by Amos Talshir
Simon imagined a giant penny landing from the heavens and dropping in the minds of a hundred thousand fans less two, making it unequivocally clear that the terrorist attack theory could now be abandoned, once and for all. The claw gathered the additional corpse and the truck left the scene, leaving utter darkness behind it. The clatter of the sprinklers turned on in the pitch reawakened the breathing in the stands, like life support. A murmur of massive doubt began to rise and increase in the stands. Obviously, they had not expected an execution to take place in full view of everyone present.
“Yesterday, lights-out was later,” Charlie said.
“Yesterday there wasn’t a rape attempt,” Simon said.
“That’s what happened?”
“I was really close,” Simon said.
“How close?”
“I could smell the hair burning when the bullet hit his head.”
“Why did they shoot him?”
“I told you, Dad.”
“You’re sure?”
“They were sure.”
“How could they have been sure?”
“Dad, they determine what’s sure.”
“Simon, do you understand this?”
“I think so. I’m not sure yet, but I think I know the system.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“It’s hard, because I understand the logic, but I don’t know who’s applying it. Who the Others are, why they’re doing this and when they’ll be done with doing this. I’m just saying I know the system.”
“From where?”
“It’s like computer games. It is what it is.”
“Okay, like in a soccer game. There’s rules, and that’s that,” Charlie attempted.
“That’s not it, though,” Simon said.
“Explain, then,” the father requested.
Simon retreated into his thoughts. Charlie knew that this was the stage when his son delved into a long silence.
“Did you meet her?” Charlie tried to find another tack in order to draw Simon out.
Simon opened his backpack and produced two candy bars he had bought that morning when they had been in the kiosk area. He handed one to Charlie, and suddenly, the two of them felt how hungry they were.
“You wouldn’t dare go to the kiosks now, would you?” Simon asked his father without taking his eyes off a certain point on the roof over the stands, where, he estimated, one of the snipers lay in wait. Perhaps the one who would eliminate anyone who left his seat after lights-out.
“I wouldn’t,” the father replied.
“Because you’ve already learned what they expect from you.”
“I’m starting to learn.”
“Dad, you’ll learn quickly. Those who learn quickly will stay alive,” Simon declared, lowering his chin to his chest. Charlie was familiar with this sleep pose. Simon hugged his backpack, which rose and fell with the rhythm of his breathing, stretching his long legs under the seat in front of them. The people all around them were sitting in their seats, horrified. Very little talk was heard, mostly whispers. The two bodies gathered with the claw arm onto the roof of the truck were still hovering in Charlie’s imagination as he observed his son nodding off. Perhaps he would also manage to sleep tonight. The accumulating tiredness increased the insane tension, but also enhanced his chances of falling asleep. Who had shot them? Who had made the decision? What would happen now? Who were they? he asked himself and thought about Simon calling them “Others.” What was an Other? Other than what, different than what? Different than what Charlie had always thought. There were bad guys and good guys. That was the way it had always been, and now it was different, more like computer games, where there were simply two sides. Who were the guys on the other side?
Charlie tried to listen to the whispers rising from the seats next to him. He heard fear. After more than twenty-four hours of lock-in, the chatter about a night of adventure away from home had ceased. Strangled throats whispered frightened guesses made by people who didn’t know what was happening to them but knew they shouldn’t do anything that would cause a sniper to shoot them in the head. After Charlie had seen a man die by gunshot for the first time in his life, immediately followed by another who had been shot in the head and killed simply because he had run to his friend, he felt there was something inside him helping him process the first victim, who had been shot because he’d assaulted a woman. I’m not like that rapist who got a bullet in the head, he summed it up for himself. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s not a death that will reach me. It’s not the bullet that will make my head explode. But later, when the sharpshooter had pierced the head of the other guy, who had done nothing more than run to his friend, that was already a different matter, and Charlie felt as if the bullet was buzzing inside his own head, the blood pouring into the throat and filling the chest, and he had a hard time breathing as he realized that this was how you killed a man like him. Actually killed, in real life, not on TV. They killed you because you didn’t do what they expected you to do. Killed by someone with a gun. Killed by someone who decided to kill.
Throughout the stadium, very few flickers of cell phones were now visible. The batteries were probably empty, and apparently, most people didn’t leave their homes for a soccer game with a cell phone charger, like Simon. But then, who actually behaved like Simon did? Only someone who had grown up in a home where the mother told the child that his father was irresponsible and the father allowed him to understand that he was an unwanted child. Only a child who was surprised to wake up each morning and find out that Dad and Mom were still living together in the same house. Who had packed a backpack in preparation for the expected moment when Mom told him they were leaving Dad. During their frequent trips to soccer games, Charlie had realized that his silent child had figured out a long time ago that he needed to take care of himself, since his mom and dad had screwed up their own lives; this was a child who took care to update his mother about the time they arrived in airports, since he didn’t trust his father to do it. A child who understood that the father was in no hurry to talk to the mother, since every conversation that began with coordinating a ride to the airport could end in a fight about how the father’s personality was inadequate to being the parent of a child with special needs. But, nevertheless, Charlie had tried to stick it out and remain at home for as long as he could. Every other possibility seemed to him like an escape from the battle over the child’s life. Everyone was right, and their lives seemed like a terrible mistake that someone else had made.
Charlie didn’t know if he had made the right decision. He was told that parents who fought were worse for a child than divorced parents. He tried to push those thoughts away and listen to the conversations around him. It was a lot easier for him to listen to conversations about the future of the world than about the future of his family. Most of the people in his stand were of the opinion that they should allow the matter to resolve itself, the way problems were usually solved in their messed-up coalition, but that there should be a time limit. Someone suggested tomorrow morning. They should at least explain what was going on with the terrorist attack. He was surprised to hear that some people still thought the two guys who had ended up with bullets in their heads had been terrorists. That was a convenient idea, Charlie thought. More convenient than acknowledging the fact that someone had locked you up for reasons you didn’t understand and from now on would shoot bullets into the brains of anyone who didn’t play nice.
His son was sleeping sitting up in his seat, the way he had gotten used to sleeping since being born with a cracked vertebra in his spine. His son was equipped with batteries and chargers for his smartphone. His son bought snacks at lunch so they would have something to eat before they went to sleep and had also taken care to bring an extra toothbrush.
The cold was bothering him tonight, so he stamped his feet on the ground, and the blood returned to
its vibrant flow, warming his body. He would have liked to get up and walk a bit in the stadium, perhaps pass this strange night in wakefulness and hope that tomorrow, everything would become a story that had come and gone. But this fear, which he had not encountered for many years, paralyzed him. Charlie had been a wild boy who had hot-wired cars and taken off with them. But at the time, he had known what scared him: a drowsy cop who would spot him from inside his cruiser and catch him, rough him up with a humiliating slap, and the story would end with another parole officer. Here, at night, while his son was sleeping sitting up next to him, he didn’t even know who or what he was scared of, which was scary. It wasn’t death. He was afraid of losing everything he had, even the bad things. Of losing Clara, who didn’t want him, and Emily, who missed him, and his broken life, which he still believed he could fix. Like the engine of a boat stuck for a whole night in the heart of the sea, and the couple on the boat was bleak with despair, and Charlie swam up there because their relatives had told him they hadn’t returned. He dove under the boat and in a few brief forays, with a screwdriver between his teeth, released the boat engine and revived it. The stalled boat sailed to shore and the people on it felt as if their lives had been gifted back to them. Charlie preferred to swim back in order to feel that he was alive, truly alive, with the screwdriver stuck in the elastic of his bathing trunks.
11.
Simon had a boner. For a while now, he had been waking up with a hard-on in the morning. Simon didn’t know if it was because he had dreamt about her in his sleep or because he was dying to take a piss. He intended to talk to his dad about it. You certainly couldn’t talk to your mother about your dick being hard when you got up in the morning. He also wanted to talk to his father about his balls. They had been troubling him for a while now. When he groped the sack down there, he felt that something was wrong. Not only were the balls asymmetrical, but one of them also had some kind of lump on it. He would talk to Dad about it. Take advantage of the fact that they had ended up with lots of hours to wait in the stadium. He glanced at his dad and saw that he was asleep, with his arms wrapped around himself in his seat. He had probably fallen asleep just as morning was coming.
Most of the fans around them were already on their feet in their rumpled clothes, with their unshaven faces, trying to guess what this day would bring. The most urgent thing, as far as Simon was concerned, was to go down to the restrooms with Dad, brush his teeth and wash himself a bit at the sink. That might be his opportunity to ask his dad why he had such a boner in the morning, and maybe about his balls, too. Hold on, though, what if Dad didn’t understand what he meant and would want to take a look at his ball sack? He was a little ashamed, but it didn’t make sense to be ashamed with your dad. He had never felt ashamed facing the dozens of doctors who had examined every inch of his body with their cool fingers. Or the hundreds of nurses who had taken his clothes off for years and measured the length of his spine and the width of his shoulders. For hours, he had lain naked under bright lights and been wheeled into imaging and photographic tunnels to examine the development of his vertebra. It seemed as if he had spent more hours lying down in other people’s company than in any other position. He lay down, on his belly or on his back, and saw dozens of doctors and nurses, specialists and residents, standing above him and measuring and drawing on his back, consulting and nodding, touching, groping and wheeling him in for more tests. They found it very interesting, and they’d smile at him and resume talking among themselves. He lay on his back and, from below, observed all the heads, mouths, noses, hairdos, chins and Adam’s apples of more and more doctors who touched him, sedated him and then woke him up and smiled at him. These endless encounters made him view them as space invaders and Matrix monsters descending upon him from among the lights of operating rooms and imaging and photography chambers. He was not afraid of them and was not shy. Simon shot at them with every weapon at his disposal in the computer game he had made up. He shot napalm at them and eliminated the masked monsters, bombing the ones in glasses with shock waves and tossing cluster bombs at groups of nurses who leaned in in order to hook him up to electrodes. He always won these games with the monsters descending upon him. Suddenly, though, he began to laugh, to actually laugh out loud, because he was imagining him and Dad standing on the bleacher and Dad feeling up his balls and all the fans cheering them on with singing…
***
The stadium seemed bleak in the early morning light. The sun rose over the stands but did not reach the required angle in order to illuminate the pitch. He took out his camera and focused the lens on the center circle, seeking signs of yesterday’s events, remnants of blood or other remains of the two people shot there the previous evening. Droplets of water glittered on the thin blades of grass. There was no sign of yesterday’s fatal event. Simon heard a noise from above and turned his camera away. A giant helicopter had appeared over the locals’ stands, making its way toward the center of the turf. Tentative cries of joy began to echo around him. The rattle of the rotors woke up the fans. Hands were raised in every stand. The locals even began to sing their team’s anthem, and all eyes were raised upward. It was a sight in accordance with anyone’s image of a rescue force about to land in the stadium, the first helicopter in a fleet meant to set them free.
Charlie woke up due to the joyous noise of the crowd and stood up next to Simon, trying to straighten out his clothes, rumpled from his nocturnal pose. Charlie’s bleary smile met his son’s grin. Charlie encouraged his son with a fierce hug, and the son continued to film the helicopter as it hovered over the center circle. Below its undercarriage hung a giant container that moved slowly around the hinge of the cable securing it to a suspension hook dangling from a contraption on the side of the helicopter. Charlie said he was certain that it would end this morning, and they could finally return home, and the helicopter had to be the first sign that it was happening. The immense crowd waved its arms and jumped to its feet with joy. Simon directed his father’s attention to the increase in the number of sharpshooters spreading out as they squatted and ran along the roof over the stands, reinforcing their positions. The fans, who had already begun to stream toward the aisles, intending to make their way down to the pitch and welcome the landing helicopter, retreated to their seats once more. The message passed in a hushed, inexplicable manner from one person to the next: anyone who went down to the turf would be targeted by the snipers.
Only once all fans had returned to their seats did the cable begin to be loosened, lowering the suspended container onto the turf. The eyes of a hundred thousand fans tracked its movement. Guesses were tossed out into the cool morning air, with a fresh hope accompanying the calls. From the possibility of a hot-air balloon being launched, inflating itself to take the first group of fans from the stadium, through an impressive presentation that would emerge from the container to explain what was about to happen, culminating in an idea that received support from the majority of listeners: inside the container were the terrorists, who would be executed in full view of everyone present, at the center of the pitch, so as to prove the efficiency of the tidy and orderly coalition of Los Españoles Estados Unidos.
Simon told his father that thousands of people persisted in believing in what they were hoping for, not realizing that something different was going on. The tension in the stadium mounted, and Simon remembered he had not even had time to pee or brush his teeth. He’d find some other opportunity to ask his father why he had a boner in the morning, and maybe about his balls, as well. His father might have gone to take a piss before Simon woke up. He certainly wouldn’t dare to go down now, because he understood what they expected of him. They expected him to wait until he himself realized it was okay to go. At that moment, he understood he knew how to explain to his father what the other thing that was happening was. He brought his mouth to Charlie’s ear while both of them continued to watch the giant container slowly descending to the turf as the helicopter hovered above it.
“This is a situation where there are no arguments and attempts of persuasion and no repeated explanations for anyone who hasn’t gotten it yet,” Simon whispered. “Anyone who doesn’t get it is out. Anyone who tries to persuade them loses. Anyone who argues loses everything he had. No one’s going to explain, listen or help. There are laws that you’re supposed to understand yourself and voluntarily obey, because no one’s going to check up on you. Just like in a computer game, you know what you need to do; you can’t convince the computer to accept your opinion or take your pace into consideration. If you don’t meet the demands, you’re out, or you’re through or you get spit out. That’s the ‘something else.’ People in the stadium figured out really quick that they’re not supposed to go down to the pitch when there’s any doubt whether they should, and if there’s a doubt, then there’s no doubt. Are you getting this, Dad? People figured out really quick that they’re not allowed to harass women, and it’s obvious that really soon, people will stop doing everything they knew deep inside that they needed to stop doing. But they kept on doing it, because they wouldn’t get caught or because everyone did it anyway. That’s all over here. These are the Others’ rules of conditioning. Like a dog knows what it can and can’t do, out of an internal edict. These guys aren’t going to explain, and we won’t be able to argue or to convince them. They’ll just put a bullet in our heads.”
Charlie wanted to trust his son, who continued filming the giant container being lowered to the turf. He needed something else that would imply to him to what extent he could rely on his son’s understanding. He had no choice. He felt adrift and misguided, just as he’d been about the thought of a terrorist attack, which he’d grown accustomed to believing in since the Twin Towers fell, or like many other thoughts and opinions he’d had.
