“Fifty?”
“Eh, could be a lot more. Easy to lose track.”
“Did they tell you to bake a loaf of bread?”
“Sure did,” he says. “Nine grains. Now, one or two grains, no sweat. But nine, ain’t that the devil?”
“How many grains do you have?”
“Once I had five.” He shrugs, as if he doesn’t care. “It’s hard to grow ya own grain, much less get it from y’all neighbors.” He smiles toward to the wall between his land and Max’s. “Looks like ya already learned that. Anyway, life out here ain’t so bad. Better than the palace, that’s for sure. I hear they gotta fight there. Here nobody’s gonna mess with ya. So I reckon it’s best not baking any of that fancy bread. Ya got a grain jar, right?”
Better than the palace? They have to fight? My gaze shifts to the Yellow Tower in the distance. How could anyone not want to go there?
“Hey, ya listenin’?” he says. “What’s in ya grain jar?”
“A jar, yes... In my hut there’s a clay pot full of corn kernels. Is that what you mean?”
“Yessir. Mine’s full of oats. Everybody’s got they own grain, but them jars is the best. They never run out. Ya eat it down, then it’s full again in the morning. So we got food, we got shelter, and the good Lord’s sunshine. I reckon we’re in heaven, or about as close as we gonna get.”
The boy smiles wide, like he’s as content as he can be. It’s baffling. As far as I know, no one in the five towers has ever thought the place was heaven.
“Have you been in any other towers?” I ask.
“What towers?”
His easy tone makes me smile. If I didn’t know about the other towers and the Scouring and everything else about this place, maybe this fertile plot of land wouldn’t be so bad...other than the invisible walls.
“Do you remember anything before this place?” I ask.
“Oh yeah! Ya really wanna hear about it?”
“Sure, what’s your story?”
His face comes alive with energy, like a schoolboy picked first for show-and-tell. “Just about every dream I’ve had since comin’ here starts like this.”
4
DREW’S FACE WAS pressed into the mud, hands over his helmet for cover, when the first bomb hit his platoon. The ground shook violently. Dark jungle dirt fell like snow. Then Drew heard the next incoming hiss. He ignored every bit of training and got up and ran. The second blast sent him flying into a palm tree with thick bark like teeth. By then he didn’t feel any pain. The fumes went into his nostrils like spirits bent on sucking out his life.
But a man named Captain Hughes somehow found Drew and hoisted him on his shoulders. The last thing Drew remembered was those spirits infiltrating his nose with the smoke and the jungle green swallowing him while all around it sounded like the world was ending.
He woke up on a cot with a bandage as thick as a pillow around his foot. The smoke was gone, and only one spirit had seen fit to stay in his nostril. Drew named the spirit Napalm. They got along alright most of the time, but Napalm sometimes said mean things to Drew.
“You ran from your men!” Napalm would accuse.
“I was scared!” Drew would reply.
“That’s why I found you...”
Drew imagined Napalm grinning and rubbing his hands when he said this, but he never saw the spirit’s face. They mostly just talked to each other, keeping company during the day.
After the pillow came off Drew’s foot, taking two toes with it, Drew got on a plane and came back to the United States of America. It was a blessing from the good Lord. Even if he had to bring Napalm back with him, Drew knew America was the land of the free and just about the best thing that ever happened to the world. Even Napalm admitted the country’s freedom was something to be admired.
Drew settled in the nation’s capital, where some men told him his brain didn’t work quite right anymore so he could leave the Army and learn to pay his rent and his taxes with the money he earned at an old building called the Treasury Department. It had the longest, straightest halls Drew had ever seen. And it was his job to keep the floors of those halls spit-shine clean. On Monday morning he would start on the first floor at the northwest corner of the building. Around Tuesday he would get to the second floor, leaving no trace of dust.
“Boy,” he’d tell Napalm, “them floors can shine if we keep scrubbin’ ‘em clean.”
Drew knew, of course, that Napalm wasn’t doing any scrubbing himself, but he kept Drew company so it seemed like a team effort all the same. He’d keep on shining on Wednesday and Thursday, and by Friday at 5 pm, sometimes at 4 pm, if Drew really got working, he’d finish the top floor and take his bucket down to the first floor, ready for Monday again. It was just about the finest work Drew could imagine. Napalm agreed.
Nice as those working days were, Drew’s favorite thing to do was to sit in this big cozy chair in a nice little apartment on Sundays. He’d pull a lever on the chair, and out came a footrest, simple as that. Sometimes the right foot, missing the two toes, reminded him of the blasts in the jungle and the smoke and the spirits going up into his nose, but Napalm told him not to worry about that anymore. He’d take good care of Drew. Whenever it seemed like Drew would get too close to that old smoky memory, he’d have a sip of Coca-Cola and flip on a screen that showed football all day. Nobody bothered him a lick in that chair. Not even Napalm. It was just great, Drew thought. Sometimes he’d even say it out loud.
“God Bless America!”
To which Napalm would reply, “And the pursuit of happiness!”
Drew didn’t keep much track of time, but he figured years passed like that. He got to where, when he stood, he couldn’t see his two missing toes anymore unless he bent way over. His stomach got so full of Coca-Cola that it blocked his view. He also lost a little bit of his hair, but it never bothered him much. He could still keep those long hallways spit-spot clean.
Things changed a bit when, one spring Saturday evening, while Drew was watching baseball—it not being football season, after all—two men knocked on his door and Napalm said they were fine men and so Drew let them in and they watched baseball together for a while.
Drew figured they were nice enough, even if they did have funny accents. One nice thing they did was offer Drew a whole bunch of money so he could buy a bigger television and order as many pizzas as he wanted and maybe even go to a real ballgame. The only thing they wanted was for Drew to do a little errand. Napalm said it was a good deal, so Drew smiled and shook their hands.
The errand was this: Drew needed to copy something that the men had accidentally left behind in the Treasury Department. They told him it was very important, and had to be done right away, even though the game wasn’t over. Drew didn’t like leaving before the end of the game, but a deal was a deal.
“They need your help!” Napalm told him. “Don’t be a coward, like when you ran from your men.”
Drew had to admit Napalm was right. He’d been afraid in the jungle, with the enemy hiding everywhere, and that’s how he’d lost his toes and somehow let Napalm inside. Anyway, Drew sure was the right man to help these guys, because he had the biggest ring of keys you could imagine—more keys than he could count. He knew where all the keys worked. Sometimes he had to go inside offices and empty trashcans and clean the floors. But this time the men knew right where the paper to copy was, so Drew just needed to go get it. They told him it was so important that he shouldn’t even tell anyone about it.