He sleeps huddled in a fetal position against a wall of dirt which is surprisingly cool and comforting.
He wakes, rolls onto his side with rocks piercing his skin, and vomits something red. His count is lowering with having to live. With slits for eyes caked closed with dirt he walks from the mine tunnel and into the low sunshine of morning to workers drinking coffee from ceramic mugs. They roll their eyes at Z., sneer dirt, then go back to their conversations about what will happen to them, what’s the deal with the sun, what’s your number. Even in morning the heat is shocking.
Skip Callahan walks past. “Saw a girl running like a dog once. Like, a real dog, on all fours and everything. Everyone, yeah you, gives me a hard time for talking about it. Keeps me up at night because I only wanted to help, see if she was okay. I think of going back to the house but what would I say? You’re like a mole and we need more moles. Jesus, you worked all night, huh? Don’t need another person who sits around drinking coffee,” says Skip, the last few words louder and directed at the workers.
Z. smiles, looks worried.
“Thanks,” says a worker to Z. “THANK YOU FOR HELPING!”
The workers climb into gun metal trucks and drive into the tunnels. Some grab shovels leaning against idling trucks and walk in. The clang and bang of machines, hammers. When Z. looks up from left to right the sky scans from red to white.
9
Dad enters Remy’s room and says Mom has one remaining. He tells her to leave her alone because something has happened to her mouth. Remy sits atop a mountain of pillows on her bed. She’s drawn pictures of black crystals all over the walls and ceiling. Where the red crystal once was, with the baby inside, has been blackened in scramble.
“We should just go.”
“Can’t,” says Dad.
“Why? Because of the fence? Because of Adam? Sorry. Actually, I’m not. I don’t think there’s anything in this world that can’t be said. Just because we’re different from them doesn’t mean we’re bad. It doesn’t mean we can’t try to save her. They are coming in anyways.”
“It doesn’t matter where we go because you can’t reverse what is happening to her.”
“You see everything as dying.”
Remy moves forward on the mountain of pillows which are balanced in a way so she slides down and lands on her feet with a jump. Dad extends his hands like he’s going to catch her but she stands tall, doesn’t need his help. From outside, Remy hears something. She makes a shhhhhhhhh sound with a finger over her lips and Dad turns toward the window. Running circles around the house is Hundred barking at the sun. He speeds past the window like black liquid, red sky behind him. He disappears for a few moments, the barking going small, the red sky appearing touchable, then reappears, a noisy smear going past the window.
“I’m sorry,” says Dad.
“I’m sorry too.”
“You are?”
“I’m sorry we never tried everything we could to save Mom.”
Dad climbs to the roof and watches the city lights come on. They look brighter. The heat turns his shirt transparent with sweat and in several random places on his body he picks the fabric off his skin. The only thing he has to think about is her. He considers going to the hospital where people are rumored to be pumped full of crystals (Chapter 14, Resurrection, City Hospital Myth) but that means making a decision. Besides, he’s never believed in the myth. It means taking a risk instead of just letting time decide. He understands what her face says without her saying a thing, that she wants to go. He’s spent so much time doing nothing for her because everything stays inside him and rings his head and the grip of his thoughts can’t get any tighter. And then there’s Remy, what she wants him to do.
He sits with his knees drawn into his eye sockets and wishes he could move himself to tears because he feels crystals crushing, buildings burning, dogs dying. Inside, he is a blubbering mess, but outside he’s a man who just can’t show it. He was never like this in Younger Years. He spoke more. He expressed himself with chosen words and hand gestures. There was a time when Mom asked how he was feeling and without hesitation he gave an honest answer, not a reply like good. He once told her while sitting on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands that he felt depressed, don’t laugh, something was wrong. He described his body as cement filled and horizontal. On some days he didn’t speak to anyone until he got home and said hello, how was your day, the words leaving his body feeling alien. He said he was an awful father and husband because the way he was limited her and Remy, their life. Back then he spoke openly, and he remembers the way he was. That version would go to the city.
Beneath the roof Remy stands in Mom’s room. On the bed her body and face are covered in a sheet. Where her mouth is, a black oval. Dad has placed a green crystal on her chest and a red on her stomach. With each breath the wet oval of her mouth expands then collapses. Remy stands motionless, watching the sheet move up and down. There’s a silence. The room is surprisingly cool. Remy can’t understand why Dad won’t do anything, she’s at the end, it’s gone on too long, they can’t keep watching this. She thinks about lifting her up right there and running to the city, saving her. She thinks about entering the hospital and being bathed in green light. But this is it, they will watch her become zero because of tradition. Remy runs away.
Under the blanket Mom’s hands move up her body. It takes minutes to pull the sheet from her face, but Remy is already outside as dog-child — her and Hundred running into the mine where a man digging never-ending tunnels swears at walls of dirt. The air outside the sheet feels cool and new. Her mouth is broken. She tries to say something, the letters are bobbing inside her head like jellyfish, but she can’t arrange them correctly.
8
He screams into the wall. He kicks the wall. Inmates think the noise is the heat wave howling against the prison and moving them closer to the village. There’s a general uneasiness with Pants in isolation, a vibe amongst inmates that something holy is about to be destroyed. Their orange jumpers and blue shirts are damp and wrinkled. They listen to the howling and wait.
The guards take turns looking at the road for Z. to come back with his hands weighted to his thighs with black crystal. Jug imagines Z. carrying a crystal so massive he has to walk sideways through the door. A crystal so big Little Karl will fall off his chair, his book of | sent flying. More than half the guards don’t show for work anymore, they are crazies running through the streets, painting their bodies with black crystals and black crosses. Those who do show up hate themselves for being themselves, but they keep it together, they gather their paychecks. They believe, in a religiously devoted sense, that Z. will come back to them, that Jug has done the right thing. The idea of Z. never returning is a cruel joke, and those who make it are ignored.
Pants asks passing footsteps if they’re going to let him die in here and the silence means yes. His imagination is turning at an uncontrollable and sickening pace. What distracted him before was black crystal. He has to define his life some other way now. And with each thought comes layers of thoughts over that thought. How exhilarating to be a child. He never wondered then when his body would register zero and all color would leave his body, mouth, eyes. No need to acquire things. The days were an endless blur of games played in water and grass. The days, like what was inside, were never counted.