Above the Ether

by Eric Barnes

  We’re not alone in doing this, his cousin says. People, everywhere, do this all the time.

  The CEO drinks again. He’ll go upstairs. Find escape in his dark and secret habit. She’s paid to wait. If he wants, she can wait all night.

  Probably, she’d prefer that.

  He opens his eyes. Looks at his cousin. He has no idea how this will end.

  There is one woman; he met her at a church service. A service he had to attend. His mother insisted.

  The woman he met there, daughter of his mother’s friend, they talked afterward. And they laughed.

  She’s wounded, clearly. A wounded person.

  He does not know why.

  But now she comes to his small apartment. Once or twice a week. They hold each other. They both cry quietly. There’s more to this than either of them can admit.

  Afterward, while she dresses in the bathroom, he leaves money near her purse.

  Which she takes.

  They never talk about it. But when she’s gone, the money is no longer there.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Carousel Operator

  In fact, crime has fallen. Fewer murders, fewer robberies; rapes are down, assaults decline.

  But it does not feel that way.

  Fewer cars are stolen. Fewer people harmed.

  But to watch the television, to read the newspaper is to be told you are in danger. At any moment, you, your family, anyone and everyone you have ever known, all of you are in danger.

  The two of them walk along the rural road leading back to the parking lot carnival.

  The epileptic has been whistling. A soft tune, passage from a hymn. He whistles it again and again.

  The carousel operator is mostly breathing. Quietly. Evenly. They both recognize in their separate ways that the most important thing is for him to breathe. It’s been this way for the twenty minutes since they left the bar. Maybe it’s been thirty.

  No one has spoken.

  It’s dark except for the stars above them.

  The first thing they say comes from the epileptic. “What a horrible way to die,” he says. “Sitting in your car. Water. Three or four feet high.”

  The carousel operator begins to nod.

  “And those buildings that fell,” the epileptic says. “Consider the horror such a catastrophe entails.”

  The carousel operator glances at him as he walks. Then nods.

  They walk another long while in silence. The silence of not speaking, at least. Because, against the backdrop of this abandoned rural landscape, the two of them are very loud. Their shoes hit the asphalt. The epileptic and his light whistling. The carousel operator, periodically, he slowly rubs his hands across his chest. His neck and arms. The palm of his hand against his skin makes a sound like sandpaper on a board.

  The kid is checking, it seems, that all of his body is still there. And unharmed.

  “I’ve been in fights,” the epileptic says. “Kicked some ass. Had my ass kicked.”

  They walk. Another while. When they hear a vehicle approaching from behind, they both step down into the gully along the road. Squat. Lean back. Hidden. An immediate, unspoken agreement.

  The car passes. They climb up to the road. Walking again.

  The carousel operator says quietly, “I told you.” When he speaks, he’s not sure it’s loud enough to be heard.

  They walk awhile.

  “You did,” the epileptic says. “But I didn’t know.”

  In a few minutes, the carousel operator nods. “Yeah.”

  “What’s it feel like?” the epileptic asks now, immediately. He has the long, dead branch of a tree in his hands. He picks the atrophied needles from the bark. Releases them into the air.

  “I can’t say,” his friend says.

  The epileptic nods.

  The road bends and, ahead of them, half a mile away, they see the bright white glow of the shopping center. Lit like daylight all the time. The silhouettes of the carnival rides stand barely noticeable near the outer darkness of the parking lot.

  “Fucking home,” the epileptic says.

  “Like I control death,” his friend says. “Like I determine outcomes I had no part in starting.”

  The epileptic releases his needles. There’s not much of a wind, but what’s there catches the needles, holds them; they reflect shallow bits of moonlight in the sky. “That’s like God,” says the epileptic.

  Their feet tap, almost lightly, against the black-topped surface of this road.

  The carousel operator closes his eyes. He walks without thinking about where he’s going.

  “I guess,” the kid says. “Yes.” He sees his steps. “But it’s still not something I’ve ever wanted to feel.”

  Tell the rape victim that crime is down. Tell the dead boy’s mother that crime is down. Tell the man whose house was emptied while he simply went to church. Tell the woman without insurance whose car is forever gone.

  Tell them crime is down. And see how they respond.

  In the morning, their last morning at the shopping center, the carousel operator works his ride. It’s a weekday, Wednesday, he thinks, so the crowd is very light.

  Parents, sometimes their kids, stare at the dark bruises on the side of his head.

  He just nods. Averts his eyes.

  He doesn’t know where the carnival will go next. He assumes that he could ask. But, really, he doesn’t care. Like the phones for sale in the dollar stores near their parking lots. He sees them. They are cheap. But who does he have to call? What news or show or information would he use that phone to see?

  He’s left the place where he grew up. He won’t go back. Not ever. That is all there is.

  The carousel winds down. The music seeming to get louder as the carousel slows. But it’s only the lack of motion, gears no longer whining, the engine that drives this ride beginning to idle almost quietly.

  Like he’s supposed to, the carousel operator now yells, “Next!”

  He hates this job.

  Back home there were his friends. Three of them. Together they were four. Roaming that city. Walking and running through the woods that divided the pale neighborhoods where they lived. In cars driving faster than possible along a waterfront that glowed with ships and a pulp mill and the constant, controlled flames from the oil processing plant.

  Back home he and his friends were gods.

  A reputation earned through violence of all kinds. Worse than can be spoken. Too much for him to say. Bodies they beat bloody, meat, not human, the four of them inflicting pain on some tall motherfucker who challenged just one of them.

  He takes tickets. With his right hand. Then transfers them to his left.

  His fingers ache. All of them swollen.

  There were girls then. A city where violence and the aura of power could gain favors with girls wanting their own escape.

  He starts up the ride.

  Horrors unspoken. Only lived.

  Yet now he’ll sometimes see his life back there for what it was. Now he wakes, in the night, in his tent on the edge of the light from a shopping center, and he wonders how he’s alive.

  The carousel blurs in front of him as he holds his head so still.

  And there was a girl, of course. One girl that he now thinks about.

  He thinks about her most every day.

  He needs to hit the stop button on the carousel. He’s late to punch it. He can see the timer. The kids, though, the parents who ride with them, he knows that they’ll be pleased. Extra time.

  The carousel blurs again.

  Of course, there was a girl.

  Watch a shooting scene caught on camera.

  See a murder in the street.

  Have your sibling describe the feeling of being carjacked in her driveway.

  Even if all of it was done by someone that each victim once called a friend.

  The epileptic talks, almost to himself. “Some places I can go and no one gives a shit about my color,” he says.

 
They’re sitting on the back of a flatbed truck. Tucked in between the metal arms of the brightly painted teacup ride, now folded up like a kid’s pop-up book left high up on a shelf.

  “It’ll be this way for days,” the epileptic says. “Weeks. Long enough that I almost forget about the racists.”

  The carousel operator stares backward, down the highway they’ve been traveling.

  The air is hot enough that, like others working for the carnival, he and the epileptic decided to ride outside, in the wind on the back of the trucks. Cooler than the overloaded cabs of the company vans.

  “And then,” says the epileptic, “some fucker will want to call me a nigger.”

  His friend listens. Staring backward. It’s ten in the morning. The sun burns hot.

  The epileptic says, “There are a lot of ways to call me a nigger.”

  The kid nods some. “I don’t say that word.”

  The epileptic nods.

  In a minute, the carousel operator says, “My father told me not to.”

  The epileptic asks, “You break your hand in that fight?”

  The carousel operator looks down, at his hands resting on his knees. His jeans. “I can’t really move the right one,” he says. “I could yesterday. But not now.”

  The epileptic nods slowly. “Motherfucking badass fight,” he says.

  His friend looks away. Along the highway, the trees are brown. As if burned by a fire that swept through here weeks ago. The carousel operator says, “I would rather not ever get in a fight again.”

  The epileptic nods. “Badass fight.”

  His friend nods.

  “I mean,” the epileptic says. Pauses. Wipes his dark hands across his pants. The pants were white once. But they’re now tan with a filth the carousel operator shares. “I mean,” the epileptic says, but then stops again. “Why do you fight like that?”

  The kid, his friend, takes a minute. “My friends,” he says.

  The epileptic nods. “Three friends, you said before. Right?”

  The kid nods.

  “You just about killed that man,” the epileptic says to him. “You know that, right?”

  The kid remembers others who lay bloody on the ground. The kid remembers cars moving so fast that the motion of it was all you could understand. Or know. Or feel. The kid remembers crossing along undeveloped high ridges, woods near their homes, where no one ever went. Except him and his friends.

  The carousel operator finally answers. “I know that.”

  The epileptic nods. “Then at least the two of us know that much.”

  The kid turns slightly toward him. Smiles some.

  It’s not a warm smile. But it’s the best that he can do.

  “I’ve seen bad things,” the epileptic says. “I’ve seen abuse. But, man,” he says, turning fully toward his friend, “I’ve never seen anything like what you did to those men.”

  “Like I said,” the friend says, closing his eyes, warm air getting hotter, pushing across his face and his swollen hands and pushing up through his jeans, “I’d rather not ever get in a fight again.”

  We’re told the danger is right nearby. We’re told to prepare for scenarios once unimaginable.

  But the real dangers are already in our homes.

  Your sister’s drug-dealing boyfriend is the danger. Not a stranger on a street corner. Not a black man in a forgotten alley.

  Your babysitting aunt with an addiction to alcohol and a history of being beaten by her own father, she is the real danger. Not the neighbor girl who takes care of the kids on the weekend. Not the college kid in need of cash, who responded to an ad online.

  Your brother-in-law with the secret fetish for child porn is the danger. Not a stranger near the playground. Not that man shopping alone in aisle thirteen of the store.

  In the new town, they spend the night and the morning setting up the carnival. Again in the parking lot of a big shopping center near the highway.

  The carousel operator has learned how to set up his ride on his own. When the guy in charge comes by, he only has to nod.

  It’s morning. They won’t open till four or five.

  He leans against the metal rail bordering the teacup ride, standing in the shade created by the roof of the carousel. The epileptic stands near him, arms up, head leaned back, closing his eyes.

  “Yoga,” the epileptic says. “I taught it to myself.”

  The carousel operator nods.

  “What else can you do?” the epileptic asks. “Besides fight.”

  There’s a wind here. Constant. They’d thought it was just the wind from the drive. Or a wind in the morning. But they’ve been here since last night. And the wind has not relented.

  The carousel operator shrugs. “Nothing. I’ve always worked. But I don’t have a skill.”

  The epileptic nods. “I can’t drive a car. I can’t ride a bike. I don’t even know how to swim.” He turns to his friend. “Isn’t that fucked?”

  The carousel operator nods.

  The epileptic asks, “How’s the hand?”

  His friend holds his hand up. He moves a few of the fingers. “These two are probably broken.”

  “I wish,” the epileptic says, “for your sake, I wish that I could promise you there’d never be another fight.”

  His friend steps forward, into the sunlight. He turns his face up to the bright sky. Eyes closed. “I know,” the kid says.

  “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” the epileptic asks.

  It’s a long time before the kid answers. “Fights,” he says. “Me and my friends. We would get in fights.”

  The heat in the sunlight is searing. But the wind blows. Hard. So it keeps him from sweating in the sun.

  “And what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” the epileptic asks.

  The kid doesn’t hesitate. “Having to leave my friends behind.”

  One rape is too many.

  One murder is too many.

  One assault, one robbery, one car theft is too many.

  Yet one will happen. In the next minute.

  One just happened. A few moments ago.

  For years, he went to church. Then stopped, when he could make that decision for himself.

  But still, every Sunday, some part of him attends.

  He does little on Sunday mornings. He likes to be alone throughout the day. On Sundays, he keeps away from televisions, computers, even phones. His mind walks through the motions of the service. The routines. The silences and shared declarations.

  He reads from his books about religions.

  On Sundays, alone in his apartment, he’ll find himself quietly singing a hymn.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Doctor

  Photos taken every moment of every day. Photos as language. A dialect. A method of communicating mood and location, desire and status. Photos taken together, huddled together, two people smiling emptily, two people smiling happily, two people not smiling, barely tolerating, but now is when you take a picture.

  He is woken in the night. Men outside their tent. Pounding loudly on the thin door frame.

  The doctor sits up. Confused. His wife is awake already. Standing naked between their beds, a knife held in her hand.

  “If they were coming for us,” he says, “they would not use the door.”

  She doesn’t acknowledge him.

  He stands. Pulls on pants and a shirt. Goes to the door.

  Two members of the gang. Young ones. Teenage boys. They want him to come to another tent. A brother of theirs has been hurt.

  He goes back inside to find shoes. A small backpack with medical supplies.

  His wife still stands between their beds. Holding that knife in her hand.

  He touches her, on the arm first, then holds her shoulders lightly. “It’s all right,” he whispers. “It’s all fine.”

  In a dimly lit tent near the very middle of the camp, the doctor finds another teenager. Lying on a cot. He bleeds from many places. His
side, his leg, multiple places on his arm.

  The teenager is wrapped in sheets turned nearly black with blood. His face and hair are filthy dirty. His hands are too, covered in dirt and mud. He breathes quickly. His eyes are wide. But he can say nothing.

  “He needs to go to the hospital,” the doctor says to the two young gang members who have brought him here. The doctor hasn’t even stepped forward. “He needs surgery. The hospital tent. He needs more help than I can give him here.”

  The two teenagers look at each other. They shake their heads. No.

  The doctor looks at them. “He’s going to die without a hospital,” the doctor says.

  The kid on the bed, bleeding and shaking, says in Spanish, “No hospital.”

  The other two shake their heads again. No.

  It’s hard to know what the three of them have been doing. But it’s clear they’ve somehow been working on the side. In the tunnels, he assumes. Given how dirty the kid is. Running drugs or guns through the passageways. Or communicating, maybe, with a rival gang from another camp. Maybe trying to move a girl north. Or some family member.

  The doctor doesn’t know. But it’s better that he doesn’t. Whether their intent was evil or wise or benevolent or benign, he is only here to help.

  The floor under the bed is thick with blood. The doctor checks each wound. Bullet holes. He can’t possibly do anything to help the boy here. He simply gets fresh sheets. Presses them hard against each wound. Wraps other sheets tightly around the makeshift bandages.

  He gets a syringe from his bag. Gives the boy a shot of painkiller. Soon the shaking stops. The boy slowly begins to nod.

  The doctor stands watching him. There’s nothing he can do.

  “Can we have another of those?” one of the boys asks. Pointing at the syringe.

  The doctor turns to him. “What are your names?” he asks in Spanish.

  The boys don’t hesitate to tell him.