"They"ve turned it off, Rich! the camera"s off. It"s dead!"
He grabbed my arms, and spun me around, and started doing a little dance, and I started to hoot with laughter along with him. It was like someone had handed you back part of your pride. It was like we were human enough to be accorded that again.
"Hey Royce, the camera in the john"s off!" shouted Harry, as we burst through the canteen doors with the trolley.
"Maybe they"re just broken," said Gary, who was still loyal to Lou.
"Naw, man, they"d be telling us to fix it by now. They"ve turned it off!"
"That so, Alice?" Royce asked the camera in the canteen.
"Oh. Yeah," said Alice. Odd how a mechanical voice could sound so much more personal than a real one, closer somehow, as if in the middle of your ear.
"Thanks, Alice. "
""S OK," said Alice, embarra.s.sed. "We explained it to the Wigs. We told them it was like p.o.r.nography, you know, demeaning to us. They bought it. Believe me, you guys are not a lovely sight first thing in the morning. "
I could see Royce go all alert at that word "Wig," like an animal raising its ears. He didn"t mention the Wigs again until later that afternoon.
"Alice, is our talking ever a problem for you?"
"How d"you mean?"
"Well, if one of the Wigs walked in. . . "
Alice kind of laughed. "Huh. They don"t get down this far. What do you know about them, anyhow?"
"Nothing. Who are they?"
"Mind your own business. The people who run things. "
"Well if someone does show up and you want us to shut up, just sneeze, and we"ll stop talking. "
"Sneeze?"
"Well, you could always come right out and say cool it guys, there"s someone here. "
"Hey Scarlett," said Alice. "Can you sneeze?"
"Ach-ooo," said Miss Scarlett, delicately.
"Just testing, guys," said Alice.
Big Lou hung around, trying to smile, trying to look like somehow all this was going on under his auspices. n.o.body was paying attention.
The next day, the train didn"t show.
It was very cold, and we stood on the platform, thumping our feet, as the day grew more sparkling, and the shadows shorter.
"Hey, Butch, what"s up?" Royce asked.
"I"ll check, OK?" said the camera. There was a long silence.
"The train"s broken down. It"s in a siding. It"ll be a while yet. You might as well go back in, have the day off. "
That"s how it would begin, of course. No train today, fellas, sorry. No need for you, fellas, not today, not ever, and with what you know, can you blame us? What are ten more bodies to us?
Trains did break down, of course. It had happened before. We"d had a holiday then, too, and the long drunken afternoon became a long drunken day.
"Well let"s have some fun for a change," said Lou. "Charlie, you got any stuff ready? Let"s have a blow-out, man. "
"Lou," said Royce, "I was kind of thinking we could get to work on the hot water tank. "
"Hot water tank?" said Lou. "Are we going to need it, Royce?" there was a horrified silence. "So much for talking. Go on, Charlie, get your booze. "
Then Lou came for me. "How about a little s.e.x and romance, Rich?" Hand on neck again.
"No thanks, Lou. "
"You won"t get it from him, you know. "
"That"s my problem. Lou, lay off. "
"At least I can do it. " Grin.
"Surprise, surprise," I said. His face and body were right up against mine, and I turned away. "You can"t get at him through me, you know, Lou. You just can"t do it. "
Lou relented. He pulled back, but he was still smiling. "You"re right," he said. "For that, he"d have to like you. Sucker. " He flicked the tip of my nose with his fingers, and walked away.
I went and sat down beside Royce. I needed him to make everything seem normal and ordinary. He was leaning on his elbows, plucking at the gra.s.s. "Hi," I said. It was the first time we"d spoken since the inquisition.
"Hi," he said, affectionate and distant.
"Royce, what do you think"s going to happen?"
"The train will come in tomorrow," he said.
"I hate it when it comes in," I said, my breath rattling out of me in a kind of chuckle, "and I hate it when it doesn"t. I just hate it. Royce, do you think we could go to work on the tank?"
He considered the implications. "OK," he said. "Charlie? Want to come work with us on the tank?"
Charlie was plump with a gray beard, and had a degree in engineering, a coffee tin and a copper coil. He was a sort of Santa Claus of the booze. "Not today," he said, cheerily. "I made all of this, I might as well get to drink some of it myself. " It was clear and greasy-looking and came in white plastic screw-top bottles.
Charlie had sacrificed one of the showers to plumb in a hot water tank. We"d hammered the tank together out of an old train door. It was more like a basin, really, balanced in the loft of the Station. There were cameras there, too.
Royce sat looking helplessly at an electric hot plate purloined from the kitchen stove. We"d pushed wiring through from the floor below. "Charlie should be here," he said.
"I really love you, Royce. "
He went very still for a moment. "I know," he said. "Rich, don"t be scared. You"re afraid all the time. "
"I know," I said, and felt my hand tremble as I ran it across my forehead.
"You gotta stop it. One day, you"ll die of fear. "
"It"s this place," I said, and broke down, and sat in a heap. "I want to get out!"
He held me, gently. "Someday we"ll get out," he said, and the hopelessness of it made me worse. "Someday it"ll be all right. "
"No, it won"t. "
"Hi, guys," said Alice. "they"re really acting like pigs down there. "
"They"re scared," said Royce. "We"re all scared, Alice. Is that train going to come in tomorrow?"
"Yup," she said brightly.
"Good. You know anything about electricity?"
"Plenty. I used to work for Bell Telephone. "
Royce disengaged himself from me. "OK. Do I put the plate inside the tank or underneath it?"
"Inside? Good Lord no!"
So Royce went back to work again, and said to me,"You better go back down, Rich. "
"The agreement?" I asked, and he nodded yes. The agreement between him and Lou.
When I got down, the Boys looked like discarded rags. There was p.i.s.s everywhere, and blood on Lou"s p.e.n.i.s.
I went up to the top of the mound. All the leaves were gone now. For about the first time in my life, I prayed. Dear G.o.d, get me out of here. Dear G.o.d, please, please, make it end. But there wasn"t any answer. There never is. There was just an avalanche inside my head.
I could shut it out for a while. I could forget that every day I saw piles of corpses bulldozed and mangled, and that I had to chase the birds away from them, and that I peeled off their clothes and looked with inevitable curiosity at the little pouch of genitals in their brightly colored underwear. And the leaking and the sudden hemorrhaging and the supple warmth of the dead, with their marble eyes full of seeming questions. How many had we killed? Was anybody keeping count? Did anyone know their names? Even their names had been taken from them, along with their wallets and watches.
Harry had found his policeman father among them, and had never stopped smiling afterwards, saying "Hi!" like a cartoon chipmunk without a tail.
I listened to the roaring in my head as long as I could and then I went back down to the Boys. "Is there any booze left, Charlie?" I asked, and he pa.s.sed me up a full plastic bottle, and I drank myself into a stupor.
It got dark and cold, and I woke up alone, and I pulled myself up, and walked back into the waiting room, and it was poison inside. It was as poison as the stuff going sour in our stomachs and brains and breath. We sat in twitchy silence, listening to the wind and our own farts. n.o.body could be bothered to cook. Royce was not there, and my stomach twisted around itself like a bag full of snakes. Where was he? What would happen when he got back?
"You look sick," said Lou in disgust. "Go outside if you have to throw up. "
"I"m fine, Lou," I said, but I could feel a thin slime of sweat on my forehead.
"You make me sick just looking at you," he said.
"Funny. I was just thinking the same about you. " Our eyes locked, and there was no disguising it. We hated each other.
It was then that Royce came back in, rubbing his head with a towel. "Well, there are now hot showers," he announced. "Well, tepid showers. You guys can go clean up. "
The Boys looked up to him, smiling. The grins were bleary, but they were glad to see him.
"Phew-wee!" he said, and waved his hand in front of his face. "that"s some stuff you come up with, Charlie, what do you make it out of, burnt tires?"
Charlie beamed. "Orange peel and gra.s.s," he said proudly. I thought it was going to be all right.
Then Lou stood up out of his bed, and flopped naked toward Royce. "You missed all the fun," he said.
"Yeah, I know, I can smell it. "
"Now who"s being a prig?" said Lou. "Come on, man, I got something nice to show you. " He grabbed hold of Royce"s forearm, and pulled him toward his own bed. Tom was in it, lying face down, like a ruin, and Lou pulled back the blanket. "Go on, man. "
Tom was bleeding. Royce"s face and voice went very hard, and he pulled the blanket back up. "He"s got an a.n.a.l fissure, Lou. He needs to be left alone. It could get badly infected. "
Lou barked, like a dog, a kind of laugh. "He"s going to die anyway!"
Royce moved away from his bed. With Tom in it, he had no place to sit down. Lou followed him. " Come on, Royce. Come on. No more p.u.s.s.y footing. " He tried to put his hand down the front of Royce"s shirt. Royce shrugged it away, with sudden annoyance. "Not tonight. "
"Not ever?" asked Lou, amused.
"Come on, Royce, give it up man," said Harry. He grabbed Royce playfully, about the waist. "You can"t hold out on us forever. " He started fumbling with the belt buckle. "h.e.l.l, I haven"t eaten all day. "
"Oh yes you have," said Lou, and chuckled.
"Harry, please let go," said Royce, wearily.
The belt was undone, and Lou started pulling out his shirt. "Let go," warned Royce. "I said let go," and he moved very suddenly. His elbow hit Harry in the mouth, and he yelped.
"Hey, you f.u.c.ker!"
"You turkey," said Lou.
And all the poison rose up like a wave. Oh, this was going to be fun, pulling off all of Royce"s clothes. Gary, and Charlie, they all came, smiling. There was a sound of cloth tearing and suddenly Royce was fighting, fighting very hard, and suddenly the Boys were fighting too, grimly. They pulled him down, and he tried to hit them, and they held his arms, and they launched themselves on him like it was a game of tackle football. I thought, there is a word for this. The word is rape.
"Alice!" I shouted up to the camera. "Alice, stop them! Alice? Burn one of them, stop it!"
Then something slammed into the back of my head, and I fell, the floor sc.r.a.ping the skin of my wrists and slapping me across the cheeks. Then I was pulled over, and Lou was on top of me, forearm across my throat.
"b.o.o.by b.o.o.by b.o.o.by b.o.o.by," he said, all blubbery lips, and then he kissed me. Well, he bit my upper lip. He bit it to hold me there; he nearly bit through it with his canine teeth, and my mouth was full of the taste of something metallic: blood.
The sounds the Boys made were conversational, with the odd laugh. Royce squealed like a pig. It always hurts beyond everything the first time. It finally came to me that Royce wasn"t gay, at least not in any sense that we would understand. I looked up at the camera, at its blank, glossy eye, and I could feel it thinking: these are men; this is what men do; we are right. We are right to do this to them. For just that moment, I almost agreed.
Lou got up, and Charlie nestled in next to me, fat and naked, white hairs on his chest and a.s.s, and he was still beaming like a baby, and I thought: don"t you know what you"ve done? I tried to sit up, and he went no, no, no and waggled a finger at me. It was Lou"s turn to go through him. "Rear Admiral, am I?" asked Lou.
When he was through, Charlie helped me to my feet. "You might as well have a piece," he said, with a friendly chuckle. Lou laughed very loudly, pulling on his T-shirt. The others were shuffling back to their beds in a kind of embarra.s.sment. Royce lay on the floor.
I knelt next to him. My blood splashed onto the floor. "Can you get up, Royce?" I asked him. He didn"t answer. "Royce, let"s go outside, get you cleaned up. " He didn"t move. "Royce, are you hurt? Are you hurt badly?" then I called them all b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.