Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

once wrote to Mom. It makes theblood jump inside your body and nothing else. They are going to need more and I’m scared about that day coming too soon .
    He knows Mom is ill, she’s mentioned it prior in letters, but he doesn’t know how bad it’s gotten, the layers of ache peeling up from her tiny screams, the rot expanding inside the tunnels inside her bones inside her body. If he could see her. If he could stand before her, he’d feel like a boy seeing her cry for the first time. How he watched hiding from the doorway his mother sob and shake under the bedsheets, and afterward, he realized while sitting on his bed and poking his stomach hard ten times, that she wasn’t invincible like he had previously thought. He wanted her to live forever after he witnessed her and the men in the mine that night, shortly after seeing her cry. He could have done something, but he didn’t. The men went back. You could have done something is a black mantra he repeats daily, an endless banner of You could have done something wrapping around his thoughts and getting tighter and tighter.
    The cell door slams shut and distracts him from the memory. The guard tells him to believe in the power of god, the values of Sanders, and smooches his cross.
    “Makes sense,” says Pants with a goofy grin.
    “Inside your body is a number of crystals.”
    “Not as ridiculous,” says Pants mimicking the size of the guard’s smile.
    The guard wants to say something back, but decides to continue smirking, that’s his answer back, and he walks from the cell, whistling, strutting, but feeling a little defeated.
    In his last sent letter Pants described eating crystal. Cold and sharp under my tongue before pressing it into my gums where it bleeds warm . Tastes pretty good . He discussed the need to jog in place, the gelatinous sweat that rings his neck, the stench of damp crystal mine dirt evaporating from his skin, all his childhood memories burned in amber then stretched into the present positive to make the universe and his life seem less awful. He oftenwonders why, when he was a boy and he fought endlessly with Dad and in return Dad and Mom fought, did no one ask anyone else one obvious and critical question: are you happy? Once, while on black crystal, he had a dream where he stood behind Mom’s legs as she stirred a cast iron pot rimmed in little green crystals on a stain-crusted stove. They were alone on a beach. The sand was cold. The delicate fabric of Mom’s gown against her calves, his hands. He could taste salt blowing in the breeze. When he began to leave the dream, when he became aware of where he was, prison, the space between his cell’s bars filled with waves.
    I placed my tongue on a crystal I found in Remy’s room , Mom writes. A yellow. I was scared to try the black. A metallic taste, lemony, and I pulled the crystal from my mouth and wiped it clean by dragging it over her mattress which I now feel guilty about. I didn’t have the spitting cloth, but I wish I did because I vomited red and probably lost another, but you don’t need to worry about me, I’m not crazy, don’t you worry while you’re in there. Do you remember when you and Remy played the tapping game?
    On the second floor a fight breaks out between inmates and guards over the heat. A bottle shatters. The comically high-pitched Al LaValle, says, “Shake me but don’t make me,” as he’s dragged to Jackson’s Hole. Pants sees LaValle’s limp body being wiped horizontally across the floor. Alarm bells ring and guards run. Some of the inmates are singing “Bye Bye Mr. Bad Guy,” and LaValle, still on his back, still being dragged by the guards, is waving both hands to the rhythm.
    He replies in his letter that he once wedged broken crystals under his toenails. Each nail on his right foot shined a different color: yellow was the pinkie toe, then blue, red, green, and black for the big toe. Throughout the day he scrunched his foot inside his boot and walked on