\nI am of the race that sang under torture<\/em><\/p>\n
\u2014Rimbaud<\/center><\/p>\n
I was about to exit when I felt the heavy hand on my left shoulder.<\/p>\n
I knew it would be the left shoulder.<\/em><\/p>\n I’d been caught shoplifting the electric razor from WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I was handcuffed then maneuvered through the dazzlingly illuminated aisles, a burly plainclothes security guard on either side.<\/p>\n Shoppers turned to look, perfunctorily.<\/p>\n I caught the eye of a shopper’s child, a small dark-skinned girl.<\/p>\n She gazed at me, alarmed at what she took to be my plight.<\/p>\n Not wanting her to see my manacles, I didn’t wave but winked at her.<\/p>\n She looked uncertain.<\/p>\n I was led into the vast warehouse-like back area.<\/p>\n Seated on the straight-backed aluminum chair with my hands cuffed behind me under the glaring fluorescent light.<\/p>\n The security guard who’d put his heavy hand on my left shoulder wore a large heart-shaped orange nametag on his chest which said WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n His head was shaved and he wore a musk-based cologne.<\/p>\n He turned his back to me and spoke into his cellphone.<\/p>\n I heard him say the word “shoplift.”<\/p>\n He slipped the cell in his pants pocket, turned toward me and held out a wide palm.<\/p>\n “Identification.”<\/p>\n I shook my head.<\/p>\n “Driver’s license, social security card, credit card, something with your contact information?”<\/p>\n I shook my head.<\/p>\n “US citizen?”<\/p>\n I nodded.<\/p>\n “Born in the US or green card?”<\/p>\n I nodded.<\/p>\n “Which is it?” he said.<\/p>\n “Your call,” I said.<\/p>\n He shrugged his heavy shoulders.<\/p>\n “You have a salt and pepper beard.<\/p>\n “That’s what it’s called, right?<\/p>\n “Salt and pepper?<\/p>\n “It’s all over your damned face.<\/p>\n “That’s green card, okay?<\/p>\n “What I want to know is what’s a salt and pepper bearded green card planning to do with a WAL* MART<\/strong>-brand electric razor?”<\/p>\n He took out a toothpick from his shirt pocket and picked at a tooth.<\/p>\n He put the toothpick back in the same pocket.<\/p>\n He said, “You’re not a salt and pepper terrorist, are you?”<\/p>\n I looked up at the sardonic flat face.<\/p>\n “I’ll tell you,” I said.<\/p>\n “If you tell me.”<\/p>\n He rubbed his thick palm on his beardless face, grinning.<\/p>\n “No salt and pepper here, bro.<\/p>\n “Smooth all over like a baby’s ass.”<\/p>\n “I can see that.<\/p>\n “What I want to know is: are you a baby’s ass who carries a sidearm?”<\/p>\n He glared at me then raised his right pants leg just high enough for me to see the ankle holster and semi-automatic.<\/p>\n It looked like a new-model Glock.<\/p>\n I said, “If I tell you I was planning to transform the stolen electric razor into a smart bomb and blow up WAL* MART<\/strong> would you shoot me with your Glock semi?”<\/p>\n He narrowed his gaze.<\/p>\n “Even a green card shit-eater would know not to even think of stealing from WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “Our security is flat-out number one in the free world.”<\/p>\n “I understood that Target’s security was flat-out number one in the free world,” I said.<\/p>\n “With Costco firmly in the number two slot.”<\/p>\n “Okay. Enough jerking off,” he said.<\/p>\n “You’re in deep shit, green card.<\/p>\n “I don’t think you realize how deep the shit you’re in is.”<\/p>\n “You married?” the other plainclothes security guard asked me unex-pectedly, in a loud voice.<\/p>\n He wore a close-to-the-scalp crewcut and WAL* MART<\/strong> nametag and stood behind and to the left of the first guard.<\/p>\n “You have a wife and shit?” he said loudly.<\/p>\n “You look spooky with that beard sticking out your face but you don’t look gay.”<\/p>\n “Are you saying I look gay?” I said.<\/p>\n “I’m saying you look like a freak,” he said.<\/p>\n “A little crazy.<\/p>\n “My guess is you’re married with kids.”<\/p>\n I nodded vaguely.<\/p>\n “Well, congratulations, you just fucked your life up,” the first security guard said.<\/p>\n “How does it feel?”<\/p>\n “You want to know how it feels to fuck my life up?” I said.<\/p>\n They both glared at me.<\/p>\n “Give me your cellphone number and I’ll get back to you.”<\/p>\n “There won’t be any getting back, freak,” the first security guard said.<\/p>\n “Not where your green card ass is going.”<\/p>\n They separated me from the chair and marched me, still cuffed, through the back area and outside to one of a series of unmarked orange customized SUVs parked abreast.<\/p>\n It was raining lightly, which for some reason surprised me.<\/p>\n I smelled the ozone.<\/p>\n With one hand on the top of my head I was pushed into the rear of a vehicle.<\/p>\n That was how it was always done on cop TV programs; I never understood why.<\/p>\n The rear was un-windowed and barred with low wooden benches on either side.<\/p>\n They sat me on a bench with my hands cuffed to a steel pole that ran above the bench from front to back.<\/p>\n Whichever WAL* MART<\/strong> security male drove, drove very fast.<\/p>\n I could hear them talking on their cells or listening to talk radio and wisecracking.<\/p>\n After about an hour the SUV stopped and they got out.<\/p>\n Ten minutes later they were back with fast food; I smelled the burgers and fries and heard them eat.<\/p>\n Even eating they drove recklessly fast, veering from lane to lane on the freeway.<\/p>\n After some time the driving changed and it felt like we were out of the city.<\/p>\n After another hour or so they stopped.<\/p>\n One of them separated me from the steel pole, relocked my cuffs and pushed me outside.<\/p>\n It was dusk, raining harder.<\/p>\n We were in front of a bunker-like concrete structure, in what looked like a deserted lot with tall weeds and rocks.<\/p>\n I couldn’t see clearly in the rain, but the structure looked as if it was built into the ground<\/p>\n Two burly males in uniform grey shirts, pants and caps emerged from the structure.<\/p>\n They weren’t wearing nametags.<\/p>\n No words were exchanged between them and the WAL* MART<\/strong> males, who drove off immediately.<\/p>\n The two uniform males said nothing as they transported me in a freight elevator underground.<\/p>\n The elevator traveled slowly and I felt the air changing.<\/p>\n When the elevator opened, they put leg-irons around my ankles.<\/p>\n “Aren’t you going to remove my shoelaces?” I said.<\/p>\n “I tried to shoplift an electric razor from WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “I might want to hang myself.”<\/p>\n They ignored me.<\/p>\n They pushed me through a narrow corridor of cave-like cells which may or may not have been occupied.<\/p>\n They locked me in a small, low-ceilinged cell at the end of the corridor.<\/p>\n All around was the damp sweet-sour stench of earth.<\/p>\n “Have to pee,” I said as they were leaving.<\/p>\n “Your prob,” one of them said over his shoulder.<\/p>\n I shuffled to a corner of the cell and peed.<\/p>\n Then I removed my shoes and sat semi-cross-legged (the leg-irons impeded me) on the dirt floor against the wall in the opposite corner.<\/p>\n After a time I slept.<\/p>\n I dreamed of eight bighorned sheep-like animals cropping\u2014or trying to crop\u2014the hardscrabble grass.<\/em><\/p>\n The horned sheep moved with extreme caution even though no hunters were in sight.<\/em><\/p>\n Close-up, the animals’ faces were bruised, even torn, with caked blood and what looked like rough sutures.<\/em><\/p>\n I was thinking\u2014in the dream\u2014about the number eight.<\/em><\/p>\n Why were there precisely eight of the gentle beasts?<\/em><\/p>\n I was awakened by a female voice haranguing me through the bars of the cell.<\/p>\n It was my wife; I wondered how she knew I was here.<\/p>\n I opened my eyes partially and rattled my leg irons but otherwise didn’t move.<\/p>\n She demanded why I would try to steal an electric razor from WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n She said the cell stank of piss.<\/p>\n She demanded again why I would try to shoplift a razor from WAL* MART<\/strong>.<\/p>\n She seemed more chagrined than angry.<\/p>\n She said despite my “background” and education I’d always been a loser, but this was the last straw.<\/p>\n This was the lowest I could sink without being in hell.<\/p>\n She’d consulted an attorney and now she would sue me for divorce and custody of our daughter.<\/p>\n She said I’d dug my own grave and as far as she was concerned I could rot in it.<\/p>\n A grey-uniformed guard looked on expressionless.<\/p>\n After she left I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n I slept.<\/p>\n I dreamed of eight large pelagic, albatross-like birds with their majestic wingspan flying in formation, not over ocean but desert.<\/em><\/p>\n Moreover the desert seemed to be on fire, or blazing fires were scattered over the desert.<\/em><\/p>\n The birds would gaze down occasionally but kept flying because there was no habitable place to land.<\/em><\/p>\n From where I was located below I could see the great birds’ faces which weren’t the faces of pelagic birds but rather the round faces of infants such as barn owls resemble.<\/em><\/p>\n I was awakened by someone rattling the bars of my cell.<\/p>\n He spoke my name.<\/p>\n I opened then closed my eyes.<\/p>\n He was an administrator from the company where I worked.<\/p>\n A small, pale male, vaguely rat-like: I didn’t remember his name.<\/p>\n I remembered that he always seemed to be sweating.<\/p>\n As with my wife, I had no idea how he knew of my whereabouts.<\/p>\n The message he delivered was brief: the company would not employ thieves who attempted to steal from WAL* MART<\/strong> and so I was thereby terminated.<\/p>\n Whatever salary was owed to me would be transferred to my wife.<\/p>\n Then he left along with the expressionless guard.<\/p>\n I shouted after the guard: “Toilet.”<\/p>\n He didn’t respond.<\/p>\n I struggled to my feet and peed again in the far corner, though in truth there was no far corner since the cell was cramped.<\/p>\n I had to squat so that my head didn’t hit the ceiling.<\/p>\n Because the floor was earthen the pee soaked into the hardened dirt.<\/p>\n I noticed a soiled straw mat rolled up against the wall.<\/p>\n I unrolled it and lay down on my back gazing up at the low ceiling.<\/p>\n From every side the damp earth was palpable.<\/p>\n Occasionally a sliver or even small clod of earth would fall from the ceiling.<\/p>\n Moreover there was vermin, and why shouldn’t there be?<\/p>\n Neither the wrist nor the leg manacles hindered me overmuch.<\/p>\n I was having a small problem drawing breath.<\/p>\n I thought I could hear cell doors clanging open and shut down the corridor and on the floor above.<\/p>\n Maybe it was the floor below.<\/p>\n I think it was below.<\/p>\n Which would make it Hades.<\/p>\n Where Orpheus descended.<\/p>\n I will miss my daughter.<\/p>\nHarold Jaffe is the author of thirteen books of fiction and “docufiction.” His most recent volume is a collection of creative nonfiction: <\/em>Beyond the Techno-Cave: A Guerilla Writer’s Guide to Post-Millennial Culture.<\/h4>\n
This story is included in issue #40: <\/em> Animals. Copyright \u00a9 2007 by <\/em>Fiction International. Authors of individual works retain copyright, with the restriction that subsequent publication of any text be accompanied by notice of prior publication in <\/em>Fiction International. Please contact the editor<\/a> for reprinting information.<\/em><\/h4>\n
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