The Returned

by Jason Mott

  “Dammit!” Fred shouted. “Let’s just get to it.”

  They made their way out into the street just as they had on all the other mornings. This was all any of them did now, this minor civil disobedience. Fred’s fields were getting overgrown, the corn beginning to rot on the stalk. He hadn’t made it down to the sawmill in weeks.

  None of that seemed to matter anymore. The normality of the way his life had been for years was gone, and he blamed all of it on his restless nights, and those he blamed on the Returned.

  The buses eventually came, and each time they passed, Fred screamed, “To hell with you freaks!” Everyone else took their cue from Fred. He was wound a little more tightly than usual today, so they became edgy, as well. They all screamed that much louder and shook their picket signs that much more fervently and many of them went to looking for more than small rocks to throw.

  Eventually the soldiers on duty called for backup, beginning to feel that things were taking a southward turn. One of the soldiers warned Fred and the others to settle down.

  “To hell with the Returned!” Fred yelled in reply.

  The soldier repeated his warning, in a sterner voice.

  “To hell with the Bureau!” Fred yelled.

  “This is the last time I’m going to tell you,” the soldier said, raising a pepper spray canister.

  “To hell with you!” Fred shouted. Then he spit in the man’s face and diplomacy fell apart.

  It started with Marvin Parker running out in front of one of the buses that was coming down the street. It was probably the most damned fool thing he had ever done in his life, but there he was, in the middle of the street, screaming and waving his sign and refusing to move. Two soldiers jumped on Marvin and wrestled him to the ground, but he was surprisingly nimble for a man his age and scuttled to his feet. The busload of Returned squealed to a stop in front of the melee.

  Fred and the rest—nearly a dozen of them—charged up to the bus and pounded on it, waving their signs and shouting and cursing. The soldiers were grabbing and pulling at them, but still uneasy about using the pepper spray and throwing a genuine punch at anybody. After all, Fred and his bunch had been harmless for weeks now. The soldiers were still trying to figure out what the hell had changed today.

  But then Marvin Parker landed a right hook square across the jaw of one of the soldiers, knocking him unconscious. Marvin was thin and lanky, but he’d done more than his fair share of boxing back when he was young enough for that type of thing.

  Everything became a blur of flailing and shouting after that.

  A pair of strong arms wrapped around Fred’s waist and lifted him off his feet. He tried to pull the person off him but they were too strong. He kicked wildly and connected with the back of someone’s head. The grip around his waist was broken and Fred tumbled into the legs of a soldier, who bowled him over.

  Somebody was yelling, “Fascists!” over and over, making the whole kerfuffle even more surreal. The busload of Returned watched through their windows, not certain of exactly how frightened they should be by it all. For most of them, it wasn’t the first time they’d come across these types of protests, but that did little to make it more bearable.

  “Don’t worry,” the bus driver told them. “I’ve seen these guys out here for weeks now.” He furrowed his brow. “They’re mostly harmless,” he finished.

  Fred was cursing and scuffling with one of the young soldiers he’d tumbled into at some point when another pair of hands began grabbing at him, accompanied by the shouting voice of Marvin Parker. “Come on, Fred! Move your ass!” In spite of their passion, Fred and the rest of his fellows lacked the training—and, more relevantly, the youth—of the soldiers.

  Fred stumbled to his feet and started running. Even with all the adrenaline, he was exhausted. He was just too old for this, and it hadn’t been the confrontation he’d thought it would be. Nothing was decided. Nothing was settled.

  Everything had happened so quickly, and with nothing to actually show for it, it all felt anticlimactic.

  Marvin was laughing as they ran. He obviously didn’t share Fred’s exhaustion and frustration. There was a line of sweat running down his temple, but his long, thin face was bright with excitement. “Woo!” he hollered. “Goddamn, that felt good.”

  Fred looked back over his shoulder to see if the soldiers were giving chase. They weren’t. They had wrestled a couple of his cohorts to the ground and were holding them down on the asphalt. Everyone else in Fred’s gang was running behind him—some of them with small bruises already appearing on their faces but, all in all, none the worse for wear.

  They made it back to their trucks, everyone scrambling to get into their vehicles and get the engines started. Marvin jumped in with Fred and the two of them lit out from Marvin’s driveway with the tires squealing.

  “They probably figure we’ve learned our lesson,” Fred said, looking in the rearview mirror. No one was coming after them.

  Marvin laughed. “Well, they don’t know us then, do they? We’ll be back at it tomorrow!”

  “We’ll see” was all that Fred would say. His mind was working. “I think I might have something better,” he said. “Something you might like even better, seeing as you seem to be in the best shape out of all of us.”

  “Woo!” Marvin shouted.

  “How are you at cutting through fencing?” Fred asked.

  * * *

  Harold’s feet hurt. Still sitting on his cot, he removed his shoes and socks and looked at his toes. Something looked very odd about them. They itched and they smelled, particularly between the toes. Athlete’s foot, most likely. He rubbed his toes and dug a finger between them and scratched and scratched and scratched until they began to burn and he could feel that there was a raw spot between them.

  Definitely athlete’s foot.

  “Charles?” Patricia called out from her cot beside him as she awoke from her dream.

  “Yes?” Harold answered. He put his socks on again but decided against the shoes.

  “Charles, is that you?”

  “It’s me,” Harold said. He moved to the edge of the cot and patted her shoulder to fully wake her. “Get up,” he said. “You’re dreaming.”

  “Oh, Charles,” she said, a single tear streaking down her face as she sat up. “It was terrible. Just terrible. Everyone was dead.”

  “Now, now,” Harold said. He got up from his cot and settled beside her. A young, scruffy-looking boy that happened to be passing by the doorway peeked in and saw Harold’s empty cot and made a move toward it. “It’s mine,” Harold said. “And the one beside it is mine, too.”

  “You can’t have two cots, mister,” the boy said.

  “I don’t,” Harold replied. “But these three cots belong to my family here. That cot’s mine and the one beside it is my son’s.”

  The boy eyed Harold and the old black woman suspiciously. “So that’s your wife?”

  “Yes,” Harold said.

  The boy stood his ground.

  “Charles, Charles, Charles,” Patricia said, patting Harold’s thigh. “You know how much I love you, don’t you? Of course you do. How’s Martin?” She looked over at the boy in the doorway. “Martin, honey, where have you been? Come here, baby, and let me give you a hug. You’ve been gone for so long. Come give your mother a kiss.” She spoke in a slow, even manner, with no accent to speak of, which made her words sound all the more unsettling.

  Harold smiled and held Patricia’s hand. He wasn’t sure exactly how lucid she was just then, but it didn’t matter.

  “I’m here, honey,” Harold said. He kissed her hand gently. Then he looked at the boy. “Now get out of here,” he said. “Just because they’ve got us locked up here like animals doesn’t mean we have to behave that way!”

  The boy turned on his heel and darted from the door, his head turning left and right as he walked, already searching for another empty cot to misappropriate.

  Harold huffed.

  “How
did I do?” Patricia asked with a soft chuckle.

  He squeezed her hand. “Wonderful.”

  He moved back to his cot—still looking over his shoulder now and again to be sure no one would creep in and take Jacob’s cot.

  “You don’t ever have to thank me, Charles.”

  Harold tried to smile.

  “Do you want some candy?” she asked, suddenly patting the pockets of her dress. “I’ll see what I can find here for you,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Harold said. “You don’t have any.”

  “I might,” she said, looking disappointed as she was proven wrong. Nothing but empty pockets surrounded her.

  Harold stretched out on his cot and wiped sweat from his face. This was the most miserable August in recent memory. “You never do,” he said.

  The woman moved over and sat on the cot beside him with a groan.

  “I’m Marty again now,” Harold said.

  “Don’t you start pouting. I’ll pick up some candy for you when I go back into town. But you can’t be misbehaving like this. Your father and I taught you better than this. You’re behaving like a spoiled child, and I won’t stand for it.”

  Harold had gotten used to this newest senility of hers. Most times Jacob played the role of her Marty. But, now and again, the wiring in her head went more akimbo than usual and, without warning, Harold found himself cast into the stage play of her mind as her child—who, by his estimate, was somewhere around the age of seven or so.

  But there was no harm—or alternative. So Harold only closed his eyes—even with his disagreeable temperament—and let the woman coo gently to him about how he should learn to be better behaved.

  Harold tried for a while to become comfortable but had trouble on account of the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking of Jacob. Jacob had left to go to the bathroom quite some time ago and still hadn’t come back. He told himself that it was nothing to be worried about. He came up with all the reasons why he shouldn’t be upset.

  Reasons such as the fact that it probably hadn’t been as long as he thought. Time was a hard thing to keep up with these days and since he hadn’t worn a watch in years—he rarely had any place he needed to be—he was ill prepared to measure how long his son had been gone, so his mind went about the business of deciding, of its own accord, how long was too long.

  It was quickly approaching that point.

  He sat up on his cot and looked in the direction of the door, as if by staring at the door intently enough Jacob would come walking through. The staring went on for a few moments and, still, the boy had not appeared.

  Even though he was fifty years out of practice, Harold was still a parent. His mind went to all the places a parent’s mind goes. His imagination began with Jacob simply using the bathroom—even if most of them were broken, it was still where people went when they had to go—and stopping off along the way to talk to someone. Then the scenario reset in Harold’s mind and Jacob left the bathroom and was stopped by one of the soldiers. The soldier asked the boy to come with him. Jacob protested and the soldier grabbed the boy by the waist and lifted him and slung him over his shoulder—all the while with Jacob screaming and calling for his father.

  “No,” Harold said to himself. He shook his head and reminded himself that this was not the case. It couldn’t be, could it?

  He stepped into the hallway, looking left and right at the people coming and going. There were more today than yesterday, he thought. He looked back at Mrs. Stone still sleeping on the cot. Then he looked at the two empty cots.

  If he left, they might not be here when he came back.

  But then there was the image in his mind of Jacob being hauled away by some soldier and Harold decided it was a risk worth taking.

  He moved quickly out into the hallway, hoping that no one would see exactly what room he had come out of. He bumped into people here and there along the way and could not help but marvel at the amount of diversity in the camp at this point. While nearly all of them were Americans, they seemed to be from everywhere. Harold couldn’t remember the last time he’d traveled such a little distance and come across so many different accents.

  When he neared the bathroom Harold saw a soldier walking past. He walked with his back erect and his eyes focused intently ahead, as if something serious were occurring in front of him.

  “Hey!” Harold called out. “Hey!”

  The soldier—a young, redheaded boy with an unfortunate case of acne—did not hear. Harold managed to reach out and grab the soldier’s arm before he passed.

  “Can I help you?” the soldier said in a hurried tone. The name on his uniform said “Smith.”

  “Hey, Smith,” Harold said, trying to sound both pleasant and concerned. There was no need in being too disagreeable just now. “I’m sorry about that,” Harold said. “I didn’t mean to grab on you like that.”

  “I’m late for a meeting, sir,” Smith said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for my son.”

  “And you’re probably not the only one,” Smith said, taking none of the edge out of his voice. “Talk to the MPs. They can help you.”

  “Goddammit, why can’t you help me?” He straightened his back. Smith was tall and wide and muscular—youth in its most refined and virile state.

  Smith squinted at the old man, sizing him up.

  “I just need some help finding him,” Harold said. “He went to the bathroom a while back and—”

  “So he wasn’t in the bathroom?”

  “Well.” Harold paused. It was a long time since he behaved this irrationally, he realized. “I haven’t actually made it that far,” he said finally.

  Smith sighed with irritation.

  “Just go about your business,” Harold said. “I’ll find him.”

  Smith did not wait around for Harold to change his mind. He turned and darted off down the hallway, making his way swiftly between the crowds of people as if they weren’t there.

  “Young bastard,” Harold said to himself. Even though he knew Smith had done nothing wrong, it felt better to curse him.

  When he reached the bathroom Jacob was just coming out. His clothes and hair were a bit out of order and his face was red. “Jacob, what happened?” Harold asked.

  Jacob’s eyes went wide. He began tucking his shirt into his pants and trying to straighten his hair. “Nothing,” he said.

  Harold squatted onto his haunches and lifted Jacob’s chin, taking a good long look at his face.

  “You’ve been fighting,” Harold said.

  “They started it.”

  “Who did?”

  Jacob shrugged his shoulders.

  “Are they still in there?” Harold asked, looking toward the bathroom.

  “No,” Jacob said. “They left.”

  Harold sighed. “What happened?”

  “It was because we have a room of our own.”

  Harold stood and looked around, hoping that whatever boys had been involved were still around. He was angry at himself for missing it, even though a part of him was strangely proud that his son had been fighting. (It had happened this way once before when Jacob had just turned seven and got into a fistfight with the Adams boy. Harold had been there for that one. He’d even been the one to break it up. And to this day he felt a little twinge of guilt at the fact that Jacob had won the fight.)

  “I won,” Jacob said, smiling.

  Harold turned to keep Jacob from seeing his grin. “C’mon,” Harold said. “That’s enough adventure for both of us today.”

  No one had taken their cots when they made it back to the art room, luckily. The old woman was asleep on her cot.

  “Is Mama coming today?”

  “No,” Harold said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Probably not.”

  “The day after tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two days, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Jacob said. He stood
on his cot and pulled a small nub of a pencil from his pocket and made two scratches on the wall above his cot.

  “Is there anything you want her to bring?”

  “You mean for food?”

  “I mean for anything.”

  The boy thought for a moment. “Another pencil. And some paper.”

  “Okay, that sounds reasonable. Looking to draw something, I suppose.”

  “I want to write some jokes.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone’s already heard the ones I know.”

  “Ah. Well—” Harold sighed gently “—that happens to the best of us.”

  “Do you have any new ones you can teach me?”

  Harold shook his head. This was the eighth time the boy had asked him for this pittance, and it was about the eighth time Harold had refused him.

  “Marty?” the old woman said, dreaming again.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jacob asked, watching Patricia.

  “She’s a little confused. That happens sometimes when people get old.”

  Jacob looked at the woman, then to his father, then back to the woman.

  “It won’t happen to me,” Harold said.

  That was what the boy had wanted to hear. He moved down to the end of his cot and sat with his feet hanging from the edge, almost touching the floor. He straightened his back and sat staring out the doorway as the overcrowding of people came and went in a great, disheveled mass.

  * * *

  In recent weeks Agent Bellamy was looking more and more overcome by his situation in life, whatever that situation was exactly. He and Harold had gotten away from doing their interviews in the sweltering heat of the schoolhouse where there was no air-conditioning and no breeze and only the stench of too many people confined to a too-small space.

  Now they conducted their interviews outside, playing horseshoes in the sweltering heat of August where there was no air-conditioning and no breeze and only the burden of humidity that was like a fist clenching around the lungs.

  Progress.

  But Bellamy was changing, Harold had noticed. A patchy beard was trying to find ground on the man’s face and his eyes were unusually tired and reddened, like the eyes of someone who has recently been crying or, at the very least, not sleeping for great stretches of time. But Harold wasn’t the type of man to ask another man about such things.