Our Labors End

Silas pulls the long brake lever with his knotted hands, and the wagon stops in front of the Fisher’s shack. The roof is tar paper. The three walls are wooden boards half-rotted, covered in pitch. There’s no door to close, just an opening large enough for the Fisher to stoop below. Ragged squares torn from the walls but no glass to make them windows.

The shack leans at the edge of the Spout. The ground is ash packed to soil with the greasy blackness from the shore. The sky above us is black.

Everything is black, and there is the light, gray and tasteless, and it shines from everywhere and nowhere at once.

The Fisher ducks below the jamb and looks up at Silas. The whites of his eyes are tired and wrinkled. His face stained so deep into his jowls that no matter how hard he washed—if he could wash—he would never get clean.

Silas looks down from the wagon. The ring of hair around his bald scalp stands up toward the black sky. A sick light, different from the sick light around us, flickers behind the smoked glass of his goggles. The machine god doesn’t say anything to me. He never does.

I climb down from the wagon. I had walked for hours this time—or maybe days, or seasons, or minutes—but got no farther than I ever have.

The Fisher has told me before. But despite all my escapes, I don’t believe him.

He says there is nothing in the world but the Fisher, and Silas, and the Spout, and me.

He says this is all there is.

The light never changes. But somehow we know it is time to lie down and pretend to sleep. The light never changes. But somehow we know it is to time to stand up, and do the work all over again.

The Fisher walks to the boat. I walk behind him. We don’t talk about my trying to escape. He knows I will do it again, and again, and again. He has stopped beating me when I am returned.

Besides.

The bruises will never heal.

I unscrew the cap from the boat’s engine. The Fisher’s fingers, gnarled and arthritic, won’t let him. He tips the fuel can—a roughsawn plastic jug cut in ragged edges—and the fuel pours out in honey-thick globs. It doesn’t smell like anything. It doesn’t gleam, because the light never changes.

The Fisher pilots the boat to the middle of the Spout.

Then, we wait, for the bodies to appear.

The ash heaps surround the Spout in uneven rings. When you stand at the crest of one, you can see they extend in all directions. Silas the machine god has cut a path through the ash heaps that lead from the Fisher’s shack to his. The machines that did it now half-empty hulks he has cannibalized for other creations.

I don’t know if the Spout once poured the black water higher, and its ebb and flow sculpted the ash heaps into their tree ring shapes.

Or if they are the grave markers of something that fell from the lightless dark overhead, like shockwaves, or the echoes of a crater.

I have crossed so many of the ash heaps. Past the time when the light does not change, but I know I should lie down. Past the time when the light does not change, but I know I should get up.

I have crossed so many of them, and I have never gotten any farther.

There is no wind here.

But my footsteps are gone.

There is a sense. Like a taste in my fingertips, like when the light does not change but I know I should lie down, before it starts.

From the bottom of the Spout—from its middle, where our boat sits, even distance from any shore—bodies rise from the deep. They do not rise with bubbles, or sound, or anything at all. Just a gentle bob through the dark water thick as ink come to rest on the surface. Skin sick and pale, eyes open, the Spout’s black water pooled against their eyelids until it runs viscous off to join the rest.

The Fisher hands me the weighted end of the net. I hold it in my hands, and its fibers are rough and splitting. They prick beneath my fingernails like splinters. They leave my palms slick with the Spout’s black water thick as ink but slick as oil.

When the bodies stop rising, I throw the net. The Fisher pilots the boat around the day’s collection. We haul the bodies to the shore and pull them from the black water. The Fisher lays them next to each other, he rests their stiff hands against each other’s. His own fingers too hobbled to twine the bodies’ fingers together, so the lifeless hands lay palm to palm. With the heel of his hand he gently lowers their eyelids, so they look like they are at rest.

We walk the path to Silas the machine god’s shack. He sits on an upturned metal pipe. The light never changes but it glistens against the smoked glass of his goggles.

The Fisher waits for Silas the machine god to look at him. The two old men stare at each other, and nothing changes but they know it is time to be done, and the Fisher nods, once.

We walk the path back to the Fisher’s shack. The ash heaps sink beneath my feet. Compact it and the oily water from the Spout into something like asphalt or soil. The crunch and crisp breath of each step counts us out until Silas’s machine starts up. With gurgling and terrible screams it pumps the black water from the Spout into his machines, and his machines make it fuel, and he’ll deliver it honey-thick to us in roughsawn plastic cans cut through the middle, and we’ll pour it into the boat’s motor, and do it all again.

Forever.

Left behind the bodies would emerge from the bottom of the Spout and they would foul the black water thick as ink. If the water’s fouled then the machine god cannot make it into fuel. If he cannot make it into fuel the boat will not run, its motor will die, and the machine god’s creations will seize up and come to rest.

And…

The light doesn’t change but it is time to lie down. The Fisher lays against a cloth, its every stitch covered in residue or fumes of fuel or grit from the ash heaps. The cloth laid atop a piece of cardboard beaten and compressed and no longer a comfort between his bones and the packed-hard soil of the shack floor.

I lie down on the dirt. I wait for his breath to slow, and although his breath never changes I know when I could get up and run away again.

I run away again.

The light never changes but it is a time for lying down, and everything is more still than it ever is. Silas the machine god’s creations stalled among the crests and troughs of the ash heaps. I start along the path between the Fisher and the machine god and when I am as far from both as I can be, I turn to climb the heaps. The ash gives underway but after several attempts it will compact into something like soil, and I can step against it, and make my way in pieces away from the two of them.

There is nothing to mark time or distance, even as I climb one ash heap and slide down its flank, if I try to keep count I cannot. The numbers do not hold in my mind.

Or

I forget to breathe, and in doing so, I wonder if this is a place where I need breath,

or this is a place without numbers.

Without use for them.

I scramble up the next ash heap and down its other side. I look back in a quick glance and see where I have carved a track from its peak. I feel the ash and the dirt against my palm that I used to steady my descent.

The light does not change but I know it will be time to get up soon.

When it is time to get up, the machines sputter and choke. They vomit clouds of black smoke dotted with sparks. Then they walk the ash heaps, up and down, until they notice me.

I do not know if he builds them, or they are made from his will. But Silas the machine god keeps his creations moving along the ash heaps until it is time for lying down, and then the machines stop again, maybe with a whispered word or maybe all on their own.

I cannot count how many of his creations I have seen, or how many differences they have shown

I panic and begin to breathe again, my chest rising and falling.

These machines are taller than me, picking their ways over the ash heaps on segmented thin legs. Wide as my finger and the segments are thin lines where the shape changes direction, but I don’t see how they are joined, or how they could bend and raise to step from crest to trough. The three legs arc upward to a final joint and spike down to loop through eye bolts holding the main body aloft. A cord of some kind, a tether, loops in a circle through the eye bolts, legs and body alike, and it is a testament to Silas the machine god that somehow the creations are held together by the tension of the cord and nothing more. Remove a leg and the creation would topple. Remove a bolt and its entirety would be in pieces against the ash heaps. A thing complete that although I can see all its parts I cannot imagine its completion.

The creations surround me and I stop. I stand on the ash heap and wait.

The light does not change. Silas the machine god brings his wagon over the ash heaps. I don’t know where his gaze points behind his smoked goggles but I feel hands on my shoulders, running down my arms, he remains in the wagon but I know he is looking for brokenness or flaws.

This time I listen for Silas to draw air through his flattened nose.

I climb into the back of the wagon myself.

Silas won’t speak to me. He never does.

He pulls the lever and the wagon drives forward over the ash heaps and although it was the direction I walked away from the Fisher’s shack and his it is the direction that will take me back there, because it always is.

The wagon stops at the Fisher’s shack.

The Fisher ducks beneath the jamb and looks to Silas. I pull a roughsawn plastic jug cut through the middle sloshing with fuel honey-thick from the wagon and climb down. Silas pulls the lever and the wagon rattles off, coughing.

The light doesn’t change but it is time. The Fisher walks to the boat. I walk behind him. I unscrew the cap from the boat’s engine. He stands at its prow as I tip the jug and pour fuel in honey-thick globs. It splashes over the engine, my fingers. When it is empty I move to place it on the shore but clumsy I throw it, instead. I screw the cap back on and it binds half-way.

The light doesn’t change. The Fisher looks over the Spout.

The light doesn’t change.

He pilots us to the middle, equidistant from any shore. Over the water, thick as ink, I wait with the net in my hands. Its fibers rough and loose prick up beneath my fingernails. He sits now, back to me, watching still or not.

The light never changes. From the bottom of the Spout, the bodies rise without anything at all. I count as they emerge, waiting for them to stop, so I may lay the weighted end of the net in the black water and begin the work. Between fifteen and twenty I lose count, and there is a noise against the hull of the boat, a dull strike beneath me. I lay the net at my feet and look over the side.

One of the bodies has risen not from the middle of the Spout, but from below the boat. Its feet protrude from the

Its feet kick.

I reach over the gunwale and grab an ankle. The skin is slick, gummy, as if it will slough between my fingers, but bone is solid enough. I hold on to the seat with my other hand, and twist.

The rest of the body slides out from beneath the boat. Like the others, its eyes are open.

Unlike the others, its eyes move. They swivel to look at me, stained blue-black with the black water thick as ink and slick as oil from the Spout. Its nose, mouth, full of the black water. In my grip, its muscles are weak. I look into its eyes.

This is how they speak, the Fisher, and Silas the machine god. Eye to eye.

All things laid out between us in a path to the horizon with no haze.

If I help this body—their pleading, to get out of the black water thick as ink and slick as oil, because whatever spark they have cannot withstand the water of the Spout—they will help the Fisher, forever, and be glad for it, because no matter what it is, it is not nothing.

And I—

I pull them close to the edge of the boat. I let go of their ankle, and lay my palm on their forehead, and push them under. I hold them there. Looking into their eyes. Until they do not speak to me, not any more.

I throw the net. We haul the bodies to the shore. With the heel of his hand he gently lowers their eyelids, so they look like they are at rest.

We walk the path back to the Fisher’s shack.

The light doesn’t change but it is time to lie down. The Fisher lays against a cloth, the cloth laid atop a piece of cardboard, the cardboard no longer a comfort to his bones.

I lie down on the dirt. I wait for his breath to slow, and although his breath never changes I know when I could get up and run away again.

I get up.

I lay next to him on the scrap of cloth, on the cardboard, and feel the heat of his narrow spine against my own.

I need my rest.

We have work to do.