Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  De Gracy turned around once more only to see an empty office. He walked around for a bit, remembering where each of them had been, but they hadn't left a single trace. He let his fingers slide across the heavy desk, feeling the furrows of age, seeing how they multiplied into endless branches. He then turned to leave the office, but a man was standing in the doorway.

  The man was wearing a fedora and a coat that reached his knees. His hands were deep down in his pockets and his head was slightly askew.

  The man in the doorway was Noah Stone.

  As the rest of the boxers finished grabbing their things, some of them putting their shirts back on, the boxer with the cap punching the punching bag was still in the ring, oblivious to what Vodeni had just said.

  “Hey, it goes for you, too,” said Vodeni. He walked up to the edge of the ring. He slipped on a piece of paper, but he managed to keep his balance. The boxer continued punching the bag without listening.

  “Hey!”

  The rest of the boxers were still moving outside when someone called out from outside the door, “Wait!”

  Vodeni turned around to see Clay Holden running towards him. Vodeni lifted his gun towards the young boxer. Holden stopped moving, but he didn't take his eyes off Vodeni.

  “I don't want to hurt you,” said Holden.

  Vodeni laughed. “Hurt me? Hurt me?! I don't think you understand the balance here.”

  “Just because you've got a gun to my face doesn't mean I'm afraid of you. Only been afraid once in my life. I don't want to hurt you, but I have something that I need to do.”

  “You should've walked out like the rest,” said Vodeni.

  “I can't do that right now,” said Holden. He looked up at the boxer in the ring who had turned around. No one else seemed to notice him.

  “I've no need to kill you, boy, but don't think I'll hesitate breaking both your arms so you never step inside a ring again!”

  “If you'd just step off that piece of paper and give it to me, I swear I'll leave.”

  Vodeni looked down at the piece of paper by his right foot. He picked it up and looked at it; it was a poster announcing a boxing match between Louis 'The Zipper' DeSanta and The Bull. He gave it to Holden.

  “Why the hell you need that?”

  “Just wanna make something right.”

  Holden then tore up the poster.

  “Now get the hell outta here,” said Vodeni.

  Holden nodded, looked up at the boxer in the ring who had resumed his training, and walked away.

  Vodeni then turned his attention back to the training boxer. He climbed into the ring and walked up to him.

  “Listen, God damn it. When I speak to you, you better listen, you understand?”

  Vodeni grabbed him by the shoulder, but the boxer turned around and punched him. The two guards began pulling their weapons, but the boxer had already whipped out a handgun, shooting both of them before they could react. Vodeni tried getting up, but the boxer kicked him in the face, knocking him out in the middle of the boxing ring. The boxer then jumped down the ring and ran on towards the east wing of the Pit.

  Noah Stone and Frank De Gracy stood only some feet apart in the office. They stared at each other with a static posture like two men preparing to duel.

  “I knew you'd be here,” said Stone.

  “How did you get in?” asked De Gracy.

  Stone smirked. “You think I couldn't get past a few goons?”

  De Gracy felt cold and wet under all his clothes, and his heart was beating fast. He kept opening and closing his eyes, but Stone remained in front of him. He felt like an amnesiac, like all the lights had been turned off around him, and he didn't remember the steps that had brought him here.

  “When I found out you had taken Julia,” said Stone, “I knew we weren't friends anymore.”

  “Friends?” asked De Gracy. “Friends?! You've come here to talk about our friendship?”

  “No. I don't think we ever had a friendship. I guess you were just there randomly, tagging along anywhere I went.”

  “You stopped me from going to Europe. I could have saved him, but you stopped me from going!” screamed De Gracy.

  “You could've gone yourself. You just didn't have the guts to go without me. That's why you stayed with me all this time.”

  “I stayed because we gave each other a promise. I stayed because I thought we were friends.”

  “I never caught the promise, remember? Remember, De Gracy... The green stone. I never caught it.”

  De Gracy swallowed and stepped backward.

  “You've dreamed about that stone falling down into the sea so many times now. You've dreamed endlessly of the friendship that never started, the love that was never there... and the love you lost.”

  “Stop it, Stone... stop it now!”

  “Jacques Lautrec... your French tutor. Left off to France without you to fight for his family, his country. Left you with an insane father. And then Lautrec died, didn't he, De Gracy? You loved him, but he didn't love you, and you know why? Because he didn't believe in love between two men. A disgusting love.”

  De Gracy rushed towards Stone, who was laughing, his hands still in his pockets, but as De Gracy tackled him, he flew through the apparition and out into the hallway.

  “Where is she!” roared a voice from down the hall.

  De Gracy looked down the hall in horror as he saw Stone running towards him, but this Stone was wearing a cap and pants with suspenders; no hat, no coat. Stone dragged him up and pushed him into the office. De Gracy staggered backwards, and Stone punched him twice in the face. De Gracy parried his next attack and threw Stone into one of the bookshelves. Books dwindled down on the floor as Stone thundered towards De Gracy, grabbing him by the collar; De Gracy pointed a knee to Stone's crotch., who ignored the impact and threw De Gracy onto the table. De Gracy flailed with his hands and legs to slide off the slippery surface; papers shuffled, the wood creaked, and as he finally rocketed off the table, the five candles fell down on the floor and near the curtains.

  “Where is she?!” screamed Stone.

  The curtains started burning.

  “What do you care?! When have you ever cared?!”

  “It's you who never cared, Frank. How many have to die before you react to anything?!”

  “I always cared, Noah. Much more than you think, I always cared. You know I saved you that night... you know I saved your soul.”

  “You always cared about me, but never--”

  “It's because I loved you,” cried De Gracy, his voice hoarse and battered, dying. “Like I loved him.”

  The fire spread to the papers on the table and the first line of bookshelves along the walls, and smoke started filling the room.

  “There's no way to...” continued De Gracy.

  “Frank...”

  “If I can't do...”

  “Frank!” roared Stone. “I know... I know.”

  “You... you knew? All these years and... you knew?”

  “I knew,” said Stone. “I knew, but you must've understood that I could never have loved you like that.”

  “Why? Because it's a disgusting love, a filthy love?!”

  De Gracy kicked one of the table legs and the table collapsed to the floor. He picked up the leg and started swinging it at Stone. Stone tried dodging it by moving backwards, but the fire had already spread well behind him.

  “I never said...”

  De Gracy made another swing at Stone, who managed to tumble away from the impact, rolling across a patch of burning floor. The fire was building around them, swirling and pacing and breathing in the oxygen from the room. It thundered, loud and hot, and smoke started pumping out through the windows and through the door. People were screaming outside.

  Stone jumped out from the office. He looked inside, but the room was black with smoke. He could hear De Gracy coughing. He stood up and ran down the hall to the room where De Gracy had been kept prisoner. The fire had already licked its way throug
h the walls of the office and was now spreading into the adjacent parts of the Pit.

  Stone kicked in the door and started calling Julia's name. The smoke was already dense and he feared it was too late. His eyes were wet from soot and smoke. He crouched down beneath where the smoke was thickest, but he still couldn't see.

  “Julia!” he screamed. “Julia!”

  “Noah?” called a voice in the dark. “I'm here, Noah!”

  Stone ran to her. He ripped the rope off her, leaving marks on her wrist. She screamed in pain, and he picked her up and carried her out the room. He ran out to the hall with Julia hanging down his shoulders like a yoke. He looked into the office as he passed, but the doorway was like a portal to hell, crumbling and burning from the fire, and he knew that there was nothing to do but continue out into the main hall.

  The main hall burned from the floor and all the way up to the ceiling. The beams across the ceiling were carrying engulfing flames that occasionally threw down a barrage of burning wood and debris.

  “It's ok,” said Stone. “We're going to make it.”

  Julia was falling in and out of consciousness.

  A hunk of burning wood crashed down right besides Stone as he ran, and he almost lost his balance.

  Stone continued on through the fire, but even through the godless bustle of the inferno that surrounded them, he heard the gunshot that tore through his shin. The pain shot up through his leg and spine. He collapsed in on himself and fell to the floor, Julia tumbling off his shoulders and near a patch of burning floor.

  Stone wrinced in pain as he tried to get up. He turned and saw Vodeni stand in front of him; his gun was raised and pointed at Stone.

  “No... more, Stone,” huffed Vodeni. One of his arms seemed limp, unnaturally twisted, as if it had been dislocated from his shoulder; his suit was covered in soot. “I don't care if the Pit dies. As long as you die with it. I'll shoot you first, so you don't have to see her die.” Vodeni's shiny necklace was now hanging out from his collar; a silver cross. Stone looked at it and sighed.

  “It's not Thomas' piece, not the chrome” he whispered. “He never took it.”

  Vodeni's pistol clicked.

  Stone prayed. The fire went still all around him and the many flames now looked like deep, red, ruby crystals. The high ceiling of the Pit was like a church's and the burning windows looked like finely crafted mosaics that depicted the battles of saints and angels. There was the angel of faith, he thought; the angel of youth and the angel of humility, but none of these were sanctity itself. None of them were safe.

  Then Stone saw the angel of death. The angel stood in front of him, arms stretched to each side like he was on a cross and with a face without expression.

  Stone heard another gunshot, but he couldn't see Vodeni anymore. De Gracy was standing in front of him, slowly crouching down towards the floor, his face already dead and gone. A circle of blood was widening from his stomach. A pile of wood fell down from the ceiling and almost hit Vodeni, who jumped back to avoid it. Smoke rose and Vodeni disappeared.

  Stone looked at De Gracy and then at Julia, who was lying near the entrance of the Pit. His leg was bleeding and the fire felt like hot needles all over his body. He pulled himself over to De Gracy's body; he looked in his eyes, seeing that he wasn't dead.

  “Frank, I'll get you out. There's time. The fire's not at the entrance yet. I can get you both out!”

  De Gracy laughed, but without moving his mouth.

  “I always loved you,” said Stone. “I loved you like a brother. I...” he stammered, picking at something in his pants pocket. “I've got something for you.” He took out a piece of paper that had been glued together, and even though many fragments were missing, many passages of the letter were still legible.

  “We're all lost, Noah,” muttered De Gracy. “Before the war, after it... lost.”

  “I know, I know, but--”

  “We tried though, didn't we? I think we tried.”

  “Don't worry about that now. Don't worry about any of that. We did good.”

  “Noah, please... get her out. I understand... I understand all of it.”

  “This here,” said Stone, pointing at the letter. “It's the letter, Frank. The one you read by the cove... the one you ripped apart.”

  The fire spread down the walls near the entrance and around the boxing ring. The ropes were burning with little lines of hungry flames.

  “Noah,” cried De Gracy. “I'm dead whether I get out of the Pit or not... please go.”

  Stone nodded and put the letter on De Gracy's chest.

  “Frank, I'm sorry! I'm...”

  A rush of fire, and beams from the ceiling broke down. Stone looked up and knew the roof was coming down. He dragged himself around a pile of debris and hurried towards Julia. Stone screamed as he forced himself to stand up, the pain like jagged glass through his leg, dragging Julia with him out of the Pit.

  Frank De Gracy looked up at the burning ceiling. Pieces of it came crashing down all around him. He took the letter that Stone had left and looked at it. With the final glimmer of his dead, grey eyes, De Gracy read the last lines of the letter.

  “Jacques often told us of the “dead” boy he knew in America that had come to life right before his eyes. It makes me happy that he knew someone like that and that he fought and died for someone like that.

  We hope to see you here once. I'm sure you have a bright future in front of you.”

  “Kind Regards

  Jacques' Father”

  De Gracy looked up at the burning ceiling and smiled, knowing he finally saw real death.

  E P I L O G U E

  [DECEMBER 16th - JANUARY 1st]

  [1928-1929]

  The boy hunched down besides the mound of dirt. A headstone marked the end of it. The boy's father crouched down and put his hand on his son's shoulders.

  “It's ok to die, it's ok.” said the father. “And It's ok to mourn the dead.”

  “I miss him, dad,” said the boy and snorted.

  “I know you do,” said the father. “Bog was a good dog. We'll all miss him. Look here.” The father took out a black box from his bag and showed it to his son. He opened it to reveal an entire bunch of chrome figurines. The boy's eyes lit up when he saw them.

  “There's a dog there!” said the boy.

  The father laughed and picked up the little figurine that resembled a dog.

  “There sure is. Now, look here. If we put it here by Bog's grave, it'll be like we're always here with him, you understand?”

  The boy nodded, a great spirit now rushing through him. He received the little dog figurine and put it by Bog's headstone.

  “There, Bog,” said the boy. “There, boy. Now you'll never be forgotten.”

  The boy's father closed the box and smiled.

  With the cold wind around him and the clouds clustering overhead, Stone felt like being somewhere between this world and the next. He stood motionless by the ashen remains of the Pit, scrounging for some lost, familiar shape among all the debris.

  The shadow of the ruined facade was cast before his feet, separating him through the middle. He tried imagining coming here in the days before the fire, before Vodeni, before everything. The shadowy green of the Pit was still unbroken some places, looking like roughened, unpolished stone.

  He remembered the glinting jade the building had seemed when they had bought it a long time ago. It had been the most wide open door Stone had ever seen. He closed and opened his eyes in quick succession, but there was no use in trying to mix the past with the present.

  Stone put his hand in his inner coat pocket and drew out a chrome figurine which he had forgot he even had. He looked at it once more, trying to convince himself that it had always existed somewhere in his possession. It was the simplest of all his figurines; it was a man with a long coat, wearing a hat. His father had told him that it was a ranger; a cowboy that protected the innocent and the young.

  The shadow of the young morning
sun cast its light on Stone's back, throwing his silhouette onto the ground of the burned down Pit. He walked across the smoldered debris, limping, careful not to cut himself, careful not to come away bleeding from all the jagged edges and unpolished surfaces, and as he came closer to where the office used to be, the shadow of the little chrome figurine joined his own, and for a short while the two fedoras were cast onto the ground together.

  The books that he knew were there were vanished with no trace of them left; all the tomes that he'd never read, the books that were there when they had first bought the Pit. He imagined the desk in front of him, stretching out from wall to wall. He imagined looking out at the alley through the window that was no longer there, looking at the twisted metal and garbage that had been piled up and forgotten.

  Stone crouched down over a little patch of clean dirt. He split the ground in two with his fingers and put the chrome figurine into the dirt. He then covered the figure with a little mound of earth and stepped back. He took off his hat and held it by his side.

  “I knew you'd be here,” a voice said behind him.

  He turned around and saw Julia stand on the other side of the ruin. She tried coming closer, but she gave up halfway through. Stone started to walk towards her.

  “Don't,” she said. “Please.”

  Stone stopped. “I'm sorry,” he said.

  Julia began shaking her head, her lips already trembling from what she was feeling; from what she had felt since he had yelled at her.

  “Noah, I...”

  “Ever since I came back to Plissbury,” said Stone. “This has been my home.” He kicked a loose board sticking out from the ground. “We... me and Frank... all of us... we tried to start a life for ourselves here, a future. After the war, we...”

  “After the war? After the... war... Noah, what war? You were never in the war! What war?!”

  “I had my war!” roared Stone. “I had my war, Julia. We all did, each one of us, fighting it every day. You think those horrors all those soldiers carried home don't exist in each of us already? You can't conjure something like that if it isn't there to begin with.”