The End of Marking Time

by CJ West

  I dropped the wrist strap and walked to the kitchen window.

  I would have run then if not for the tracking device under my scalp. I was sure the pile of lessons would crush me before I finished three years laboring away in this room. Even if I could stick it out, the government would get tired of paying me for doing nothing. My slavery to the black box would be cut short. I just couldn’t know who would bring it to an end.

  As I’m standing here, we all know two things. First, the government gave up on me before I quit. Second, three years was ridiculously optimistic.

  The living room window was big enough to jump through. From the third floor to the cement walk wasn’t quite enough to kill me, but for a moment while I looked down, I saw a simpler end to my problems.

  Did every citizen walk around with all this math in their head? If they did, how did I get so far behind? Did I sabotage myself? Was it my mother or my teachers? I thought about Joel and how close he was to jumping. I had no one really. Double and Cortez had it right. I hadn’t even started down that road. I was going to lose my son to Nick and Kathleen. I was twenty-five and I had nothing to live for.

  My feet moved back until I could only see the street through the window. As easy as it would be, I couldn’t throw myself out. I didn’t want to end up mangled on the sidewalk and live only to be tethered to a ventilator for the next twenty years. I stared at the glass and a few times I looked to the door like it would open up and offer another path, one where less work would lead to a comfortable life, like the one Nick and Kathleen were making for Jonathan. The program beckoned, but that was hopeless. I sat and stared until the knock sounded on the door.

  Dr. Blake stood on the landing in a jogging suit.

  I hadn’t heard from him since the prison hospital, so for him to suddenly show up the day I started his portion of the program was too much of a coincidence. The program had called him just like it had ordered the cables delivered to my apartment. Maybe Wendell knew I’d be thinking about jumping at this point. Maybe someone was watching. I couldn’t be sure. After our talk, Wendell should have been rooting for me to jump.

  Blake looked fresh in his suit, like he’d been on his way to the gym and gotten an urgent message to come to my place and keep me away from the window. Based on the bulge around his middle, I guessed he wore the jogging suit because it was comfortable, not because he planned to mount an exercise bike. The brand new running shoes seemed to confirm this.

  He sat down uninvited on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. I would have done the same if not for the keyboard, the remote control, and the wrist strap for the black box.

  “You had a tough day, didn’t you?” He asked the question with a smile, reveling in my difficulties.

  I told him I’d plowed through a bunch of Wendell’s discs, but he saw through my rosy spin.

  He said math was one of the toughest parts of the program. I just nodded. Then he told me I was at the fifth grade level and that completing the math component was going to take years regardless of what else I worked on. That was the first time I thought he was trying to shove me out the window.

  “You don’t appreciate what’s going on here, do you?” he asked.

  Appreciate was exactly the wrong word in my mind.

  “You’re getting a major opportunity here. A chance to grab hold of your life before you get flushed. While you’re sitting in here learning things you should have learned when you were ten, the government is paying for you to live pretty darn comfortably.”

  “Prison is prison.”

  “You have no idea how lucky you are?”

  “Lucky?”

  “What should society do with people like you, Michael? People who for whatever reason threw their lives away? Is it our responsibility to pick you up and dust you off? Is it my responsibility to save you?”

  I wanted to tell him to screw. That I’d be fine on my own, but by then I knew that was a lie. Blake knew it, too. I was a thief, an excellent thief, but the government took that away from me. It was impossible for me to make a living and Blake took great pleasure in having control over me.

  “The world is at a crossroads. Common sense is returning and you are one of the first beneficiaries. Why don’t you appreciate that?”

  Did he really think I should be thankful for being stuck here?

  “Listen, when you went into prison, the system was broken. Anytime a system hangs around long enough, you get people pecking away at it from all sides and eventually it doesn’t work anymore. The guilty hired more and more expensive lawyers. Trials took forever and judges let men they knew were guilty go free. So more and more work by the police was accomplishing nothing. Trials work much more efficiently now, don’t you think?”

  “And this helps me?”

  “Sure. In the past, convicts sat around watching television. What did they learn? Nothing. Were they really being punished? I think not. We tried a few feeble efforts at rehabilitation, but now we understand the truth.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What truth?”

  “To rehabilitate someone, to truly help them lead a useful life, takes a mammoth effort. We can’t afford to waste that effort on just anyone. We need to pick those who are deserving and weed out the rest.”

  “Which am I?”

  “You’re a guy with a chance. You doomed yourself by quitting school. We are giving you a chance to save yourself. We’re offering to teach you all the things your parents and your teachers failed to make you understand. That’s a massive effort. A massive effort.”

  For some reason I went back to his revelation that I was learning fifth grade math. Was my mistake really that big? Could I stay in this apartment another six or seven years to learn what I’d missed? He was right that it was a massive effort, and I was doing all the work.

  “Don’t be discouraged.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re in the best program there is. Wendell is a genius.”

  I still didn’t believe I was lucky.

  “There are seven programs in Massachusetts. Five are reeducation programs, but a few employ questionable methods. You were lucky to draw Wendell’s program. It’s your best chance to turn things around.”

  “What good is this crap?” I waved toward the black box.

  “You still don’t get how monumentally you screwed up by dropping out of society, do you? You’ve figured out that you can’t run. Let me show you your alternative and then you’ll see how lucky you are.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I climbed into the passenger’s seat of Dr. Blake’s BMW, feeling guilty about what I’d done to Joel and nervous that I might actually see him. I was also morbidly curious to see the place where I might eventually die. Blake was my teacher and I believed he was trying to help me however painful the lesson was. I’d never really thought about the man himself until he started the car and rushed off into the dark. Why did a man like Dr. Blake teach in a reform program instead of taking a professorship in a prestigious college? Did he get some special satisfaction from teaching relearners? Or was he unable to secure a position with a more respectable clientele? The answer turned out to be one and the same, but as he zipped along, I was intent on what he was about to show me.

  Blake took back roads south and west, away from the city. He kept me talking, I assumed, so I wouldn’t know how to get back to wherever he was taking me, but our destination was only fifteen minutes from my apartment. When we pulled up to the guardhouse, I had visions of breaking in and helping Joel escape. I kept telling myself that the tracking devices would never let us get away, but to be honest, it was the sheer horror of the place that cooled my ideas about sneaking through the woods and helping Joel.

  The car stopped and the guard came to the window. He recognized Dr. Blake immediately. “We weren’t expecting any new residents tonight.”

  Blake explained that we were there for a tour and the guard said, “Lucky you,” in my direction. After what happened lat
er, I still wonder how much that guard knew and what he meant by lucky.

  The former prison building had been renovated, but it still retained its bland cement face. Windows were added and barbed wire was removed, but the residents inside were locked in tighter than when the building advertised itself as a home to violent criminals. Given the choice, the relearners inside would gladly return to the days of common rooms and televisions.

  “This is your other option,” Blake said as he parked the car in the far corner of the vacant visitor parking lot. He killed the lights. “If you can’t finish your education. If you can’t stay out of trouble. This is where you will wind up.”

  He was trying to scare me. I stiffened, determined to keep my cool, but Joel and Stephan had already convinced me to do anything to avoid coming here. Earlier I’d been thinking my choice was to jump or to finish studying. It had been a close one. What Blake was about to show me was more gruesome than anything Joel and Stephan described.

  Blake pressed a button and my window buzzed down into the door. Animals called to each other. They could have been birds or bugs, I wasn’t sure. If an animal didn’t live in a park, or walk on a leash, I probably hadn’t seen it, and didn’t really care to. The noises were a bit spooky, but they weren’t what Blake wanted me to hear.

  It took a minute or two, and then I heard a man scream as if he were in horrific pain. I imagined his fingers were being crushed in a vice as he wailed on and on. Blake explained that at night they keep the upper windows open so the relearners who’ve been here longest have an opportunity to jump. He wanted me to hear what was happening inside this remodeled prison. We had to come at night because the windows were closed during the day in case anyone wandered through the woods. According to Blake, the screaming continued day and night.

  I asked Blake why we needed such a place. And if people knew about it, why hadn’t it been shut down. Blake didn’t answer. He seemed angry that I hadn’t asked what was making the men scream. He asked himself the question and proceeded to answer.

  He told me they couldn’t have relearners die off too soon after they came here, so they toyed with them a while. They didn’t kill anyone, but once a relearner came through these doors, he never caused trouble for decent citizens again. A few men ran the entire facility. They locked the relearners in their apartments and used Wendell’s technology to keep track of their clients.

  The black box was a warm up. They showed recordings of other relearners nearing their breaking point. All the rooms were identically decorated, so no matter which room they showed on television, it appeared to be the room the relearner was currently in.

  They got the name cat baggers by trapping feral cats from suburban colonies, riling them up, and releasing them into the relearners rooms at night. Even wild as they were, the cats perished quickly. Some of the more violent relearners enjoyed smashing the cats with whatever was at hand. The guards removed everything heavy from the rooms, but then the relearners began to whip the cats with towels and belts. Finally, the guards found a drug that caused temporarily blindness. That was a spectacular success. Imagine waking up blind in the middle of the night with five hungry wild cats gnawing at your arms and legs.

  That was just the beginning. They released colorful gasses into the rooms. Some were harmless, others simply irritants, still others rendered the relearner paralyzed while a guard came into the room and abused them. They used street drugs, dart guns, and poison. They even tried pumping in exhaust fumes from cars in the parking lot.

  I’d heard enough. I’d do anything to avoid this place, but Dr. Blake wasn’t finished. He told me about a young man they pumped full of appetite stimulants. They fattened him up until he couldn’t move and then they let in the cats while he was fully aware of their attack but could do nothing to defend himself. Blake had made his point, but he didn’t start the car. We sat there another twenty minutes until I heard something awful. It was nearly midnight when I heard the half-hearted scream and then the collision of bone and flesh against concrete. The crunching and cracking made me shiver, and I knew a man had just jumped to his death.

  “I get it. Why’d you bring me all the way out here?” I asked.

  “This is what’s in store for you. You’ve been judged non-conforming twice since you left prison. You’re headed here if you don’t shape up. If you don’t finish your exams before you get arrested again, you’ll be in one of these rooms.”

  This was punishment. The men who ran this place took pleasure in tormenting relearners. They had no one to answer to and they never would as long as their clients kept leaving in body bags. This was no alternative, but the black box in my apartment held years of work I just wasn’t prepared to complete. Blake knew this, that’s why he took me here. He wanted to impress upon me how hopeless my situation was.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I’m here to help you,” he said.

  My stomach started churning. Something was wrong and I hadn’t figured out where this was going yet.

  “I can help you get through your lessons or I can make them supremely difficult. It depends how cooperative you are.”

  “Cooperative?”

  He pulled the waistband of his sweatpants and there staring at me was an erect mushroom with a chubby little stalk. He wasn’t wearing underwear because he’d planned this from the very beginning. He told me if I was willing to do him a favor a few times a week that he’d make sure my progress went smoothly. These things happened in prison. His other relearners did what was necessary to graduate. I wanted to vomit.

  Charlotte came to mind. I’d fantasized about her since the first time she swished into my room. Was my interest in her any different than Blake’s disgusting move here in the car? At least my advances were subtle. Sitting there I learned something important. Now that cash was gone, sex was the new currency of the underworld.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The next morning three flat gray pads arrived at my doorstep, courtesy of Dr. Blake. If the screams, and the suicide weren’t enough to keep me awake all night, Blake’s sleazy request certainly was. I hadn’t finished walking home until three o’clock and didn’t open my eyes until the knock on the door prompted me to go out and find the pads.

  I was too tired to go back to math problems, so I ate a donut from the kitchen. They were getting a little hard around the edges, but Joel had taught me something important about finances. Too bad my mother or Morris Farnsworth hadn’t given me that lesson earlier. I went down to the donut shop for coffee, now accustomed to the reaction when the door notified the masses that a criminal was in their presence. They didn’t think of me as a relearner. Only Wendell bought that crap.

  My mind wasn’t clear enough for math problems even after coffee, so I went straight from the donut shop to the courtyard and found Deone and Tyrone alone at a picnic table in the sun. They grunted when I sat down. I thought that was all the conversation I was going to get until they asked if I knew what happened to Joel.

  I told them about the girlfriend, the earrings, and the mother-in-law.

  “Damn,” Tyrone said. “He was through. Just a few weeks and he was out of here.”

  Deone couldn’t believe Wendell sent Joel to the cat baggers. I didn’t tell them I sold Joel the earrings. They would have shunned me, so I changed the subject by asking what they were studying. They were both in their senior year. They were close to getting out, but not as close as Joel had been. That was why they stayed here in the courtyard. The walls kept the relearners away from trouble. It was a safe haven for relearners even if it resembled a prison yard, or maybe in some ways because it did.

  “Have you guys ever been to see the cat baggers?”

  “You didn’t get in the car with Blake?” Deone laughed.

  “How was I supposed to know he’s a homo?”

  “You’re a bigger fool than I thought,” Deone said.

  “We going to be seeing him around your place?” Tyrone asked.

  �
��Screw you guys.”

  “You walked home, huh?”

  They didn’t wait for me to nod. Good thing, because I wasn’t saying anything. “Did he do the whole thing about the police chasing you?”

  “Dude, you’ve got to smarten up.”

  I hope you are as disgusted by Blake as I am. He had his scam down and I’m sure he netted more than his share of friendly favors that way. The pressure on relearners came from every side. People don’t care what happens to us. I honestly think most people would rather send relearners to the cat baggers than let Wendell train them and set them free. I know what happened while I was sleeping was tragic, but that kind of prejudice isn’t right. I’m sure none of you has been in my position, but you must know in your heart that we don’t deserve to be tortured.

  At that point in my conversation with Tyrone and Deone, I was looking for any distraction to clear away the image of Blake’s open jogging pants. I told Deone about one night when I boosted four cars from the same neighborhood without anyone getting wise. Deone and Tyrone shared some stories about times they’d gotten away and times they’d gotten locked up. As we were sitting there in the sun I remembered what Wendell said about how much non-conformers hurt him. Deone, Tyrone, and I had made our living taking things from other people. It’s all we knew.

  Those guys back at Stephan’s seemed like the country club set. They screwed up and decked some guy and got into trouble, but they’d be out quick and they wouldn’t be back. What did it really take to teach some college grad banker to stay out of trouble? Whoever was running that place had it down and Wendell was getting screwed. I thought about how much I would have to learn to get my GED. Wendell had worked hard to create all those lessons and to assemble the counselors to help me. That was a lot harder than picking teams and refereeing a Wiffle ball game. I wondered what else they did over at Stephan’s.