Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“Then why are we running all the fuck over town?” Logan asked.

“It’s fine with you to run into bowling alleys and smack people around, but all of a sudden it gets dark and you’re afraid? Is that it?” Moses taunted. “She’s going to be here. This is where her doc was…”

“Is that what the giant dyke said?”

Moses Moon knew it wasn’t about skin or accents or the way someone walked. That wasn’t the reason why they were here with their scabby skulls and in-grown hairs. It was to build something of their own. Something new. They needed to make it new, and the only way you did that was harvesting the past. Pulling up all the broken things your parents had buried and killed and making them your center. Turn trash into your cosmos — either worship it or burn the fucker down. Moses wanted to pull everyone down to that level, and it was easiest when you were already on the edge of the radar. It was easy when you sucked cock or spoke Cantonese or cut hair for the two hundred black men in town. It was easy to slip off the map and end up in the small little place, crowded with everyone else’s misery and bleeding from open pores you couldn’t close. That was why they bought the big heavy boots and ran razors over their heads and stabbed pens into their tiny bird chests. Start at the bottom of the level, start in your own tenements and tattoo MADE IN LARKHILL on the line above your skull. Let the ink settle and blur till you can barely read the letters. It was best to start at the bottom, and Larkhill was dead weight.

“You can suck my cock,” Moses said.

They would tear it down, and then it would be new.

“Like you even—”

Moses tackled Logan, and then they were rolling around in the dead leaves and melted snow. He pinned the smaller boy underneath him and raised his fists. One, two, three, and there was blood pouring from Logan’s nose. Logan coughed and tried to choke Moses but then B. Rex was tearing them off each other, using his short arms to hold them apart and laughing.

“You know how stupid this is, Loogie? I am going to get my ass kicked tomorrow by the old man. The cops are already probably at my house. Now I have to babysit you two? No, not going to play it this way. You two can throw your little pity party some other time. It’s fucking cold. You get that?”

The two boys flopped down on the grass. Logan wiped the blood from his face while Moses massaged his throat. From one of the brick buildings, they heard something bang against a wall. It groaned in the darkness.

“Where you going, B. Rex?” Moses asked.

“To find your fucking mom. You coming or not?”

The double doors were painted industrial green. B. Rex yanked one door open and pushed his way inside. Moses and Logan followed him down the hallway, stepping around small holes in the floor and pink tufts of insulation. There was a painful light coming from down the hall. A small sign on the wall read WARD 3-W. They passed a nurse’s station covered in old schedules and crowned with a busted clock. It was always 7 a.m. in WARD 3-W.

There was another thud from farther down the hallway, toward the light. B. Rex kept striding forward. Moses wanted to sit down. He could feel his stomach turning. Elvira had tried to run away many times before, but Moses always caught her waiting for the elevator. Elvira pretended she knew where she was going, but she was never wearing any underwear. Sometimes she said it was a job interview at Scotiabank. Other days she had a hair appointment. The nightgowns she liked to wear didn’t cover much; Moses found it hard to find extra larges at the second-hand stores. It seemed like only small people handed down their clothes. People got fatter with age. The ones who got thinner were usually sick, their bodies retreating away from poisoned bones or squeezing the last bit of energy out of each fat deposit until there was nothing left.

Elvira had refused to wear underwear. She would flush it down the toilet or chuck it out the window. Sometimes she used it like Kleenex and left it bunched up in the garbage. On those mornings when he caught her in the lobby, Moses knew everyone was watching her as she paced back and forth across the threadbare lobby rugs. They were leering from the collapsed La-Z-Boys and couches scattered around the Dynasty’s busted lobby. Moses didn’t know what his friends would find in WARD 3-W, but he wanted to stop walking. He wanted a homemade quilt to wrap Elvira up in before he turned the corner and found B. Rex and Logan staring at her half-naked or worse. Moses lingered behind his friends as they neared the light. There were strange stains on the floor and deep gouges in the pale green linoleum.

“You gotta see this, Mosey,” B. Rex said.

It used to be a cafeteria. Long, chipped tables were pushed into the corners and orange chairs were stacked up to the ceiling. The majority of the floor was covered in a thick mulch that smelled like manure. Tall stalks of green filled the room, urged higher by the powerful lights above them. Racks of hydroponic equipment were drilled into the ceiling. The air was moist and stuck to their skin. Large wet stains sprouted from the walls and long tubes of aluminum ductwork crisscrossed the floor. Mold grew on every surface in a sickly half-rainbow of greens and browns. Moses allowed his spine to relax slightly. His mother wasn’t here. She didn’t like plants; she had told Moses she didn’t trust them. Plants could stop providing us with oxygen at any time if they decided they’d had enough.

“You ever seen anything like this?” Logan said. “It’s like the fucking Emerald City. I’m just waiting for some flying monkeys or some shit. Breathe it in, buddy. This is going to be good. How much do you think we can take before they notice?”

They were lucky it was wearing a chain.

“Probably five plants each or some—”

The bear burst out of the tall plants, its patchy fur revealing stringy muscles underneath. Teeth snapped in front of B. Rex’s nose and then all three were running toward the door. The bear bellowed and crashed after them through the stinking plants. Logan lost a boot in the thick manure but kept on going. The bear rose up on its hind legs and bellowed again, revealing a scarred chest covered in seeping gashes and cigarette burns. A few butts remained embedded in its chest like dead tapeworms. One eye couldn’t focus — it stood still in the middle of that roaring face.

The boys didn’t remain to observe this new specimen. None of them had ever been this close to a bear. Only B. Rex had ever been to the zoo. They scrambled away into the darkness as the animal continued to bellow and roll its thick neck against the reinforced chain tethering it to the wall. Someone had welded it in place.

The boys stumbled down the hallway, crashing into fallen ceiling tiles and office chairs. Logan’s bare foot hit the cold linoleum with a splat as his breathing filled Moses’s ears. The bear roared again. It was all fur and teeth and seeping wounds. Some of the cigarette butts looked fresh — they were filled with day-old puss.

The heavy green doors lay ahead. B. Rex led the way, his stubby legs pulling him closer to the cold air outside. As he yanked the steel door open, a large hand grabbed him by the neck and threw him onto the frosted grass. Moses and Logan emerged behind him and were lifted off their feet by two sets of heavily tattooed hands.

“Whoops,” a voice laughed. “Where you runnin’ to?”

Moses couldn’t breathe. The hands were locked around his neck. He knew the police didn’t tattoo their hands. They didn’t have bushy beards or snakes encircling their thumbs. B. Rex tried to stand up, but a size-twelve work boot pushed him back down onto the wet grass. A red pickup was parked beside the crippled building. It had mud splashed up to the windows. Logan let out a wheeze as he struggled with his own headlock. The moon outlined their bodies.