Obe met quite a few men in blue that day, and to his relief none of them were Rein, the man who had quickly befriended then betrayed and beaten him during the grocery day frenzy. From the men he did meet, it seemed there were only two topics of conversation anyone cared to discuss.
One was that Obe himself had become some kind of overnight hero in thwarting a hunt in front of the entire Family of Blue. Some of the men knew him by name already, and several asked him to retell his story or show the hard-won fruits of his labor.
“So let’s see your prize!” a man named Stig had asked.
At first Obe hadn’t known what he’d meant. Then he remembered that his entire, famous run from the women had begun because they’d caught him stealing a pair of brand new sneakers from a dead man of the green sector.
“Uh, I lost those already,” Obe had to admit. “Stolen that same night before I even got a chance to put ‘em into action.”
Stig had laughed, which for a moment had angered Obe. “Damn, you know how lucky you is?!” Stig had shouted. “I had me a pair of sneaks once. Not the purdy greenies you had, but sneaks is sneaks. I musta lost three weeks good sleep til they was fine-ly stole. Best thing happened to me in this place. Sneaks is good, but sleep is better, okay?”
Obe smiled then, realizing the man had meant no harm and had even given him advice which he’d already learned usually came at a price.
“Sure,” he’d agreed.
But Stig and the rest all winced when they saw the bottom of Obe’s ravaged feet. He’d done a literal skid to a halt in the grocery day alley mere seconds before the car had come tearing around the corner and screeched to its own halt, the alley stuffed with more than fifty men. The stalemate had succeeded, everyone believed, because Obe had somehow managed to blend into the crowd. The women could have easily singled him out and shot him. But they hadn’t, and most men contended Obe had held his panting breath just long enough to remain an enigma.
He took the praise with humbled appreciation, feeling special but beaten. He wondered how many knew he’d been physically beaten by Rein and the other final combatants in the grocery day scrum. None of them offered any food, and Obe felt it would be somehow wrong to ask. He moved on, instead, feeling his hunger grow with each passing man.
The more persistent talking point was the sudden decrease in hunts and kills. It had been two days from the time of Obe’s incident, and nobody had seen a single car or woman since. Many men thought it had something to do with Obe, furthering his hero status, since his was the last run anyone had recorded.
But I was chased again since then, his mind protested. His imagination reached out, trying to make the connection a legitimate one. He reminded himself to seek out Baj soon and get his second mark. In the meantime, he peeled the small forming scab of his first marked run to make a good scar, and happily sucking the trickle of blood.
Yet as he mingled with his new peers and strengthened his acquaintanceships, he was eyeing each man carefully. Even before he crossed the border from his black sector haven to this world of blue, he had decided to actively look out for the gangs the shadow man had warned of. It took him several hours to finally notice their call signs. Both were subtle, but once he saw them they were obvious.
Without the ability to add tattoos or adorn themselves as was the style back home, these men had resorted to altering what they had: their jumpsuits. The first man he saw it on was a portly and genuinely decent guy named Sope. The cuff of his right leg was rolled up a single inch higher than the left, and it was edged with a fine crease. He wondered what these men called themselves and what the rolled cuff signified, for if there was one thing he had learned, it was that gang members prided themselves on their symbolic brandings. But he liked Sope and on a whim Obe asked him if he knew of many men who visited their old stomping grounds in green sector. “Sort of… say hi to old friends,” he had finished. Sope’s reaction had been an odd one, more of a question in itself than an answer, and Obe had quickly changed the subject and moved on.
Soon he was seeing several men with the oddity in their island-issued attire. Always it was the right leg, and always it was a single, hard-creased roll. In total he counted twenty-seven men who belonged to this unknown ring.
The other gang had opted to alter the tiny tab of their jumpsuit zippers. Wedged inside the little hole of each was a small stone or rock. One man Obe met, Goom, was constantly adjusting his, which was what had finally set Obe to noticing it. He wasn’t sure if this was because Goom’s stone wasn’t lodged properly or because he was a fidgety man who could not leave well enough alone.
What he hadn’t noticed at first was everyone’s odd behavior, though eventually it became clear. From the very first, everyone was quite pleasant to him. Both those who wore the rolled cuffs or stoned zippers were almost overbearing with their friendliness. Before long, he was embarrassed at their blatant flattery. Obe counted only four men who had worn neither, and these four had been the most pleasant of all simply because they hadn’t also born the mark of overzealousness.
The cuffers and the stoners are sizing me up, he marveled. Deciding if I’m worthy of their band.
Don’t flatter yourself ‘Mr. C’ his ever-present other side taunted. They’re probably buttering you up, getting you ready for the proverbial turkey baste. An instant celebrity like you would make a good trophy, living or dead.
Shut up, he told his incessant mind. Nobody has said or done a thing yet other than be nice. And that’s all I’m going to take it as.
Fine, his evil side countered. But it said no more, and Obe concentrated then on his growing hunger instead. The next grocery day was Wednesday, only one day away, and just the thought of a whole bag of food made him salivate.
He went to sleep early that night, trusting the hills of the blue sector as safe enough for the Family and therefore safe enough for him. He stamped down a spot of tall grasses and lay in his makeshift bed. The constellation Orion wasn’t yet bright in the night sky, but Obe simply didn’t have the energy to stay up any longer. He said his prayer dutifully and quickly passed into sleep.
But his nightmares, of course, returned.
5
A group of six men stood at the crossroads of the two largest streets in the blue sector’s old city. All but one wore their right pant leg rolled and firmly creased. One of the men dropped to his left knee and straightened his cuff. As he did so he looked down the long, wide street before him and waved at a passing stranger.
There had once been a sign at the corner which proclaimed the streets to be Windsweep and Majesty Roads. But that sign was gone now, taken by the women when they had learned the men were using the metal for devious purposes. A shank or two still remained, but most had been rounded up, plucked one by one from the dead hands of forgotten rapists, batterers, and molesters. The only one known to the blue populace was the triangular blade wielded by Baj every grocery day when he marked men’s forearms with successful runs. Baj didn’t carry it on him, though. To do so would risk its being lost when and if he were killed. Where it was kept only the elders knew. Baj retrieved and returned it to one of them each time.
“Oh, they’ve got their eye on him,” one of the men said. “Their numbers are down. They go after everyone these days. Besides, they’d be stupid not to. Bad strategy.”
“But our numbers are bigger and our land is sweeter. Easier to run in. He’d be a fool to join the damn Hillbruhs.”
“And yet the Hillbruhs have their asset. We would be the fools ourselves to ignore it. I am more concerned about his first grocery day experience. It did not go well for him, and that bodes poorly for us.”
Deliberately, the speakers and four of the other men looked to the sixth. He felt their stares immediately. “I told you I was sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about the long-term. I’ll get him back on my side. I just need the right oppor-”
“Your opportunity is past, Rein.” The eyes now all turned to Doov, the lone man among them who had
reached the prestigious elder status, and knew the Family of Blue’s full secrets.
“Well, then you talk to him. He likes you.”
“I will. But you could do great assistance by smoothing things over first.”
Rein’s silence was agreement enough, and Doov moved quickly on.
“This is paramount, gentlemen. If the Hillbruhs gain enough men, they’ll double their price for water, or worse yet declare war. None of you have seen it. I have. We wouldn’t need the women to take us out. In a week there’d be nobody left but the loners. Hell, half of them would probably get caught in the crossfires.”
“When do you think Lace is going to strike?” It was a portly man who spoke, a man who appeared to have no business outrunning cars. But Sope, had other skills. Chief among them was his ability to appear unimportant, to blend into a crowd. No man in island history had fewer runs with more nights and days to show for it. His defense against the women was avoidance, but his offense for targeted greenhorns was camaraderie. He had been a car salesman back home, and he had raked in the commissions despite being perceived as non-pushy by nearly every one of his clients.
“He works slow, so not for at least another day or two. But he doesn’t wield all the power. Another may have already done the job.”
“I checked Obe this morning,” Sope said. “No stone.”
“Well, he wouldn’t need to decide right off, would he?” Doov continued. “If he’s as smart as he appears, he’s holding out to hear our offer. Even a shark doesn’t bite at the first chunk of chum.”
“I don’t see it,” Rein interjected. “His intelligence, I mean. I know that run of his was a game-changer, but I talked to him before grocery day. He was as lost as a puppy. I’m pretty sure that standoff of his was pure luck.
“Maybe so,” Doov said. “But maybe not. Either way, we have to assume the Hillbruhs either already have or are going to go after him. What we need to decide is whether he’s an asset worth fighting over.”
“To me, he is,” said a man not much older than Obe himself. “You can’t create that kind of attention. It’s like they say in show business. Any publicity is good publicity.”
Four of the little cluster nodded in agreement. The other, Sope, was staring off down the southbound street. In the distance a man walked across the road. He waved a hand and subtly flipped a finger of his other hand toward the ground. Sope waved back, careful to give the same secret movement in return. Down the eastbound street another man crossed the path. “There is another way,” he said aloud. His five companions turned their heads to him as he saw and repeated the All Clear signal once again. “We can avoid this mess of buying his favor outright out and just assume him to be an enemy before the Hillbruhs take him on. If he’s not yet part of their group when he dies…”
The rest did not need to be said. It was not the first time an innocent would be used like a game piece for the betterment of others. It would certainly not be the last.
“You mean an ‘accident’,” Doov said.
“I mean bad advice,” Sope clarified. “If you give the nod, I can have him dead of his own accord in less than a day.”
“How do you figure that? No one’s even seen a car in two days.”
“He was asking about green sector this morning. Wanted to know if we ever went visiting there. I asked him if he’d rather stay a baby or die like a man, and that shut him up. But I’d bet if I tried again… gave him what he wanted to hear…”
“An interesting notion,” Doov said. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. Let me talk to some others and I’ll meet you back here tonight.”
“Well, don’t take too long,” Sope said. “Lace might not nab him by nightfall, but he certainly isn’t going to wait until after grocery day.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The men separated and quickly disappeared into the city’s shadows, like so many light-bathed cockroaches. For the next several hours, at eerie ten-minute intervals, the north and south sides of Windsweep Road were visited by a pair of men who just happened to cross the road in unison. They waved their hands and twitched their fingers in unison as well. Five minutes later another set of men did the same from the east and west sides of the road once named Majesty.
Not fifty feet from the intersection where Doov, Rein, Sope and their three pant-rolled companions had stood was the entrance to a wide alley where, twice a week, the men who did not wear stones in their zippers came to collect their food.
6
Obe dreamt often, and his dreams were usually filled with torture and pain and crying. More often than not, they were of running… simply running the treadmills with the crack of Rhonda’s switch and the road before him that never changed. This night, it almost felt as if the nightmare was there even before he had fallen asleep…
His hands shook with fear, and the paper he held shook with them. He didn’t need the wrinkled thing anymore- had memorized it days ago- but they insisted he read from it. Read every word. Read ‘with conviction’.
Because convicts needed conviction.
On the grassy hill less than a mile from the stream he could not find, Obe winced and moaned but slept and dreamed on…
He’d finally been broken with needles. They had slid them under his fingernails. Six of them, two on the left hand and four on the right. He’d been told they would do each of his ten fingers. One inch deep. Then his ten toes. But the toes would go in an inch and a half. Then, if he still hadn’t agreed to confess, they’d go back to the fingers and push the needles a full inch deeper. He believed every word they said, because everything that the women said they would do, they did. They never lied, never bluffed. The day of the needles was his breaking point.
“Again, pig.” He shot his eyes back to the paper, and despite knowing he could recite the words flawlessly, his eyes followed along nonetheless.
“My name… is Obe. O.B.E. Obe like robe. Obe like globe. Obe like lobe and strobe and especially probe! My name is Obe. Obe, O.B.E. Who am I? I’m Obe. What’s my name? My name is Obe. O.B.E. Hello. I’m Obe, O.B.E. Obe like strobe. Obe like probe. I am Obe. I’ve always been Obe. I’ll always be Obe. My name… is Obe.”
On the hill, Obe’s lips mouthed the words in perfect synchronization with his dream.
He’d endured great pain, like the thumbscrews, in the weeks after his castration. Every few days some woman would open the door to his box, drag him or push his crawling body to one of the torture rooms, and make him scream. On days that he wasn’t tortured, he ran the treadmills. They’d only told him about confessing two days before the needles, and he’d used the time to decide to confess.
In fact, he’d agreed to confess immediately upon the opening of his box, but the woman who dragged him out didn’t listen. She told him he was lying, and his punishment had been the first needle. Five needles later, she believed him.
Then she’d escorted him back to his box where they made him sign a long document not with his own name, but with the strange, weak sounding ‘Obe.’ The following day, he was brought back to the torture room and beaten by two women. Then they’d made him make the first recording. When he stammered or spoke without conviction he was hit or kicked or stomped. The first day, that had been at the end of each reading, and he emerged from the room bleeding from his ears and with two broken toes.
On the hill, Obe’s toes curled under tightly. One split at the base of the missing nail and began bleeding again. Another- the pinky on his left foot- bent a little less than the rest. It had never healed properly, but at least he no longer felt the pain.
“Again,” she said. And as always her voice was smooth and confident. Strong. Powerful and angry behind a hidden smile. He read the words again.
“My name… is Obe. O.B.E…”
He had been reading for hours. For days. The monotony of it was horrible, but at least there were few beatings now. Occasionally she’d kick him or spit in his eyes, but mostly she just listened and told him to read it again
.
“Again, pig. Again. You’re not reading with conviction. You’re only saying some of the words with your heart. You need to read the whole thing… THE WHOLE THING… with conviction.” She kicked him this time, in the ribs. He didn’t grunt beyond the release of air she had pushed out from the force of her boot. She didn’t kick again, but only waited.
“My name,” he said, “is Obe.” He paused. Thought. Tried to go on with more conviction. “O.B.E. Obe like robe.”
How long did he read it? How many times? Was it seven hours each day? Was it a thousand times in total? Two thousand? He didn’t know. He only knew he was going crazy. He was trying to read with full conviction! He wasn’t holding back! Each time he tried with all his heart. Each time he spoke with such ferocity, such honesty, that he was sure it would be the last. But she didn’t believe him. She must somehow know that deep in his heart, he still knew that this ‘Obe’ was not his real name. Did she intend to do this until he actually believed? That wasn’t fair. How did someone purposely forget something?
“Again, pig. You’re starting to disappoint me.”
“My name… is Obe. O.B.E…”
When she finally let him stop for the day, she didn’t beat him and said it was a reward for being good. For five consecutive days this had been his torture. There had been no treadmills, no devices, and no other beatings.
On the sixth day, the Voice of God began.
On the grassy hill, Obe cringed in his sleep. His toes curled under again and his hands reached up and covered his ears…
Woman Scorned Page 9