Philipp Meyer - American Rust

He pushed through the brush making his way toward the old building. Mouth very dry now — fixating. Mental game and you're losing. Find a stream again. But there would be no streams — it was an industrial zone. Several minutes later he was walking down the gravel road toward the warehouse; off to one side there was an old front- end loader, abandoned and grown over with devil's tear thumb. He picked his way through the thorns and went to the bucket and it was full of rainwater. Brushing the leaves aside, he cupped his hand into it, it tasted tannic and like metal but he swallowed it anyway just to wet his throat, then took another palmful. Might be sorry about this later, he thought.

He was nearly to the building when he had a sudden urge to use the bathroom, he barely had time to squat in the ditch by the road. Nothing to wipe. Good- bye Mr. Clean. Something in that water? Too soon for that, just shock of something in the stomach. Can't remember the last time you felt this dirty.

He went around the warehouse, trying the doors, they were all locked but one. Shining his penlight around, the floor of the warehouse was filthy, piled with debris, people had been scavenging the copper wire and pipes. Right next to the door he'd come in through was another door that led to a small room, it looked like the office, it was cleaner and less dusty than the rest of the building. There were old file cabinets and desks. This is the spot, he thought. Smell of old piss. He took his sleeping bag out and spread it on a desk, it might have been a workbench, he couldn't tell.

It was hard but he kept getting warmer and then he was actually comfortable and warm but he lay there and couldn't fall asleep. Can't stop the mind from going, try the old trick. He put his hand down his pants and pulled for a while but nothing happened. Too tired. He thought about Poe and his sister he had heard her cry out once, a stifled muffled holding your breath noise, and after a minute of thinking about it he was hard, it was a disgusting thought, his own sister, but fine he'd take it, it was the closest he'd been to actual sex in two years, not since he and Autumn Dodson had done it after her graduation party, he still was not sure why she had done it, she'd gone off to Penn State after that. Because you were the only one with a brain in the entire school. That was not the only reason — the kid took over that time, too. The kid made it happen, saying things old Isaac English never would have had the balls to say. Then you're down on the couch in her den, she lifts up that cute little rear of hers to let you get her pants off. Then, look at you, a naked girl in front of you with her legs spread. Put your finger in her and watched it go in and out for a long time, seemed a miracle the way it was slippery like that. Lying there in the dark with his hand down his pants he thought about that, it was old material but good enough, he finished and fell asleep right after.

Sometime later he was dreaming, there was a car and then he heard voices and he was wondering if he could wedge the door closed when the voices got much louder and he realized he wasn't dreaming. There were people in the factory with flashlights.

“Someone cracked that door. It wasn't like that before.”

“Come on, Hicks.”

“You gotta look. You don't look from over there.”

The next voice was loud: “If there's any piece- of- shit bums down there you might as well come out now and save us some work.” People were laughing. Someone said: “You're a goddamn dumb- ass, Hicks.”

Isaac began to disentangle himself from the sleeping bag; the room he was in was small, the office maybe, there was only one way out of it and he was only partially out of the sleeping bag when the door swung open and light swept around the room. He put his hand on his knife but he saw them and they were young people, high schoolers. He let go of the knife.

“Hold up,” he said, but he'd barely gotten off the workbench when one of them walked directly up to him, looked back briefly at his friends as if to make sure they were paying attention, and punched Isaac in the face.

“I went to Buell Memorial,” he said, but the others were on top of him and he was knocked to the ground. He tried to protect his head but something caught him on the jaw anyway and then in the stomach and then his ribs and back and he tried to protect his sides and got kicked in the mouth again. He covered his head and they kept kicking. His wind was knocked out and he couldn't breathe, he was choking. Then the light was in his face and the kicking abruptly stopped.

“Christ, Hicks. It's a fucking kid.”

Isaac stayed where he was, covering himself.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Hicks. “All of you.”

One of the others said: “Fuck yourself, Hicks. The car is leaving, you can walk home if you want.”

The person he knew was Hicks squatted down next to him and said: “You'll be alright, buddy. We got you confused with someone else. You want a beer or anything?”

“Don't touch me,” said Isaac.

Hicks knelt there a few more seconds, unsure of himself, and then Isaac heard him stand and walk quickly outside. He heard car doors slam and then heard the car pull away. He was afraid to touch himself for what he might find. He stood up and walked outside to the dirt lot. It was empty. It hadn't taken more than a minute. Most of his face was still numb and he went back inside and repacked his things and finally he stopped heaving. He found a rubber welcome mat and carried it outside to sleep on. The kids had been sixteen, seventeen, maybe younger. Good, he said out loud. Now you know. He walked through the tall brush toward the river until it seemed no one would find him. When he crouched down there was no wind. His heart was still racing and his mouth tasted like blood. You could have stopped that, he thought. If you'd cut even one of them, the rest would have taken off. He decided it was fine. Fool me once. He took out the knife and set it next to his head. It took a long time before his heart slowed down enough for him to fall asleep.

He was in the back of Harris's truck and they pulled into the police station. It was not the first time he'd been there, it wasn't even properly the police station, in fact, it was called the Buell Municipal Building on account of there were other offices, the mayor's and the city council's. According to the newspaper, the mayor now slept in his office because his wife had kicked him out. It had been a minor scandal, the mayor living out of his office. The municipal building was white cinderblock, three stories with a flat roof, it looked like a big repair shop of some kind, not the headquarters of a town. The inside was painted yellow. It was not old but it looked that way. The original city hall had been condemned years ago and several times Poe had broken in and walked around inside; it was a large red brick building that looked like a castle, iron windows, wood paneling inside and dental molding, it looked like the home of a rich person, a place you could respect yourself. But the city did not have the money to maintain it.

Inside the new building Poe saw the pudgy Chinese officer, he was watching Fox News, it looked like he was having a conversation with the television. Harris took Poe downstairs to the holding cells, Poe had been there before, a long hallway with what looked like big steel firedoors every ten feet or so. The cell had a butcher block for a bed and no mattress. The light fixture outside flickered like it would give him a seizure. There was one window that looked up from the ground toward the parking lot, but the plastic was hazed over.

“I'll be back for you in a bit,” said Harris. When he wasn't busting heads he had an open, easygoing face, eyes that forgave you, like he was meant to be something else, maybe a schoolteacher. Which was probably the reason he had to bust so many heads, to make up for the way he looked.