Recombination

by Brendan Butts

  Back in the tool shed, I hung the clothing from the racks, out of the way of the tools, so they wouldn't be disturbed as the other workers filed in to get their equipment for the day. Then I grabbed a shovel and headed outside.

  Jack was waiting, as usual, grouping people together and giving them tasks. I was grouped with a few people I had seen around but hadn't worked with before. Jack didn't even spare me an extra glance. If he was annoyed about my having missed work the day before, he didn't show it.

  The day flew by. I worked the fields tirelessly. Maybe it was the day rest I'd had or the nanos, but I just didn't seem to get tired. As the day wore on, I pushed myself harder and harder, foregoing the five-minute breaks every two hours we were afforded by law. When the water came around, I made a point of walking right up to the woman and getting some, before she could pretend not to have seen me.

  By the end of the day, I felt as though I'd earned some respect from the other workers in my group and they seemed to be warming up to me, even if it was grudgingly.

  By my own account, I had done three times the work of anyone else in my group. Even Jack seemed impressed by the progress we had made over the course of just one day, though he offered his admiration to the group as a whole.

  At dinner, I piled my plate with as much food as I could safely maneuver the line with. I walked over to the most empty section of the cafeteria and sat down to eat. For the next ten minutes, I only paused for breaths and sips of my water. I tore into the food like it was my first meal in months and the last I would ever have. I noticed several people glancing at me curiously out of the corner of my eye. When my plate was cleared I went for seconds. This time I didn't pile it so high as to be a hazard while I was walking back to my seat, but high enough to draw a chuckle from the server that had heaped the large portions of mashed potatoes onto my plate.

  "I'm a growing boy," I said to him, cheerfully.

  Back at my seat, I dug into the plate with the same single-minded concentration that I had with the first, though I ate more slowly this time. Nanos, they really do a job on you. These things must be breaking down the food as soon as it hit my stomach for their little war with my injuries. Still, even I was surprised by how much I was able to eat.

  Over the next few weeks, I worked the fields just as hard. I skipped all my breaks except for water or the bathroom. I ate twice or three times as much as would be expected of me in the cafeteria every night.

  I fell into a routine of working and eating as the weeks moved on. I saw Zenigra once or twice in passing. He would ask how I was feeling and I would tell him that I felt great. One or both of us were always on our way to do something, so we didn't have time for much more than that.

  The rest of October melted away. Halloween came and went without fanfare from any of us that worked the fields. The nights were getting colder now, though the sun still beat down pretty hard during the day. The breeze was the most notable distinction for me that the seasons were changing. I still hadn't gotten used to seasons.

  In a domed city like Miami, it's pretty much the same temperature all year long. I'd had to get used to “weather” when I left. Not that Miami didn't have “weather”, so to speak. It rained in Miami, but only for short periods of time, and mostly on weeknights. It was very rare for it to rain on a weekend. I'd heard it was that way to bolster tourism.

  My routine of working, eating, and sleeping lasted all the way up to Thanksgiving. That was a special day for drifters and Switchgrass aces. We only had to work the fields until noon, and then we had the rest of the day off until the big dinner.

  Having free time during the day is not something most drifters or Switchgrass aces that work the fields are used to. So, most of the workers just drifted back to the dormitory to catch up on sleep, wash clothes, or swap stories. That would have been what I was doing, had I not been made an outcast by that bastard Piner.

  I had been ignoring his attempts to get a rise out of me for weeks now. He had given up trying directly and had instead started trying to undermine all the goodwill I had been fostering with my exceptional work. I thought back to one such instance a few days before. It was the same old speech he had been giving for a week now, every time I opted out of a break.

  "Look at him. Even he knows he's not welcome here. See how hard he works to try and make up for the fact that he shouldn't even have gotten in? That's the first sign of guilt, you know? Except what he's doing isn't helping anyone. All he's doing is making the rest of you in his group, hell the whole lot of us, look lazy and old. Or maybe that's his real goal. He wants to hurt us and make us look bad. Like we did something wrong. Like we can't keep up. We're all working so hard but look at him, he's working harder. All should praise him, oh Switchgrass master. Peh," Piner had spat on the ground in front of me. "That's what I say to that."

  I had been lucky so far, Jack hadn't put Piner and me in the same group. Maybe he was doing it on purpose. Jack might have caught parts of Piner's speeches when he was walking around, inspecting our work.

  I'd learned a bit about Jack in the past few weeks. He didn't seem to warm up to anyone. Which led many of the workers to call him a slave driver behind his back. I didn't agree. Jack didn't exchange pleasantries with his workers like many of the other full-time plantation staff did. That didn't mean that he thought of us as expendable resources to be used up and thrown away.

  I remembered back to when I was 11 and my Dad had come home from work practically jumping out of his boots with excitement. He'd gotten a promotion and would now have several people working beneath him. It was all he could talk about over dinner for that entire week.

  "I'm going to be a good boss. I won't treat the men and women that work under me like dirt, the way the other supervisors do."

  A few weeks later, he came home from work and admitted to my mother and me that he had been wrong. He'd thought he could be friends with the people that worked under him. That he could make work a little less stressful for them by cutting them some slack or covering for them from time to time. Now they were walking all over him, asking for days off or calling in sick when he'd known they were just hungover from being out the night before.

  He told me he went to the other supervisors for advice, but they just laughed and told him everyone made that mistake their first month. They told him the only way to keep the respect of your employees is to be a hard ass. If he wanted to get their respect back, he had to make an example out of one of them, so the rest would fall in line.

  So he had to fire one of the guys that called out sick. Now, the rest were showing up to work on time and not one of them was asking for any special favors anymore. But, now they looked at him with the same bitterness and distaste they did the rest of the supervisors.

  "They call me a sellout when they don't think I can hear, or maybe they want me to."

  I thought about Jack and figured he might have had a similar experience. He seemed resigned to the practicality of the situation. As much as he might have liked being friends with some of the workers, it was a bag of dirt he wasn't willing to open.

  He wanted to run a tight ship. He liked efficiency. I'd noticed all these things about him over time. That's what led me to think he may have been purposefully keeping Piner and me in different groups.

  I decided to skip the dormitory. The only thing waiting for me there were cold stares and muttering. It was high time I paid a visit to Zenigra.

  I had some questions I wanted answers to. Particularly about the nanos I'd been given and why the initial effects they'd had on me didn't seem to have worn off yet. My sense of taste was still much stronger than before and my endurance in the fields was still unrivaled.

  There were other things I'd noticed as well.

  My eyesight seemed to have improved. I never needed glasses or anything, as far as I remembered, 20/20 every time I got an eye exam. Now though, it seemed like I could read things much further off, or notice much more detail on anything relatively close up. I had figured all
these things were side-effects of the nanos, but it had been almost two months and they hadn't gone away or even diminished.

  In fact, they seemed to be getting stronger.

  I set off across the fields in the direction of Zenigra’s hut. I had the hope he was home, but the resolve to wait if he wasn't.

  Chapter 11

  I contemplated my enhanced senses as I walked to Zenigra's hut. I hadn't shared the knowledge of how the nanos had affected me with anyone so far. Maybe Zenigra would have some answers. He must have taken nanos plenty of times while he was a ganger. The bottom line was I'd been forcing myself not to get used to them, as I'd been pretty sure it was just a passing phase. I hadn't had much occasion to really push my body or my newly acute senses to their limits, except on the fields. I knew I could handle exhausting amounts of manual labor, but that was about all I knew. The problem was that my endurance could have been attributed to my many months spent working the fields, at all the plantations I'd stopped at on my journey.

  I reached Zenigra's hut and knocked on the steel door. There was no answer. I banged again, louder. Still nothing. He was probably out doing something for Lucas. I had no idea when he would be back, so I sat down and put my back to the door.

  I shifted uneasily for half an hour, my body unaccustomed to being prone for long periods of time, except during sleep. I toyed with the idea of going back out onto the fields and doing more work, but I dismissed the thought almost immediately. If Piner saw me, he'd just have all that much more ammunition next time he decided to give a speech about me. Still, just sitting still on the steps of Zenigra's hut was making me feel uneasy.

  I stood up, unsure of exactly what I was planning to do, but knowing that I couldn't just sit and wait any longer. I decided I just needed to expend some energy and that a run around the edges of the plantation would do that.

  I started out slowly, wondering how long I could keep up a steady pace. It had been ages since I'd actually ran. On the road, you keep it slow and steady. Scantville was the last time I'd really let loose and just run as fast as I could.

  I figured that a run along the edge of the plantation would be about two miles if I went full circle. I jogged away from Zenigra's hut, leaving it and the rest of the central compound behind. I reached the edge of the plantation and the ring of trees that surrounded it on all sides a few minutes later.

  I stopped there, thinking I might need to catch my breath a bit. It took me a moment to realize that not only did I not need to catch my breath, but I wasn't breathing hard at all. I sliced an X into the ground with the heel of my booted right foot. This would allow me to know where I'd begun. With that finished, I started jogging around the edge of the plantation.

  I could still see the central complex looming half a mile in. As I circled the compound, sticking to the tree line, I could make out the dormitory coming into view, and a few moments later the cafeteria building became visible. Zenigra's hut had already passed out of my field of vision. I hoped he came back during my run and didn't go back out again. It would suck to have missed him again.

  I slowly began to increase my pace until I was running full out. This was a pace that I knew from past experience would tire me out very quickly. I had been great at sprinting during Gym class, but anything with any distance to it, I had to take at a moderate pace. I usually finished middle of the pack in Gym class. Better than many, but still far behind the real athletes.

  I continued, my feet barely touching the ground as I vaulted along. I looked over my shoulder briefly to see if I was kicking up a trail of dust in the dry dirt and was surprised to see that I wasn't. I was still running flat out, but my muscles weren't even burning. My breath was easy.

  Five minutes later, I slid to a halt, having just passed the X I'd marked in the dirt.

  I could feel only the barest hint of fatigue in my muscles. My breathing was still regular and there was barely a drop of sweat my forehead. I felt incredible. I'd just ran what I estimated to be two miles in something like eight minutes. That had to be some sort of record for a kid my age.

  The runner’s high carried me all the way back to Zenigra's hut. I approached the hut from behind and as I was walking along the side, I stopped. I heard voices inside. The thin metal that made up the hut had apparently not been designed with privacy in mind. I pressed my ear against the metal, hoping to catch some of the conversation.

  "The last package is two days late. I'm beginning to think it was intercepted." It was Lucas' voice. I was sure of it. "Every single one we lose costs me a lot of goddamn money."

  There was a long pause in the conversation, so long I thought Lucas might have decided to leave without saying more. Then another voice, Zenigra's this time, spoke.

  "You don't think maybe the runner just walked? Took the package and flashed off the reservation?"

  "I've made it pretty clear what happens when someone comes in light. You think someone is stupid enough to try to rip me off? Are you kidding me?"

  I'd never heard Lucas like this. He must be angry. Really angry. All pretense of composure was gone from his voice leaving it cold and calculating. It sent a shiver of fear down my spine.

  "I'm just saying you might wanna think--"

  "I'm not paying you to think or to tell me what to think," Lucas said, cutting Zenigra off.

  "Sorry, Boss," Zenigra replied in his low rumbling voice. I could tell Lucas' words had stung him.

  "What bothers me," Lucas continued as if Zenigra hadn't spoken, "is the possibility that someone else knew who the runner was and was able to pick him off. Could be the competition. Could be the Feds. Though I pay the Feds enough to stay well enough away."

  "Yeh. But how?"

  "I don't know how. That's what bothers me. Where's the kid?"

  "Who? S--John?" Zenigra said, his deep voice faltering slightly.

  "Yes, John. You see any other kids running around costing me money on nanos and payoffs to the Doc?"

  "Uh, no."

  "So, where the hell is he?"

  "In the dorms I guess, that's where the rest of 'em are. Waiting fer the feast tonight."

  "I want you to bring him to me later."

  "Uh. Yeah. Sure Boss. Everything okay?"

  "Yeah, everything’s just fine. Just bring him to my hut after dinner."

  My heart started beating faster. Faster than after my two-mile sprint, as little as that meant. What did I have to do with any of this? Was Lucas just looking for someone to beat on that wasn't the size of a small house? Jesus, I hoped not.

  I heard the door to the hut being pulled open and I slid away from the wall and around to the back. As I was rounding the corner, I caught someone else ducking out of sight behind another hut about a hundred or so feet away. I wasn't sure if they were hiding from me, or from the person exiting the hut, who I assumed was Lucas. It was just the smallest of glimpses, but it was all I needed to know the identity of the other skulker.

  Piner.

  He must have followed me off the fields, he must have been watching me, maybe waiting for a moment to ambush me and give me the beating he'd been promising for two months. Now, he had something better. Information. He'd seen me eavesdropping on Zenigra's hut. It wouldn't have been enough to get me kicked off the plantation, as I could just say I was waiting for Zenigra and Lucas to be done talking so I could go and visit.

  Still, it was enough to make me look like exactly the kind of person that Piner had been painting me out to be. And if Lucas heard about it, I'd definitely be in for a beating tonight. Whatever Lucas and Zenigra's biz was, they sure as hell didn't want me knowing about it.

  Zenigra, whose openness and honesty I'd grown accustomed to since meeting him, hadn't mentioned anything that would have led me to believe he was involved with anything illegal. When Lucas had gotten Zenigra and me onto the plantation and hired Zenigra as his bodyguard, or whatever he was, I'd just assumed that Lucas was a partial owner of the plantation and that was why Jack put up with him.

 
Now it seemed like more than that was going on here. The way Lucas had spoken to Zenigra also pissed me off. Talking to him like he was an idiot. Like nothing he said could possibly be right. I began to understand what Zenigra must go through on a regular basis. This kind of thing was exactly why he'd left whatever gang he'd been running with.

  Why hadn't he just punched Lucas in the face? There was no way Lucas could ever beat Zenigra in a fight. Just no way. So why had he held back? Then, my anger changed to guilt as I realized he probably hadn't taught Lucas a lesson in manners. If he had, he'd have been fired, and if he was fired, there would be no reason for Jack to keep me on the plantation. Especially given that all the other workers hated my guts.

  I watched the spot where I'd seen Piner disappear for several minutes until Lucas must have been long gone, but I never saw him emerge from his hiding place. Finally, I gave it up as a bad job and began walking back to the dormitory. I wasn't in the mood to talk to Zenigra anymore. I'd gone to his hut hoping for answers and was now walking away with more questions.

  I whiled away the remaining hours in the tool shed. I tried to nap a few times but found my mind was too active for it. Different thoughts and scenarios were racing through my mind as to what Lucas was up to.

  What were these mysterious packages that he had been receiving? Something valuable. He had said as much himself. Was Zenigra just the muscle or was he involved in some other way? I worried about my friend. Lucas had mentioned the Feds. I knew from TV that the Feds meant the Federal Government. They didn't get involved in something unless it was big time. Or they could make a profit off of it.

  When eight o'clock rolled around, I found myself queuing up to enter the cafeteria with everyone else. The mood of the crowd was excited. Thanksgiving was one of the few holidays that got respect on a plantation. Jack had announced earlier that week that they were bringing in no less than 25 turkeys for this year's buffet. Turkey, plus all the fixings: gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, cooked onions, squash, and everything else you can imagine. He promised that no expense had been spared. There was even to be some wine, though he admitted the wine itself was going to be pretty cheap.