Read Online The Occupation of Emerald City: The Worker by Ken Brosky - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ken Brosky
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time—is
keeping five feet of distance.
Guess I’m not a threat anymore.
“Sign. Sign now and leave,” he says. His forehead is lined
with sweat and when he hands over the paper, his thumb leaves a wet smudge near
the top.
I look over the pages of notes. None of the text is in my
language. “What does it all say?”
“No terrorist,” the general says flatly. “That is all.”
I sign everything, hardly caring at this point. My lungs are
craving fresh air and I can almost taste that first fountain soda I’m going to
buy at the nearest market. I actually want to shovel coal—hell, I’ll give up the supervisor job and shovel coal
full-time just so long as I can work my atrophied muscles and get my heart rate
up and actually do something again.
The officer nods to the soldier behind me, and I feel a
gentle push on my shoulder. I stand up and follow the soldier out of the room,
into the narrow hallway that seems so uninteresting … the magical spell it had
over me in the darkness under the hood has dissipated. It’s just a hallway with
metal doors, and nothing more. It doesn’t feel dangerous anymore.
“Good luck,” the soldier says once I’m at the end of the
hall. He opens the door leading outside to a small parking lot. There’s a yellow
school bus with black windows waiting in the parking lot and beyond that, I can
see a cropping of houses off in the distance and a highway road cutting between
them. The weather is cool. It could have been days, but somehow I know better.
I know Joshua is right: it’s been more than a month.
As I walk toward the bus and my slippers hit the hard
concrete, I can feel the loose fat on my body jiggling. Not as much muscle
anymore. My entire body feels like a pair of loose clothes and yet the sun
bearing down on me, the cool air kissing the exposed skin of my neck all serve
as a reminder that things have already been at their worst. It’s got to get
better now. I’ll go back to work.
But it’s hard to picture the power plant. In my mind, it
looks like a big box with windows and a black smokestack and from the
smokestack, strings of smoke swirl out like from a kid’s drawing. That’s it.
That’s all I can draw in my mind. The details are gone.
I sit in the back of the mostly empty bus, watching Joshua
step on board. He tears his shoulder away from a soldier’s grip. The others all
sit near the front, either asleep or staring ahead with blank expressions, all
disheveled but no one even closely resembling what I would call a “terrorist”
even with their faces caked with dirt, their hair greasy and unkempt, their
eyes sunken just like the eyes of the homeless men who walk around my
neighborhood with squeaky shopping carts. They’re just civilians, wearing
pajama bottoms and t-shirts just like mine. It doesn’t look like they were
allowed to shower. Or maybe they couldn’t shower on their own like I could.
One young teenager can’t stop looking around, darting his
head in every direction at every sound, eyes wide, his puffy black hair
bouncing around. He keeps saying in a low voice that this is all a trap, and
the man next to him puts a hand on his shoulder and rubs gently to calm him
down. Another young man, wearing a white eye patch over his left eye, is
leaning against the black window and staring with his good eye—a beautiful
sapphire blue—at the middle-aged blonde sitting in the opposite seat.
She, in turn, stares at the green seat in front of her.
The soldiers shut the metal door dividing the seats from the
bus driver. I look down and see that there are metal hoops in the floor to
chain prisoners.
“You still look nervous,” Joshua says.
“Aren’t you?”
Joshua shakes his head. “I don’t feel anything. I feel like a
robot.”
I shift awkwardly in the seat as the bus pulls into gear.
“Maybe I’m not so sure exactly where we’re going.”
Joshua leans back. “The black paint over the windows probably
isn’t helping things.”
“No,
keeping five feet of distance.
Guess I’m not a threat anymore.
“Sign. Sign now and leave,” he says. His forehead is lined
with sweat and when he hands over the paper, his thumb leaves a wet smudge near
the top.
I look over the pages of notes. None of the text is in my
language. “What does it all say?”
“No terrorist,” the general says flatly. “That is all.”
I sign everything, hardly caring at this point. My lungs are
craving fresh air and I can almost taste that first fountain soda I’m going to
buy at the nearest market. I actually want to shovel coal—hell, I’ll give up the supervisor job and shovel coal
full-time just so long as I can work my atrophied muscles and get my heart rate
up and actually do something again.
The officer nods to the soldier behind me, and I feel a
gentle push on my shoulder. I stand up and follow the soldier out of the room,
into the narrow hallway that seems so uninteresting … the magical spell it had
over me in the darkness under the hood has dissipated. It’s just a hallway with
metal doors, and nothing more. It doesn’t feel dangerous anymore.
“Good luck,” the soldier says once I’m at the end of the
hall. He opens the door leading outside to a small parking lot. There’s a yellow
school bus with black windows waiting in the parking lot and beyond that, I can
see a cropping of houses off in the distance and a highway road cutting between
them. The weather is cool. It could have been days, but somehow I know better.
I know Joshua is right: it’s been more than a month.
As I walk toward the bus and my slippers hit the hard
concrete, I can feel the loose fat on my body jiggling. Not as much muscle
anymore. My entire body feels like a pair of loose clothes and yet the sun
bearing down on me, the cool air kissing the exposed skin of my neck all serve
as a reminder that things have already been at their worst. It’s got to get
better now. I’ll go back to work.
But it’s hard to picture the power plant. In my mind, it
looks like a big box with windows and a black smokestack and from the
smokestack, strings of smoke swirl out like from a kid’s drawing. That’s it.
That’s all I can draw in my mind. The details are gone.
I sit in the back of the mostly empty bus, watching Joshua
step on board. He tears his shoulder away from a soldier’s grip. The others all
sit near the front, either asleep or staring ahead with blank expressions, all
disheveled but no one even closely resembling what I would call a “terrorist”
even with their faces caked with dirt, their hair greasy and unkempt, their
eyes sunken just like the eyes of the homeless men who walk around my
neighborhood with squeaky shopping carts. They’re just civilians, wearing
pajama bottoms and t-shirts just like mine. It doesn’t look like they were
allowed to shower. Or maybe they couldn’t shower on their own like I could.
One young teenager can’t stop looking around, darting his
head in every direction at every sound, eyes wide, his puffy black hair
bouncing around. He keeps saying in a low voice that this is all a trap, and
the man next to him puts a hand on his shoulder and rubs gently to calm him
down. Another young man, wearing a white eye patch over his left eye, is
leaning against the black window and staring with his good eye—a beautiful
sapphire blue—at the middle-aged blonde sitting in the opposite seat.
She, in turn, stares at the green seat in front of her.
The soldiers shut the metal door dividing the seats from the
bus driver. I look down and see that there are metal hoops in the floor to
chain prisoners.
“You still look nervous,” Joshua says.
“Aren’t you?”
Joshua shakes his head. “I don’t feel anything. I feel like a
robot.”
I shift awkwardly in the seat as the bus pulls into gear.
“Maybe I’m not so sure exactly where we’re going.”
Joshua leans back. “The black paint over the windows probably
isn’t helping things.”
“No,
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