by Jeff Ewing
The heat poured through the windows and leaked under the door. She moved closer to the fan, let it blow through her hair and across her face, drying off the sweat stinging her eyes you could mistake for tears if you didn’t know better.
Kyle flipped through The Sandman, tried to put himself into the story, right there in the panels the way he used to, but it wasn’t working. He was afraid he was getting too old for it, for fantasy. Or maybe it was this place—out in the wilderness of western Kentucky. He still wasn’t sure why he’d taken the job. He didn’t care about computers anymore, there was no fascination for him in machines. The solitude was what had appealed to him, the idea of it. Finding some deeper part of himself through isolation and contemplation. A kind of digital Thoreau, that’s how he’d framed his future self. It had felt good buying the three-pack of Moleskines—the bookstore clerk looked at him like someone consequential, a thinker. But he’d run out of thoughts in less than three pages, and the journals were now leveling the legs of his desk.
He picked up a bag of D&D dice, let them tumble around in his palm. He could go for a game, but he had no friends here, didn’t know anybody at all. When he thought about it, he hadn’t made any new friends since sometime in junior high. And back then it had just happened. You fell together, like to like. In the adult world you had to make an effort, and he found it harder every year to work himself up to it.
“Seven fifty,” the girl behind the counter said.
“Okay.” He wanted to call her by name, say “Thank you Jane,” or whatever. That was a step, wasn’t it? He looked for a name tag, but realized he was just staring at her breasts—it would look like that anyway. He turned away, felt himself blush. The girl clicked her tongue like a teacher correcting him.
When he went to unlock his bike, he saw that somebody had stolen the saddle. He had to ride back to the data cave standing up, leaning out over the handlebars. He forgot at one point and nearly impaled himself—an emergency room story the staff would have laughed about for weeks. Who’d steal a goddamn bike saddle? Even here, in this backwater, the prevailing assholes unfailingly found him.
Carlynn came back from lunch laughing and carrying a bicycle seat.
“Boy’s gonna get a surprise when he sits down,” she said, waving the seat by its stem. Like it was a trophy of some kind, a slain creature.
“Why would you do that?” Lauren said.
“What? It’s funny.”
“That’s some hospitality. Just think if you were him, in some strange town—”
“Oh, it’s strange.”
“In some strange town, don’t know anybody, and you get treated like that?”
Carlynn shrugged and dropped the seat on the counter. “You’re no fun anymore.”
Really, though, what kind of behavior was that, what brand of Southern hospitality did that fall under? And she was fun. That just wasn’t her idea of it.
She lifted the seat off the counter and stowed it underneath with the case of plastic bags and the box of Swiffer pads. Its proximity embarrassed her a little. She thought about the way he’d blushed when he was checking her out. She didn’t mind, really, it didn’t happen all that often anymore. Everyone in town knew everybody else, they’d all grown up together, and there were no more surprises. People didn’t even throw surprise birthday parties, they always fell flat. That, she thought, was the perfect town slogan for Breedon: Nothing Surprises Anybody.
He was a scientist of some kind, she’d heard, out at the Kipp Mine. What used to be the Kipp Mine. Which explained his pallor, the general inattention to appearance—he was working on something important, dedicating himself to a larger goal. In the interest of others, she was sure. Probably measuring the radiation penetrating into the old shafts, the rays chipping away at the earth like an ice pick. Working on something, not for something (or someone). To solve a problem, to better people’s circumstances—not just to get a paycheck and a weekend.
And what was she doing? Selling gewgaws and comic books to redneck teens.
Carlynn offered to lock up, but the last time she did forty dollars disappeared from the till. Lauren had made the difference up herself, told Mr. Hantz it had gotten misplaced or fell behind the counter. Not again, though. As lousy a job as this was, she wasn’t risking losing it to cover for somebody else’s klepto tendencies. If Carlynn needed something, she could have come to her, or to Mr. Hantz. Now he suspected her, Lauren, straight as an arrow Lauren. He looked at her differently. That’s what good deeds got you.
“I’ll take care of it tonight,” Lauren said. “You’ve got plans, right?”
“If I don’t, I’ll make some.”
“Go on then.”
Carlynn was slow getting her things together. She watched Lauren closely as she went about cashing out, running her tongue around inside her mouth like she did when she was thinking deeply. It was not attractive.
“Really,” Lauren said. “Go have fun.”
“Fun,” Carlynn said, snorting. She seemed about to say something else, but instead she just turned and strolled out the door, her purse swinging at the end of her arm like she was on a boulevard somewhere—in Paris or something—and everybody was watching her. But it was just Breedon and only Lauren watching. She went back to counting.
She put the bike seat in her bag with the post poking out the top. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it. The mine wasn’t on her way home, but it wasn’t completely out of the way either. Maybe she’d cut through the woods like she used to when she’d catch her dad after his shift, timing it so he’d be coming out of the elevator when she got there and she could straddle the bike and shuffle along beside him, kicking up dust nobody noticed, they were already so covered.
Gil Taver, who worked for the utility company, said the place sucked up power now like nobody’s business. “Megawatts over everybody.” Well, why not? Might as well make use of the place. The coal was long gone, and nobody wanted it anymore anyway. Solar was the thing now, and wind. Coal had never brought anybody anything but black lung and greenhouse gas. And towns like this, holes in the map.
The lights were on at the ball field. She could see little clots of teenagers out around the trees, their cars pulled up on the grass. Friday, the doubter’s Sabbath. It didn’t mean much to her now, but she still remembered. Drinking and necking under those same trees out along the first base line where she could see shadows moving and hear laughter and swearing. Nate’s breath, whiskey-sharp along her skin. She hoped he was doing well now, she really did. But it wasn’t likely. People didn’t change, that was just a fantasy of little girls and drinkers.
Past where the road turned to gravel and the last of the lights were blocked by the trees, it was darker than she remembered. Of course, there were all those men with lamps on their helmets then—like explorers, bright eyes sweeping across the woods and the burned fringe of weeds. They seemed happy, that’s the way she remembered it—a few singing even, high hillbilly voices—but that probably wasn’t accurate. It was the end of coal already then, and no one had any illusions left.
“What’s to stay for?” Nate had said that last night, leaning against his Camaro. Running a thumb along the little lip under the door handle. Caressing it.
“It’ll come back.”
“Coal? You’re shitting me.”
“Not coal, no. Breedon. Something else will come along.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But places don’t just die.”
“Sure they do, all the time.”
“They hibernate, maybe. Fall on hard times, but that’s different.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“It’s history.”
“Well, I’m talking about the future, not the past.”
He didn’t have anything better waiting for him when he drove off, she knew. A cousin somewhere in California, Bakersfield. She’d looked it up online, and it was even worse than Breedon. Dirt and dead grass, and oil pumps like rusted-ou
t dinosaurs raising and dropping their heads, sucking the dry ground even drier.
She’d been right too, it had come back. Part way, at least. Businesses had stopped closing, a few new ones had opened up. There was an organic farm just outside of town now, a craft brewery with stainless steel vats shining in the window. And two coffee shops that sold drinks you’d never know were coffee. Of course, it could be that the rest of the country had just sunk a little lower, and they had only risen in relation. She couldn’t be sure, but did it matter?
She turned the last bend and saw cars and people, headlights shining on the mine’s scarred-up metal doors. Big, bright rings like a Hollywood movie premiere or a prison escape.
Servers were going down right and left. He’d rebooted eight since lunch; the weekly average was four. He’d called the Data Center, and they’d yelled at him, told him to just fucking fix it. But this was way above his pay grade. He had no idea what to do, and he suspected they didn’t either. He hadn’t touched anything, it wasn’t his fault—which didn’t keep him from being a scapegoat. In fact, it was probably the perfect scenario for a scapegoat, maybe even the reason they’d hired him and sent him out here in the first place.
But that wasn’t why he was crying. It was his bike, the stolen saddle. How stupid was that? Why should he care? Because it was personal, that’s why. It wasn’t a random crime, some fucked-up delinquent kid walking home from school. It wasn’t a crime of opportunity, it was a hate crime. They hated him. He didn’t know why, but they did. It had happened before, in other places, on other jobs. Something in him rubbed people the wrong way. If they got to know him, they’d like him—he knew they would—but he wouldn’t get the chance. It had already passed. He was on the outside, and the door had slammed shut again in his face.
He punched the wall, solid rock that didn’t give. He felt his knuckles crunch, the skin peel back. He was howling now like an animal trapped in its den.
Another row of LEDs went red, then another. Someone’s data vaporized as he watched—family photos gone, a brilliant coming-of-age novel shredded into scrambled bits. Information all around him was spiraling out into blackness, like the arms of a galaxy gathering nothingness up in its sweep. Chaos, electronic Alzheimer’s, loss and decay.
Then a knock, the void’s fist rapping.
He wiped his nose and slunk over to the security console. The camera was the cheapest you could get, and she was pretty blurry, but it was definitely her. The girl from the store.
He pressed the intercom.
“Hello,” he said.
She looked around comically.
He pressed the intercom again: “The button by the door.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“Look, there’s some people out here. They’re kind of unruly.”
He could see a small crowd behind her haloed by headlights, the silhouettes of beer bottles and mullets and—was that a rifle?
“Why?”
She was yelling something at the crowd, then she turned back, half-smiled up at the camera.
“Sorry. What?”
“Why are they unruly?”
“It’s Friday.”
“I don’t have any money or anything.”
“They think you’re the government, some secret part of it. Or there’s aliens in there. Or something. I’m not too clear on it myself.”
A bottle hit the wall beside the camera, spraying liquid across the lens. The girl held her hand up to her forehead, brought it away and looked at it.
“Are you bleeding?” he said.
He could see her mouth moving, but there was only white noise and a high piercing whine.
He felt the slowness of the ancient elevator’s ascent as a physical pain: “Come on come on come on,” thumping the heel of his hand against the panel. Rising up through the darkness to—what? A mob of shadows shuffling through a fog of dust and truck headlights.
“EVERYBODY CHILL THE FUCK OUT!” he yelled, emerging into the relative glare.
A shadow or two paused to look at him, somebody laughed and was shushed.
“Okay,” a guy said—twenty-something in a Skrillex t-shirt and cargo pants. “Will do.”
Off to the side, the girl from the store sat on a blanket with a sterile pad pressed against her head.
“Are there aliens in there?” somebody in the back asked.
“What?”
“In the mine.”
“No, it’s computers. Servers.”
“Oh shit, really?” Skrillex said.
“Yes.”
“Okay, makes sense. Nice and cool in there, wide open.”
“Right.”
Skrillex leaned down, looked at the girl closely.
“You feeling all right? No concussion symptoms or anything?”
She shook her head.
“Really sorry about that, Lauren. It was Cliff, he’s an idiot. But you know that.”
“Everybody knows that,” somebody said. “Even Cliff.”
“Fuckin’ A,” somebody else—presumably Cliff—said.
He could feel his knees shaking. If he talked now, his voice would come out thin and warbly, scared sounding. So he just nodded and squatted down beside the girl on the blanket. People were already moving off, cars backing out. Soon it was just the three of them.
“Underground, and they call it the cloud,” Skrillex said finally.
“I know.”
“Around here, man, it figures.”
He produced a bottle of Jack Daniels from somewhere and set it on the blanket.
“Look, y’all take this, okay? And no hard feelings. Really, we’ve got nothing against the cloud.”
“Or you either,” somebody else said, a girl back in the shadows he couldn’t see.
“Right, or you either.”
Lauren—that was her name, he knew that much now—sat up on the blanket and squinted into the darkness.
“Was this your idea, Carlynn?’
No answer, just the sound of feet shuffling across gravel.
“You should be ashamed!”
Skrillex nodded in commiseration, then strolled back to his car. They could hear the girl giggle as he climbed in beside her and they drove off.
Lauren reached into her purse and pulled something out. She was so close he could almost touch her.
“I brought your seat,” she said. He didn’t correct her, tell her it was actually a saddle. Not too long ago he would have.
He took her with him down a branch tunnel while he rebooted six more servers that had crashed, waiting for the sky to fall, for red lights to flare up and down the mine. Staring him down before pouncing. But that was it, the end of the emergency. Everything went green after that and stayed green. He had no idea what the glitch had been—an act of god, sun spots, voodoo.
“You live down here?” she asked. His cot and his little bookshelf were wedged against the wall under an old vent pipe. It looked like a dungeon, he could see that.
“Pretty much. If you call it living.”
“What do you call it?”
They spread the blanket out on the floor. He could feel the heat of the processors washing over them, the whiskey firing through his brain. There were pockets of safety in the world, he was beginning to believe, cozy little corners amid the melee.
She’d be fired first thing Monday. She knew it as surely as if it had already happened. Mr. Hantz would see the pictures, maybe on Carlynn’s phone—Lauren with her head bleeding, yelling and waving a bottle. He’d hear about the scuffle from his police friends. By tomorrow it would be a riot, and he wouldn’t want any part of it. Lauren couldn’t imagine who else he’d get to work in the crummy little store, but that was his problem. She was safe in the mine for now. Safe and sound in a hole in the ground, as her father used to say.
The boy was looking at her in a way she recognized. He took a big slug of the whiskey, choked a little on it. He was so awkward that a twinge of something like mercy shive
red through her. He leaned in, knocking the whiskey over.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Hold on,” she said, righting the bottle.
“I’m sorry. I’m not too good at this.”
She took another sip, scrunched up her face.
“Nobody is.”
No one she’d ever known, at least. Maybe her mother and her father had the knack once, that mutual feeling, but that was a long time ago—and as far as she knew she’d spoiled it. It was just her and her dad for most of her life, then he’d died in the mine … could anyone blame her for having her doubts?
“I was with this one guy for a while,” she said. “We almost got married.”
Nate another in the line of disasters, but without all the dust and frenzy; just a steady drift apart that always made her think of icebergs—clumsy and slow and inevitable.
“We were okay at this part of it,” she said. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? A relationship.”
“I don’t know.”
“No,” she agreed. “Me neither.”
She lay back on the rock floor. The cave ceiling arched out of sight overhead; above that was everything and everyone else. She let them all go. After a little while he moved closer, rolled half onto her and started kissing the side of her head. His chin poked into her neck. The floor was uneven, and he was heavy on top of her, not as light as he looked. All sharp points, hip bones and knees.
Along the walls little green lights glowed, cycling on and off like animals’ eyes. She squinted, let them dissolve into vague, amorphous blobs and thought: What if it was just us left? All alone down here, everything up above blown up or melted or dried out. No Carlynn, no Nate, no Mr. Hantz. Just me and—she didn’t even know his name. The Albino, but she couldn’t very well call him that. She’d have to ask him later. He was busy now, breathing hard.
When you thought about it, it had already happened—on a small scale, and more than once. Little armageddons when people moved away or died, your world skewed off a little. Towns went under, like this one, and if they came back it was never the same.