Джош Малерман - Inspection

The number was once twenty-six and, having flipped through the report, he’d seen Burt had mentioned A and Z, despite Richard’s personal orders not to.

…we’ve already lost A and Z to much more gruesome ends…

He removed his red coat, exposing a simple tank top beneath. The muscles in his shoulders and arms looked strong beneath the soft overhead light. His beard as dark as misinformation.

In the beginning, following the successful launch of the Parenthood, Richard was very aware that he had to fill the tower with a profound sense of character. It was his duty to deliver the philosophy of the Parenthood. His duty to make good on all that he claimed the place could be. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for him to feel the pressure of the Inspectors he’d hired, simple convicts only a year prior, to feel them and the cooks and the teachers and the academic-book writers, ex-cons all, watching him as he gave his speeches to the (then) twenty-six toddlers in the Body Hall. The Alphabet Boys, Burt had come to call them (a name Richard, as their D.A.D., was rather fond of). A name for each letter of the alphabet.

A

B

C…

Yes, in those days Richard gave his speeches for the benefit of the staff, whether he directed his voice at them or not. It was exciting indeed when, five years into the experiment, Richard first spotted comprehension in the eyes of his boys, knowledge transferred, from the pulpit to P, from the speech to each.

And now…The Delicate Years were close. No longer could Richard come at the boys subconsciously, through feel, a vague but powerful sense of rules and why not to break them. With the Delicate Years came the full attention of discerning boys. Intelligent boys. Boys who could, and would, now analyze each and every word Richard used.

He smiled in the mirror. It wasn’t the first instance of his boys breaking stereotype: In the world beyond the Parenthood, teenagers stopped listening to their parents.

Richard flexed his aging biceps, frowned at their appearance in the glass, and put his jacket back on. He’d read the Burt Report later. The staff psychiatrist broke more rules on one page of paper than other staff were permitted over a decade.

Addressing Richard directly. Mentioning A and Z.

He left his quarters and was greeted by two guards in plainclothes outside his door. Both armed. Richard recognized the awe in their eyes—as if he were a celebrity, the pastor in their church.

He still had them, he knew. Twelve years in.

“Just get up there and spread some excitement, right?” Richard said for their ears as they followed him up the black-tiled walkway to the Body Hall. “Show them it’s okay for a man to be overwhelmed by his passions, dangerous as some may be. The time of radiant men has arrived.” Here Richard paused and turned to face Bobby, the thin-haired guard who once stole cars and spent three years in jail for theft. Sometimes Richard wondered if the staff hadn’t simply traded drugs and drink, incarceration, for the Parenthood. “God is sweating, Bobby. Can you feel it?”

Beyond the glass walls of the hall, snow fell. Richard stepped to it and looked out upon the Yard. In the now-hazy distance, the pines stood guard.

“It’s time to usher in the new father,” he said. “And his new sons.”

Greatness, Richard once told a former guard, with one hand on the shoulder of the man’s plaid short-sleeved wholesome shirt, just before sending him to the Corner, is not pretty to look at. Study the faces of the world’s biggest thinkers and you’ll note an optimistic dismay. Exhaustion. May this be the last thing you ever learn, Brad: Exhaustion isn’t brought about by sitting still. You gotta move to get it. And motion will give you those worry lines, that thinning hair, that shell-shocked glaze over your once-bright eyes. Tell me, Brad, which would you rather have? A simple, easily read face or the bloody knuckles of a man who has knocked on his inner sanctum’s door?

The guard Brad had experienced doors locking on him before. Four years in Jackson for assault. But he’d never seen anything like the Corner.

“Welcome to the Parenthood,” Richard said now, still watching the early-morning snow fall through the hall glass. The sudden swell of choral voices, Alphabet Boys singing in the Body Hall, broke his reverie. In blond Bobby’s eyes he saw the dark side of the Parenthood, the closing of the Corner door. Richard thought maybe he could hear the door creaking.

Richard smiled. It was not the Corner at all but rather Gordon emerging from his own quarters on the first floor. The Parenthood’s chief assistant to D.A.D. looked as wonderfully infallible as he always did. His black hair like a shining singular piece, the face and hair of a plastic toy soldier in a thousand-dollar suit.

“Richard,” Gordon said. “Did you read the Burt Report?”

“Some.”

“Well, I have a lot to say about the five suggested alternatives to the floor shift. And seriously, where does Burt get the nerve? I’m sorry the two boys were named.”

“A and Z,” Richard said. He was quiet a beat. “And here I’ve just said their names again.”

The six-part harmony of Voices seemed to emerge from one holy throat. A minor chord as sad as the death of their brothers A and Z.

Spoiled boys. Spoiled rotten.

Richard closed his eyes. He turned his back on the falling flakes and walked toward the Body Hall, toward the sound of his boys singing.

“Yes,” Gordon agreed, writing Richard’s words down on a clipboard. “But you shouldn’t have to think about them just prior to delivering a speech. It was egregious, as Burt often is.”

“Have I changed, Gordon?” Richard asked, his eyes open again, his black boots clacking against the black tiles. Ahead, the last of the boys—H, in all black—could be seen hurrying through the Body Hall doors.

“Changed how, sir?”

“Do I value now what I valued then?”

“You’ve remained staunch in your vision, sir.”

“I have. And yet…”

“The Burt Report is getting to you. That’s all.”

“I fear, Gordon.”

From the Body Hall, the voices rose, swelled to a weeping peak. Richard paused at the door. He eyed the alternating choir, the six boys who sang today. In their black slacks and black turtlenecks only their faces shone, floating visages hovering in the shadows under the arches of the Body Hall. The echo of their song added ghosts to their small number.

Richard relished the sight. The Parenthood choir, Voices. The other boys, too, dressed in black, seated in the pews. The white carpet of the aisle. The shadowed podium on the stage. The staff lined up against the walls like watchers.

Or perhaps like the victims of a firing squad.

Richard spotted Warren Bratt, sloppy and overweight, slouched and frowning.

“What do you fear?” Gordon asked.

The Body Hall lights reflected off Bratt’s glasses, and Richard couldn’t tell if the cynical author was looking at him or not.

“Surprises,” Richard said.

One deep breath and he entered the hall. Gordon followed.

As Richard walked the white carpet, his red jacket and slacks like spilt blood upon it, he was engulfed in the morbid tones of Voices, today the boys from Floor 8 with F and W accompanying. Despite Richard’s total ban of religion in the Parenthood, the boys sang Barber’s Agnus Dei. Aesthetic gibberish to them all; they had no way of knowing Latin.

His boys. His Alphabet Boys.

Oh, how they stared. Flat admiration in their eyes. Even those who sang: J and D, L and Q, F and W. As their voices rose to the Mural of Ambition upon the Body Hall’s high ceiling, they did so in one unified chord, seemingly adding dimension to the image of the shirtless man raising the boulder with his mind. The boys in black, the boys in the pews, some whispering, some elbowing, all fixated on the man in red leather, a moving wound now upon the white carpet toward the stage. As Richard climbed the steps, as Gordon and the guards shuffled to the sides of the stage to join the other staff, many of the boys inhaled deeply. They’d been with him only moments ago at their individual Inspections, yet seeing their D.A.D. at the podium in the Body Hall was a sight each and every time. Looking right, Richard smiled Warren Bratt’s way, showing nothing of his opinion of the unkempt, balding author’s particularly rumpled appearance. Then Richard signaled the boys of Voices to cease singing, and their final chord rang out long after they took his cue.