On the Up

by Shilo Jones

  One thing feels odd, though. Different than other jobs. It feels a bit—as we scramble around the house’s foundation, hammering plywood to shore up the trench—like there’s no reason for us to be there. And possibly no end, either. Jobs have a finish line. Do the work, go home. But on this house I half expect Clint to come around when we’re done, tell us to tear it all out, begin again, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives milling around the base of that lost structure, hands against wood and concrete, soft skin to mute object, covered in sweat and mud and sometimes blood, vaguely sensual, vaguely making me want to fuck, but no longer understanding what the object we’re labouring on is for. Sometimes I’m filled with dread, and in my mind this dread takes the image of a welded steel tube filled with nails, machine bolts, ammonium nitrate and fuel oil and buried in the earth.

  Other times the dread is even more messed up, two words flashing neon red in the bay window:

  IMPENDING DOOM

  IMPENDING DOOM

  IMPENDING DOOM

  which is enough to make me retreat to the Ford, fumble for a smoke, pop the cork on an Oxy. Sometimes the dread becomes a sound like a ringing cellphone and my wrecked leg buckles and I’m forced to sit down in the mud and Ryan says hey man you good and I say what are you looking at, keep digging. Other times I imagine lighting the Alma house on fire. The neighbourhood. The city. But of course that doesn’t happen.

  Me and Ryan suffer smashed thumbs, stubbed toes, aching backs. I nearly cut my foot off with the concrete saw. A half-pallet of bricks falls off the truck, almost crushing Ryan. He slips into the trench and almost impales himself on a spike of rebar. I call him careless, clumsy, tell him to watch out, he’s going to get himself killed. We spend the day enveloped in dull pain, the ache of manual labour, and occasionally this pain is marked by the sudden, much sharper pain of trauma. The exchange is timeworn: we sell our bodies for cash.

  I spend mental energy, on my smoke breaks, noting my work is similar to war, being engaged in theatre, stuffed in a metal coffin called an armoured vehicle, slowly roasting alive because the AC’s out, choking on dust, being shot at, maybe shooting back, smoking, waiting, talking about nothing, and maybe it’s your day to catch a bullet in the face, have your hand torn off when it gets caught in the chain of an M242 Bushmaster, have the LAV saw you apart when it’s shredded by an IED because the politicians were too busy bickering about the MEXAS add-on armour kit, a costly upgrade.

  Labour has always served as peacetime boot camp to war. The body adapts to physical discomfort. This is the kind of thing I think about, driving in the rain across the Knight Street Bridge, over fishing boats floating in the choppy grey-brown Fraser, smelling tire rubber, fresh-cut cedar, and river tide. I think: pain connects us to our physical selves. Provides blunt, undeniable evidence we are of this world.

  During lunch break me and Ryan are sitting in the Ford when he says he wants to go to California. I ask why. He says because it looks nice. On TV? I ask. Yeah, he says, looks nice. Sunny. There’s an ocean there. We have an ocean, I tell him. Theirs looks nicer, he says, ashing his smoke out the window. Says their ocean’s warmer, has waves you can surf, boardwalks, pretty girls. For some reason I get pissed off, tell him not to be a sucker. Tell him he’s being sold something. Tell him the grass isn’t always greener. Ryan looks upset. I tell him California’s a dump, a fucking cesspool, full of money-grubbing thieves. Dickbags? Ryan asks. Yeah, I say, arrogant dickbags everywhere. And polluted as fuck. Don’t…don’t believe everything you see on TV, dumbass, half that shit’s filmed here anyway. But the girls look nice, he says. Fuck you, I say, really starting to wish he’d be quiet. The girls are horrible. Shallow. Money-grubbing. Plastic tits that bust and leak. Ryan looks at me, says not all of them. They can’t all be like that? I think for a second, say the ones you’re talking about are.

  Ryan picks at a blood blister on his thumb. It’s silent for a long time. I get lost in a not-great thought about never seeing Daree or my daughter again and how much cash can I get to them because I got a feeling shit’s gonna go haywire real quick. Then Ryan says, besides, it’s cheap to get to California. How you figure? I ask. Because you’re driving downhill, Ryan says. I laugh, ask why the fuck he thinks that, and Ryan gets angry, like he’s being made a fool of, indignant in the fierce manner of a person talked down to his entire life, and the kid traces a circle in the air with his hands, says duh look at a fucking globe dude driving to California is all downhill, which is when something goes weird in my throat and when I can breathe again I say yeah, you might be right and offer him another smoke.

  After lunch we’re in the trench, exposing a cracked and leaking foundation when Ryan comments on how most of the houses we work on are empty, says he’s never seen anything like it, which reminds me of something I saw online, maybe bullshit but who knows, about entire cities in China built up and never lived in. Condo towers, shopping malls, highways. Brand new and completely empty. Not a soul. Arid wind blowing dust through broken doors. I think about how odd that condensed time is. Even our ruins are contemporary.

  Did the ghost-city urban planners design a skid row? A prison? Government buildings with stern-faced bronze statues guarding central courtyards, security cameras, defensive landscape architecture, precautions against the nonexistent population staging a protest? Were all contingencies considered? Disaster plans drawn up, outcomes accounted for? And, more pragmatically, I think about the point at which waste on a city-wide scale becomes a form of viable economic production.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the trench slumping in, three hundred pounds of clay hardpan nearly crushing me alive. Leap out of the way, trip, sink to my knees in a foot of icy water, scream. Ryan laughs, tells me to be more careful or I’m gonna get myself killed. Later, back in the truck, I chew my peanut butter and jam, think about the people who died building those ghost cities. Ghost deaths. Counterweights slipping from cranes and bringing the whole mess down. Plummeting from ten storeys up because the bamboo scaffolding went. How absurd their deaths were. Why does it feel like those workers were fed to something massive, sharp-toothed, with a body made of mist, or dragged to the top of a pyramid, hearts cut out and consumed, corpses hurled down stone steps, only no fervent believers waiting to celebrate their deaths, no prayers, ritual robbed of significance? What will they do with those ghost cities, if they even exist, if it’s not an elaborate hoax, joke’s on me, Marky failed the internets? Tear them down? Build them back up? Rinse and repeat?

  That’s what’s happening in this town. Tear it down and build it up, sell it, do it again, like Clint said the first day I arrived. Don’t even need to move in. Remove use value from the equation, cycle speeds up, unrestricted capital flow, rising GDP, a river of cash. Investment vehicles. Everything clicking along, gaining speed and momentum, humming, tickety-boo. The only thing in the way is us. Consumption is very meatspace. Slow, antiquated. Obsolete. We’re shifting to a higher level of abstraction. Creation and destruction in the same instant. Like a Hindu god. A subatomic particle.

  Day’s done. Pack up the tools. Still no word from Clint, fine by me, that Reed daughter work sounds like nothing but hassle. Drive Ryan to Commercial Station. About to boot him out when I’m like, fuck. Tell him he can crash at Clint’s condo if he wants. Ryan doesn’t ask about me knowing he sleeps rough or say thanks, just gives me a blank look, like it doesn’t matter where he sleeps, like he hasn’t slept in the same place for more than a few days in ages.

  We get to the condo around six. Tired, filthy. Eat microwave pasta, smoke a joint, play Call of Duty. Ryan sits cross-legged on the floor because there’s only one chair. The television flashes red and white. Things explode, reform, explode, die, get reborn. I’m feeling edgy, pent up. You have to sleep on the floor out here, there’s only one bedroom, I tell Ryan. That’s okay, Ryan says, hands twitching on the game control, staring at the screen. Outside there’s a city, and beyond the city a forest, maybe something called Canada, but we’re in a con
dominium, concrete walls, no lights on, only the television glowing and popping, and we might as well be in suspended animation or on board a nuclear submarine, asleep in the bomb shop, snuggling an eighteen-foot cruise missile because it’s nice and cool, dreaming a coffin dream.

  After he kicks my ass at Call of Duty Ryan goes to the bathroom, returns to the living room naked. Covering himself with cupped hands. Looks like a child who crawled out of bed and has to go pee. I ask what the fuck he’s doing. I took my clothes off, Ryan says, chin raised, looking straight at me, defiant, refusing to be ashamed, refusing the weakness he thinks feeling ashamed would betray. I say yeah, I fucking see that. I took my clothes off, he says again, uncertain. A few seconds tick by, slow, protracted. I tell him yeah, whatever, now go get dressed. I can’t pay rent money, Ryan says. I say good, cuz I’m not your fucking landlord. What are you? he asks. I don’t know, I tell him. Something from the woods.

  Ryan stands there, motionless, covering himself. I’m conscious of the world outside the condo, low overcast, muffled city sounds, strangers. I say: Get your clothes on, I’m getting a Pizza Pop, want one?

  Is it because we’re not fags? Ryan asks, trying to sound angry. I tell him, you need to hate someone, at least hate the right fucking people. He looks confused, standing in the empty condo, skin grey-blue in the light of the paused video game. Who’s that? he asks, frowning, serious, goosebumped. I say that’s for you to decide. We’re silent for a few breaths. It’s not a heavy or a bad silence. Can we play more Call of Duty? he asks. I say sure, for a few minutes. Then I turn away, light another joint, tell him I’m getting tired, got a long day tomorrow, then ask how he likes his Pizza Pops. Ryan returns to the bathroom, yells that he likes ’em warm but not super melted. A while later he comes out dressed in dry clothes, settles on the floor, resets the game. We share the joint, he kicks my ass at Call of Duty, looks at me, says fuck dude, I thought you were getting Pizza Pops.

  * * *

  Can’t sleep. Four a.m., sucking on a jawbreaker, scratching, staring at the ceiling fan, debating paying Mr. Craig Williams another recon visit. Scrap the idea. I know plenty about the target. More than I need. Going back serves no purpose, only adds unnecessary risk. Mr. Williams has a public profile on one of those social media fitness sites. Fit-tracker. Fit-wanker. I know his preferred running route if he’s working on low-end endurance instead of intervals designed to build sprinting power. I know his maximum heart rate during various training phases and how he tweaks his diet for each phase. His weight. His favourite playlists. I know what days he meets his business partner and what days he runs alone.

  This is a nice time, before engagement, when things feel solid, in control, and I’m in no rush. So all I do is grab my laptop, go online, find Williams’s picture again, stare at it, say good morning, good sir.

  It’s still dark when I roll off my Therm-a-Rest. Drink water from the faucet. Do fifty push-ups. Hundred sit-ups. Three squats before my leg’s killing me so bad I have to quit, pisses me off, the goal is five. Add fingertip pull-ups off the door jamb to get rid of being pissed off. Decide not to take an Oxy until after lunch at the earliest. Go to the kitchen, eat a PowerBar and an apple, boil cowboy coffee, pour it into a Thermos. Eat a boiled egg while I make two tuna fish sandwiches. Make a mental note to buy a slow cooker because I’m tired of paying too much money to eat shit food at gas stations. Then I walk around the island between the kitchen and the living room to wake Ryan up.

  He’s gone.

  Search around, not expecting to find him. But he’s curled up on the balcony, wrapped in a waterlogged blanket, lying in the narrow strip of dry vinyl beside the sliding glass door. I stick my toe in the small of his back, ask him what the hell he’s doing out here and he says he can’t sleep inside, it’s too hot, he needs a lot of space around him. I say no problem, now get up, time for work.

  Jasminder Bansal

  Wake in the middle of the night sweating, blinking through an afterimage of masked men wielding machetes and grinning men with gold incisors. Blankets wrapped around my neck, where am I, militiamen carrying machetes and was that Amar standing at the foot of the bed?

  Mangy yellow light through paisley curtains. Horrible taste in my mouth, stale gin and cigarette ash. Traffic noise so loud it vibrates the door. The door of where? City Centre Motor Hotel on Main…shit. The cash from Peele…three grand, more than I’ve ever seen. Then later with Eric on the Granville Strip because I didn’t want to be alone after Clint Ward tracked me down, told me to get the fuck out of Marigold. I bailed on Eric halfway through the night. And now I’m alone in a dive hotel, not hungover because I’m still drunk.

  A silhouette against the window. A man, heavily built, standing outside? Setting his hand against the glass, like he’s trying to feel if I’m in here?

  No, nothing. No one.

  A shitty seascape painting hangs beside the bed. A two-masted schooner bathed in heavenly light as it crests a wave. Stormy seas. We shall persevere?

  Lying wide awake, arms folded behind my head, watching headlights slide across the ceiling, wondering how much would be enough? To make me forget Amar and walk away? Who can say five hundred grand wouldn’t be enough? Or five million?

  I think it would. Of course it would.

  Reach for the bedside light, change my mind, decide to lie still, and the creepy feeling builds that if I move I’ll be spotted, but by whom I can’t say. The security chain on the door is ridiculously flimsy, a child’s toy bracelet. I lie awake, thirsty, uncertain. Should I call Meeta? Eric? Sim? Pick up the hotel phone, wanting to say hi to someone. Say hello, I’m here. Do you have a second? Just to talk? I discovered something that might be big, a connection between Clint Ward and Vincent Peele and someone higher up but now I have no idea what to do. The dial tone buzzes impatient in my ear. Then I have an idea. A silly idea—

  “Hi, Amar,” I whisper into the phone. “It’s me? Jaz?”

  Nothing. Of course there’s nothing. There has to be nothing. Because if there’s something, a sound, a voice…no. There’s nothing at all, which means I’m mostly okay. I flip onto my side, turn my back to the door.

  What would Amar say? If he were alive with me now? If we were talking on the phone about what I know?

  Clutching the phone to my ear. Dial tone painfully loud. Wanting to set the receiver down, hang up. But needing to hear him, or imagine hearing him, his unhurried voice, that smooth, self-assured manner. Amar had it all figured out. Right and wrong. Who he was and who they were. Where he stood and what he stood for. How did he discover his answers so young? Where did they come from? Who told him?

  I hang up the phone.

  Mark Ward

  Fuck Wednesdays.

  Carl “Blitzo” Reed

  Prison. Jail. The slammer. Doing the bird. Will jail teach you a lesson, Mr. Reed? Will you be reformed? Improved? Nope, sorry, guess you’ll have to accept me as I am: weak, flawed, imperfect, prone to embarrassing bouts of this and that. Trouble is this time around they didn’t even give me a proper cell. I’m in the medical ward, for Chrissake. Zero street cred. No interesting people to lie to, be threatened by, mule dope for, make love to. Lying on a single bed, not even strapped down. Not considered a threat. Not happy ’bout nothin’. Feeling much too clearly. A small room, painted pastel yellow, with a rather sinister stainless-steel band of sheet metal running from the floor to about four feet. Prison wainscoting.

  Designed for what? To contain fluid splatter?

  And a single fluorescent light hanging directly overhead. Rusted wires. An obnoxious, fascistic light. Making my eyes water, making me moan and shiver. Illuminating pragmatic industrial fixtures and ugly, government-issue furnishings. Three sturdy aluminum and orange-vinyl chairs lined up against the wall. Chairs made to last. Made to cry in. Made to have long, drawn-out, heart-to-heart conversations in. Made to assist in reaching new levels of understanding, have breakthroughs, repent, be sent home to try again, try very hard, a non-stop trying mac
hine, talking through it, communicating, maintaining positivity and optimism, learning life skills, strategies, coping mechanisms, while unbeknownst to us the orange-vinyl chairs snicker among themselves, knowing we must feel their unsettling sticky-warm seats yet again, fail again, sin again, repent again, the cycle continues, gotta laugh or court insanity, sorry there’s no such thing as real change in the human heart, they lied to us, it’s a racket, an ethical pyramid scheme, only good people believe change is possible because they’ve never had to try, we are who we are, nature and nurture, can’t fight it only ride it, this is who I am, leave me be and for Chrissake please turn off the light, because:

  I’D WAY RATHER DIE

  THAN SIT BACK DOWN

  IN YOUR FUCKING CHAIR.

  Sensation of my body ends at my neck. This is the only upside. I can move my head, examine my body like it’s not mine. No recognition of this pale, sunken chest, pudgy abdomen, flaccid cock hanging left, wormy, insignificant, what are you, overhyped, more myth than reality. So my body’s waaay down there on the bed. Doing bodily things it was designed to do. Events shrouded in mystery. Guts doing digestive stuff. Blood pumping around, carrying whatever, heart beating. All involuntary, on autopilot, keeping me going for what? This is an appropriate time for an epiphany concerning the illusion of control. An appropriate time for humility. Gratitude.

  Something like: Thank God I’m ali—no, fuck it, truth is I miss getting high with my potbellied pig, feel incomplete without him, way too drug-free for gratitude.

  No windows in the room. Air pumped through a machine. Sliced through giant fan blades. Calculated, accounted-for air. A metal door, painted the same yellow as the walls so it blends in, and a security camera mounted above it. On instinct I smile for the camera. I’ve been awake for days. Years. There’s a squat, sturdy-looking table beside the bed. Water in a paper cup. Pills in smaller paper cups. Nothing worth looking at. They won’t give me methadone. Too expensive for inmates. So there might be some Gravol in there, a few other mild packets of disappointment. Besides, I refuse to take their goddamned government-issue poison pills. Pollute my body with their neurotoxins and bovine hormones. Mush my mind. Big Pharma’s behind it. Forced vaccinations. Chemical castrations. Secret test subjects. Aligned with the Agencies. All the information is there; you just have to believe it. Check out the quality blogs, not beholden to Big Media, do your own research, courageous down-home folks risking it all to reveal the truth about how they ate a Snickers bar laced with Roundup and whatzit, felt a conversion to Islam coming on, sawed off a cat’s paw, drove backwards three times around L.A. to cure themselves. Who stands to gain? Big Pharma. Big Insurance. Big Guv. Toxic this and that. Madness. Mind control.