Ink

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

  “Leave a trail, we’ll find your life.”

  – FedEx Brigade message #1,597

  Note in Appendix B, Tattoo You: A New Methodology for Cataloguing Ephemera from the Ink Incidents, E. Parkway and C. Riordan (New York, London, Toronto: International Library Association Press), 356.

  Finn: Redaction

  1.

  It used to make us laugh, the way the letters accusing us of distorting the news to fit our liberal bias came in on the same days as the ones repudiating our conservative agenda. As if there were some morphic resonance about mediabashing that left and right tapped into at exactly the same moment in the vast ocean of time.

  Now, of course, nobody bothers to write letters or post comments online.

  Because none of what we produce is news.

  It looks like news: lots of words in the same column widths and fonts as before; bylines; breakout graphics and pull-quotes. But whether you pick up a tabloid or broadsheet, a newspaper-of-record or the local rag, or haunt multi-platform news sources, you’ll notice a remarkable concordance. We’re all writing the same stories. Sometimes, we even use the same words.

  “Wait,” Melinda counsels.

  So, in an ironic reversal of what I wanted as a recent college graduate, I settle for writing a kind of fiction while pining for journalism.

  Every so often the truth escapes and goes viral.

  Here are the records of the sterilized. Here are the memos with the number of participants and e-mails with familiar names and official signatories verifying involvement. Copies and scans appear on dozens of web sites and their mirrors; gifs and pngs and jpegs attached to thousands of tweets; at the top of searches regardless of what’s being Googled.

  For a few hours they slip under and over and around the Internet restrictions and security measures until they’re excised. They’re always successfully hunted down and vanished. But days later, they’re back anyway.

  And then the truth starts popping up where the not-so-wired can also see it. It is written on FedEx labels and stuck on the lampposts, traffic lights and stop signs of Hastings and other cities. As twitter hashtags and accounts are blocked and access goes intermittent, these are the low-tech equivalent tweets: “8th and Callowhill, 2 p.m.” on labels that cover the city June 24. And you turn up at that hour to find it raining paper on that street corner, hard copy proof of whatever bit of ugliness is in the process of being excised – or retrofitted to banality – in our collective memories this week.

  Like the involuntary sterilizations. The official story these days is that they aren’t sterilizations but new and innovative treatments for bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress and a whole host of addictions. There are even videos of the procedures, with nationally renowned talking heads to explain the methodology and aver that, as far as public health initiatives go, this one is efficacious enough to merit continued funding. But then the FedEx Brigade deluges us with copies of the inkatoriums’ purchase orders for the chemical agents and pharmaceutical formulations employed and it gets harder and harder to swallow the lies.

  Truth apportioned in megabytes and street theater are the only news since the rest of us in the media have turned chickenshit. Still, if Melinda and I are any indication, it doesn’t mean journos aren’t holding on to a boatload of flash drives stuffed with truth in case we ever regrow balls. Or get tired of living.

  Okay. Maybe I’m exaggerating about that last, but here’s what I know is spot on: Given enough time every official story ever concocted falls apart. Someday, someone will put together the mathematical or scientific formula that explains why this is always the case. But I don’t need proof, I’ll settle for certainty of outcome.

  2.

  It is as when we first reunited. Every time. Mari and I can hardly keep our hands off each other while we wait for Gussy to fall asleep. But like all little kids, he seems to have a preternatural sense about this and finds ways to postpone his bedtime and keep me absorbed and engaged with him until, from one moment to the next, he simply drops into deep sleep wherever he’s at.

  As I carry him to his bed I wonder that my heart was ever big enough to fit the love I feel when I look down at his tranquil little face. But later, caught the dark mystery of my wife’s eyes, I remember the heart is an infinite place.

  Afterward we tell and retell the stories that never make it to the papers. It’s a promise we’ve made to each other, as binding as our wedding vows. We want to hope.

  “I happened upon an interesting web site today,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “About urban legends.”

  I know she expects something more substantial when she turns her face to me, eyebrows flying high.

  “You’re mentioned,” I say. “Well, your kind. They call you Primordials, and you supposedly use your magicks to do away with ink-baiting legislators and lily-white nativists. You all sound pretty fearsome, I have to say.”

  She gets a good, long laugh out of that one. “I wish,” she says, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “Don’t wish too much. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m lily-white.”

  “Come the revolution, we’ll spare you,” she says, nestling closer. “I hate sleeping alone.”

  “Ha. I knew you loved me for my body.”

  “Your lily-white body,” she amends.

  I stroke her hair, fall silent.

  “Give me something to really feel hopeful about,” she says quietly.

  It takes me a long time to think of something.

  “The FedEx Brigade exists, whoever and whatever they may be. And the people who are bypassing net restrictions to link to the stuff Abbie and the gavilanes sneak onto the web are young,” I say. “Hell, Abbie and the gavilanes are pretty young themselves. The world they usher in when we old farts get out of their way is going to be very different than the one we’re living in now.”

  “It’s a long time to wait,” she says.

  “We don’t have to wait,” I say, gently. “We can leave.”

  “No.”

  “Why do you hold on so tenaciously? The Canadians are really much nicer than we are. You’d have to be a ruffian to not lead a decent life there.”

  “But I’m not Canadian,” she says. “Neither are you, and neither is Gus. You just said it, our faith is in the young. If kids Gussy’s age leave, there’s no hope for the nation we love.”

  “Mari….”

  “Father Tom says Augustine had it right, that the soul takes more pleasure in what it has lost and recovered than what it has had all along. He says, given enough time, even a nation remembers it has a soul.”

  I pull her to arm’s length, look into her face. “I don’t care about the nation’s soul. I care about us. And I’m tired of the instaskin, the ban on everything that makes you what you are, the worry that someday Gus will be found out and have to wear that goddamned tattoo. I’m tired, and it’s time.”

  No.

  I hear it clear as a bell.

  I think I physically start, because Mari presses back close to me.

  If not now, when? I try asking.

  Never, the supernatural being that I am also wedded to says. And though I don’t remember ever hearing the jaguar’s voice in my head, it is enough like Mari’s that I can detect a note of sadness in the word.

  It’s my sister who’s named for a character gifted with prophecy, but when I look into my wife’s eyes, I know the future. There’ll never be any home but this one for me.

  3.

  This is how it happens.

  Melinda sends me to cover something completely innocuous.

  Now, if your business is news you know the innocuous assignments are always the most onerous of all. The silly features are the ones that generate bad feelings and claims of misrepresentation, or phone calls accusing of bad attitude and worse purpose.

  So, I’m telling you, it’s just an art show.

  Sarai is there, because she’s got that gene that makes you believe art’s sign
ificant. Most of us didn’t inherit it. Her parents are there too, after all, they gave her the gene. The only thing that interests me about the whole thing is that Melinda learned about it from a FedEx label in one of the alleyways that gives to the Avenue of the Arts. Sophie, the Gazette’s secondary photog now, is here too. Which might give you an idea of how starved the paper is for original content, normally we’d ask for courtesies.

  The artist takes her shirt off within the first five minutes of the performance, then stands stock still, as if the sight of her nipples perking in the cool of the performance space is going to be enough to keep us riveted. It’s a lazy and far too tame attempt to shock an audience who, let’s face it, has seen nipples in a variety of shapes and sizes before.

  On the other hand, I’ve noticed that Mark Nalick, the self-appointed arbiter of Hastings morality who spits while he presents his screeds on YouTube, is here. When I sneak a peek at him, I see his eyes turned fanatical already.

  It’s one of those performance pieces you either think is genius or reminds you of the way your 5-year-old digresses while he tries to tell a story. The artist patters on about censorship while she divests herself of more and more clothing. Eventually an accomplice seated in the audience hands the artist a cross, which she proceeds to rub suggestively over the exposed areas of her body.

  Again, tired.

  What hasn’t been done already to the cross – that highly charged symbol many of us revere and another good chunk of us think is wielded in direct opposition to its intention? But it’s a smart move on the artist’s part. Nalick is certain to rail and foam at the mouth about the performance piece now, and that’ll fill the gallery with both his supporters and the artist’s. It’s a win-win for all involved.

  And it pisses me off.

  Where have the transgressive artists or wild-eyed moralists been as we rewrite ink history? Our history?

  But then, just about when I’ve composed the scathing lede of my story in my head, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.

  The artist pulls the skin off her arms.

  The tattoos line up each arm in blue, green and black lines. Of course they aren’t the real thing – no ink has multiples of the government tattoo – but they might as well be given the collective in-drawn breath of the audience.

  I have a moment to wonder what direction the performance will take before I realize there are people throughout the audience mimicking the artist and pulling instaskin off in sheets.

  Were they planted in the audience or did they congregate there thanks to the label tweet? Is their action planned or spontaneous? Is this an art performance or flash mob?

  “This is turning to news,” I text Melinda. I know she’ll send an additional reporter, and I don’t care if I have to share a byline so long as we get an honest-to-God news story out of it.

  People scramble out of their chairs, knocking them over in their haste to get away.

  The inks – or are they non-inks pretending to be inks for a purpose? – scatter.

  I grab Sophie’s arm. Her mouth’s hanging open and she seems to be caught in some slo-mo, syrup moment.

  “Start shooting and stay out of reach. And for God’s sake, get something on video.” I give her a little shove to set her in motion.

  I watch cops and pop control agents pour into the space like I once saw maggots showering off a rotting squirrel, they just keep coming like there’s no end.

  The tasers are out. A man, sixty at least and marked with blue, twitches on the ground dancing to the rhythm of electrodes. A young girl flings an arm up, moving her fingers in what appears to be the sign language of desolation, until she, too, goes down.

  A cobblestone crashes through the gallery window. It just misses Sarai’s mother. Glass rains down. People start screaming. Another stone smashes through and hits a policewoman whose gun sails out of her hand. And then two more stones follow, flying in without having anything left to smash.

  Agents shoot into the crowd.

  Outside, people pry more cobbles right out of the street and let them loose.

  I can no longer tell those who started inside the gallery from those who’ve run in. Some people are barehanded, but many have cobbles and guns. The shooting begins in earnest.

  I’m trying to move Sarai and her parents toward the closest glassless window, so they can get out, when I mark something dappled skitter by. I rarely see Mari’s jaguar, but I sense she’s here for some reason, in this jumble of the world’s layers all gone chaotic at once. Every way I turn I catch shadowy movement at the edge of my vision.

  I head in the direction I think the jaguar’s gone.

  I see Matthews, newly arrived, on the other side of the gallery. He’s standing in a group, gawking at the number of people down, clipped by cobbles or tasers or bullets. I signal him. Interviews. Quotes. Anything.

  I chase after the dappled creature, but it darts in and out of other shadows, both solid and spectral, and I almost trip as it stops short. The body laying on the ground in front of it spasms, as if it’s been hit while it’s down.

  Then the creature turns around.

  I have a moment to register the dapple of hair, not fur, and the pitted surface of a ruined face. I’ve never seen the dwarves Mari fears and her twin chases down, but I know that’s what stands before me. An etheric projection of the pure evil we human beings are willing to visit on each other. In every age, every country and on every layer of reality.

  The creature opens his mouth in a wide smile that shows wicked shards of teeth.

  Kai.

  The harsh whisper insinuates itself into my head and multiplies there, like an neverending echo.

  Something slams me from behind and I go down. I struggle to not black out. The dwarf holds my eye with his inhuman one for a few moments, then scurries away.

  My hearing fades in and out. I’ve fallen where I can see others – flesh and shadow – moving through the debris, but I can’t move my head. Another heavy blow, this time to my shoulder. My eyes fill with water, and I think I’m going to throw up.

  A figure swims into sight. Who? Ink. Gang maybe…. She ducks down to the floor to get a look at me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask her.

  Whatever is affecting my hearing is also affecting my eyes. I almost think I can see the solid and unsolid pandemonium through her. She doesn’t answer but lays a hand gently on my forehead. The pain recedes a bit when she does.

  “I’ve been shot, haven’t I?” It’s getting harder for me to speak, but I have to.

  She nods. The wrist that moves back and forth as she smoothes back my hair has a black tattoo on it. A wisp of familiarity. I get the picture of a girl with huge hoop earrings standing on the steps of a church. Nely.

  “Mari will be so happy when finds out you’re alive,” I say.

  Shh, güero.

  Her lips don’t move.

  “Are you a Primordial then, like Mari and Gussy?”

  She smiles. Like and not like. We serve differently, but the same end.

  That’s when I know.

  “I’m dying. That’s why I can see you.”

  She looks down at me. What kind eyes she has.

  “All the stories I was supposed to write, they won’t ever get told now.”

  Who says?

  “No one hears the voices of the dead.”

  That’s what you think.

  Another familiar voice nudges into my head. It is faint, but gaining, as if it’s trying to swallow the miles between us. And then another – thinner, younger, less in control – behind it.

  Oh my God. My son’s fully twinned and I didn’t know. And now I’ll never recognize the doubled consciousness as I look into his eyes. I’ll never meet the being charged with protecting him. I’ll never see my son grow into the complex, amazing, magical person he’s bound to be.

  Pain closes my eyes. This so much worse than the physical suffering.

  “They aren’t going to get here in time, ar
e they?”

  In time for what, güero? Don’t you understand yet what a gift you’ve been given? Whatever you want to tell them, say it now.

  I don’t have time to be eloquent. The thoughts I send to my wife and son through their twins are unpolished and raw. Rough copy. But perhaps love and gratitude doesn’t have to be perfectly expressed. Perhaps it just has to be the whole of the story.

  Nely’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder, and when it does, stillness steals over me. It’s not so bad really. Something both warm and cool radiates out from the center of my chest.

  Damn.

  Matthews is going to get the front page.

  Abbie: Mile marker 324

  1.

  I’m the one who puts the gavilanes back together again.

  From the first I understand the future of the gang is in tech. When I show Neto how easily I retrieve Toño’s stranded gavilán fortune – licit and illicit – and rewrite the lives of the people we want to protect, he looks at me as if I’m the miracle he’s been waiting for all his life.

  Jobs is a gavilán, now, along with about seven of our wiliest cohorts from computer science 303. Remi and Ana, and their lovers and buddies and sisters, are in the reconstituted traditional wing of the gang. Remi is second, I’m co-first.

  Lucero is born – Lucy to me, Luz to Neto – and he adores her. She calls Neto Papá from the beginning. It is both sweet and bitter. Neto is just enough like Toño to make me forget, and different enough to make me remember.

  Bitterness drives a lot of gang leaders. That, and revenge.

  But there’s no one left for me to take out on either count. Celia’s long dead and none of the others has resurfaced. Not even after the gavilán name was reborn in gang circles. Neto and I think most of the old gavilanes are dead, or if not that, taken secretly into the fold of other gangs. None admits to it, of course, but I don’t expect truth from any gang but ours.

  Mari has become my closest friend, driven by our twin joy in the children who stand as testimonials to our twin losses. Even though she’s in Hastings and I’m in Smithville, we speak to each other regularly. Sometimes we even complain about the way our magicks serve but never suffice. I don’t understand her magic, nor she mine, but I can’t forget that she was the first to recognize that virtual is every bit as powerful as primordial. The code that comes as naturally as breath to me is the gold strand I add to the skein her animal twin showed me at the inkatorium years ago.