’t trust anyone here.”
“I think we should just forget all this.”
Prison noise and silence in the cell, Jug just staring through Z.
“I could list everything that would happen to your friends,” says Jug. “Listen, I’ve read the letters multiple times, they’re fascinating. You want to be someone important, that’s fine, I understand that urge. But it’s greed. Don’t pretend it’s something more or something different. I’m here to help though, because my greed is black crystal and being the guy who gets it. Bring it back here and you’ll be remembered, that’s what you want, I know that and you know that. Win-win. See?”
Another hand from behind runs up the inside of Z.’s leg.
“But what you’re asking me to do is impossible,” says Z. “This feels like a t-t-t-trick.”
“What you’ll learn,” says Jug, “is that everything is a trick. Only thing that isn’t is the universe. I’m talking about outer space, the sun, the moon, planets, stuff we don’t know about. No humor out there. Serious business among those stars. The universe does whatever it wants while we’re forced to play games. We’ve all thought about our lives compared to what’s above, right? Think about it, the universe is going to live forever. No counting days or crystals. No last breaths with loved ones. The universe will just keep expanding. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s important that we just do what it is we do and we keep doing it for as long as possible.”
Z. imagines an entire network of black crystals underground. It has to be a fantasy. But he saw it, Jug held it up for that quick moment, and he’s never seen a crystal like that before. Was it just a red, this messed jail lighting, his exhaustion, his mind dimming the color? Why would someone like Jug make up such a story if it wasn’t real?
“What I’m saying is, you had your own idea of a game to keep you occupied. A jailbreak in reverse. I mean, fuck, stupid and somehow brilliant. That’s why you can do this. And we have a game in here where guards take black crystal, and when they don’t they act like idiots. They hurt more. What are we suppose to do – fire them and let them tell the media what’s going on? PR disaster. I feel like I’m talking to myself here. This is the game we want to keep playing and there isn’t anything wrong with that. The game is what keeps you distracted from the universe bearing down on you.”
“I understand,” says Z., “but I don’t know what’s happening.”
“I’ll give you a few days. I’m not sure your friends can last more. Come back with it and they walk. Pants too. As a matter of fact, all the villagers in here, everyone goes, why not. You’ll be remembered as the man who sprung your people free. They’ll build you a statue and you’ll be remembered forever. Don’t let me keep you longer. The guards get wild without it. No telling what they might do to your friends while you’re away. And no telling what they may do if we can’t control them, maybe run rabid to his home and find the one his mom has in that box. Only so much I can do here. Come on, let’s go.”
Z. runs under the sun-clogged sky. He makes eye contact with a man wearing a dress sitting on the stoop of a brick building. The man raises his arm slowly, the sleeve of his blue dress gathering around his elbow, and while coughing, he gives Z. the middle finger. Z. runs faster. He puts the city on his back. The man holds his middle finger as high as his arm will stretch, leans forward in the direction of Z. who slides down the cliff, creating long dusty tunnels in the air above.
17
The sky is laced with turquoise worms, and where the sun normally is there’s two red lips, a parting mouth with clouds for teeth. Her bed contains 24 stacked pillows that form a wall. She gets into bed and looks up at the black crystal drawn on the ceiling. She closes her eyes, steadies her breathing, and touches the pillows. The mouth in the sky fills with red and the teeth vanish and it’s the sun. The worms wail and turquoise cascades down an arc in the sky.
The first pillow Remy places on her feet. The next, her legs. The next, her stomach. Finally, her chest. She builds layers until she has to balance the pillows on her body with her breathing. She puts the last three pillows on her head and hugs her face until she passes out. Her arms flop off the sides of the bed and her fingertips dangle near the floor.
She’s a baby. She takes wide, unsteady steps, and on a few occasions, tips backward, arms extended as her diaper thumps the floor. She wears a blue shirt with a hand-drawn black crystal (Brother). Her face is blond hair. She stumbles from her bedroom and into the hallway where she falls down the stairs, blond hair blown open and her body awkwardly sliding down the stairs as Mom shouts from below. Afterward, Remy cried for fourteen hours. Mom stayed awake the entire time, tapping her back in sets of ten, feeding her sips of tea, telling her it would be okay, they will come back on again.
Remy twitches in the wobbly picture and her eyelids flicker. Her arm as baby arm snaps like a bird’s spine beneath a boot. The pillows fall. One hits her arm. Mom moans from her bedroom. Her negative weight floats upward from her refusa
l of food. Her falling numbers hurt everything around her, even the carpet looks depressed. Dad skips between loving companion to distant husband to angry father. He spends his days alone. Each day this week he’s been sitting gargoyle-perched on the roof. Recently, Remy’s thought the problem of Mom’s sickness isn’t Mom’s sickness exactly, but Dad’s reaction to Mom’s sickness.
Remy writes in a notebook:
FELL DOWNSTAIRS AS A BABY -5 CRYSTALS.
SUBTRACT -1 FOR EVERY YEAR AFTER FROM AGING.
She puts three pillows on her face and grips tight until she passes out again, her hands falling off the bed, eyes now moving over a dark road. She’s riding her bike with the blue and yellow tassels tied to the handlebar. She wanted red and green, to be special, but Dad bought the commons. This vision like the last is broken from reality but more severe – Remy riding her bike on the road to the mine, blue and yellow tassels blowing endlessly backward and touching her home. Her hair is also endlessly long and it touches the house. She’s followed by a spotlight. Her feet blur on the pedals. She’s trying to escape the light. Skin three inches above her right ankle catches on the rear derailleur and the bike breaks into a severe slide. Water sprays from where the tires skid. The road becomes a beach and Brother is standing there covered in glistening sweat, jogging in place, with Harvak at his side who is also jogging in place. Sea crystals the shape of hexagons colored white foam then harden to black stone on the sand. An octopus is flung by the sun across the sky. The spotlight disappears and the man, who looks just like Dad, who held the spotlight, twirls his hand goodbye, bows, then jumps off the cliff at the top of The Bend.
-8 CRYSTALS FROM BIKE ACCIDENT.
She creeps down the staircase and sees only legs in the kitchen. She can’t understand how they can stand so close to each other and yell so loud, how can their faces not split and bruise. Mom is doing almost all the shouting and her legs are following Dad’s legs around the kitchen. He’s cooking something and trying to avoid her. The thrill of watching her parents in this raw, private moment makes Remy’s heart race and hands grip the wooden banister. They have always been so troubled, so doomed. They have always talked around each other. The pillows tumble again and the black crystal drawing on her ceiling comes into focus.