Between The Bars

I learned to crawl alongside a dead baby. The poor thing got its ankle leash caught on the base of the drinking fountain. Squealed for days, then became a stain right here in the middle of the hall, stinking and sinking into the cement while I scooted around collecting up all the new stuff for my parents. I’d clutch on, they’d reel me back. I was a fishing hook. 

I could collect these things for my parents only because Dead Baby hadn’t lived long enough to collect them for hers. She was sent through the bars before me. Too soon. Too young. She could crawl and clasp, but she couldn’t yet understand her parent’s warnings. Nor their whispering and shouting descriptions of the easy little curve she could crawl to free her leash. 

She and I, we could have been a pair. We were supposed to be a pair. Born only three months apart. They ripped us from our screaming mothers and passed our little heads, cell-to-cell, through the bars all the way forward. Up to here. Two babies plopped down together in the Liberty Cell. And given new parents. Parents adjacent enough to feed and bathe us. Train us. Keep us alive.  Everyone counting on us. 

When my baby wife died, I suddenly became the senior infant in the cell closest to freedom. Not just the senior infant but the only infant. Then the only child. Then the only adolescent. The only person. In this cage alone.  Alone in the Liberty Cell.  

Until now. I ‘m getting a new wife today. They’re finally sending a baby forward. There have been other baby girls born, of course. But they had to be sent to that pitch-dark cell where everyone keeps dying. Can’t let even one cell die out or the whole line forward starves. Food flows in only one direction in this train.

I ‘m getting a new wife today. If not today, then for sure this week. From what I’m told, the baby needs to come through the bars now, or very soon, but the mother is resisting. From what I hear, she has her fingernails in it, her teeth on its throat, desperate for whatever leverage she can get at this point. The others are backing off for now. 

The baby’s father freaked out even worse. He had to be killed by his cellmates. That happened this morning. Such a waste.  Didn’t help his wife or his child one bit.  From what I heard, he went wild. Violent. Irrational. He was breaking things and hurting people. He had to be permanently stopped, of course. Can’t have that kind of craziness. Food flows in only one direction in this train. 

The father knew this and yet he just couldn’t stop himself. Even if it made things worse, he simply couldn’t stand by and watch his wife and baby be pulled apart. He must have lost his mind. Because, really, what was he going to do? How was he going to help? He’s not even in the same cell with them.  Between the bars, he had somehow started a family. But a family he couldn’t save. I wonder if I will I go crazy like that when I’m a father.

Though I’m getting a new wife today, my old wife is still around. She’s scattered a bit. As her body began to come apart, I was sent crawling over her. Through her. She died face down with one swim arm under her, tiny hand clutching a stapler. My parents knew the stapler was under there and they really wanted it.  

It took time, but I finally collected it for them. The stapler. For my folks. Took it out of the dead baby’s dusty hands. Once she had rotted enough and I could see through her rib cage, it was right there, shiny and ready to grab. The stapler came from the briefcase scattered on the floor. Up there past the drinking fountain. The skeleton slumped next to it was probably a lawyer. Someone who, all those years ago, came into the prison to try to free somebody but got stuck himself. 

Like any object that’s harder than asphalt and concrete, a stapler is worth a lot. My parents traded it for food. Which they forwarded up to me. I’m their hope. I’m everybody’s hope. Or maybe my unborn children are. Or my grandchildren, or great grandchildren. I don’t know, I’m trapped in this cell. Here’s as far as I’ll go. Here’s where I’ll spend my whole life. Unless my children free me.

We’re all waiting for the generation that finds the exit from this place. The generation that breaks out to soon return with the tools to free us all. Without good reason, every generation has believed that at least their grandchildren will be free. Since generations, we have heard no airplanes. Nobody returns our bangs on the pipes. We think we are alone in the world. Yet we still want out.

When the Pulse hit, prisoners, guards, and wardens alike had their whole fate decided simply by where in the prison they happened to be at that instant. The metal bars provided both a protective shield and a lack of escape. Most in the prison died but at least a dozen survived. In awkward couples, they launched the only people I’ve known. None of these ever had a straight idea of what the Pulse was about. And the lack of any real way of finding out, from inside here, has handed down stories in various versions involving an explosion on the Sun and a collapsing climate on this planet. 

My great great grandmother happened to be in a hallway connected through bars with both the interior courtyard and the cafeteria pantry. Her cell survived. So did the courtyard. The courtyarders learned that because their cell offered no exit, they were not seen as a good investment for food from the pantry. So they pulled up asphalt, almost with their fingernails, and traded and tilled in human excrement until they got a garden together. They’ve been the most powerful cell ever since. They’re the ones who decided to post me here. In the Liberty Cell. Even though their cell is the furthest from freedom, they make the decisions. 

The prison pantry was hugely overstocked for the few original survivors. But we’ve been feeding on it since generations. Even though most of the stock is gone, it must still be the most interesting place, the pantry. So many things to grab in there. Here in the Liberty Cell, there’s not much. My cell is mostly just a long, boring section of hall defined by the next shut gate. My parents would have liked to just skip this cell and place me on ahead in the next one. But their arms weren’t long enough to care for me so far away. 

It will be years before my new wife can have a baby. I’ll probably already be a father by then. Now that I’m mature enough to maybe not kill it, I’ll be passed a baby to raise. Alongside my wife.

There is something special about the next cell, and I’ll be showing this to my new wife even before she understands what I’m saying. The cell of our children has a corner! An exciting L in the hall. Two generations have known of this corner and wanted to know what locked gates lay beyond. Maybe many. Maybe none. Maybe the cell of my children is not even a cage.  Each day I grow more eager to know what’s beyond the corner. I want to send my children into the next Liberty Cell even before they are born. 

Odds are my children will simply find another locked gate. At that point, I suppose my dream of freedom will go away. Then, like my own parents, I’ll simply center on sending my kids to pilfer the cell of the next generation. I’ll stop wondering how many generations there are to the exit and instead focus on the few things within my children’s reach.