Monkeytown

by Chris Vola

  “Monkey?” The weeks spent in the cage – Dragging across the concrete toward the chair and the bucket, lifting up until something gives out from behind and crashing, knocking the bucket, on the floor again, covered in shit and blood, seeping back into the cuts, burning.

  “Chimpanzees make tools, use them to find food,” Titus says, pinching absentmindedly at an eggy strand. “They’re status-hungry social climbers, manipulative and capable of deception, same as us. Learn to use symbols, relational syntax, numerical sequences, et cetera, et cetera. And all that’s pretty impressive, except for the zero control of their instincts, whether that’s related to hunger, physical discomfort, fear, sexual excitement, whatever. The difference between you and me and a monkey is an instinct for self-preservation, a simple matter of control.” He sips some juice. “Turns out you aren’t a monkey. Congrats.”

  “How am I not a monkey?” I ask, suddenly charged. “Because I was starving and you unlocked the door and I went to find whatever I could? How is that any different from what a monkey would do?”

  “There’s a difference,” he says.

  “What if I had been one?”

  “Those people locked up down the hall, you remember checking in on them?” he asks. “I guess people might be stretching it. What do you know about crystal meth, Josh? Ever puff a little ice with your bros?”

  “No,” I say. Meth?

  “That’s right, my bad,” he cuts my thoughts off. “I’m forgetting that your chemical adventures have been made possible by the pharmaceutical industry. Party favors of the rich and obvious.”

  “I’m not rich.” The money? My money? Davis told them. Is that what Titus wants? This is bigger than…

  Titus laughs. He picks up a beige folder. “DEA and local police shut down fourteen meth labs in this area of Virginia last year. What do you think about that?”

  I’m thinking too much to know what to think. My legs and wrists twitch. Recurring images – Davis smiling, Billy’s uniform, piles of milky shit…

  “It’s horsecrap is what it is,” Titus says. “The past three months, we’ve shut down twenty-three labs in these woods. We do more than the DEA ever could, or would. We bring the survivors here, away from the prison system, from their families, from themselves, where we can control their recovery. Because I believe that none of them are truly bad. They’re all more or less victims, monkeys.”

  The survivors?

  “You give them drugs,” I say. Chew the pills, suck them down, SUCK THEM DOWN – NOW!

  “Cutting them off would be totally inhumane. You’ve seen Dr. Drew.”

  I’m twitching hard. Titus doesn’t say anything for a long time. The birds have stopped twittering. “What did Davis tell you about me?”

  “You were in coffee beans or something.”

  He chuckles. “Let’s say I occupy a unique niche in the film industry. Mostly freelance.” He finishes the food on his plate, piles it up again. I stare at the books, trying to make any sense of the last hour, shrunken stomach overstuffed.

  Titus holds up an old book. I can’t understand the writing. “This was a birthday present from Philippe and his brothers – whom you’ve already met – purchased on their last trip home to Montréal.”

  “Montréal? I thought they were Russian or something.”

  “Russian?” Titus laughs, sprays bacon bits. “If they heard you say that…” he tries to compose himself. “No,” he says, “they’re about as French-Canadian as they come, as French-Canadian as poutine, own all of Celine Dion’s CDs, hardcore Québécois.”

  “Why are they here?”

  “Why?” Titus repeats, as if I’m slightly retarded. “They have more reason to be here than anyone. For three hundred years their people have been persecuted, tortured, their language and culture marginalized to second-class status. They’re American ghosts, dude.”

  I think for a second, but nothing comes. Really, French-Canadians?

  “Good,” Titus says, even though I haven’t said anything. “Very excellent. Now,” he stands up, walks around the table, “let’s see your room.” I freeze. He pats my shoulder, reassuringly. “A new room,” he says, “one that’s a little more comfortable.”

  *****

  Men line both sides of the hallway as we walk by, carrying metal staffs or AK-47s, individuality obscured behind the masks. Some of them nod at Titus.

  “The door’s unlocked,” he explains, “and you’ll be free to come and go, although I would strongly recommend that you remain inside, at least at first.” Too tired to ask him what this half-threat means. Just tie me up and get it over with. “You’ll be digitally monitored twenty-four hours a day during this, ah, probation period. If the door is opened, a motion-detection system activates. There’s also a metal detector built into the doorframe. A minor annoyance, I know. Everything you need – clothes, deodorant, toothpaste – will be provided. Check the drawers in the bathroom.”

  We stop in front of an open door near what I think is the front of the building. The room is dim, but warmly lit, the floor carpeted in a plush off-white. The walls are off-white, bare. Three beds, identical white sheets. Two men – Billy asleep on the floor, shivering, jaws clenched; the other reclines on one of the beds, reading a book.

  Titus closes the door behind me.

  “SO YOU’RE NOT a monkey,” the man says, looking up. He’s maybe Australian, maybe English. Plump, fiftyish, bearded, thick bifocals. White tee shirt and sweatpants. Familiar face. From where? Billy writhes on the floor, naked down to his boxers, grinding his teeth. Ashy gray skin, lips the shells of insect carcasses. How can I help? Do I want to? My hand reaches for orange bottles that aren’t there. “What’s wrong with him? You’re just leaving him like –”

  “Bill’s had a rough go at it lately,” the man cuts me off, sits up. “Best thing we can do now is leave him be.”

  Billy whimpers. Yellow drool stains the carpet. What happened?

  “Now, there’s no use,” the man says, sternly. “Take a seat on your mattress and let’s get acquainted. Harry Blunderthal.” He extends a hand.

  “The terrorism guy,” I say, “from the radio.” This is another lie, another trick. Should I believe him? Does it matter?

  He laughs. “Terrorism guy, yes I suppose that’s…am I really getting that much attention?” Billy moans. Harry stops smiling. “Are you Josh or Davis?”

  “Josh, how did –”

  “They’re the two words he says most often. You don’t look like a Davis.” Billy opens his eyes. Two glassed-over marbles.

  “What did they do to him?”

  “Titus tell you why you’re here?” Harry asks.

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you anything?”

  “He said he liked Calvin and Hobbes, and meth addicts are monkeys, I don’t fucking know, man.” Alternating currents of desolation, paranoid fright, disgust. My head sinks into my lap. The bed spring creaks softly. Tears trickle, then flow.

  “Anything else?” Harry asks, unconcerned.

  “He makes films or something.”

  “Well!” Harry claps his hands. “It’s nice to see he’s being honest. I think it’s time I caught up on my reading. If you’ll excuse me.” He stares at the camera tubes protruding from the ceiling, picks up a pen and an open paperback of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, starts jotting liner notes.

  I lay back on my mattress, numb, stare at the high, off-white ceiling. Billy convulses on the floor.

  The door opens, one of the French-Canadians pushing a serving cart covered with hot plates of various leafy vegetables, potatoes, slabs of pork, water bottles. He parks it in the space between Harry's bed and the one I’ve chosen.

  “Bon soir, Jean-Paul,” Harry says. Jean-Paul bows slightly like a constipated James Bond villain, exits. Billy, who’s now half-awake, tries to push himself into a sitting position, fails, crunches into the carpet.

  “Let’s get him to the tub before he messes on the floor again,” Harry hops
off the bed, limber for a man of his girth, bends over Billy’s shivering torso.

  Billy was always a pudgy kid, skinnier after he got discharged, but it takes almost no effort for the two of us to carry him across the room and into a bathroom that looks like the one I showered in earlier. Harry takes Billy’s clothes off and I can see the extent of it. No new scar tissue, but a completely visible ribcage, blue and yellow welts, old tattoo lines blurred by track-marks that run like baseball stitching around his ass, legs, and arms. Harry presses a button and hot water hisses from the faucet, shocking Billy awake. He struggles for a second, goes limp.

  “We’ll feed him after we’ve had a proper dinner,” Harry says.

  “You’re just going to leave him?” I’m shaking, hugging the bathroom door.

  “There’s sensors that will shut the water off when it’s full.”

  I’m frozen. “I c-can’t, I can’t do this…” Harry’s hand on my back. I try to swat it away but he grips down with surprising strength. “Listen,” he whispers into my ear. “The cameras can see everything we do, as long as the lights are on. But there isn’t any night vision and the audio’s patchy at best. They can’t hear when you fart, and they can’t hear when you groan. And with what they’ve been feeding us, there’s been plenty of both going on.” He squints and purses his plump lips together like he’s swallowed a rotten piece of fish. “Second, you need to calm down, because it’s not doing you, me, or him any good. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, no one in this room is in any position to control his future. The most important thing is that we keep our…heads straight.” He lets go, heads for the buffet.

  I stare down at Billy again, floating in relative peace, eyes shut. My chest heaves, slow. I follow Harry. “Will you be having asparagus or kidney beans with your pork roast?” he asks, seated on his mattress cross-legged, tucking a spread-out napkin into the neck of his tee shirt. “Because I’m afraid the bloody potatoes look a bit spoiled tonight.”

  Harry leans across the tray, nudges my shoulder. “A little dinner reading?” He drops The Human Stain into my lap. “You might find the bottom of page one-thirty-five interesting. Use the pen if you make any of your own observations.” I look up, confused, but Harry’s already back on his bed, across the tray, stuffing his mouth with salad.

  I open the book to where a pen has been stuck between two pages. Harry’s handwriting covers the margins, the chapter-break space:

  Let’s get right down to it. From what information I have been able to obtain, Titus – Walker M. Baird, III on his birth certificate – was born in suburban Maryland in 1941. His father was a tobacco lobbyist, his mother a homemaker. Graduated from UVA magna cum laude, joined up with the FBI at the beginning of the Kennedy administration. Promising young bureaucrat. But his heart wasn’t in it, and it was the mid-sixties, so he…

  I look up. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Harry gives me a sharp glare, then softens, laughs. “I’m not telling you anything,” he says. “Philip Roth wrote the book, not me. If you’ve got a problem with what’s there, I suggest you take it up with his publisher. I gave you that book,” he says, lower, “because it seems like you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter and I thought it might interest you, that’s all. If you’ve already read it, then by all means, hand it back.”

  Billy coughs in the bathroom. “No,” I say, “I haven’t read it.”

  “Good,” Harry says.

  …Walker quit the government, took a bus to California, tuned in and dropped out, changed his name, ended up directing three low-budget psychedelic monstrosities financed by half of Jefferson Airplane. Nothing more until the early seventies, where we find him in South Asia. Are you aware of the Dong Tam Chemical Uprising? “The group of Viet Cong who apparently stole a small supply of Agent Orange from the Americans and brought it back to their jungle village?”

  Yes, I write in the margin, Billy’s father used to talk about it. I think he was stationed near there.

  NOTHING CHANGES much for three days. I assume it’s three days because we’ve had six meals – three dinners identical to the first and three breakfast buffets, similar to what I had in Titus’ room, brought in on the same tray by a silent French-Canadian. After dinner, the lights go off until the next tray arrives, and we continue our conversation, passing the book back and forth, our scribbles illuminated under the blanket by a laser-pointer keychain Harry managed to hold on to.

  If you’re aware of Dong Tam, then you’re aware of the propaganda footage, the Vietnamese women and children spraying captive American soldiers, beating them with the hoses, naked and rotting alive in the…

  --

  I know what you’re talking about.

  --

  What no one knows is that the village was actually a set constructed just outside Hanoi. The villagers are Viet Cong prisoners, performing because they’ve been told that they’ll be freed if they follow orders. Of course that’s a lie. The Americans are prisoners, too. Federal inmates. Death Row’s dung pile. The whole thing was a convenient way for your government to enrage its people, to throw out a few bad apples, and most importantly, to justify the annihilation of a dozen villages standing in the way of major push into enemy territory. The man behind the movie was…you probably guessed it.

  --

  Harry finishes coloring in the details of Titus. How he left the government for more lucrative freelance work. First Lebanon War, Iran-Contra, the Columbian Civil War, nothing less than a starring role in all of them. How he shunned the West and made friends with “every cave-dwelling psychopath who needed a couple of anti-tank missiles to start their war in the name of Allah or Iggy Pop.” How he helped lobby for the twenty billion dollars that were funneled into Afghanistan from 1981 to 1987 to help the Russians…

  I lay back, cold and composed, feeling between my shoulders the lump where I’ve hidden my BlackBerry under the mattress. The dead onion smell wafting over from Billy’s bed means it’s almost time to wash him. And then there’s the other roommate. For all I know, “Harry” could be full of shit, but at least he’s here talking to me. Lies are better than pregnant silence.

  Why are we here?

  Harry writes on, oblivious.

  …we knew he’d been in the Middle East since the mid-to-late nineties, Hamas, maybe Hezbollah. Four months ago I accidentally ran across him! Standing in the background for half a second of a Yushua execution tape. It was really quite easy, what with the red shirt.

  --

  That’s why he kidnapped you.

  --

  That’s the fairly obvious part. The most interesting thing we need to ask ourselves is, who is responsible.

  --

  Titus, Yushua. I thought that was easy.

  --

  No, no. Titus doesn’t have an ideology. His ambitions go as far as money and tending to his…flock. And it doesn’t fit with anything I’ve seen from Yushua, from what little has been seen. No, I’d have been chopped off weeks ago. He’s been hired.

  --

  You don’t know who it is.

  --

  I have a few ideas, but no, I’m not positive by any stretch. But enough. Tell me something about you, Josh.

  “UP NOW, TIME for his cleaning!”

  Harry’s finished his daily sets of push-ups and crunches and is stretching his back against the cool concrete wall. Billy’s in his bed, quarantined in the room’s far corner, tearing at the sheets, eyes rolling. Drool puddles staining his pillow.

  Harry stops his routine, walks across the room, strips Billy’s foul sheets and shakes them in one fluid, matador-style flourish. “You ready, Bill?”

  “Rrng! Notarfff!” It’s always the same. Confused grunts, nonsensical half-words. We bring him into the bathroom four or five times a day when he needs to bathe, shit, or piss. Billy’s physical state, along with the room’s hotel-quality cleanliness, is one of the least disconcerting aspects of the living arrangement. Harry’s peaceful demeanor – a soon-to-be-martyr
ed guru seated calmly at his prison window, observing his noose being tied to a tree branch – makes me more nervous than the sound of the tray scraping against the door.

  “Come on rattle-boy,” Harry says, “he’s not going to move himself.” I’ve been shaking so badly that when I’m in bed my feet and hands inadvertently tap against the room’s wall, a constant syncopated rapping that Harry seems to think is hilarious.

  We’re carrying Billy to the bathroom, Harry doing most of the work. Billy can’t wait and as the dark stain expands across the seat of his sweatpants, Harry gives me this sad-yet-smug, self-defeating smile that disgusts me enough to slug his fat red English face, tear his beard off hair by hair. I don’t do or say anything. At this point, what’s the difference? No, we aren’t monkeys, but the instinct for self-preservation is sliding gently away into the off-white…

  JEAN-PAUL OPENS THE door, a good deal after breakfast but too soon for dinner, carrying two fresh sets of military uniforms, a large beige envelope. He sets the bundle on the carpet in front of our beds, bows, disappears. Harry looks up from his book, gets up. He opens the envelope and takes out a thin pile of papers, sifts through them, jerks his neck like something’s caught in his throat. He tosses a uniform at me.

  “Special delivery,” he says without a hint of irony. “We’re going to be making a movie.”

  I STOP READING the script, stare at Harry struggling to button his pants, his pale gut protruding well beyond his belt.

  “Is this for real?” I ask. “They want us to act like we’re –”

  “Yes,” Harry cuts me off, “they do. One thing to learn,” he whispers, “is that compliance is often the best way to gain access, the easiest way to get up close to study what the fuck’s going on. Get used to the cameras, the camcorders, the movie magic. It’s what they do, and for some reason they haven’t turned you into another Billy. You might want to try and ride that out as long as you can.”