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J.G.P MacAdam
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I hid and watched them make their way up. Couldn’t tell whether they was a he or a she or a none of the above, but they was alone and dressed all in awful black robes, their hair a swipe of gray. Whoever they was, once they reached the top they stopped and turned and beckoned for others to follow.
Stay the fuck quiet, said that fiddly voice in my head, the one that’d gotten me outta one or two dicey circumstances just like this. Stay the fuck hid. But I was about to find out this wasn’t no circumstance no one was ever prepared for, voice in their noggin or no. No less I squeezed myself deeper into them night shadows under the last guard tower, an unmanned one lucky for me, and I watched, and I waited.
Ugh, what was that ugly smell? Somebody’s cat slink over here and die? Nuthin I could do about it now. Next up the slide came a convict, barefoot, holes riddling his prison clothes, a snare pole in his hands and with his snare he led the first refugee, by the neck, and them refugees came on, one after the next, in a line that seemed to have no end, each looking just as filthy and half-starved as myself, their wrists bound with zip-cuffs, the cuffs on their hocks barely lending enough room for their feet to shuffle, their necks, also, zip-cuffed and linked from one refugee’s neck to the next like they was the links of a chain stretching all the way back down that muddy slide, other convicts spaced along the chain with their own snare poles, like slaves sent to enslave their own, and I argued with myself when it was gonna be enough, when’s the line of ‘em gonna end—when?
The wall was close. Could almost taste its crusty cement. I just needed whatever was going on with Black Robes over there to finish up and get the hell outta my way so I could keep running down the length of the wall—till I came to an end. That was the plan now, now that I’d finally made it to Gate One, the only remaining border crossing station. I’d walked all this way, come so far, so many obstacles overcome, and what do I find? That motherfucking Gate shut, cinched tight, teeth clamped. No one got through. No refugees, no stowaways hiding in shipping containers, no execs with money, no one. But lo and behold here I find myself about to witness some serious shit going on in this know-nuthin border town, shit nobody knew.
An emra gunned it up the slide next, cakes of mud flinging from its wheels. It squealed to a stop and its back ramp dropped and four soldiers clad in black came stomping out. Great, said my inner voice, just fucking great. It’s gonna get worse now, you watch. Them soldiers was joking and slapping each other’s asses, like they’d just clocked-in for another shift.
“Ha! Ain’t that the truth?”
“Gate One’s always cleaning up after the rest of the Commonwealth.”
“Don’t I know it!”
“They raise ‘em, we jail ‘em!”
The fourth soldier stopped dead in his tracks, eyes all confused and ogling around.
“Ah, not again,” said one of the others.
The tallest soldier, damn sure the one in charge, marched over. “Zyne! What is it now?”
“I—something’s wrong in my head, Sarnt. I keep thinking this is all something we’ve done before, like some weird time loop or déjà vu or something, and-and-and my mind just keeps tryin’ ta—to remember it, but I can’t.”
“Bo,” said Sarnt over his shoulder, “get me a tissue.”
“Aww,” said Bo, making sniffly noises at Zyne. “Gonna squirt some now, lil’ baby? Is yer job too tough for ya, huh? Hey Ute, get a load of Zyne losin’ his shit again.”
“Again!?” said Zyne. “What do you mean again?”
Ute also crowded around and pointed and laughed and patted Zyne’s whittle baby helmet. “Is he crying?” she said. “Are you seriously fuckin’ crying right now?”
“Enough!” Sarnt shoved Zyne forward. “Time to do your fuckin’ job.” Zyne stumbled into place and all four of ‘em came and knelt before Black Robes, right as whoever they was lifted their palm and took a big breath. “This punishment is not meant to deter nor to rehabilitate, it is meant to eradicate the slothful from our midst.”
There wasn’t no end to that line of refugees coming up the slide, till it did end, and them convicts started torquing the chain of ‘em with their snare poles, forcing it to fold in on itself, so all them refugees could squeeze into this corral setup just the other side of the fence from me.
The hell they packing ‘em in there for? Shush, shut up!
“We are the earners,” said Black Robes, “the hard workers, the breadwinners, yet they—” He pointed towards them refugees, all of ‘em cussing and fighting against those convicts trying to corral ‘em—“They are the usurpers. The slovenly. The disloyal. They just want to take what we’ve earned, then hold out an empty bowl and ask for more.”
Sarnt put on this black mask he had, his soldiers following suit, white skulls grinning where their faces used to be—the hell was going on?—then they loaded their rifles and cocked rounds into their chambers and them refugees stirred up a holy ruckus as the last of ‘em was crammed into the corral and those barricades clanked closed. That’s when I saw ‘em. Where the wild desert ended these long mounds rose up, one row of ‘em after the next all tamped down nice and pretty, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the hell them mounds was for. Buried nuclear waste? Storage? Big goddamn gopher mounds?
Black Robes raised their voice over the ruckus. “They have forsaken labor. They have forsaken that which gives our lives purpose, that which is seed of our sense of self. Thus they deserve no bread, and no mercy.” BR lifted a blue bottle outta their robes, hate to say it but any kid off the street back home could tell you what it was. “You do the necessary task that no one else in this Commonwealth is willing to do.” BR twisted the child’s lock cap off the bottle and doled out four antitrauma pills, the devil in their innocence, these teeny-tiny circles of white aglow under the moonlight. Them soldiers pulled up their masks and opened their mouths, one circle of white for each outstretched tongue. “As soldiers you have sworn an oath to protect the Commonwealth from its worst, you have no more sacred task than this.” Each tongue withdrew, each mouth closed, each throat bobbed with a swallow. “You are all that stands between our way of life and those who would destroy it. No one gets to walk away,” and them soldiers intoned in turn, “No one gets to walk away.”
“Lemme see,” said Sarnt.
Bo, Zyne and Ute yawned their mouths open and Sarnt snatched each jaw in turn, telling ‘em to lift their tongues and waggle ‘em around, making sure they swallowed. Then he told ‘em to take their positions—“Time to clock-in!”—and they pulled their masks back down over their chins, and stood, and marched like motherfucking ghouls towards them refugees.
People was gnashing their teeth against their zip-cuffs, throwing their bodies against the barriers. Black Robes turned on their heel and just waltzed the fuck away, back down that slide, their head bowed like they was praying or something.
“Pssst… pssst…”
Motherfucker was staring right at me, one of them refugees. But ain’t you a refugee? Shut up. The fence was between them and me, just a poke of a stick through that chain-link. If he could see me here in the shadows under the tower then—
“Pssst!”
I bit my lip and glared at that motherfucker and shook my head real slow. No, I am not here, motherfucker.
“My name is Yusuf,” he whispered. His ears stuck out through his curls. His eyes pleaded with me to register his words.
Them soldiers was marching right up to him, to all the ruckus in the corral, snare poles clanging against the barriers, everyone jostling so bad the whole thing was starting to lean to one side. But this one refugee, fuck-all his name, just stood stock still and stared.
“My name is Yusuf.”
Shut the fuck up, motherfucker! Look away! Can’t you see I don’t wanna die here, too! Stop whispering your goddamned name at me, tagging me, passing it on to me, cuz you know you gonna die, placing this weight onto me cuz you want me to carry it—
That’s when it hit me—just what the fuck was happening here at Gate One. Refugees from all over was flooding to this border town, all of us chasing a possibility, a hope, that once we stepped foot on the other side of the wall we’d be free. But what’d we find? A door closed and an open pit with our names on it. It was right there, couldn’t believe I ain’t even seen it till just now, a wide open dark as death pit, not a few steps from where I sat hiding and peeing myself. It hit me like a landslide. What was buried under all them mounds stretching out into the wastes before me. Could see ‘em down there in that pit. Shades of folks. Limbs bent in ways they ain’t meant to bend, the buttons of their clothes straining against the bloat of their bodies. Ugh, that smell. But it wasn’t just nameless people piled in the bottom of that pit, it was Milleth. In that pit and buried under all them mounds was a hundred Milleths, a thousand Milleths. If she died before my eyes once more, she died a million times.
“I got this bunch,” hollered Ute.
“Bo, take that side!”
“These others’re mine, Sarnt.”
Them refugees went into full-tilt hog-tied panic and that was exactly what those soldiers wanted. They had this shit down. Yusuf was first. His eyes was shut, his face slate. Kid ain’t even flinch when that muzzle flashed across the front of his face and the bullet went through his head and the heads of those behind him. Shot lit the ends of my nerves on fire. Shit, I prayed, to whomever or whatever, make it stop, make their guns jam, a war start, something, anything. But there wasn’t nuthin. There was only that spraying of the soldier’s guns, like street sweepers blowing shit into a sewage drain.
“I got four with that one!’ said Bo.
“Eh, mine’re only going through two at a time,” said Ute.
“Zyne!” said Sarnt. “Show some fuckin’ efficiency. Stop wasting bullets!”
They worked their way around to the back of the corral, and them refugees, each of ‘em with a face now, a face I saw as they began falling over themselves and flopping into that pit, bones cracking as they hit bottom, the links tugging and, one after the next, already dead or still flailing, the chain of ‘em pulled itself into that pit, neck by neck, each and every one of ‘em slipping through the mud and their dead weight yanking the next, and the next, and the next.
“Woo, there they go!” called Bo.
“Like fuckin’ dominoes,” said Sarnt. “Told ya it’d work easier this way.”
Them convicts skinned out in a hurry. Their job done they shouldered their snare poles and marched themselves back down the slide, not looking back, frowns on their faces grim as scythes. Only those soldiers, and me, remained, and those not yet dead down in that pit, their wails unlike anything I ever heard and never wanted to hear again. They was beyond despair. I tried to stop shaking, tried not hearing ‘em anymore, but even with my hands plugging my ears I still heard and there was no unhearing, no forgetting… They went on forever, those wails, echoing on down the wall. Big blobs of tears ran down my cheeks I was so goddamn scared.
“Looks like Zyne actually anted-up and did his job for once,” said Bo.
“Huh?” said Zyne. “What d’ya mean?”
“God.” Bo shook his skull-face side to side. “Those antitraumas really do a number on ya, don’t they?”
“What antitraumas? When did I take antitraumas? What’re we doing up here? The hell’s going on in that hole?”
“That’s pre-fuckin-cisely the right answer.”
It was like those soldiers ain’t even hear the wails coming up outta that pit. Two of ‘em lit cigarettes and laughed as they broke down the barricades and stacked ‘em up against the wall.
“This hole’s full-up, Sarnt!”
“Alright, Ute. Startup that dozer and cover ‘er over. Then it’s time to head back in and clock out!”
A bulldozer coughed into life, its stinging exhaust drifting like dark phantoms through those of us remaining—us, witnesses. I hugged my shins and rocked back and forth, wiped hot tears out from under my eyelids, as one pile of dirt, then another, and another, clopped into that hole, and I screamed inside that it wasn’t me, that I couldn’t do nuthin, that there wasn’t nuthin to do unless I wanted to be buried alive myself. God help me!
“Get it all in there,” shouted Sarnt over the engine. “Pack it in tight!”
My name is Yusuf, that’s the last thing he wanted anyone on this earth to know, and he chose you to remember it, ain’t that right? Motherfucker. Oh, Milleth, I’m sorry. I shoulda watched out for ya, I shoulda taken ya to play somewhere else.
My hands twisted into my pockets, desperate for something to grab onto, anything to keep this memory from resurfacing but I couldn’t stop it. Milleth, my kid sister, forever young in my mind, stepped on a landmine leftover from an old war nobody remembered. We’d been playing out where we knew we wasn’t supposed to go. That look on her face as she froze and turned back to look at me. I was shouting at her to come back. That instant when she knew, when we both knew what the click under her toe meant. Then she stepped on it again, stepped on it again, stepped on it again, and again, and again, until my brain jiggled inside of my skull once, twice, a thousand times. It was like I was outside of myself, watching myself spiral down into a chemical waste sludge, the mud pulling on my ankles, burying me down and covering me over with all of the other memories no one wanted to smell the stink of anymore, screaming my voice raw, screaming her name, that cloud of dust pluming up into the sky, the pieces of her legs, the blood pouring out and I didn’t know what the fuck to do, she just went all quiet and pale and dead. Everything in me, that made me special—love, concern for others, concern for my own life—it died in me that day.
Then there was that first night, the night I made my escape, and I hid and tried to sleep under this big buttress of rock. Nuthin but desert far as the eye could see. The rock, over me, I knew. Back in my hometown they made everyone take geology courses before they sent us to the rigs in the shale fields to labor bringing forth the gas outta the earth so it could get pumped into a pipeline and make the execs rich. I recognized that rock, you damn sure I did. The colors of each limestone layer, mustard, then tan, coffee-brown, then that gritstone with them itty bitty calcite pebbles, then way yonder up top a solid red smudge of sandstone. I prayed to the rock cuz I didn’t know no better. My own life’s just a blip compared to you. Eons of compression made you. A dick and a pussy made me, made Milleth, what difference it make her? All my life, my pain, my joy, what aspirations I had, to escape, my failures, all of our screens and jobs and livelihoods and pipelines and prejudices, they amounted to no more than a grit in a tons-wide slab. Our lives meant nuthin. Milleth meant nuthin. I meant less than nuthin.
I failed to register when Ute shut off her dozer, or when those soldiers remounted in their emra and drove back down into Gate One, or when the whistle of the wind over the wall, and the ragged breaths outta my mouth, and a fresh mound, tamped down nice and neat, was all that remained. I was stone. I couldn’t feel nuthin. My mind was shutdown, like it put up walls of its own between me and the reality of what our godforsaken country had become.
My name is Yusuf.
Motherfucker wasn’t gonna leave me alone. My fingers slow and stiff as they was finally touched on something in my pocket. I pulled it out, squinted through the crusts of dirt on my eyelids, and lo and behold it was that bit of red sandstone I filched the first night of my escape. It was one of many stones I carried in my pocket, each one filched, snatched, picked off the face of the earth I walked over day after motherfucking day, just to get here, like so many other wannabe escapees, all of us trapped behind a wall our forefathers was so zealous to build, to fund, to vote into office politicians who promised to build more wall, higher wall, stronger wall, to protect us, when all it was really doing was trapping us in, starving us, and now, murdering us. My fingertips traced the edges of my bit of sandstone. Smooth on one side, gritty on the other. Twirling it round and round. The screens back home never talked about what was happening here, too busy trying to sell us bullshit, horseshit, any kind of shit so long as it sold. No one knew about this. Even the soldiers committing it, maybe even their commanders and those in charge of ‘em, everyone, our whole shithole country, no one wanted to know, to remember. Cuz their lives, my life, any runaway’s life, wasn’t worth nuthin, no more than a grit in a tons-wide slab. I gripped that sandstone in my hand till I felt something again, felt pain.
But they do matter, don’t they? Each motherfucking life matters, cuz we’re all we have, we grits. We only got each other to hold on to. We gotta care cuz the universe, the earth, the wall itself, couldn’t care for nuthin. We had to remember this, all of us, remember it, cuz what other defense we got against oblivion?
My name is Yusuf.
I know, motherfucker. I know.
I placed my bit of sandstone back in my pocket, carefully tucked and buttoned the flap, patted it for safe keeps. My legs, I found, still worked. I did a quick tap all around my pockets. Satchel? Check. Water pack? You betchya. My broken screen? Yes, sirree. After a hazy breath or two, my boots stumbled forward, up the slide, yonder through that break in the fence, across the footprints and bootprints and tiretracks and shell casings left in the mud, lingerings of carbon and diesel exhaust and, not too far, wild sagebrush on the wind. Them mounds, them mounds was awful in their silence. But I nicked a flimsy piece of something off the ground, looked at it real close… Maybe on the other side there’ll be people wanting to know about this, hear about it, I can write it, let word link to word and let that chain carry on into what future we may grasp for ourselves, painful as it would be to cut open this scar, to remember, still, it’s gotta be done. The memory’s gotta carry on. I stared at that piece of mud rock or shale or whatever it was pinched between my fingers, a piece of nuthin rock unremarkable in every way. Into my pocket with you, all of you, we gotta a long walk ahead of us.
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J.G.P. MacAdam is a disabled combat vet and the first in his family to earn a college degree. His short stories have featured in Passengers Journal, Apeiron Review and Line of Advance, among others. You can find him hunting for wildflowers with his wife and son, or otherwise at jgpmacadam.com
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