Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Read Free Book Online

said it involved breaking out The Sky Father Gang. His hand was a sleeping spider on Bobby T.’s shoulder and Bobby T. looked scared to move. “A j-j-j-jailbreak in reverse,” Z. said and stepped away. “A jail… break… in… r-r-r-reverse?” He scratched his head. “Breaking out of a prison, but twisted, reversed, inmates entering a prison in exchange for inmates already inside. Or maybe it’s… who knows what it is because I’m the o-o-o-one who can d-d-d-define it.”
    “We’ll do it,” Bobby T. said, not knowing what he meant exactly but feeling uncomfortable with Z. and thinking he had to say something, anything, to break the strangeness. He looked at Ricky and shrugged and Ricky shrugged back.
    “I’ll do it all right,” mumbled Z. more to himself than to Bobby T.
    Z. wore a green robe in the old style. The collar and wrists were white and fur lined. His feet were covered in dirty whitesneakers with fat tongues. Extreme heat didn’t bother him. He randomly shouted, “This heat wave is a joke!” The robe belonged to his grandfather and held memory and magic. His eyes were the color of truck exhaust. His stutter came and went, but the closer he got to defining the jailbreak in reverse, the less it appeared. He would erase it. He would become smooth and living forever in people’s memories. When he spoke, the Brothers believed and followed every word, sentence, idea, believing that Z. was powerful and special and would eventually change their lives too.
    “Question,” Z. said. “Your attention, please.”
    They turned their backs on the prison, joined Bobby T., and leaned into the slight give of the fence. Bobby T. tongue-clicked rock noises and stopped when Z. gave him a real serious look.
    Arnold said, “Let’s do this thing,” to which Z. rolled his eyes and allowed a moment of shame. “Sorry,” said Arnold.
    In the breeze Z.’s green robe fluttered open. He wore a white t-shirt and had a belly that he quickly covered up. “How many of you are w-w-w-willing to go into the prison with me?”
    Everyone raised their hands and their upper backs fell into the give of the fence.
    “That’s what I thought,” he said, and again began mumbling the phrase “jailbreak in reverse” while pacing back and forth as the Brothers breathed in nothing but the hot air of their doomed land.
    “Let’s do this thing,” repeated Arnold, and this time, Z. nodded and pointed with both hands at the prison and wouldn’t stop nodding until Ricky asked if he was okay.

29
     
    O n a typical morning he spends three hours in the laundry room, which is fifteen degrees warmer than the second-floor cells. The laundry room is a miniature warehouse of cleaning in the color gray. Hot air hangs like a curtain on a movable track. Metal tables edge-lined with machine-drilled dimples hold clothing pressed in stacks. Washers and dryers built into ten towers shake in front of windows covered in blue X wire. The sun creates bars of light through the steam and the outline of McDonovan’s body is visible while he irons a heap of shirts.
    He silences his ears with toilet paper. In the afternoon part-time workers from Open Skies Cleaning Service arrive and finish whatever he didn’t get to. Having someone the administration can trust, like Pants, is cheap, allows them to pay less to Open Skies, and he does an exceptional job (Grade A, extra shower time, full heat), resulting in his nickname which makes him feel belittled, like when Dad called him “tiny man.” Not “little man” like some fathers lovingly call their sons, but “tiny man” in a tone that cut. The way he runs a crease from the thigh to kneecap before dropping to the ankle the guards can’t figure out. When Pants tells them he was an artist of sorts, in Sky Father, they nod, not understanding what participation in Sky Father has to do with working an iron like a seamstress. Hesays when he was a boy his parents made him clean and iron his underwear until