Crystal Eaters (19 page)

He leans against the machine. He moves the flashlight over his body and up and down the tunnel walls. The air is hot, heavy, and where the flashlight misses it’s dark with an occasional mist
of gnats. Dust engulfs all space and the engine is at a low and rumbling growl. His concentration loosens, and for the first time since he began digging, he’s forced to reflect on who he is, what he’s doing, and his body deflates. He doesn’t feel like a solid person anymore. His arms ache and his hair is matted with sweat. His fingernails are black with work. He’s a person.

He aims the flashlight in the opposite direction of the machine. The light ends ghost-like where the tunnel splits into three different directions. He presses his head into the tunnel wall until rocks pierce his skin. He turns his back to the wall and sits on the ground where the air is so full of shit that when he opens his mouth to drink from a canteen his tongue is blanketed. He pulls his legs in and cleans his eyes with his knees. He tries to calm his shaking legs by massage.
What horrible things are happening to them?
With his tongue he cleans his front teeth. He swallows dirt and grips his calves. He’s digging a tunnel to nowhere and in the thought, the clichéd metaphor for life of
digging a tunnel nowhere
, he laughs.

What does it all mean
, and the thoughts go more sentimental:
wonder when I’ll die, a body as husk, a body as zero. Will anyone remember me? HAHAHAHA
.

He once prided himself as someone who didn’t think these thoughts. He mocked people who expressed feelings. But here, in this dark tunnel exposed by flashlight and machine light (
what happens when these lights burn out?
) his thoughts are inescapable.
You have to keep moving because it’s the only thing a person can do
. He pulls himself up and into the machine and extends the tunnel.

Dig
.

Breaks a new layer of wall.

Dig
.

There’s no black crystal.

Dig
.

A waterfall of dirt attacks him.

Dig
.

Z. ducking even though he’s covered by the metal roof of the machine.

It doesn’t exist so just get a dark-colored red, a bunch, and trick them
.

When Z. was a child he met Adam McDonovan who told him he was breaching the city to achieve something no one had ever done before. Z. asked if it would be bigger than fireworks and he said yes, different, why was everyone talking about fireworks. He said that the true way to extend one’s count was to have others remember you. He held a bag with dark crystals, looked like red. Everyone wants to be amazing in an ordinary world, said Adam. Z. listened and memorized every word. He didn’t want to be stomped out like some bird. Just be great enough so someone younger will remember you, said Adam.

6

T
he division began with the night of separate bedsheets. For years, Younger Dad insisted on sleeping under the same sheets
because that is what married couples do
, no matter how much sheet Younger Dad took in twists during the night. Sometimes, Younger Mom woke with her fingers touching an edge of blanket as Younger Dad, deep in dream, held the blanket from her.

“Why’s it such a big deal,” said Younger Mom. “How do you expect me to sleep if I don’t have any covers and you have to, absolutely
must
, sleep with a window open?”

Younger Dad had a theory that he’d achieve a better sleep if fresh air was blowing in. He spent his days working in the crystal mine, harvesting yellow and melting it down. It was difficult, messy work, that clogged his body. If fresh air wasn’t circulating, his mouth and nose went dry and would cause him to wake throughout the night. Not that he could remember, the next day, of waking up, but he said he
felt it
. He said the sleep
didn’t catch right
.

“What about a bigger blanket?”

“That’s not a solution.”

He took three blankets into the garage and placed them on the table where Harvak would one day expel his last crystal, and using a needle and black thread, he stitched. It took two
hours and the stitching was poor. When Younger Dad pulled at the new seams triangle-shaped holes formed. He went back and added thread – quick loops to help hold together the triple blanket that wasn’t a solution, but an attempt.

He pulled the blanket from the garage and into the house where he let it drag across the floor and up the stairs. The blanket extended from the bottom of the stairs to the top and into the bedroom where it slithered from a fearful Remy who watched half-hidden, but standing, in her bedroom.

It took another hour to figure out how to display the blanket. The trick was to fold it in a way so it appeared to be three separate blankets stacked. He wanted it to be a surprise when Younger Mom entered the room, ready for bed, dressed in her gray nightgown, brushing her teeth with one hand while pulling the bedsheet down with the other.

“What’s going on here?” she asked, looking at the bed stacked high with blankets.

“Watch THIS,” Younger Dad said.

He pulled one layer off and to the right and another to the left. The blanket touched each wall of the bedroom. One side had to be folded back over. Younger Dad stood with his arms extended outward.

“Very you,” said Younger Mom smiling with her hand spread over her mouth. “Still going to keep the window open?”

That night, on each respected side, they crawled into bed and under the blanket with a good fifteen feet of fabric on each side.

Yes, the window was open. Yes, Younger Mom was smiling and laughing. Yes, Younger Dad felt pure joy for having injected pure joy into Younger Mom. Yes, Younger Dad asked if Younger Mom was tired and ready for sleep and she said yes and yes they went to sleep. They were years away from the first signs of her illness but it was there, inside her. It didn’t matter then. There was joy in that bed.

Younger Mom woke at 2:35 in the morning because of the
breeze blowing on her arms. The blanket had dipped to her waist. She pulled it to her chin, fell back asleep, only to wake twenty minutes later with the edge of the blanket against the side of her body.

“It worked,” Younger Dad said in the morning, a spoon filled with oatmeal raised to his lips. “I’m good.”

“Not exactly,” she said, pouring a cup of coffee, looking through the kitchen window above the sink. “Put all the blanket on my side tonight.”

So, they put all the blanket on Younger Mom’s side in a ridiculously huge pile even Harvak was too scared to jump into. Younger Dad had barely enough blanket to cover his body. He had about two inches of blanket on his side, to the thirty feet of clump on Younger Mom’s.

It didn’t work.

“I’m sorry,” said Younger Dad. “Huh.”

They tried tucking the blanket under the mattress, and they tried wrapping Younger Mom in a tunnel of blanket, and they even tried having Younger Dad only touching the edge of the blanket, not even on him really, but none of it worked. The last attempt involved Harvak sleeping between them – the dog acting as a kind of anchor to the blanket. But after an hour Younger Dad flipped and flopped and Harvak leaped from the bed as the blanket shifted once again and the breeze blew in from the open window.

“People talk about people who don’t sleep together,” he said.

“You should care about me sleeping, not people.”

“I believe in a one blanket policy, I think,” said Younger Dad.

That night Younger Dad went into the bedroom and saw two blankets – one brown and one white – neatly folded side by side on the bed.

Years passed. Remy grew. Adam imprisoned. Mom coughed a new sound. Dad fought through his blanket. That is, instead
of taking blanket, which he couldn’t do now, his body moved toward the center of the bed and pushed at Mom who woke throughout the night from knees and elbows.

“Last night your elbow pressed into my spine.”

Dad tried sleeping on the couch. He couldn’t fall asleep because the flow of air from the window wasn’t right. Mom tried too, but the couch proved too lumpy, and she hated the feeling of her arm disappearing between cushions.

“It’s temporary,” she said. “What we’ll do is set up a bed in the spare bedroom. I know, his bedroom. I’ll get some sleep. My head hurts.”

“If that’s what you want,” said Younger Dad. “If sleeping in separate bedrooms is a good idea then let’s do it.”

Dad stands on the roof. He kept the triple blanket in the garage for years, and earlier, pulled it up the ladder. It hung blob-like over the eaves and became a flag some villagers waved at when Dad shook-out the dust. He placed it over the roof, corners to corners. Wondering what to do about Mom – can anything living be saved from death – the triple blanket covers all.

5

R
emy runs through the mine with Hundred. Sharp yellow disregarded by workers because they won’t liquefy due to over-crystallization cut her feet. Remy imagines her count as twenty ice cubes pyramided inside her.
I don’t have any color. Mom is leaving. Who will be strong enough to bury her body? Dad is with her now, he will watch her go
. Leaving the mine, Remy looks toward the city so near, the fence smashed by three new buildings. The sun is a predator in its sky blistering. She heads home feeling helpless.

Dad climbs down from the roof by way of ladder holding the triple blanket.

“You’re not with her?”

Dad bunches the blanket against his face, trying to keep it from hitting the dirt, but most of it remains clumped at his feet. “Going in now.”

“To see if she’s dead?”

“To check.”

“Just help her. Let’s go. Come on, please.”

Dad walking toward the front door: “I’m doing everything I can.”

“You’re not doing anything.”

“Remy.”

“You’ll be remembered for doing nothing.”

“Who will remember?”

“Me.”

“Stop it.”

“I’ll stop when you help her. This has been going on for too long. Please.”

“Remy, I told you.”

“Let me see her face.”

“No.”

“I’m going to see her face before she’s gone, you owe me that.”

“You shouldn’t see her like this.”

“You can’t stop me.”

She follows Dad into the house where he dumps the triple blanket on the couch. They walk to Mom’s room, Remy stepping on the heels of Dad. The house is heavy with heat and difficult to navigate. Things are melting: a diamond-print reclining chair holds the impression of a giant, and the flesh-toned paint on the walls is dripping on the floor. When they enter the bedroom their bodies move slower in her presence. Mom looks tiny on the bed. Dad removes the blanket from her face in a quick passive-aggressive sort of way, looking at Remy the entire time, as if he knows what her reaction will be, as if he knows, and doesn’t care, that it will hurt her.

“You wanted to see.”

Remy’s shoulders fold inward and her stomach absorbs a hammer. Sharp pieces of crystal trickle down inside her. She’s never seen a body get this far.

Mom’s face has lost meat the skull once held. And Dad was right, something is wrong with her mouth, as if she chewed bricks. Her eyes are glazed and rust-colored. Soon, her left eye will drip crystals (Chapter 5, Death Movement, Book 8). Her nose is hardened ash that Remy imagines if she touched would crumble. Gray hair gunked with shit fans her pillow. Dad repeats
Can you hear us? Can you? Are you okay?
and Remy thinks
Don’t leave
me
. Smell of dead dogs. Smell of burning. She peels the blanket from Mom’s feet and sees the skin is a darker red compared to her face and neck, and even her veins, once strong and blue, have disappeared beneath this new red shell.
A lack of circulation results in the color red drying everything up, erasing the last crystals in the body
(Chapter 9, Death Movement, Book 8). The red is moving toward her chest and aiming to stop her heart.

“You don’t have to be here,” says Dad, in a softer tone now that he’s seen Remy’s reaction. “I know you’ve heard this before, from me, from books, and maybe you don’t believe it, but it’s never been disproved. Parents go and their children step into their place. There’s nothing wrong with just letting that happen.”