Young Writers Society

All twelve jury members file into their box, like Jews filing into a shower room, all naked and white. I can see their verdict carved into their chests and making bird's nests in their mouths. And I can hear their thoughts a little, too. Ever since my voice disappeared, I've gotten good at listening, and whispers buzz all around the courtroom like fruit flies.

A grey man in a suit starched so tight it hangs around his neck like those signs that panhandlers hold on the sides of the streets (Vet. Out of work. Anything helps. God bless) hands a slip of paper to the bailiff who takes it to the judge's bench. He slips it to His Honor, slips it like little girls passing note and I expect to hear the judge giggle when he reads the verdict but instead clears his throat and looks up.

The jury is cast in iron.

And the judge says,

“Guilty.”

***

He shakes my hand, tells me his name is Peter Hall and that I can call him by his last name because he was in the army for so long that anything but Hall sounds stiff and scratchy to him, like the orchestra pit music in silent film. As usual, I don't say anything and I try to keep my eyes anywhere but his face, which is sanded down and adobe brick colored, colored like a red pick-up when it drives through the dust. He's part Indian, I think. I can hear his heartbeat through his shirt and it is the sound of rain dance drums, tanned hide stretched and slapped by open palms.

“In fact, there was this one time when me and a buddy were taking the night shift and he had brought this hard rice liquor in one of those little Vietnamese towns and we got so drunk that we wouldn't have been able to see a Vietcong even if they danced around in front of us naked. Anyway. So my buddy says to me – ”

But his words are empty things that are easily scattered, easily unheard.

He's trying to give me a psychoanalytical test, I can feel it. He looks casual and laid back, but I can feel his eyes filming, calculating, judging every expression on my face. Any change in breathing. Any recognition in my eyes. And so I keep myself as still as possible and my face empty and lifeless, like big game animals stuffed with cotton. I am unreadable. Uncodable. Because if someone opened me up to see the things squirming around in my chest, all the light bulbs in the world would crackle out and the earth would be plunged into a darkness that's as thick as cement churning around in the back of one of those mixers like clothes in a laundromat.

I know this.

I can just feel it.

So for the good of mankind, my lips are stapled shut and I'm a bunker where my thoughts and feelings can huddle together so that even the heaviest bombing only rattles their teeth.

The words he's saying are robust and loud like a southern baptist choir beltin' out songs of praise to our lord Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. But my only associations with the Lord were in Liesel and Joseph's living room where he was twisted in agony on that cross with his eyes upturned towards the ceiling. So I don't understand him. I can't.

He asks me my name again and I make sure to remain comatose.

“Listen,” he says. “Just talk to me for a little, alright? I'm not gonna break you down into a bunch of psychobabble, because I just wanna get to know you, OK? We're gonna get through this together. Partners. That's what we are from now on.”

He smiles and his face cracks open.

“OK?”

Outside, the clouds are dyed red by the sun, making them look like spots on a painted horse and I stare outside until Peter Hall gets up in silence and leaves me alone.

***

I lay in bed and listen to the sounds of this place.

The guy in next door is moaning, moaning like he's just lost his entire family, as if he's holding the hand of his daughter all hard and sticky (with dead sweat) now, like one of those giant lolly-pops. He moans and it seeps through the walls and into my room. It is a strange kind of lullaby. It is a strange kind of music box.

It echoes.

Half of me is glad of the distraction from sleep. I'm desperately afraid of what'll happen once I close my eyes and dreams start performing inside my head, as silent as mimes; they are always silent. These days, ever since the trial, the dreams have all been about Heather, too. They've all been about her dead face, her eyes swirling, swirling, swirling like goldfish corpses flushed down toilets, a whirlpool sucking in the sight of me on top of Amir. Me holding a candlestick above this half-naked kid with his head turned into salsa.

It's not about Amir any more.

His thought is gone along with my voice.

But the other half of me wishes he was back, so that he could kill off all the other thoughts that are populating my brain now. I want to go back to imagining rather than remembering, because things were so much less rigid there, less real. It was all flaky and loose, like tobacco before you roll it up into a cigarette.

Now though.

Now the man next door to me is sprinkling me with sleeplessness.

The old homeless man who sat next to us was drooping like a sunflower, heavy and black-faced. He was breathing funny and playing with a zippo lighter, flicking the lid up and then down, up and down. I've seen his face before. I've seen it on a hundred different men just like him. Men in uniforms who suck the life out of other people like newborn kids slung around their momma's chest, breast-feeding with vacuum mouths. I know because I'm one of them.

Except I remembered to bring my mind with me when I left Hanoi. I remembered to pack it with my cigarettes and socks.

We're waiting for a bus, me and Charlie. He needed to get out of the institute and they'll let me take patients out as long as they have this tracking bracelet around their ankles. I feel like I know this kid inside and out already. I know he's just a little chipped and that he doesn't have the energy to kill someone again or run away.

I decided I'd take him to that park on 111th street. I figured maybe I could charm a few words out of his jealous mouth, pull them out like colored handkerchiefs tied together and stuffed up a magician's sleeve.

He can talk.

I know it.

The city bus wheezed to a stop in front of us and I let the old homeless man go ahead in front of us and I could see the impatience on the faces of the passengers as he wobbles up the steps. Charlie and I took a seat right behind him, the bus ratcheted like a gumball machine, and gasped onto the road.

“Nice to be out of there, huh? I can only stand so much of all that disinfectant and white-wash. Reminds me of when my grandpa died. He wanted so much to kick the bucket on the reservation, but my dad insisted that he get that cough looked at down in the city, buy him a couple more years, I guess.”

I glanced sideways at the kid's face.

Blank and white; like a bedsheet ghost.

I noticed people staring at the hood. The director thought it would be a good idea to get him weaned off of pillowcases and onto scarves and shawls and slowly make it so he didn't even need to wear a face covering anymore. But the more people stare then Charlie'll never come out from under the bed.

The city skated by outside like fast food waitresses on roller blades and I searched for something else I could say to Charlie, something to get him to talk.

After a moment I took a pen and a crumpled up receipt out of my pocket and I handed them to him. I said, “Do this for me at least, okay? Write on the back of that scrap whether or not you can hear me. Yes or No.”

He took the pen after I held it out to him for a while, like a kid taking his first Marlboro from the neighborhood delinquent and then his fingers closed around the receipt. Those fingers were so delicate and whispery; mere impressions in the air, gentle as words hissed into the ear of a horse. They looked fragile, too. I was pretty sure that if I touched them the wrong way they'd crunch and then wither into stalks of old skin.

Slowly, he scratched 'Yes' onto the scrap of paper.

“Do you realize that no one's going to hurt you anymore? Yes or No.”

A pause.

Yes.

“Can you speak?”

No.

“Do you want to speak?”

Charlie stopped and turned into stone again, and his hands turned pale and papery, like Monopoly money. The pen hovered above the receipt. I waited for a while and the bus stopped for another load and if I could have seen his face I'm sure it would be filled with deliberation. I knew what he was thinking. I knew that silence is a comfortable place to be. It's warm and safe and no one can hurt you there. I've seen plenty of guys freeze up and turn into GI Joe dolls, lifeless and plastic, and never come back because words are so painful. They are so obvious and harsh. They are filled with too much meaning.

And then, scribbled:

Yes.

“Why can't you?”

He put down the pen and crumpled up the receipt and looked out the window, sealing me off again. I stared at him for a little bit and then I shrugged, leaned back, and closed my eyes. I listened to the old, homeless man breathing in front of me for the rest of the trip, whirring and clanking.