David Means - Hystopia

Ambrose’s voice rose slightly into a sweet register and Singleton had another flash: a young man, dressed in a billowing white shirt and high-waisted pants, lounging on a bench in Central Park, posed for a photo on the back of a book, a book he had read just after treatment, on the back porch of his apartment.

“Are you the guy who wrote the book?”

“Yeah, I’m that guy. I’m the one who wrote the book Kennedy had on his bedside table around the time he was shot the first time. Now let’s get back to business. Go in that stall and I’ll go in the other and when the coast is clear you’ll see why I made you come in here.”

“Jesus, just give it to me.”

“Get in the stall,” he said.

In the stall there was the kind of shit smell you could taste, the kind that stayed with you forever — beyond microbial, some residual cosmic aftermath emanating from deep space.

A dainty hand curled up under the partition. It clutched and opened and then disappeared again.

“You OK over there?” Singleton said.

“Shush, we have to make sure the coast is clear.”

“If you say that again it’s not going to be clear. We’ve been in here for about five minutes.”

The file was taupe-colored, with the TOP SECRET stamp. It was coded TERMINATED. It had the blue label of an operation report.

“Open it, look, and give it right back while I do my business,” Ambrose whispered.

“Christ,” Singleton said.

He opened the file and read the report quickly. The target, Rake (a.k.a. name unknown. Speculation as to Ron Martin), had been located (see photo) dead in Mackinaw City.

“Where’d you get this?” Singleton whispered.

“When you work in Terminations, you tend to have access to termination files, my friend. That’s Rake.”

Clipped to the upper-right-hand corner of the top document — the case outline — was a small photo, taken in a photo booth somewhere. The face was thin and reminded Singleton of Vincent Price, a Vandyke beard and beady eyes and a ten-thousand-mile gaze. It was a face to go with the stench. This was a guy who maintained the same expression day after day, until his very skin conformed to it. Deeper in the file was a larger photo with a termination stamp, smeared slightly, and a note scrawled on the back: target Rake (Ron Martin), see note on dog tag located; body discovered in Mackinaw City, Michigan.

“Hand it back,” Ambrose said. “Got to get back to the post-briefing. Just wanted you to see this,” he said.

“Hold on,” Singleton said. He stared at the photograph and began to skim the report — body positioned against a tree … Suicidal ideation … Near Ft. Michilimackinac … Terminated case …

Someone came into the bathroom — a throat clearing, the heel-toe click of dress shoes. The hand flashed under the wall of the stall and Singleton gently put the report in it. He heard Ambrose close the briefcase and flush the toilet. He heard Ambrose leave his stall.

“Hello, sir,” Ambrose said.

“You didn’t have anything to add at the meeting?” Klein said. “I didn’t expect someone from Terminations to contribute, but you might want to think — and this is advice, son, man to man, about making a pretense of giving a shit. When I mentioned that Rake wasn’t terminated, you could’ve at least given your two cents, argued your case, or given me a nod. That’s my advice, man to man.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

* * *

In the lobby she was waiting, silent and alone, by the revolving door. The lobby was full of energy, more movement than usual. He fought the urge to grab her hand, but he risked a nod and a look that said: Follow me, you’re not going to believe what I have to say. When the moment was right, he’d give her the news. As far as the Corps was concerned, they were tracking a dead man. The face in the file, at least the one clipped to the file, and the face in his unfolding flashbacks were the same, a perfect match with a memory from a dream.

Outside, in the blunt, brutal light of day, her face looked pale and frightened. She wanted to get to her father as fast as possible, to get him and get out of town. They made their way past a police barricade — the cops nodding them through checkpoints.

“It’s time to get out of here, Sing. Time to get to my father and head north.”

“We’ll be AWOL, we’ll be in deep shit.”

“This is deep shit,” she said. She had his hand and was pulling him down the street. There was smoke to the east where fire trucks dodged sniper fire and the police and the National Guard were taking control-march formation. The lower part of the state had been fueling up with riot potential for months: one spark, everyone had been whispering, one single spark was all it would take. Even Klein had mentioned it weeks ago — he thought, getting behind the wheel — saying something about Franz Ferdinand, an alignment of forces set to explode. Maybe we don’t have a man like Franz Ferdinand, but we’ve got Kennedy. He was standing at the window, staring out. It’s going to explode when the president explodes, he added. But our job here is not to pay attention to the external political or social factors but to keep our eye on the certain targets.

Vietcong put heads on sticks, cutting them not neat and guillotine-style but in a way that leaves the necks shaggy, Rake was saying. He was at the kitchen table and MomMom was cooking and there was a claustrophobia that seemed to come from the smell of the frying food and his intensity, his fists balled, his eyes shifting from Meg to Hank and then to Haze and then to Meg and Hank again as they tried not to listen, to remain calm. They sat across from him at the table, hands folded in their laps, listening as he explained how he and Haze had taken out an entire picnic, done the head-on-stick thing. He asked them to imagine four or five kids playing in the grass away from the picnic blanket, away from the parents. Then he asked them to imagine the folks with a thermos bottle, a wicker basket — people who should know better than to let their kids run with butterfly nets, people who have suspended their fear for the sake of hope.

He was probing, it seemed to Hank, testing for a reaction, but some of his jitteriness seemed directed at Haze, whose hair seemed longer now, hanging down into his eyes, parted like curtains to reveal shriveled eyes that had trouble focusing, drifting slightly. Whatever had happened on this run had taken some toll on the young kid, sapped whatever little strength he had before, and there was a new scar up in his scalp, a patch of missing hair as white as chalk. Rake was saying that it would be easy to imagine the Corps seeing the heads on sticks and knowing it was him for sure, and then he pounded his fists on the table — the silverware jumped, MomMom jumped, Haze blinked, Meg stayed perfectly still, staring straight ahead. MomMom came over with a pan and served him cabbage. He took a bite and spat it out and was at the stove before Hank could get up. She fell to the floor and began to kick her feet. Lord, Lord, she said. Rake kicked her and she began to speak in a crazed tongue, her words half-formed, and she began quoting fragments of the Bible at random, senselessly drawing from the book, saying, Go forth and blow the trumpets into the fortified cities! A lion has come from his thicket to waste your land!

Get her up and out of here. Put her in the yard, do whatever you do to shut her up. If she’s going to speak in tongues, let her do it tied up out there, Rake said. He picked a pot from the stove and held it over MomMom’s head and said, Get up, old lady. Get up or you’ll get some of this slop you call food in the face.

I’ll take care of her, Hank said. He spoke calmly, with deliberation. There was a sudden tense silence in the kitchen — the drip of the faucet, the sound of birds far off in the trees. MomMom grew still, hardly breathing, her big gray eyes staring straight up.