“What?” says the guard, a short man with blue eyes, head shaved and wrinkled with fat. There’s a motorized fan clipped in the corner of the booth on full blast. It appears to do little to cool. He’s the sweatiest person Z. has ever seen.
“Reporting,” he repeats, the last few letters, the “ing,” an embarrassing high pitch, Z. not totally positive if what he was told to say by Pants is right.
“Reporting?” says the guard who draws his gun from the holster. “Reporting what?”
Z. wonders if what he was told, what he remembered from the letters, has become scrambled in his head and he’s getting it all wrong. But that’s impossible. He’s spent endless hours memorizing the plan nailed to his bedroom wall, highlighted with red pen.
“Exchange inmates from Willows Bay,” he says looking at the Brothers. “Standard set here. Shouldn’t take long. You believe this heat? The sun. Heck, I remember when I’d stand at The Bend and watch the turquoise sky and don’t think we’ll ever see that again. Nah, all different now.”
“Right,” says the guard.
His gun is halfway drawn. Z. looks like the typical transfer guard with necklace whistle and cream-colored shirt. There’s a weird piece of green fabric at his wrist but that’s nothing too strange because transfer guards are an odd bunch and there’s such a high turnaround for the job. And the exchange inmates all have the facial expressions of men with nothing to do but think about what they are recently found guilty of. The guard studies them. Nods Z. up and down.
“They say we’re not coming?” says Z. “Typical.”
“I get mad,” says the guard.
The Brothers, minus Z., take turns looking at the sky, their boots, everyone making tough-guy faces.
Just trust and follow the plan — Pants.
Inside the glass booth is a computer. The guard’s fingers graze the letters QWERTY, his eyes narrowed and mean at Z. before he slaps the gun back into his holster. The noise makes Z. flinch and prepare to absorb a bullet. Then the guard says, “Ah, I’m messing with YOU. You need a blood transfusion? Look white. GOT YOU. Got you real good. Oh man did I get you good.”
“R-r-r-reporting,” repeats Z. This was never mentioned. “I’m just… reporting like I’m s-s-s-supposed to. Reporting.”
The guard bounces inside the booth drum-slapping the walls. Then he starts patting his pockets. He’s incredibly short — his height barely increases when he stands from the swivel stool and Z. notices a rectangular clip on his breast pocket engraved with his name, Karl.
“I do this all the time, newbie,” says Karl. “Getting people is what I do.” With a pen he pulls from his pants pocket he writes a single | in a notebook filled with pages of |.
Z.’s shoulders drop. He remembers his breathing. The air is disgusting. He composes himself back into character, remembers something Pants said in a previous letter and he laughs, shakes his head, slaps the glass twice and says, “Fucker, you did. Now open up before these boys die of heat stroke.”
“Heat wave gonna kill us all,” says Karl jingling a ring of keys. “But nobody wants to listen to me. Man, did I get you guys. Might be the best get I’ve ever gotten. Hold on.”
Z. and the handcuffed Brothers mingling behind him stay on script. Some stand looking at their feet hiding their smiles, others are puffed-chest and tight-jawed. Ricky, on the verge of fake crying, rubs the side of his face against his shoulder. Karl comes out of his booth and a buzzer goes off. He nods at Ricky and says to Z., “Always one in the bunch, huh.”
“Yeah,” says Z. “It’s the guys who can shut themselves off who survive.”
“You know the drill,” says Karl.
The notes, the guidelines, the advice from the letters, are working. Even Z. is kind of surprised when they get access into the prison. Bobby T. smiles as the gates open to ringing bells and then he stops smiling when Z. gives him a real mean look. The bells sound like the days of worship when the mine workers announced green and red crystal finds. Bobby T. was a child running to the mine with dozens of kids, pushing and swerving around each other, never tripping. He held a big green one up to the sun and it looked like water.
The wind blows their shirts into fat suits. Bobby T., as instructed to do at various times, spits, and the saliva wraps around his cheek. He attempts to slap the spit from his beard but forgets the handcuffs and the hot metal digs into his wrists. He rolls a shoulder and the saliva comes off on his shirt in a solid leash.
“Pick up the pace,” says Karl.
They follow, trying not to stare at Karl’s height. Z. thinks about saying some city-speak, maybe ask him if there’s ever been a population increase of midgets.
Splitting the guards, they walk through the open door and into an office where three women in white blouses with blond hair sit behind a marble counter. The women look up at the group entering with the rush of humid air. Before the door shuts one of the women gets a good look at the sky and her eyes widen. When the door shuts, her expression goes right back to before, a numb forever-lost look. Gray and blue cubicles cram the room, phones ring, and the tops of people’s heads float above padded walls.
Z. takes a deep breath. “We made it,” he says and immediately feels judged, scared, for saying out loud what he meant to think.
“No, you didn’t,” says a woman in white, searching with her hands over the empty desk. “We don’t have a report for new inmates, or a transfer, or an exchange, or any paperwork at all.”
“You’re absolutely right, Toby,” says another woman. “Looks like we have ourselves a problem.”
Z. doesn’t have a wrap for this situation because he was told by Pants that once inside there would definitely be paperwork and the Brothers would be moved into the appropriate cells. He wonders how many midgets live in the city and why they exist. He hears someone slam a phone down followed by the phone crashing against a wall. A man in a charcoal suit with spiked hair runs from one end of the room to the other waving a folder. The women in white smile at Karl whose cheeks are full of air as his blue eyes wobble. Half his head is above the counter. His body is shaking. One of the women leans over, rolls her eyes, and pokes his right cheek. His face farts.
“BAHAHAHAHA,” says Karl, collapsing to the floor. “I get you again, and again, and again,” he says, emphasizing each again with a mock windmill punch on the carpet. When he stands, he marks another | in his book. “Shit,” he exhales. “I’m on fire.”
“Sorry,” says the woman sitting in the middle. “Little Karl is that kind of person. We agree, on occasion, to play along. Besides, it’s all in good fun. Nobody gets hurt.”
“What kind of person is he?” asks Z., smiling, maybe flirting with the woman because her face appears backlit by the sun. He’s heard about this before via a city television commercial — lipstick, eye shadow, mascara, and bronzer. She makes him smile like a dope, yes, fun fun. Or maybe he smiles because smiling, he was told by Pants, makes city people give you what you want.
“An asshole,” says the woman to the right. “That’s what kind of person he is.”
“Go in and I’ll pass this upstairs and these guys here will be set and good to go and they can move on with their lives and —” says the woman in the middle, saying the words so familiar they kind of bleed together, a script she’s said ten thousand times before. She trails off and her face is expressionless, dimming. “What was I saying?”
“Had my fun for the day,” says Little Karl. “Jug will finish the transfer up. Nice meeting you.” Little Karl walks out the door, says, “See ya later, fellas,” to the guards, waves his book at them, and re-enters the glass booth with the computer and corner fan which he holds his hand near to see if it’s working.