Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  “You can run along now,” said Solomon. “You're free.”

  The horse walked towards him, but he stepped back.

  “I said that you can run away!” he yelled, making himself even bigger to scare the horse. “Go, you stupid thing, go!”

  The horse squealed and ran around itself, its eyes still locked with Solomon's. Solomon picked up a rock and threw it at a tree.

  “Go, damn it, Go! Run away!”

  And the horse turned around and started to gallop.

  “Run away!” screamed Solomon. “Run away and don't come back. Run, Grundy, you stupid horse... Run away!”

  CHAPTER 25

  Noah Stone and Julia Sedgewick were lying in bed next to each other, a thin linen covering their naked bodies. Julia played her fingers up and down Stone's chest. He responded with intermittent grunts of pleasure.

  "Do you like that?" she asked.

  "Mmh," grunted Stone. "It's nice and ticklish, and it feels... It feels like..."

  "Feels like what?"

  "It feels... it feels almost like the color blue?"

  Julia laughed. "How's that?"

  "I don't know. It just feels like my blood gets replaced with a cool, blue liquid that runs up and down by spine. A blue feeling."

  "Well," she said, running her fingers farther down. "As long as it doesn't make you feel blue, then I don't mind you feeling whatever color you like."

  Stone smiled, and for a while they were satisfied with the quiet between them. The sun was rising outside, slowly dusting away the last of the night's darkness.

  "You owe me a story, you know?" said Julia.

  Stone looked down at her, her eyes big and expectant, staring up at him.

  "What story?"

  "The story of why it's just the five of you?"

  "Oh," said Stone. He recalled the promise he'd made some time back on the bridge.

  "It's been more than two weeks now."

  "I know what I said, but I didn't think you'd take it literally."

  "When it comes to you,” she said, “I have to take everything as literal as I can. You are by far the most abstract man I have ever known, and that's even counting my father. Every word you say is like a whish or... Or a whoosh! And..." she said, stopping for a moment. "I just think that if I don't take everything you say to be literal, then I'm afraid that any meaning would be lost between us, you know? You're very difficult like that, and your words even more so. They're like shadows, and if I don't grasp every one, cherish every one, then... then I'm not sure how I could keep loving you. A shadow is a very hard thing to love, Noah."

  Stone nodded, unsure of how to respond. "There's always a reason why someone keeps their distance," he said.

  "I know, I know," said Julia.

  Stone wondered if it was a good time to get up and leave. He removed the sheet and got out of bed. He then put on his pants, shoes, and shirt. Julia got up too, scooping up some of her clothes from around the floor. The silence between them had grown into a pressure.

  Stone sat on the edge of the bed. Something inside of him, something distant yet unfortunately memorable, frolicked at the top of his mind. It was locked inside, not with chains or with rope, but it was there, a creature in his head, and though its prison door had long since been opened, it denied to run out, to run free. Stone felt like a lone warden in the prison of his mind, banging his nightstick along the bars of all the opened cages, his catastrophe not being that everything escaped, but rather that nothing did. And so, in what must have felt like an effort to exorcise himself, Stone just started talking.

  "After we had acquired the Pit," he said, "we were set on making it into a boxing ring, and we wanted to have daily matches, and people would bet on the fighters and so on, and so on."

  Julia looked at Stone, sat down next to him and put a hand on his lap.

  "Me and De Gracy had a list of potential boxers that we tried to acquire throughout Plissbury. Shortly after we assigned Grundy as janitor, Eckleburg became our accountant. Messenger was there too, but he was so young then - so young - but one hell of a boxer too." Stone laughed. "I've never told you, but first time I met Messenger, he gave me such a sock'em that I still feel it today, but that's entirely a different story. I knew he'd be a boxer, and he was... He became our best."

  "I'm so sorry, Stone," said Julia.

  "Don't be. I'm sorry, I'm trailing. Anyway, we had the Pit going, and we had just had the first week of succesful matches. I wanted to arrange some kind of celebration for everyone, so we did, and... We had food, drink, and people came at first, but then everyone kind of dwindled off one place or another. I still don't remember any of the conversations I had with anyone that night. And I drank alot... I must've downed a bottle for everyone that left that night, and..." said Stone, his voice trailing off, turning almost silent. "At midnight, it was like I had woken up, and around me sat De Gracy, Eckleburg, Grundy, and Messenger, and they seemed just as alone as me."

  "Mmh, I see," said Julia. "So that's why it became the five of you."

  "No," said Stone, shaking his head. "It's because of what I told them." He swallowed. He was still looking straight at the floor. "I... I was very drunk, and we all started talking about this and about that, and... I..." Stone's throat went dry and numb. "It was as if we knew what would happen. It was as if I knew that they would be there when, and..."

  Julia put a hand on Stone's shoulder, her eyes welling up.

  "And I told them about my family, and my father and the plantation, and..."

  The lower edges of Stone's eyes trembled.

  "And I told them about my mother, and what she did to me... the things she did to me... the way she... and none of them said a word. None of them have mentioned it since, even though I can see it. I can see it so clearly in their eyes that they know, and its right there, behind the cages of their eyes like a rambling animal, but they keep it there. That's the reason for the five of us. Because they keep it there. Their pity, or whatever it is."

  Julia's head rested on Stone's shoulders. She was crying.

  "That's why I might seem like a shadow to people," said Stone. He looked relieved, like people do right after they had exhausted themselves crying. "Those are the reasons that can make anyone seem a shadow. The darkness just spills out, and there's nothing anyone can do. You just endure it, like a rock at the bottom of a cliff, facing the sea, and you breathe through all the waves, and then you realize that this is you breathing... This is you living through the waves. And you harden with every wave, because that's when you realize that sea is never-ending... And that you're just another rock in it."

  Stone looked down at Julia. Her eyes were splashed, her cheeks still running with tears. He nodded to signal the end of his tale. He then got up and started collecting the rest of his things, and Julia left the room.

  When Stone had put on his jacket and was ready to go, the door to the bedroom opened and Julia walked inside. She was holding a hat in her arms, still crying.

  "I... I wanted to save it for your birthday next week," she said, "but I want you to have it now." She walked to him and pressed the hat up against his chest.

  "It's grey, Noah... The hat, it's grey," she cried. "Like a rock... Like stone."

  Stone wrapped his arms around Julia and hugged her, the soft felt of the hat squished between them. He held her, and for the first time he thought not of some creatures in cages that he wanted to run off, but instead of this one creature in his arms that he would never want to lose.

  He let go, and Julia put the hat on top of his head.

  "Thank you," he said.

  Noah Stone walked through the streets of Plissbury. He noticed the many broken street lights on his way home, and as he started counting them, they all suddenly went off, their light now replaced by the slowly rising sun. He felt the contours of his new hat, tried catching his blurred shadow on the pavement to see its silhouette.

  When Stone reached his own apartment building, he walked inside the hallway
and up the stairs, noticing that his apartment door was open. He started to panic, all sense of threats and lingering nightmares stirred to life inside of him, but then Grundy came out. "Good morning," he said.

  "Grundy?" said Stone, a weight lifted from his shoulders, making him breathe.

  "I'm sorry," said Grundy. "I had nowhere else to go."

  "It's alright," said Stone and walked inside. "You just scared me, that's all. I was sure I'd find Vodeni or his crew in here... Jesus."

  Grundy closed the door after Stone had walked inside. He then proceeded to sit down. "Are you afraid that they would do that?"

  "No, not really. The feeling just caught me, that's all." Stone walked around a bit before sitting down. He acted like he was looking for something.

  "But how come you're here?" asked Stone. "You haven't been here since..."

  "Since the night Eckleburg died."

  "Yeah.”

  "De Gracy was in the Pit with some men that I've never seen before. They were talking and rowdy in their way, and for some reason that scared me. I returned to my room, but then I came here."

  "You don't know what they wanted?" Stone took the hat off his head, studied it for a second in his hands, and put it on the table next to him, careful it didn't end up in any of the many puddles of scotch.

  "No," said Grundy, shaking his head. "De Gracy seemed very subtle, very discreet. Maybe that's what scared me the most," he lied. "I was hoping that you could have a talk with De Gracy one of these days. I'm sure he'll talk to you."

  Stone grinned. "I'll try, but don't go hoping. De Gracy and I don't exactly see eye to eye anymore."

  Stone cleared the coffee table of any excess trash, took a bottle of scotch and filled himself a glass. He then looked around his own apartment and wondered what Grundy must have thought when he came in.

  "What happened between you?" asked Grundy.

  The question stayed in Stone's mind, picking and tearing at the reasons he knew their friendship was falling apart. What happened? Stone didn't know what had happened, and the only thing he could do was to tell his side of the story.

  "I just don't want to do it anymore."

  "Do what?"

  "All the smuggling business, the weapons. Look, Grundy, I've told you about Julia, and... And then there's the boxing. If it weren't for De Gracy and all this, then I'd be where I really want to be. I've got everything I've ever needed, life before life, but I'm surrounded by a world dying to take it away."

  "It's not a world, Mr. Stone," said Grundy. "It's just this town."

  "Just this town?" said Stone, leaning in towards Grundy. "And isn't this town the world to you? When you first came here, wasn't it your world? 'Cause for me, it still is. We'll all live under these streetlights, Grundy, following each and every one. But we'll die under them, too."

  Grundy was silent. He was still watching the floor, grumbling.

  "When I was a little boy," he started, "I'd sit on the top of this hill and watch the sun. I never saw neither sunsets nor sunrises because I had to work or sleep, so I just saw it hanging motionlessly in the sky. And the days passed as I wasn't looking."

  Stone listened.

  "The masters," he said, clearly uncomfortable saying the word, "although I guess you weren't really allowed to call them that at the time, were a rich family, and to distance themselves from us workers, they had a couple of farmhands, white men, at their disposal to keep the farms running all days of the year. Many of them were impossible, and I was very afraid of them. But," said Grundy, softly kneading together his hands. "One of them sat down next to me... I don't remember his face too good, but he wore blue overalls, a stalk of wheat hanging from his lips. I was crying and caked in mud because of... Because of earlier, and he just sat next to me, looking at the stalled sun like me. 'It's funny... the way I ended out here,' he told me. 'My own pa told me that I could be working on his plantation all my life, but I didn't want that... I wanted a different path for myself, and pa told me that I should follow the sun whenever I could.' But his pa had told him something else, too, and that was that the sun also rises.”

  "You mean the sun always rises," asked Stone. “Like the expression. That's what my own pa told me at least.”

  "No," said Grundy. "No, no, because that wasn't what I had wanted to hear. The sun also rises... because the sun always sets."

  Stone slit his eyes. "Why did you tell me this, Grundy?"

  "Because it does. A lot of things have two faces, even the sun... And if you want to throw off your mask now, then I think you should."

  "Grundy, I--"

  "I know that you're Noah Stone, but this street you're walking, these streetlights that you're following... There are other streets, and that's what that farmhand told me."

  Stone cleared his throat and emptied his glass of scotch.

  "Grundy, why don't you stay here for a while?"

  Grundy shook his head. "I'm not supposed to stay here," he said. He stood, seeing the box of Stone's chrome figurines near the window. The figurines had spilled out of the blue velvet confines of the box, and Grundy imagined for some reason a crying boy next to them, a comforting hand of a faceless man resting on the boy's shoulder. Stone stood up as well, Grundy's eyes trailing back up.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" asked Stone.

  Grundy grinned, shrugged, and walked out of Stone's apartment.

  CHAPTER 26

  The sound of Stone's voice reverberated throughout the entire Pit.

  "Absolutely not!" he yelled. "I've stood and watched long enough, but this I will never accept."

  Vodeni and De Gracy were sitting in what used to be Eckleburg's and Stone's seats, and they looked up at the raging Stone in the way that a condescending doctor would an insisting mental patient.

  "This is a natural progression," said Vodeni coolly, "and by no means a permanent one."

  "Not permanent?" said Stone. "Not permanent? This is not about weapons or cigarettes or booze. We're talking about people!"

  "And people are rather far from permanent, aren't they, Stone? Rather temporary, really."

  Stone looked down at De Gracy, seeking some sort of solace or comfort, but in the grey of De Gracy's eyes, he found nothing but the chilling feeling of something missing, something gone; the feeling that something had irrevocably been taken from him and replaced with something else.

  "I will not be a part of this anymore," said Stone, turning his back to the two men.

  "That's funny," said Vodeni as Stone was leaving, "'Cause Frank here was just telling me that he was sure you were gonna do it."

  Stone was cold. De Gracy nodded, but he looked away, didn't look Stone in the eye, and Stone knew he hadn't told yet; he knew that Julia hadn't become leverage yet.

  Stone was about to speak, about to decline once more, but he couldn't. He couldn’t risk De Gracy telling about Julia. Not now. Not so near the end.

  "What's the job about?" whispered Stone.

  A sly smile whisked across Vodeni's mouth. "We'll get five in at noon, and you're supposed to drive them out to the old quarry."

  "When?" asked Stone.

  "Tomorrow night," said Vodeni. De Gracy still didn't speak. "You, De Gracy, and Björn will take the truck."

  "Why not tonight?" asked Stone.

  "Bjorn's not in 'till tomorrow, and there's no one else we can spare."

  Stone nodded reluctantly. He felt nothing but a desperate feeling to finish the assignment as quickly as possible, and even if he knew that more jobs would inevitably follow, he at least thought that this would buy some time.

  Grundy looked down at the broken mop on the floor, remembering his fury as a distant ghost, a genie; liberated by the snap of the mop. He lowered his head and sighed deeply. The reflection of himself in the mirror seemed distant, compliant, completely void of rage, and for a moment, it was impossible for Grundy to recognize himself. He turned his face, curving his everchanging scar along the pane of the mirror, watching it from all sides, tender
ly touching the coarse lines of the wound he'd once given himself, the wound he'd felt a need to reapply ever since it first blossomed.

  He put his hands to his knees and rose. From a closet by the door he found another mop, grabbed it and left the room. The Pit seemed vibrant and alive as he walked down the hall towards the main hall, the sound of people cheering and yelling, and not drunkenly so as he'd heard before, but instead very composed, purposeful cheers. He opened the door and walked inside just as the weapon hatch was being opened. A group of three men walked in from the main entrance, laughing, stupid smiles smeared across their faces. Grundy looked across the hall and he saw De Gracy and Vodeni coming out, and from behind them, his arms crossed, his fedora pulled down to hide his eyes, came Stone as well. They all walked from inside the office, through the corridor and out into the main hall, and there they awaited the men coming inside like the guests at some morbid, dark wedding.

  And in through the door, kicked and pushed, came the walking bodies of five young, black men. Grundy's heart petrified on the spot and he clamored for breath. Each of the five men caught his eye, and even in the brief moment of their shared gaze, Grundy felt he knew them; knew their families, knew their stories. They were silent, their unheard pleas long since silenced by the dryness of their throats, their eyes begging and searching.

  Grundy looked at De Gracy and Stone. De Gracy was leaning up against the wall, motionless, his arms crossed. Shame was spilling from Stone's invisible eyes like bubbling tar.

  The five men were pushed down the ladder, and once they were down in the darkness of the hatch - a darkness that Grundy only remembered too well - a man by the edge pulled up the ladder and closed the hatch. The man stood, his face gleaming in the light, and Grundy recognized him once more, his heart reaching full circle, closing in on itself, collapsing.

  A man was standing next to Grundy, his eyes glued to the hatch.

  "What will happen to them?" bellowed Grundy. The man acted like he'd just dropped something, his gaze suddenly unglued.