this short story was originally posted on Open Salon

September, 2009.  It contains a boat.

Mofick tacked me, honor, he did tack me.

Gavel sounded hastily.

They struck me from behind I'd figured.

Dust heap. Dried blood out my nostril. Hold it. Sssssh!

Henry'd given me a used snot rag. I bandaged my blistered right hand.

Actually, I am exhilerated.

Only juice for what? Two, three? days?

The man with Redeyes/ice, kept his mouth shut. Traded the 10lb. for the 7lb. he said nothing. He looked through me. He said keep your mouth shut. I avoided the guards' eyes. Kept my mouth shut. The guards were dressed in white like---but I had to keep moving---down, it'd be too easy to trip and and get dragged and beat over the shoulders and then, then what? 10 or 7 pounder it won't matter, you'd be unchained, beaten and the rest of 'em would drag you to the pit.  That hole in the dust filled with shit and skeletons and you'd pray to keep your eyes closed. Your mouth shut. You just knew that fat one would smash your mouth first. Maybe even so badly you'd be dead before you'd hit the feces. Keep pace. Don't drag a leg. He'd uppercut you, flatten your nose for good. Mean sumbitches, all of 'em mean.

Mom, they're all mean.

25 maybe 30, no, 27 of us. No way you'd be able to stand on the rocks and then break rock after rock, only a half hour, a few minutes you'd wish you'd die, balancing like that, no footing all morning. You couldn't sling the sledge no more. You kept swinging it. Thinking about it was death. My heart stopped racing. Maybe it wasn't there. I breathed through my nose, only dust. My mouth hung open and I couldn't spit. I'd die here and my bones would be powder.

Cold water hosed on you every 120 minutes. Everywhere the dust.  No air, all dust.You'd focus on the rocks trying to split them evenly  again and again and at once, one whack, watching for sparks. A spark from your sledge on rock took on meaning. An evenly split grapfruit sized rock, wow, you knew life had meaning, and always another truck. Big canvass hosed, fire hosed dirty water, you'd pray for that water, and it was always warm, heated by the incessant sun, yet an iota cooler than the air. Wet, cool, it was water. You'd open your mouth turning your face  instinctively just so, or you'd be knocked on your ass just for 'sport'. 

You'd have to put your head down right away, turning as you could, keeping the full force off your rib cage.  Earlier they'd lifted a guy in the air with the hose and held him suspended for awhile, laughing their asses off, how they were able to balance him off the ground until all of the guards from down the way'd come over to have a good laugh!  Discreetly the bigger men near him tried to pull the leg chain, to ease him down, but that proved stupid right away; the guards made a saddistic game of it until the other prisoners just let it be. He was taut to his chains like a puppet high off the dirt with a good two yards of rusted chain on each leg iron.  It was horrible. I felt bad being able to sit down on the sharp stones as they unlocked his leggings, dragging him feet first over the small rise.  We'd a brief reprieve, impossible to tell time, as the sun was always overhead.

I'd been chained for what? Two weeks? Twenty years? A thousand lifetimes? 

Rarely clouds slipped between the sun and the parched dirt. Snakelike the line of chained men: all of us worked and pounded rocks. And pounded rocks.  Buzzards had it better. There was no cadence, no singing.

Another dump truck, the stench of diesel exhaust, you'd try closing your eyes and the sun would be up already. 

Three cots down the guy's nose bled and a boy soldier with an antiquated rifle as big as he was first butted him, and then smashed his face in with a roundhouse full baseball bat swing. Splat/crack. The sound of---I'd have to keep moving I knew---the kid'd fallen over and the bullet winged the small propane tank toward the front beneath the rusted corrogated steel roof and richocheted smack dab into the neck of the guard at the door. He clasped his throat, you could see how the jugular---I'd run now---time was yours not mine.

I picked up the guard's gun, not seeing much at all.

 The camp lit up.

Starving dogs barked, howled at 3 0'clock. We wrapped the blankets over us, over our hands. The man with Redeyes/ice and I pushed and were shoved and tripped away from the door and then most of us were out into the wet air. We went right, turning behind the bamboo barricks.

I kicked a dry eggwood post and the barbed wire slumped enough---it was everyman for himself---and we ran forward, branches poking your eyes, guys wildly bumping smack into trees, wobbling getting up again, running in circles out--out into the night.

 Startled birds flew; the dark woods paniced.

First one shot then two, three and ackackackackack bullets blew by us all around stupidly too high.  Somewhat to my left I sensed Redeyes/ice and then he wasn't---I stopped bent low backtracking-- he held the rifle up and I took it from him, his white face stared at the darkness. He'd nothing else on him. He was born with nothing and now he died---my breathing alone would get me captured---I had paused as long as I dared. 

The dogs were coming. Now I had two blankets and a backup rifle.

I knew it was a hilltop in the darkness when I fell onto it and kept sliding. You knew it when those hellhounds found Redeyes/ice.  I'd stopped falling and had to rest.  Even if it meant going back to those rocks and that heat.  I licked dew off leaves.  Then I tore big, broad wet leaves and chewed them, filling my mouth not swallowing. I breathed through my nose.

 I took the wad from my mouth and smeared mud with it on my face.

Quietly I moved sideways, then down some. Climbing a tree momentarily seemed to be a good idea.

I was too weak. I kept moving.

Down before a dirt road, a shallow water ditch lowly ran alongside it. I covered up as best as I could until my breathing slowed, quieted. For the rest of the night you'd wake up wide-eyed, terrified.  Men and beastly dogs walked the road as their torches beamed high and low and off and on.  Once a boy in a pith helmet urinated into the water near my boots. He belched and farted at the same time.  He dropped his shorts and squated but then an older man ran at him from nowhere, he seemed to be cursing, I didn't know the language, and he hit the boy several times across the face with a riding whip. They walked on the man bickering and the boy silent, toward the sharp curve, where through the diminished night you could see how the road steeply plunged.

At daybreak it seemed that my drunken tormentors had given up the search or were already preoccupied harrassing those left up the hill at the plateau prison.

Small red mites nested in my ears, nostrils and in the corners of my eyes.  I could barely move.

I knew I had to act quickly without thinking.  I positioned myself across the road where it rolled to a corner before it descended.  Soon an open lorrie clattered toward the curve.  Moving recklessly--eerily its amber lights glowed like devilish animal eyes.

I sighted the driver---it was the fat, bald guard. The gun didn't fire.  Safety? Safety?  I thumbed what had to be the safety nipple as sweat seeped into my eyes and as the lorrie began turning and bouncing the windsheild glinted KABlAM a hundred dark birds took wing.

I laughed like a mofick the truck careened-caromed-tilted skidding left and the guards flew out breaking their necks one of whom I saw decapitated, his  head sliced and snapped off on a cargo bar.

Screams filled the new day as  the lorrie left the road just to my right and then flipped over a boulder, impacting a large, thick tree.

Its wheels spun freely upside down. 

I rummaged whatever I could get my hands on: large water bottles, a bag of AlmondJoy minatures, a machette, what I guessed to be Uzis for each shoulder, a carton of Newport Kings, and then with one of the two cheap lighters I lit up what smelled like fuel, throwing the lighter once, and then backing off twice before leaning into it until it ignited.

There was a tremendous explosion, jetting up a huge fireball.

I made a rugsack with my blankets and ran down the road. Down to the beach.

I surprised an old fisherman at first light as he gaped at the black smoke swirling high above the trees.

He put his hands up.

Slowly he smiled, then nodded toward the boat.  We walked the boat out into the surf.  Soon we puttered away as fast and far as we could in silence. He killed the engine.

And hoisted sail.

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