Amped (17 page)

“If you’re gonna be useful, I needed you to see,” he says. “You got to know how bad they want what we got.”

Jim leans forward in his squeaky La-Z-Boy recliner, the fabric on its arms shined to a high gloss by his knobby elbows. The chair looks like a stray dog covered in burn wounds, but Jim is oblivious, blue eyes bright.

“I told ya, kid,” he says. “It’s not too late.”

It’s right there on the tube, on the evening news. The Free Body Liberty Group out of Arizona. The FBLG is protesting at the Arizona State Capitol. Behind a chattering newscaster, I can see the angel of justice perched on the roof of the capitol building, her sword raised. The crowd there is loud and proud and standing up for an American’s right to decide just exactly what to do with his or her own damn body.

Maybe Samantha was wrong.

Jim is cracking a smile at me from across the living room, gray stubble collapsing into mirthful wrinkles. He sits at attention like an exclamation point in the wood-paneled living room. A dust-coated deer head stares down at us from its mount on the wall. Head lowered and horns poised, challenging infinity with black eyes.

“There’s still goodness in people,” muses Jim, watching the television. “Take that, Vaughn, you
dickhead
.”

I’m grinning back at Jim. Trying to enjoy this moment—the first time we’ve seen an organized group of people holding up the amp end of the dialogue.

“This is how it has to happen,” says Jim. “The regular folks have to fix things. We can’t force them into it.”

These are vanilla humans standing up for their family and friends. Most of the temples on the television are bare. A minority but finally vocal. I can’t help thinking that if those were amps standing on the capitol steps, well, it would be a different scene.

Somehow, Jim hears it coming first. Moaning floats through the window, too shocked to be crying anymore. Without a word, Jim pries himself out of his La-Z-Boy and hauls ass into his bedroom.

I’m half out of my seat when the front door bursts open. Lucy staggers inside, carrying Nick in both arms. The kid falls onto the couch.

There’s a rivulet of blood coming from his temple.

“What happened?” I gasp.

“Spotlighters,” says Lucy. “Must have got him crossing the field.”

Nick moans again, but I can’t make out the words. Something is different about him. Something I can’t quite place…

His maintenance port is gone.

That little nub stripped right off his face. The skin around it is raw and puffy and bleeding.

I can’t believe he is still conscious.

Lucy looks over, and I turn to see Jim framed in the weak hallway light. He’s got his worn old doctor’s bag pinned under a skinny bicep.

“Get a wet rag from the kitchen, Owen,” Jim says.

The old man is all business, squatting by the couch next to Nick. He glances up to Lucy and starts to say something, stops, lower lip quivering. Sets his jaw and starts again.

“Can he still see?” Jim asks Lucy.

It’s a simple, short question. But after he asks it, the old man swallows a lump of emotion. Forces it down past his Adam’s apple
and into his paunchy stomach. Down there, the despair can chew him up slow instead of consuming him all at once.

“I don’t know,” says Lucy. “He found his way home. But they tore it out.”

“Christ,” he says. “I’m not sure what we can do without the port.”

I drop a wet dishrag into Jim’s hand and he dabs at Nick’s temple. Scrubs the dirt away, leaving pink, inflamed skin. The rag comes away filthy and dark with blood. But the boy starts to stir. His eyes open and rotate back and forth.

“Nick,” says Jim, waving at his face, “what do you see?”

Nick turns and squints up at his adoptive mother. Doesn’t say anything. His thin lips press together in a white line, and he closes his eyes again and a new wave of tears streams down his face.

“Baby, you’re gonna be fine. You’ll be okay,” says Lucy, stroking his cheek with one hand and methodically wiping tears from her eyes with the other.

“You’re doing great, Nick,” I say.

Jim strokes Nick’s head, pushes wet strands of hair out of his confused face. A goose egg is growing on his forehead, cratered by a small red gash. Turning dark fast.

Lucy and Jim look at each other. A question is in the set of her lips, in the concerned wrinkle of her forehead. She leaves it unspoken.

“Best case it’s just a concussion,” Jim says. “I’m going to need to get a look at what’s left of the maintenance nub to find out. Seems okay for now. The implant itself is still in there. Port could have come out clean at the connector. But you know, worst case, if it came out rough …”

Lucy says what Jim can’t.

“Brain damage.”

On the television across the room, a fat sweaty guy with a sign is yelling. Face turning red. Other Free Body protesters surround
him, screaming mouths on flushed faces. The yeller’s voice has gone hoarse and he barks the same two words again and again like a piece of broken machinery.

“No limits!” he is shouting. “No limits!”

“Turn that shit off,” snarls Jim, “and get me some light.”

I snap the television off. The front door is still open, a yawning mouth leading to a warm dark throat outside. The stars didn’t come out tonight and the crickets are singing about it in the shadowed grass.

On the couch, Nick’s small eyes are wide open and scared and sad.

Jim yells for light again. I trot to the kitchen table and grab a cheap desk lamp off a stack of old newspapers. Pens from forgotten companies and keys to long-junked cars spatter to the floor. I plug the lamp in next to the couch and hold it as high as the short electric cord lets me.

Jim’s got a thumb hooked under Nick’s eyelid, pulling down the skin. The lamp light shines down weakly and Nick’s pupil retreats, collapsing to a black decimal point. The outline of the retinal implant floats there, rudely visible. The shape of it is square and angular and so clearly man-made compared to the natural mottled brown of his eyes.

“What’s your name, son?” Jim asks.

Nick’s eyes slowly snap to attention, focusing on Jim’s face. The old man gently cradles the boy’s head. Nick blinks up at him. Moves his lips into the shape to make words.

“Nick,” he says, voice slurring. The boy turns and sees Lucy. “Momma?” he asks.

“I’m here, honey. Where did they hurt you?” asks Lucy.

Nick raises one fist and taps the side of his head. His wrist is bent, fingers curled up in a way that’s not good. Jim winces, tries to hide his reaction.

“Nowhere else?”

Nick shakes his head. Drops his fist.

“Who did this?”

Nick just looks up at Lucy. Eyes wide and brown. No response. The boy’s lips start to move, quivering. Again, nothing comes
out. The boy squeezes his eyes closed and shakes his head, tears slithering onto the couch cushions. He reaches up and wipes his eyes with one hand that’s still curled into a fist.

Like a baby.

Jim slumps onto his haunches. Lucy puts the back of her hand against her mouth. I lose concentration and the lamp doglegs. I feel Lucy’s gentle fingers on my spine and I reach behind me and take her hand. We don’t look at each other, just feel the warmth of each other’s hands.

I don’t know if Nick has got brain damage, but this isn’t good and he’s so
young
. I can’t even imagine it. Some reggie tried to tear the fucking amp right out of his head.

Maybe I should have let Lyle beat the shit out of those reggie kids.

Jim stops poking around and looks up, works the hunch out of his shoulders. There is relief on his face. “Looks like the maintenance nub came off clean. Implant is fine in there. I think he’ll be okay. But he’s gonna have to rest until we can find a replacement port,” says Jim. “Home is fine. Hospital won’t work on this anyway.”

“Whoever did this is outside right now,” I say, “laughing about it.”

“Nothing to be done,” says Jim.

The way the words catch in his throat makes me feel suddenly small. I have a vision of our trailer from high above. A tiny cube of warmth, jaundiced light spilling out the windows onto dead grass. Trailer sitting here like a rotten shipwreck, alone and long forgotten on the abyssal plain of the ocean floor.

Nick puts his fist on his chest. I reach over and take his fingers
in mine. Our eyes connect, and he opens his hand. As his fingers uncurl, something small and yellowish and electronic falls onto his chest.

His missing maintenance nub.

“Good job, Nick,” I whisper. “Smart boy.”

Jim eagerly pulls out a pair of surgical tweezers. Plucks the device off Nick’s gently rising chest. The old man holds it up to the light and inspects it, squinting.

“Can you put it back in?” I ask.

“Need to sterilize it. But not yet. Drag that old TV over here,” Jim says, grunting as he stands up.

“Why?”

Jim holds up the implant. “Because if Nick can’t tell us what happened, why, we’ll just have to watch for ourselves.”

In a ditch, not far from here, little Nick is dragging himself up on bloody knees. Running as fast as he can. In a streaking flash he glances over his shoulder. A group of men are giving chase. They wear grins like Halloween masks. Mouths soundlessly coned into hooting O shapes. Lips peeling back and eyes glittering from flashlights, apelike and predatory.

We sit in the living room and watch the world through Nick’s eyes. The retinal chip floating in Nick’s eyeball never stopped recording. It sent images to his implant where the information was cached on a tiny hard drive. It only kept about twenty minutes, up until the moment it was disconnected. Now that the nub is plugged into the right receiver, we bear witness.

No sounds. Just a vision of violence.

Nick falls again, lands in the rough caress of his own shadow. Digs his torn fingernails through dead bristles, clawing forward. A spotlight is aimed at his back. Before him, his lunging silhouette slithers through spiny stalks of brown grass.

The spotlighters caught Nick coming into the field after dark. We’re free to come and go during the day—nobody has tried to set up roadblocks, yet. But it’s different at night. Some of the other trailer park kids must have thrown Nick’s Rubik’s cube over the fence. He was cautious, searching for it. He saw the spotlighters, watched them from a distance. But he got too close. The field was too dangerous after
sunset.

Full of sharks. Sharks in lawn chairs. Cheap hollow-tubed aluminum chairs sitting cockeyed in the field. Shotguns leaning against them. Empty silver beer cans littering the grass like dead fish. A scene bathed from above in Rapturously bright light, inky shadows rooting through the dirt and stalks of grass. Like a little fake moon landing being staged every night here in our field.