This Is the Night

by Jonah C. Sirott

  Safely in his seat, Alan allows himself a moment to feel. Whatever was awakened within him by lighting the fire only became more enlivened by slashing the tires of the Registry bus. If only there had been someone to admire his work! But Gad was weak, too convinced by a sense that the Registry was inevitable—that must have been it. Without a model for another way of life, he had simply jumped back to his old one. So sad. That path of his would lead nowhere. A jolt in the road as the bus runs through a pothole, and the thought strikes him: Will Gad allow him a path of his own?

  There are a thousand ways in which he is not safe. All of the other passengers on the bus are women. But women might be Reggies just as often as men. He considers the blunt possibility that Gad might have told people, alerted some team of agents in a windowless room that Alan will be arriving in Western City North as a Registry-runner with an intent toward arson, and that all of these innocent-looking women are just waiting for the right moment to spring up from a reclined seat and wrap their hands around his throat.

  The roads are now open. Policemen, Registry agents, whoever they send after rogue Homeland Indigenous who burn their schools down and run toward a second taste, anybody could be coming for him. But not because of Gad. How can he think that? Gad, he decides, would not betray him. And even if he did, so what? He had not been caught for the fire, had not been spotted as he let the air out of the tires of the Registry bus. In the pale light of the rising sun, it comes to Alan that he might actually be good at something.

  Unclear on when he last slept, Alan’s tiredness forces a protective clarity he has never known. His dried-out eyeballs make high-pitched clinks every time he blinks. I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done, he thinks, only that my best friend might have told someone I’ve done it.

  “Last stop,” the driver announces. “Downtown. Western City North.”

  Alan reaches into his bag, pushing aside his beloved hunting knife, gliding over his one pair of socks, before finally coming to rest on the zippered pouch from his father. The industrial matches are still there. With grace and tenderness he slides his fingers over them. It’s time to burn down the induction center.

  Downtown Western City North: people everywhere. Older men in suits rushing to get to wherever they have to go, women with high-heeled shoes clicking across the street. Even the air seems different—Alan can feel the salt and smell the water. No agents or policemen greet him; either Gad has not snitched or the authorities are unable to find him. Both scenarios are entirely possible.

  The ocean wraps around this place—he’s seen the map—but now he truly understands what it means to be a peninsular city. Wet air slurs around Alan’s face. His stride is a breaststroke that breaks apart the little wet particles floating all around him. The buildings are taller than any he has ever seen.

  How to begin, where to start? Briefly, he wishes he had made a pitch for Terry to join him. She had said she knew the city. But would she have supported his cause? Like Gad, she was not full-on Homeland Indigenous. And like Gad, she is not here with him.

  He comforts himself with future accolades. Once he has committed his magnificent act, he will find the baldheads and get an introduction to HIM. Perhaps he will even be fast-tracked to a leadership position. Obviously he will have to strike during nighttime; that is a given. And of course he’ll have to find the place first, watch the security comings and goings. Surely there will be other necessary reconnaissance, from determining the induction center’s primary materials (the best burns can never be one size fits all) to more basic concerns such as escape routes and getaway plans. A young woman standing on the sidewalk hands him a free newspaper. First Tuesday, the paper tells him, is this evening, the biggest induction day of the month. Alan wonders whether he can fast-track his plan.

  Still, there are other, more pressing needs. First food, then sleep. He has not eaten since sharing a loaf of bread with Gad the night before.

  Peeking through the tall buildings, he sees the ocean. Finally he has reached the edge. No more civilization until some alien country thousands of distance-units away. A strange shoulder collides into him.

  “Watch where you’re going!” the shoulder yells. It’s true; he can’t look at the expanse of water and the people in front of him at the same time.

  Yellow sodium lamps are lit up even though it’s daytime. It could be that Western City North is immune from blackouts, he thinks, and that in this magical city the lights stay on every hour of the day. Trolleys and buses roll down the street, shiny black antennas sticking up from their backsides, crackling and dragging on overhead wires. Does a grid of wires web the entire city? And what about the blackouts? Do these wires somehow circumvent the lack of electricity in the Homeland? But no matter, an instinct of food propels him forward, directs each turn he makes. The overhead wires follow him everywhere he goes. Maybe he judged Gad too harshly; they had somehow just gotten separated, and amid the chaos they will run into each other on the streets of Western City North and embrace like old friends.

  Down the street, a police officer with a wide gap between her two front teeth smiles and heads toward him. I am her prey, Alan thinks. This officer has spotted him, exiled and alone in her exotic world, and she is laughing with the knowledge that her brutal coworkers will soon hop from behind corners to cuff and detain him. For kids soaked in evil, for uppity Homeland Indigenous who burn down the precious facilities we provide for them, the cop’s face says. At any moment, she will signal the others. But she doesn’t, instead passing Alan with a bouncing-ball step. Calm down, Alan tells himself. Relax.

  At the end of the block is a gleaming bronze statue, a glowing beacon that pulls Alan in, mothlike, toward its shining metal plates. The statue is a mess, a tangle of metal men pulling hard on a humongous punch press, each sinewy man wrestling with the lever. Even working together it seems doubtful they could operate the thing, and Alan wonders why this strange city wants to memorialize their failure. Even so, it’s a beautiful statue, larger and shinier than any he has seen before. A man in a ragged vest sits on the plinth of the statue, directly below the bronzed action. He has one arm, small bruises around his eyes, and has surrounded himself with large piles of newspapers.

  “I am much unappreciated,” he tells Alan. The man smiles, and Alan can see he only has a handful of teeth.

  “Sorry,” Alan says, meaning it. “Do you know where I can get something to eat?”

  He does, but first, he says, allow me a quick story. From under the punch press statue, the man explains that he has waited his entire life for the Young Savior to take notice of him and help him out. But the Young Savior, it seems, is distracted, preoccupied, tied up in handling His other affairs. Food? he says. Of course he can tell Alan where to get food, he snorts. That’s not the point. It’s bigger than food. A request, the man says. He sees that Alan is young, and could he please wait his turn for the Young Savior’s help, as he himself has been waiting, he explains, a long, long time, a situation in which it is only fair that he should get to go first. Not to eat—Alan doesn’t have to wait for that, the man is quick to say—but for the bigger stuff, the true favors from on high. “The things I saw in the jungle,” the man says before trailing off. “If you have any manners at all, you won’t cut me in line.”

  “But where’s that food?” Alan asks again. The man points him toward a church.

  The church is clearly an offshoot, its congregants and clergy not adherents of Homeland Religion proper, but whatever denomination it is, Alan doesn’t pay attention and heads straight toward the line of pensive-looking men awaiting their peanut butter and white bread sandwiches. Most of the men are vets, but a few of them are healthy. Snatches of their conversation float through. “My last day of freedom,” one says. First Tuesdays are the worst days.

  Alan considers asking any of these men whether the quotas are real, a second opinion on whether all Homeland Indigenous men really do have to serve, but save for a couple of Minority Group Cs, this hungry knot of men
around him are all Majority Group. Though they might have an answer, Alan knows that to most Majority Groupers, the problems of Homeland Indigenous are nearly invisible.

  Instead, he asks a morose man with a severe gash between his eyebrows where he might find a safe place to take a nap and whether he knows who the baldheads are. The man tells him about a park a few blocks away with plenty of benches and minimal harassment. “Don’t know what you want with those baldheads,” the man says. “They just play games. They’re not going to help you.”

  Alan thanks the man and moves on. It’s been too long since he’s slept, and his feet drag against the pavement. It seems impossible that happiness has ever bothered to come his way, so he tries to remind himself that he has lived a life in which good things have come to him and that he is on a journey, a quest to do something important. Even so, his lack of sleep colors everything.

  Each sight his eyes fall on is sick: the dirty toddler running naked while his scarred and hobbled father tosses wood chips at a pigeon—sick. A bald man in a wheelchair with a thick mustache and matchstick legs mumbling to himself, insanity on wheels. Sick. At least he can see the park now. It’s true: there are plenty of benches. As the sun lowers into the clouds, a deep, coppery light covers the world around him. Spotting an empty bench, Alan puts his bag under his head and uses it as a pillow. His bent eyes push themselves closed. Within moments, he is asleep. Soon Gad comes to him, calm and forgiving, and they develop a true plan, a direction.

  “Hey,” a voice says. (Name and Address of Person Who Will Always Know Your Address.) We could find each other, Alan thinks. I could explain. “Hey,” repeats the voice.

  Gad has found him.

  But the voice isn’t Gad’s. Alan looks up and squints into the morning sun. However long he has slept, it doesn’t seem to have been enough. A man is speaking, telling him that where he’s sleeping isn’t a good place to sleep.

  “A young guy like you? Alone on a First Tuesday?” the man says. “Might as well just go report for duty.”

  The man has gold crowns in his mouth that wink when he talks. He is also missing one arm. On closer inspection, the man’s furry voice sounds nothing like Gad. Is the sound of his closest friend already fading?

  “But I don’t have a good place to sleep,” Alan says. He blinks the sun out of his eyes.

  “Well, I can get you a meal.”

  The man, Alan sees, is bald.

  “A kid who doesn’t have a good place to sleep could probably use a meal,” the bald man says. “But first, you have to play a game.”

  “A game?” Alan says. A shuddering joy comes over him. Though he knows his path is a long one, it seems that he has stumbled upon the trailhead. Perhaps the rubber slice of Registry bus could serve as the sincerity of his intentions. Maybe he doesn’t have to burn down the induction center tonight after all.

  “Come take a ride,” the baldhead says. It is as though the man is reading a script from his pamphlets. Everything is how it should be. “Get ready for the most important game of your life.”

  Let the journey begin.

  30.

  Benny woke up shivering, the cold sun drilling holes in his eyelids. He had slept, it seemed, from the afternoon of one day to the morning of the next. A thin film of dew had wrapped itself around him while he slept. Hours on the bench had made him stiff, though the thought of making his way toward the induction center offered up a much worse feeling. First Tuesdays are the worst days. At least he had till sundown.

  Sitting up, he could see that his bench was not the only one in the park that had been slept on. Other men around him slowly groaned to life, pushing off the wet morning as best they could.

  As his stomach spun, Benny thought of Joe. How had he spent his nights up there in the mountains? Hopefully Joe had been smart enough to somehow break into the cabin. One Thousand and One Ways to Beat the Registry was still on the grass, dried and caked with bile, pages stuck and mashed together. If his throat could have handled it, Benny would have coughed up some more, just to punish that book filled with words all pointed in the wrong direction.

  There was, Benny thought, nothing to intercept Joe with if he showed up at the induction center, nothing to save either of them. A one-armed man with a shaved head and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses moved into Benny’s line of sight. People in this city just couldn’t leave each other alone.

  “I don’t need it,” Benny said.

  “What don’t you need?”

  “Whatever your angle is.”

  “Fair enough. We don’t need you, either.” The man sidestepped the vomit-caked book and sat down on the bench.

  Benny turned to look at him. “Does whatever you have that doesn’t need me have a meal somewhere in it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay.”

  “But if you want the meal, you’re going to have to play a game.” The gold crowns flashed again. The man seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “What kind of game?”

  “The most important game of your life.”

  “Look, I just want something to eat, okay? I’ll listen to whatever you say, but I have to be somewhere important by sundown.”

  “First Tuesday, eh? That’s nothing compared to the Joust. First day of the rest of your life, brother.”

  “That’s the game? The Joust?”

  “You got it.”

  “Meal first?”

  “On my word.” He placed his hand to his chest.

  The man led Benny to the edge of the park, where a large van idled on the street. Inside were two other men with shaved heads—one of them definitely Registry age, a situation that immediately tensed Benny up—alongside a bald woman and three other guys with hair who seemed to have also been sleeping in the park. The youngest—even younger than me, Benny thought—looked to be worse off than any of them. Bags under his eyes and a nervous look on his face, this kid was Minority Group L, Benny thought, or maybe even Homeland Indigenous, but definitely tired, hungry, and new to the city. As the van pulled out into the street, the kid’s eyes, though hemmed-in and hungry, clamored to take in as much of the city as his weakened state would allow.

  “Now right there”—Benny pointed to the kid, eager to act as tour guide—“that’s the island just off the coast where—”

  “Wow,” the driver said, turning around to interrupt. “You guys smell like corpses.”

  Who the hell was this bald-kid driver to talk to him like that? And on a First Tuesday? Benny would have swung an axe right through his neck if the situation had allowed for it. That his last day of freedom should have to be spent cadging free food from strangers was a hollow truth that the driver’s smug words seemed to magnify. What about good-byes to friends, to parents? But again, he still had till sundown. If he could just get a good meal, his mind might clear a bit and he’d be able to think. “Now where was I?” Benny cleared his throat and pointed out a few more landmarks to the possibly Indigenous kid. No one brought up the fact that it was First Tuesday, but everyone was well aware that a good chunk of the populace was due to report. Even those who had never interacted with the Registry knew how the last day of freedom worked. Show up by six p.m. or else.

  Through the window, Benny looked at the pedestrians—women mostly—their faces cracked with grief as they went about their day. First Tuesdays made it even worse, he knew, even if their men were long gone. All it took was the pain of another to be reminded of their own misery.

  A few more turns and Benny saw the van was headed into the northern part of the city. They drove uphill, past high fences shielding the large homes of the sort of folks who wouldn’t think twice about calling the Point Line on some wildhair wandering their streets. Not like the rusty quadrants surrounding the induction center. Today the place would be packed, and for a brief moment he worried about finding Joe once he got there. A quick meal from these baldheads and then he would duck over to look for him. The timing shouldn’t be hard; if he knew his oldest friend, Joe would have
made the decision not to run and would wait for him outside the center, even if it meant walking in just as the blaze of the sun lowered below the horizon. They would find each other, and Benny would tell Joe he was sorry for demanding he follow and then leading him straight to nowhere. Not that an apology would do either of them any good in the jungle.

  Benny turned to the possibly Indigenous kid next to him. “So what are you here for?”

  The kid frowned. “A meal, just like you.”

  “No, I mean, why were you sleeping in the park?”

  “Why were you sleeping in the park?”

  Fine, so the kid didn’t want to talk. Probably had to be at the Registry by six himself. The van drove on. The driver wavered the knob of the radio, pausing for a moment on a tearful ballad. Just as the song reached its highest, most impassioned state, the driver shifted the station. Even though Benny still hated the guy for calling him smelly, he couldn’t blame him for the switch. Sometimes turning off a piece of yourself was the only way to get through the day.

  Now, a news station: At a press conference on the steps of the highest lawmaking assembly in the Homeland, an announcer intoned, four more legislators announced that they would now caucus with the Coyo—

  Again the driver twisted the knob.

  “Hey!” said Benny. “I wanted to hear that.”

  “Like four more make a difference,” the driver said.

  The other baldheads laughed, as did a few of the park dwellers. All of them but the possibly Indigenous kid.

  31.

  These baldheads are strange, Alan thinks. But whoever they are, the baldheads are also, he knows, outside the main lines of communication, downwind from the visible. And below it all is where he needs to be. The van speeds onward, past manicured bushes and verdant lawns, the houses themselves mysteriously hidden.