by J. D. Palmer
It does not go unremarked upon. David is silent as he goes about his business; slicing, stewing, prepping meat for the hungry beasts that will come howling demands for food later. But he has an assigned helper, an odd fellow who introduces himself as Wing.
“You’re in danger of getting fat, cabron.” And he laughs a high pitched giggle and slaps his own belly.
He is from Mexico, although his English is fairly well put together. He says he worked in a restaurant before the downfall, and he taught Spanish to a server who in turn taught him English.
Wing is young, barely eighteen, and I would have guessed younger. He is very short and slight of stature, with such an innocent face that I can tell he has trouble being taken seriously. He tries to compensate for this by growing a black beard, sprinkled with red, that gives him the look of a Hispanic Nostradamus. His hair is thinning already, seemingly his only insecurity. He bounces around the kitchen, helping wherever directed, and he has taken to assisting me with the dishes.
At first I told him to piss off. I told him I preferred to work alone. Fucker didn’t listen and now, to my chagrin, I look forward to chatting with him every day. I wasn’t as good at being alone as I thought.
Five days…
“Be patient,” my dad whispers in my ear. So I put my head down and ignore everything. I bring a plate of food up for the doctor to give to Beryl every day. I ask him how the tests are going and he gives me the same answer every day.
“We’re getting closer.”
And I’m told she doesn’t want to see me.
I do my best to be patient. For her. But it’s hard. So at night I curl up with a book and a bottle of vodka and I’m always asleep before the lights are shut off.
I rarely see John or Steven. John is working hard to make a name for himself in the community. Steven has sought me out a few times, but we dance around the larger issues and make meaningless conversation that quickly fizzles out. Neither of us mention Beryl, or what will happen when she is allowed to leave. I want to be angry with them. I want to rant and rave and lash out at this community. But the justifiableness has eroded away to expose my own feelings of guilt. My own inadequacies.
“Be patient.”
I work and eat and sleep and drink, and somehow in between all of that I get to know Wing. His is a dark past that he tells casually and without emotion. When I express shock he simply shrugs his shoulders and says, “it’s the Mexican life.”
He is the fifteenth son out of sixteen children. His dad brought him to the U.S. when he was ten years old. He lost a brother to the kick of a horse. He lost his mother and three sisters to “cholos” that took over his town. One brother was killed by the cartel and another joined it. His dad died of heart failure. Other brothers disowned him for staying in America. Another died trying to join him.
He tells me all this with sadness, but also understanding. As if those tragic events were lamentable, but part of life. If it were me I would be much more jaded. I don’t know. Maybe he has the right of it, maybe I’m the one with the skewed perspective.
He hums a lot, and skips around the kitchen with a joy that, against my wishes, raises my spirits. He tempers my own anger, my own sense of self pity at the events that have shaped me over the last few months. The last few years. He shows me the folly of allowing the death of my father to be the lone event to shape who I am. To allow it to drown my future.
He does this for me.
And I find myself telling him about my home. About Jessica and our child. I tell him of my mother, and her strength, and he laughs and tells me he thinks that perhaps we had the same Madre.
My body recuperates and for those few hours in the afternoon and at night, my soul also finds respite.
I take refuge in sleep. The labors asked of us are not strenuous. Not to someone who is used to digging irrigation and baling hay. Or hauling a cart full of food up tall hills…
Doing dishes is easy. So if I’m not working, or eating, then I’m in my bed. Perhaps I’m feeling sorry for myself. I try to see it as long overdue rest needed for an overtaxed body.
I love sleep. But it is a hard country to travel to. I find my heart racing and my teeth grinding. Imagined arguments, or fights, or scenes played in my head in which I bring Stuart down. Bring him to his knees. Make him pay. Twist the knife in his gut.
Thus the vodka. It speeds the process into sleep. Limits the dreams, too. All in all I’d say I was having a good go of it at Camelot if I wasn’t so angry all the time.
And full of guilt.
And afraid.
The clubhouse is a disaster when we show up the next morning. Food and plates and bottles are scattered everywhere. A pile of puke lies congealed across the better half of a table.
“Fuck.”
I think that’s the first time I’ve heard John swear. He and I tackle the main room while Steven helps David cook. Breakfast isn’t a big meal. Cut up fruit and vegetables and David makes toast and marmalade, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The men grumble and say it’s the same as yesterday and most just stuff their pockets and leave. Thank God. It’s going to take hours to do all the dishes.
Wing isn’t here today. It’s odd, him not being here. He is the most reliable person in Camelot, at least as far as not shirking work. I do the dishes by myself while the brothers wash and chop and boil, all directed by David’s knife.
We get back to the condo assigned to us when the sun is high in the sky. Steven and I are tired but John is still upbeat. “Isn’t this place great? Everyone working together to keep each other going… And working in the kitchen is all we have to do to stay? Never thought we’d be so lucky.”
Steven is more skeptical. He doesn’t like the way we were taken any more than I do. “I wonder if Beryl is okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” John is quick to jump to the defensive.
Steven rolls a shoulder. “I don’t know, John. Men… The way that guy was eyeing her. Fuck man.”
John scoffs. “They haven’t seen a woman in a long time. I think we can forgive a little staring.” Steven just purses his lips and John gets exasperated. “They’re trying to save a girl. Besides,” he gives a little shrug, “maybe the doctor can fix her, you know? Whatever is messed up inside her. Maybe get her to talk. This is the best place for her.”
His words hit me, drenching me like a sudden plunge into cold water. Instantly, and horribly, I’m furious. How can he so casually call her broken?
Easy.
I find myself standing. Fists clenched.
Easy.
I don’t say anything, can’t say anything, my jaw is doing its best to grind my rear molars to dust.
I leave the building. I have to. There is a logical side of me that sees that there could be a kernel of truth to what he says. It’s that he so easily calls her defective. That he thinks that someone who hasn’t suffered beside her or seen what she has seen, someone like that doctor, could be better at “fixing” her. Fuck that guy.
I walk blindly, long strides burning off the rage that courses through me. Across grass and up stairs and I’m pounding on the door to the doctor’s office. A minute later he wrenches it open, eyes wide and angry.
“I said it was open!”
I march past him. “I didn’t hear you. Where is she?”
He shakes his head. “She doesn’t want to see anybody. I told you.”
I round on him. Get right up in his face. “I don’t fucking believe you, and it’s been five fucking days. I want her to tell me.”
Doctor Wong is an educated man. A doctor. Someone who has sacrificed his life to trying to help others. He’s also an asshole. Instead of reasoning with me he gives me what I want.
We walk down the hall to a nondescript door. A keypad similar to the panic room glows on the wall. Two men lounge in the corner playing cards. Guards to make sure she stays inside.
“Turn around.”
“What? Why?”
“Jimmy and I are the only ones who
know the code. It keeps her from having to deal with any… unwanted visitors.”
I turn around, impatient, and he punches a code on the pad. A click. He pushes the door open and stands to the side, one arm holding it as he looks at me expectantly.
I am tense. This is too easy. I have suspected that he is up to no good. They’re all up to no good. She will be dead or be tortured or unconscious. There is no way that she wouldn’t want to see me. Me, who has suffered through so much with her. Witnessed so much together. I palm the knife I hid in my sleeve.
The door opens into a lush suite. Sunlight streams in from multiple windows and sky lights. The doctor leads me through a living room filled with oil paintings and blue and white vases towards a small set of stairs. We climb in silence. What is he up to?
At the top of the landing he gestures to a bedroom door. I knock. There is no response and I chide myself for forgetting that she wouldn’t answer. I push it open. Take a step back.
Beryl sits on the mattress of a four poster bed. She isn’t chained, or cuffed, but wires run from her wrists and temples to a machine in the corner. She reads a book and music plays from a CD player.
She looks up and sees me. Her eyes channel into mine. A cold stare. A blankness that is worse than anger or reproach.
“Your friend demanded to see you. I told you that you weren’t taking visits but…” The doctor speaks from behind me. Smug and nonchalant. “Would you like him to stay?”
A brief moment and then a shake of the head. The doctor closes the door with a small, “I warned you.”
That’s it. A closed door. And then we retrace our steps.
I’m hollow. I feel deserted. I walk faster than he does and blow through the door as if to face a reckoning. I keep walking. My strides long, the tendons in my leg stretched to the max and me enjoying the pain. I kick long steps out into the sand and then drop to my knees and scream silently into the earth. Fists clenched, tendons in my neck straining.
“Fuck!”
I can’t go home and I can’t leave. I can’t be John’s friend or a part of this community. I can’t help Beryl. I can’t be what everyone fucking needs.
Yelling. Someone in pain. I sit up, looking around. The setting sun glares off of the solar panels in front of me, flashing and shifting like some alien body of water. The yelling comes from my right.
I get up and walk, doing my best to follow the sound. Another scream, this time more than one voice. I approach slowly, wishing I had a gun. The ground dips and I find myself trudging through fine sand. The land marbles in front of me, bowls and hills that can’t possibly be natural.
Oh yeah, this is a fucking golf course.
Tufts of dead grass still mark areas where the green used to be. My toe catches on something. I bend down and pry a putter up from the sand. Better than nothing.
I find the source of the yelling at the bottom of a sand-trap. Men form a ring at the bottom. Some hold bottles of alcohol and many are without their shirts and all of them united by a primitive form of raw masculinity. They stomp their feet on dead sand and it makes a dull, hollow sort of thump that reminds me, of all things, of the first time I heard the heartbeat of my child.
They form a circle around two combatants. The large teenager who sat by our fire, Ben, has Wing in a headlock. They’re shirtless, sweaty bodies coated in sand and grime. A blood smear runs down the length of Ben’s back. Wing squirms free and rolls away. The crowd gives him an appreciative cheer.
The whole thing is presided over by Theo who walks the circle, studying the fight. The behemoth is shirtless, a mixture of rippling muscles and tattoos on dark skin. Large eyes with heavy brows that make him seem angry. Or maybe he is. He stops and points things out to random men in the crowd, miming punches and explaining holds.
Wing hits Ben in the eyes with a flurry of rabbit punches, knocking him backwards. The men start to yell, turning from fans at a spectator sport to a rabid group of hounds baying and howling for death. He continues to circle the larger man, kicking and hitting and avoiding the swings. He is too small though. Eventually he gets too close, Ben grabs him and they slip into a slow, awkward hug that topples to the ground. Ben pins his legs and climbs on top, raises a fist and slams it into Wing’s nose. He is out of breath, his breath ragged as he sits atop his squirming opponent. He raises his other hand and hits him again. Then he slips his hands around Wing’s neck and begins to choke.
No one does anything. They watch as his face turns purple, and no one puts an end to it. Quiet now, they watch on, silent witnesses to one kid murdering another. Someone steps forward and Theo puts out a beefy forearm to stop him.
Perhaps it’s my anger with John. Or maybe it’s the frustration and guilt of not being able to help Beryl. Or I’m just tired of death. Or maybe I crave it. Wing has been nothing but kind to me, nothing but a balm to my wounded psyche.
But I know it’s not my place to intervene.
The next thing I know I’m swinging the putter down onto the back of Ben. He sucks in breath, the pain sharp and unexpected. I hit him three more times and he rolls off the smaller man, trying to crawl away from me.
Hands grab me, yank me back, throw me to the ground. I try to get up and I am kicked in the ribs. I look up to see the alpha standing above me. “The fuck you doing?”
I spit, there is blood in my mouth and I don’t know why. “He was killing him.”
The man shrugs. “He was gettin’ him acquainted with death, yeah.” A smile. “I woulda stopped it though.”
I slowly stand. “Didn’t look like it.”
He flashes white teeth at me, slowly approaches. He dwarfs me by three inches and forty pounds. “Check out this nigger. Y’all see this?” He gets close to my face. “I heard about you from Don. Heard you got an attitude. Lose it. I’m only gonna tell you this once.” He turns so everyone can hear. “Everyone earns their keep. Making food. Fixing shit. Finding supplies. And why do we fight here?”
The men roar back. “To survive!”
He raises thick arms and flexes them over his head. “We fight here so we will know how to fight those who wish to take what we have! We fight so we will not be afraid. We fight for our future wives. We fight to settle disputes. And we fight to see who’s in charge. Who’s in charge?”
A roar of “You are!”
He turns back to me. “Apparently you got a problem with that.” He shrugs his shoulders and rolls his head to loosen his neck and he doesn’t so much as step into the ring as the ring ripples, reforms around the two of us. I survey the eager faces around the circle. This can’t end well.
“I didn’t challenge you.”
He spits at me. “Yeah you did motherfucker. The moment you stepped in and hit my boy over here.”
“I’m not going to fight you.”
He doesn’t say a word. He just steps forward and hits me in the face. I hit the sand like a sack of potatoes. “What…”
I roll over onto all fours, gasping. I touch my lip, it’s split wide open, blood is dribbling down my chin and pattering onto the sand. I stand up. He throws his arms open wide, inviting me to attack. I am afraid. I am outmatched by this man and he knows it.
“To survive we need to be strong. How do we become strong?”
“We fight!” A chorus of yells, men drooling over the prospect of bloodshed.
He takes a step towards me. “Well come on then.”
There is no sympathy from the crowd. They bay like hounds for my blood. The man across from me is relaxed, in his element. When the lights go out, men like this rise to power.
We spar, my long arms able to punch him once in the jaw before I’m on my back, wind knocked out of me. He lets me up again. I try to keep him at a distance. He stalks me around the ring of men, letting me punch him in the face, laughing at the small damage I inflict. He feints a tackle and laughs as I scramble backwards. The ring of men closes, men pushing me forward and then we are trading blows. I swing as hard as I can. Then I’m on my back. Hi
s shadow blots out the sun and then all I see are his fists. I roll over and he moves his punches to my ribs.
Dear god let this stop.
He stops. I think it’s over and I try to leave. Sharp stones scrape my knees as I crawl to the edge of the pit. He lets me get halfway out of the sand trap before grabbing my ankles and pulling me back down. He toys with me, dodging punches that lack strength and then laying me down with a well timed punch or kick.
I try to get up and more blows rain down on me.
Stop. STOP.
Please stop.
Stuart is screaming as he brings the belt down on my back. Again. And again. I try to get back into my corner. I can’t seem to find my blanket.
“Please stop. Please.”
I can’t find where I am in the room. I don’t want to make a mess, don’t want to upset him further. I put a hand up to my neck, my body expecting the electrical current at any moment.
“Please.”
I am in a ball, weeping.
The onlookers cheer as Theo unzips his pants and releases a stream of urine on my prostrate form. I close my eyes and cover my face, glad that Beryl can’t see this.
Chapter 18
I stare up at a dusky sky, the sun not quite risen over the distant mountains. Mashed cotton clouds move at a leisurely pace. My shirt is sticky with blood and dried piss. I know I should get up. Get cleaned up. But I don’t move. Not yet.
The men left awhile back, the laughter and insults slowly fading away as I lay in the dirt. My head hurts. My ribs hurt. If I had any pride it would be hurting as well.
There is a shift in the sand beneath me. The earth shrugs its shoulders before returning to stillness with a small sigh. A small stirring in the tectonic plates is if they, too, thought I should get up.
But I don’t.
It’s nice to be still. I’ve been trying to get better or get home, trying to figure out where I stand in this new world and how I can protect my group… And now all that worry and frustration has been taken away from me. I am not in charge of anything anymore.
