Tropic of Kansas

by Christopher Brown

  The seventh day in the camp, as the other detainees loitered in the common areas after dinner, Sig escaped.

  He got the idea watching squirrels. The squirrels loved it behind the tall fences, which kept out their competition. Sig saw one jump from a tree outside the fence onto the roof, grab some acorns that had fallen from another nearby tree, and then jump back using the fence as a relay.

  Del went with him. Samir said he didn’t want to die yet.

  They waited until the guards were busy after dinner. Samir took watch. They leaned Sig’s cot up against the wall and pushed through the section of cheap ceiling Sig had cut out the night before. They carried their blankets around their shoulders. Del could barely fit when they got up in the crawl space. Sig didn’t wait. They followed the ductwork on their hands and knees to the roof access and broke out into the open air. Sig half-expected to get shot right then, but the guards in the tower were watching a prisoner delivery.

  He could see the black trucks driving by on the high road behind the mall.

  They tossed their blankets so they would drape over the razor wire where the fence came close to the back of the building. Del’s throw was good, but Sig’s went too far, over the fence. Too bad, said Del. Sig backed up, got a running start, and jumped anyway.

  The razored barbs felt like sharpened velcro, grabbing onto his prison jumpsuit in bunches, poking through into his forearm and hand.

  Del didn’t even make it to the fence.

  Shit.

  “You go!” said Del, curled up on the ground, groaning.

  The sound of Sig’s body hitting the chain link like a big monkey got the guards’ attention, but by the time bullets came they hit torn fragments of his paper jumpsuit that stayed stuck when he leapt from his momentary perch.

  The tree branch Sig landed on broke under his weight, and he hit the frozen ground hard. But he got up okay. Nothing broken. His blanket was right there, so he grabbed it.

  He looked through the fence. Del was up on his knees, hands behind his head, hollering at the guards not to shoot as they came around the corner and from the roof.

  Sig ran. He heard the gunfire behind him, but didn’t hear Del.

  They came after Sig fast, but he had already disappeared into the landscaping that ran along the side road. He heard them off in the distance as he crawled through a vacant subdivision of knee-high grass, broken doors, and gardens gone wild. He evaded capture that night moving through cover, the way a field mouse escapes a hawk.

  He was glad it took them half an hour to get out the dogs.

  He used torn chunks of his prison jumpsuit to bandage his wounds. They were little bleeders, but he would be okay. Then he cut a hole in the middle of the blanket to turn it into a poncho. He thought about where he could get new clothes, if he made it through the night.

  Later, as he huddled in a portable toilet behind a convenience store just south of the borderzone, he wondered if what that Mountie said was true. That they had robots in the sky that could see you in the dark, tag you and track you, and kill without you ever knowing they were there. Sig thought maybe if he got cold enough, their heat cameras couldn’t find him.

  4

  When Sig was nine years old his mother got arrested for her protesting. They said they suspected her of terrorist activities. They sent seven men in suits to take her away in a black Suburban. She said they just wanted to shut her up.

  She was gone.

  So was Sig’s dad. He was a fugitive on the other side of the northern border, smuggling and poaching. So the judge sent Sig to the Boys School.

  The Boys School was in an old summer camp on a small lake outside Duluth. It was a place where the court let the state send dangerous kids so the state didn’t have to pay for their care.

  The Boys School was run by an ex-Marine who had been the director of the summer camp until he got the idea he could do it year-round with troubled youth, funding from the Lutheran Brotherhood, and a government contract. His name was Barney Kukla. Before that he taught high school gym in North Dakota.

  The Boys School was like the Marines for kids. They had inspections once a week where Barney would give out root beer floats to whichever cabin was best squared away. Sometimes Barney even tried to bounce a quarter off the bedsheets. Sig was not very good at inspection. He did better at archery, orienteering, and paddling. He was pretty good at making stuff out of leather and bone, too.

  On weekends they had these big games that Barney and the other counselors would dream up. It started with a game of Capture the Flag spread across the whole hundred acres occupied by the camp, and then spun off into crazy variations. There was Border Guard, where one team tried to smuggle trunks full of rocks across a frontier marked with ball field chalk and guarded by kids with squirt guns and unlimited detention authority. In Mole Hunt, members of each team were actually covert agents of the other team. Barbary Coast was played on the lake in canoes and sailboats, with water balloons as cannons. On Barbary Coast day Barney wore a giant admiral’s hat with a big yellow feather that the other boys dared Sig to steal. For MIA, Barney and the counselors built a little pine log and chicken wire jail on the other side of the little swamp. The older kids persuaded Sig to sneak through the swamp after sundown and break into the fake jail, which turned out to be a pretty stupid idea.

  Even if he got caught sometimes, Sig was really good at all those games. But his favorite was Klondike Day, when the entire camp area was littered with gold nuggets they made by painting rocks yellow and hiding them like Easter eggs. At the end of the day you could trade in the rocks you’d found for special treats from the dispensary. Including a root beer float if your nuggets weighed enough. Sig got so many of the rocks that he couldn’t even spend them all, so he hid them in a special spot behind the rifle range.

  That was when he figured out a hole in the camp security perimeter—the area behind the backstop of the range. Later that week Sig got a letter from his mom saying she didn’t know when they would let her out to come get him. That night he snuck out of his cabin through the loose floorboard he’d discovered during the last inspection, and disappeared.

  Getting Mom out of jail was a lot harder.

  5

  Sig woke to the sound of men talking outside the convenience store, and when he opened his eyes he saw the slow strobe of police lights bouncing off the ceiling of the plastic john. When he heard the men go into the store, he ran, into the woods behind. Morning came awhile later, which was mostly good.

  When he got far enough away from International Falls and the detention center, Sig came back out of the woods and stowed away in the back of a truck. He woke up in Bemidji, then jumped a freight that took him back up north of Hibbing. He walked from there, twenty-some miles in the dark, to the last place they lived. The morning light broke just as he started down the long gravel drive through the woods to the cabin by Lost Lake.

  The woods had burned. Maybe the year before, but you could still smell it in the black pines. There had been fighting.

  Mom’s house was gone. Razed. Sig dug around in the dirt. He didn’t find much. There was one shoe, a broken mirror, a soldier’s shiny button, and a red ponytail holder. He dusted off the ponytail holder. The smell of Mom was gone, washed out by time. He put it in his pocket anyway. He might be able to use it. He rarely cut his hair after he ran. Mom always liked it long.

  He kept the button, too, as a reminder. He made note of the logo imprinted in the brass, a picture of an eagle swinging a sword.

  He walked down the road to Kong’s place. The trailer was still there, but Kong wasn’t. It looked like he hadn’t been there in a long time. Kong was old even back when Sig was a little kid, so who knew.

  The trailer was tucked in the woods, but with a clear view of the water. Sig remembered how they would fish right out there at dusk. Kong would look at the contrails in the burning-down sky and tell fortunes. They were mostly dark forebodings of war and struggle, except when he saw far in the future, whe
n he said most of the people would be gone.

  The trailer door was open. Animals had been through the place. It was a mess.

  Sig rummaged around. He found some clothes that smelled like a nest. Kong used to be a lot bigger than Sig, but now it would be the other way around. Sig found a black hoodie that stretched out without tearing too bad, and a few mismatched socks. He shook the little rodent turds off the hoodie and put it on, then shoved the socks in the big stomach pocket for later.

  The animals hadn’t found the safe. It was right where Sig remembered, hidden in the floor under a box and a removable piece of plywood. It was a simple little safe, four-digit code that scrambled the year Kong’s dead son was born. The code still worked. And Sig’s tackle box was still inside.

  The tackle box was small, too, just big enough for a day’s worth of lures. But instead of tackle it had Sig’s stuff. The stuff he collected when he was hanging out with Kong. Stuff they found on the lake and in the woods. Stuff guys left behind, mainly, the kind of stuff a boy would notice and pocket. Arrowheads, little bones, some weird rocks, a pocket watch that didn’t run, spent pistol cartridges, and sixty-two dollars and thirty-five cents in vintage pocket change.

  Kong always told him some of those coins were worth more as collectibles than as regular money, but today they were probably going to have to get back into regular circulation for someone else to discover, while Sig worried about getting to tomorrow without getting caught.

  Sig was glad Kong kept his promise to keep Sig’s secret stash but was bummed Kong wasn’t there in person. Kong would know what to do. He had escaped from a lot worse situations than this.

  The only other thing Kong left in the safe was his old knife. Sig remembered the story. It was a military survival knife from a war before Sig was born. Kong got it as a gift from a downed American pilot he helped. It was a good knife. Kong had given Sig another knife a long time ago, a Hmong blade, but they took that one away from him. This one he would borrow and not lose.

  6

  Sig walked into Tower and hung out at the public depot until he found a ride. He bought some work pants, a ball cap to hide his hair, cheap sunglasses to mask his face, and a clean new T-shirt with the name of the business on it. Iron Country Supply. He bought a fried walleye sandwich, too. The people made fun of how long he took to count out his change on the countertop. The lady told him we’re not supposed to accept cash but when she saw how old the money was she changed her mind. When Sig was done he had a little over sixteen dollars left. He changed into the clothes in the bathroom, cut what was left of his prison jumpsuit into pieces, and put them at the bottom of the trash can.

  He ate his sandwich under a leafless tree at the edge of the parking lot. He hung out and watched from the margins for about twenty minutes until he saw the big tanker pull up and decided to give it a try. When he showed the driver the buffalo nickel and said it was worth three hundred bucks, the guy laughed and said sure, I’ll give you a ride to Grand Portage since I’m going there anyway. The way the guy smiled Sig thought he was going to say keep your money kid but he grabbed it and pocketed it while he was still smiling, then showed Sig where to sit while the guy went inside to use the head.

  The trucker was based out of Thief River Falls, running biofuels and other cargo between the NoDak fields and the border forts. When Sig asked why he was making deliveries to an Indian casino the guy laughed and said you must have been gone awhile.

  When they came up on a checkpoint at Temperance River, Sig tried to hide in the back of the cab. It didn’t work. The guards shined a light on him. The trucker said that’s my kid, taking a nap, we’ve been driving all night. Sig tried to play the part. Sat up, acted groggy. He could hear the gunmetal when the guards moved. The crackle of the radios, connected to base. The harsh white beam of the flashlight in his face. Maybe taking his picture.

  When they were waved on and Sig got back in front, the trucker asked Sig what was that all about.

  I don’t like soldiers, said Sig.

  Then you’re in the wrong country, said the trucker.

  Sig looked in the side mirror, back at a pair of border guards in their dark green fatigues. You couldn’t tell through their shades, but it looked like they were talking and looking at Sig at the same time.

  One of them got on the phone.

  The truck hissed, then moved out, into gear.

  The changed mood in the cab made Sig nervous. When he looked over the trucker was messing with the screen on his steering wheel, like he was looking something up.

  They drove on for another twenty quiet minutes that felt like hours. The road cut through tall pines on either side. Every once in a while there was a sign.

  Federal Border Sector Superior

  Access Restricted

  All Vehicles and Persons Subject to Search

  They passed through stretches where you could see the big lake off to the right. Cold blue water that dissolved into cloud along the horizon.

  They passed through a little town that had been abandoned, or cleared. Same thing. The post office was bombed out, marred with big black scorches that licked out through the empty windows.

  On the other side of the town they entered another thick patch of forest. That was when the soldiers walked right out of the woods with their machine guns ready, the leader waving at the trucker to stop.

  The trucker looked at Sig.

  “Guess you’re worth a lot more than an old coin, kid,” he said.

  The brakes were so loud. The squeak of big hydraulics.

  Sig went for the door, but the trucker locked it from his controls before Sig could grab the handle.

  The guy smiled.

  Sig leapt at the guy like a panicked animal. Stuck Kong’s knife into the guy’s leg. That drove his foot harder on the brake and knocked the truck out of gear. The lurch threw Sig up against the windshield. He kicked the trucker in the face. The door opened so fast Sig practically fell out onto the ground, hands first, dropping the knife.

  The woods were right there. The guy had driven off the road.

  Sig grabbed the knife from the dirt.

  He ran, chased by bullets, into the labyrinth of trees, intuiting paths that would be hard to follow. The soldiers relied on machines to see their prey, but their electronic eyes had trouble seeing through the dense forest. Too much noise.

  He heard a helicopter. It came in close. Maybe it saw him but couldn’t get a clear shot.

  He imagined what they saw on the screen.

  He almost lost a sneaker crossing the swamp. The muck pulled on his feet, like the mouth of a hungry monster. He reached down and found the shoe when it came off, carried it in his hand until he could stop.

  He heard more shooting. Not too close, but not far, either.

  In a clearing at the other end of the swamp lay a dying moose. Juvenile male, maybe two-thirds of the way to full-grown, rack fuzzed out like a teenager’s beard.

  It had been shot. Three red wounds across the torso. From a big machine gun.

  Sig kept moving.

  When the moose cried, it sounded like the call of some ancient horn. A word in a language no one knows.

  7

  It was late afternoon when Sig walked into sovereign territory. His clothes were soiled with dirt and pine sap, his pants wet to mid-thigh, but he had not been shot or captured.

  Feeling suddenly safe just by stepping over an imaginary line that only existed on maps, he wondered why he hadn’t come there a long time ago. Maybe because these weren’t really his people. They weren’t even really his dad’s. Or maybe because he was a lot more scared back then.

  The public part of the reservation was easy to find. He could see tall buildings over the treetops.

  He cleaned himself off as best he could, then walked out of the woods and into a big parking lot.

  They had built a ten-story office building next to the old casino. The casino sign said closed for season, but you could tell it had been that way for many
seasons. The parking lot had more shipping containers in it than cars. Some of them were painted in camouflage patterns, others stacked three high.

  Under new management. That was what the trucker said.

  Sig walked past a row of tricked-out pickups and SUVs. Most of them looked new. Shiny and expensive, with high suspensions and all kinds of aftermarket add-ons. He was excited when he recognized one of them, a vintage black van converted for off-road running. He had slept in the back of that van more than a few times. Hard to forget the image airbrushed on the side, faded now from sun and winter, a wizard riding on the back of a giant owl. The tires looked brand-new.

  He looked around, wondering where he might find its driver.

  It was confusing seeing this place turned into an office park. He tried a few doors, all locked with security access pads. He tried looking in through the windows, but they were mirrors. He saw a few people coming and going, but they were too far off to even make out their faces. He found a building directory that listed companies he’d never heard of, some with tribal names:

  Chippewa Development Group

  Arrowhead Logistics Co.

  Gichigami Salvage and Rescue Corp.

  OJOCo Data Foundry

  Superior Bank

  He saw a couple of people walk into another building on the opposite side of the parking lot. The old hotel. He walked down there. The door said community center. It was open. Inside it was more like a bar.

  Sig sat at the counter. Behind it was an old white guy who’d lost his smile, leaned back watching the television over the bar. When he finally looked over at Sig, he looked right back at the TV, as if Sig weren’t there. Sig took off his ball cap to see if that helped.