His letters discuss the effects of black crystal and how the guards are hooked. They believe in immortality under a universe that will silence them. What he has will run out. He’s convinced the guards that it increases longevity. They are good to him because he controls it. They don’t steal it from him because they don’t fully understand what the black crystal is besides village voodoo and aren’t sure they want the responsibility of its possibilities, so they keep this game going with Pants and it’s working out just fine. There is an understanding and a structure and that’s what people need. Besides, what the hooked guards believe is this: the city will eventually take over and then they won’t need Pants McDonovan ever again. They can study the mine and what the village lifestyle is like and finally be comfortable with what they now don’t understand. They can bring the village into modern living with god, carpeted cubicles, televisions, dishwashers, tooth x-rays, nuggets, yoga, babysitters, meat, car washes, air conditioning with floral scents, jogging, speed dating, screens, cat-shaped headphones, keyboards, raw juice, leather interior coffins. The guards like getting high, feeling new and different, on the black crystal.
Black crystal just feels good he once wrote to Mom. It makes the blood jump inside your body and nothing else. They are going to need more and I’m scared about that day coming too soon.
He knows Mom is ill, she’s mentioned it prior in letters, but he doesn’t know how bad it’s gotten, the layers of ache peeling up from her tiny screams, the rot expanding inside the tunnels inside her bones inside her body. If he could see her. If he could stand before her, he’d feel like a boy seeing her cry for the first time. How he watched hiding from the doorway his mother sob and shake under the bedsheets, and afterward, he realized while sitting on his bed and poking his stomach hard ten times, that she wasn’t invincible like he had previously thought. He wanted her to live forever after he witnessed her and the men in the mine that night, shortly after seeing her cry. He could have done something, but he didn’t. The men went back. You could have done something is a black mantra he repeats daily, an endless banner of You could have done something wrapping around his thoughts and getting tighter and tighter.
The cell door slams shut and distracts him from the memory. The guard tells him to believe in the power of god, the values of Sanders, and smooches his cross.
“Makes sense,” says Pants with a goofy grin.
“Inside your body is a number of crystals.”
“Not as ridiculous,” says Pants mimicking the size of the guard’s smile.
The guard wants to say something back, but decides to continue smirking, that’s his answer back, and he walks from the cell, whistling, strutting, but feeling a little defeated.
In his last sent letter Pants described eating crystal. Cold and sharp under my tongue before pressing it into my gums where it bleeds warm. Tastes pretty good. He discussed the need to jog in place, the gelatinous sweat that rings his neck, the stench of damp crystal mine dirt evaporating from his skin, all his childhood memories burned in amber then stretched into the present positive to make the universe and his life seem less awful. He often wonders why, when he was a boy and he fought endlessly with Dad and in return Dad and Mom fought, did no one ask anyone else one obvious and critical question: are you happy? Once, while on black crystal, he had a dream where he stood behind Mom’s legs as she stirred a cast iron pot rimmed in little green crystals on a stain-crusted stove. They were alone on a beach. The sand was cold. The delicate fabric of Mom’s gown against her calves, his hands. He could taste salt blowing in the breeze. When he began to leave the dream, when he became aware of where he was, prison, the space between his cell’s bars filled with waves.
I placed my tongue on a crystal I found in Remy’s room, Mom writes. A yellow. I was scared to try the black. A metallic taste, lemony, and I pulled the crystal from my mouth and wiped it clean by dragging it over her mattress which I now feel guilty about. I didn’t have the spitting cloth, but I wish I did because I vomited red and probably lost another, but you don’t need to worry about me, I’m not crazy, don’t you worry while you’re in there. Do you remember when you and Remy played the tapping game?
On the second floor a fight breaks out between inmates and guards over the heat. A bottle shatters. The comically high-pitched Al LaValle, says, “Shake me but don’t make me,” as he’s dragged to Jackson’s Hole. Pants sees LaValle’s limp body being wiped horizontally across the floor. Alarm bells ring and guards run. Some of the inmates are singing “Bye Bye Mr. Bad Guy,” and LaValle, still on his back, still being dragged by the guards, is waving both hands to the rhythm.
He replies in his letter that he once wedged broken crystals under his toenails. Each nail on his right foot shined a different color: yellow was the pinkie toe, then blue, red, green, and black for the big toe. Throughout the day he scrunched his foot inside his boot and walked on the tops of his toes in ten-yard clips. People watched him walking odd from shack to shack and they shook their heads, pitied his strangeness. He sprinted across a busy street of mining trucks pumping their breaks and screamed and laughed, the feeling of coming alive through pain and crystals, before collapsing against a store wall and shaking, his feet ballooning with liquid as the candle maker himself told him to hurry along while poking him with a stick.
He opens the second letter on the bed. It’s from Brothers Feast. He’s received these letters before, a kind of fan mail from those following in the footsteps of The Sky Father Gang:
1) What’s a jailbreak in reverse look like?
2) Would you like to leave the prison?
He grabs the white box from the closet and takes out the black crystal which is changing shape with use — in his palm it looks like two small intertwined pinecones. A passing guard who already appears maxed-out, eyes not looking like eyes, stops at his cell and stares. Pants picks off a crumb-edge that the guard takes. The guard smiles, places the crumb-edge under his tongue, and crab-walks away to the sound of ringing bells. Pants knows what’s going on because he’s seen it before: guards getting sky-high are messing with the alarms and jumping and laughing inside an office with bullet-proof glass. They are taking turns pressing their faces against the glass and blowing kisses until they pass out. The crab walking guard on his way back to the office is having too much fun, grinding his pelvis against the walls as he goes.
Pants sits back on the bed. With his front teeth he shaves off a layer of black dust from a flat side. He catches the dust on the top of his pointer finger, raises it to his nose, inhales, poof.
He writes back that a jailbreak in reverse would be criminals running into jail. Or no, a jailbreak in reverse would be criminals or people who belong in jail running into a jail and freeing everyone who doesn’t belong in jail and the criminals staying in the jail. He rips the paper with hand speed. He’s excited with the possibility of leaving as the thoughts, ideas, spin and tear at the You could have done something banner. He draws a square with arrows running in and bubble-lines running out. The arrows are labeled Brothers Feast and the bubble-lines The Sky Father Gang.
Answer to question two, this answer written with more controclass="underline" Yes and I will help you. He’s heard the prison looks real pretty from the outside, and who knows how much time is left before the city moves in. Is it true the heat wave is only getting worse? From my window the sky looks faded from too much sun. Beneath this he writes Pretend to be inmates. One of you will play the role of a newbie transfer guard. Say it’s for a transfer to a holding tank called Willows Bay. I’ll leave with the others. Brothers Feast will remain inside the prison until they become legends in the village and then set free when the administration realizes what’s happened. They won’t, they can’t, keep the foolish innocent. If there’s a problem, just act insane. They never keep the crazies in here. If you can pull off breaking into the prison, you can later pull off breaking out of a psych ward. Just follow these guidelines…