The gate clatters as it reaches the end of the track.
Nine. Ten. Eleven.
I round the corner. The gate begins its return journey. It is moving faster this way, but I am small. I will only need a little room.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
The metal post seems to speed up the closer it gets.
The gate is a jouster’s lance, the post a competitor’s body, and it is coming, coming, coming… I close my eyes, clench my teeth, and hurl myself through. Behind me, the gate bangs on impact as it meets the post.
I catch my hands on my knees, heaving, sweat trickling from under my hair. A group of men comes out of the door, paper lunch bags in their fists. Their voices are a storm of sounds, eyebrows knit, eyes dark. Everyone seems to speak at once, but no one looks at one another. They take turns glancing back at the building behind them. The tallest one swings his gaze ahead and catches sight of me.
“What are you doing here?” It is the voice of Mr. Bill, my father’s friend from work. He brought me a deck of cards for my last birthday, and he is the only person allowed inside our house aside from Mother’s students.
I freeze. I should have waited out the day in the woods, thrown rocks in Cold River, built another fort from fallen limbs where I could hide from Mother and sharpen twigs into something more useful. They make it easier to pry skin from something dead so I can see what’s underneath. I have rinsed bones clean in the river. I have watched slime and maggots wash downstream, revealing the lines of muscle, chewed and pocked. I have seen guts, still warm and fresh and firmer than I thought they’d be. It is easier to split a worm than an intestine.
I wish I had a stick now. Mother has warned me that a man’s rage is worse than hers, a tornado by way of comparison to a warm spring rain. I have yet to see it, but my mother has never been one to lie, save the stories she has me tell when I have a new bruise or welt. They’re to keep you safe, she says.
Otherwise they may take you from us and put you in a group home with other boys—boys bigger than you—with a dirty kitchen and slimy dishes, with reeking toilets that don’t flush, the seats covered in yellow film and streaks of brown crust, and an empty pantry, and no beds, just blankets on the floor, musty and full of holes. You think when I yell it is meanness, but it is love, Michael. You’ll see. This world is hard. You must be harder. You must be ready. I am making you ready.
These rolling thoughts condense into a single, vibrating, squealing note.
“Are you okay, Michael? Is everything okay at home?”
“Yes, Mr. Bill. Is my father here?”
“Should be coming out any minute. They’re having us take an early lunch. You know how your dad is, though. First one in—”
“Last one out,” I finish for him. Mr. Bill eyes the factory and returns his focus to me.
“Why don’t you wait by the fence?”
I back up until I feel the chain link press against my shirt.
The door swings open again, and my father lumbers out. “We got it,” I hear him say to Mr. Bill.
Mr. Bill looks up at the sky for less than a second and points in my direction. “You have a visitor today,” he says.
My father’s gaze follows Mr. Bill’s finger. He puffs up with a breath, his hands on his hips, and walks in my direction, his strides longer and more hurried than usual. I would back up farther, but there is nowhere to go. The fence is at my back, the gate locked shut, and I wonder if this is the storm, if he will brew and blow and thrash like I have never seen before.
“Come with me,” my father says when he reaches me, his hand firm on one of my shoulders, and the sore places Mother made earlier throb with warning. He steers me away from the big gate, toward the back of the factory. A walk-through gate is cut into the fence at the back corner. Dad pushes a button. Something makes a clicking sound, and the gate pops open a sliver.
He is going to march me home, straight to Mother, and the two of them will be a hurricane.
Instead, we walk across the valley, over a mound, through a line of trees, and stop at a metal plate that reminds me of a sewer cap.
“I want to show you something,” he says. “It’s underground.” He bends down, twists the cap, and casts it aside. I peer over the ledge, but all I see is darkness.
“There’s a ladder. It’s easy to climb. I’ll go first, then you follow me,” he says, and lowers himself into the hole. I sit and swing my legs over the side, feeling for the metal with my toes before turning around.
“That’s good. Keep coming,” Father calls from below me. I move hand-hand, foot-foot, the metal slick with a thin coat of moisture, and count the rungs as I go. There are nine, then the floor, which feels like concrete on the ball of my foot, not the cold, damp earth I expect. I hear the creak of a doorknob being twisted, the flick of a switch being moved, and the dark is overtaken by a fluorescent light. Beyond the door is a little room, not even as big as my bedroom, with a tall, square table and four chairs. Most of the walls are covered in metal cabinet doors. Two of them are painted white. The rest are silver. The floor is bare concrete.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“This is kind of like our clubhouse,” Father says. “We make something powerful in the factory.”
“Like magic?”
“Sort of. Yes, actually. Like magic. Magic can be good, and magic can be bad, right?”
“Sure.” I nod.
“Sometimes, the magic goes badly. Like today, some magic snuck out, and it wasn’t supposed to. So we all have to leave for a little bit until they figure out how it’s getting loose. Mr. Bill and I made this place in case we need to be close enough to help catch the bad magic but we also need to be safe. Because magic can hurt people just as much as it helps. We’re learning how to only do good. But it takes practice, and practice means mistakes.”
My stomach turns to stone. Mother would not agree, and I am grateful she is not here for more reasons than one.
“What happened to your face?” Father asks, cupping my chin.
“I… I fell. On the way here.”
He holds my head steady. “Why did you come? Is your mother having a bad day?”
“I made a lot of mistakes.”
He kneels in front of me so he is looking up at me, and at this moment I feel taller than the factory outside. “You don’t have to play piano if you don’t want to. There are other things. Your mother… ever since she lost the baby, music has turned into a kind of child for her. She nurtures it, protects it. Music and that damn piano mean too much to her, but there’s no convincing her of that yet. She’ll come out of it. She will. But she shouldn’t yell at you like she does, and I’ll talk to her about that.”
“Please, don’t.”
He exhales and looks me plainly in the eyes. “Okay. I tell you what. This weekend, we’ll make you a clubhouse in the woods, too. A place you can go.”
“Just like this one?”
A faint smile touches his mouth. “This one took a lot of time, a lot of money, two grown men, and a year. It’s bigger than it looks. There’s a door behind the ladder we came down that goes to the basement of the factory. The white cabinet doors open to a tunnel that leads to an old mine shaft. If you follow it all the way down, you’ll pass a well I dug, and then you’ll come out right at Cold River.”