He mumble-sings Gimme gimme crystal (pop pop) gimme gimme bark bark (woof woof) and feels insane. He imagines baby Remy walking through the house. She fell down the stairs and broke her arm and he wonders what damage that must have done (-5). He remembers showing baby Remy the crystal mine, and how she sat in the black dirt molding clumps that soon rained from her spread fingers, and later, how she licked the glittering dust off her arms. He remembers killing a wounded bird because he wanted to experience, what he said to Mom, a little death, not too much, but enough to feel it. He wanted to try and move, with his shoe, the body of something once living.
He told Remy The Sky Father Gang would perform a demonstration like never before. She made a motion with her hands that symbolized city fireworks and he said no, not exactly, but just as thrilling, just you wait. They sat on his bed and when she saw the duffel bag packed with crystals she went Ew yucky. But he wasn’t present in the moment, he didn’t make eye contact. And there wasn’t glowing light coming from the bag, spotlighting baby Remy’s face. And there weren’t loving words said by him because he would miss her. And there wasn’t any true emotion conveyed at all because he had Dad inside him. When he kissed her on the head it felt choreographed, something he saw on television, which was true.
He vomits into his hands and looks for forty. His mind narrows in on the moment with Remy in his bedroom that at the time was so meaningless to him because he was young, and foolish, and he doesn’t go sad with emotion, but it’s anger with no place to go but from a pit in his chest and down to his stomach and through his legs and out his feet that kick the wall.
7
Z. climbs into a yellow machine that digs 10,000 times faster than the short-handled shovel. He creates so many tunnels he becomes lost. His head moves left to right and back again. He reverses the digging machine, climbs out, and inspects the walls with his hands. He’s covered in dirt and sweat. He jumps back into the machine, begins working again, and every time he reverses the ceiling rains rocks. He drives and digs, drives and digs, his mind a wet hornet on the fact that he needs to find the black crystal to not only save the Brothers, but to accomplish something that every child has dreamed about since the beginning of time. All his energy is placed in forward movement.
The machine, which is old and rattles with loose parts, is equipped with a shield-shaped light on the top that blazes the path Z. digs. The light misses corners. Z. stops, leaps from the machine, and uses a flashlight to closely inspect shadows. He can’t afford to be sloppy and miss what he needs. Beneath his feet he cracks yellow, blue, and green. He’s surprised by a red. His body is a field of gravel. He crosses his arms and rubs his forearms together until a mound of gunk falls off.
He leans against the machine. He moves the flashlight over his body and up and down the tunnel walls. The air is hot, heavy, and where the flashlight misses it’s dark with an occasional mist of gnats. Dust engulfs all space and the engine is at a low and rumbling growl. His concentration loosens, and for the first time since he began digging, he’s forced to reflect on who he is, what he’s doing, and his body deflates. He doesn’t feel like a solid person anymore. His arms ache and his hair is matted with sweat. His fingernails are black with work. He’s a person.
He aims the flashlight in the opposite direction of the machine. The light ends ghost-like where the tunnel splits into three different directions. He presses his head into the tunnel wall until rocks pierce his skin. He turns his back to the wall and sits on the ground where the air is so full of shit that when he opens his mouth to drink from a canteen his tongue is blanketed. He pulls his legs in and cleans his eyes with his knees. He tries to calm his shaking legs by massage. What horrible things are happening to them? With his tongue he cleans his front teeth. He swallows dirt and grips his calves. He’s digging a tunnel to nowhere and in the thought, the clichéd metaphor for life of digging a tunnel nowhere, he laughs.
What does it all mean, and the thoughts go more sentimentaclass="underline" wonder when I’ll die, a body as husk, a body as zero. Will anyone remember me? HAHAHAHA.
He once prided himself as someone who didn’t think these thoughts. He mocked people who expressed feelings. But here, in this dark tunnel exposed by flashlight and machine light (what happens when these lights burn out?) his thoughts are inescapable. You have to keep moving because it’s the only thing a person can do. He pulls himself up and into the machine and extends the tunnel.
Dig.
Breaks a new layer of wall.
Dig.
There’s no black crystal.
Dig.
A waterfall of dirt attacks him.
Dig.
Z. ducking even though he’s covered by the metal roof of the machine.
It doesn’t exist so just get a dark-colored red, a bunch, and trick them.
When Z. was a child he met Adam McDonovan who told him he was breaching the city to achieve something no one had ever done before. Z. asked if it would be bigger than fireworks and he said yes, different, why was everyone talking about fireworks. He said that the true way to extend one’s count was to have others remember you. He held a bag with dark crystals, looked like red. Everyone wants to be amazing in an ordinary world, said Adam. Z. listened and memorized every word. He didn’t want to be stomped out like some bird. Just be great enough so someone younger will remember you, said Adam.
6
The division began with the night of separate bedsheets. For years, Younger Dad insisted on sleeping under the same sheets because that is what married couples do, no matter how much sheet Younger Dad took in twists during the night. Sometimes, Younger Mom woke with her fingers touching an edge of blanket as Younger Dad, deep in dream, held the blanket from her.
“Why’s it such a big deal,” said Younger Mom. “How do you expect me to sleep if I don’t have any covers and you have to, absolutely must, sleep with a window open?”
Younger Dad had a theory that he’d achieve a better sleep if fresh air was blowing in. He spent his days working in the crystal mine, harvesting yellow and melting it down. It was difficult, messy work, that clogged his body. If fresh air wasn’t circulating, his mouth and nose went dry and would cause him to wake throughout the night. Not that he could remember, the next day, of waking up, but he said he felt it. He said the sleep didn’t catch right.
“What about a bigger blanket?”
“That’s not a solution.”
He took three blankets into the garage and placed them on the table where Harvak would one day expel his last crystal, and using a needle and black thread, he stitched. It took two hours and the stitching was poor. When Younger Dad pulled at the new seams triangle-shaped holes formed. He went back and added thread — quick loops to help hold together the triple blanket that wasn’t a solution, but an attempt.
He pulled the blanket from the garage and into the house where he let it drag across the floor and up the stairs. The blanket extended from the bottom of the stairs to the top and into the bedroom where it slithered from a fearful Remy who watched half-hidden, but standing, in her bedroom.
It took another hour to figure out how to display the blanket. The trick was to fold it in a way so it appeared to be three separate blankets stacked. He wanted it to be a surprise when Younger Mom entered the room, ready for bed, dressed in her gray nightgown, brushing her teeth with one hand while pulling the bedsheet down with the other.