Sam Lipsyte - The Subject Steve

"Don't," I said. "Please."

"Don't what?"

"Please," I said.

The hut was a furnace now.

"Falanga," Heinrich said. "I love that word. Falanga. The beating of the soles of the feet. Submarino is water torture, near drowning. Very big in Uruguay when I was down there. Fellow up at Harvard or someplace, he did a study, took regular people, housewives, students, told them to shock someone in the next room. He'd have actors in there pretending to be in agony. Most of them kept turning up the volts. Even with the screams, the pleas. What do you think of that?"

"Doctor's orders."

"That's right," said Heinrich. "But now it's all about deprivation. That's the thing nowadays. No light, no air, no sleep, no food, no water. Or just food. Dry food. Stale peanuts. Stale saltines. No water. Cotton mouth. Or kick a blindfolded man off a chopper. How could he possibly know he's only a few feet off the ground? The complex of emotions when he hits, that's what breaks him. These are the techniques. The state of the art. Make somebody stand for days. Fluids collect in the feet. Believe me, you can't conceive of the pain. You can't conceive of the fluids. It's not about violating the body anymore. It's about putting the subject in a situation whereby the subject's body violates him. Betrays him. Do you get this distinction? It's kind of subtle."

"It's not so subtle."

"You're a subtle man. How did you like tomorrow? I used to see that on billboards when we made cheese runs. Somebody wrote that crap, I always said."

"Me."

"Yes, you."

"So, that's the deal?"

"What's that?"

"Deprivation?"

"No," said Heinrich. "You've already been so deprived."

What he did to me now he did for a good long time. He did it maybe with some of the tools he'd talked about, the ones from the tarp, the grand antiques, the hooks and prongs and pincers I heard him pull from the fire. Sometimes he did it with his hands. The lulls were the worst part. Too much time to smell the cook stench.

I blacked out, came up into some throb of wakefulness. My hood was slipping and I saw pieces of the room. Heinrich knelt in the corner with an old Army-issue hand crank telephone. He clipped leads to it, ran the wires back to where I hung.

"Steve," he said, "I'm really thinking you've earned a phone privilege."

He went back to the corner and turned the crank.

I woke up next to the dead fire, my cuffs cut away. There was a note in one of my shoes: "Welcome to the World of Self-Born Men. P.S. Given your condition, you are relieved of kitchen duty for the rest of the week."

I stumbled out of the hut, fell a few times running down the hill trail, ripped my shins on roots and stones. My bones were making soft, sifting noises. I had to blow blood from my nose to breathe.

Old Gold stood at the gate. He'd gotten his knife out, and by his expression appeared to be already picturing some triumphal display of my pancreas.

"Come to keep me company?" he said.

"I'm walking through this gate, Gold."

"My job will be to stop you."

"Fair enough," I said. "But there's something you should keep in mind. I have nothing to lose. I'm a fucking terminal. Doesn't that resonate with you?"

"Folks who really got nothing to lose, they just go ahead and do the stuff they want to do, Steve. They sure as shit don't make speeches about it."

"All right," I said. "What if I forget about the gate? What if I go through the trees?"

"Trees is fine," said Old Gold. "My thing is here at the gate."

"Bless you for your thing," I said.

I cut back around the dining hall, hacked through some poison sumac to the road. Now I'd have rashes in my wounds. Well, sure, why not? What kind of hellishness stinted on rashes? I stood out past the gate, looked back towards the compound, the blunted cone of Mount Redemption rising up behind it. I'd never found out if it was the cure or the disease that would cure me of my disease. Fat chance I ever would. I watched Old Gold punch the gate post for a while. Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight.

He saw me, waved.

Pangburn Falls was a ghost of itself, a dead old barge town. I walked the main drag, boulevard of broken riverine hope, decrepit colonials, clapboard rot. Ancient porches slid down to junkyard lawns. Bent bicycles, rusted barbells, bladeless fans. All my father's owner's manual agon ended in this place. Here rested the gadget dead. I heard a whinny, a snort. Down the street a palomino drank from an inflatable kiddie pool.

There was a gas station up ahead, warm window neon, a lit sign spinning in the mist. They were advertising something called half-serve at the pumps. Some men stood near a tow rig with hot coffee and crullers.

"Hey, look," said one in coveralls. "It's a bust-out."

I readied for flight. I wondered if I had it in me for sustained fleeing. There was a shopping mall on the other side of the river. Parking lot, pink stucco, brick. What would I do if I got there? Hide behind a rack of sport coats? Beg the grill cooks for a fry boy hat?

One of the men by the tow rig made a hard fart.

"Dragon tail," he said, darted into the repair bay.

"How's the freak life, freak?" said a kid with long hair and T-shirt that read: I Skull-Fucked Your Dead Mother Today, What'd You Do?

Must share a mail-order club with Parish, I thought.

"I'm tired of the freak life, tell you the truth," I said.

I tried to coo it country.

"Where you from?" said the man in coveralls.

"South of here."

"South you mean the city?"

"Yeah."

"I got a daughter there."

"Doubt I know her."

"What, you think I'm some kind of moron?"

"No."

"I'm just letting you know that I sympathize."

"Sympathize?"

"Fish out of water," he said.

"Fish a-floppin'," said the kid with the T-shirt. "Ready for the blade de filet."

"Blade de what?" said the first man. "Don't mind Donald. He's stifled. My name's Steve."

"They call me that, too," I said.

Steve led me back through the repair bay.

"Take a load off. I'll get some coffee. Cream?"

"Thanks."

I fell asleep in the chair. Later someone was shaking me awake. Steve handed me a mug of coffee, leaned back on a gunmetal desk littered with invoice slips. I checked the cup for advertising slogans. Ancient reflex, I guess. Steve's Auto Repair , it said, Fixin' Since Nixon .

Rookies.

"We got one of you guys a few years ago," said Steve. "Looked like hell. Told us some crazy shit about how he'd failed to be a good mother, something like that. What's that about? It sounded somehow faggot-related. Like from the urban gay subculture."

"I'm not sure what it's about," I said.

"I'm not a homophobic, you know."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"Got a brother in the bi-lifestyle."

"Look," I said. "I'm not sure what it's all about. All I know is I've got to get back to the city."

"Reminds me of before. When old Heinrich had the prison camp. Better than a real prison, far as business around here went. Too bad he got all artsy fartsy. Though it looks like he's still getting his licks in. Boy, are you a sight. You know, my pops was on the march to Bataan."

"Can I use your phone?" I said.

"You know about Bataan?"

"I saw a movie."

"The movie captured about one percent of the horror, my friend."

"I got the idea, though."

"And about three percent of the idea."

"I'm sorry about Bataan. Tell your father I'm sorry about it."

"I will. That's kind of you. Guess I'll go over to the cemetery this afternoon and inform him of your concern. Want to come, asshole? Phone's right there."

I called Fiona.

"Daddy, where are you?"

"I'm in hell, baby," I said.

"Is there a bus?" said Fiona.