Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  PLANTATION OF CHROME

  R.J. COULSON

  Copyright © 2017 R.J. COULSON

  All rights reserved.

  PROLOGUE

  The first rain shower covered the very bottom of the all too small graves. Shovels were lifted towards the dark sky, the moon light showing like sharp lines on the felt of their fedoras and along the edges of their sweaty skin.

  “Why the hell are we digging one each? Why not just make one big hole?” said De Gracy.

  “One big hole?” said Eckleburg, breathing hard. “They at least deserve separate graves!”

  One of the men, isolated from the rest, wasn't digging at all. He stood closer to the wall of trees that surrounded their plot of nothing. The cigarette in his hand whispered smoke from its tip, mixing with the surrounding air.

  “Stone! Hey, Stone!” said Eckleburg. “How about helping out a bit here? I can’t take it anymore.”

  “We’re all helping out here,” said Stone.

  “That’s easy for you to say, but what on earth is going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  The sound of the shoveling continued unbroken.

  “This wasn’t right,” continued Eckleburg.

  “It was necessary,” said Messenger, his voice lined with a slight Irish accent.

  “But no one decided anything. You forced this on us!”

  “Look,” said Messenger, “it’s either this or sitting in some god damned cell, all right? And it’s your fault if any. It was you they recognized. We all told you not to come.”

  “But…” said Eckleburg, his voice crumbling.

  “When we met earlier, we were prepared, Eckleburg,” continued Messenger. “Don’t tell me we didn’t talk about this. You think those guns were for fun? You think it was for fun we brought the goddamned guns?”

  “We never talked about this.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ all mighty. It isn’t about the details. We all knew that we were going to--”

  “They are not details,” screamed Eckleburg, pointing at the bodies of the dead boys. He threw away his shovel and rushed towards Messenger. He grabbed the collar of his shirt, shaking the cap off his head. “Look at them there. Look at them.”

  “I’m not some kid, Eckleburg,” said Messenger, pushing Eckleburg away with little effort. “I’m in this, like the rest of you. You think Stone would let me be here if I wasn’t? I’m just the same.”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what we did tonight. There are no circles in God’s hell for what we’ve done tonight.”

  “Don’t you mean the Devil?” said Grundy. His voice was very deep, as if someone had dropped a boulder among them.

  “This isn’t about God or the Devil,” said Eckleburg. He couldn’t well see any of the other men, but the sounds of their shovels had continued when he had stopped digging and started preaching. “This is about the hells reserved for man. For what they've done, and this… There isn't a circle in hell for all of this. Not with God, not with Satan. We’ll be chained to this earth for this sin, forever walking among the sinful that dared take the life of innocence.”

  “Eckleburg,” said Stone, his voice firm and calm. He had finished his cigarette, erasing any trace of his own existence in the dark. “I can’t hear you digging. I’d appreciate if we all finished this so we could go home.”

  “You can’t ride this off as some job to finish. This is a matter between us and God, for what we’ve done--”

  “Eckleburg,” repeated Stone. “Isn’t it true that the earth was flooded once? In the bible?”

  “Yes, but--”

  “And that God did that?”

  “He did, but only because--”

  “Only because he saw the majority of sin to linger in the hearts of the few. God killed many children that day when he let the waters fall from the sky. We are the few now, Eckleburg, I know that, but God’ll surely look away. He won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  “And what mistake is that? Tell me that.”

  “Going against man.”

  Eckleburg trampled towards Stone’s voice, towards the wall of trees, but in his moment of bravery he had forgotten the stern face of the man in the dark, and he flinched the instant he saw him. It was with great effort that he managed to speak at all. “We can’t extinguish our own sin by further doing sin,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

  “I won’t stand trial to anything but another man,” said Stone, “and for him to ever drag me to any court whatsoever would require knowledge of me doing something worth the judgment.”

  “But God knows,” said Eckleburg.

  “God doesn’t care, and God's no man. This is all a question of what another man can do to you. How someone else can step into your home and rip you off of your feet, leave you with nothing but the socks around your ankles. I didn’t wish for any of this, and I realize it wasn’t the plan, but if you don’t continue shoveling, I promise you that you’ll become that other man among us, and you’re the weakest here. Even if you’re so disillusioned to think that God’s somehow with you. God created this world, that's right. But only so men had someplace to fight.”

  Shortly after, the sound of all four shovels resumed and nothing more was said.

  P A R T I

  THE GLASSES

  [ SEPTEMBER 15th – OCTOBER 5th ]

  [1928]

  The boy took a few steps back when the door opened. A man stepped inside, carrying a bag. He closed the door behind him.

  “Your mother opened the kitchen window,” he said. “We don’t want a draft, do we?”

  “No, sir,” said the boy.

  “Now, let’s see what we have here,” said the man. He put the bag that he had brought on a chair and started rummaging through it. He then pulled out a pair of glasses and put them on a table.

  “Try them on,” he said.

  The boy curiously approached the glasses. He looked through each of the pieces of glass at a distance, the air behind them distorted and bent. He picked them up and put them on his face and, looking all around the room, he noticed the fine details of the woven tapestries, the intricate carvings of the wooden furniture, and even the smallest imperfections in the pattern of the floor carpet.

  “How are they?” asked the man.

  “This is amazing,” said the boy. “It’s like a whole new world. Thank you… thank you so much!”

  “I'm not the one to thank,” said the man. “God is.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Thomas J. Eckleburg rocked back and forth before the great wooden cross, his face glued to his shaking hands. Sweat showered down his face, his glasses sliding to the tip of his nose.

  The church was empty, and the moon light only lit up the very first rows of pews. The rest remained dark and erased.

  Eckleburg put his hands on the floor and looked up at the cross, his eyes passing above the edge of his glasses. He drew a hand through his sweaty hair.

  “Why would he forgive?” he whispered, his eyes still fixed upon the cross. His body trembled, uncontrollable. He stood up, but didn't move. He looked at the dirt on his hands and screamed. He ran to the altar and started smearing the dirt off his hands against the cross, screaming, “It was an accident, it was an accident, it was an accident!” He ran to a window mosaic of Abraham and put his hands up against the moonlight, but he could still see specks of dirt everywhere, moving like ants before his eyes. He collapsed under the window, the moonlight stripped from his body.

  And the church was empty.

  CHAPTER 2

  Noah Stone’s hands had been free from the splintering shovels, but specks of dirt still fell from his grimy fingers. He rubbed them against one another, blowing hot air into them, tryin
g to squeeze out the cold.

  The winds were whiplashes through Stone’s bones. The thought of home usually didn't bring him warmth, but now, seeing the characteristically unlit window above Hamilton’s barbershop was a sight he’d longed for the entire evening and most of the night. A smile, of some kind of relief, showed across his face.

  He ran into the apartment building and up the stairs. Everyone inside the enormous structure was sleeping. He felt it when putting his hands against the walls, like a heartbeat through the bricks. He grabbed the key from under the welcome mat, opened the door, and as he went inside, throwing off his hat and coat, the veil of mystery that he had carried around in the streets trickled down to nothing. He removed his suit jacket as well, his shirt pressed against every curve of his body with a glue of sweat. The fabric moved with his restless arms, crumpling and folding in on itself, like a layer of shed skin as he tried to regain the heat he had lost. There was no light in the apartment, only a soft glare from outside the window, street lights and the moon mixing. Crude furniture, aligned without a system, scattered for purpose not aesthetics. Short curtains over the window, crooked carpets covering each other, empty bottles in one corner, glaring emptiness in another.

  Stone took out a glass from one of the cabinets lining the kitchen in the corner and filled it with scotch. Stone sipped the golden liquid, and his throat jerked with gratitude. He felt his own breath enter the room, and he sat down in a ragged armchair, immediately sure that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. The feeling of oncoming insomnia usually seemed like a soft premonition to him, almost a comfort in the late night, but now it was like an ebb of disaster crashing over him.

  He noticed his own reflection in the mirror across the room, but he didn't dare look. He instead put down the scotch and closed his eyes, the clattering of the glass in his head like a creaking iceberg ripping apart from the mainland.

  It was raining outside.

  Stone had slept briefly. His lips were parched, and he took another sip of scotch. He knew that he was only pushing back his thirst, not quenching it. He then cleared his throat, got up, and walked to an old dresser in the other end of the room. He opened the bottom drawer, searched through the pile of clothes in it and found a flat box, which he brought back with him.

  The little box creaked with rust as he opened it. Inside it, embedded in deep blue velvet, were several little chrome figurines. He took one of them out and felt its smoothness between his fingers. This particular figure was broken. Its legs had come off. He had tried putting the legs back on, but their placement by the figure's knees made it look like the figure was now kneeling or praying. Stone couldn’t remember when he’d broken it. He put it on the table beside him and took out another one of the figurines.

  This one represented a knight in armor, but with many flimsy edges that made it look like the armor was peeling off. Stone put it back in the box, taking out another.

  He looked at it closely, seeing its two faces. The shape of it was inexplicable, as if two of the figurines had been melted together into one inseparable being.

  There was a strange addiction, even calmness, in looking through the little figurines. They had made him think of his father.

  But also of his mother.

  He leaned back and looked at the ceiling, his eyes shutting out everything around him, and his breath turned to time, and time finally gave him a moment's rest.

  The frantic knocking on the door shattered Noah Stone's sleep. It was still dark outside. He got up from his chair, smeared waxy fingers through his exhausted eyes, and opened the door.

  “My God,” he said when he recognized Eckleburg’s shady silhouette out in the hall. Eckleburg's spectacles were resting on the very edge of his piney nose, giving his eyes an odd sense of urgency. “Not even God’s up this early,” continued Stone. “What’s the matter?”

  Eckleburg scurried inside. He looked around for a moment, as if surprised that there wasn’t any light. He rubbed his hands like a praying mantis, looking firmly at Stone. He was wearing a grey suit and a white shirt, the golden chain of a pocket watch running along the lower left edge of his jacket.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  “Sit down,” said Stone.

  Eckleburg sat. Stone dragged a chair from the kitchen and joined him. He took another sip from his nearly empty glass.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  “No… no thanks,” said Eckleburg.

  “I figure there must be a reason for this late-night visit.”

  “Reason?” asked Eckleburg, his piercing eyes fixed through his glasses and out on Stone. “Reason?” he repeated, harshly. “Stone, this is beyond reason. What happened yesterday was beyond reason. There’s nothing you can say that’ll--”

  “Calm you down? No, I thought not.”

  “I won’t calm down,” he said. “There is nothing to be calm about.”

  “Look here, Thomas,” said Stone. “I’ve got nothing to say to all that. You ask the others? Fine, but odds are that they won’t be saying anything either. Things haven’t changed because no one knows nothing, you understand? We left the place with no clues that’ll ever trace back to us.”

  “There’s--”

  “Nothing... there's nothing. Listen,” Stone moved in closer. “We’ll go to the Pit in a few hours. You sit down where you sit and I’ll sit down where I sit, and it’ll all be fine, all right?”

  “I know, I know, and I’ve been trying to tell myself all that, but I can’t get myself to calm down. What if someone else saw us?”

  “Thomas, listen. We left the house empty, you understand? It was empty, no doubt about it. The police will come and investigate, sure. They know our history with Bishop, but that’s the only reason. Other than that, they’ll have no lead to get them going.”

  “I am a lead, Stone,” said Eckleburg. “I am. My son, he... he used to play with the other kids, and... oh God... oh God, oh God.”

  Eckleburg turned pale. He folded his hands into a tight ball, closed his eyes, and started whispering frantically.

  “Don’t do that,” said Stone, slapping Eckleburg’s hands apart. He took one of the cigarettes from the table and tried to light it.

  “Why do you have such a hard standing with God?” asked Eckleburg. “You need him. If anyone does, you do.”

  “I don’t need no one,” said Stone. The first flare of spark lit up from his cigarette, followed by a train of smoke.

  “I just think you’re being too harsh, that’s all.”

  “I can’t say that--”

  “You are!” said Eckleburg, grabbing Stone’s hand. “You hide behind that smoke of yours, tilting your head back. But you need to realize that what we did yesterday was far beyond what anyone would do for themselves and their future. I tell you this now. You couldn’t see their faces yesterday from where you stood, but I could. You weren’t there shoveling the dirt off of the ground, piling it up next to their dead bodies, but I was.” Spittle left Eckleburg’s mouth, as he talked faster and faster. “I don’t care what kind of men you think Grundy, Messenger, and De Gracy are but I know that they are just that... men. You’ll see it later when we see them at the Pit, you’ll see. Yesterday wasn’t just a burial for us, Stone. It’ll change everything, you’ll see. God knows and now I know. No one gets away from that without smelling the world a bit differently. No one,” he said, leaning back into the armchair. He then knocked on the table three times, got up without a word, and left Stone alone in the darkness.

  As the morning sun followed Noah Stone out of the night, the great warehouse in front of him manifested as if conjured by smoke and mirrors. Its walls were a scaly green, the facade barely holding up, like a sagging face. There was a sign written with big capital letters that said “THE PIT”, and below that, written with black paint,

  Home to the true lost generation

  – Real Boxing –

  Stone walked up to the building, the gravel crumpling like snow beneath
his feet. He grabbed the doorknob, but the door was locked.

  “The hell?”

  He was about to pull out his keys when the door slid open with a soft creak. A giant was standing on the other side of the door, his eyes hollowed and black in the dark corridor.

  “Grundy, why the hell's the door locked?” asked Stone.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Stone, but Eckleburg told us to.” Grundy's voice was dark and deep. He was enunciating each word with meticulous care.

  “Eckleburg? He already here? But I just… Never mind, just let me in.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Stone”

  Grundy opened the door wide, and Stone stepped inside, past him. Grundy was amazingly large, the width of his shoulders easily equaling that of two men. He looked down, the scars and burns on his dark face shimmering in the early sun.

  “De Gracy in yet?” asked Stone, pulling the gloves off his hands and tucking them back into his coat.

  “No, he ain’t.”

  “Eckleburg’s here, and De Gracy ain’t? Well I’ll be.”

  “It’s strange, but perhaps not without explanation.”

  “It's lucky that you live here, Grundy. You're never late nor early,” said Stone. He saw the boxing ring through the archway behind Grundy’s back leading into the main hall of the Pit. A figure sparred inside of it, throwing punches at invisible foes. Stone stepped closer to the archway, watched the boxer. “Grundy,” he said, not moving his eyes off the ring. “I might have to speak to you later, but not now, ok?” His head slanted a bit to the left, as if he tried to scout out the boxer with no intent of letting himself be seen.

  “That's fine, Mr. Stone. I’ll be round the back till after the fight, I think.”

  Grundy's words recaptured Stone's attention. “You not gonna watch this fight either?”

  “No, Mr. Stone. It’s isn’t for me. I’ll just be in the back, cleaning.”