Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  “About your work? How will I ever know all about you when you won’t even tell me about your work?”

  “You want that?” he asked. “You want to know all about me?”

  “Well, yes, don’t you want to know everything about me?”

  “Yes of course I do, it’s just…”

  As they were walking, Stone noticed a stand of newspapers behind Julia and excused himself. He walked in between the many people and when he reached the stand he felt a soft breeze from the sea run across his face. The headlines screamed:

  PLISSBURY CONTRACTOR MORRIS CLAYBORNE AND SON FOUND DEAD

  And beneath that, in a lesser font:

  UNSURE IF SUICIDE OR MURDER

  There was a photo of what Stone thought was the crime scene, but the many policemen were obstructing the actual victims. When Stone walked away from the stand and back to Julia, he felt like he’d left his shadow back there, hurdled a weight off himself.

  “You certainly look cheerful all of a sudden,” said Julia. “What was that about?”

  “I just wanted to see if the Plissbury Pickers had won this weekend.”

  “And?”

  “They had,” said Stone, smiling.

  “I didn’t know you were so into sports. You literally look a new man.”

  “Then there’s one more thing you know now,” said Stone, once more grabbing Julia’s hand. But now, facing Julia and the real world, another shadow gorged through his temples when he realized how he had just reacted to two other men's death. He tried focusing on Julia's skin between his fingers, the smell of her, her hat, and the way her hips bobbed.

  They walked towards the center of the carnival, and the Ferris wheel grew taller and taller before them.

  “It’s almost inevitable that we’re going on that thing, isn’t it?” asked Stone.

  “I think it is. You don’t have problems with heights, do you?”

  “Oh no, I don’t. I just haven’t tried one before.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s very fun. Fun and slow. You just sit in one of those little baskets, and it’s as if the earth is being pulled away from under you, and you end up drifting up, up, and up, and then, at one point, a very short moment, you’re up the highest you can get... and we’ll get to be there together.”

  Stone had looked closely at Julia as she said those words. He had tried to follow her every grimace, every sparkle of her eyes, but her enthusiasm engulfed her.

  “But then it’s down from there,” said Stone.

  “I guess it is, but that’s the easy part, and,” she joyfully added, “we’d still be together. Once you’re together on the Ferris wheel, you’re together all the way round.”

  “That sounds nice,” said Stone.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  The queue to the Ferris wheel was long, and it only moved in short bursts, and as they came closer to the entrance, Stone realized that he had to look straightly vertical to see the top of the thing.

  “We can still jump the rope if you have second thoughts,” joked Julia.

  “Har, har,” said Stone.

  He paid the man by the wheel and they were guided to an empty basket. They got in, sat down, and waited. After a short while the basket jerked, and with mechanical clanks and squeals emanating from the center of the wheel, they finally took off the ground.

  “It’s very slow,” said Stone. “Much slower than it looks like off the ground.”

  “I know, it’s so relaxing,” said Julia.

  As they were raised higher, the carnival seemed to disappear from under them like an entire city sinking into the ocean of the surrounding darkness.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” said Julia.

  “What is?”

  “This. I mean, look at what surrounds us. It’s the same from my workshop window. All this dark all around us, and not just now because it’s night, but all the time. And here we are, on a Ferris wheel in this little pocket of light. It’s almost like the last remnant of life on earth, and here we are, thrown right into it... asked to stay here for as long as we can. Doesn’t that feel weird to you?”

  Their basket moved the final stretch before the top, and then, with another quick jerk, they were left hanging, and it was like there was no suspension at all to keep them aloft.

  “I find solace in the dark,” said Stone, “but I see what you mean. It can be a depressing place, this town.”

  “You know, for some reason, I always imagined my life ending here at the docks.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It just seems so fitting, doesn’t it? It’s like the first few pages of a book, all dark and hollow. And I die there, in the very beginning, and the reader gasps, and--”

  “Don’t say that,” said Stone. “I mean, look where you are now. You’re at the top! Sure, we’re surrounded by darkness, but that doesn’t mean anything. Look, try closing your eyes.”

  “What, why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Julia closed her eyes, and the world disappeared from her sight. She felt how the basket slowly swayed. Then Stone put a hand on top of her own. She twitched at first, but then she relaxd, and the hand was still there, and there was nothing but the hand.

  “Do you feel my hand despite the darkness in your head?”

  Julia nodded, afraid that any words would corrupt the moment.

  “This, this right now,” said Stone, “is what you really are. When you open your eyes, you just escape, you let yourself spill into the world, but this,” he said, caressing her hand, “this is the only thing that matters; not darkness, not light, but this. Now, open your eyes again.”

  Julia slowly lifted her eyelids, and as she did, the basket slowly began moving back down.

  “Who told you that?”

  Stone laughed.

  “What, I can’t think of something like that on my own?”

  Julia smiled as she looked at him. Then she looked back up at the top of the wheel. There were many things she had imagined would happen at the top of that wheel, and even though none of them did, she was left with the feeling that it had never truly been the top at all, but that she was still soaring upwards, and in that brief moment of ascension, she closed her eyes once more and felt that Stone’s hand was still wrapped around hers.

  De Gracy stepped out into the cold evening air. He walked out on the promenade and leaned up against the railing. The sea was calm and black. He took out a cigarette from his inner pocket and lit it. A thin line of white smoke started rising from its tip. He looked down towards the lights and show of the carnival, and he could hear the jovial screams and jingly music. He turned around and pushed his back into the railing. And then, for seemingly no reason at all, he started walking towards the carnival. He got closer to the entrance; the sounds were much stronger and livelier, and some of the sweet smells even made it to where he stood. A few people were still entering, but a lot more were walking out through the exit, entering the night. De Gracy looked at his watch; both arrows were pointing upwards. He looked at the crowds, seeing the small children cry about leaving, seeing the lovers cling to one another like bugs on hairs of grass, seeing… De Gracy threw his cigarette into the ocean and stepped back a few feet. He scuttled to hide his face between the broad collars of his coat and the shade of his fedora. Stone and some woman walked through the exit and out on the promenade. The woman was leaning up against him, her arms locked around his. They were both laughing as they passed. De Gracy was breathing heavily behind the collars of his coat, the heavy smell of fabric thrown back onto his face. He saw them walk down the promenade and further into the darkness, and for a second he even took a few steps in their direction, but he stalled; he didn’t want to see where they went. He needed to make it impossible to follow.

  CHAPTER 18

  That same evening, in the shadows of tombstones and the soaring towers of the church, Paul Messenger was scurrying past the many graves, hands in his pockets and his head low. He wore a cap that slid do
wn across his brows, its back pointing upwards at a steep angle. Instead of stopping at any one grave, he instead found the wall of the cemetery, and, like Daedalus in the labyrinth of the Minotaur, he slid his hand along it, finally reaching the corner with the cracked hole in it. Vines and roots had grown around the hole, blocking off all but a very narrow hole, which Messenger squeezed through with great effort. His head was still paining him, and most of his body was sore and unable to move without it hurting. Behind the wall, surrounded by the trees and bushes of the adjacent patch of forest, was a little wooden plank. Twigs and branches whipped Messenger’s face, as he crawled in closer. There was a slightly protruding mound, but it had long since been covered with grass. Messenger tried to make himself comfortable, but something was always poking him one place or another, and it made it impossible for him to stay still. Big, clunky letters were carved into the wooden plank:

  MESSENGER

  Messenger slid his fingers along the cuts in the wood that he had made so long ago. He remembered how he had sat here then, exhausted from having buried the body, relieved for finally saying goodbye.

  “John,” he whispered softly, and the leaves, otherwise untouched by the wind in this desolate and dense corner of the woods, moved to the air of Messenger’s words. “Jooohn,” he called.

  The sky was a bluish gray through the many layers of leaves and only showed as a few spots here and there. Messenger looked from one patch of sky to the next; it sent his eyes into infinite spirals, his mind into the final wonders of what would happen if he just looked back once more and then never again returned. ‘Messenger,’ the wood carvings said, and he wondered why he never wrote his brothers full name instead. He put his hand on top of the grave and touched the mound of grass; it tickled his hand, making him smile for a moment. He plucked off a few of the blades of grass and then some more until he had finally bared a fine circle of earth. He curled up the sleeves of his shirt and put his right hand on the circle of dirt. Then, as he breathed slowly, closed his eyes, and cleared his head of everything but those splotches of the all too distant sky, the remnants of tiny graves and digging shovels and the sound of gloves hitting leather all far away and fleeting, he slowly drilled his hand into the ground. The blood on his still fresh wounds mixed with the dirt and grime, and he felt himself spill out into the surrounding soil. He went in a little deeper, but the fear of reaching too far struck him, and he quickly pulled his hand back up. He looked at the hole he had made and quickly filled it up with some of the dirt that had been pushed up.

  The giant Grundy sat in almost complete darkness. He was in his own room, looking into a mirror. He touched his face, feeling the scars that surged along its surface. He stood, grabbed some notes off a nearby table, and left his room. He closed the door quietly and moved down the corridor, and as he was walking, he heard the distinct sound of gloves beating into leather. Grundy stopped and listened, imagining for a moment that it wasn’t the glove of a boxer, but the distant rhythm of a drum. ‘Dung,’ it said, and ‘dung’, it said, and ‘dung,’ it said, but then it stopped, and Grundy opened his eyes. He continued down the corridor, through the door and into the heart of the Pit, and there, in the ring, swinging at an invisible enemy stood Paul Messenger, skipping from side to side, flailing his fists into the air. Grundy stopped for a moment and watched him.

  Even though Grundy hated violence, he was aware that this was different; this was Messenger’s fight with another enemy entire; an enemy that Grundy recognized. Messenger’s back was coated in a thin line of sweat, the plates of his shoulders moving up and down like two tectonic plates. Grundy took a few steps forward.

  “You’ll kill yourself doing that,” said Grundy. Messenger didn’t turn around.

  “I saw the way you looked earlier,” continued Grundy, “leaving the locker room, looking more a wound than a man…” Grundy chuckled. “And I say, if you continue like that, every single sinew in your body’s gonna snap, I’ll tell you that. And every muscle’ll follow, yes sir.” Grundy moved closer to the ring. Messenger continued sparring, seemingly unaffected by Grundy’s approach. Grundy walked to the other side of the ring, so he could see Messenger’s face.

  “Jesus, son, you look like a train wreck. Why did you remove all those covers off your wounds? Here, I’ll just come up and…”

  “Just leave me alone,” said Messenger, his focus unwavering. Grundy stopped, his hands still on the ropes.

  “You knew I’d be here,” said Grundy. “If you wanted peace, you'd stayed home... not come here. You knew I'd be here.”

  “You’re always here, anyway,” said Messenger.

  “Exactly my point,” said Grundy. “Exactly my point. You could do those routines at home I’m sure. Probably not much space, but even an outhouse would have enough space for what you're doing now. Most apartments, rooms, or what have you are almost the size of boxing rings anyway.”

  “Look,” said Messenger and stopped moving. He looked straight down at Grundy. “I didn’t come here to talk, and I didn’t come here to stay either. Just wait a second, and I’ll be out of here, and you can use the ring for whatever bullshit you’re using it for, got it? It’ll only take a minute.”

  “It will, huh?” said Grundy. He was still for a moment, but then he hauled his massive body up the ropes and into the ring. “I’ll just wait here then,” said Grundy. “I’ll try not to get in the way.”

  Messenger stopped moving and looked at him.

  “What do you mean you’ll wait here? Can’t you just go away? You got a bed in this very building, so I’d suggest you go use it.”

  “This is usually my time here, so I don’t see why I should go anywhere.”

  “You don’t have any time here. You’re a janitor here, not a boxer, so why the hell should you be here at all?”

  Grundy walked to the other side of the ring and sat down on one of the stools there. He spent some time arranging the stool under his body to align it with his center of gravity. When he was finally comfortable, finally balanced, he looked at Messenger and sighed.

  “Do you remember what this ring looked like when you and Holden were done? Did you ever, even once, look down on this floor?” asked Grundy.

  “I did,” said Messenger. “But I don’t remember it,” he admitted.

  “Because,” said Grundy. “Right here?” he said, putting his hand on a spot not too far from the corner post that he was sitting by. “Right here there was a puddle, around this big, of blood. It had a strange shape, almost like a country, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  Grundy stood up from the little stool and walked along the ropes. “And here?” he said, crouching down. “I found a splatter that went all from here to here; like a river, from here…” he looked at Messenger. “To here.” Grundy continued to walk around, and as he was about to point out one more spot, Messenger raised a hand and stopped him.

  “I get it, I get it. You remember the stains, because you had to clean them up.”

  “No,” said Grundy. “I’m showing you that I remember your misery better than you do yourself.”

  “That blood isn’t my misery. My misery isn’t something that goes splat on the floor of a boxing ring. It isn’t something that you or anyone else can wipe up and call it a day.”

  “It might not be your misery, that’s true,” said Grundy. “Because your misery is your own, and it’s your right to understand it, but… it is the circumstances of your misery. The blood is what we see when you’re gone. I know why you’re here tonight, and I’m also here to stop you from doing it.”

  “What? You don’t know nothing about any of that. Just leave me alone.” Messenger turned around, putting his parades back up.

  “Messenger!” bellowed Grundy. “I can only sweep away the blood you drip onto this very floor you see here, this very floor, but leave here and no one will be able to save you. Not even Mr. Stone.”

  “This isn’t one of your plays,” said Messenger. “I’m not here to act co-s
tar to one of your stupid fantasies.”

  “You’re right,” said Grundy and pulled out the notes that he had brought from his room. He took one of them and looked at it carefully. “This,” he said, “is one of those plays.” He let it drop to the floor, immediately replacing it with another. “And this is one of those plays… and this one… and this one… and…”

  Messenger watched as the many pages were thrown on the floor, and as they landed he started seeing the stains that he had left in every boxing match since he had walked into the Pit.

  “And this one, and this one, and this one…” Grundy dropped the papers faster and faster, but when he reached the last slip, a rugged brownish piece of paper, he stepped closer to Messenger and said, “But this one… This is not one of those plays.”

  “What is that?” asked Messenger.

  “This is the reason why I know you’ll be leaving the Pit later tonight, and it’s the reason why I’m here to stop you.” Grundy unfurled the piece of paper completely and held it out towards Messenger. The image of the Bull was the same as on all the other posters.

  “You kept that? Why did you want to keep that? Why… Never mind, just give it to me,” said Messenger, statically reaching out his hand towards Grundy. “Give it to me, now.”

  To Messenger’s surprise, Grundy immediately obliged. He stepped forward and handed Messenger the poster.

  “Like your misery,” he said, “this is yours to have. Just don’t forget that I know about it.”

  Messenger held on to the poster and looked at it.

  “He’s fighting tomorrow, isn’t he?” asked Grundy.

  Messenger nodded.

  “Down at the Plissbury Arena, isn’t that right?”

  Messenger kept nodding.

  “So that means that your father is here, in Plissbury, tonight… And you’re going to go find him.”

  Messenger let the poster drop to the ground. He had no time to process what he had just heard, so he turned around and jumped out of the ring, limping away.