It was like fire in his mind, in all their minds, it was a great bonfire reaching up to the sky, and Ralph knew that when it reached the sun, he’d wake up from it – a fever dream. The night had seemed to last forever, and they would all remember it for years to come, they knew, if there were years ahead of them and not mere hours.
Shadows flickered around them, the darkness itself illuminated by a brilliant moon grown hazy with the canvas that stretched above their heads. The smells were sweat and farts and hidden tears – the fear was in all their mouths, in their nostrils, like smoke from a catching fire. The bunks and cots were shadowy with the other boys, some of them moaning in real or imagined pain, others huddled together like the small group Ralph found himself in, a circle of boys sitting up on two cots and sprawled on the wood floor of the Hut.
A match lit, the tiny yellow flame illuminated the circle of boys, casting their faces in flickering. It was like camp, that’s what Ralph thought, it was like camp only it wasn’t camp, it was the nightmare of what camp was to children much younger than them. Part of him felt as if he were still four years old and he’d been left all alone at the playground, his mother had not come to get him after school, and all the other children were gone, no one needed him enough to be there. No one wanted him enough. No one cared. But he was older now. He had to let the memory of that turn to ash. He needed to tell what had happened. He had to break the silence so the other boys around him could break theirs, too, so they could find relief from this night.
Ralph went first, his breath coming slowly because he still hadn’t recovered from the way they’d held him down, his asthma had kicked in slightly and they’d taken away his inhaler so he had to be careful. Slow, deep breaths. His eyes hurt just from the memory of the interrogation’s bright lights and then the bitter tears that followed his confession. Was he still crying? Even he wasn’t sure, but he tried to hold it in as much as possible, to hold in the little boy inside him who threatened to burst out and show the others that he was what he’d always feared himself to be: a weakling. The darting matchlight slapped yellow war-paint on all of their features. They were Indians in a sweat lodge. He closed his eyes and began, “I had just barely gotten to sleep – halfway in a dream and it was all kind of like a dream when I heard all the shouting, it was my dad, he was shouting like crazy.”
Jesus DeMiranda, the smallest boy of thirteen that Ralph had ever seen, said nothing, but his eyes widened, and he had a curious curl to his lips like he was about to say something, even wanted to, but could not. There was something compelling to his face, something withdrawn yet very proud. Ralph tried not to only look at him, because it made him feel little and ready to break down crying again, so he laughed like it didn’t matter, “And my dad is such a loud son of a bitch.”
Jack jumped in, “My dad didn’t say a word. The bastard.”
Hugh coughed. “My dad went nuts, he was just shouting, and my mom was crying, but even when the big guy grabbed me—“
“The big black guy,” Jack added, then glanced at the others. The match died. Another one burst to life immediately; Ralph and his matchbook again.
“A big white guy,” Marsh said, slapping Jack across the top of the head.
“Yeah, a big white guy, wearing camouflage shit and his face was all green, it was freaky, I tell ya,” Ralph continued, holding the piss-colored fire in his hands like a delicate small bird in front of the others so they could all see their own fear, “and I was so scared I pissed my underwear and my dad, when I saw him, he was practically crying but since I could tell they weren't beat up I knew somehow that they had something to do with this, and it had something to do with that thing with my cousin from three days before and maybe with the fire that burned down this old shack, but I never really thought they’d do something like this, I mean, shit, this kind of Nazi bullshit—“
“It’s scary,” Marsh said, and his voice seemed too small for his six-foot tall frame. He grasped his elbows, leaning forward on his knees. “I just smoked some pot. That was it. Not half as much as my friends.”
“What did you do that got you sent here?” Ralph asked Jack.
A silence.
Match died.
“Ralph,” someone said in the dark, Ralph wasn’t sure who it was, but he waited in the dark for a moment because the ghosts of their faces still hung there, photographed by the last light of the match.
Scraped another one against the matchbook.
Marsh continued, “With me, I thought they’d killed my folks and my sister and they were gonna do something terrible to me. And then I wished it was a dream. All of it.”
“They hit you hard?” Hugh asked, nodding towards him.
Marsh shrugged. “They hit me. That’s all. I barely felt it by then. I just figured they were gonna kill me. I figured if I just concentrated or something it would all happen and then it would be over. I thought it was because of the time I bought pot and got more than I paid for. That’s what I thought. I didn’t even think. I just figured that was it. It was over.”
“And it’s worse than that,” Jack said. “You know what I heard my mother say when they put the blindfold on me? I heard her say—“
“No one cares,” Ralph spat. “They all lied.”
The boys fell silent for a minute.
“I thought it was gonna be like ToughLove or something.”
“They sold us up a river.”
Jesus opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it again. Fear had sealed his lips.
“They did it because they love me,” Jack said, but he was crying, he was fourteen and crying like a baby and Ralph decided then and there that he didn’t care what the others thought. He leaned over and threw his arm over Jack’s shoulder. It reminded him of when his little brother got scared of lightning or of nightmares, and even though Jack was his age, it seemed okay, it seemed like it was the only thing to do. Jack leaned his head against Ralph’s neck, and wept while the others watched, not shocked, not confused, but with longing for someone to let them cry on his shoulder, too.
Jesus DeMiranda wept, too, softly. Ralph asked him why, and he said it was because he was afraid of the dark. Ralph gave him one match to keep. “For an emergency,” he said, and all the boys watched as the little DeMiranda boy put it in his pocket, as if the match were hope and someone needed to keep it.
Ralph kept lighting his matches as other boys gathered around in the darkness and told their stories of woe, and wept, and gave up what fight they had in them.
By the time Ralph’s last match had died, morning had come, and with it, no sound until the foghorn blasted its wake up call.
Copyright 1999 Douglas Clegg. Originally published in Subterranean Gallery, edited by William Schafer and Richard Chizmar. All rights reserved, used here with permission.