Plantation of Chrome

by R. J. Coulson

  “But... how do you deal with it? Surely you feel something.”

  “I tell myself that there's nothing to deal with, that it was an accident--”

  “An accident, right?!” Eckleburg’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, it was, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner we can all get this ship sailing again.”

  Eckleburg was quiet for a while, his gaze darting across all the bookshelves that surrounded the office. “I'll go get my son,” he said. “I'll go get Isaac.”

  As Noah Stone approached the church, coming in from the side of the graveyard, he stopped to appreciate the tall towers on each side of the entrance. He didn't often stop to look at buildings, but in the case of the church towers, remembering the fire many years back when he was just a young kid coming to Plissbury, he wondered how rebuilding something like that was possible, to erase the flames completely.

  Realizing the queue building behind him, he let the crowd slip past. He gazed out at the cemetery walls as the people slipped by him, trying if he could see the very farthest of the tombstones. He found the idea odd, that some human had planted a stone into the ground to mark the death of another. It made sense, of course, making a monument out of death, but why of a material so easily perishable, like stone? Shaking his head, he extinguished the trails of his mind, not liking where it was taking him. He didn’t have to think about death now.

  He turned towards the church entrance, now joining the many people that were pushing in through the broad opening. He noticed a woman in the crowd. She was wearing a hat with some flowers in it, pale and soft. He followed her movements for a while, noticing how her chestnut brown hair seemed to defy the wind compared to all the other women behind her, and how her wrists rested neatly on the edge of her hip. She looked out over the crowd, but she didn’t notice Stone, and on her way into the church she tripped, almost falling on the church aisle. Stone, seeing her falling, dived in through the crowd, but he didn’t manage to catch her. He stepped in, helped her up, and she took his hand without even flinching. She looked at him from under the lace of her hat and smiled.

  “Thank you very much,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” said Stone. He quickly let go of her hand, and let her back into the crowd.

  Stone was very deliberate in his choice of seating, making sure to get a spot in the back from where he could see the entire congregation, but where no one could see him. He saw Eckleburg, waved at him, and the jittery Eckleburg waved back, his gaze fleeing all over the church hall, ultimately falling back on the altar, where Father Sebastian was getting ready. Stone noticed that he dipped one finger in the holy water, unsure if it was normal practice or not. When the last of the crowd sat down, Father Sebastian finally started speaking.

  “Welcome all,” he said. “I’m happy that so many of you could make it through the weather, and as some of you know, or might remember from last time, today’s sermon is dedicated to the commemoration of our recent lost ones’, and for that we’ve collected the entire boys’ choir.”

  Eckleburg waved at the choir, and it was only then that Stone noticed that Eckleburg’s son, Isaac, was standing in the front row. The boy looked very different from when he’d been at the office, as if the light that fell on his face here in the church aged him beyond the shell of the boy that he was. Then, from a door behind the altar, a woman came out. It was Gretchen Eckleburg. Father Sebastian nodded at her, as she passed down to the row where Eckleburg was sitting. She sat next to him and whispered something in his ear. Eckleburg scratched his nose.

  “Today,” started Father Sebastian, his voice echoing in the vast hall, “we will be talking about the losses that we all feel and encounter in our lives, especially for the ones in our lives that we least expect to see go through the gates of Peter. I know, without a doubt, that most of you have heard about the incident that happened almost two weeks ago now.” Father Sebastian took a quick break to acknowledge the many nods throughout the congregation. “And,” he continued, ”it is set in my heart that all these children still have a chance to see the light of our world, if they have not yet encountered the light of our Lord. It might be a very direct way of saying it, but I believe in these children’s future, no matter their fate in this world. None of the families are with us today, but I believe that none of them have to be for them to be able to feel us, and for us to feel them. Now, these young men will sing for us.”

  The boys of the choir all took a step forward, and started to sing. Eckleburg bowed his head, and his shoulders started moving up and down. Then, like a gunshot, he stood up and ran up to the choir, grabbed his son, and began to cry, collapsing down on his knees. The singing was cut off, replaced instead by Eckleburg’s sobbing echoing through the hall. Eckleburg was clenching his son, and he refused to let go, all the while crying and screaming and praying. Father Sebastian was forced to pull at Eckleburg, but Eckleburg pushed back.

  Seeing the priest plump down his own altar, Stone stormed up the aisle. He grabbed Isaac, pulling the boy away from his father.

  “What the hell's the matter with you?” asked Stone through his teeth.

  Eckleburg slapped Stone.

  “Don’t use that word in this house!”

  Stone grabbed Eckleburg's hand.

  “I’m going to get you out of here now, and you better follow me, you got that?”

  Eckleburg nodded, and Stone pulled him up on his feet. Stone nodded apologetically to Father Sebastian and to Gretchen Eckleburg, who put a soft hand on Stone’s shoulder and said, “You didn’t have to do this, Noah. I don’t understand why he’d--”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Stone. He grabbed Eckleburg by the arm and started walking him up the aisle, but then, like another gunshot, Eckleburg turned to the cross by the alter and shouted, “They’re not here, any of them! All the other kid’s parents are not in church, and that’s why those things happened. They left God, so God left them!”

  “I will have no more of this!” said Father Sebastian. Stone grabbed a tighter hold of Eckleburg and started dragging him up the aisle and towards the door.

  “I saved my son!” screamed Eckleburg again and again.

  On the way out, passing the very last row of pews, Stone caught a glimpse of the woman he had seen earlier. She was covering her mouth with her hand, and Stone felt embarrassed, not at all sure how he must have looked in her eyes.

  Frank De Gracy and Noah Stone were standing in a cramped room, the only light coming from a black lantern that they’d brought down. It swung back and forth, casting a moving shadow on the many wooden boxes that surrounded the two men.

  “God damn it, Frank,” said Stone. He slapped the lantern, making the light spin even more. The shade from De Gracy’s fedora moved around his face. “Are these the ones you bought?” asked Stone, moving the lid off one of the wooden boxes. The light fell on the black metal and wooden polish of several stacked rifles.

  “Noah, I got them stupid cheap. We can pass them on for at least double the price.”

  “I don’t care,” growled Stone. “It’s not about the money. This is all too early. I don’t want the cops or anyone to come around here, thinking that we’d had something to do with Bishop’s death.”

  “We’ll have to start moving something sooner or later, Noah. This ain’t working, all this other stuff. The boxers and all was a nice idea, and it’s kept us low these past four years, but this wasn’t what we planned for. Wasn't what we wanted.”

  The light bounced back and forth between the two men's faces for a while.

  “I know, I know, but it’s just… We did all that, and I don’t want it to be for nothing, you understand? It’s bad enough with what’s happening to Eckleburg and Grundy.”

  “I understand all that, but we’ll have to start somewhere, even if it’s just building stock for a bit. No one’ll notice that we’ve got some extra rifles lying down here. I don’t want anyone, especially not Bishop’s boys around knocking on our front door, but we got
ta put some muscle into this.”

  “Not like this, we don’t. It doesn’t make sense to expand our stock if we can’t be selling in the first place.”

  “Then let’s do a few passes. There’re some men down by the harbor, and they’ll be needing some fire. Nothing to do with Bishop, I swear.”

  “Are you talking about our inventory around town?” roared Stone. “That’s as bad as selling it, god damn it. I know your intention, but this is just stupid. It’s barely been two weeks, and you want people to know that Stone’s folk are out on the street again, doing the same damn thing that made us clash with Bishop in the first place. How’ll that look? How’ll that look for anyone that has bricks enough to put two and two together?”

  “Stone's folk? Since when in hell are we Stone's folk?”

  “That's not what I meant. You know that.”

  De Gracy kept quiet a while. He turned his back to Stone and put the wooden lid back on top of the weapons. “I’m sorry,” he said. He took the lantern and turned towards the ladder that led up through a hatch in the floor of the main hall. He was about to start climbing when Stone grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “This isn’t about not doing what we wanted, Frank. It's not about breaking the promise we made. It’s about the time to do it in. Grundy’s out crying every morning, and Eckleburg’s down on his knees in church. You and Messenger are acting cold, but I know it’s just a façade. We lived through something the other night, Frank. Something that you just can't run away from, or turn your back to. No matter who you are.”

  De Gracy stepped down from the bottom rung of the ladder. He stared into Stone’s eyes.

  “And how are you feeling about it? When Messenger slammed the first one at the top of the stairs, what’d you think then? Who did you think the lesser of?”

  “Messenger didn’t know by then, it was too dark to see what was happening--”

  “Of course he knew! We all did, Noah. You heard Grundy from downstairs. They were coming up to where we were hiding, and they sure didn’t sound like any adult men to me.”

  “We couldn’t know!” roared Stone. “No one could, and that’s why it happened!” Stone grabbed the lantern from De Gracy’s hand and smashed it onto the floorboards. “It was dark!”

  “You’re acting as unimpressed as Messenger and me,” said De Gracy, shaking his head, “but you won’t admit it. You know you can’t let it get to you, because if you did, it’d break you. And you can’t--”

  “It was dark!”

  “And you can’t have that!” De Gracy pushed Stone into the wooden crates. “You can’t bear the feeling of being broken, Stone. Ever since Bishop embarrassed you, put you down like he did, you’ve been clamoring for some hidden glory here in this god damned pit! And now that we’ve finally lifted the lid to something greater, you don’t got the balls to climb the first fucking step.”

  There was rummaging among the crates for a while. Hands were scraping, either nervously or deliberately, on top of the wooden lids of the weapon crates. It was like the sound of rats in the dark.

  “You’ve sucked it in for four, almost five, years already,” said Stone, his voice calmer. “Give it another five months, and we can finally get some of this shit into the light.”

  De Gracy began climbing the ladder, ignoring Stone. He reached the top and opened the hatch, and light spilled into the cellar, revealing Stone’s figure. And even though De Gracy disappeared shortly after, it took a while before Stone followed.

  Isaac Eckleburg was sitting on his bed. His room was very tidy, and many of his toys were either arranged nicely on shelves or put into neat piles on the floor. The window above the bed cast a split shadow on the opposite wall, and some of the moonlight blended with the light from the hall. The door opened and Eckleburg looked in. He smiled at his son, who’d already made room for his father on the bed. Eckleburg came in and sat down next to his son. He admired the window’s shadow on the wall.

  “You must be tired,” he said.

  “I am, father.”

  “There’s nothing to say to that,” said Eckleburg, as he stroked Isaac’s hair.

  “Father?” asked Isaac.

  “Yes, son?”

  “Why were you crying in church the other day?”

  “I cried,” said Eckleburg, “because I realized that I had saved you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I felt, some time ago, that something bad would happen to you. You came to me and asked if you could go out and play with the other kids. I remember telling you 'no, not tonight', I smiled, and… and it saved you.”

  Isaac was quiet for a while. A band of clouds covered the moon outside the window, drowning the shadow on the wall.

  “How did you know that something bad would happen?”

  “God, son,” said Eckleburg, “because of God.” He grabbed Isaac’s hands. “God told me that I couldn’t let you go outside with your friends, and I listened. It’s very important to listen to God, and to hear his wisdom. There are people on the earth through whom God chooses to speak, and they become prophets.”

  “Are you a prophet, father?”

  “One could say so, yes. And I saved you by listening to God.”

  “That makes me glad,” said Isaac.

  “It does? That makes me glad then, too. You think you can sleep now?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good, son,” said Eckleburg. He kissed Isaac on the forehead. “Then goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, father.”

  Eckleburg left the room, and as he closed the door behind him, the clouds passed by the moon, letting the shadow return, and Isaac soon fell asleep.

  When Eckleburg stepped out into the hall, he was shocked to discover that Noah Stone was standing at the end of the hallway. He was wearing his coat, holding his fedora in his hands.

  “You startled me, Stone,” said Eckleburg “How’d you come in?”

  “I met Gretchen in the driveway. She let me in.”

  “Ah, so she’s home as well.”

  “Yes, but she went to bed. Father Sebastian sent his blessings.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes. They were preparing for the service tomorrow.”

  Eckleburg’s face turned grey. He walked past Stone and into the living room. Stone followed.

  “I didn’t quite expect you this evening,” said Eckleburg.

  Stone sat down in a chair without removing his coat.

  “I figured that if you could visit me before sunrise that I could come here after sunset.”

  “I see no harm in you coming this late. I can do this to soothe you if you want,” said Eckleburg, walking to a clock hanging on the wall. He pulled it down, tinkered around its gears, and set it back up. He had moved it an hour back.

  “Is that today? Already?” said Stone.

  Eckleburg nodded, joining Stone at the table. “It's actually tomorrow, but I did it for your sake. You want a drink or something like that?

  “No thank you,” said Stone.

  “Why are you here then?” asked Eckleburg, a sudden coldness in his voice.

  “Why do you think I am?”

  “No doubt because of what happened last week at church.”

  “You haven’t been at the Pit since then, Thomas. We can’t handle the paperwork without you for so long.”

  “I was thinking of coming in Monday, maybe tomorrow after church--”

  “Why did you make that scene?”

  “Out of gratitude,” said Eckleburg. “I was happy that God had helped me keep my son. I was grateful for what my faith had brought me.”

  “Your faith? Thomas, you didn’t save Isaac.”

  “I did save Isaac,” said Eckleburg. He leaned back into his chair and bored his nails deep into his temples. His eyes were closed, teeth grinding. “I used to like talking to you, Stone. But recently you’ve started defying a lot of old teachings.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve never been a man of God.”
/>
  “That’s a shame,” said Eckleburg. “Then maybe I’m the only one of us that’ll be saved for what we all did.”

  “Salvation’s with each of us.”

  “Salvation’s with God! One’s impossible without the other.”

  “I came here tonight because I was worried about you, not because I wanted to remind you to get back to work, but every time we talk recently, it's like we need to go through a sermon of our own. Why are you so obsessed with my morality... or any other’s?”

  “Because we are judged by it, and I cannot go to heaven while lingering with the hell bound.”

  “I’m hell bound?”

  “You’re all hell bound,” whispered Eckleburg. “Everyone is, but me and my son. I’m disappointed with you, Stone. You had such a God-fearing mother.”

  “Do not talk about my mother!”

  “It takes a real God fearing woman to call her son Noah, doesn’t it? And I wonder what your father would--”

  Noah Stone leaned in over the table. His knuckles were burning white around his fedora, crushing the soft felt.

  “What I don’t do to you now is out of respect to your family, but I swear that if you ever bring up my mother or father, I’ll peel god straight off of you, do you understand? I’ve always been good to all of you, and now you treat me like garbage.”

  “It’s because you made the decision you did.”

  “We all made that decision!”

  Eckleburg shook his head.

  “We did not. You and De Gracy had already talked about going to see Bishop before you asked Grundy, Messenger, and me. Messenger added to the idea, and me and Grundy just tagged along.”

  “But you did say yes.”

  “Not to all that happened.”

  “None of us said yes to that.”

  “You made a bad decision, Stone, and you led your flock to sin.”

  “You’re not my flock. I don’t have a flock.”

  “Yes you do, and you betrayed us. That’s why you’re so eager to make sure that all of us are all right. You know that if any of us get hurt that it will be on your conscience. Our pain is your pain from now on, Noah. And you wonder why I'm obsessed with morality.”