Goodhouse

by Peyton Marshall

  At La Pine we didn’t have rooms like this. Our headmaster’s idea of punishment was to make you weed a field or rewrite an essay until you “said something intelligent.” Of course, the Goodhouse schools were supposed to be identical. And maybe they were now, after the attack, but it would have been easier to adjust to Ione, to accept everything, if I hadn’t felt like I was living in a distorted memory of home. These boys looked almost like my friends, with their blue uniforms, their short hair and their swagger. I seemed constantly on the verge of recognizing someone or, more precisely, I’d recognize a walk or a gesture—but if I stared, the likeness would disappear. Dr. Beckett, my intake doctor, had promised me that time would dull memory. And so I was taking my evening pill, swallowing the monofacine in anticipation, waiting to forget.

  * * *

  The sound of a door opening made me startle and turn.

  “Country boy,” Creighton called. He exaggerated his vowels, both imitating and distorting my slight Oregon accent. He looked like he’d been in a fight. His eye was purple and he was favoring his right leg. He seemed pissed off, and it gave me some satisfaction.

  Davis followed him into the room. He was carrying my shoes and a new, clean uniform. The proctor who’d given me my pill remained in the hallway.

  “Sticky fingers,” Davis said. He shook his head in mock disappointment. “We were very surprised. One of our model students.”

  “And you don’t have enough hair to wear a barrette,” Creighton said. “Or was it for your girl Owen? Now, that is beautiful.”

  Davis tossed me the clothes, and I quickly pulled them on. My stomach hurt. The pill felt as if it was burning a hole through me.

  “I need some dinner,” I said. “I’m not supposed to take medicine without food.”

  Creighton frowned. “Every boy gets dinner,” he said. “It’s regulation.”

  “Are you saying you’ve been mistreated?” Davis asked. “Because that’s a serious accusation—something your class leaders want to know.”

  “Personally,” Creighton said, “I’m very committed to the well-being of my fellow students.”

  “Never mind,” I said, stepping into my shoes. “I had enough lunch. Forget it.”

  “Wait,” Creighton said, cocking his head as if he was confused. “So you’ve eaten already. I don’t understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. But he took a step toward me, and I had to force myself to stand still and let him approach.

  “You lied and now you claim it doesn’t matter?” Creighton said. I felt his breath on my face.

  “Now hold up,” said Davis, his voice soothing. “We don’t want to rush to judgment.” He walked up to me and it was just as Owen described. I looked into his eyes and he had a soft smile there, and then his fist was sunk deep in my belly and I was lying on the floor waiting for air. When it came, I heaved up a white, foamy substance. “Boy hasn’t had any dinner,” Davis said.

  Creighton hobbled closer to peer at me. “Look at that,” he said.

  But I was looking at Creighton’s right leg, the one that bore all his weight. He was like a flamingo, perched, vulnerable—a house on stilts. His red face, still fat with childhood, was balanced at the top. I tried to do a breathing exercise and to think about my status, that thing we all guarded—that pass to a good life. I must have believed in fairness still, because I felt how unfair it was, and this burned in me.

  I kicked Creighton as hard as I could in his bad knee, and he crumpled with a howl. He cut the sound short, instinctively swallowing it, though he continued to writhe on the floor. I scrambled to my feet and prepared to face Davis, but he just stood there, hands at his sides, watching me, waiting to see if I was going all the way in an attempt to join their ranks.

  “Demerit,” called the proctor.

  “Shit,” I said, realizing the full magnitude of what I’d done. “Shit.”

  “I’m gonna destroy you,” Creighton said. “You’re fucking dead.” His face purpled with rage. He struggled to stand, but was unable to put any weight on his injured leg. “You’re never going to graduate,” he said. “You’re going to stay right here and be my little bitch.”

  “Easy,” Davis said. He pulled Creighton to his feet and then restrained him. “That’s not the plan.”

  “It is now,” Creighton said.

  But Davis merely smiled, his expression sweet and satisfied. “No,” he said. “We don’t have to get our hands dirty with this one.”

  * * *

  They were gone for hours. When Davis returned, he was alone. I began apologizing the moment he stepped into the room. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said. “I don’t understand what happened.” And it was true. I’d been reliving the moment, trying to pinpoint my error—to see what part of myself had given its consent. “I just want to tell you that it won’t happen again,” I said.

  “I know it won’t,” Davis said.

  An infirmary nurse hurried into the room. He was a short and muscular man with a considerable underbite. “This one?” he asked.

  Davis nodded. The nurse pulled a metal case from his uniform pocket and began to prepare a syringe.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I retreated to the far wall, my hand touching the crumbling cement of the foundation.

  “I heard you were trying to get back to your people today,” Davis said. “Is that right?” He leaned against the doorframe, watching me.

  “What do you mean?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I mean, you crawled out a window and waved your arms and said, Here I am.”

  “I was trying to get away,” I said.

  “Funny how it looks the same,” Davis said.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You weren’t there.”

  The nurse stepped forward and held out an alcohol swab. “Right arm,” he said. I didn’t move. “Please show your compliance.”

  “Is this for an Intensive?” I pointed to the syringe.

  “We don’t know that word,” the man said. But he did. Everyone knew the school tested drugs on students. To sign up for testing was the fastest way to burn off demerits. The studies were listed as Maintenance Intensives, but of course you had to be careful. You never knew if your fingernails would fall out afterward or if you’d be unable to sleep for a week.

  Whatever was in the syringe made me almost instantly sick. It sent an icy shock through my body, up past my shoulder and into my chest. The sensation was so intense that it reminded me of January in Oregon—the way a sudden breeze could leave you breathless, the way thin mountain air could cut through clothing, penetrate lungs and ears and fingers. It was overwhelming, and I almost expected to see the frosty cloud of my own breath.

  Two seconds passed and the sensation lessened. Two seconds more and whatever it was had flowed through my heart and into my brain. It was a part of me.

  * * *

  Davis cuffed my hands together with a plastic cord. He made me jog behind one of the school’s T-4s. These were little white carts that the proctors used to get around campus. They ran on a battery, silent except for the distinctive humming of their engines and the hiss of their rubber wheels on the pavement. They had two rows of white vinyl seats and a sun canopy overhead. It was hard to keep pace with my wrists lashed together. I was off-balance—too tall and uncoordinated. Davis swiveled in his seat to watch my efforts, to relish every stumble. I tried to keep my face free of expression, to deny him this at least.

  “It was just a barrette,” I said.

  “What are you bitching about?” Davis said. “I never had a girl on my Community Day.”

  We were on the old campus, skimming across the cement walkways, passing the original Preston School stables, the old metalworks, the science building. They were all built of brick, with columns sunk into the façades. It gave them a grand and collegiate appearance, now at odds with their designations as Laundries 1 and 2 and Storeroom 6. We looped near the dormitories—a series of long, squat, cinde
r-block buildings that the boys called bunkers.

  It must have been late at night because the walkways were clear, and the school seemed deserted until we got closer to Vargas, with its huge redbrick façade. A work detail was preparing the long-unused flower beds in front. I smelled the compost. I saw a black, loamy pile of it on a nearby tarp. Bushes and plants were lined up in the road; the large ones had root-balls bound in burlap. Overhead, a cloud of insects clustered with all the frantic energy of electrons circling a nucleus.

  The T-4 stopped, and for a moment I thought I was joining the work detail. I felt a surge of relief. I wasn’t afraid to stay up all night and dig. I’d done a lot of farm labor in Oregon and I knew I could handle it. Davis walked me toward the crew. The boys looked sullen and slump-shouldered. I recognized some faces from my class, and then I was shocked to see a La Pine boy. At first I thought he was another hallucination, but I blinked and he remained. He was a little kid named Harold. He was maybe twelve years old, and looked pitifully small next to everyone else. He had brown ragged hair and eyes that were too close together, giving him a wild appearance, almost like a feral cat. I nodded to him, but he looked away.

  I didn’t join the group. Instead, Davis marched me out of range of the floodlights, away from all the others. I began to get nervous. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” Davis said.

  We passed a T-4 boxer with a boy inside. These were specially modified units, the backseat replaced with a black-painted wooden box that forced a boy to stay in a seated position, his head poking out of a small circular opening, his body encased in what became an oven during the day. It was a common punishment, and the boy inside had badly swollen lips. He tried to say something as we passed, but it sounded more like a grunt. A bottle of water had been set on top of the box, just a few inches from his face.

  I looked down at my bound hands. A little dot of blood had crusted to my sleeve at the injection site. “You called me a Zero,” I said. “That’s a bullshit rumor.”

  “I like rumors,” Davis said. “They always have a little truth in them.”

  I shook my head. “You haven’t been out there,” I said. “You don’t know what it’s like—otherwise you’d never say that.”

  “I know what it’s like,” Davis said.

  “You should hear the things people say about us,” I said.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “That we should all be sent to an island somewhere so we can kill each other.”

  And for some reason this made him laugh. “There’s an idea,” he said.

  We were practically off campus now, fast approaching the fence. It was making me panic. We were headed for the big field that separated the Goodhouse facility from the Mule Creek State Prison. At Goodhouse, our fences were a series of black poles, but the prison was different. It had more old-fashioned barriers, observation towers, and razor wire. The stretch of land dividing the two institutions was called the Exclusion Zone—and it encompassed a wide swath of grass and a small hill covered in some kind of leafy vine.

  We approached the fence poles, and the hiss of the electricity was audible. The stench of burnt ozone grew stronger. Our chips should have sounded an alarm by now, and I was suddenly worried that Davis meant to shove me into the current. I stopped. “Whatever you’re doing,” I said, “you don’t have to. I have cash. I can pay you.”

  “How much?” Davis asked.

  “Twenty-seven credits,” I said.

  It was a tiny amount, and Davis didn’t bother to respond. He just walked to the fence and then stepped between two of the poles. The current was off. And this appeared true for several segments.

  “You want to run?” he said. “Now’s the time.”

  The Exclusion Zone stretched away from campus—like a dark road disappearing into the distance. I felt the pull of the hills beyond—that fake freedom. But there was nowhere to go, and he knew it. I stepped between the poles. I followed him and he walked me closer to the leafy hill, and then I could see that it wasn’t a hill at all but the foundation of some abandoned building. A little path led to a stairwell and a sunken door. “Come on,” Davis said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going in there.” I slowed and started to back away. The basement door opened, and two men in brown uniforms jogged up the stairs. They had yellow patches on the sleeves of their shirts, something in the shape of an old-fashioned shield.

  “I brought you a live one,” Davis called, and I realized they were Mule Creek guards, their thick black belts equipped with different sorts of weapons and restraints.

  I turned and ran. The two men caught me easily, knocking me to the ground, using some kind of wooden baton. One of the men put me in a choke hold. He dragged me down the staircase and I clawed at his arm, which seemed as thick as a python. When they tried to open the basement door, I kicked the door closed. The man with his arm around my neck squeezed until I saw spots. The last memory I have is of looking up to see Davis leaning over a rusted metal railing, grinning down at me.

  “Welcome,” he said, “to the island.”

  FIVE

  At Ione there were rumors about boys who disappeared, boys who were taken somewhere and never came back. We lived in fear of being sent to PCB, the Protective Confinement Block, with its dark, windowless rooms and solitary cells. No one graduated from PCB. There were stories about boys who found human bones in there—boys who’d pulled out loose teeth just to have something to toss and locate in the darkness. But worse, we were afraid of vanishing. Some roommates never showed up at lights-out. They were not listed as being in Confinement, not on a work detail, not transferred. They simply did not return from their day.

  The corrections guard released his choke hold on me and I sank to the ground, unsteady and confused. I was briefly in a small room, like a waiting area. Other guards were there, too, and then a man grabbed my shirt and dragged me through a warren of little hallways dotted with doors—each with a hand-painted number on the front. Everything reeked of urine and mildew, and one wall had a green slimy substance growing around a pipe. The walls were a tapestry of graffiti, some of it done with real aerosol paint, but most rendered in marker or chiseled out of the concrete itself. I heard people in the other rooms. One was chanting a song I didn’t recognize. Somewhere two people were having a muffled argument.

  The guard opened a door marked 25 and pushed me inside. The lock clicked into place behind me. There were two mattresses in a pile and a closet without a door. Peeling linoleum tiles checkered the floor, and a toilet jutted out of a wall that was partially torn open, revealing the plumbing. The room smelled of mold. I got to my feet. I told myself this wasn’t too awful. At least I had my clothes.

  Somebody shoved me from behind, and I only had time enough to register a blur of movement before I hit the ground. A foot kicked me twice in the ribs. “Don’t get up,” the voice said. I rolled over, scooting across the disgusting floor on my back, trying to get as far away as I could. The man who stood there was bigger than I was, taller but not much older. Tattoos covered his arms—a tangle of birds in bright grays and blues. His thick hair was much longer than Goodhouse regulation and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit with the words MULE CREEK CORRECTIONS printed on the front. Here was the embodiment of all our worst impulses, I realized. Here was our wrong-thinking self—personified and unredeemed. We were never supposed to be in the same room with these people.

  “Damn,” he said. “You must be in some serious trouble. What’d you do?”

  “Stole a barrette,” I said.

  “For real?”

  “Accidentally,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I do a lot of stuff accidentally.”

  I coughed, tasted bile in my mouth, and spit onto the floor, trying to rid myself of the flavor. The young man was watching, his head cocked to one side. His voice, when he spoke, was a quiet deadpan.

  “You’re a real hardened motherfucker,” he said, and for some reason this
made me laugh. “My name’s Tuck,” he said. I told him I was James, but he wanted to know what my real name was. “The one you were born with,” he said.

  “Don’t know.” I shrugged. I got to my feet. “Just a name.”

  “You should find it out and get that slave name out of your mind. What are you doing with a girl’s hair clip, anyway?”

  “I was out on a Community Day,” I said, “to learn about civilian life.”

  Tuck circled me, and I turned to keep him in sight. He had a fluid walk and a way of leaning his head back as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. “You must be so screwed up,” he finally said. “We talk about how you all are being groomed to be serial killers, all next-door-neighbor-nice and then, bam. I heard about one of you who got put in here and he tried to get his cellmate to do breathing exercises, make them both feel all right-thinking.”

  I leaned against the wall, then stepped away, feeling the damp.

  “So, how’s it working out,” Tuck said, “all that brainwashing? You feeling pretty good?”

  “I do know a great breathing exercise,” I said, and felt a rush of joy. Not since La Pine, I realized, had I been able to speak so freely. It made me like Tuck—and then a sudden fear caused me to check the ceiling. This might be a trick. I instinctively searched for a camera, looking toward the uppermost corners, where they were usually mounted. Tuck followed my gaze.

  “There’s no surveillance in the rooms themselves,” he said. “And we have to get those off.” He nodded to the plastic cuff that cinched my wrists together. He told me to try and pull my hands as far apart as they would go. It wasn’t far.

  He dug through his pockets and produced a lighter. “Hold them out.”

  I realized he was going to try and melt the plastic wire. “No way,” I said.

  “Trust me. This is necessary.” He clicked the lighter and a flame appeared atop the plastic cylinder. “You don’t want to be caught in here with your hands bound.”

  “You can’t melt it,” I said.

  “I can weaken it,” he said. “And then you can snap it.”