Brian McKinney

Boy 4

"F acts don’t mean anything, on 

their own, you know?” I say to Flotsamantha, who I think likes to play nurse. “But if you line facts up together and they point at something nobody else sees, then they’re clues.”

    “And cuts let blood out, and then you die, like. . .” says Flotsy, who shades her eyes when I interrupt her, like she can’t believe I’m still talking and wants to watch more carefully.

     “Listen. And then don’t run off and tell everybody what I said, okay?”

    “Promise.”

    “A bunch of these ‘facts’ are telling me it’s not over. I feel like I’m in the

middle of something, a time of change, a time that will be a story, a story I should remember.”

    “Like what? Is it true?” she asks, leaning, then sitting up on the boulder I’m on top of, getting closer to my wound. I know what she means. I nod, too tired to act sad.

    “Yeah, last night, my father. The Marshall. The Marshall! Red Laser. Stairway also took Bruno, Phillip,  three best friends. I hardly remember that shaker, you know, following the dragonflies. . .”

    “What? How do you know. . .?”

    “I saw them once. In the daylight.”

    “So the ‘dragonflies’ took your father, our leader? To heaven?”

    “That’s why I look so, so. . .”

    “Your mask looks okay. You got a few red nicks, your arm and stuff, but you look okay to me, uh, without the bloodshot eyes.”

     “I couldn’t sleep. I started to remember stuff.  I could still hear his voice,  clear and loud,  him shouting directions down to me like he was in charge of some operation, not like he was leaving me forever.”

     “What’d he shout?”

    “’Stay low, Fordie, stay low!’  Calm, like always, looking down at me. Fifty feet over my head! At me! All the time the red beam pulling him up into that darkness, that crazy downward wind. . .”

    “Taking him away forever, right?” she asks, leaning in closer, a sad expression on her sun-block covered features. I don’t say anything.

    I’m feeling better, almost like in a dream, because another picture, another explanation has silently developed. The doubt and confusion is giving way;  scattered memories are falling into place, changing into clues. My life is beginning to make more sense, which brings me back to yesterday, before my father was taken. I almost begin explaining things to Flotsy, but she’s luckily focused elsewhere.

    I went to our hiding place,  thinking it would be the last chance I had to read if I was pulled up. I fight with  the invader who has somehow slipped through the secret entrance. I see him drop the big jar with my pets, hear the glass splintering. Then I’m waking up, feeling the downward wind, sensing something bad has happened and not caring because the Red Stairway has come to take me away. Not me, as it turns out, but my father and the normal bunch of Sixteeners, including my three best friends.

    “Ford? what’re you thinking?” says Flotsamantha.

     “Sorry. Got a headache. Where am I?” I joke, like I’m waking up in a strange place.

     “You’re in the middle of a valley surrounded by purple mountains, resting on a flat boulder in front of your tent.”

    “Go ahead, miss pretty pre-preg, cook up some more words.” I say, challenging her.

    “Okay. You’re wounded. Rest. Now, let’s see, up the rocky slant to our right is a ten foot high grey cement wall.  On the other side of that wall, that is the Ramp, a very wide concrete road, as wide as our Garden.”

    “And?” I manage, the sun poking at my eyes as it peeks out from behind Bully Mountain, the last blue smudge on the horizon to the left.

    “And? You want me to dis’cribe the whole world?”

    I nod, trying to make sense of this world she is describing.

    “Mobilities ride on the ramps, which is lots of them, all over the place, tall, veggies in the fields next to our huts. There.”she says, like she just completed the labors of Hercules, or just landed like Superman after plugging the hole in the dam and rounding up the criminals.

    “Oh, and all over the place are the straight thin white tubes, which to me look like the legs of some gooky animal. There!” she says, louder, like there’s nothing more to say. She’s right, as far as she’s said it. Bunch of wide roads, walled off, moving buildings going by in the day, us living in huts, mostly, some better in Crestville, the Option three’s growing and picking veggies in the fields. Those tall white things, barrel-sized tubes shooting into the sky, they got propellars, father tells me,way up where the wind blows hard, turning the propellars, making something called energy. That’s one thing I won’t do, climb up one of those service ladders.

    “Rumor says we have a new chief. Already, a new head Aegon.” Flotsy announces, standing up. She’s sturdy enough to be Option three, but she’s a pre-preg hottie, doesn’t have to make a choice, just pop out the babies,  raise ‘em and then take off for the Ramp, live clean. I look down at my sweaty shorts and pinchy rubber-soled shoes from the night before. My wrist is bloody. My dad is gone. Facts. Truth.

    “Flotsamantha, you won’t tell on me? If I tell you a secret? A big one?” I say, my voice louder but not enough for the others to hear us.

    “A big one? How big?” she asks, turning and sitting again, leaning on the boulder.

    “I’m not sure how to begin. Look, to me, the stuff I know is crazy, the only thing crazier is who dreamed this up, and why, but that’s something we’ll probably never know.” I pause, seeing her ‘boring!’ face develop.

    “Okay.  I have a lot of books, some from my father but most from the garbage dropped off the giant moving buildings. I know how it used to be, if the books weren’t lying. People lived in houses, or apartments,  not huts or tents. Boys had cars, went places instead of spending all their sixteen in a place as small as Garden 17. They ate hamburgers and French fries, not uncooked vegetables. Boys played gentle sports, and girls met on Phasebook and competed to have the best wall.”

    “You are crazy!”she says, not leaving but leaning closer. I get the idea.

    “In the stories in my books boys have a father, and a future, something to worry about, something unknown, something to look forward to, but, except for me up to last night, . . .”

    “The Offies have no fathers. All Offies know are the five Options, the ways to avoid the Red Stairway.” She says, louder than me, then adds in a whisper,  “Don’t you feel better?”

    “You don’t understand. I’m not trying to freak you, talking forbidden stuff.”

    “Good. They might not let you go up.” She says seriously. “If they catch you talking about books you’ll have to pick options, no sweet desserts and laughing and pretty girls for you.”

     “Yeah, pretty like you? Listen, Flotsamantha, last night I wanted to go up, up with him, but I told you, he ordered me to stay low, avoid the beam. So, if he believed Heaven was so wonderful why didn’t he want me to go with him?”

    “Maybe ‘cause he knows you don’t like high places, nothing higher than a basketball hoop; wanted to save you the fear.”

    “I’d do it, rise up like a bird. I’d do a lot of stuff. Okay, listen to this.” I say, seeing her again, new, pretty eyes, pretty lips, wearing some thin shirt with dark eyes just showing through.

    “What you got?” she asks, smiling. I can’t believe I’m telling her this, but my dad and Bruno and Phillip and Hugo are gone anyway.

    “Something I’ll never forget. The last day of our multiple opponents training, two weeks ago? We were standing near the Beach and the b-ball court.” Flotsy leans in closer, her eyes upon me. “My father pulled me away, to go for a walk, he said, towards the Crest. As we walk he tells me he’s proud of me, how much I’ve learned so fast, how I’m growing, like I’ll be even taller than him, stuff like that. Dad stuff. Normal, at least for us. Before we know it we’re all the way through Shucksville, into  Crescent Heights. As we walk through the Heights’ neat paths he tells me, ‘Life here sometimes gets you ready for life there,’ he says, nodding at the Mobility passing by, ‘If you’re up to it.’ Weird. Then he tells me ‘knowledge is the key to victory’. I think he’s talking about the Aegon contests, but by then I start to worry that he found out about the secret cave because we keep walking past the Heights and down into my valley and then over to the bamboo that hides the entrance. I freak because I think he’s going to find the way through the bamboo thicket, but he’s just checking to see nobody’s hiding behind things.”

    “Secret cave? Past Cresent Heights? In that bamboo?” she says, leaning closer, kissing me on the clean place on my jaw.

    “Yeah.” I mumble, kissing her back. She breathes on me. “Listen, that’s not the good part.” I say, part of me wanting to go inside the tent with her. She pulls back, fanning herself. I notice sun is on my shoulders already, two fingers above Mt. Bully’s dark jiggiety top. “Here’s the really weird part. Is it a clue?The second clue?” I ask, Flotsy looking slightly annoyed, or trying to deal with sun in her face.

    “He tells me, ‘Ford, you’s special. Born on the Ramp, I want you to live out your destiny, the meanin’ of your name. Now, your mother gave you a middle name, Gemini. I wanted ‘David’, but never mind that. You’s the original. Don’t ever forget that. You are the original.’ He said, looking at me sideways, adding,  ‘No matter what happens.’  Then he looked me square in the mask, hugged me, and walked away. What did he mean, telling me I was ‘the original?’”

    “Not a Probot?”she asks, me nodding in agreement.

    “And being born on the Ramp?”

    “Lots of kids are born on the Ramp, if the delivery is difficult.” She replies, into it, her eyes pressing into me again.

    “Gemini? David? What’s that all about? And Ford?”

    “What about the, the books? In the secret cave?”she asks, looking a little lost but wanting to help.

    “Yeah, I have a dictionary, and some encyclopedias, but right now, for some reason, going back to the cave doesn’t feel right, ya know?”

    “So, clues?” she says, putting an arm around me lightly, kissing me again. I’m struggling to concentrate. I turn my head away, toward the sun.

     “‘No matter what happens’ is the part I don’t need a dictionary for, like he was warning me that something big was going to happen, and by telling me a couple of weeks ago, before it happened, that it was something he knew about; something planned. So---? Is today what he had in mind, me seeing him pulled up last night and now trying to figure out what to do?”

    “Uehuu, what happened, what is that mess on your other arm?” she almost shrieks. I look, which I didn’t want to do. It’s still bleeding. I’ve been holding it against my leg. My head hurts.  Behind me, on my left, I hear faint sounds of working near the Beach, a flat area down near the canal, the place where we do our Aegon training, mostly martial arts.   I’m suddenly hearing the moms behind me on the other side, Flotsy’s side, their high pitched screams and instructions blending with the shouting and grunting of young wanna be Option 2’s, boys recently masked and tattoed, wrestling and punching each other. They want to start early training for the  test which will make them a part of the police, the Aegon, which is the second way to skip being pulled up by the red beam. In my zonked ears, assaulted by the punks’ grunting and their moms’ shouting, I say, “Isn’t there anyone else who wonders if there’s something more to life than fighting and making babies?”

    But I don’t have to worry because she’s gone; probably heard one of her kids shouting for her. I wish I could miss her, that all the rest of what has happened would go back to normal: my dad was the head Aegon and Phillip, Hugo and Bruno were still alive, or still with me, on earth.

    I have the Offramp right in front of me, but my stomach grinds, like I can’t see what’s really important, and that I should see it, or is it more like I’m looking at a clue, something  really obvious,  something puzzling,  like reading a book and not being able to remember the title?  This feeling, this ‘ghost’ in my stomach makes my heart beat fast; I think it’s one of those things you want to forget, want to leave without a name, and that’s what tells you it’s important enough to want to remember. I don’t like being confused; I need to let it go, follow the wisdom of the saying, ‘do it now, think about it later’, so I  turn and stare at what was behind me, keeping my bleeding wrist and arm hard against my side. 

    Kids and moms noisily march off to the vitamin igloo, their lives back to normal after hiding under sleep pads in their huts during last night’s ‘heavenly’ visit. Some Option 3 guys, older than me, are delivering sacks and bushels of  fruits and vegetables they picked on the other side of the canal. A few of the bigger, older, muscle-bulging, badge-wearing Aegon Option 2 ‘peacemakers,’ are back on the job too, enforcing the rules, twisting arms to ‘gain the confidence’ of the Fourteeners and Fifteeners, by now comfortable in their masks, bad boys mobbing around on the b-ball court, showing off  to the red-lipped pre-preg hotties. This wild crazy stupid ‘party’ is for those who didn’t go to Heaven last night; a party of normal, a party my big tough friends Arturo and Bruno thought they’d still be enjoying.

    It’s eight o’clock, the time when the metal buildings start moving again, their giant black tires partly hidden behind the ten foot high ramp walls. The Mobilities on our ramp are so tall they seem to disappear into the deep blue; we know them mostly from the pops and squeals of the four-man high black tires as the rubber treads pinch out plastic bottles and other garbage that some of us throw over the wall for fun. The noise is muffled, but it echoes around in the momentary canyon formed by the bottom of the building and the high wall that separates the ramp from us.  Every ten minutes or so from 8 to 8 we hear the echoes of the Ramp rolling over garbage, rolling over us.