“Do you think these things are for real?” he asks. He gestures to the thick, metal squatting posts that run in a cube of long rows behind us. They could be grave markers if they weren’t so close together. There is a pile of assorted trash that is as long as and taller than the building we are closest to. A claw foot bathtub is perched haphazardly at the top, like the crow’s nest of a great ship.
I shrug. He is twelve and I am sixteen. This age gap feels wider than it used to. He remembers when the posts were installed and what they are meant for, but he hasn’t paid attention to the speeches about them on the screens at home and on the streets in the city. Men in suits who stand before blue curtains and behind sturdy insignia sealed podiums represent things he doesn’t need to worry about yet as far as he knows.
“Tommy,” he murmurs, placing a hand just above one of the posts. He looks at me and smiles crookedly. He’s trying to make me nervous. But it isn’t these stumps of metal planted into concrete that make me worry; it’s the switch that controls them, and if no one’s been lying, which is unlikely, it lies within the building a hundred yards away lying adjacent to us. A luminous question mark hangs above that building in my mind, and it is the nearness of that mystery that makes me a little seasick if I think about it too hard.
I glance at the sea of trash. It is eerie in it’s own particular way. The trash isn’t so much trash as discarded furniture and belongings that aren’t allowed in homes in our sector anymore. You’d think people would steal from it, but no one dares. That pile is full of people’s favorite things, memories and treasures. I’ve seen people wander around, the connivers I call them, I think they live in some of those ultra down mattresses, bathe in the moonlight in the claw foot bathtub as they watch over the posts. We haven’t seen any here tonight but they worry me, I worry they will materialize out from within that pile and then what will we do?
My little brother is still hanging over one of the posts, still waiting for me to jump up and pull him away from it.
I stand up slowly. I won’t let my movements give away my anxiety.
“Where are the guards or whoever?” he asks, now hanging back and looking around, having quickly given up his charade. He still hasn’t touched any of the posts.
I turn to begin leading the way out of the fenced in area, “They aren’t around right now,” I say but I’m not referring to who he thinks I am. “Anyway they’ve never been activated, the man who had them built is out of favor. Who’s to say there’s any danger at all?” I say this to the air in front of me and I wait for my little brother to catch up before I bend to peel the fence up from the ground and I don’t wince, I don’t wince when the wire cuts into my palms. I let him through first and then I roll under, the fence slapping at me noisily as I push myself up in a hurry.
“Mom is making biscuits and gravy tonight,” I say. We walk the mile home quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment