Rash

by Hautman, Pete

  “Yeah. How long are you gonna make us stand out here?” I asked, surprising myself. You’d think getting punched in the belly once would have taught me something.

  Hammer gave me a long, hard stare. “What’s your name, nail?”

  “Bo. Bo Marsten. Look, we aren’t exactly dressed for the cold.”

  “Cold?” He raised his black eyebrows in mock surprise. “It’s practically high summer! That sun won’t set till almost midnight! You want cold, just you wait a few months.”

  “We could die from exposure,” I said. “You could be charged with neglect.”

  “Neglect?” He threw back his head and laughed. “Charged by who? Let me explain something to you, nail. You gave up the benefits of civilian life back when you did whatever it was you did to get put here. This is the real world. You belong to me and Mickey D. Nobody gives a damn if you catch a chill. Now step away from the fence.”

  Nobody moved.

  “I said, STEP AWAY FROM THE FENCE!”

  I stepped forward a few feet.

  “ALL OF YOU!”

  Everybody took a couple of steps forward just as a metallic crash came from behind us. I looked back, instinctively ducking. For one interminable second I did not understand what I was seeing. It was large, it was yellow and white and brown and black, it was almost as high as the fence, and it was rattling the chain-link. Then I saw it for what it was. A bear, nine feet tall, its long black claws scrabbling over the metal links.

  My legs turned rubbery and I fell back on my rear. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The bear pressed its filthy belly against the flimsy-looking steel mesh and leered down at me, dragging a huge blue black tongue over its furry, pink-stained mouth. The smell of dead fish, rotting meat, and Italian spices washed over me.

  “Don’t worry, kiddies,” Hammer said. “He can’t get in.”

  The bear was not alone. Two more polar bears came lumbering up to join him. They stared in at us with expressionless black eyes.

  “Nails!” Hammer looked around at the scattered inmates, a few of whom had run a considerable distance. “Get back here. C’mon now, boys, I’m not done talkin’ to you.” The four guards were moving to intercept some of us, like dogs herding sheep. “Last one back in line gets a baton up his ass.”

  That had some effect. A few seconds later we were once again lined up in front of Hammer, but with a good ten feet between us and the fence. The fishy, tomato-saucy reek of the bears hung in the air like bad breath in an elevator.

  “Now listen to me,” Hammer said. “Your welfare is not a priority. In fact, we have contracted with the government to take on more workers than we need. I lose a few nails, no problem—there’s plenty more where you come from. Something happens to one of you—and things do happen here—we just toss you over the fence. Attempted escape. Those bears won’t leave so much as a shred of gristle behind. But don’t worry. Do your work, don’t try anything stupid, and eventually you get to go back home. Simple as that. Now, how many of you boys like pizza? Let’s have a show of hands.”

  A few hands went up, but not mine. I’d never eaten one of the things. Pizza was grandma/grandpa food. It had gone out of style with burgers and fries.

  “Only four?” He grinned. “Well now, ain’t that tragic.”

  With that, Hammer climbed back onto his atv and drove off. Behind us one of the bears let out an impatient growl. We all turned to look. I could swear that bear was smiling.

  One by one we were escorted into the building by a guard. I had never seen so many hard surfaces and sharp corners in my life. The floor was hard unprotected concrete—no carpeting or rubberization. There were spots where the slabs joined unevenly. It would be easy to trip and fall. Even the walls were dangerous. There was no padding on the corners, and in several places along the walls I saw exposed bolts and rivets. The place was a death trap.

  “You could get hurt here,” I said to the guard. He laughed and gave me a jab in the back with his baton.

  When we reached the infirmary, the guard made me strip down naked. A bored-looking medtech came in and poked, prodded, scanned, and measured me. When he had finished examining every square inch of my body, he gave me a small white plastic-wrapped packet about the size of my palm.

  “Put these on,” said the tech.

  I unwrapped the packet and shook out a pair of thin, white paper coveralls. I put them on.

  “Not very comfortable,” I said. It felt like wearing a paper bag. “There’s no padding at all.”

  “Get used to it,” said the tech. “You won’t be wearing anything else for the next few years.” He was holding a device in his right hand. It looked like an overly complex staple gun. “Hold out your arm.” He grabbed my wrist and jammed the device against my forearm and pulled the trigger. I let out a howl and jerked my arm away.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Locator pod,” said the tech.

  Given that we were in the middle of nowhere surrounded by polar bears, I don’t know why they bothered with that. I guess if somebody escaped they could use the locator to find out which bear had eaten the escapee.

  He gave me a small bag containing a toothbrush, soap, comb, and several pamphlets listing the rules and regs of McDonald’s Plant #387.

  “Enjoy your stay,” he said.

  A guard escorted me to my new home, a nine-by-ten-foot cubicle with a bunk bed, a metal toilet, three walls of unpainted concrete block, and one wall that was all bars. A thin slit of a window about four inches wide looked out over the tundra. I put my bag on the bottom bunk, took a piss, then sat on my bunk and stared at the wall. At first I thought it was just dirty, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw the shadows of words that had been scrawled on the concrete, then scrubbed off. Mostly it was illegible, but I could make out fragments of names, numbers, and assorted obscenities all tangled up with each other, layer upon layer. I wondered whether I would be adding anything to the mix.

  I heard the door slide open and looked up. It was the huge fat kid. I stood up, returning his red-eyed glare. The guard behind him prodded the kid with his baton. He squeezed through the doorway, and my cell got a lot smaller.

  The kid looked around, taking in his surroundings, then tossed his bag on the bottom bunk.

  “That’s my bunk,” I said.

  He moved my bag to the top bunk. “Bugger off,” he said.

  I took a step back, my heart jumping. No one had ever said anything like that to me. It was far worse than anything I’d ever said to Karlohs Mink.

  He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared glumly at the wall, just as I had been doing a minute earlier.

  Clearly this whale had been assigned to the wrong cell. I looked out through the bars, hoping to catch the guard before he disappeared, but I was too late.

  Looking back at the fat kid, I considered my options. What I wanted to do was grab him by his paper coveralls and yank him off the bunk and shove him out through the slit window. All of which was impossible—he looked like the rock of Gibraltar.

  I decided to try for friendly.

  “What are you in for?” I asked.

  He ignored me. I sat down on the toilet because it was the only place to sit. His eyes slowly moved from the wall to me. He blinked, as if he had forgotten that I was in the room.

  “You better not be planning to take a dump,” he said.

  “I’m just sitting here.”

  “Good. This joint already reeks.” He lifted a hip and released an explosive fart.

  I could almost see the cloud of stink making its way across the room. I was not disappointed. The stench nearly melted my molars. I stood and pressed my face against the bars. Breathing shallowly, I waited for the smog to clear.

  “You don’t like how I smell?” he said.

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Maybe if I smashed your nose in it wouldn’t bother you so much.”

  That did it. If I had to share a cell with this gigantic stink bomb, I wasn’t going to let
him intimidate me. I remembered a note from my brother, sent a few weeks after he’d been sent to Nebraska: Prison is tough, Bohunk. There’s one thing you learn fast. Never back down. You let ’em push you around, they’ll make your life hell.

  I gave him the hardest look I could muster.

  “You want to know what I’m here for?” I said.

  He snorted. “Should I care?”

  “I’m here for beating the crap out of a guy about your size.” Well, his height, anyway. “It wasn’t that hard.”

  His eyebrows went up. “You?”

  “Yeah, me. I broke his nose.” I could hear my heart pounding. I held my face rigid. I’d never been so scared in my life. If this kid decided to move on me, I’d be crushed.

  “What, did you sneak up on him and hit him with a club?”

  “You want a demonstration?” I forced myself to smile. I figured I’d be dead in about thirty seconds. Might as well put a good face on it. We stared at each other for, I don’t know, eternity. Then, to my complete and utter astonishment, he looked away.

  “Whatever,” he said, returning his eyes to the wall.

  I returned to my perch on the toilet, feeling pretty cocky. “My name’s Bo,” I said, letting a little friendliness back into my voice.

  “Eddie Reiner.” He jabbed a thick thumb at his chest. “Most guys call me Rhino.”

  I should’ve known.

  “I don’t mind the top bunk,” I said, feeling magnanimous. “I’ll probably sleep better up there, anyway.” Also, I wouldn’t have to worry about four hundred pounds of lard crashing down on me in the middle of the night.

  “Good,” said Rhino.

  “So what are you in for?” I asked.

  He muttered something.

  “What?”

  “I said, I like to eat. Okay?”

  “They sent you to jail for eating?”

  “That’s right. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kinda fat.”

  I’d heard of people going to prison for self-abuse, but Rhino was the first one I’d ever met. It took him a few minutes to start talking, but once he got going, he went off like a webcast.

  “A couple years ago my folks sent me to a diet camp. You know, where they feed you soybean casserole, celery sticks, and vitamin water for breakfast, then make you walk on a treadmill for two hours every morning. I was there for three months but only lost about ten pounds. That soybean casserole wasn’t half bad. Once they sent me home I gained it back in about three hours. And then I really started to pack it on. We have this old scale at home that only goes up to 350 pounds? I used to get on it every so often just to see if I’d maybe accidentally lost enough weight for the scale to weigh me. Last time I got on it, the thing broke.

  “So then finally the SS&H guy at school forced my parents to send me off to one of those government fitness centers. They had me on an eight-hundred-calories-a-day diet and worked me six hours a day in their gym. I didn’t lose any weight—I’m pretty good at getting food when I need it—but I got plenty strong. You want to see?”

  I shrugged. I’d made him back down. What did I care how strong this kid was?

  Rhino stood up—it had to take a lot of strength just to get that body off the bunk—he grabbed two bars at the front of the cell, one in each hand, took a breath, and . . . bent those steel bars like they were cooked noodles.

  He grinned at me. “You work out six hours a day, you get some muscles.”

  “I see that,” I said, feeling my heart shudder.

  “Anyway, they finally gave up and sent me here.” He bent the bars back into place and looked at me. “I like you. You got balls.”

  I swallowed. I had balls but they felt like they’d been sucked right up into my belly.

  “I wasn’t really gonna smash your nose in,” he said. “I just wanted to see what you’d say.” Rhino went back to his bunk and sat down. “At that fat farm—I was there five months—they couldn’t figure out how come I wasn’t losing poundage. It was driving them all nuts. See, I’d figured out a way to break into the kitchen. Every night I was sneaking in there and stuffing myself. I’d have got away with it longer if I hadn’t got greedy and ate a whole tray of lasagna one night. They noticed that. A few nights later I got caught with my face in a tub of brownie mix. So here I am.”

  “How long are you in for?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Two hundred days?”

  “Two hundred pounds. I’m in until I lose two hundred pounds. Or till I die.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said.

  “No fooling. Hey, you got anything on you?”

  “On me?”

  “Yeah. You know. Any food?” His eyes got a little bigger.

  “Sorry.”

  He grunted, disappointed. “Oh, well. I hear there’s no shortage of munchies in this joint. It’s an all-you-can-eat operation.”

  “What do they do here?”

  “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  “You like pizza?” Rhino asked.

  That first night at the 3-8-7 I dreamed of my father. I was chasing him down a crowded hallway, running too fast and bumping into people. Maddy appeared in the crowd before me. Her dark hair appeared and disappeared in the churning mass of people. I tried to shout her name, but all that came out of my mouth was a rush of air. I tried to run to catch up to her, but my feet sank ankle-deep into the Adzorbium floor. I was slogging through Adzorbium, and then sinking into it up to my knees. Everyone else, I saw, was wearing a special type of shoe that kept them afloat. I howled in anger and frustration. The earth shook. Something crashed into my back.

  My eyes jumped open. A dark gray ceiling hung a few feet above me. I was tangled in a blanket. Again, something smashed into my spine.

  “Hey! Wake up!”

  Rhino’s voice. Rhino kicking the bottom of my thin mattress.

  “Okay! I’m awake!”

  He gave my mattress another kick. “Good. Who the hell is Manny?”

  “Manny?” I must have been shouting Maddy’s name. “I don’t know.”

  “You sure were yelling at him. You better not be gonna do this every night.”

  “I sure hope not,” I said. The dream memory left me feeling nauseated. Maddy. I didn’t care if I never saw her again for the rest of my life.

  I had figured I’d end up picking fruit or breaking rocks or sweeping gutters or replanting forests, something like that, stuff you think of when you think of convicts working. Maybe they’d put me to work patching roads like my brother, or beheading shrimp like my dad.

  But I never thought I’d be making pizzas.

  You are no doubt aware of the retro craze for hand-tossed pizza. Until recently most people thought of pizza as just another old-fashioned grandma/grandpa food, like oatmeal or hamburgers. Most towns still have one or two old-fashioned pizzerias that cater to the geriatric crowd, but nobody I knew ate the things until recently, when Keanu Schwarzenegger told People Time magazine that he enjoyed a hand-tossed, hand-topped sausage pizza during breaks on the movie set. That’s how these things get started.

  Next thing you know, all the cool people were scarfing V$300 designer pizzas with a side of cheesy bread.

  Me, I never ate one of the things back when I had a choice. To me they looked like somebody barfed blood on a big cracker. No thank you! But the marketing people at McDonald’s saw it as a huge trend. They developed a line of frozen hand-tossed, hand-topped extra cheesy gourmet pizzas. You can go to any McDonald’s restaurant now and order a Luigi McDonald’s Hand-Tossed Original Pizza Pie in any of eight different varieties for only V$89.95 each.

  They put me on the pepperoni team. It takes four team members to create a Luigi McDonalds’s Hand-Tossed Original Pepperoni Pizza Pie: the tosser, the saucer, the cheeser, and the shooter. Everything before and after is done by machine. I was the shooter.

  They called me the shooter because I was the guy with the pepperoni gun. Here’s how it works: Four guys stand
at a conveyor belt. The tosser is at the far left, then the saucer, then the cheeser, then the shooter. Every twelve seconds a Doughmaster B720 about the size of a bus plops a disk of warm dough onto the belt. The tosser picks that dough up, gives it a few quick tosses and spins, and drops it back on the belt. Since the dough is already pizza-shaped when the tosser gets it, his job is to just give it that not-quite-round hand-tossed look. It’s harder than it sounds. The belt lurches forward, advancing the naked pie to the next station, where the saucer squirts 200 milliliters of tomato sauce from his overhead dispenser onto the dough disk. He then spreads it using a thing that looks like the blade of a plastic spatula. The belt advances, and the disk gets cheesed by the cheeser, who uses a cheese gun to cover the sauce with squiggles of mozzarella. Then it’s my turn. A pepperoni gun looks like a handheld hair dryer, only there’s a long rope of pepperoni coming out the back end and going up to a giant pepperoni coil hanging from a spool above me. One spool of pepperoni is enough to top 1,800 pizzas.

  I pull the trigger on my pepperoni gun. Disks of pepperoni shoot out as fast as you could blink. One pull of the trigger delivers twenty-six thin pepperoni disks. When I was in top form, I could shoot them where I wanted them, but most times I had to quick make some adjustments to their placement. You want them to look hand-placed, but you don’t want them too lopsided. After twelve seconds, which is not as much time as you might think when you’re topping, the pizza goes straight into the freeze-and-packaging unit.

  Rhino and I were on the same team. He was our cheeser. He wasn’t a bad cheeser—Rhino was surprisingly quick and graceful for a guy his size—but every time he found himself with a couple of spare seconds, Rhino would stick the cheese gun in his mouth and let fly. It was pretty disgusting to watch, and it kept setting off the ingredient balance alarm—a voice would come over the PA telling us we were using too much cheese. We called him Cheese Boy.

  One thing about being part of a team: You learn to control every little movement. A turn of the wrist, the way you twist at the waist, keeping your one eye on what’s coming down the line and the other on what you’re doing—every little detail becomes important because if one little thing doesn’t happen just right, everything stutters and grinds to a halt. Dodo, Red, Cheese Boy, and me: four parts of a human pizza-making machine. When we were in sync, it was nightmare poetry.