over forcibly, and pinned me to the bed and kissed me, and I wondered if that mattered at all.
Censlus
Right now I wish I could heed Tim Allen’s advice not to stand too close to a naked man, though I suppose, by my younger brother’s five-year-old logic, Bill Sparkman's not naked, on account of he’s still wearing his socks. He's also wearing a whole mess of duct tape, round his hands, his feet, his eyes, his neck, pinning his Census Bureau ID to his shoulder, right alongside the rope around his neck. And he’s got one word written in felt pen across his chest, and that one word takes his death right out of my hands: fed. There’s still a red rag in his mouth, and I’m waiting here, because the FBI say they’ve got all their physical evidence, and today’s the day we get to cut Bill down.
But the FBI’s late, which is typical, since we’re out in nowhere, and even folks from around here can get lost coming out this far. We been working the scene in shifts, to preserve chain of custody on anything we might find, but that means I’ve been working twelves without much sleep between 'em.
Now, I’ve met Bill Sparkman. He subbed at my daughter’s school, and while I never met the man, and he never taught my daughter, I’ve seen him around. Most bodies, not that I've seen all that many, but most get to be just bodies for a time, before some grieving relative finds me to tell me who they were. Bill ain’t like most bodies. I know him, and his story, well enough to know he shouldn’t be where he is now. Bill was an Eagle Scout, a local director for the Boy Scouts, he’s got a kid, and they lived a few streets down from me. He wasn’t getting enough hours teaching, so to supplement his income, he was working part time for the Census Bureau.
I tend to ignore the mad shit percolating out of folks like Michelle Bachmann and Glen Beck, but at a moment like now, I can’t not draw the line between their paranoid partisanship and the creak of the rope around Bill’s neck as he swings just a little in the breeze. Reminds me of a thing my daddy told me: “There’s nothing on this Earth more dangerous than a damn fool with their damned fool ideas. Trade 'em their damn fool ideas for guns and the world would be a safer damn place.” The man loved to swear, but the Lord (through my momma) wouldn’t let him say worse than “damn” without catching hellfire.
Now Bachmann and Beck and their kind like to talk about government takeovers, and other nonsense, but the census ain’t some new liberal concoction. It predates fascism and communism by a fair shake: our first was in 1790, and was conducted by Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness himself. We’ve taken a census once a decade since the country got started. And far from mutating into something invasive this year, the only major change to this census is that they dropped the long form questionnaire- in effect, this census is less intrusive than in years past.
But I got a naked man swinging by his neck from a tree- one of my neighbors, to point the fact. I ain’t a fed, but being as I work for the state of Kentucky, I think I’m just one step below that. But it ain’t really about which level of government I work in. Just like the black folk who got lynched in these parts weren’t strung up for being dark- not even for being different and not acting the part.
They died for fear, for ignorance- folks who believed the government was taking too much of their money, and trying to do too much for someone else with it. The funny thing there, and I mean the dark cosmic irony sort, not the laughing out loud kind, is the only conspiracy was the one they and theirs hatched. Democrats ain’t raised taxes yet, haven’t really substantially deviated from Republican game plans, truth be told. So the idea that the feds are making a grab now, well, it makes about as much sense as stringing up a part-time teacher, single father, and Eagle Scout thinking he’s got an eye to infringing your freedoms- which is to say it makes not a damn bit of sense at all.
Seed
I apologize first for the paper I’m writing on. This advertisement from a market vendor, it is the only paper I have with me, and I know that were I not to write this now, I would not write at all. I apologize second for the embarrassment of an old woman staring at you as I have, but I ask your indulgence a moment while I explain myself.
Perhaps you would know it from my clothes, but I do not regularly eat in such fine restaurants. I might never have come here at all, had we not celebrated my sister’s birthday here.
More than twenty years ago I had a son with my husband. When he was born he seemed healthy, so the doctor let me hold him, and he looked up to me and smiled. But then he began having difficulty breathing, and they took him away from me. I watched through the glass, too weak to move from my bed, as my son passed.
When my husband died 3 years ago he was cremated, as is our usual custom- but our son was only an infant, and tradition dictated he be buried, to ensure a speedy path to his next life. My husband and I could not afford the Rs 100, so we dug our son’s grave together. In shifts, as we had but one shovel.
And that is why I have come here, every Friday for a month. I feel in you a familiarity, a connection I have been without for years. It is not always popular to speak of such things, especially among the young, but you have my son’s eyes. You have his smile (though it was toothless last I saw it). I think I was your mother, in another life. And in that life, you died before I had the chance to tell you that I loved you, and I do. That is all I felt I needed to say.
Faith Emmanuel
The last detail I could remember was that my car smelt funny. Every breath I drew sizzled in my chest so strong I heard the sounds of frying bacon. I felt my ribs stabbing into my organs, one at a time, like mean children’s fingers.
My eyelids were dry and scraped like matchbook covers, and pale fluorescents burned my retinas. “There you are, dearie,” a woman said to me. I could see a blur of red over white that solidified into a cross on the forehead of her habit.
Then I felt the scrape of needles beneath my skin, and I tried to move, but I was strapped with leather to the table. “Mustn’t hurt yourself,” she muttered as she left the room, smiling sweetly to herself.
I woke again. I didn’t remember falling asleep, or even becoming drowsy. It must have been one of the needles. Why were they drugging me? But when I moved, I found that everything was gone except a single tube in my right arm. The straps were even gone. I sat up and kicked my legs off the table.
The door to my room immediately opened, and a man with a pleather briefcase entered. He had a dark, curly beard that made him seem like someone’s father, and wore a plain, brown suit like the one my high school English teacher wore to chaperone dances.
“I’m your public arbitrator, Louis Anden. I’m here in anticipation that you will contest the health care costs enforced upon you by Faith Emmanuel Hospital.”
“Enforced?”
He sighed. “Time was, a hospital like faith Emmanuel would impose costs on indigent clients- billing them, essentially. More recently, they won the rights to a kind of operational sovereignty, where they can enforce costing agreements unilaterally.”
“What costs? I haven’t seen any figures,” and I stopped. I was in Faith Emmanuel Hospital. Oh my God.
“In exchange for removing the bullet from your torso, the hospital staff removed a kidney, and some of your plasma. As you were unconscious, the contract was entered into at their discretion. However, the incision they made to remove your kidney became infected. As you were once again unconscious, a new contract was entered into, again at the hospital’s discretion. Since they have already removed all discretionary organics, they have opted to remove your left hand, or, quote, ‘20% of all separable internal organs,’ end quote.”
“What the hell are separable internal organs?” Louis smiled weakly, and adjusted his glasses, and I knew I was about to be humored.
“Not all organs can be separated successfully into fifths. If you remove only a portion of the heart, for example, that section will cease to function, so there’s no point in using it as payment. All the hospital would receive is a dead lump of tissue. The same can be said of
the testicles, and the intestines. Although there are rare cases when they will extract 50% of a person’s intestines. Advanced bowel cancers, usually, but that’s rare.”
“They want to steal my organs?”
“They can’t just take your organs. We live in America, not the fucking Middle East. You get an arbitration meeting. I’m the public arbitrator. I’m actually very good. I’ve won several cases.”
“Several?” I asked.
“Three, to be precise.”
“Out of?”
“One hundred and fifty-seven.”
“Is it too late to cop a plea?”
“Look, Josh.”
“John.”
“Oh, right. Josh is the one who lost his feet this morning.”
“Jesus Fucking Christmas.” He splashed his fingers from shoulder to shoulder, then to his forehead and his heart. “Are you a Christian?” I asked, concerned I’d offended him; I half-remembered my mother telling me lawyers were all godless monsters.
“I was, until I turned 21.”
“Why, what happened?”
“The church had me excommunicated when I went to law school. They’re still kind of sore about that separation of church and the judiciary thing.”
“Have you ever won a case like mine?”
“No. In fact, I’ve never won a case that didn’t