The Silvers

by Jill Smith

  She touches his shoulder, just like she did the day of the Breakthrough II meeting. “Good luck.”

  Then she’s gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Imms waits in the laundry cart, in darkness, smelling sweat, humans, and bleach. Alone climbs into the cart with him and makes things colder. Alone opens its coat, and Imms doesn’t need light to know what promises dangle from the lining like pelts, like ribbons and jewels and scalps.

  Moments of connection, of truth. Of two souls tugging on the same bone. A trip to the park and Christmas morning and laughing because B can burp on cue. A long kiss and a short kiss. The scratch of beard bristles, the healing of torn skin. A small hollow inside someone. The willingness to climb into a secret place, to occupy it so that cold can’t.

  What price wouldn’t Imms pay for those moments?

  The door to the supply room opens, and someone comes in humming. The light goes on. Imms sees a man’s hand grip the cart handle, then release it again. Something soft but heavy lands on Imms, a mesh bag full of stained and smelly rags. The man shoves the cart out of the STAFF ONLY room and into the hall. If he thinks it’s heavier than usual, he doesn’t check to see why.

  After a few feet, the cart stops. Imms hears a knock on one of the doors. No one answers, and Imms listens to the man press numbers on the keypad. The door clicks open, and the man goes inside. A moment later he returns, and a new snarl of dirty sheets and towels lands on Imms. Imms holds his breath.

  He realizes he needs to be able to see where he is, so when the man goes into the next room, Imms makes himself a tunnel in the laundry pile through which he can just make out the room numbers on the doors. At room 139, a woman answers and hands some towels to the man. “Present for ya,” she says.

  “And here I thought Christmas was over,” the man says.

  She can open the door herself, so she must not be a prisoner, Imms decides.

  140. 141. Imms still doesn’t know how he’s going to get inside B’s room. The man always leaves the cart in the hall while he goes in to get the laundry. The cart rolls toward room 142.

  Then it comes to Imms. All he needs to know are the code numbers. The man knocks on B’s door. No answer. When the man leans down to press the keypad, Imms follows his fingers. 3-7-1…” The man shifts, blocking Imms’s view as he punches the final number. The door opens, and B stands there holding a small bag of laundry.

  B looks thinner and his beard is completely shaved. He offers the man the bag.

  It’s all Imms can do not to jump out of the cart and run to him.

  “That’s it?” the man asks.

  “Wash my sheets every day, and I’ll start to think I’m on vacation.”

  The man chuckles. “Doin’ everyone else’s. Might as well do yours. Sheets right out of the dryer—best smell in the world. Live a little.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  The door is wide open. Behind B, Imms sees a large bed, a table with a lamp, and a desk with a stack of books on it. The stack looks precarious. Imms wishes he could straighten it.

  The door closes, the bag lands on Imms, collapsing his tunnel, and the cart rolls on. Imms presses his face to the bag. Familiar smells, B’s smells. The towels belong to this place, but Imms recognizes the clothes. He has seen them in their bedroom hamper, on B, hanging up in the laundry room, on the floor beside the bed. What was the last number? Imms tries to remember the man’s finger, to guess where it was heading before the man moved and Imms couldn’t see.

  The bottom row of numbers. 7, 8, or 9. Or was it the 0, in the lowest corner? Three more doors. At the fourth, the man goes inside the room, and Imms hears him talking to somebody. The two of them are laughing, and the door is only partway open. He’s probably not going to get a better chance than this. He extracts himself from the laundry pile as quickly as possible. The cart creaks and wobbles as he climbs out, but the man is still laughing with the occupant of room 146, and he doesn’t notice.

  Imms races back to 142. He remembers the camera at the end of the hall too late. It is perched in a corner, looking right at him. He sticks up his middle finger, because this is what Bridique would want him to do. Then he takes off one shoe and punches 3-7-1-9. Nothing. He tries 3-7-1-8. The door clicks. He pushes it open.

  Immediately he throws his shoe at the stack of books on the desk. The books topple.

  B, who is sitting at the desk, shouts in surprise. Imms sees the camera in the corner of the room swivel toward the book wreck. Imms enters the room and slips through the door to his left, into the bathroom. “Stay there,” Imms calls to B.

  Silence. B has stopped moving. Imms hears the camera swivel again.

  Imms leans his head against the bathroom wall. He is uneven, one shoe on, one off. “Just stay there a few minutes and pick up the books. Pretend like everything’s normal. Then come in here.”

  He hears B collecting the books, placing them back on the desk. He waits, his heart so bright and active he wants to reach inside himself and grab it, shake it, tell it to settle down. After a few minutes, he hears B stand. He listens to B’s footsteps come closer. The bathroom door opens, and B steps inside, closing the door behind him.

  Imms can’t remember the word hello or his plan or even how he got here. He catches his own reflection in the mirror over the sink, his colorless, injured-looking skin and the golden-brown back of B’s head. B doesn’t say anything, and for the first time Imms considers how furious B must be at Imms for landing him here.

  Imms opens his mouth, but before he can speak, B’s arms are so tight around him Imms isn’t sure whether he’s being crushed or held. He decides it’s the latter and wrenches his arms out from under B’s, squeezing back.

  “How the hell?” B whispers.

  “The laundry cart. The camera outside saw me, but I don’t care.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “I came to rescue you.”

  “Huh?” B’s grip slackens.

  “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  B releases Imms. “All right, pardner. There are a couple of problems with that.”

  “Shut up,” Imms says. “I’m going to save you, but when I do, things are going to be different. Do you understand? We can’t go home.”

  “You’re never gonna get me out of here.” B gestures to a bulky band around his ankle. “Ankle monitor. Locked door. Guards.”

  “Grena said you were allowed outside, in the field closest to the river.”

  “Grena?”

  “She helped me.”

  B doesn’t answer.

  “We need to get out there. Then we go into the ground.”

  B laughs and shakes his head. Imms’s hands fall away.

  “You think I’m kidding?”

  “I can’t go into the ground. Are you crazy?”

  “You almost did, on my planet. You would have, you were just afraid.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You were. But you can’t be afraid now, because I’m going to protect you.” Imms watches B’s eyes, willing him to understand. “We’ll go into the ground, deep, and we’ll go under the fence. Then into the river.”

  “This is sounding worse by the minute,” B grumbles.

  “Once we’re in the river, I’ll keep you up. I can stay underwater forever, and I can swim in the current.”

  B’s not laughing anymore.

  “We’re going to run,” Imms says. “You understand?”

  “I can’t. I’ve tried.”

  “No.” Imms shakes his head. “You haven’t really.”

  B stares at Imms a moment, then slowly nods.

  “We’re gonna go somewhere they can’t find us.”

  “And after that?” B asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  B snorts. Whatever hold Imms had on him a moment ago breaks.

  “You didn’t ask, ‘And after that?’ when you brought me here,” Imms points out. “You just did it.”

  “I was wrong,�
� B says.

  “You weren’t.” It’s important B knows this. He wasn’t wrong. Imms has gone deeper than any Silver has before. He feels the beauty in that, but also a sorrow that could never have been his without B.

  He waits for B’s answer, but it doesn’t come. He can’t believe someone didn’t see him on the camera out in the hall. He expects guards to burst in at any moment.

  “You know how much more trouble I’ll be in if this doesn’t work?” B asks. “If I stay here, there’s a chance I could make a deal. If we get caught, we’re both fried.”

  “So let’s not get caught.”

  B thinks too much. Silvers know what is right now. What is dangerous right now, what is beautiful right now.

  They can love without and after that?

  But Imms doesn’t push. B has to decide on his own.

  “When I’m ready to go out, I buzz them on the intercom,” B says finally. “They put in the code that unlocks the door at the back of my room. A long, narrow run leads to the fitness field. The run doesn’t have a camera, but a couple are on the field. If I stay in the run too long, the guard on duty yells at me to get onto the field. If I don’t, someone comes around the corner to check on me.” He offers a hint of a smile. “It’s at least fifty yards from there to the fence around the field.”

  “We’ll go into the ground there. How long can you hold your breath?”

  “Not long. A couple minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? How long will we be underground?”

  “A couple minutes.”

  “You sure?”

  Imms nods.

  “You don’t look sure.”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Imms—”

  “Please, B. I can do this. Let me do this.”

  Imms waits, holding his breath. After all this, B can’t say no.

  “I’ll buzz them. Slip out while the camera’s following me. Then stay along the left hand wall. The camera’s blind there.”

  Imms grins. “All right, pardner.”

  B reaches out and touches Imms’s face. Leans in and kisses him.

  Then he flushes the toilet and leaves the bathroom. A moment later, Imms darts out and moves along the wall, very slowly. B hits a button on the box by the bed. “Going for a run,” he reports to the box.

  “Okay,” a voice crackles back.

  Imms hears the door along the back wall click. B opens it and motions Imms to follow. B has retrieved Imms’s shoe. Imms thinks B wants to give it back to him, but B throws it into the center of the room, and the camera swivels to follow the vibrations. Imms kicks off his other shoe and follows B outside into the narrow fenced run. B walks quickly toward the end of the run. “Through that gate,” he whispers. “That’s the field. And once you’re in the field, the fence is fifty yards to your right. Shit.” He stops. “We can’t do this.”

  “Lie down.”

  Imms is about to pull B to the ground with him when a door opens behind them, and Violet Cranbrim emerges through the back door of one of the rooms neighboring B’s. She freezes when she sees them. It seems to take her a moment to realize what’s going on. She doesn’t speak, just stares at Imms. He begs her without words to please, please stay quiet. She turns and goes back into the room. To tell the NRCSuckers?

  Imms lies down in the grass next to the gate, drawing B with him. He pulls B close, wraps both arms around him. “Deep breath,” he says.

  Imms feels B breathe in. He wills all other thoughts out of his head and sinks. For a second, he fears B won’t follow him, that B will resist. But then the body he is holding yields and comes into the earth with him.

  Dark earth, not bright. Muddy, damp, thick. Hard to move in. Imms doesn’t let himself panic. He moves through the ground, slowly at first—inch by inch. Then more quickly. His body swims along the contours of the earth. Dirt rains on them, in their eyes and ears. When this happens, B tenses, and Imms has a harder time moving him. He wishes he could tell B to relax. He tries to say it with his body. It almost works.

  B chokes. He must have opened his mouth. The sound is horrible, somehow both muffled and amplified underground. Imms tries to tunnel faster, but he is losing energy. If he’s not careful, they’ll both be trapped here. B’s body twists, and Imms navigates a patch of roots that looks like those close-up videos of the inside of the human body—blood vessels dangling like cave formations, cells clustered in plasma, the walls of organs looming like shadows.

  B is still now. Imms can no longer feel him breathing. He is about to surface, fence or no fence, when he sees the glistening points of chain link diamonds in the dark-earth ceiling above him. He drags B under the fence. And up.

  They emerge into sudden sunlight through a rush of dirt and stones. B’s eyes are closed, his face streaked with dirt. He isn’t breathing. Imms hears shouts from the other side of the fence—distant, but coming closer. Imms drags B a few feet, then stoops and lifts him. B is heavy, but the weight is not too much for Imms. He runs toward the river.

  He stops partway and sets B on the ground. B is breathing, Imms realizes, but faintly. Imms lifts him again and carries him to the river. They arrive at the wide part just in front of the dam. Imms gets into the water then pulls B after him. B’s body makes a splash and starts to sink, but Imms pulls him up and swims, holding B’s body close against his own in the chilly water.

  B coughs dirt. His eyes open. “We made it,” he murmurs.

  “Can you hold onto me? That way I can swim faster, and you can stay above the surface.”

  B grips Imms’s shoulders, and Imms ducks under the water, careful not to go too deep. Imms swims until he feels the water start to pick up, the current urging him forward. He has no time to hesitate at the dark entrance to the deep, swift part of the river. The current shoves them headlong through warnings, into danger, toward escape. Suddenly Imms doesn’t need to swim. All he has to focus on is helping B stay above the water. That, and avoiding rocks. The latter is more difficult than he anticipated.

  He doesn’t know how long they travel downriver, but eventually the water grows shallow and is full of stones. Imms pulls B to the bank, lifts him out and drapes him on the ground. He doesn’t recognize where they are, but this place is quiet and surrounded by trees. Imms sees a house in the distance, but it is mostly cloaked in brush, and the windows are dark.

  Imms lies down next to B. Jostles B’s arm. “Hey.”

  B doesn’t reply. Imms swallows, trying not to let fear crawl between them. He remembers the day Lons shut off, how he begged Lons to stay with him and Lons left anyway. He can’t let himself think about B gone.

  B’s chest lifts and falls restlessly the way water does in lakes just before waves from. The movement is promising, as though B is gathering momentum. Eventually his chest will break from the rest of his body, become white-capped and slide toward shore. Imms puts his head on B’s ribs, and kisses his soaked shirt.

  Finally, B opens his eyes. He stares at the sky then turns his head toward Imms.

  “You did it.” His voice is rough, strained.

  Imms is too wrecked by wonder to even smile.

  B settles back down and is silent a long time. Imms counts fifty-seven breaths before B speaks again. “I messed up. I wanted to tell you that. I’m sorry.”

  “Turn over.”

  B resists only for a moment. Imms rolls him onto his side and rubs his back. Thick, ropy muscles Imms has loved since his fingers first discovered them. “I’m tired,” B says.

  “Sleep,” Imms whispers. “I’m right here.”

  “How long?”

  “Sleep,” Imms repeats.

  Finally, B does. His breathing deepens. His body relaxes. Imms stays awake as the sun dips in the sky, turning things comfortably gold. A helicopter passes overhead, and Imms wants to pull B into the ground with him, but doesn’t. The helicopter is too far away to see them. They’ll have to get up soon, though.

  And after that? The question keeps en
tering Imms’s mind, and he chases it away. And after that?

  He knows no ending. No riding off into the sunset. They are in this continuing story, a story in which he grows, loves, hurts, and is. He remembers B on Christmas, trying to follow his drifting heart with their joined hands. The truth hides, it shifts. But it is always somewhere inside him. Sometimes it shines so brightly, it can’t be missed. Maybe now that humans know the truth is out there, they will demand it.

  He leaves B and walks to the water. The sun is almost down. The river is slow here, but as Imms walks, he sees it pick up again. He doesn’t want to get too far from B, so he turns back. When he can see B again, he sits on the riverbank and dips a toe into the water, flinching at the cold. They’ll use the river as long as they can. See where it takes them.

  This is B’s dream—escape, freedom. A point from which they can go any direction but back. But B can’t do it alone, could never have done it alone. Because B has no experience with Alone. He’ll need a guide through a world emptied of any obligations beyond survival and love.

  They’ll both miss Mary and Bridique. But B is in those books of photos. And Imms is somewhere, out of sight, but part of that family. Mary, Bridique, Grena, Dave, Cena…they’ll be waiting, when one day it’s safe for B and Imms to come home.

  But right now, it’s time for a journey.

  Imms will swim underwater with B on his back. He’ll interrupt fish and break clouds of algae. He’ll dodge sharp rocks. He’ll be a cow-nosed stingray migrating. They’ll go as far as they can.

  Silver children stay underwater for eight years. Nobody knows what happens to them during that time. Some of them never resurface. The ones who do don’t remember. Once, long ago, Imms went into the water. He closed his eyes. He breathed only when necessary. He didn’t mind the cold.

  This journey will be different. He will not be alone. He will keep his eyes open as much as he can. To see the color, the life. The danger.

  About the Author

  Jill Smith grew up in Sandusky, Ohio. She holds a BA in theater arts from Case Western Reserve University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. Her essay, “Trust Someone,” was a 2012 runner up for the Wabash Prize for Nonfiction. An avid traveler and painter, Jill lives mostly in West Virginia, and always with an extremely judgmental dog, Professor Heidi Carmichael.