Read Online This Is the Night by Jonah C. Sirott - Free Book Online

they be anything but? His father has not fought to keep him.
    “I want to give you something,” says his father, slipping the canvas bag off his shoulder.
    A rush of wind brushes Alan’s ears with dust. Though his father is still talking, Alan lets his voice dissolve into the wind. He makes a promise to himself: I will be stronger than the man before me.
    “Take it,” his father is saying. In his hand is a bright orange pouch with a zipper running along the edge. The sky is broad and open above them, the sun hot and unrelenting. Opening the pouch, Alan finds a whistle, a nickel-plated compass, and a box of waterproof matches on which is printed: “Burns intensely hot in the strongest winds.”A survival kit, Alan realizes. A small group of objects placed together in a zippered pouch to help him survive.
    “Don’t lose this,” his father says. “You’re going to be in a new kind of place now.”
    Four years later, and Alan still has that pouch. He keeps it in a locked chest at the foot of his bed. Suddenly the lights in his cell flicker off. Finally, true darkness. Twelve more hours until his solitary confinement ends. Not that what he has to return to is much better. Even so, anything he suffers with the other boys is better than too much time alone.

4.
    Western City North was a town of firsts for Lance and Lorrie. In their new apartment the two of them ate new foods and tried new positions for their new lives: oysters; draped over the bathtub — the cool porcelain an awful shock against warm skin ; a rare and fresh kiwi that a radiant older woman had handed to Lance on his way to work; Lance standing while Lorrie remained seated on the tiled kitchen counter, legs on his shoulders; fresh cherries and bright blueberries, together almost half a month’s rent, followed by some twisted maneuver that neither of them enjoyed called the pinwheel. Soon, with fresh fruit and quality produce scarce even in the fertile soil surrounding Western City North, their bodies were all they had left. Gone were the stone fruits, berries, and salad greens. Remaining was each other, clenched legs, crossed ankles, and all. Even when all that was affordable were sweetgrass stews and tough meats, they were still a couple possessed, marvelously fucking each night until the first hints of sunlight crept through the blinds.

    On his eighteenth birthday, Lance mailed his card to the Registry. It was mandated—every man had to—but as a small act of defiance, he gave his address back home instead of his smoky Western City North apartment next door to the family of Neutral Country Ps. As expected, Lance heard nothing back. And while the Registry was silent, everything else around him began to crumble.

    First, one of them itched. The next day both of them did. They went to a free clinic, waiting for half the day while men with facial wounds and rare fungal diseases received their care. Finally a nurse practitioner hustled them into an exam room, smiled at what were surely her first patients of the day whose damage did not come from combat, and handed them a topical cream.
    Once home, Lance and Lorrie followed the tiny directions on the little tube, even made a game out of it as they applied the cold cream to their ragged skin.
    Two days later, Lorrie still itched.
    “Don’t worry,” Lance said. “Give it a few more days.”
    A few days were followed by a few more, and Lorrie’s itching did not subside.
    She rubbed the cream into her skin. She still itched. She rubbed more cream, mangling the tube into spilling its final few drops.
    “There isn’t anything,” Lance said. “I can’t see a thing.”
    “Please.” The knurled tendons in her neck rose into a ridged surface that pressed against the skin. “Just check one more time.”
    And for her, Lance would move around skin, squint his eyes, and look for the lice that almost certainly weren’t there.
    Lorrie became increasingly distressed and spoke only of contamination,