Cemetery Strike

by Christopher Orza

  ––––––

  So, just a few days after that shirtless Moe broke out of Woods Edge Cemetery, right at the start of our shift, Sonny told all the workers to go home. I lingered there, waiting for everyone to leave so I could hop the gate to find a body that didn’t already have its shirt ripped open and holes poked through its lungs. For a while it seemed like all the other workers had the same idea. No one would leave.

  Armando was the first to budge. “Juan, vamos.”

  He was probably just going to walk around the corner and then climb the fence. I didn’t feel like huffing with him, though. The last two times we’d buddied up together I didn’t see the ballerina, and I always looked forward to her. “No,” I said. “Alone today.”

  Armando laughed at me and walked away.

  A few of the other workers finally started to leave. One even took his protest sign, like he knew he needed a souvenir because he was never coming back.

  That left me, Sonny, and the Hole of a Bitch. We just tried to come up with something to say. We talked about how we outlasted the protesters on the other side of the street. We talked about how the government could’ve stopped all this if they had just stepped in. Then Sonny got a call from his wife.

  “I can’t come home now,” he said into the phone. “There are all these people out here tearing up my cemetery. Everything I built.”

  With Sonny still talking on the phone, I said, “I could watch the place for you.” And it was the truth. I’d watch it the best I could while the ballerina jellied my balls.

  The Hole of a Bitch said, “Me too.”

  Sonny thought for a moment, the phone paused in his hand. He said, “As long as there aren’t any problems like the last time you two stooges watched the place.” He was already unlocking the gate for us. “All I need you to do is make sure people aren’t breaking anything. Keep them away from the trailer. And away from the tool shed, too, if you can.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “My horns are like bone now,” and I knocked on them with my fists. “Anyone takes a swing at me this time and I’ll just ram them with my forehead.”

  With me and the Bitch inside the cemetery together, the Bitch started talking right away. “I’m sick of these people destroying death.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a crazy world.”

  “We should do something to fix it.”

  “Like what?”

  He said, “Oh, I know. We can pour cement down the corpses’ throats.”

  “What would that do?”

  “Stop those fuckers from getting high.”

  “I don’t think the cement would reach the lungs,” I said. “That’s where the huffers pull from.”

  He thought. “Oh, I got it. We could bury all the bodies.”

  “You ever dig a hole deep enough to bury someone?” I asked. “We’ll get one buried tonight. It’ll take us months to do everyone, and that’s only if people stop dying.” I don’t know why I was entertaining him with all this.

  We walked on, passing dead bodies with their clothes ripped off and their ribs cracked open.

  “Oh my God,” The Hole of a Bitch said, so excited his crotched caught fire. “What if we ripped open their chests? Like, opened up their lungs so there was nothing left to huff. It’s brilliant. Come on. Come on.”

  I can’t tell you why I helped ruin perfectly dead lungs. Maybe it was because me and Crystal got into a fight that morning. Or maybe it was because the money bag I had didn’t bring any happiness with it, the way I expected it to. Or maybe, hopefully, somewhere inside me I knew huffing caused hell to rise up under the cemetery, putting it on a platform for the whole world to see. Whatever the reason, me and the Bitch ran through the cemetery like Batman and Robin, the Man of Darkness and the Kid Crusader, searching for unused bodies so we could destroy them. All this while huffers buzzed around in their daze.

  The Hole of a Bitch. I couldn’t believe how crazy he was. When we found an unused body, he went right to ripping open the guy’s shirt and tearing at his chest. Panting, the Bitch looked up at me. With his nails, he had made marks on the dead man, but that was it. He said, “This isn’t working.”

  To not smile a laugh right in his face, I looked away. The tool shed stood in the distance like a rotting artifact of better times. I said, “Do you think the shed’s open?”

  The Hole of a Bitch booked it. I had to sprint to catch up, Peter Pan chasing Tinker Bell through Neverland, alligators and pirates nipping at our feet.

  We picked up tools that were remnants of the old method of burying bodies, before groundskeepers began using compact utility machines. The tools, a pickaxe and a spade, were probably older than us, but sharp and well-made.

  On our way back to the body, we saw two huffers with their needles and tubing bent over the dead body we’d found. The Hole of a Bitch screamed, “Die motherfuckers!” and ran right at them, holding his pickaxe in front of him like a bitch. The huffers, though, they dropped their needles and tubing, scrambled, and ran.

  The Bitch didn’t chase them too far––just a few steps. Just enough for them to run to a different cemetery. When he turned back toward me, all out of breath, he said, “Oh my God that felt a-mazing.” He said it like we’d just huffed a vagina.

  Then he hoisted the pickaxe above his head and dropped it on the dead body. The point stuck in between bone, and he had to seesaw it out. He lifted it again, this time all the way above his head, and he dropped it. The ax kept going until the dude’s chest was just torn up, splintery, broken-boned meat.

  “Let’s do another,” the Hole of a Bitch said.

  More. More.

  By then, though, I’d come to my senses. With the first body ruined gruesomely fast, it made me think that we really were going to mess it up for all the huffers, even myself. Of course, I didn’t want that to happen. So I needed to slow him down, or to stop him. “Can we take a break for a second?” I said.

  We sat in the dead grass, maggots pulling themselves all around us.

  I said, “You ever think about huffing? It’s supposed to feel like marshmallows licking your balls.”

  He scrunched his rabbit nose at me, cocked his head back, and said, “Are you freaking kidding me?”

  “I didn’t say we should have sex with it.”

  “Huffing is theft of the worst kind,” the Bitch said, righteousness shining out of his eyes.

  “They’re just a waste product,” I said. “You can’t steal garbage. Anyway, you just did much worse than any huffer ever did.”

  He snarled at me. Then, figuring me out, he said, “Oh my god. You wanna do one?”

  I flexed my jaw, grinding my back teeth to paste.

  The Hole of a Bitch said, “You’re one of them,” pointing at the huffers that ran away.

  My jaw cracked, sending arthritic pain all the way to the horns on my skull. I even pushed in on those horns. It just increased the pain.

  “Do you do it in Woods Edge?” the Hole of a Bitch said, like he was ready to break up with me.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “You don’t have any morals?”

  “I haven’t huffed you,” I said. He didn’t think it was funny. I said, “Huffing’s just a way to use people up. Whatever they left inside. It doesn’t hurt anyone that can feel it. It’s just there. Like air.”

  “Huffers are vandals,” The Hole of a Bitch said. “They’re scavengers.”

  “Aren’t we all? Think about it. This whole city is built on the burial grounds of all the cultures that came before ours.”

  The Bitch looked away from me. Whether he agreed or not, he definitely didn’t like what I said. When he finally turned back, he said, “You wanna grab some mimosas? They have them at Harold’s up a few blocks. They’re fourteen buck, but at least they’re still open with all this nonsense going on.”

  “Drinking makes me sick,” I said.

  The Hole of a Bitch snapped his fingers. “Shoot. You feel like watching me drink, ‘c
ause I’m sure as hell not watching you huff?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  ––––––

  When all the good bodies ran out, that’s when the killing started. You probably remember a point when you thought things couldn’t get worse. That’s when the huffers upgraded from stabbing cold bodies to stabbing warm ones. Overnight, the cops that showed up to work couldn’t move fast enough to clean up the senior citizens with their guts bled out, grocery bags spilled beside them.

  With all the danger running around the city, I started huffing exclusively with Armando. The dude was built, and huffers didn’t usually mess with people walking in pairs.

  We left the safe house, Armando mumbling Spanish curses at the old couple that ran the place. They were warning me about the two demerits I had for not signing back in at the end of the day. One, because of the night I should’ve killed Crystal Meth. And two, because of the night I spent with the Bitch tearing up dead bodies. One more demerit and I’d be sent to my PO and Dr. Moe all over again. It was almost worth not getting high to not see those two. Almost.

  “Come on, Armando. Don’t worry about them.” I put my arm around his shoulder and walked us out the door. I didn’t want him doing anything stupid with the old couple, like slapping the old man upside his head. They didn’t mean any of it. In the end, I think they knew we were huffers, and they just didn’t want us sleeping so close to their bedroom.

  I hadn’t had a body in three days, and, during these three days of anxiousness, I needed to huff more than ever. Every time I looked around or listened to what people shouted, this whole world seemed like my rotten child, like I’d fathered this bastard and didn’t do the right thing with it. It was just like what my parents had done, and I didn’t want to think that I had become them. Also, Crystal was back on her pussy strike. It didn’t help things at all.

  “I need it bad, Armando,” I said.

  “Yo también.”

  Right in front of the Woods Edge gate, while waiting around with a bunch of other huffers who had the same idea as us, I saw the Chinese delivery guy riding his bike. He still wore his surgical mask, but the apron and checkered pants were gone. When he saw me, he pedaled faster, like he wanted to come tell me something. I was gonna shout at him to go home. I swear I was.

  That’s when Armando ran at him and jabbed the guy’s stomach. The Chinese dude fell backwards off his bike, and the bike continued to ghostride until it crashed into the locked gate. Armando sat on top of him and kept fucking jabbing his hand into the guy’s gut. That’s when I grabbed Armando’s arm and pulled it back. But it wasn’t just an arm. No. A small hunting knife fished back and forth, ripping open intestines, bleeding him out.

  When Armando was done, he leaned back all sweaty. He looked like he had just finished fucking the tightest pussy in the city. He looked exhilarated, newly satisfied.

  Armando got off, stood to the side, and said, “Es todo tuyo.” With his palms pointing at the dead Chinese delivery guy, Armando offered me the lungs the way a cat offers a dead bird to its master. Just fucking giving it to me, like I’d asked for it.

  “Armando! No!” As much as I wanted the lungs, as much as I didn’t want the real world, I didn’t want this.

  Other huffers with their knives started crowding us, but they knew not to get too close to Armando. You could see all the blood dripping from his arm.

  “Si, jefe.”

  “No,” I said. And that’s all I could say, like the word could’ve taken back the deed. It felt like I’d killed him. Like I’d killed the Chinese delivery guy in a dream, woke up, and the man was still dead.

  “Fuck, Armando.”

  “Jefe.”

  “No, Armando. No.”

  “Jefe,” he said, like it was no big deal.

  And I just yelled at him like the dog that he was.

  The surgical mask had fallen down in the struggle, and his face froze in a painful smile. He had died with that same apologetic look, telling me, “I know you’re a fuckup, but it’s okay, rye?”

  “Jefe. Rapido.” Armando still gestured for me to huff.

  “No, Armando.”

  So, like a person who had first offered his food to a friend, Armando dug in. He took out his sharp pipe, twisted it into the Chinese delivery guy’s stomach, tilted it, uncapped his finger, sucked. Then, something I’d never seen before, Armando went for the other lung, and he frantically stabbed a little higher this time, and sucked in like he wanted to win a contest.

  Breathing out, he complained, “No está funcionando.”

  Armando took his pipe out and stabbed the guy a third time, this time closer to the heart. He breathed in and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

  “Hijo de puta!”

  When Armando didn’t start tripping out, I realized something was wrong. Or, very, very right, depending on who you are and how you look at it. The Chinese delivery guy didn’t work. He was different from most people, so maybe it made sense. Maybe his lungs were made up different. Or maybe Asians ate too much ginger or some shit. Or maybe the protective mask he wore worked. Or, maybe, Armando stabbed his lungs during the struggle, bleeding out all the good stuff. Anyway, all the blood up Armando’s sleeves made me glad he stood there as sober as a headstone, as sober as me.

  “Fucking waste,” I said.

  And Armando soccer kicked the Chinese delivery guy in the head.

  It took me a long time to figure out why the Chinese delivery guy didn’t work. I just kept thinking about what made him so different from most people. When I finally got it, I realized that it was this difference that could save the world. If everyone can do it, that is.

  Think about it. Think.

  Chapter Eight

  In the beginning of all this I told you I could get the killing to stop. I hope you still believe me. I’m getting to it, I really am, but first I have a few more things to tell you, just so you know I’m not some Moe that’ll say he’ll be someplace and then never show.

  During the whole time of the strikes, Sonny’s wife was skeleton sick. He didn’t come in showing us pictures or bragging about it, but the way he moped around when he thought no one was looking, you could tell.

  From the rumors around Woods Edge, she’d been sick for their entire marriage. So of course Sonny had to keep working. Even with the insurance that the union provided, workers had to pay thirty percent of any hospital bills. Imagine thirty percent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. On double his salary it still wouldn’t work. Now imagine if he stopped working altogether and tried to retire. There was no way he could leave Woods Edge, even if he wanted to. But there was more to it than that. Even if Sonny’s wife wasn’t sick, I think the woman would’ve known how much he worried about the cemetery. She must’ve known it was his child and that he needed to be there, especially during a time of crisis.

  The point is, even after everyone stopped showing up to work, and after it was apparent that huffers owned the streets, Sonny kept coming. I know this because me and Armando had to duck him at all hours. While I scouted for bodies, Sonny lugged in new cargo with a wheelbarrow. I’d see him ushering out huffers with his arm on their shoulders, telling them to be careful and not to return.

  Seeing him from a distance, I always wanted to talk to him, but at the same time I didn’t want him to know that I haunted the cemeteries like all the other huffers.

  So when Sonny came to see me at the safe house, I thought that maybe he’d caught me at Woods Edge and was gonna try to set me straight. I was laying on the bottom bunk, reading something from my father’s box of books.

  “How have you been?” Sonny said, looking around.

  “Good. I’ve been good.”

  He stood there, hands in his pockets. “I’d like to be frank,” he said. “I need your help, but I’d rather tell you what it is outside.”

  “Sure. Anything, Sonny.”

  “Wait until you agree to it,” Sonny said. He moved more inside the room so he could close the door. He wh
ispered, “What I’m asking you to do, it’s illegal.”

  “Whatever you need, Sonny.” I didn’t have to think about it. For some reason, I felt like I owed him. I really don’t know why. He never did any special favors for me. I think it was more just the type of person he was. How he treated me. How he treated people in general.

  Sonny moved one cheek. It might’ve been a smile. He said, “If you have a pair of gloves, bring ‘em with you.”

  “Yeah, sure. Just give me a minute.” He stepped out of the room and I closed the door after him. I didn’t have to get changed or anything. I just needed the huffing cross from under my father’s books. I never left without it.

  On our way out, Armando bumped into us in the doorway.

  “Aye, papi. ¿Cómo estás?”

  “Stay the hell out of my cemetery,” Sonny said, pointing a finger at Armando’s chest.

  “No problema, Papi.” Armando put his hands up in playful self-defense, the same way you do if a kid points his finger and yells bang. Then Armando shot his eyes into me. “Tú también un problema?”

  I just glared at him, gripping the huffing cross in my pocket.

  “Come on,” Sonny said, and he started walking down the hallway.

  Sonny led us straight to Woods Edge Cemetery, straight to the trailer. His car was parked right beside it. Without saying anything, Sonny unlocked the trunk, opened it, and showed me a huge body wrapped in a floral-printed bed sheet.

  Silent tears trailed from Sonny’s eyes to his lips and then onto the cotton flowers. He was like a kid in an old man’s body, but a kid trying real hard to do what’s brave and right. His bottom lip trembled. He had every emotion in his eyes: fear, love, pain, happiness, contentedness, regret.

  “I have to bury her,” Sonny said. “I need help. You’re the first person that came to mind.”

  I wanted to ask how he’d gotten her in there, that’s how heavy she was, but I thought it’d be rude. The lady took up the entire trunk. It took both of us sweating and groaning and straining our balls just to lift her enough to plop her in a wheelbarrow.