A Boy in a Corner with Chalk in His Eyes

by Ian Donnell Arbuckle

Table of Contents
Part 2 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

“Then they stopped coming,” said Deseret. “One week, there was one on a Thursday, and then after that, nothing. I was so bummed. Midterms were coming up, and I couldn’t even concentrate on them, I was thinking so much about the smallest things that I had done, trying to decide which one, or string of ones, had stopped the flow of plastic roses.”

“Probably a hidden camera crew; they got bored of watching you,” said Troy. He wasn’t looking at her, but he would have sworn he heard her sad smile; she sighed when she did it, and some reluctant curve of her lips bent the sound just so. She didn’t say anything else.

“I think you’re right,” said Troy. “I’m not sure — the calendars keep changing — but I think it’s been a year.”

“Since when?” asked Deseret. Troy didn’t answer. She began to pout, to push her lower lip out. It looked like a pink caterpillar had settled on her mouth, like she had taken a whorish injection of collagen.

“Put that away,” said Troy. She sort of giggled, and then did it.

“Why won’t you tell me?” she asked him. “What happened a year ago?”

Troy laughed through his nose. A lot about this world seemed funny to him. He thought maybe it was the slapdash similarities between this and his first world; he thought maybe the atmosphere was full of nitrous oxide. “You’re nothing like her,” he said. “She was quiet and she had a laugh like a kitten’s purr. She was a vegetarian, and she hated playing games.”

He stood up and turned away from the board. He faced the city and raised his hands as though presenting it to Deseret. “This — this isn’t a heaven here, with you. This is purgatory, a place where work is rewarded by a diminishing torment. But even I don’t believe that! There’s no circle to the universe, no curve; I could keep going forever and never find my Deseret.”

His voice was a hail of punches, each word its own discrete and weak wound, but compounded, like fists, they had the power to make her bleed; it was like the first gentle, distant rumble of artillery.

“I can’t even pretend,” he said. “You’re fat and ugly and, once I’m gone, you’ll cease to exist. Chew that up.” He shoved away from the game board and leaned on the railing, head bowed. There was nothing penitent or humble about the posture. He was just trying to think of how long it might take him to reach the ground.

Behind him, strings swelled. “I wish,” said Deseret,”that I had a thousand tongues to say, You don’t deserve me.”

“Yeah, well —” said Troy, and he jumped. His eyes were forced shut by the rush of air, the sting of tears. The wind in his ears died gently and he rubbed his sleeve across his lashes, wicking up the water, staining the fabric. He was still standing on Deseret’s deck. The game board was still there. Bizarro Deseret was not.

All right, Troy thought. Who runs this place? A tiny magnet of boredom rested at the bottom of his thoughts, drawing the others down.

* * *

There was the desert; there was a wind. The hard-packed ground remained unmoving. A light smudge grew on the horizon, like a pool of melted, colorless tallow. The sky’s hot breath went down Troy’s neck, his sticky shirt, his eyes and throat. Particles of dust too fine to see dug into his skin like blown ice, but Troy’s blood burned at the points of contact. He tried walking backwards, but the bare skin at the nape of his neck caught fire and he felt his shirt begin to tear along its seams. He raised his eyes and caught a glimpse of unnatural light on the horizon, back the way he had come. It looked as if it came from a spotlight or a skyscraper.

He made an effort at cursing, but it came out as croaking. He thought that maybe he could run in the direction the wind was blowing, and thereby avoid the slashing of the crescendo storm. He made it four slow steps and then his legs gave out. He pulled his head against his thighs, presenting as little of himself to the wind as possible.

Voices echoed in and out of substance, driven through his skull by the combined forces of the storm and his own gravity.

“I have left five husbands behind,” said Deseret. “And I left them all crying. From one end of this land to the other. I own fifteen percent of everywhere I’ve been. This land is my land. Four of them cried when I left. Big, wet tears in the garden. Too much salt in the water. A bed of roses died. I’ve never been good with plants.”

* * *

“My god,” said Troy. “This place is incredible.”

“It’s funny,” said Commander Beresford. “That’s the word that everybody uses. First time I bring a guest up here, it’s incredible. I’m starting to doubt my own trustworthiness.” Beresford grinned at Troy, whose muscles were too limp to do anything but gape and slouch. The quick ascent felt as though it had shook his insides to water and pulp. “I’m glad you like it,” said Beresford.

“I remember,” said Troy. He paused for a long moment, his hands on the plexi-glass that separated his body from the vacuum. “Washing out,” he said. “I remember washing out of the program.”

“Physical trials?” asked Beresford.

Troy shook his head. “Two tours, I proved I could handle anything from a chunk of styrofoam on up to the flying villages. Spent four hours in the air on a paper plate, damn it. It was the psychiatric exam,” he added. “Four hours in a chair — they ain’t as comfortable as you’d think — and that was it. Grounded. From space, anyway.”

“And from up here,” mused Beresford, “even the passenger airlines look like slugs.”

“Yeah,” said Troy. “Listen, I really have to thank you for giving me the tour.” There was a wash of hot blood through his forehead and he felt sour liquid crackling through his tear ducts. It wasn’t a reaction he had predicted.

“Don’t mention it,” said Beresford. He seemed to be debating whether or not to sit down. He ended up leaning against the bulkhead, inserting himself into Troy’s peripheral vision. Troy’s eyes had the look of polished ball bearings, damp and heavy. “When you were in the fourth grade,” said Beresford, “did your teacher put your names up on the board?”

“Like,” Troy coughed, “you mean like if we were misbehaving?”

“That’s it,” nodded Beresford. “For my class it was first offense, name on the board; second offense, check mark by the name; third offense, circled check mark; fourth offense, sit facing the corner.”

“Fifth offense?” asked Troy.

“Bull whip to the groin,” said Beresford. “This one day, can’t have been too long before Christmas, I was goofing around, showing off for a girl, and got my name on the board for spitting. Damn near twelve feet, I swear. The threat didn’t bother me; I liked the way my name looked, all slapped up with chalk. So, I keep showing off, rocking my chair as far as it would go. Got the check mark for knocking little Frannie Calico over backward and spraining her finger. Then I got the circled check mark for saying the F-word. That day, I tell you, that day was all mine. Not another name up on the board.” Beresford waited for Troy to smile before continuing. “Fourth offense was me telling Frannie Calico her finger brace looked stupid. I didn’t think saying so was as bad as saying the F-word, but there you have it. The teacher scooped me up in his two big hands and dropped me on a stool with my back to the class.

“It so happened he got me set up right in front of the blackboard. No chalk was in reach, but the felt erasers were both close enough to grab. It was silent reading time, so even the teacher had his head down. I snapped up those erasers and just started beating the hell out of them, against each other. Raised this big old cloud of chalk dust. You like that smell?” Troy shook his head. “It’s one of those smells that some people like, some people don’t, like gasoline,” said Beresford. “Anyway, I looked like a ghost by the time the teacher wrenched those erasers out of my hands. I couldn’t fight him off because I couldn’t see. The chalk dust had drifted right into my eyes. Someone else was sobbing — maybe one of the girls at a desk near me, and the teacher, he said, ‘See what you did? You made her cry’.

“I got sent home. Developed a rash — turns out I was allergic to chalk dust. All over my body, these things like chicken pox itched like the dickens. It was miserable.

“It wasn’t the first time I got sent home, so my parents had a meeting with the principal, who suggested counseling. I spent some time in one of those obnoxiously sadistic chairs you mentioned, age nine, exploring myself. I didn’t get to learn what we found, the counselor and me. He gave the report to mom and dad, so I had to sneak up on them to hear it. Counselor thought I had difficulty adjusting to additional stimuli, that I could only manage one familiar set at a time. Kind of a low-level autism.

“Proved them wrong, didn’t I?” said Beresford, tapping the plexiglass and looking down on Africa.

“It’s incredible,” said Troy. “But I believe it,” he added. He waited through an interval of smile and nod before asking, “Do I want to know about my application?”

Beresford bent his eyebrows into apology. “Not if you’re anything like me,” he said. “Sorry, son,” he went on, hooking his thumbs in his coverall’s pockets. “Wasn’t my decision in the end.”

Troy nodded. He fixed his eyes on empty, sparkling space, which could swallow a lifetime of warm sorrow, freeze it, and render it neutral. “Why,” he said.

“Psychobull,” said Beresford. “You were under serious consideration, I know, but someone — you want to hear this?”

“Yeah,” said Troy.

“Someone wrote that you seemed to have undue difficulty focusing during stressful situations.”

“Didn’t seem to be much of a point,” said Troy.

“I’m sorry,” said Beresford again, though it sounded less like a sentiment and more like punctuation.

“Don’t matter,” said Troy. “Just a childhood dream, you know.”

Beresford knew. He clapped Troy brotherly on the shoulder. “Well, drink it in,” he said. “You don’t have to come down for hours, yet.” He turned to leave Troy alone.

“Sir,” said Troy over his shoulder. “Thank Des for setting this up, would you?”

“She was happy to do it,” said Beresford.

“Thank her anyway. Part of a dream come true, at least.”

Beresford triggered the door open; it gave a mechanical sigh. “Drink it in, son.” The door was silent when it closed.

* * *

There was a desert; there was the woman. She had two voices, and they sang together, scraped together like the hind legs of a cricket, one against the other, the other against one. The air hummed and she hummed and she provided all the echoes she could need.

Troy stood in front of her, reflecting her song back into her lips. “This land is your land,” she said. “This land is my land.”

She disappeared. Twilight fell in an instant; or Troy’s thirst had destroyed him and taken him to a world in which the Earth hid half her face behind a modest lock of shadow. The relief from the heat lasted only long enough for the blisters to remind him of their hot pain.

He walked. The first person he met was a kid, waist deep in a pit of mud. The kid was pulling handfuls from a shuck of straw that sat on the harder ground beside him. He pulled those handfuls under the surface of the mud, and his legs pumped like deliberate pistons. He looked up when Troy gasped for water, but didn’t say anything. Troy bent to the mud and thrust his lips into it.

“Hey, man,” said the kid. “You ain’t supposed to be here.”

Troy lifted his head to see what the kid looked like. He waited for the kid to say something else, but the kid just shrugged and drew another fist of straw under the surface. Troy watched it disappear.

“No,” said Troy.