Phone tenuous curiousThey were slaves. as they were shoved onto a dusty road along the fields, Gabriel explained that the manacles would stay on for the first few days, then would be removed if they observed the rules. The superintendent mounted a big grey horse and rode behind them, laughing as the brutes who escorted them slapped rods of split cane on their raw backs to keep them at a half trot. They reached a long shed with narrow slits, a handsbreadth wide, for windows. The only entry was through a barred door in the center of the back wall, facing the fields, inside a yard defined by thick logs laid on the ground in a U against the building. In the center of the yard was a large oak tree. Along the back row of logs were two blood-stained punishment posts. ‘Don’t you?’ the historian persisted when I failed to answer. “Are ye fit, McCallum?” Murdo asked. I unscrewed the cap and held the flask out. Hickey swallowed a mouthful and did the post-pint sigh:Ahhhhh. The smell of whiskey filled the cabin. He handed the flask back. “I didn’t even know what the World Trade Centerwas,” he said, laughing. “I spent most of that morning asking people why it was such a big deal. It wasn’t like Britney Spears died or anything. Needless to say, I was not a bright kid.” I’m free as a bird. I don’t have to explain my actions. Nothing moved, nothing sounded. Phil passed the cars lining the pathways of the trailer park. Fog, inside, and frost on the outside clouded their windows. He half expected a kid to finger-draw a happy face in the fog from inside one of the cars. In front of Jim’s place, an empty space where his Chevy should have been. Phil skipped the layers he usually worked through to get to the park’s perimeter and headed straight to the gravel lot, figuring that Jim would be there, and the girls, too, if they’d made it out that night. Edda rushes back and squeezes into the backseat among all the luggage. My daughter’s grown out of buying ice cream in Selfoss. She’s holding a can of Pripps low-alcohol beer and a pack of peanuts. ‘Well, I…’ I told you it was true. The Wild Ones do exist. Hickey looked at my hand without accepting it.‘It’s five to eight on a Friday evening,’ he pointed out flatly. Most of the others, rangers and Scots, were angry and resentful, though when their epithets were heard by the overseers they paid with slaps of the split canes or Trent’s knob against tender scars. “My father loved old-time jazz. I used to sit on his lap and listen with him.” I stared at them as they exploded into laughter, failing to understand the joke.‘I am dead,’ I said to shut them up, but it only made them laugh harder. The Viking raised his hand for attention when Hickey had emptied his glass. Svetlana approached, exchanged Hickey’s empty glass for another double, and a fresh pint for the Viking’s partially consumed one. A third sparkling water was set in front of me. I’ve been lucky. I called you. You just didn’t hear. The following day, a Sunday morning, I am setting off to walk around Longchamp. You don’t have to turn to stone. The matter’s settled. I’m going to finish making my bed, I say. I’ll be back in a moment. ‘Are we dead?’ Hickey wondered in a muffled voice. ‘What d’ya reckon, Castler? Are we dead or wha? Ah here, sure you already are.’. |