by J. D. Palmer
Rock bottom has its perks.
When I was fourteen I tried out for the football team. I had played in middle school and was pretty good. I had a group of friends who pushed for me to join. They'd slap me on the back and tell me how good I was.
But I wanted to be great.
Or, at least, I was expected to be great. I had the potential. And I don't know if this was simply pressure put on myself by myself, or if the people around me actually did have high hopes for my future.
But deep down I hated it. I hated the weight on my shoulders. The way it made me feel sick. The sleepless nights and anxious days. I remember my mom driving me to the tryout and I prayed, hard, that somehow I wouldn't have to do another season of stress and nerves and falling short of success.
And I didn't.
My ankle snapped thirty minutes into a practice scrimmage.
And it hurt. A hell of a lot. And it sucked, for a long time, dealing with surgeries and crutches and pain. And the people who I thought were my friends faded away. They had wanted me on the team for my prowess, not for me. And that, once I figured it out, had made sense to me. I had never played for the team to win, I had played for me. I saw that now. And that hurt, too.
But holy hell it was such a relief. Freedom, for at least awhile, to simply exist. To have an excuse for not succeeding. To do nothing.
Here I was again. I had tried, right? And it just wasn't in the cards.
I allow myself to wallow in that same deceptive self-pity, at least for the moment savoring the absence of pressure.
Footsteps in the gravel. Sand crunches as someone kneels down next to me. Wing’s concerned face cuts into my line of sight.
“Are you dead?”
I don’t move, wait for him to go away. He doesn’t.
“I know you aren’t dead, you’re breathing.”
I don’t want to speak. I don’t wish to acknowledge what happened, or what lies ahead, or how I am now. I want to be nothing. Just for a moment. I want to watch the clouds go by and embrace insignificance.
“What’s the girl’s name? Since you’re dead I should probably tell her the news.” His voice takes on a serious tone. “Some of the guys are saying, uh, you know, now that you are beat that she is up for grabs.”
All right kid.
I roll over. “What?”
He grins. Brown skin crinkling at the corner of his almond eyes. “I knew that’d get ya.” He waves frenzied hands in my face. “Don’t worry, they know she is off limits. But the guys like to plan ahead.”
I sit up. Take stock of my ribs and my face. Well shit, I can walk. “What’re you doing here?” I sound old. My voice is raspy, as if I haven’t used it in a long time. He holds out a hand. His grip is tight, eyes meeting where mine should be, as if trying to gauge the depths of my sanity. He pulls me to my feet, one hand holding onto my forearm until I can stand on my own.
"You are gonna have some bruises, chingón. I don't think mine are going to be that bad. I know how to protect my face. Not like you."
He laughs like we're sharing a joke. Hell, maybe we are.
"No one fights Theo anymore. He's a fucking killer."
I don't respond. Not like I haven't found that out firsthand. I take a few steps towards the compound and Wing skips ahead past me.
"Why did you help me?”
I shake my head. I really can't remember why. I was angry. God I was angry. And frustrated, and something John had said to me had burrowed its way into my mind and hatched into something reckless.
"I thought he was killing you."
He laughs. "No one dies in the pits amigo, that's against the rules. But he is gonna be hurting tomorrow!"
I still don't understand why he is so upbeat. Neither of us has had a good time of it today.
"Why were you fighting?"
His face darkens for a second. "He took a picture of mine."
I don't ask any more questions and we are content to make our slow way back in silence. He leads me to the door to Doctor Wong's office and I'm just glad that we don't run into anyone else along the way. He grips my hand before I go in and looks me in the eyes, the smile back on his face.
"Thank you, amigo, even if it was muy estupido. Fucking chingón!"
I have no idea what he means or for what he is thanking me for. He knocks on the door and gives me a pat on the arm before scampering off down the hall.
Wong is callous. He has me strip away my urine soaked clothes and then he ushers me into a small bathroom. Tells me to shower. I haven’t had an actual shower in so long that the moment the hot water hits me I break down and cry again. I cry out of self-pity and thankfulness equally. I cry and wash a body much more scarred since the last time I found myself here.
I’m lost. Reeling inside and out. When this happened, this death of humanity, I was ripped from my foundations. Tossed into an abyss. Almost destroyed and now… Now I despair that I am something futile. A speck of dust caught in a never ending swirl of wind with no power to escape its sway.
I take a long time, longer than the five allotted minutes, and am surprised to find the doctor still waiting for me. He examines me, prodding ribs with an ungentle touch and pushing my head around as he examines cuts and bruises.
“I could tell you that you have a concussion. Chances are you’ve had one for awhile. I could tell you that you have a couple cracked ribs. Doesn’t look new. But what I think you really need to hear…” He looks at me with eyes hardened by too much death. “Things are different now. Different here. You need to know your place. You can’t throw your weight around. Words and actions mean more today than ever before. But maybe you see that?”
I don’t say anything. I am too tired, too broken in spirit to argue or agree or do anything but meekly nod. I feel like an animal. Like the burden that Stuart called me. A dog left off his leash that was disciplined by a sterner hand. Perhaps that’s what happens when society falls. We became animals. And I’m farther down on the food chain than I imagined myself to be. Or should be. I try to think on this but the thought is already gone, an ideation already slipping through the grates of my leaky mind.
I fall asleep on the cot in his office. I do not dream, or if I do I do not remember. And that’s something for which I’m thankful.
I wake up, ribs and chest aching, and slowly sit up. Beryl sits across from me on another cot. She saw me waking up and looked away. Her profile is stark against the light from the window, anger and worry warring on her features. Then she looks back at me and her face contorts, emotions rising and falling and slipping beneath the surface until it’s just relief.
Her presence is enough to make me emotional. I heave in a breath, taking in what it means. She is here. I let out a bitter laugh, disregarding the pain in my side. “We have to stop doing this.” I laugh even harder and she grins her lopsided grin. She crosses to me and gives me her gentle hug and I know that if she was angry at me I am forgiven. Or not forgiven, just… In this world one cannot afford to hang onto grievances. More than before.
“I’m sorry, Beryl. I’m so sorry. It’s your choice—”
She places her fingers over my lips and keeps them there, her eyes staring into mine. She lets the moment linger, letting me know just how angry she was. Then she shakes her head as she exhales a breath I didn’t know she was holding.
I spend the rest of the day with her. I woke up in a room adjacent to the Doctor’s office but eventually Beryl leads me away from Wong’s hovering presence and to the suite that she calls her own. I follow her up the steps that lead to her bedroom that has a window and the four poster bed with the strange familiarity and we sit on the floor.
We don’t say anything for hours.
We don’t eat. Souls as starved as ours make it easy to forget to eat. But she cups my scabbed hand in hers and we read books in simple silence. Wong comes and takes her blood. A process that causes her to go rigid with tension, eyes tightly closed. After that all other knocks on the door are ignored and fo
r some reason they let us get away with it. The shadows lengthen and the day is almost gone and I have yet to say a word.
But I need to. I want to be rid of the dark thoughts that haunt me and I hope that if I say them out loud, share them with someone else, they will cease to have any sway.
I tell her about the fight. And I tell her about Stuart and how I feel like his ghost lurks in my subconscious. And suddenly I find myself telling her about our forays out into the beachside houses. What I saw and felt. What I smelled. What I was forced to do. And it pours out of me, culminating to something, some admission that I don’t see coming until it has departed me lips.
“I’m afraid he was right. Not in what he was doing, but about me. That I’m not someone who can take part in the world. One who can shape it. I’m simply a creature to be pushed and beaten into doing what others think is the right path.”
Dark eyes appraise me, taking in what I have said. Then she slaps me, hard, pain radiating from a jaw already over-abused. I reel backwards from the unexpected blow, a hand snaking up to cover my face. My lip is bleeding again. I look at her, shocked. She is breathing hard, lips and jaw moving as she struggles with the demon inside her that holds her tongue.
“You… are wrong.” The words are whispered, smoky and thick with emotion. She tries to say more, hands flitting up to her face and patting at her cheeks as if they can help with the formation of sentences. Tears leak out of her eyes as she strains against the invisible wall inside herself.
It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to say more. Hell, the slap said it all. The time for self-pity is over. Forever. We are here. We have survived and we will keep on surviving. I hug her. I hold her and those three words mean everything to me.
I sleep on her couch and wake early the next morning. I am stiff and sore, my side one long strip of pain. I hobble upstairs. Beryl is asleep, coiled in the center of the bed. I don’t wake her. I make my way back downstairs and place a hand on the doorknob. Yesterday I dreaded seeing these people again, forced to relive the shame every time I looked into their eyes. IF I could look into their eyes.
Today I will chance it.
Last night did much to restore me. I feel… steady. Clear. Not physically, but emotionally. I’ve been in fights before and I remember this feeling. The same feeling after sex. Or a hug from a loved one. Or a bar fight. Contact with another human. Grounded. Something that connects us not with another but refocuses the world. Perspective, if only for a short time.
Inside me, the nuts and bolts that power my mind are whirring and clicking and snapping into place in a new direction.
I walk outside. Steven has been waiting for me. He gives me a bottle of water and we sit in the grass. “You going to be all right?” I nod my head. My mind is still grappling with this new idea, trying to untangle the threads of my battered brain. We watch the sun rise over distant mountains until someone yells at Steven and he helps me up and we walk across the sand again. The clubhouse looms ahead.
Fifteen men file inside to fill up on breakfast that is dished up or thrown at or dropped on the floor depending on who is in line. The men grow silent when I enter. Then a laugh. A jeer. A cascade of derision washes over me as I walk with Steven to the far corner. Men laugh and make jokes and some merely look at me like I got what I deserved. A few are quiet, eyes full of pity before they turn away from me.
Breakfast is served but I get none. I didn’t really expect to get any. Steven offers me some off of his plate but I scoot away. No need to get him in trouble.
John is talking vehemently with Don. He wants Theo punished. He wants a trial. The men talk quietly, pretending not to be listening to the exchange. Theo leans casually on the wall, arms crossed, dark eyes boring into the back of John’s head. Don wears a weary, sad face and keeps shaking his head. “This is the way things are conducted around here. He broke the rules.”
John slips into lawyer mode. “He wasn’t aware of the rules. We weren’t aware that disputes were handled physically.”
Don puts a hand on his shoulder, speaks down to John. “Not all disputes. We aren’t animals. But we have a system that works.”
John gestures to me, the edges of anger finally creeping into his voice. “This is not right.”
Don steps back. “Right? From what I heard he stepped into the circle and beat one of the men. With a golf club. What about that?”
“He was protecting—”
Don interrupts. “Theo is the protector in that circle.”
John points. “He is not in a right state of mind to be asked to adhere to your rules.”
Don is taken aback. Steven looks at me. I almost laugh. Guess he thinks I need a psych test.
I probably do.
“These are trying times,” Don continues, “and we have to be strong to survive. We make fighters here. We fight here, for everything, do you not see that?”
John’s forehead crinkles in confusion.
“That doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Don is exasperated, he decides to make this a public problem. “Okay. Okay, let’s talk to him.” He calls across to me. “Harlan. Would you like to make this an issue?”
I shake my head. This will do nothing. It’s what Don wants, dammit. He turns to John. “There. You see? Issue solved.” Snickers as John walks back to the bench. I hear someone mutter “fuckin’ pussy” though I don’t know if it’s for me or for John. I appreciate him trying, but civilized behavior will not get us very far here.
After eating the chores for the day are assigned by the man who fucked me up. He reads directives straight from Don although he adds his own flair. He gives out the favored jobs first.
“Tech duty to Dan and C.J. Farming to Bry and my nigger Jayson, so long as you stop bringing in so many tomatoes. Nasty shit, dogs. Town duty goes to… aw fuck it, Richard and Pasco. Sorry Pasco.” And so on. The only pause comes when he gets to my name.
“And the newest asshole to this place. Harlan.” He stares at me, eyes blanketing me with scorn. “What kind of name is that? Har-lan. You’re moved to shit pit duty. Fill in the old and dig the new. Four feet deep. You got a problem with that?” He barely pauses. “Didn’t think so.”
He keeps reading. Fuck, I figured I would still be cleaning dishes. I look at the men around me. No one so much as glances in my direction. As if I might rub off on them. Bring them down into the muck and shit, too. Maybe I will, dammit.
They think that beating me, pissing on me, has broken my spirit. It almost did. But they don’t know that I’ve been forced to shit myself while chained to a wall. That I’ve been electrocuted to the point of voiding my bowels while crying out in pain. I’ve slept in a blanket coated in my own blood and shit and piss and begged for more food. For more water. Maybe I don’t have any pride left. Or maybe I have found that there is no such thing to begin with.
The animal inside me emerges from the shadows. I welcome it with open arms as it prowls around my heart and finds a precipice from which to keep watch in my mind. I am defeated, but I am alive. And the animal reminds me that a lion who was cornered and beaten is still a lion. Still dangerous in its own way. And shame isn’t something a lion holds onto.
My eyes narrow as the world snaps into place. It’s as if my mind and soul were jumbled, pieces of a puzzle scattered together but not in concert. Now a picture has formed. I have spent so much of my life worrying about judgment. Judgment for my actions or lack thereof. Morality. John worried so much about my cavalier attitude towards death that it had me questioning myself. Now I understand. Now I see that I was playing by the rules of a world that no longer exists. You adapt, or you die. I have adapted and it’s as if everything in me has aligned. I run a swollen tongue over cracked lips and grin. These men think me beaten.
Fools.
“Har…”
I look up to see John and Steven staring at me with concern. A laugh, or something that might pass as a laugh is still creaking out of me, the grin still plastered across my face. I wa
nt to tell them that I’m okay, that I’ve figured things out. But I doubt they would believe me. I want to tell them that I’m not crazy. I don’t know if I’d believe me.
Wing leads me out into the heat of the desert towards a line in the sand. The makeshift latrine is only two feet deep and near overflowing. Wing gives me a hat and an apologetic glance before darting back towards the kitchen.
The sun beats down on me, conspiring with gravity to force me down into the sand. Jagged mountains behind me stand sentinel over vast amounts of nothingness and the small band of men who have refused to die.
For awhile I just stand still, breathing in the hot air and letting my bones settle. The roiling sea inside me is smooth, my inner turmoil placid for the first time in what seems like forever.
I watch small figures hustle around the compound. A truck drives onto the grass and a couple guys unload bags of soil. They take a wheelbarrow and run a load of dirt to a greenhouse, pausing on the way to stand beneath a window. One of the men stands up in the barrow and begins to make loud protestations of love followed by exaggerated hip thrusts. I wonder if Beryl sees it.
I dig. It’s physically exhausting, battered as I am, and emotionally degrading. I dig the hole next to the old one, the newly dug dirt slopping into the old crater. Flies buzz above the soiled toilet paper and defecation and each shovel full of dirt dropped into the shallow chasm is another mouthful of air that makes me retch.
My hands are blistered from labor I’m unused to. The sun scorches me, the hat Wing gave me barely providing any cover. The cut on my lip throbs and my jaw is so swollen that it hurts when I smile.
But fuck it I do smile, even as I retch over a hole full of other men’s shit and piss.
I am reminded of the words given to me by my mother and father in my youth. How I had so much potential. “You can do anything you put your mind to, Harlan.” Yet somehow I never could find something to do with it.
Now it is plain to me. I was molten metal. Shapeless, formless, without purpose. That’s how I spent my life so far. But the beating they have given me has hammered a crucible into which I can pour the alloy of my being.