This Is the Night

by Jonah C. Sirott

  Lance knew his fists were out of practice and that as a new resident of Prison Complex J, he had arrived at a period in his life in which the ability to fast-track his rusty skills into usefulness was surely in his best interest. No sooner had he prepared for his first fight with the man whose earlobe he had tasted than he saw that man pop a guard in the face—a punch that sent an immediate geyser of blood into the air and was later said to have broken the guard’s nose in two places. Dragged by his ankles to some interior chamber of the prison, Lance never saw again the man whose earlobe he had tasted.

  Though the man with the salty earlobe was gone, there were all too many men entirely. Lance’s thoughts were dirty and rotten. Brushes and paints were not allowed, but charcoal pencils and paper were made available to him, and so he drew. Lance drew pictures of women with huge breasts and blurry faces, he drew pointed breasts, meager breasts, breasts that were round and full, breasts with puffy stretch marks on their sides, textured breasts, breasts shaped like teardrops, athletic breasts, swooping, sagging, and tubular breasts, nice breasts, mean breasts, apathetic breasts, and before long, his fellow inmates took notice. Lance began to barter, primarily with an Eastern Sector breast aficionado two cells over who brewed a briny hooch from pilfered yeast rolls sneaked from the dining hall in balled-up napkins.

  One day he brought the bootlegger his latest work.

  “No good,” the bootlegger said, shaking his head. They were in the yard, their one allotted cell-free hour in the sunlight.

  “Why?” Lance asked.

  “Sicker,” the bootlegger said. “Draw me something sicker.”

  Lance returned to his cell and began to draw. He realized that it was not just the bootlegger who wanted a new level of vulgarity in his work. Without paints, he could not embark on his grand project, and so his project was forced to change. From his pen emerged women, bodies, really, women crouched on their elbows, asses in the air, and other women, legs stretched so far back their toes tickled their earlobes. He felt no need to add faces.

  The small cell was crowded with men, all of whom agreed that Lance should have the worst bunk, his feet nearly pressed against the cool metal of the seatless toilet. Each time someone went to the bathroom, Lance was forced to hug his knees.

  Though he was not invited to participate, the men in his cell talked. Some recent attack on the Homeland was the worst ever, a higher body count than the last ten attacks combined. Word around the prison was that after an initial volley of speeches blaming the Coyotes, the prime minister was laying unusually low. Health problems, people said. But then again, people had been wishing health problems on the prime minister ever since he turned eighty. The man was ninety-six years old.

  On day three, the library cart came around, pushed by a casually dressed young woman with uneven eyes—a volunteer, most likely—who treated the resisters with an extra dose of guilt and admiration.

  “Don’t you want something to help you pass the time?” she asked Lance with a nervous smile. “We’ve got tons of books. No newspapers, though.” Lance shook his head. What, he asked himself, would he want to read for?

  The woman smiled and pushed her cart toward the next cell of men.

  Before the bugs, Lance remembered Lorrie reading one of her Foreign books to him, looking up at him and quoting out loud: As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. Here in his cell the words finally seemed right. He didn’t trust anybody, not the guards who couldn’t help but slam him against the solid steel bars to clear a bad mood, not the longtime convicts who looked at him with disgust because their service in the timid early years of the war was still fresh for them, and certainly not himself. He had given Lorrie bugs, small creatures that had turned into something else and driven her crazy. When confronted with her eroding mind and body, he had responded with fists. That was what mattered; the rest of his life was just a distraction.

  The next day, the woman with the library cart came around again. “You got any Foreigns?” Lance asked.

  “New assignment,” the guard told him in the morning. “Facilities.”

  “Is that kitchen duty?”

  “Nope,” she said. “The warden put you with a suit. A big shot. Arranges the furniture, chooses the lamps, I don’t know.”

  Escorted by the guard, Lance passed three checkpoints. Watchwomen from the towers kept their rifles by their sides, glaring down from above. He was frisked twice. The administrative area of Prison Complex J was new to him. In the hallway were large portraits of the elderly prime minister looking young and the Young Savior looking even younger.

  “Kid,” the guard said. “Meet your new boss.”

  The man was circular: little stick legs poked out from a round chest. Large bags swallowed most of his eyes, and the buttons on his shirt strained against the strength of his stomach. On his desk was a bowl of fresh strawberries, their long, wedged shape so distant that Lance could not recall the experience of ever having eaten one.

  “Good to meet you,” he said. “And glad to have you.” He put his hand out for Lance to shake.

  As if I have a choice, Lance thought. The hand hung in the air.

  “I’m Mr. Dorton, son. What should I call you? Help yourself to a strawberry.”

  38.

  Benny Dorton knew his role. The tall man had explained the function he was expected to serve in a violent and threatening manner on the ride over to the induction center: Sit on that bench. Wait until six; the sun will set, and they’ll open the doors. When the first recruit is about to step over the threshold, flash the signal. “Oh, and one more thing,” the tall man had whispered. “Do anything different and we shoot the Indigenous kid right between the eyes.”

  Could these baldheads really have rigged the whole place to blow? Wasn’t the induction center smothered in security? Still, the intentions of the baldheads did have their own mangled logic. If visibility was what they wanted, now was certainly the time to strike. On a First Tuesday, everyone would be at the center: print, television, and radio reporters, sobbing mothers, bitter protestors, and, of course, the inductees themselves.

  Now Benny sat on a bench across the street from the induction center, the spectacle unfolding before him. He had expected more from the actual building that wanted to take him. It was an unassuming twelve-story box, tiny compared to the compound he had conceived of as having a city block all to itself. The air grew cooler as the sun settled lower in the sky, the colors around him increasing in volume along with the number of protestors. Half the city, it seemed, had gathered in front of the building.

  Benny was having trouble keeping his knees from visibly shaking. Why not find the first official-looking person he could and shout a warning? But the tall man had made it clear: “You can’t see us,” he had whispered, “but we can see you.” So Benny stayed put on the bench. Though the baldheads could keep him sitting, they could not control his eyes. And so, in the slowly dying light, he scanned the crowd for Joe.

  Overhead, the streetlights flickered on, brightening the faces of the arriving inductees. Were all these men destined to die? Was he one of them? It was 5:50. Ten minutes to go.

  A group of protestors to his left began to organize.

  “Circle up!” said one.

  They walked counterclockwise, chanting and high-stepping at each other’s backs. A young woman in tight jeans and a denim shirt approached what seemed to be the leader. “I’ve got a class in a half hour,” she said, shoulders shrugging. “It’s a lab. I can’t miss it.” The protestors in front and behind her moved forward and back to close the gap; in a moment, Benny would have never known she had been there at all.

  His eyes swept the crowd for Joe. What kind of decision could he have made without him?

  “Hey, brother. A moment of your time?” The man speaking had feminine lashes, long and straight and the color of coal. A bright blue book was tucked below his armpit.

  “Go away!” Benny hissed. He did not want the baldheads in the van, wherever
it was, to think he was snitching. The man’s simple approach could mean the Indigenous kid’s brain might now be splattered across the fabric of the van.

  The curly-haired man had a joyful weariness to him. “I just wanted to let you know that whether you are going in there or you aren’t, it doesn’t matter. The Young Savior loves you either way.”

  “Just leave,” Benny said, pleading. “Just get out of—”

  Before he could finish, a series of yellow lights clicked on, bathing the crowd in a heavy shine. Immediately the male protestors began to scatter. Just before six, and the news cameras had arrived. None of the eligible protestors wanted their faces filmed for fear of being seen and reported to the Point Line. The curly-haired stranger shrugged at Benny’s lost soul and headed into the crowd. As the remaining group of protestors—all of them women—took up another chant, a new sound cut through the clamor. Benny could hear it clearly: a voice, not just any voice, but a specific voice that possessed a particular sonic quality and could only mean one thing. From deep within, he screamed with pleasure. He knew the sound of that voice; he had known it all his life.

  39.

  In the kitchen, Mr. Dorton hears the dragging sounds of his wife’s tears. He goes to her, caresses the back of her neck. His wife takes a deep, muscular breath, but is unable to stop crying. “He just needs some time is all,” Mr. Dorton tells her. He takes a large gulp of coffee. “He’s strong.”

  Mr. Dorton kneads his wife’s shoulders and thinks of the boy who works for him at the prison. A handsome kid, nice eyes, somewhere around Benny’s or Daniel’s age. Clearly a dodger, though the boy addresses him respectfully and sees his assigned tasks through in a quiet and capable manner. A thoughtful boy. Mr. Dorton has seen him reading during breaks, more than he can say for most of the prisoners. Still, the boy had shirked, run away from courage, not toward it. Who could ever understand that? A rusty sob escapes from deep within his wife. He realizes she is still crying. “He’ll come out soon,” he assures her. “Daniel is strong, I told you. He just needs some time.” But his words are not working. Soft and swollen tears continue to fall from her face.

  “Benny,” she sobs. “Where can Benny be?”

  A rage pours through him. A ceramic mug shatters against the wall, thrown, he sees, by his mottled right hand, which is now popping with thin, swollen veins. Brown streaks of coffee slide down the wall. “Our Homeland-decorated son has locked himself upstairs and all you care about is our dodger?” screams Mr. Dorton. “Daniel saw some truly messed-up things in that damn jungle, but no, your thoughts are with our youngest—a boy who, pardon me, doesn’t give two shits about helping out the country that gave him everything. No, by all means, keep your thoughts on the son of ours who won’t even call his parents to let them know he’s alive, doesn’t even bother to find out whether his brother made it back from the jungle. I’m the one who has to walk everywhere in town, to go to work with the stain of a dodger on my back. Me! That’s the boy you care about?”

  He screams more, cursing the Young Savior, dousing his name in gasoline, stomping it in mud. He understands that the screams are upsetting his wife, but he finds that he cannot stop, that he is falling in love with his anger at the unfairness of it all, and so he lets the rage course through him, curling his fingers until his thumb rests tightly between his middle and ring fingers, a clenched fist, he realizes, the perfect shape and posture for striking. He chooses the wall closest to him. For a brief, peaceful moment, he is released from the knowledge that his family is falling apart.

  The impact to the plaster is minimal, but moments later, the pain makes its entrance: sharp, stabbing streaks flitting from fist to elbow, a hurt that Mr. Dorton does his best to ignore. A thin river of blood flows over his knuckles.

  Sally Dorton runs upstairs and slams their bedroom door. Another room, Mr. Dorton thinks, that he can no longer enter.

  His oldest son has disappeared into his childhood room. His youngest son has vanished into the murk of Western City North, a place probably only a smidgen friendlier to a faithful Homeland citizen like himself, Mr. Dorton thinks, than the jungles in which Homeland boys were being picked off one at a time like ring-necked pheasants. The country he loves is not doing well.

  That morning’s papers had told him all he needed to know: the metabolic machinery of the Coyotes is at full throttle. Each day their numbers grow as some new cowardly legislator announces he or she has joined up with the other spineless lawmakers. And the man who the Young Savior–fearing citizens of the nation have put their trust in, who allowed decades of war to pass like a dream, the man whose moon-bright vision is the only one that can extract them from the quagmire, the man who designed the plans, has missed yet another of his weekly radio addresses.

  Daniel is upstairs and empty. Benjamin is nowhere. The gripping quiet of his own house is choking him. Darting up the stairs, Mr. Dorton bangs on his oldest son’s door, his fingers swelling rapidly. He has not spoken to Daniel since his son’s violent show of emotion the other night.

  “I need to talk to you!” he cries. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  From the other side of the door, silence. The wind whirls outside, vibrating the glass of the windows. As Mr. Dorton turns to walk away, he hears the gentle skid of paper being slid over the threshold and under the sweep. His knees gripe, his back whines, but he cannot go slowly. With the speed of a much younger man, he bends down to see what his son has slipped under the door. Immediately he recognizes the pamphlet. It is the same one the mangled vet gave to him on his last visit to Daniel in the hospital. Fareon, the pamphlet screams. The Real Reason for War.

  40.

  Whenever someone says he’ll gladly point you in the right direction, you know that person is full of shit. How was Joe supposed to know where the induction center was? He had never been to that part of town. But clearly the noseless vet he’d asked for directions had sent him off in the wrong direction. Only after two buses and a long, uphill climb did he finally arrive at the induction center. Now he saw he hadn’t even done that right. His shabby route had plunked him down on the wrong side of the building.

  The lack of a rear entrance didn’t surprise him. Joe had seen photographs of First Tuesdays in the newspapers before. If the long line of men were to stream toward whatever open door the induction center flung open, what sort of image would that be? No, the men needed to be arranged, one behind the other. When the Homeland projected order, people felt like there must be a plan. All must pass through the front. But for Joe, there was no version of his life in which he walked through that door alone.

  His eyes shifted toward a bright flash of sun shining on an open steel grating. Could it be so easy? The words of the Young Savior came to him: Everything with wings is beyond the reach of law. And with that, Joe started up the fire escape.

  41.

  On Mr. Dorton’s desk, the bowl of strawberries was always full, and he was never stingy with them. From this, Lance took that Mr. Dorton must have been a wealthy man and a very good father. Though he must have known why Lance was there, probably could have cleared up definitively whether he had been pointed or not, their daily exchange of words never included anything but questions from the older man regarding the former life of the younger one. Had he ever been to Western City North? Of course, Lance told him. That’s where I lived. Western City North was wild.

  “Did you cook food or eat out?”

  “Both.”

  Did he own a television, did he ever go see any of the retiree leagues play? Mr. Dorton wanted details. This guy, Lance thought, is trying to piece together a life that’s based on mine but doesn’t belong to me.

  “You know,” Mr. Dorton said, his voice lowering, “I have a son in Western City North.”

  “Oh yeah? It’s a big city. What part does your son live in?”

  Mr. Dorton gave an exact address.

  A rainbow of shock shimmered inside Lance. That a father would know his son’s exact address from memory
. But even more, that such an address would also be the very space where he and Lorrie had lived and breathed together.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Dorton asked.

  Lance had begun an extended coughing fit. Four units. He could narrow down all the residents immediately. Which one had been a Dorton? His internal census began on the bottom floor, striking out the asthmatic widow. Moving across the hall in his mind’s eye, he came to the door of Tim and Rebecca, or just Tim once Rebecca had left him on her Indigenous quest. An upward gush of fear entered him. Had he held a knife to the throat of Mr. Dorton’s son? Impossible. Tim had talked about his father before, said he was one of the few casualties in those first years of war. Lance studied Mr. Dorton some more and let his internal surveyor climb those familiar stairs. Mr. Dorton clearly wasn’t an immigrant from Neutral Country P, so that ruled out the many war-aged cousins who had often crashed in the apartment across the hall from his own. Only one apartment left: the empty place, the place that had belonged to the runners.

  He could see the faces of two men, one of whom he had bumped into on the stairs with a duffel bag, the guy clearly headed out on the first step in a long series of Registry dodging, and the other one, a quieter guy with an indistinct face who tended to follow the loud one around. The guy he had caught on his way out—the loud one—Lance had seen him before, staring at Lorrie as though she might be his next catch. The quieter one he had seen around as well, but that one had always kept his head down, barely able to compose audible hellos and good-byes. But what were their names?

  “Benny,” Mr. Dorton said in a whisper. “That’s my youngest.”

  No shit. Mr. Prison Administrator Big Shot had a runner kid. The guy was no different from anyone else.