The Deadheart Shelters

by Forrest Armstrong

  “The literary equivalent of an Alejandro Jodorowsky film.”

  —Carlton Mellick III, author of The Egg Man

  “The hip hop lovechild of William Burroughs and Dali...”

  —The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction

  “There aren’t many writers, apart from Milton and Dante, who have such energy and invention, and ease of execution. Forrest Armstrong has vast talent.”

  —Tom Bradley, author of Lemur

  “[F]asten your irreality-belt and get ready for a never-before mind-space voyage!”

  —The Small Press Review

  “Thirty years have passed since I read The Ticket that Exploded, but I think I’ve finally found a writer with the skill to cut Dr. Benway’s rusty surgical blade through the next leg of the run through the nightmarish urban jungle: Forrest Armstrong. His serrated language drips with blood.”

  —The Journal of Experimental Fiction

  “An impressive, mind-altering force... Armstrong resuscitates the reader’s amputated interest in contemporary literature, slapping apathy from our eyes.”

  —John Edward Lawson,

  author of Discouraging at Best

  “Deft, vivid prose... I believe that Forrest Armstrong is the real deal. His talent for language is something to get excited about.”

  —J. David Osborne, author of By the Time We

  Leave Here, We’ll Be Friends

  Swallowdown Press

  PO Box 86810

  Portland, OR 97286-0810

  WWW.SWALLOWDOWNPRESS.COM

  ISBN: 1-933929-04-9

  Copyright ©2010 Swallowdown Press

  The Deadheart Shelters Copyright ©2010 by Brandon Forrest Armstrong

  Cover art copyright ©2010 by Dana Terrace

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  All persons in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental or for satirical purposes. This is a work of fiction.

  This is how I remember what got me here. I hum my mind into a soundproof place, a gun-dark ocean with cardboard skies. I rewind it back to when I could feel the world on me like ant limbs.

  First I think of the geese.

  When I was a boy, they worked me less. I had time for other things. I would sit in the moss waiting for the older ones to come home. I would watch the sun fragment in slow motion like an egg with corn syrup yolk. Then the geese would start calling and put cleaning fluid in my head.

  From then on the evenings were like battered cars—tired and waiting for the next day to start, watching the older ones ease themselves out of feeling like battered cars to be fresh tomorrow.

  Then all our young faces got old, and the old faces got older or left. I stopped hearing the geese. We have all grown into new faces and now I go fishing in the mind that is soundproof and gun-dark to remember them.

  There was a slave named Clyde, whose eyes were once bright like suns almost-risen over hills; that indirect way. A perpetual dawn.

  Clyde used to say that Thomas was his brother and we all felt that way. Thomas was the one who said “Why” when we all thought “Okay” was enough. He never grinned. He loved Clyde and maybe nothing else. It was strange how it happened but that’s how it was.

  Thomas would always get lazy on the job, finding ways to circumvent it. He often involved Clyde in his dodge attempts. When asked to pick apples from trees you’d see them distantly, throwing the apples back and forth, or squeezing them above their mouths to get the juice. Things like that. Once in the alligator fields they hid curled up inside the bone cage, and then sprang out, covered in crushed berries, to surprise us.

  Of course they’d get punished. Clyde too, that wounded animal. I wonder if they said to each other after “But I’d do it again” or if it was something they just knew.

  Then Thomas went too far. We were asked to kill chickens with hatchets and he wouldn’t even touch them. The master was there—the coops are right by where we lived and didn’t require much walking to. Thomas’ refusal almost seemed weak, but maybe it only seemed that way. “That chicken hasn’t done shit to me,” he said. “And I ain’t the one eatin’ it. You want chicken so bad why don’t you chop it yourself? Afraid to lose your appetite?”

  The master struck him in the face. Thomas became utterly expressionless and turned his head back. They stared at each other, the master with a big grin and Thomas with nothing. “Kill the chicken, boy.”

  “Not your fucking boy, old man. I’m a child of the planet and I belong to no one.”

  The master hit him over and over again, getting him on his back so he’d spit up blood and teeth to his side and it’d stay there next to his mouth. “Think about it, boy! You belong to me!”

  “Fuck you.”

  I thought Thomas might die there, and thinking back, it would have been better.

  But he lived. Long enough to be blacked-out by punches and woken up with cold water from the hose. We were all watching, dumbfounded and silent out of self-protection.

  “Thomas,” the master said as the beaten man’s eyes shot open blinking. “You belong to me. I know exactly where you came from. I raped your fucking mother myself.”

  The hatchet Thomas had refused to hold was lying by his side, and he grabbed it. That was his suicide-decision. It doesn’t matter whether he would have swung it or not, the holding it was the mistake. He got shot in the arm. His hand twitched and let go.

  Then the master flipped him on his stomach and hit him in the back of his head with the pistol, so he’d black-out again. He was lifted by the arms in the mouths of the dogs; there was an imprint in red where his face was down on the ground. He was drooling through the holes made in his lips and one of us vomited. The master put a black sack over Thomas’ head, gave one quick glance to us, motioning to follow, then led with the dogs dragging Thomas between him and us.

  We watched all of this too.

  We were walked through the city as usual, with Thomas draped and not waking up, until we got to the ocean. On the shore he was put back down and they tied stones to his ankles, and one around his neck. Then the master woke him up so he could know what happens before it does.

  “You ain’t never been no good,” the master said. “You get a little work done but mostly you just get in the way. No more. No more.”

  Thomas was looking around, trying to conceal his panic. He kept opening his mouth, wetting his lips, and closing it again. Swallow. Gasp as if it was a normal breath. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he was too afraid, and all he saw was the master’s face above his.

  “Lemme see that tongue.”

  Thomas swallowed and his eyes got big. He shook his head, jerking, barely turning it on the neck. “Open up,” the master said again.

  He wouldn’t do it. The master pushed through his cheeks with the knife, slicing at his tongue while it was still hidden, which must have hurt worse. Finally Thomas gave up and spit out a tongue already made ragged and the master took all of it.

  When they dragged him out by his arms, the stones making it harder, all Thomas could do was clench his eyes shut. I imagine he looked like that all the way down to the bottom.

  Clyde was doing the same thing.

  The first time they brought Lilly in we were sitting in the basement, playing with the checkers who we’d learned to be friends with. When you are here anything that does not bark or hurt you is a friend; the cold air we were underdressed for even, because it touched
us softly. We looked up and I felt something inside me I knew must be love, because every old slave has fallen in love once and can warn about it so you know when it happens. “Never fall in love with a slave,” Abe said once. “Nothing will happen but the daily disintegration of your hope as you watch all the things you can’t do for her. If you need love to get by, fall in love with someone in the street so you will never see her hurt. You meet her in your head when you’re sleeping, and pretend she wants to be there.”

  “He’s saying don’t fall in love,” Mark said.

  “I might be saying that, but if you need love to get by…”

  “We need a lot more to get by than we get and we still get by. Huh?”

  She came down crying, and threw herself at our feet, as if she was going to ask for something, but what do you ask for. No, ask for things in your head when you’re sleeping and pretend they come. We learned these things fast, without teaching.

  “Here’s a new one,” said the Master, looking down at her. “The farmer up the road died and his kids sold ‘em all cheap. She’s a frail thing, never woulda bought her if it ain’t so cheap.”

  You learn to hold your tongue. Because why else, what do you get. But I saw her and felt what must be love, like ladybugs hatching in my stomach and running for light. Some would drink Novocain to drown them, but I wasn’t once like that.

  When the Master left she looked up at us, the tears and snot blemishing her face and I loved her through them. I have never felt less myself, only more reasonable, more aware. I put down the checkers and sat down in front of her, taking her hands so she couldn’t hide herself with them.

  “You will be happy here,” I said.

  “There is no happiness anywhere for people like us. But at least there was familiarity.”

  “There will be that again.”

  “I don’t want to start that all over, the hurting together so we love each other, I hurt enough—”

  “We will take care of you.”

  She sniffled and hugged me and to think of it now it is one more dead weight of life, one more thing happening in the infinite rearrangement of objects and trying to keep your mouth somewhere it can breathe. But at that time it was different, like ash in a fireplace blown up out of the chimney. She smelled like magnolias. I met her in my head that night.

  They kept us in a basement and put duct tape over the windows, so the see-through became a part of the wall that breaks easier. We never tried to break them; imagine if we did: Go where? And the dogs who are always listening and the men who are always waiting.

  At night they’d give us one candle and when it burnt all the way down we’d have to wait until morning. But I grew to love voices, because you can see them in the dark.

  Our beds were tucked with no space between them so they became one long bed, but we’d sleep with a chain cuffed around one ankle, and you couldn’t roll very far. It got sore sometimes when I was young; I’m older now, and my ankle feels fine. All night watching the mobiles spin, for we were like children then, and most of us still are. We were easily mesmerized and loved them for putting these things in the ceiling just so we could look at them. If a man is beating his dog and somebody else tries to stop him, the dog will attack the preventer. I know this.

  One time I remember: it was late and the candle was almost spent, and I looked forward to the talking that’s born with the new-dark. None of us are family but we’re all family.

  When the light was gone so we had no more shadows to stare at, Lilly said, “I get so tired sometimes.”

  “Do you?” said Mark. He’s pitiless with everyone, but especially himself, which to me always justified it.

  “Oh, let her be.”

  “I mean it I get so tired sometimes.”

  “Well get some rest, girl.”

  “That’s not enough. I mean a tired that stretches farther than days and nights. Like there’s a bigger rest I need.”

  “Don’t you know it.”

  “They call that dying,” Mark said. “You wanna die, Lil?”

  “Oh, heavens no.”

  “Then take the rest you have.”

  “I understand you, Lilly,” I said, and it got quiet for a minute except for her murmuring. “Thank you, Pete” and I felt like I’d said something stupid. I love Lilly; she’s the only thing I miss. She loves me too and I bet she misses me. One time we snuck away from the dog—when he let us off the chains—and just kissed. It was a long time and we didn’t ever say anything. When we got caught we got hit, both of us, so we were too sore to work for the rest of the day. Later when we saw each other we both said “But I’d do it again.”

  “If I had me anything, it’d only be a cloud,” said Abe, who rarely spoke, so we’d listen when he did. “Look how soft they look up there. You could spread ‘em real big and they’d still be soft as a pillow.”

  “Bed ain’t soft enough for you, grandpa?”

  “Shut your mouth, Mark. Imagine if we had that. There’s enough clouds up there for all of us. And when we had the time we could get to building a staircase down so we could visit the people when we wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t wanna visit them anyways.”

  “I would,” I said. “You see them every day and some are nice enough to say ‘Hello.’ What do you think they’d say if they had time to say more?”

  “They’d say ‘Why do y’all stink so bad?’ and I’d go ‘’Cause we ain’t got no fuckin’ showers.’ Then guess what I’d say?” Nobody guessed, but Mark kept talking. “I’d go, ‘Can I use yours?’ Ha!”

  “We don’t stink.”

  “You got used to it. A shame.”

  We always talked like this, saying things so the conversation won’t die. Then people roll over and go to sleep without telling anyone, until eventually you might be the one to realize you’re the only one still listening to yourself. “I mean it, I get so tired,” Lilly said.

  “Do you think you’re sick, Lilly?” I asked.

  “No, nothin’s wrong but this tiredness. I feel fine.”

  “No more talking. Just sleep.”

  “Who the hell you think you are to tell us to go to sleep?” said Mark.

  “I was just talking to Lilly.”

  “One of us should try to break out of here,” Abe said abruptly.

  “Not me,” said Mark. “I’m happy enough.”

  The next day the dog walked us through the city to these fields a couple miles away, where we had to pick the blackberries that grow inside of alligator skeletons. You’re constantly hunched down and your fingers get blistered fast, but you can’t bleed on what you pick or they’ll never let you leave. I was standing next to Abe over two alligators that died fighting and became skeletons tranced like that, and we were digging cautiously through the piles in their mouths because you can’t rupture the berries either. I was watching Lilly and sometimes I caught her watching me back, then we’d both smile and put our heads down.

  The dog circled us, barking arbitrarily. The sky there looked like alligator skin. I remember Abe saying When the skin and stuff disintegrates or whatever it will do when it does, it’s so nasty it must get stuck in the air above it forever. And God sure as hell ain’t letting it up into the vapors of Heaven, not to mingle there, No.

  All I knew were the blackberries in its mouth.

  “Hey, Abe,” I said that morning, “you think we could break out?”

  “I’m not talking about me, Pete. Look how old I am.”

  “Well what about me?”

  “Nobody’s ever tried. You know that? Nobody’s ever tried.”

  “I’d like to get free and then get all of you free.”

  “Well I’d sure love that. I’d sure like to rest a little before death takes control of me.”

  “Maybe I’ll do it.”

  The dogs started barking in that bodiless way that curved like violin bows through all angles of the air, so as long as you’re in earshot you hear it as well as if beside them. We turned to see their t
eeth bared and Clyde backing up. He had this almost expressionless look with his lips trembling, as if the muscles of his face were too heavy for expression and this was the most that came out.

  “What?” he said, twitching back to the drum of each bark. “Why the hell they give us masters that don’t speak English? I don’t even know what I did.”

  “You better turn back and work, Clyde. They ain’t gonna leave you alone ‘til you do,” Abe called to him, but at the beckoning of his voice one dog departed from Clyde and ran to tackle Abe instead. I took a step back, because I learned early that trying to prevent the will of those above you only subjects you to what you’re trying to prevent. One dog bit Clyde and we could see the blood swell to fill the puncture wound, and Abe had to close his eyes to keep the saliva from getting in.

  Clyde turned and tried to work again, gently collecting blackberries in the palm of one hand, while the dogs chewed his shoulders and ripped holes in his shirt the size of raccoons. He kept working, like a monk knelt with his head soaked in incense to forget the dirty air the incense expels, putting the berries in the bucket beside him unbroken.

  Later, his lips had stopped trembling, and his bruises looked as natural as birthmarks.

  Abe was somewhere else.

  When we walked back that night I was able to get next to Lilly and for a second I was able to hold her hand, but I let go because I was afraid of the dog looking. What he’d do if he saw. If he punished me, okay, my body is only the thing I live in. But I didn’t want her hurt. I asked “How was your day?” and she just turned her hands over to show me the blisters on them, but when I looked up she was smiling.

  “It happened,” she said. “Can’t nobody ever take that away from days, can they?”