They are always hungry, and now is no different. The real trees, the thick ones with fanned branches and heavy leaves, are a long way from the school, but there are hours until breakfast. Gad knows how to find the nests, and Alan is a better climber. Once off school grounds, they start to talk. They are still a ways from the forest; none of the shrubs come past their kneecaps.
“Walk faster,” Alan tells him. All sorts of nonsense could slow Gad down: the cast of sunlight on a shiny rock, some strange colored spot on the desert floor. Sometimes Gad is like an unruly horse, but just a quick wave of the whip is all it takes to get him back on track.
“I was dreaming when you woke me,” Gad says. “All I remember is that it was really messed up. A fire, everyone running, screaming, I can’t remember. I don’t like to have dreams like that.”
Alan sighs. What could be more boring than the recounting of someone else’s dreams? The trail begins to fade, and they find themselves in a yellow meadow of dry grassland. “Maybe your dream was about next year,” he says.
“What about next year?” Gad asks.
“Exactly,” Alan says. The idea that he could kill a man feels fine to him. The fact that he might have to does not.
One of them steps on a twig. The crack gives a hard echo that spirals up into the fizzy sky. Two lizards chase each other over the smooth surface of a rock. Gad stops under a ponderosa pine. “Right there,” he points.
Looking up, Alan nods. He’s hungry, and he knows that the answer to his hunger is in this tree.
“Right there, on the third branch,” Gad says, gesturing with his finger.
When exactly they figured out that crow eggs tasted as good as the normal kind from a chicken, Alan can’t remember. In fact, crow eggs are even better, as lately, the eggs served in the dining hall are barely thawed and light green with syrupy yolk and tiny cracks twisting and snaking along the surface of the shell. As for the crow eggs, Gad and Alan sneak out early to find them and then steal to the kitchen late at night to scramble and salt the extra sustenance.
Alan follows Gad’s finger and spots the nest. From the ground, the nest is just a clump of sticks resting in a fork of branches, though Alan knows once he’s up top, that same haphazard bunch of sticks will reveal itself to be a grass-lined, deliberate structure. His stomach turns. I want those eggs, and I hate how much I want them, he thinks.
Even though he should have outgrown them, Alan still reads the Ricky X-P books when no one is watching. Ricky X-P has a guy in his ragtag gang of friends who challenges him for the top spot—a difficult situation for sure—but at least he can always pile a small mountain of butter atop each thick slice of freshly baked bread while he considers his next move. Ricky X-P does not have to eat anything he doesn’t want to. The distance of art from life is never fair.
The nest is almost at the top of the tree. Gad picks up a rock and makes a pile of several more in case the mother crow is around. Both the mother and father bird can attack, but it’s best, they’ve found, to take the mother out first. Once the mother has been killed, the father bird lets out a few dejected caws and gives up. Some father, they joke.
When Gad began calling them mother and father birds, a formless smirk had spread through Alan’s body, cackling throughout the entire trip. Such a sad-hearted attempt for his halfie friend to try and be more Group F–like.
With arms raised over his shoulders, Alan hugs the tree. Gad stands under his feet and pushes. Alan’s arms can’t wrap the entire trunk; if they were only a little longer, he’d be able to clasp them together. Not being able to lock his hands makes for a harder climb. Fingers wiggling and sliding, he looks for ridges in the bark to dig into for a better grip. Palms skyward, Gad pushes up hard against the thin rubber soles of Alan’s canvas work shoes. Alan’s shirt bunches up, and he feels the gentle scratch of the warm bark against his belly. Finally, feet now higher than Gad’s palms can reach, he begins a smooth, rhythmic motion that slides him up the tree. Small shrubs below disappear. Alan’s heart beats hard against the bark. Don’t look down, he reminds himself, but he does anyway, his stomach making a dizzying fist. Immediately, Alan drives his hips into the tree to make sure he’s balanced. Not that he’s ever fallen, but even so, being that high up isn’t the same as having two feet on the ground.
“Hey!” Gad calls up to him.
“Hey, yourself,” Alan shouts down. The top of Gad’s head is a tight pinhole on the forest floor. “Are we good on time?”
“I think so.”
Typical. Gad never knows what time it is. And yet nothing could be more important. If they are late, they’ll miss their breakfast of watery porridge and black bread, the replacement for Gad being a smack in the face from the fat fingers of the priest in charge of morning count, the replacement for Alan, who is already on probation, much more severe.
As Alan nears the top of the tree, he transfers one hand to the extended branch where the nest is. With his legs and arm still wrapped around the trunk, he uses his free hand to pull down on the branch, a test of its strength. The branch isn’t wide enough for him to crawl on. He will have to hang, to dangle his feet over the forest floor, to shuffle his hands, one over the other, until he’s under the nest. Then he’ll hold himself up with one hand and reach with the other, moving it around blindly until he grasps an egg.
Once Alan has the eggs—there are usually four or five—he’ll drop one at a time down to Gad. Sometimes Gad will be in the middle of throwing rocks at the mother and father crows. Before Alan drops each egg, he shouts down a warning. How he does it, Alan isn’t sure, but Gad always catches them. Gad has soft hands and uses the momentum of the egg in a way that cushions each one from the long fall. There’s a satisfaction in the teamwork of it all, but not that much. Hand crossed over hand, Alan inches out on the branch until he is directly below the nest. His shoulders ache, but the pathetic pangs of his stomach burn stronger. The wood of the branch gives a groan and a creak. Alan watches his feet float above the moist forest floor, his black canvas work shoes standing out against the thick tangle of ferns and ivy. A harsh caw aims at him from somewhere he can’t see. The crows are near. But then, another sound, a voice.
“Hey!”
Alan looks down at Gad, who looks right back up at him. Neither has spoken. A downward bend in the wood tells Alan to move fast, that he can only hang from the branch for so long. Already there is a bite in his shoulders, a burn and a sting. There isn’t much time.
“Hey!”
The immaculate tone is unmistakable. This voice belongs to a woman.
Again Alan swings his head downward so he can see Gad, who lifts his shoulders and shrugs. Dangling in one place for too long isn’t a good idea; the sag of the branch is starting to seem threatening. With his weight held by one arm, Alan reaches into the nest, feeling around for an egg. His fingers close gently around a shell. There is a squawk and a rustle, and a rock whizzes by his ear followed by two or three strong, short calls.
“There’s two there!” Alan yells down to Gad. “Mother and a father.” He drops the egg. He knows Gad will catch it. More rocks, more screeches.
“I said hey!” yells a woman’s voice again. Alan can’t see a woman anywhere. The branch creaks some more. So far, they only have one egg. One isn’t enough. Alan reaches for another, and this time he hears the distinctive sound: a quick squeal like a human baby followed by a grand and definitive thump below. Gad has killed one of the crows, hopefully the mother. Between the blades of Alan’s shoulders, quick, hot spasms gallop ribbons of vibration through every part of his body. The other bird lets out one bitter, sharp caw before descending into a slow, mournful keen. Yes, they have definitely killed the mother.
Alan drops another egg down to Gad. Two eggs so far. Still not enough. Both arms ache, and the narrow branch keeps up its moaning, insulted that he’s taking so long.
“Stop right now, you two!”
Alan looks down and sees a Majority Group woman with wild, bushy hair. The blue
stones on her fingers stand out against the browns and greens around her, even from on high. Whatever she wants doesn’t matter, because Alan can’t hold himself up much longer. The spasms in his back march forward; he reaches for another egg.
“What are you doing?” Alan shoots his eyes downward just in time to see the Majority Group lady kick over Gad’s pile of rocks. Whoever this woman is, Alan would never allow someone to kick over his pile of rocks. He wants to make his way back down, to give this lady a shove and tell her to get the hell out of here. But first, he must grab more eggs.
The branch above Alan lets out a short snap. He feels a quick, dropping sensation, but only for a moment before bouncing up again. Though the branch might be strong enough to hold him, he is not sure if he is strong enough to hold the branch. Time is up. Two eggs it is. Alan swims his way toward the base of the tree, hand over hand, as quickly as he can. Grunts below him, some from the Majority lady, some from Gad. He makes it to the trunk, heart whipping around his chest.
Below, the strange lady is spitting and sputtering in Gad’s direction. Alan begins his descent, his skin scraping the bark, folding and falling against the trunk in his desperation to reach the ground as soon as possible. The tops of Gad’s and the Majority Group lady’s heads become larger, closer. She is shaking a finger, one hand on her hip. As Alan caterpillars down, he spots a black pile on the forest floor. It’s the mother bird, dead and still, its mothlike eyes cold and eerie.
“What the hell do you guys think you’re doing?” the wild-haired Majority Group lady is yelling at Gad. “This isn’t the way you’re supposed to do things.”
Alan sets both feet on the ground. “Who the hell are you?”
“Yeah!” says Gad. “Who are you?”
Typical, Alan thinks, for a halfie to only become emboldened once the numbers are on his side.
For a long while, they stand on the forest floor: Gad, the pile of rocks, Alan, the dead crow, and the Majority Group lady. No one moves, but the Majority Group lady’s eyes call out fiercely; her face is damp with fresh dirt, and her lips are in silent motion. Alan sees that the Majority Group lady is building up, that she has waited for this moment.
“Now what did you go and do that for?” she says finally, pointing to the mother bird at their feet. “Why would you do that?”
The crow lies on the forest floor, its pathetic feathers scattered in a circle around them. A mess of red organs spills from its belly.
“So we could get these.” Gad holds up the two eggs Alan dropped down to him. A wide grin stretches across his face.
Ridiculous. Why is he smiling? Two is never enough. “Don’t answer her questions until she answers ours,” Alan says to him. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the forest?”
The Majority Group woman pinches her earlobe. “Exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. You two are Homeland Indigenous, right? You go to that school?”
They nod.
“Wait, watch this. Let me guess.” She turns to Alan, a finger pointed inches from his forehead. “Indigenous Group K.”
He shakes his head.
“P, then. You absolutely must be Group P. Your eyelids scream P.”
A few blinks and Alan tells her no, he is not Group P.
“Q? Are you Q?”
Qs are in Eastern Sector, four thousand distance-units away. This woman is nuts.
“Either way,” she says, rubbing her hands together as though a faucet is just above them. “You two go to that school.”
A raw stench floats up from the bird. The shafts in the crow’s wing jut out at terrible angles, and Alan watches as the appalling recognition of the stink appears on the woman’s face.
“That’s why I’m here,” she says. “They won’t let me get too close to campus, but I know all about you.” She shakes her head. “You guys don’t know anything.” Her knuckles are huge; her eyes are sore and overly exerted. “What I’m thinking is you two don’t know what’s what. If you did, you wouldn’t be killing crows with rocks. You don’t have to do that.”
“But we do have to,” Gad says. “School food is all old and rotten.”
Alan wishes Gad would stop justifying himself to this stranger. There’s a disgusting bubbling sound, and a viscous purple ooze pours from the dead crow.
“Listen,” the Majority Group lady says, “you’re Homeland Indigenous. I can see that. But what about you?” She points at Gad.
“Group F,” Gad says. “The both of us.”
Ridiculous. The sad, squirming fact is that Gad seems ready to answer any questions this stranger has. Still, the rage in Alan’s chest is slipping away. Sure, he wants answers from the eccentric in front of him, but he knows that with some people it’s best to let them chatter on about their topic of choice until the sound of their own voice exhausts them. Clearly, the Majority Group lady in front of them is one of those people.
“Really?” the Majority Group lady says. “You’re Group F?” She points to Gad, who nods and looks at his feet. “How about that? I wouldn’t have suspected.”
“It’s true,” Alan says. He notices the feathers on the crow’s neck are grey, unlike the deep blackness slathered on every other part of its body. Usually Alan and Gad don’t stick around and stare at the crows they’ve killed.
“See that bush right there?” the woman says, pointing to a rounded shrub with dark green leaves about five feet away.
“Which one?” Gad asks. “That one with the hairy flowers?”
“Yeah, that one right there with the spiked purple dome-heads. Like an alien spacecraft, come to visit us and parked in our forest.”
They shrug. “What about it?”
“You guys know what that is?”
“No,” Gad says. “What is it?”
Alan crosses his arms, disgusted that Gad plays her game so willingly.
“See, that’s the killer!” The Majority Group lady rises to her tiptoes, her voice escalating along with her height. “They don’t even let you know about those things. For all you know, that could be some amazing breakfast, some scrumptious dessert. This is your environment. And that’s part of it, you know? Your parents, or grandparents, or ancestors, maybe they were snacking on those leaves left and right till the Homeland probably tried to murder them or something. But you guys don’t know, you know?” She places her hands on her hips, her tone lower now. “But what I’m here to tell you is that you do know. That is, you know it, you just don’t know you know it. But it’s in your blood, your hearts. There’s no need to go around tossing rocks at crows. You’ve got a whole salad right beneath your feet and a recipe book stranded in the outer reaches of your brains.”
Alan considers telling the lady that the last time he saw his grandmother, she stood behind a thick door and warned him of the dangers and pain coming to the School would bring upon him and his family. Never had she said anything about eating plants or bushes. And he could go on, he thinks, to let this Majority Group lady know that when it comes to snacking, his parents prefer cold cuts and dips to spiked bushes specked with dirt. But no, he remembers. Let this lady go on about bushes and crows and recipe books. The more she talks, he decides, the more she will reveal. There has to be something.
“You Homeland Indigenous kids,” the Majority Group lady says, “you’re all so far apart. My thing is to make sure you all know about each other, help connect you guys together in the struggle. I started out in Western City North, but right now I’m coming from another school just like yours. You guys ever been to W?”
They shake their heads.
“So I was passing by a school there, and those kids, Group F kids—”
“Group F?” says Gad.
“Maybe not F. Right, you’re F. Whatever. These Homeland Indigenous kids I met, those kids are in the know, let me tell you. They put out an underground newspaper, broke into their equipment room and flipped it, right? Printed their own stuff. I know what you’re thinking: there’s a million underground papers. Two million
probably. What’s one more?”
Alan is not thinking this at all, but the woman continues, her buzzing words leaving the thinnest of odor trails, guiding them to new locations.
“Real truth perversion goes down there—you guys can probably understand. So these kids, they took control and cranked out some real strong words, you know? They told the truth in that paper. Talked about the quotas, too. Does that kind of thing go on here?”
“Truth telling?” Gad says.
“Truth perversion?” Alan tries to clarify. “Quotas for what?”
“Don’t you know that all Homeland Indigenous get the worst assignments? There are different rules for you guys. Resistance isn’t the same for Majority Groupers. At least they have the chance to get some sort of desk job.”
“I saw on the news the other day that some woman from parliament was talking about how she’s going to meet with the prime minister and convince him to draw down,” Gad says. “Lower troop levels, gradually end this thing.”
Alan stares at him. When did Gad ever watch the news?
The woman’s wide eyes flicker. “Ridiculous. That’s one of those Coyotes. All words, no action. They’ll probably get ten guys sent home and call it a victory. But forget that. Do you guys know how old the prime minister is?”
“Ninety-something.”
“That’s right. And I won’t even get into Fareon, though you Homeland Indigenous should be paying attention to that, too.”
Alan makes a mental note to look up “Coyotes” and “Fareon” the next time he’s in the library. His body feels rigid. He wants more information from this woman, but does not want to ask for it. Never again, he promises himself, will he be the one who knows less.
“Enough about Fareon,” the Majority Group lady says. “You guys hip to HIM?”
“Who?”
“HIM. Tell me you know about HIM.” She fixes her stare on both of them.
This Is the Night Page 10
