The Deadheart Shelters by Forrest Armstrong Read Free Book Online

out of vaseline; this is what we were. For whether we were made of flesh or cement I saw us as I saw us, fooled by the chemicals decompressing my mind, or nudged into different belief. Our faces continued to be true. I saw Dirt as the newborn he was, a naked mollusk rasping for the womb we never forget in the computer of memory. And I saw Felt as a lump of vaseline dried in the sun, rasping for nothing but continued abstinence from evaporation.
    I started hearing a ringing in my head like microphone feedback which meant the feelings we got from the showers were leaving. We didn’t miss them when they left; their departure left amnesia in its wake which meant to the fooled mind that the day had never happened, except to register on a paycheck. “Where are we walking?” I asked.
    “Huh,” said Felt. “You’re right, we’re going the wrong way. I lost track. Look at that beautiful sunset; I think I was trying to walk into it.”
    “It looks like turtles swimming,” said Dirt.
    “You idiot. It looks nothing like that.”
    “To me it does.”
    “It looks like seaweed that floats,” I said.
    “It doesn’t look like that either. When I was young we used to sit on the cliff, where you could see the tops of all the trees come together so tight you’d think you could walk right across them. It looks more like that.”
    “It doesn’t look like that,” Dirt said.
    “You wouldn’t know, you were born a week ago. You’ve never seen anything that beautiful.”
    “I was born in a tree!”
    “You were born in a laboratory. Now hang on, we’re still going the wrong way. Let’s turn around.”
    When we got to the truck, Felt asked if we wanted to go where they go at night. I thought of returning home where I pull the covers up to my nose and pretend I’m talking to someone. “Where do you go?”
    “There are two places we sometimes go. You know the first, and I know how Dirt would feel, watching that. I tell you he’s lucky he met you—”
    “Where’s the second place?”
    “We go to the pond, to splash rocks.”
    “Okay. We’ll go there.”

The water was quiet but the city behind us never softens and if you are inside of it you are always tethered to it, hearing it. I thought of how even the dogs were quieter and spoke a language I understood. The men from the mines sat wrapped up in blankets, occasionally reaching an arm out to grab a rock and throw it in the water.
    “Thank you for inviting us,” I said.
    “Yes, yes.”
    I picked up a rock and threw it in the water but couldn’t get it to bounce on top of it like they could. There was a bridge nearby that people never stopped crossing and an old man sleeping underneath. “You know, I always used to think a city would be different,” said Dirt. “I thought everybody was part of it, all thinking about it the same.”
    “Look at him,” I said, pointing to the man under the bridge.
    “I don’t even know who’s in charge,” said Dirt. “Is somebody in charge?”
    “Of course,” Felt said. “Learn these things for yourself.”
    “Is that man always there?” I asked.
    “He’s always there. Stop talking, both of you.”
    One of the miners lit a cigarette and all of them, seeing him, reached for their pockets and got their own. I asked if I could have one. “So this is what you do, huh? It must be nice to sit by the pond and splash rocks,” I said.
    “It’s what you’re doing,” Felt said.
    “It is nice.”

I don’t understand how the others do it; the heart is like a great and thrashing marlin between the lungs that refuses to die. The heart pollutes the head with tear gas and thrashes forever for the unfathomable relief of a cat tongue lapping up the mind’s milk. None of these dreams are mine, I only recite what I overhear my heart mumble. My heart who is indifferent to me.
    Ah Lilly you are a silkworm in my brain! I pretend I don’t love you and my head starts whistling like a train horn with the chain pulled down forever until