The Dirt and the Man and the Dream

It was all a dream.

Lane’s eyes shot open and saw darkness. His mind teetered between wakefulness and sleep, still trying to separate his thoughts from his senses. A cold, damp breeze chilled his body. Insects chattered off in the distance.

It was all a dream.

The realization sprouted in his stomach and spread through his chest like an itch below the skin. All of it was gone. Or, rather, had never been. The family. The love. Safety. Security. Warm meals. Football games on TV. He had created it all, a poorly-drawn picture he fell face-first into.

Lane propped himself up on his elbows, cursing the droning cries of the night bugs. For a moment, he had been someplace else. Away from this place. But now he was back, covered in filth he could never clean, his arms and knees and shirt caked in mud, his body shaking incessantly in the cold, wet air. 

It was the first he had dreamt in a long time. Sleep was a rare thing when your bed was mud and your blankets were the filthy rags that covered your body. When it did eventually come, it was never deep or vivid. There was no rest, only a moment when consciousness meshed with unconsciousness. He never woke from his so-called sleep; he came to and debated with himself how much sleep the brief period of inactivity amounted to.

Lane did not fall asleep again for the rest of the night. He lay awake, his eyes closed, trying to remember the dream, to hold onto the images and feelings, trying to retain as much detail as he possibly could before they slipped away into the creases on the mind.

All he could remember were fragments. Single frames accompanied by brief spikes of emotion. He remembered sitting down on a recliner. He remembered the smell of food – it may have been hamburgers or tacos or something – but he remembered feeling hungry for something that was being cooked, something he could smell. It was not the constant, skin-stretching hunger of his current life, which devoured his muscles and weakened his mind. It was a safe hunger, one that knew it would be sated.

Lane opened his eyes. The sun peeked through the trees, rays of gold shooting like pikes through the gaps of the wood planks that formed his cage. Lane heard guards begin to emerge from their tents, chattering softly with one another at a pot clanked over a campfire. Though he wished he could, Lane could not smell it. He could not smell anything since he had been here, his sinuses constantly clogged. It was probably for the best.

Lane crawled sluggishly up to the thick wooden boards that separated him from the camp. He and the others – all 32 of them – peered through the slats in their wooden cages and watched with instinct-like awareness as guards awoke, shook sleep from their eyes and walked over a small hill to take their morning shits. A few of the prisoners spoke in quiet, subdued phrases to one another. Lane said nothing. He only watched. As the morning progressed, as the guards finished their preparations for the day, the speaking ceased. Every prisoner’s attention fell, one by one, on a single man hauling back wood from the tree line.

His name was Yuro. At least that was what the old timer in the cage next to Lane had called him. Yuro had finished his breakfast, had unloaded some crates and had rationed out ammunition. Now, he sat leaned back on a shoddy brown table outside his tent, sharpening a long machete on a whetstone. He lifted the weapon up to the sun, getting a good look at it, and gave a contented grin as he lowered it back down to the leather strap hanging from his waist. 

Yuro ran his thick fingers over receding, black hair and reached for his front pocket. As he did, the prisoners’ jaws clenched, their pupils widened, and their hearts began to thump quicker. Yuro pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. He smoked it slowly, serenely, looking out at the forest surrounding him as he did. Each prisoner watched, trying to gauge from a distance how much of the cigarette was left.

The cigarette seemed to be gone in an instant, even though Yuro smoked it all the way down to a tiny white stub. He took a last, brow-creasing puff, and yanked the tiny white sliver of away from his mouth as he exhaled through his nostrils. He flicked it into brush, and turned toward the cages, reaching his arm across his waist for his machete.

The prisoners backed away from whatever crack or crevice they were looking through and moved slowly toward the middle of their cages. They stared at the wooden doors before them, seeing nothing of the camp, Yuro or any of the outside world. There was only the door. Some sat there, anxiously praying their door would remain closed. These were usually the newcomers, guys who hadn’t yet realized their situation. The rest had no energy left for hope or worry. They had used up all reserves for both.

Lane’s gaunt, bony face showed no anguish or despair. His expression could have been mistaken for boredom as he stared at the heavy wooden door before him. It would open, or it would not. No use worrying until then. He told himself this every time.

Lane heard the creak of old, hinged wood and a shout come from a few cages down. He turned in the direction of the sound, though he saw nothing but damp, wet moldy wood. The raspy voice first begged for mercy. As the voice moved closer to Lane, it began telling the that they had chosen the wrong man, that he would be able to do more work than ten of the others combined. Lane’s gaze remained on the door before him as he listened to the desperate voice pass by, and he had to focus on distinguishing it from the crunching boots of the guards. It trailed off. To somewhere.

Lane and the others didn't have to guess where that was. It didn't matter if – beyond the southern hill – there was a gulley, or a stream, or another camp. The only ones who knew were the ones who were gone. It did not matter what lay over there, because whatever it was, it was accompanied by death.

—-------------------------------------------------------------

The day was long and agonizing. The prisoners were fed at noon. No vegetables again, same as it had been for the last month. Just a small bowl of plain white rice, hard and unwashed. As soon as the prisoners had eaten, the guards lined them up, gesturing with their weapons, saying Go in thick accents. They led the caravan of grease and mud and fragility through the camp, past tents and armed men and tables with various rounds of ammunition scattered across them.

Lane noticed a gray lady sitting cross-legged underneath one of the tents. He had not seen a woman in maybe a year, probably longer. She was old but beautiful. Deep wrinkles cut around her brow and at the corners of her eyes. A man, dressed in a guard uniform, sat on one knee next to her, lifting a cup to her lips. The woman’s eyes met Lane's as and his fellow prisoners shuffled by. Her gaze was not one of hate, he noted, and then thought no more about it.

The rest of the daylight was spent underground. Lane and six others, as many as could possibly fit in that space, crawled into a deep, narrow gap in the earth and set to work extending and widening tunnels. A prisoner could only hope it was the latter and not the former. On days when the tunnels needed to be expanded into fresh earth, one man was selected by the guards to crawl through the tunnel, deep into its narrow, muddy branches. The digger had to work in a space so tight deep breaths were constricted, scraping the dirt in small, miniscule movements and passing it backwards, to a man holding a bucket. He would then pass that to the next man, sending a small, pitiful pile of muck to the surface. 

It was a job that tested you. Trapped, with maybe four inches of space on each side, shoveling for an entire day. Lane had done it four or five times before. But he still had some muscle then, and had not yet been completely reduced to the frail skeleton he was now.

Lane was not selected to dig. He crawled down into the hole, three men from the digger, and waited for the bucket to come. He and the other bucket-handlers who could see watched as the digger pulled himself into a narrow crook and began to scrape, trying to conceal the sounds of his whimpers from the guards.

Typically, there was no room for thought during this work, even as a bucket hauler. The holes were hot, and only got hotter as men sweat and exhaled carbon dioxide into the small, nearly airtight space. He had to focus on conserving his energy and keeping his senses. There were no other thoughts in such a matter of survival; only the experience of pain and the threat of death.

Even so, one thought managed to seep into Lane’s mind as he lifted a bucketload of dirt above his head, brown globs falling onto his face and over his mouth. He thought of his dream from the night before. Football, hamburgers, his mother and father. It helped him, so he continued thinking about that dream as the sun rose overhead and sweat ran down his face in dirty lines: the feelings, the safety, food… his mind chewed over these, and an idea occurred to him. Maybe he could experience those emotions again, in sleep. Because he knew in his soul he would not encounter them again in reality.

—--------------------------------------------------------------

So, as the chorus of bugs struck up for the night and the sunlight faded, Lane focused on watching TV. On the smell of something in the oven cooking. On being clean. On having a bed. Eventually, he fell asleep, and his mind filled in the gaps. He saw details now. He saw his mother’s lips curve upwards in a smile. That armchair, it was filled now, his father reclined back, hands folded across his belly as he gazed at the TV. He felt the narrative of the dream. He was home, his mother was cooking – he thought it could have been meatloaf or hamburgers, but wasn’t completely sure – and it was a Sunday. 

Lane was sitting on the sofa beside his father. He wanted to speak to his parents, to tell them he was alive, that their boy was okay, but he could not make a sound. His voice came out in a raspy whisper, and his lips did not move to form syllables. He used every muscle in his mouth and throat and chest to try and communicate, shutting his eyes and contracting his diaphragm, shouting until he saw stars. But nothing. His dad kept watching TV, and his mother kept cooking meatloaf. He strained harder, and it woke him.

—--------------------------------------------------------------

Lane survived the morning selection the next day. It was some kid the others said was from Georgia.

When the Georgia kid first came to the camp, he was big. Maybe 220 pounds, with arms that seemed to burst from the seams of his uniform. He fought the guards, his hands tied behind his back in chains, using his shoulders to knock one of the unarmed ones to the ground, then leaving his feet and coming down on the small man with all his weight. The guard howled, and the Georgia boy howled along with him.

It was one of three times anyone in those cages had laughed while in the camp. They laughed quietly to themselves, but heartily. It took six guards to get that boy subdued. They stood around the big hunk of muscle and concrete bones, kicking him in whatever area was not already occupied by a foot. Still, the other prisoners laughed.

There was a twinge of hope in the days after that – even after the beating, as the boy was being dragged bloody, bruised and battered into his cage, his legs trailing limply behind him. It was not a hope for an escape or a rebellion, but that, at some point, their brothers would come for them. Tanks would come cruising through the tree line, crushing tents and firing rounds in every direction, and jets would come screaming over the forest, raining fire from above. The Georgia kid reminded the other prisoners that there was life outside of wooden cages and muddy, cramped tunnels.

That was something like 13 or 14 months ago, Lane guessed. The hope had long vanished since then. The kid had gone from a true-blue action figure, spitting on guards and cursing them to a hollowed-out specimen, no more a man than a corpse. His eyes sank deep into his large brow, and his arms became noodles that swung from his shoulders, listless and lifeless. He did not fight as the guards pulled him from his cage that morning. He walked alongside them, maybe even a step or two in front, as Yuro and two armed men followed him down the path, past the tunnels and over the steep embankment.

The guards led Lane and six others back to the holes. They lined up in front of the entrance, their eyes fixed straight forward. The guard walked down the line, looking up and down at each prisoner, and stopped at Lane. In the corner of his left eye, Lane saw him hold out the spade. Lane’s gaze drifted over to the spade. He paused for a moment, then grabbed it and slowly made his way to the front of the line.

The work was brutal. Lane had already begun tasting metal as he shimmied his way into a narrow gap of earth, his shoulders squeezed together on both sides. Navigating the dark, cramped space was difficult. Lane finally found what must be the end of the tunnel and began to dig. Each spadeful of dirt involved jimmying his hand up in front of his face, scraping a couple inches worth of mud from in front of him, and carefully maneuvering his spadeful of dirt back to the man behind him without spilling it.

It was slow-moving and painful. The air was hot and stuffy. The oxygen was slowly replaced by the dirty, rotten breath and putrid stenches of the prisoners. Lane thought about the dream, and it kept him working.

—--------------------------------------------------------------

That night, Lane’s dreams were as vivid as they had ever been – even more so than before the war, when he slept on a mattress, with pillows and blankets and air conditioning. 

Lane was back in his childhood home, mom cooking, dad watching TV. He could not speak, but he did not try. He was communicating with his parents, in some intuitive language which was not comprised of words, but which was more precise and direct than language could ever be. They knew what he wanted to say, and for the first time in his life, he felt peace.

—----------

And when Lane awoke, he did not try to hold onto that dream. It did not need to be held. It stuck to the back of his eyelids. The emotions that were once echoes now filled his heart. He felt his soul. In a life so consumed by pain, hunger, and bodily needs, he had forgotten about his soul. It was there, he was reminded. It was a part of him that could not be spat on, struck or caged.

It was all a dream, and it was wonderful.

Lane knew what would happen next, and it did not worry him. He was ready. As the other prisoners backed away from their peepholes and waited for Yuro to approach, Lane stood up. The door opened just as he did. Yuro may have spoken an entirely different language, but his face communicated clearly. It spoke of bewilderment. It spoke of embarrassment. It was only visible for a second, but Lane knew.

The guards threatened him, shouting Go, Go, motioning with their rifles. Lane walked out of his dirty cage calmly and waited for them to lead. Yuro pushed him forward, holding his knife at the small of Lane’s back, goading him forward every few seconds or so, the knife puncturing a hole in his back that began to bleed. It hurt, but it was okay.

The four men walked through the camp. They passed the tunnels, Lane walking comfortably and upright. His frail, bony chest stuck out, his thin legs moving fluidly. Lane passed the gray lady. He saw her and she saw him. She did not hate him. She knew.

Lane approached the hill, and as his gaze crested the top, he saw what lay beyond. A field of lotus flowers, pink and sprawling. They had just bloomed. It was beautiful. Lane saw this and knew it would be the last of this world’s beauty he would see.

Yuro pulled Lane by his shoulders to his knees. Lane inhaled deeply through his nose and dropped his neck. He turned and looked at the field of pink, seeing them sideways. It made him chuckle to himself – something about irony. And then he closed his eyes. His mind flooded with the image of home. Football, safety, meatloaf. Family. He saw mother’s grin, saw her whole face now, seeing him, receiving him. 

Yuro’s machete struck Lane’s neck and severed his head.