Shane Jones - Crystal Eaters

“I had an accident taking a drive,” he says, undressing. “A table, in the street. I’m okay. I’m not hurt, so no need to worry, no need to get worked up.”

Mom stands and needles pour down her legs (Chapter 3, Death Movement, Book 8). She rubs his arms. She appears shorter. The bedroom has taken on more of a grave-yellow hue, like the bathroom, from the heat.

“Why were you out so late?”

A black smudge left by the steering wheel horizons his forehead. She touches it and he moves her hand away. She goes back again and he lets her.

“Wanted to clear my head. Isn’t it strange that a table, a table , was in the middle of the street? I’m not talking about a piece of junk someone threw out. I’m talking about a full size dining room table. Kids. Brothers Feast. Black Mask. Royal Bob.”

“You ever talk to Maggie next door? She told me the buildings are moving closer with the sun and it’s the end of times. I know, she’s old, don’t listen to her with that voice of hers. But everything moves inward. We okay?”

“I’m fine. What’s in the box?”

“Where were you driving?”

“A really big table.”

“You were driving to where you could see the prison, weren’t you,” says Mom, stepping closer, voice lowering a little, forcing eye contact. “Like we used to do. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t be the hard you, you were so gentle with me before, be like that. Remember sitting in the truck and watching the lights turn on at the prison and imagining that our thoughts were matching up with his thoughts? I do.”

He looks at his boots dotted with specks of blue. He immediately becomes worried that he’s lost more than just a few. He immediately becomes conscious that he’s moving toward zero, and as fast as the thought arrives, he rejects it. “Truck is wrecked.”

“I remember thinking I was kissing his forehead and hoped he was thinking of me kissing his forehead.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Nothing has changed.” He studies the gauntness of her face and tries to locate the past her with his finger.

“Nothing has changed,” she repeats and shakes her head away from his hand. Outside there’s that sound bugs make when it’s too hot and another building burning. The firemen wear pearl-colored heat-resistant suits and shine like soap bubbles as they fire hopeless streams of water from long hoses kids stomp on. “Can you say how you’re feeling? Why has it been like this for years and years and years and I just put up with it? I know that look, you don’t want to get into this. And don’t tell me it’s because of the separate beds thing. It’s always been this way. We’d drive out and look at the prison and I cried and said everything I felt but you never said anything. You just kind of sat there. Numb and cold.”

Then Dad blurts out, “Okay, I considered leaving.”

It’s difficult for her to stand without the black crystal fully in her bloodstream. Her legs are stilts. She’s taken more of it, but it’s leaving her system again and she’s losing the energy for everything. She’s not fully shocked by what he says, but it still hurts.

“I was going to drive as far away as possible. I wanted out. I couldn’t take it anymore. Sometimes it all feels so unlivable.”

“Would have been easier to leave than watch me die. Where’s my cloth? I have the worst dreams now.”

Dad speaking at her back as she moves around the bed: “I thought that. I’ve thought about a life by myself and thought how much easier —”

Mom lies down in bed. Dad stands next to the bed.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Why didn’t I?”

“Why didn’t you walk in? You could have made a life selling crystals, running back and forth and grabbing the best ones.”

“Did you just say there’s a problem with your dreams?”

She spits on the chest of her nightgown. The goo shines with red crystal or thick blood. Dad circles the bed, an ache in his lower back developing from the accident that will only get worse from now on. He wants to change the subject away from what he’s feeling. She seemed so much stronger before, when they held each other and he hummed that song.

“Remy talks about dying.”

“We’ve talked about it,” says Mom. “The city, the sun, but she can’t discuss death?”

“She’s small.”

“Not thinking about dying is living in denial,” says Mom, touching the liquid on her chest. “My legs hurt.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You were.”

“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have come back.”

“You know those television shows that go really fast to zip through a scene, and it’s funny? Like that show we watched with the family who lived on the beach? I see us like that, but it’s not funny. It’s just the two of us moving to opposite sides of the house and the house is shrinking. His imprisonment changed us but we never talked about it enough. I saw it in you the first time we sat in the truck, watching. You were damaged. You should have gotten it out of you back then but you didn’t.”

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to respond to that? Anything I say is going to be unhelpful. I don’t have anything to say.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I care about you and Remy more than anything.”

“I think the most selfish people are the quietest.” More spit, a deeper shade of red. “Promise you won’t leave again. I need you here. We do. What do you think it’s like to be zero?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s like the city.”

“Concrete and endless noise?”

“Wonder if I’ll feel anything.”

“Phones, politicians.”

“Wonder if it smells like anything.”

“Does that matter?”

“They have a hospital.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Dad, and comes back to her and sits on the edge of the bed and rubs her legs in long deep strokes that she doesn’t notice. He loves her, but can’t handle what is happening because he can’t control it. Later, he’ll walk to the kitchen for the spitting cloth. It will be the last time — the cloth the texture and color of smashed cherries disintegrating over his hands as he rinses it out. He wants to ask her again about her dreams. He wants to know what’s wrong with them.

“I can’t feel you.”

He receives a letter from Brothers Feast saying the jailbreak in reverse has been finalized and they are coming into the prison. He’s traded letters with Z. and they’ve worked together on the escape plan and everything is ready. McDonovan knows breaking in is risky, teetering on the absurd, but it’s worth it because there’s a chance he will see his family. Mom wrote there’s a new dog named Hundred who has one yellow eye and one black. She and Dad haven’t been getting along (nothing new) and something about a truck accident in the street (truck wrecked, bad back). In his reply letter he asks for a specific date and time, wondering how they could forget something so crucial.

She’s tried the black crystal and the sensation is an illusion to a rising number. Black crystal foams your eyes with what you think are crystals stacking inside your body, the pyramid growing, but it doesn’t hold. At first she felt better from her sickness, but later, the rush of illness flooded back stronger. He wrote And everyone wants to live longer, how sad. I will see you guys soon. There’s been talk of my release. Love and all things good, Adam . She touched his name.

Pants is escorted by a guard through the prison’s exercise room and into the basketball court. Inside his left shoe his foot is bandaged from the destruction of his big toe, the shard of black crystal that ate away the nail and much skin during the health meeting. The guard tells him to stop dragging his feet by tapping his club on the back of his thighs.