Michael Bunker: Refuse

Leah chewed in silence. Though there was occasionally some discussion, silence was really one of the hallmarks of papermaking meetings. This form of fellowship did not tax the emotions or put undue strain on friendships. In fact, Leah usually left the meetings with a sore jaw, but a cleansed soul. The friends spoke with their eyes and hearts more than they did with their mouths, and every so often, one of them would get that faraway look like they were writing, right there, right then, in their minds. Leah had written entire chapters, and had memorized them—word for word—while chewing and pulping the paper upon which she would eventually write those very chapters. There was a sublime beauty to the process that she could not convey but that she felt down to her very core.

She slipped her penknife carefully under the paper in the very corner of the frame. Slowly she eased the paper away from the mold and then, holding it up, she examined it in the light. The small, colored hairs and fibers stood out starkly against the eggshell colored sheet. One of the realities of homemade silo paper is that every sheet was unique. The paper itself took time and industry, and each leaf bore the signature of artistry and care. Leah removed a dozen sheets from a homemade press, and replaced them with the new sheet that she’d just removed from the frame, along with a handful of other sheets from the others that waited to be pressed.

The makeshift paper press was a brilliant feat of engineering, and it hid in plain sight disguised as a metal shelf unit. Each individual shelf within the unit was almost invisibly made up of two separate sheets of thin metal. Beneath the flange on each shelf, there was a hidden set of wing nuts that could be turned in order to press the paper.

She twisted each of the wing nuts to tighten up the press, and then pushed the whole unit back into place so that—without some prior knowledge—no one would know that the shelf was actually a device used to manufacture illegal paper.

Leah heard humming, and as she evened up the dozen sheets of new and finished paper in her hands, she turned to see that Ivan was kicked back in his chair, humming to himself and chewing slowly. His eyes were closed and she could tell that he was writing something in his mind—working out a turn of phrase, or maybe a description of something that had yet to come into existence. The other four members of the guild: Randall Paine, the sweeper and his wife Louise (Louise worked as a picker in the recycling unit up on 48); Mark Durant the farmer; and William Burke the porter—all were taking a break, sipping tea and discussing their latest writings.

She smiled as she looked at Ivan, and at that moment he opened his eyes and returned the smile. He always had a smile for her, and he never pressured her to reveal what she was working on. He trusted that she would tell him about it whenever the time was right.

As she walked back towards the table, Ivan bent over and spit into the frame, working and smoothing the pulp with the flat end of a comb until it was just the way he wanted it. She always admired the care and intense concern that he always took with his work. The moment seemed poetic and beautiful to her, but then it is often true that when life is at its most poetic, the whole of it can turn on a dime. He’d just started to hum again when the door flew open and standing there in the open door, Leah could see Sheriff Tatum and the Mayor of the silo.

The trek down to the Deputy Sheriff’s office in the lower mids on 70 passed almost, but not completely, without conversation. It was only thirteen floors, but thirteen floors can seem like an eternity when you’re being arrested and taken to jail. What made it worse for Leah, was that the other five members of the guild—her closest friends—were on the pilgrimage up and not down. They were being escorted by the Mayor and the deputy from the up-top up to the Sheriff’s office on the uppermost floor. Why they were being separated she did not know—and it wasn’t for a lack of asking.

Sheriff Tatum and the deputy from the mids (she did not know his name) were mostly silent as they escorted Leah down the well-worn steps of the mids. A few times they asked her if she needed to stop for a break, or if she needed water, but other than that they kept to themselves.

“I know why I’m being arrested. That’s pretty clear,” Leah said as the sounds of their steps echoed around them. “I’d just like to know why I’m the only one heading down. Why are my friends being taken to the up-top? Can you tell me anything?Anything at all?” She thought she’d try again, though she’d made no headway with the two lawmen thus far.

“There’ll be plenty time for talk when we get you into your cell,” Sheriff Tatum replied. Same refrain.

So many bits of information, and none of it added up. Why was she being taken to 70? And by the Sheriff himself? Why was the Mayor going up with the others? Leah tried to even out her breathing as the steps multiplied beneath her. Porters buzzed by, usually slowing to take in the scene, staring at the young woman being escorted by two representatives of the law. She knew a few of the porters personally, so she was certain that by now the talk would already be bouncing around from person to person and from floor to floor. Her life was now being analyzed by strangers and by people who barely knew her. She tried to care what these others thought of her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not. She was not one of them.

Her thighs were already starting to protest, but there weren’t many flights left to go, so she kept her head down and concentrated on the steel treads and the railing and how not to let her fears and imagination run away with her. She thought of the martyrs, and of Alexander’s stories of sacrifice and resistance. She thought of Alexander and how willfully he’d gone out to clean. Then she wondered if she’d ever chewed on the shredded remnants of Alexander’s life files.

The jail cell in the deputy sheriff’s office in the mids was cool and dark, and the feeling of incarceration was more than just tangible. The whole world seemed to press in on her, and she could feel, in a very real way, the impression of history and the ages swirling in the air around her. There was a world out there… outside… and there had been a world long before someone built this silo, and all of that—the old world, and antiquity—maybe it was all buried under the ground too, but it was still out there, and there were stories both here and there that, without voices of their own, begged to be told.

Still, here she was, locked up. It felt like she’d marked and passed the moment in her life when it was all coming to an end. Her mind dwelt for a moment on the memory of Alexander and the short time he’d spent in a cell before he’d been sent out to clean. Then she thought about innumerable other prisoners—not just in the silo—but prisoners of conscience from other epochs and from another, earlier world. Alexander had told her that stories of resistance and refusal had always marked the history of humanity.

Maybe she was just being melodramatic. Perhaps she was just a young, foolish woman with dreams of self-importance. Yeah, maybe. Her reverie was broken by the sounds of a key turning in a lock.

Sheriff Tatum entered the cell trailed by the deputy from the mids. Tatum held a file in his hands, but he didn’t refer to it or even allude to anything that might be in it. The file was a prop. Maybe it was intended to subconsciously indicate to her the real power of paper. Maybe her life was in that file, and the dispensation of that life was at the whim of the one who wielded it.