‘How so?’
‘Look at you. Nobody wants to mess with a big guy. Everybody’s afraid of you.’
Rem asked how much of this mattered.
‘I’m just saying. Nobody wants to fuck with you. That’s all.’
Santo liked to run his hand back over his head, the palm flat and one or two fingers bent to scratch his scalp, which he generally kept shaved, so the noise, for such a small gesture sounded loud. Rem thought of this gesture as something urban, partly because he knew that Santo came from Minneapolis, and partly because the Latino boys, with their shoulders burned with tattoos and their various styles of goatee, appeared more urban than rural. He couldn’t picture Santo outside of a city.
‘I’m short. People fuck with me all the time. Like Fatboy, they hit on me like Fatboy there. Difference is, they do this only one time.’ Santo pointed to Fatboy, a weedy nineteen-year-old, a mouse. Stunted in pre-pubescence, the man/boy ate burgers, fried meat, drank power drinks, never slept, suffered from bad skin, and remained rake-thin. Fatboy liked to smile, a smile which showed small and weak teeth. He never disagreed or bad-mouthed anyone, no matter how unpleasant the exchange. Rem hadn’t seen him angry, despite the abuse he had to tolerate, and because of this he admired the boy. Fatboy managed supplies for the PX. He lived to supply and delivered on every request (Cheetos, Oreos, Chipotle dip, Mega-Moca-Latte-Mix, Vegemite, DVDs, Blu-Rays even, CDs, and, according to rumour, porn of any variety). Fatboy navigated with ease around HOSCO’s complex systems. And best of all, he let Rem sleep wherever he wanted.
As a consequence, Rem drew Fatboy into their breaks and lunchtimes, invited the boy to sit with them when he played cards with Santo before their night shift. And while Santo rarely spoke to the boy he didn’t appear to mind his company, especially when Fatboy brought chips and Cheetos, dips and sometimes fries.
Santo smiled every time he spoke about the money he was making. ‘In thirty days the pay becomes unreal. Now I’m in extra-overtime. I’m printing money. Soon it will have my face on it.’
Santo liked to smoke home-grown smuggled by the convoy security. He liked the day to slip from him, he liked to feel easy, so if anything happened he’d be in the best shape to take it, because bad news shouldn’t be taken straight. ‘I have this idea.’ He leaned toward Rem, his breath sweet and grassy. ‘You know. Something you should do, because you’re a big white man and they won’t say no to a big white man. The idea? We work on the teams that go in after the attacks. We volunteer.’
‘We volunteer? This is your idea?’
‘It’s a good idea. You’ve no idea how much they pay. By the time they go in everything’s over. It’s meat, it’s not even people, what’s left over.’
Rem didn’t like it, but Santo persisted. ‘You put together a team. They want people just like you. Big white people who do things.’
Rem wouldn’t consider it. He’d seen enough devastation from a distance, and had trouble forgetting the cabins obliterated by the attack, the stink of scorched blood and fat, his fear over what had happened to the men inside.
* * *
The shifts altered once the buildings had been cleared either side of the new routes: so they began to work during the day. Every night, after Santo returned to the cabins, Rem spread out his mat and lay under a table in the cafeteria and knew he would not sleep. Santo’s idea stuck under his skin. Them and us. They blew up markets, employment queues, clinics, schools, colleges, funerals, any protest or procession. They bombed exit routes, corridors, roadways, targeted surgeries, emergency vehicles, so that there could be no escape. And when this was done they went to the hospitals and blew up the arriving ambulances, the waiting rooms, targeting relatives, the doctors and nurses. How many times did Rem, Santo, and the crew of Unit 409 listen to the attacks then wait for the follow-up blasts? Rem had no language for this, but understood that he was part of the dynamic. However separate Santo and the others might regard themselves, Rem at least admitted that he was, in some way, connected.
* * *
Three in the morning Rem woke to see Fatboy stacking candy bars into the vending machines. A slight nervous energy ran through the boy, his feet jiggered as he unloaded the boxes.
Rem watched him walk away, arms full of snacks and cardboard flats, and told himself he wanted company. He followed Fatboy through the complex, a small channel of light marked a corridor to an exit, a set of folding doors. He found his cigarettes in his pocket, caught up, and offered the boy a smoke.
‘Can’t sleep?’
‘Don’t seem to need it.’ Fatboy looked at the sky, at a yellow horizon edged by shadowy palms and the distant square hulks of buildings. He pointed at the cabins with boards secured behind the windows to prevent blast damage. ‘Like a face,’ he said. ‘See? Eyes? Mouth?’
Rem looked back to the PX, worried about the light from the corridor.
Fatboy’s thoughts were often disconnected and Rem became used to the chaotic switches: ‘What’s the most people you ever saw?’
Rem said he didn’t know.
‘The most people — in one moment. Right in front of you? Face to face?’
Rem wasn’t sure, and Fatboy led him back through the PX, past the Stores, the commissary, the humming fridges; the canteen seeming longer in the half-darkness, its recesses deeper. The boy leaned against the door before he pushed. ‘Tell me how many you think there are.’
The door opened to a series of interlinked spaces — a loading dock, a parking lot, the remnants of a boulevard — one large area bordered on two sides by blast walls, and along the far side, by low-rise prefab buildings. Lamps mounted on the buildings cast an acid wash over the compound. To Rem’s amazement the ground was covered with sleeping bodies.
Fatboy leaned against the door to keep it open. ‘Wild, right? TCNs. Third-country nationals. They run the facilities. Everything.’
From their feet to the far perimeter slept the drivers, shelf-stackers, cleaners, sales clerks, barbers — he couldn’t account for the numbers.
‘They don’t have anywhere to sleep?’
‘Most do. There’s an area behind with shipping containers. They’re modified for sleeping, each container holds around nine men. They’re mounted one on top of the other. Not everyone’s working. Some are going home, others are being shipped out, or transferred. If you aren’t working, you aren’t assigned quarters. You ever seen anything so wild?’
‘I don’t see how this is any safer?’
‘The containers get hot. A while back some of them were burned out. After that most people started sleeping like this. It’s better to be outside, especially when there’s trouble.’
From what Rem could see the bodies were male, men sleeping side by side, fitted together, on and under vehicles, lodged crazily, puzzlelike, head to toe, with little space between them. Most slept in thin T-shirts, trousers, with rags or paper or newspaper over their heads and faces. Rem couldn’t absorb the detail, so that group immediately at his feet stood in for the many laid out before him.
* * *
Rem and Fatboy began to spend their nights together.
Fatboy’s habit would be to smoke, pause, then ask a question, as if there was something on his mind.
‘You ever pray?’
Rem answered no.
‘Your parents alive?’
Rem shook his head but didn’t answer. He finished one cigarette, lit another.
‘My mom lives in Michigan. Doesn’t do much but eat.’