The next morning his body was swollen. When he stood, his left hip slipped from the socket before finding its new place a quarter inch left. Both ankles were loose. It hurt to put clothes on. He was scared to breath, and when he did, deciding on a big inhale to see just how bad it could be, the air flowed over something sharp.
Days later in the mine he found black crystals during a strong rainstorm and odd day of extreme heat, and desperate to heal, willing to try anything, he accepted a double-dog-dare from Bob T. and ate three chunks. He brainstormed ideas on count when his brain unfolded and folded and unfolded again, the feeling of black crystal in his body a new machine to revisit. He had no anger toward Dad, only fear, and thought of giving him, not Mom, a black crystal as a gift, an apology for being the type of kid who embarrassed his parents, who deserved to be punished for the way he was, what he did.
The pain from the punishment has stayed. He moves in ways so he doesn’t feel it. For example, he knows not to lean too hard on his left hip. He forgets at moments, like playing basketball, when he drives the baseline and tries for a lay-up he’s too far under to make. He takes a step under, to the far side of the rim, and his hip makes a loud pop, turning the guard’s hamburger-head in the window. He launches three-pointers that force him to land hard on the heels of his feet. His foot throbs numbers.
He can’t hit a shot. Everything bricks. When the ball gets trapped between rim and backboard the guard with the hamburger-head who has a belly like a bag of trash comes in and knocks it free by jumping with his club, his keys jangling and pants sagging. He grabs the ball and continues shooting, trying to hit the simplest of shots and misses each one.
With every missed shot his body hurts and he can smell his shit coming in through the vents in waves, crashing into the fans above who spin the shit and flatten-out the shit. Guards crowding by the window crawl over each other and laugh as he misses. He stands two feet from the hoop and raises the ball with one hand. Push. And miss. A muffled yell from a guard against bulletproof glass says, “Gotta be kidding me!”
It’s my fault for hiding my underwear and it’s my fault she’s sick.
The steel white doors unlock and open, meaning the hour is up. He has one shot left. Flick the wrist. Swish.
Pants says, “I’m a winner,” with his arms raised, ponytail a dog’s tail, the ball rolling to a stop at the colored, padded wall. He thinks of Mom and the previous health meeting when he discussed the rape in the mine and how it dug up sadness, frustration, odd attraction, things no boy should witness or have to process. How he felt guilty for doing nothing. But now he has another chance. He will escape. He will see her again. He will find a way to add and make things better. He stops jumping, a sharp pain connecting his foot to his lower back.
When the guard with the hamburger-head puts a hand on his left shoulder Pants falls to his knees and grabs the guard’s hand which goes limp. The guard reaches for his baton at his belt. The shit comes down from the ceiling and Pants vomits blue slush into his right hand and the guard says to him they need more crystal. Pants tells him to stop, there’s little left, who are you, who is anyone.
A village myth says the sun will rage war on the earth. This is not a myth. Another village myth says the city will move into the village and crush it, that the city is alive, that it’s a creature who eats the small. This too is not a myth. A third village myth says the black crystals are reaching up and pulling on the sun’s flames, but no one knows for sure if that’s true or not. Could just be a myth.
18
Ricky and Bobby T. take turns shoving each other into the fence. The chain-linked metal absorbs their bodies before springing them back. Coating half the sky, the sun. There’s a theory that if you put a frog in water and raise the temperature half degree by half degree the frog won’t notice, that the frog will stay in the water and die in the water. The Brothers walk and Ricky and Bobby T. continue shoving each other.
“You know what I hate,” says Ricky. “Frogs.”
“So?” says Bobby T.
Z. tells them to be quiet and they nod. He’s trying not to act nervous, but this is the big day, this is the beginning of becoming remembered forever and his legs are shaking.
They total seven men dressed in khaki pants and powder-blue shirts. Z. is the exception. He wears black pants and a cream-colored button down. A dogtooth-shaped whistle on a string dangles around his neck. Green fabric torn from his grandfather’s robe is tied around his left wrist.
“This is it,” he says. “No turning back now.”
Ricky moves the knife. With the help of Bobby T. they open the fence.
They stand at the bottom of the cliff. At the top is The Bend. Before they climb, everyone but Z. removes handcuffs from their pockets. Z. locks their wrists behind their backs. All eyes sting with sweat.
The sun boils clouds.
The sky bleached.
They follow Z. up the cliff. They fall and slide and claw and become covered in dirt, just how they planned. They climb with their heads down, blinking from the raining dirt. Ricky is a bit dramatic and falls several times on purpose, flopping back down the cliff with his legs outstretched. Dirt fills their shoes and dirt pours down their backs and dirt becomes stuck in their sweat. They find levels of harder dirt they use as stairs and they climb to the top. A few city gawkers holding binoculars step back and mumble. A young girl holds a phone into the sky and moves her thumb up and down against the screen. A man with a face like a horse says they look funny. He tries to say more but chokes on the candy he’s eating. His wife slaps his back and he walks away, head down, one arm raised, swallowing.
They walk in a single file line with Z. leading and the sun following. After a half mile through the outskirts of the city, the Brothers looking into the streets and seeing things like dogs dressed in leather jackets, big suits on little men, hairy neck = gold chain, twenty types of bottled water, electronic shirts, traffic lights somersaulting green-yellow-red, neon signs, everything electric and somehow not powered by yellow crystals, everything big and ugly and loud, the intricate brickwork of the prison comes into focus.
“Everyone okay?” says Z.
If there was a problem someone would speak because the plan said so.
Z. walks painfully tall. He tells himself that he’s in control because he’s the kind of person who is never in control. He doesn’t perspire much, but the heat pulsates against his ears. His heart beats scary fast so he relaxes with conscious rhythmic breathing (Pants wrote that city people do yoga and detailed something called Prana). He tells himself everything will be okay. The jailbreak in reverse will be his greatest accomplishment because it has to be.
“Good,” he says. “Let’s go.”
They prepare their facial expressions as they reach the prison.
A glass booth shouldered by gates and barbed wire is the first encounter. Behind the gates and glass booth is a paved road to the prison entrance. There’s a door, ADMINISTRATION, with two guards standing at either side. The guards are dressed like the guard inside the glass booth Z. makes eye contact with — perfectly pressed blue pants and crisp tucked-in blue shirts.
A drain in the glass booth, face level, holds a metal net that distorts his voice when he speaks into it, “Good morning. Reporting.”