Original Excerpt: The Prodigal (second in a series)

(part one)

Photo by Nick Turner

image courtesy of unsplash.com

Still seated, the middle man took out his little book and glasses once more.  "The second portion is Motor," he said, and again he read aloud:

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could countFive mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have saidTo please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.His sister stood beside them in her apronTo tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,As he swung toward them holding up the handHalf in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man’s work, though a child at heart—He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off—The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.No one believed. They listened at his heart.Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The hair rose all over my body.  Again I couldn't swallow.  He only read it once.  The lights, again, went out.

I leapt to my feet, but they grabbed me in the dark, the right-hand and left-hand men, impossible that they were so strong, they were lifting me up, taking me off my feet, and one was grabbing and pulling away from my body, against my struggles, the shoulder and right arm.

"You will have only a short time once I say 'Go,'" said the man in the middle from the darkness somewhere.  There was a low hum, and a whirr, as of a small motor spinning to life.  It sounded small, but that didn't reassure me.  Someone was pinching the skin ofmy arm.  "I want you to knock the block over."

Something was wrong.  They knew why I was here.  This wasn't the test.  They were pretending now.  I wanted to tell them everything, and plead for my life.

"The block isn't there," I shouted instead, terrified of what they would do.  A small sting, another needle, halfway between my elbow and thumb.  The light over the table came back on.  If there was a current this time, I was too distracted to remember it now.  I knewit wouldn't end with the needle. I knew something was coming. I didn't know what it was, or thought I didn't: to read me a poem aboutit first? Did they know? Was this real? Test or torture or maybe, maybe, empty threat?

The whir of the motor grew louder.  "You will need to concentrate," said the man, "as we will be unable to help you until you pass."  He was holding something, but the light on the table was too dim to see.  The motor sound was everywhere.  I was gasping and choking and crying out, crying for help, but no one could hear me.

I writhed in the grasp of the two men, but they held like statues of steel.  The middle man was grabbing my wrist, holding my arm firm in the air, near the table.  I felt the warmth of the light on the table on my hand, the hairs of my forearm.  The Middle Man was holding up the saw blade in the darkness over my head.  The whirring jumped up an octave and got louder; ready to bite.  Not an empty threat.  "This may sting," he said, and the blade entered my arm.

It was over before I was finished experiencing its beginning; a splat, skin tore, tissues parted, bone must have come away like butter under a hot knife.  My arm was taken from me about four inches below the wrist.  I cannot forget the sound it made, but I will not describe it to you.  The anticipation had been worse than the pain, because apart from the stinging, at first, there was none.  Just cold empty nothing flailing away at the stubby end of my arm.  Nothing, in the shape of my missing hand.  The instant it was done, the Middle Man said, "Go."

Go what?  I remembered what he had said, and seeing the block, but I was too busy screaming and gasping and trying to get looseto think of anything but the injury.  I felt the blood leaving me, the cold coming in, taking its place.  Soon there'd be nothing inside mebut the cold, and nothing outside me but what used to be me.

"You are running out of time Irving," said the Middle Man in the darkness.  "You are bleeding to death.  We can save your life, but first you have to knock over the block."

I moaned and whimpered, I uttered oaths, I swore vengeance in the vilest terms that came to mind.

"Look at the block Irving!" said a voice, not the voice of the Middle Man. I didn't know whose voice it was.  I wasn't sure it wasn't inside my head.  "They're trying to kill you!" I heard it say.  "Just do what they tell you!  Look at the block!"

I looked at the table, still trembling with pain, but saw no block.  Each pulse was pounding on my arm's end like a hammer through a drum.  There was no block!

"Hurry Irving," said the Middle Man, still helping to hold my arm in place, holding it towards the light and the table, sounding bored.

"You can feel it," said the voice, "even if you can't see it."

I don't know what happened.  Even now, I can look at the moment from before and after and from either side, and I am uncertain.  The nothing at the end of my arm was in the shape of a hand, and I felt it push against something else, or I should say another nothing, one that might have had the shape and texture of a wooden block.  It was a lie that told me it was true, and even if I didn't believe it, the thing that had been my hand did.

"You can feel it," said the voice.

"I can feel it," I said.  My body hurt where the men held me.  I was shuddering all through chest and spine, and very very cold.

"Knock it over," said someone, someone I hated, sounding bored.

I touched the block again.  It was firm and smooth.  I pushed against its side.  

"Knock it over," I said.  I pushed harder.  I felt it fall.

The brights came on, and I was let fall.  The floor, hard but warm.  Someone speaking, other two were blurring about, doors opened.  I imagined a tourniquet, and then blacked out.

*  *  *

Nota Bene: The text appearing above in italics is, as before, not original content. 

The poem is called Out, Out—, by Robert Frost, first published in 1916

Story Excerpt: The Prodigal, Part 1

photo by Vladimir Kramer

courtesy of unsplash.com

They are going to burn it out of me.  I know it.

Most recent first, so suddenly I was back in the Test. I screamed to be back in the chamber, but my scream was nothing, because my throat and lungs weren't there.  I was a white fire in a belling wind, I was also trapped in glass, in the memory.  The chamber, then.

It happened backwards, most recent first, which was good for me because it got the worst over.  But I have to tell it forwards or you won't understand.

I don't know how much you know.  Everyone knows there are two rooms in the Test.  Everyone knows about what happens in the first.  Most disagree about what happens in the second, except people who have been there, and we're not telling.  

The first room is the Oral, the second the Corporal.  Two rooms, three doors: enter one, enter two, exit.  Fail the Oral, you leave through the door one, the way you came in.  This is why everyone knows what the Oral is like.  Pass the Oral and you enter two, and you never come back.  After the Corporal, whether you pass or fail, you leave through the back, and no one sees you again.  

In the memory, now and but not now, I tried to swallow then, when I passed door one, and I couldn't.  People are scarred to take the test.  But what choice do we have?  Does anyone but me know?  Will I remember much longer?  They will burn it out of me.

My hands were cold.  I was trying to swallow and couldn't.  There were three men in the first room: so far so good, this is the Oral.  I knew, roughly, what came next.  I knew that I had above-average chances of passing the Oral.  What I was fighting not to think about, funny how it all comes back to you and you can look at it all at once, what I didn't know when it started was whether theysuspected me, whether they knew why I had come there, whether they would let me pass, or even let me leave.  Any time during the Oral you can  give up and leave.  I had made up my mind before, I meant to pass both tests; but when I passed door one, I immediately wanted to turn and go back the way I came.

  

*  *  *

They began the questions, there were no preliminaries.  I stood, they were seated. I didn't recognize any of them.

You've probably already heard about the Oral, so I won't bore you with the details.  The questions were short, and my answers were usually long.  They asked me about the Circle, my Totems, they explored my childhood with sharp details, they probed my reactions with strange hypothetical scenarios, they lead me down false ways I had to smell out and avoid.  Everything I had taken in at Academy was sampled at random, and my powers of speculation and synthesis were challenged and changed on the spot.  There was no regular pattern or flow, the questions were mixed.  All three men jumped from topic to topic at random.

In a way it was easy, because I had been well trained.  If I didn't know an answer, I felt its absence immediately, and made one up.  I didn't stall, I didn't mutter.  They didn't tell me if I got anything right or wrong.  Their tones and expressions never changed.  I wondered why there were three of them.

So it was that the final question came so easily and calmly that I almost didn't realize it until I'd answered.  "Would you like to leave, Irving?" the man the middle asked, and I almost said No.  Then I realized the test was over, and I had passed, and this was my last chance, but I had to know.  "No," I said.

"The test is over," said the man on the left.  "You have passed," said the man on the right.  "Congratulations," said the man in the middle.  They smiled, and stood.  The door behind them swung open with a hum-click, and there was a similar sound behind me.  Instinctively I turned to look; the door I had come in through had disappeared into the wall.  No way out but forward.  So I went that way.

The three men followed me.  The second chamber was as plain as the first, and cold.  Now there were four chairs, all facing each other.  The men were seated, gestured that I was welcome to.  I faced the middle man, and the exit.  I heard the door behind meclose.

"This is the Corporal Test," said the middle man, after a moment of silence.  "There are two portions: the first is Sensory."  From a pocket, he produced a small codex and a pair of reading glasses.  He put the glasses on, opened the codex, and read,

"One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;"And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter"Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,"Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place"For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."

Then he stopped, and read the poem again.  Then they all looked at me.  The silence grew long.  I almost sniff-smirked to break it.  The room was  cold, but there were no windows or pictures on the walls, and I didn't think that was the point.  Just when I was aboutto ask if the Sensory portion were over, the man on the left rose, and going to a cupboard he took out a short round table and a black cloth.

He set the table in the middle of our four chairs, and put the cloth over the top.  Then the man on the right stood, went to a cupboard, and this time I did smirk, because I thought they were playing with me.  When I did the man in the middle smiled politely.  The man mimed picking something out of the cupboard, carrying it to the table, and setting it down.  Then he took his seat, and we all looked at the empty table.

"Do you see anything on the table," said the man in the middle, no longer wearing any expression.

I looked hard, and tried to look like I was looking hard, but I wasn't missing anything.  The table was empty.  Then it thought I guessed it.  

"The black cloth?" I said.  The man in the middle smiled again.  

"Apart from that," he said.  I said I saw nothing.  He stood, and took something small from another pocket. It was small and black, and opened like a glasses case, and he pinched from it a shiny little straight line, a needle.  He stood and walked towards me.

"Please hold still, Irving," he said, standing before me and pinching my right eyebrow between to fingers, hard.  "This may sting," he said, and slipped the needle through my eyebrow.

I didn't cry out, but I did gasp and shiver a little.  It did sting, but maybe that was because I'd anticipated it.  After a moment it mainly felt cold and pinched, and there was a faint buzz, like my whole skin was vibrating: it was the lightest touch of a weak current.  The man was wiping hot tears and blood from my cheek with a red cloth.

"Very good, Irving," he was saying. Was the touch of the red cloth a caress?  A reassurance?  He returned to his seat.  "Please cover your left eye."  I did so with my left hand.  The lights in the room went out.

"Do you see anything on the table," he asked again.  I could see nothing at all, but I didn't want to be jabbed with anything else, so I didn't answer right away.  At last I couldn't stall any longer.  I said I saw nothing.

"And now," he said, and I felt the current grow stronger, and suddenly there was a light on the black cloth.  I couldn't see where itcame from; somewhere above the table, but there didn't appear to be a source.  "Please keep your left eye covered," he said, and I pressed my hand down more firmly.  I was blinking blood out of my open eye, the brow was stinging again.

"I see a light," I said, feeling somewhat reassured.  I had begun to fear that these would be questions with no answers.

"And now," he said, and something very strange happened.  The hum grew stronger again, and I could feel it beating like blood in my fingertips, but I didn't notice this.  A block had appeared on the table, as suddenly and silently as the light had a moment before.  Weight, shadow, and all, a small triangle shape, like a very tall and skinny pyramid.

"Do you see the shape," he said.  I said I did, and thought it must have been some sort of hologram.  "Please pick it up," he said.  The table was within arm's distance, so I reached out and did so.  Its sides were smooth and polished, bright red paint over wood.  I felt its weight in my hand.  "Do you feel its weight in your hand," he said, and I said I did.  He said to put it down, and I did.  He stood, and came towards me.  My body tensed, and he put a hand on the back of my head, but then the lights came on.  He had pulled the needle out of my brow.  The hum was gone.  Except for the black cloth, the table was bare.

"You may remove your hand," he said, and I did so.  "Congratulations," he said, "You have passed the Sensory portion."  He handed me the red cloth for my face, and asked if I would like any refreshment.  I declined; I wanted to get it over.


Nota Bene: The text appearing above in italics is, of course, not original content. 

The poem is called The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens, first published in 1921 in the magazine Poetry and collected in his book Harmonium in 1923.