by Jason Mott
Tent Village was a green, drab assembly. Made from tents so old Harold couldn’t look on them without risk of suddenly falling hip-deep into some boyhood memory. A memory so distant it showed up on the movie screen of his mind in black-and-white.
The saving grace thus far had been that the weather was forgiving. Hot and humid, but mostly dry.
Harold crossed Tent Village, headed toward the far side of the camp, near the southern fence, where Jacob’s friend, a young boy by the name of Max, stayed. Past the fence, the guards walked their slow paths, rifles at their waists.
“Mindless bastards,” Harold barked as he always did.
Harold looked up at the sun. It was still there, obviously, but it seemed warmer all of a sudden. A thread of sweat ran down the center of his forehead and eventually dropped from the tip of his nose.
All at once it seemed to get hotter. Ten degrees at least, like the sun had come down just then and settled upon his shoulders, intent on whispering something very important into his ear.
Harold wiped his face and rubbed the sweat in his hand against the leg of his pants.
“Jacob?” he called out. A tremble began at the base of his spine and moved downward through his legs. It congregated at the knees. “Jacob, where are you?”
Then, suddenly, the earth rose up to meet him.
Jeff Edgeson
If the clock on the wall was to be believed, then Jeff’s hour with the colonel was almost over. The colonel had spent the past fifty-five minutes asking the questions they both knew by heart at this point. He would rather be reading. A good cyberpunk novel, or maybe some urban fantasy. He was partial to authors with great imaginations. Imagination was an important and rare thing, he felt.
“What do you think happens when we die?” the colonel asked.
This was a new question, though not a very imaginative one. Jeff thought for a moment, feeling a bit unsettled at the prospect of talking religion with the colonel, whom he’d grown to like. He reminded Jeff of his father.
“Heaven or hell, I guess,” Jeff said. “I guess it depends on how much fun you had.” He offered a small chuckle.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Jeff said. “I’ve been an atheist for a long time. Never been sure about much.”
“And now?” The colonel sat up straight in his chair and his hands disappeared beneath the table, as if he were reaching for something.
“Still not sure about much,” Jeff said. “Story of my life.”
Then Colonel Willis pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and handed them over to the young man.
“Thanks,” Jeff said, lighting up.
“This doesn’t have to be unbearable,” the colonel said. “We’ve all got our parts to play in this—my kind and yours.”
Jeff nodded. He leaned back in his chair and exhaled a long, white plume and he did not mind how uncomfortable the chair was or how bland the walls were or the fact that, somewhere in this world, he had a brother and the colonel and his men would not let him find him.
“I’m not a cruel man,” the colonel said then, as if he knew what Jeff was thinking. “I simply have an unsavory role to play.” He stood. “But now I have to go. There’s another truckload of you due in this evening.”
Nine
HAROLD AWOKE TO a sun that seemed brighter and harder than he ever remembered. Everything was far away and questionable, like coming down from taking too many medications. There was a crowd gathered around him. They all looked taller than they should, stretched out into exaggeration. Harold closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he opened his eyes again Martin Bellamy was standing over him, looking very dark and official. Still wearing that damned suit, even in all this heat, Harold thought.
Harold sat up. His head hurt. It had been his luck that he’d fallen onto a patch of grass and not the pavement. There was something in his lungs. Something heavy and wet. It sent him coughing.
One cough led to another, and then there was no coughing at all, only outright hacking. Harold folded in half, his body rattling against itself. Little dots appeared before his eyes, fluttering in and out of existence.
When the coughing eventually stopped Harold lay sprawled on the grass with a blanket beneath his head and the sun in his eyes and sweat covering his body.
“What happened?” Harold asked, feeling something sharp and wet in his throat.
“You passed out,” Martin Bellamy said. “How are you feeling?”
“Hot.”
Agent Bellamy smiled. “It’s a hot day.”
Harold tried to sit up but the world betrayed him and went to spinning. He closed his eyes and reclined back onto the grass. The smell of the hot grass reminded him of when he was a boy, back when lying out in the grass on a hot June afternoon didn’t need to be instigated by passing out.
“Where’s Jacob?” Harold asked, eyes still shut.
“I’m here,” Jacob said, emerging from the crowd that had gathered. He ran up with his friend Max in silent tow. Jacob kneeled beside his father and took the old man’s hand.
“I didn’t scare you, did I, boy?”
“No, sir.”
Harold sighed. “That’s good.”
Jacob’s friend Max, who had shown himself to be a very tender and concerned boy in general, kneeled at Harold’s head and leaned down and removed his shirt and used it to wipe Harold’s brow.
“Are you okay, Mr. Harold?” Max asked.
Max was a Returned of the British vintage. Complete with accent and manners. They’d found him over in Bladen County, not far from where that Japanese fellow had been found all those weeks back. Seemed that Bladen County was becoming a nexus for exotic, previously dead individuals.
“Yes, Max.”
“Because you looked really sick and if you’re sick you should go to hospital, Mr. Harold.”
In spite of his calm, stoic Returned nature and refined British accent, Max spoke like a machine gun.
“My uncle got sick a long, long time ago,” Max continued, “and he had to go to hospital. Then he got even more sick and he coughed a lot like the way you were coughing only it sounded even worse and, well, Mr. Harold, he died.”
Harold was nodding and agreeing to the boy’s story even though he’d failed to keep up with anything beyond the initial salvo of “My uncle got sick…”
“That’s good, Max,” Harold said, his eyes still closed. “That’s fine.”
Harold lay there on the ground for a very long time with his eyes closed and the warmth of the sun sprawled out across his body. Small conversations came to his ears, even over the sound of the soldiers marching diligently around the fence outside the camp. It hadn’t seemed that Harold was this close to the perimeter fence when the coughing fit had first taken over his body, but now he realized how close he was to the edge.
His mind began a chain of imaginings then.
He imagined the land beyond the edge of the fence. He could see the pavement of the school’s parking lot. He turned onto Main Street and passed the gas station and the small, old shops that were built along the street so long, long ago. He saw friends and familiar faces, all of them going about their business as they always did. Sometimes they smiled at him and waved and maybe one or two of them shouted hello.
Harold realized then that he was driving the old pickup truck he had owned back in 1966. He hadn’t thought about that truck in years, but he remembered it vividly now. The wide, soft seats. The raw strength needed simply to turn the damned thing. Harold wondered then if today’s generation could appreciate what a luxury power steering was or if, much the way it was with computers, it was something so common now that there wasn’t any more magic to be had in it?
In this small imagining, Harold rode through the entire town, slowly realizing that there was not a single Returned among its many streets and avenues. He rolled on out beyond the edge of town, along the highway toward home, the truck purring smoothly beneath him.
At home he wrestled the
steering wheel into the driveway and found Lucille, young and beautiful. She sat on the porch in the glow of the sunlight with her back perfectly erect, looking regal and important in a way Harold had never seen another woman look in the entirety of his life. Her long, raven hair fell past her shoulders and shimmered in the warm sunlight. She was a creature of grace and importance. She intimidated him, and that was why he loved her so much. Jacob ran small loops around the oak tree in front of the porch, shouting something or other about heroes or villains.
This was the way things were supposed to be.
And then the boy looped behind a tree and did not return from the other side. Gone in an instant.
* * *
Agent Bellamy was kneeling in the grass by Harold’s side; behind him a duo of eager-looking paramedics cast a shadow over Harold’s sweat-soaked face.
“Do you have a history of this?” one of the paramedics asked.
“No,” Harold said.
“Are you sure? Do I need to pull your medical records?”
“You can do what you like, I suppose,” Harold said. His strength was coming back, riding a low tide of anger. “That’s one of the benefits of being a government man, ain’t it? Got everybody’s information in a damned file somewhere.”
“I suppose we can,” Bellamy said. “But I think we’d all rather just do this the easy way.” He nodded to the paramedics. “See that he’s okay. Maybe he’ll cooperate with you a little more than he did with me.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Harold muttered. He hated holding a conversation while flat on his back, but there didn’t seem to be much choice just now. Every time he thought of sitting up Jacob would press down gently on his shoulder with a look of worry on his small face.
Bellamy stood and brushed the grass from his knees. “I’ll see about getting my hands on his medical records. Make a note of all this in the log, of course.” He waved his hand, beckoning to someone.
A pair of soldiers came over.
“All this for a tired old man,” Harold said loudly, finally sitting up with a grunt.
“Now, now,” the paramedic said. He grabbed Harold by the arm with surprising strength. “You should lie down and give us a chance to make sure you’re okay, sir.”
“Relax,” Jacob said.
“Yeah, Mr. Harold. You should lie down,” Max inserted. “It’s like I was telling you about my uncle. He got sick one day, didn’t want any doctors fiddling at him and so he yelled at them whenever they came around. Then he was dead.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Harold said. The speed at which the boy spoke was enough to wear down the old man’s rebellion. And he was very, very tired all of a sudden. So he just gave in and decided to lie back on the grass and let the paramedics do what they would.
If they did something out of sorts, he figured, he could always sue. This was America, after all.
Then Max raced off into another story about the death of his uncle and Harold was lulled into unconsciousness by the rapid drum of the boy’s voice.
* * *
“We’re going to be late,” the old, senile black woman said.
Harold sat up on his cot, not yet certain on how he had gotten here. He was in his room and it was a little cooler than it had been and the sunlight through the window was all but gone so he figured it was the same day, only later. There was a bandage on his forearm covering up an itch where Harold figured a syringe must have been poked at some point.
“Damned doctors.”
“That’s a bad word,” Jacob said. He and Max were sitting on the floor, playing a game. They leaped up and raced to the bed. “I didn’t say anything before,” Jacob continued, “but Mama wouldn’t want you saying damn.”
“That is a bad word,” Harold said. “What’s say we don’t tell her?”
“Okay,” Jacob said, smiling. “You want to hear a joke?”
“Oh, yes,” Max interrupted. “It’s a wonderful joke, Mr. Harold. One of the funniest jokes I’ve heard in a long time. My uncle—”
Harold raised a hand to stop the boy. “What’s the joke, son?”
“What is a caterpillar most afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” Harold said, though he remembered well teaching Jacob this joke, not long before the boy died.
“A dogerpillar!”
They all laughed.
“We can’t stay here all day,” Patricia said from her cot. “We’re already late. Terribly, terribly late. It’s bad manners to keep people waiting. They’ll start to worry about us!” She reached out a dark hand and placed it on Harold’s knee. “Please,” she said. “I hate to be rude to anyone. My mother raised me better. Can we go now? I’m all dressed.”
“Soon,” Harold said, though he didn’t know why.
“Is she okay?” Max asked.
The boy usually spoke in paragraphs, so Harold waited for the rest to come. But it never did. Patricia fidgeted with her clothes and watched them as they did not seem to be getting ready to go. This upset her very much.
“She’s just confused,” Harold finally said.
“I’m not confused!” Patricia said, snatching her hand back.
“No,” Harold said to her, and took her hand and patted it gently. “You’re not confused. And we won’t be late. They called a while ago and said that the time’s been changed. They pushed things back.”
“They canceled?”
“No. ’Course not. Just moved stuff back a little.”
“They did, didn’t they? They canceled it because we’re so late! They’re angry with us! This is terrible.”
“That’s not the case at all,” Harold said. He moved over to her cot, thankful that his body seemed to be getting back to normal; maybe those damned doctors weren’t all bad. He put his arm around her large frame and patted her shoulder. “They just changed the time, is all. There was some mix-up with the food, I think. The caterer had some kind of falling out in the kitchen and everything went bad, so they want a little more time, is all.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” Harold said. “In fact, we’ve got so much time I think you could probably manage a nap. Are you tired?”
“No.” She pursed her lips. Then: “Yes.” She began crying. “I’m so, so tired.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Charles. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” Harold said, stroking her hair. “You’re just tired. That’s all.”
She looked at him then with a great, deep fear set in her face as if, for an instant, she realized that he was not who he was pretending to be, as if nothing was the way her mind told her it was. Then the moment passed and she was a tired, confused old woman again and he was her Charles. She rested her head on his shoulder and wept, if only because it felt like the right thing to do.
* * *
In a little while the woman was asleep. Harold stretched her out on the mat and brushed the stray hairs from her face and looked down at her as if his head were full of puzzles.
“It’s a terrible thing,” Harold said.
“What is?” Jacob asked in his flat, even voice.
Harold sat on the end of his cot and looked down at his hands. He fixed his index and middle finger as if they held one of those small, wonderful cylinders of nicotine and carcinogenic. He put his empty fingers to his lips. Inhaled. Held his breath. Let it all go—coughing a little when his lungs were out of air.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Max said.
Jacob nodded in agreement.
“Helps me think,” Harold said.
“What are you thinking about?” Max asked.
“My wife.”
“Mama’s okay,” Jacob said.
“Of course she is,” Harold said.
“Jacob’s right,” Max said. “Mommies are always okay because the world couldn’t get along without them. That’s what my daddy said back before he died. He said that mommies were the reason the whole world worked the way it did
and that without mommies everybody would be mean and hungry and people would be fighting all the time and nothing good would ever happen to anybody.”
“That sounds about right,” Harold said.
“My dad used to say that my mum was the best in the world. He said he’d never trade her in, but I think that’s the kind of thing every dad is supposed to say because it sounds good. But I bet Jacob thinks that, too, about his mum—your wife—because that’s what you’re supposed to think. That’s how things are….”
Then the boy stopped talking and only stared blankly at them. Harold welcomed the silence, but was unnerved by its suddenness, as well. Max looked terribly distracted, as if something had suddenly leaped up and snatched away everything in his mind that had been there only seconds before.
Then the Returned boy’s eyes rolled white, like a great switch in his mind had been thrown. He fell to the floor and lay there as if sleeping, with only a faint trickle of blood on his upper lip as proof that anything had gone wrong.
Tatiana Rusesa
They were whites, so she knew they would not kill her. More than that, they were Americans, so she knew they would treat her kindly. She did not mind that they would not let her leave; she only wished that she could help them more.
Before they brought her here—wherever she was now—she had been at another place. It was not quite as large as this place, and these people with her now were not the same people, but they were not very different. They all said they worked for something called “the Bureau.”
They brought her food. They gave her a cot on which to sleep. She still wore the blue-and-white dress the woman had given her at the other place. Her name was Cara, the girl remembered, and she spoke both English and French and she had been very nice, but Tatiana knew that she was not being very helpful to them, and that weighed heavily on her.