A Close Call

The market is unusually quiet today. There are a few empty stalls that are normally occupied. The flood has taken its toll on the lower lying areas around New Ontario. There have been whispers of The Chamber sending health advisors and an emergency team to assess the situation and help those in need. No one says it out loud, but it is a visit that would be unwanted. Supplies are also low, and Imelda has not arrived with deliveries. I wonder to myself if she’s okay. Surely, Conrad would have said something if she had been injured. 

We work on into the afternoon before we hear the familiar rumble of the delivery truck. Ansel looks up suddenly, and then glances over his shoulder toward the back of the stall. I see his shoulders relax slightly, and I exhale a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. 

“Lady Bird!!!”, Philomena squeals, “You make us all worry!”

Imelda gives a soft smile as she holds a sack of flour on her hip. “I’m fine!” She says passing the sack over to Philomena. Then more quietly, “Mama’s had a rough morning.”

Philomena nods slowly, “You take your time getting to us, if your mama needs you, you stay. Not many customers today anyway.”

Imelda nods toward Ansel and says, “I have a box of produce in the truck. You’ll give me a hand?”

Ansel wordlessly follows her behind the stalls to accept the delivery, but the tone in her voice sounded like there was more to say in private. I return my attention to chopping onions and garlic when something catches my eye. A lady put her bag on the counter of the stall and walked away. I can see some of the contents peeking out, and there is a chip card visible in the internal pocket. No one in New Ontario has a chip card. This is a rural community, and we only have the option of a fingertip chip. A chip card is reserved for the very wealthy, and for the higher government officials within the community. My hand twitches at my side, and I feel desire swell inside of me. If I could get my hands on that card, I could go anywhere. I  could do anything. I’d have to move quickly, but I could get pretty far before I had to dump it. In my mind I can see myself buying supplies and taking off past the barrier communities to the border. Joseph and I always talked about how we were going to go to the border when the summer came. We had a plan: I would steal our supplies while Joseph fished during the day. Although, Joseph never knew I was stealing.  

A memory floats back to me. At first it feels fuzzy and that scares me. Memories of Jo, and the barrier have always been so sharp. Recalling things now seems more difficult. All at once I hate myself even more than ever. I’ve become so comfortable. Am I becoming one of them? Would my father disown me if he saw me here pretending to be a part of The Chamber’s narrative. Blindly going along just because Ansel is nice and gave me a place to stay. Is pretending to have a chip as bad as actually having a chip? Is it one step away from complete compliance? I use my rage and try to focus. Finally, the memory comes into focus.

“Where do you go while I’m fishing?” Joseph asked me one morning. 

“Oh, you know…I just go out and about looking for anything that may have been dropped or lost.” My voice sounded dishonest even to my own ears. 

“You don’t think people come back looking? For the things they dropped or lost?” Joseph’s eyes were so big and innocent as he tried to understand. 

“Probably not…they probably figure that anything they lost near the barrier was bound to be gone by the time they came back to it. Besides, you and I are alone. We have to stockpile if we’re going to make it to the border. And if we want to cross? Well, we’ll need something that we can use to barter.” He didn’t look at me as I spoke. He knows I’m holding something back. Instead, he quietly winds a fishing line around his fingers and sighs heavily. 

“Hey, Franky?” he asks, “You think anyone ever thinks about us? Looks for us? You know, like Uncle Frank.”

What do I tell him? Uncle Frank probably assumes the chamber put us in one of the state run schools when they took father in. Besides, going with Uncle Frank would be an insult to father’s memory. Everyone knew father wanted us to be free of all this. It was my job to get us there now. 

“I gotta get going, Jo.” I say, but I’m unable to look him in the eye as I leave. 

Most evenings I would come back empty handed. Joseph was usually more productive than me. One evening though, I came back to the barrier with a surprise for Joseph. Someone had dropped a can of soda. I spotted it at the same time as another fella that I noticed from the barrier. He was probably 18, and he went by the name Ed. He was taller than most people his age and muscular. Not in a bulky way, but in a lean but sinewy kind of way. He had a big scar on his forearm and everyone agreed that you didn’t want to mess with him.

Right after we both noticed the can, we made eye contact. Neither of us dared to glance back at the can and risk giving ourselves away. I noticed his jaw flex slightly, and that was the only cue I needed. I bolted forward in a sprint breathing deeply and focusing on my stride. In my mind I was back at my old school doing shuttle runs in PE. And I was always the fastest. As I neared the can I saw him a few paces off. I angled my body and bent my front knee. I could hear the gravel scatter as I slid by the can, scooping it up, and changing direction. When I rounded the corner I slowed down slightly, convinced I had shaken Ed. Suddenly, a hand captures my forearm and my body is jolted by my own momentum. Just as I steady myself, a fist connects with my left eye. Mindful not to let go of the can, I take a knee in front of Ed. 

“Give it up!” he snarls. 

I slowly begin to lift the can toward him, while quickly grabbing the knife father left me from my sock. In one swift motion I pull the knife out, and plunge into Ed’s big toe. As he lets out a blood curdling scream, I jerk the knife upward, and take off in a sprint. 

Later that evening I boiled a can of water over our fire and dropped the tip of the knife in. Joseph caught a trout, and there is no way I’m letting him gut that fish with a knife I removed from Ed’s foot. After several minutes, when I’m satisfied the knife is sterile, I pull it out and wipe the blade against the hem of my shirt and offer it to Joseph. He has a look of pride on his small face. It’s a look I feel all the way in my bones. 

“You did good, Jo.” I say, unable to keep myself from smiling. 

“You gonna tell me what happened to your eye?” Joseph asks. 

Instead of answering him, I pull out the can of soda and offer it to him. His eyes go wide as they dart between me and the can. 

“How did you? Where…? No one has soda anymore! Not since the Chamber banned it!” He exclaims. 

“It’s all yours.”, I say, “You deserve it.”

“No way.” Joseph refuses. “We’ll split it.”

Stealing has never been a moral dilemma for me. The Chamber took everything from us. They refused to treat my mother’s cancer and condemned her to die. The decision was made by a medical advisor who read the physician's report and decided she wasn’t worth saving. She would cost too much. The people who made that decision didn’t have to hear her wailing and screaming as the cancer moved to her bones and her brain. They weren’t there the day her eyes turned to glass and the screaming stopped. Not because she had died, but because the cancer had progressed far enough into her brain that she stopped responding, but it hadn’t quite killed her. They weren’t there the day she finally did die, and she was carted off, wrapped in a white sheet. Then they came for father. Because he had decided that they didn’t know best. There isn’t a flinch in my soul when I think about taking something that doesn’t belong to me. There is nothing I can take that would balance the scales between me and the rest of the world. 

This familiar feeling of rage, indignation, and a desire to be on my own is nearly enough to set me in motion. It’s as if my body responds to the decision before my mind even makes it. But as I begin to step toward the object of my inspiration a large hand closes around my forearm and pulls me toward the back of the stalls. Ansel is dragging me wordlessly as my feet scramble to catch up to his large stride. My breath is caught in my chest and my mind is full of questions:

“How did he know what I was going to do?”

“Did I make it obvious?”

“Can he read minds?”

I’m not able to even vocalize anything as Ansel drags me up the ramp and into the back of Imelda’s box truck. He rolls the door down with force behind me and jams a finger into my face. 

“Stay here until I come for you”, he says through harsh breathing. 

“Ansel, I wasn’t going to…I mean I thought about…”, but Ansel cuts me off. 

“Keep your voice down, kid! They’re going to find you out. They’re checking chips right now!” He says in a whisper-yell. 

It hits me like a ton of bricks. That card I spotted…that was an enforcement officer. 

“Wait…you know? You know I don’t have a…”, I begin. 

Ansel cuts me short, “I’ve always known, kid. Now stay put.” 

I answer with a nod. My eyes lock on his, and we know that we’re both in this together now. It’s an unspoken contract. By hiding me, he’s implicated. Wordlessly, Ansel backs out of the truck and gently closes me in. As I wait there in the dark, holding my breath, I suddenly feel like I’m back in that closet listening to my father put up the fight of his life; The soft sound of punches being landed echoes in my ear with all of the irony the word “soft” implies, the thumping of boots on the wooden floor, the grunting of men in a struggle. I can almost feel Joseph’s hot breath and his tears on my hand as his body trembled against me. When the heavy silence signaled my father’s loss of the fight, the air turned thick with terror. I’m a ghost on two sides of a mirror. I’m not sure how long it takes. It could have been one minute or one hour. Eventually, the door cracks open and my breath catches. The light blinds me after being in the dark truck and it’s difficult to tell if I’m being let out, or found out. 

“Coast is clear, kid”, the sound of Ansel’s voice lets me know my fate. I’m safe. For now. 

Finally, my eyes adjust to the light and I’m able to take in the concern on his face. We both dodged a bullet today. Neither of us wants to acknowledge the way things could have unfolded. Emotionally, I feel drained. What started as inspiration, and a desire to flee to freedom took me back to my hardest moments. Now, I’m flooded with relief and with gratitude toward Ansel. I’m also full of guilt for thinking that I could betray him in spite of all he’s done. At the same time as all of this, I’m ashamed and confused by my loyalty to my father. Ansel looks as if he’s having an internal crisis of his own. He looks like thunder again. I can’t tell if he’s mad at me, or mad at himself, or mad at the government. For a moment we just stand there amongst the produce in the back of that truck, sharing the same space, but feeling our own separate agonies.

Words rush out of me so suddenly that it stuns both of us. “My brother’s name was Joseph. We hid in the closet when they took my father. This felt…similar. I have all this anger, Ansel. All this darkness. I have memories that won’t go away. I swear, I want to make it right, but I don’t know what that even means…and…”

Ansel’s heavy sigh cuts me short. “Kid”, he says, “All your life you’re gonna try to do a whole lot of right to cancel out a little bit of wrong. You’re gonna spend a whole lot of precious time tryin’ to outrun things you never set in motion. Son, you never would have had enough of a head start to outrun the things your father set in motion… things that were set in motion by the government, or by some man who wrote some technology to save humanity…those wheels started turnin’ long ago. Long before you even came to be. You need to know tha…”

“Ansel!”, Imelda interrupts as she runs up the ramp of the truck, “They’re gone, but they said they’ll be back tomorrow. I’m not sure if you’re going to want to chance…”, her eyes dart toward me and then back to him, “it.”

“I reckon I gotta call to make then.” Ansel answers as he walks down the ramp.

Imelda isn’t looking at me, but as the light filters in against her, I swear she reminds me of a lighthouse. Her entire person feels like a call to safety even as waves are crashing against her. She’s better than me, which is not a hard feat, but for some reason knowing that she is fills me with angst. I open my mouth to speak, but nothing is coming out. Internally, I beg her to say something to me, to put me out of my misery. She doesn’t come to my rescue though. She only sighs at me with a look of disappointment and walks down the ramp into the sunlight. Clearly, I’m not one of the ships in her eyes. I imagine myself sinking into the ocean as her light skips over the waves, leaving me to my fate.