Unstoppable Moses

by Tyler James Smith

  And then.

  And then.

  And then.

  I pictured the fabled golden halls of Guthrie Community College. The one building in Guthrie, aside from the hospital, that was more than three stories tall, conveniently located right across the street from the actual no-shit graveyard. I would drive by that stupid bowling alley on the way to class every day.

  The tiny bean sitting in the plastic cube rattled back and forth, and I could feel Test staring at me—looking at me like I was just another little prick who couldn’t accept help.

  He pulled another length of crust off, balled it up, and ate it.

  I figured, fuck it, I’d tell him about Charlie. The real story. The story that I tried and tried and tried to tell when everything first happened, but nobody would listen to. He thinks this is a chance for me to do something good?

  Let me tell you what happens when I try to do good things. Or maybe you saw the story on the news?

  “Look, I’m n—”

  “No, you look, mister.” He pointed at me as he called me mister. “No more crap. No more sneaking around and smoking cigarettes or giving me attitude.” He cleared his throat. “I saw you,” he said.

  My eyes stayed on him and his smudged glasses, and my face turned to blank porcelain. I erased every line of emotion from the history of my face; I scrubbed every fault line clean away and let the muscles relax. I took a breath. Let him tell me he saw me on the news, long before the courts told him I was safe and would be attending his camp. Let him be another victim of mine who bravely tells me that they forgave me but never forgot me.

  I waited for the jumping bean to start jumping again.

  He continued: “The way you went to Allison when she got hurt.” He pulled his glasses off and his eyes shrank to human size, and I cracked. He breathed on his smudged lens and wiped it on his shirt.

  “What?”

  “Lump. The girl all the kids call Lump. When the can exploded. That kind of noise—with all the sparks and the fire, everybody running around—nobody knew what it was. Not at first, anyway. Sounded like an artillery shell, and your first move was to help.”

  “She was hurt.”

  He nodded. “Despite your attitude, you deserve to be here as much as anyone else. Besides, you don’t know Allison. She came here last year—youngest kiddo we ever had. Some of the other kids gave her a hard time for it and she kind of just closed up. And this year she’s actually trying to make friends. I think it probably has to do with what’s going on at home with her dad.” He took a breath, almost seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything else, then added, “She needs friends, especially since she’s still younger than a lot of the kids this year; and now that’s you. Since you don’t have a cabin to head, you get Allison. Welcome to Lump Detail.”

  “Her dad?”

  He looked at me, tired, and said, “We have one week here, Moses. One.” He fit the glasses back on his head and squinted for a moment, readjusting his vision. He pulled something out of a greasy-looking laundry bag next to his desk and tossed it at me. “Tomorrow’s field day. You’re on flag football.”

  I uncrumpled the wadded-up—but surprisingly clean—referee shirt and Test gestured for the door. He went back to deconstructing his sandwich and I never got my answer about Lump’s dad.

  * * *

  By the time I left Test’s office, the flames were out. The fire pit was an inky, sooty pool, because the children were all thoroughly convinced that they were the only ones that could prevent forest fires. I pulled my phone from my pocket. The text from my dad said:

  Hey Buddy,

  I just wanted to touch base and let you know how proud of you I am. It’s nothing Moses the Magnificent can’t deal with, I’m sure, but I’m still proud as hell of you for handling this like a man. Anyway, talk to you soon.

  Dad had impeccable texting etiquette on account of working in the tech industry since the ’90s. Even when I was a kid and we didn’t have cell phones, he would send fully punctuated messages to the beeper we kept on a key ring next to the front door.

  I typed out “I love you” in binary12 and knew that, when he got it and when he got a chance to send a message back, I’d get a message that said 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101.13

  The next message from the unknown number said:

  Moses. This is Michael. We need your help. Cabin B.

  I didn’t know how they had gotten my number but I didn’t care. I not-quite-ran toward their cabin, uncomfortably aware that I’d only known these people for a day and was already almost-running through the woods because they needed help.

  The cabin was actually two cabins—two A-frame cottages connected in the back by a large bathroom—and when I got there Matty was standing in the front cabin’s walkway talking to Michael through the screen door.

  “Moses!” she said, smiling and waving, when she heard me jogging up.

  I tried to slow to a walk when I realized no one was panicking, so I waved and tried to regulate my breathing. Michael mashed his face up against the screen.

  “Moses? Thank God you’re here.”

  I extended my exceptionally casual wave to Michael.

  “He won’t let me in,” Matty said, switching from goofy melodrama to clinical, factual conversation seamlessly.

  “It’s for your own good!” Something behind him crashed down and he spun to face the noise, pointing a bright green water pistol that was steaming from the barrel. “It’s not safe here, Matty!” He turned back. “If I don’t make it out of here alive, I want you to move on—”

  “Move on?” she cut in, moving right back into the schlock.

  “Move on! Live your life. And when you get the choice to sit out or dance … I hope you dance.”

  Matty threw herself against the screen, her hands pressed against the frame. “How can I dance without my other half?”

  He placed his palm flush against the screen.

  “Can you open the door for just one last kiss? A final kiss?” she asked him.

  “Hush,” Michael said, placing his finger against the screen.

  Matty turned and looked at me, switching back to somewhere between clinical and casual. “A war broke out between the cabins. Lots of casualties. Why do you have a referee shirt?”

  “Football tomorrow. Test gave it to me. It looks pretty quiet over there,” I said. The cabin in the back had seemed absolutely empty and silent when I’d gone tearing by it.

  “Of course it does!” Michael said through the screen. “Faisal rules with an iron fist; he rules with fear.”

  “Michael is more of a Tom Hanks kind of leader. You should have heard the bumbling-but-inspirational speech he gave to them earlier,” she said, trying to keep the smile from her face the best she could, like she begrudgingly loved him despite his being a jackass.

  I looked past them into the bright cabin. Five or six children were positioned on and around beds, all peering past the fluorescent bathroom into the pitch-black square of nothingness that was Faisal’s cabin.

  “Are you sure there’s anybody over there?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s over there all right. Waiting. He already taught them guerrilla tactics like killing the lights and farting. I think one of his kids shit his pants at us.”

  “Why aren’t you in there?” I asked Matty.

  “I’ve already lost too many people I care about,” Michael said, looking into Matty’s eyes and stroking his hand down the screen. One of his child soldiers said, “I hear something!” and all the tiny bodies went rigid with wartime adrenaline. “Also it’s No Girls Allowed,” Michael added.

  Matty made a fart noise with her mouth and said, “He won’t unlock it. Also it’s almost lights-out so I need to get going anyway.”

  From the dark of Faisal’s cabin, a small orange shape came clattering across the floor. It skittered into the bare feet of one of the kids, who held it up lovingly while someone else said, “It�
��s a Reese’s Pieces!”

  “You put that down, Goblin Joe—put it right down,” Michael said, pointing his steaming water pistol at the child.

  “I have so many questions,” I said to Matty.

  She nodded toward Michael and said, “Water gun’s steaming because it’s got hot water in it, but he told them all it was pee. And we call Goblin Joe ‘Goblin Joe’ because…” She nodded toward the kid who was slowly raising the bathroom-floor-candy to his mouth while maintaining eye contact with the Buddy pointing an alleged pee-gun at him.

  All of the features on my face collapsed into a display of disgust.

  “Goblin Joe. Kid’ll eat anything. They’re lucky though. I think Faisal would have really peed in the gun,” Matty said.

  Another piece of candy bounced out of the darkness toward Goblin Joe.

  “Damn it, he’s like E.T.,” Michael said. “Faisal! You know he’ll eat anything you throw—quit trying to poison him!”

  A few seconds later a handful of socks sailed out of the dark and landed at Goblin Joe’s feet.

  “Do not put those in your mouth!”

  To his credit, Goblin Joe did not put the socks in his mouth.

  Another piece of candy appeared, this time closer to the darkness; Goblin Joe followed the candy. A moment later and another piece bounced out, even closer to the wall of darkness separating the cabins. Michael was about to threaten him with the pee-gun again when Matty interjected, “Michael! I have boobs and I have to leave.”

  Michael immediately forgot about his platoon.

  Goblin Joe bent for the fourth piece of candy, his jaw still working on the previous one, when a Nerf arrow sliced out of the dark and hit him in the eye. Michael’s hand was out of the door when he turned to see the child hit the tile floor, clutching his face.

  Matty grabbed the door open, clutched Michael’s wrist, and swung him to the floor while turning off his cabin’s lights. They never stood a chance: an army of ten-year-old girls came pouring into the cabin full of disoriented boys, pulling makeshift blindfolds off, firing Nerf guns, and swinging wet socks like medieval morning stars. Cabin A—along with Matty’s reinforcements—was a swarm, a plague, and as Michael turned to look at Matty she pulled a Nerf gun from her coat and stuck the barrel under his chin.

  “You?” he asked.

  “Me,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

  THIRTEEN: MACHINE BOY

  “NO, NO, WATCH, HE LOVES this, watch,” my dad says.

  Half of the family is in the dining room, spilling over into the kitchen, talking and laughing and cleaning up after Easter dinner. The other half is crowded into the living room, relaxing, drinking, and mostly tuning out the classic rock playing on the radio.

  “Moses! Stick ’em up!” he says, right as Angus Young rips into the opening chords of “Back in Black.”

  I’m sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, playing with Charlie, and I’ve got a red towel tied around my shoulders. I whirl on cue, standing and putting my fists against my hips as my dad fires off a Nerf dart that bounces off my chest with a soft plap noise.

  I smile, because if there’s one thing they’ve drilled home with me, it’s that I’m their superhero.

  The Magnificent Moses.

  Moses the Miracle.

  Machine Boy.

  Since Dad moved back in, I fill the gaps in the conversations. Whenever things get too drawn out or quiet, the conversation inevitably shifts in my direction.

  I look down at Charlie to see if he saw, if he watched the Nerf dart fall harmlessly away, but he’s mouthing AC/DC lyrics and staring down at the toys on the floor and I can’t tell if he’s laughing or crying about me taking another bullet to the heart.

  FOURTEEN: THE NATURE OF THIN ICE: PART TWO

  “THEY REALLY DIDN’T GIVE you a cabin to lord over?” Michael said as he dealt the next hand. The cabins had agreed on a cease-fire on the grounds that Faisal had threatened to suffocate one of them if they didn’t at least pretend to try to sleep. On account of official lights-out, we’d set up the card table under the harsh fluorescents of the connecting bathroom. The lights made the stark contrast of the black and white bars on my ref shirt even more defined.

  “Nope. They needed Buddies, but Cabin Lordship was full up,” I said,14 picking up my cards. I risked a look at Faisal, who didn’t have the same “You’re a bullshitter” look on his face from earlier because he was staring into his cards.

  “Wait. How much are tens worth?” he asked Michael.

  “Tens are worth ten.”

  “And nines?” Faisal asked.

  “Nines are also worth ten,” Michael said, helpfully.

  “Are eights tens?” he said, visibly trying to sort the rules out in his head.

  “No, eights are eight. I told you.”

  “This game is nonsense.”

  “Unless,” Michael continued, “it’s an eight of clubs. Then it’s a ten.”

  “Awful, unwinnable, horseshit nonsense.”

  “It’s better than Porns—”

  “You shut your terrible mouth!” Faisal said.

  “It’s not my fault you don’t understand Tens.”

  “No one understands Tens! Hey: remember that time your girlfriend betrayed your trust and murdered you in front of a bunch of kids?”

  “I have an Uno card,” I said, holding the card up between two fingers.

  Michael whistled. “Bad news, man. Bad news,” he said. “You have to go elbow-drop one of Faisal’s kids.”

  “No he doesn’t,” a voice said from the darkness behind Faisal. A chorus of small voices shushed the kid and outright told him to shut up.

  “Shut up or we’ll come search under your mattresses,” Michael said without looking back.

  “What do you possibly think you’re going to find under a kid’s mattress?” Faisal said. “They have all of the porn already. All of it. Inside of their telephones.” He turned his attention to me. “So what did Test do to you?” he asked me as he laid a card down.

  My stomach turned into a brief sour knot and I wanted to ask him why he couldn’t leave it alone, but I realized that his not talking about it would have been just as conspicuous.

  “You can’t play reds yet,” Michael said.

  Faisal stared at him and didn’t pick the card up.

  It was pure eye contact and zero sound.

  No breathing.

  They burst into a lightning round of Rock, Paper, Scissors that Faisal immediately won; he fist pumped and Michael said “shit” and one of the kids in the dark told him that he wasn’t allowed to say “shit.”

  Faisal marked ten points on his scorecard, muttering, “Tell me I don’t understand Tens; I’m the motherfucking king of Tens.” He looked at me and said, “Future reference: there’s usually a bluff clause in his games—he tries to build his cheating ass a loophole into any games we have because he is a bad fucking person. Anyway. Test.”

  “Right: he just wanted to have a few words with me about the nature of thin ice.” If he pressed the issue, there was enough truth I could give them without giving it all away. I lined up my options: lie and tell them that I was on Test’s shit list because he thought I smelled like weed; tell them he was just trying to break me in; tell them anything except the fact that Test knew my whole story and was telling me that I belonged here too.

  How would that conversation even go? Hey, guys, Mr. Test was telling me to drop my attitude because I deserve to be here too. Oh, right, because I inadvertently helped burn down a bowling alley right before watching my cousin get shot.

  Still, even Test had thought we were only talking about the thin ice underfoot and not the ice that had somehow found its way into all of the beams that held me up.

  “Ooh, I know that talk. Did he call you ‘mister’?”

  “He did,” I said.

  “He seems especially vigilant about his hard-on for you,” Michael said. “I mean, I get him hating Faisal—Faisal shot him with a bow
and arrow.”

  “Test loves me,” Faisal said. “I tickle his fancy. I’m the Test Tickler.” He heard what he said, smiled before going very serious, then pumped both of his fists up and exclaimed, “I am the Testicler!” and the darkness around us busted up.

  “Not really sure why he’s got it in for me. Guess I just have one of those faces. By the way, did you get Lump to Sheila?”

  I knew the nurse’s name was Shelly. They didn’t know me and they didn’t know that I was supposed to be a miracle or a criminal and it was stupid and little but it felt good to act like I didn’t know what the nurse’s name was. It felt good acting like I knew how to just be someone playing cards past bedtime who had nothing special or unique about him, not even a good memory.

  “Is that the girl whose ear fell off when the can of beans exploded?” Michael asked. “I never knew her name was Lump. Also who’s Sheila? Do you mean Shelly? The nurse?”

  “Right, Shelly,” I said, nodding. “She used to fall down a lot. Lump, I mean,” I said.

  “She’s fine. And her ear didn’t fall off,” Faisal said. “She wouldn’t stop talking about that deer. Shelly didn’t have any paper for her to make flyers, so I think she’s doing it tomorrow in Arts and Crafts. Kept saying that after she found it, her new name was going to be Katniss.”

  The darkness behind Faisal spat forth a child made of shapes, and his hair was a latchkey-kid hatchet job, the same kid Faisal had been cracking up on the bus. He walked past our table without saying a word, clenching his briefs, ignoring us and the catcalls behind him. He shuffled up to the low urinal as close as possible and pulled his underwear down around his ankles. The faces in the dark laughed like shitty little hyenas and the kid at the urinal kept his head down until the dribble in front of him tapered off.

  “Trevor, my man, how you doing?” Faisal asked the kid when he’d finished and had started scrubbing his hands with pink liquid soap.

  “Fine,” he said with his back to us.