‘Del, set the lines straight’, Astor yelled from the other side of the rail. Dale had spent little to no time in understanding how to be a railway construction worker as specialised as that sounds, or at least be useful with some of the work that required less skill. Just as he had spent little time getting his feet back on ground and learning to survive again in the new town of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He had dumped the gloomy extradition clothes into a refuse bin and the only clothes he had were the two dirty, always-unwashed work clothes. He lived in a tavern; a tiny room that was only a bit larger than the prison he had once stayed, it had a stacked bed that he shared with one of the workmen, his two work clothes hanging from the wall facing the bed and his only footwear - brown muddy work boots – laying beneath the bed. There was little or no space to walk around in the room. For Dale, ahead of the claustrophobic restraints of the room, there was the bigger problem of nostalgia that always startled him when he got into the room. But it wasn’t only the room.
It was everything. He still had Pierson’s pendant laying beneath his pillow and Barry Yates’ letter which he happened to read almost every day. At the railway, he would frequently gaze at the lake that he had fallen into the first night he spent in the state and just get lost in the shadows that came with that yet another close contact with death. It was strange and scary to know that he had been followed with someone from Dexter still planning to shoot him. He was only lucky that night just as he had been lucky in Boorbunk, and when someone had been sent to shoot him in his cell, and when he had been younger and he had a hammerhead smashed against his head. It was one of the reasons why he had disposed the black uniform the next day because even one month after, Dale wasn’t completely sure that no one was following him. He still double-locked the door every night and covered the curtains and looked under the bed to see if there was someone hiding there and refused to sleep for the rest of the night when he had the awful dream where a sniper was on his head and the assassin was about to squeeze the trigger, only to wake up to find that he was in a little room not wandering about on the streets, trying to catch his breath.
‘You are going to show us some of your tricks today, huh?’, Astor said to Dale as they watched their hands off the mud in the lake.
Dale faked a smile and nodded. ‘Yes, I will’, he said.
The railway workers turned out to be haughty, reserved-to-the-point-of-unfriendly kind of people. Always concentrating on their work and talking less to other people, focusing their mind on their thoughts and roaming around just the way prisoners from all the Boorbunk wards behaved during The Redemption. They didn’t like their jobs, they didn’t like the frugal wages that they received.
It was the way members of the Ward-15 behaved to one another before The Humour Sect. Just the way, their group had served as a binding factor in the ward, bringing everyone together and making everyone forget about their immediate worries even though it was more visceral back at the prison. He had done the same thing here, showing them magic one night with the unbelievable Transformation Trick. And the outcome was just the same as when Tristan had cracked everyone at the cell that night. And even with his struggling mind and nostalgic unrest, he found solace in making people look in awe, and applause at the end of every performance.
Astor had become one of the men he talked to the most frequently, he reminded him of Tristan.
‘Hello everyone. My name is Dale and today, I will be performing some magic tricks’
‘Today, I am going to do some mind-reading’, he said in the lunchroom after they had all settled down digging in their first meals of the day that served as breakfast and lunch. ‘I bought some two decks of cards even though that might mean I would stay hungry till the end of the day’
Everyone laughed and by then, he had picked out the cards and lay the cards on the table. ‘Because our breaktime would soon be over, I would just do something very straightforward. So, I will give this deck of cards to my good friend and also my roommate, Frankie. I want him to check if they are actually different cards or not’, he said and walked over to his table.
‘They are different cards? You’ve checked well?’, Frankie nodded to Dale and returned the cards. ‘Here we go. This is the trick. I am going to give a random card to every one of us. I won’t see but you will’, Dale said and loved the glorious anticipation he was seeing on everyone’s faces.
‘I am going to shuffle the cards so it won’t be said from people like the white-haired Diman that this is trash’, he said the word with the Mexican accent of Diman, and everyone laughed including Diman. Diman had proven to be the haughtiest of them all, even showing apathy the first day that Dale had talked about performing some tricks, not knowing that it was going to blow his mind away just like it did to everyone else’s. ‘So, the cards have been well disoriented. So, I am going to share it now to everyone. I will give you all one card each to keep to yourself’, he said as he walked across the tables dropping one card to each person, facedown.
Probably owing to their hunger or the smallness of their foods, the men at the railway were fast eaters. They had all packed their empty plates aside, focusing on what stunt this man who was younger than most of them was going to pull off.
‘You are going to give me one too’, the man who owned the pub said from the little cubicle where he lay evasive.
‘Sure’, Dale said. The man had given Dale free food the day he had performed The Transformation Trick, stating that he was going to call his grandson and granddaughter to watch him perform sorcery.
‘I am not going to show you my card’, the man stated and held the card to his chest in a dramatic way that made everyone laugh.
‘So, now that everyone’s got a card. I want you to check it. I am going to give you some few seconds to master it’, Dale said looking down, making it clear that he wasn’t peeping at them.
‘Okay now that you have done that. This is what I am going to do. I am going to read your minds and get the exact card that you have’
‘You can’t do that. Can you?’, he heard the store-man say.
‘Well, that’s what we are going to find out’, he said and picked up the second deck of cards in his hand. ‘Then after I have read your mind, I would give you your exact card from this pile. Are you ready?’, he asked. Everyone in the hall echoed Yes.
The other townspeople in the hall echoed along packing their food to one side and neglecting the television that had been placed for them to view, they had found something more interesting to fix their gaze upon.
Dale looked at everyone with his eyes half-open, straining his eyes as if he was trying to pierce through the tough fabric of their mind and see the contents.
‘So now I have successfully found out the cards you picked. It didn’t take so much work’, he said and laughed. ‘So, I am going to start with you Diman. You don’t think I know your card, do you?’
Dale shuffled through the cards in his palm to show him the one he had picked. ‘Something tells me that this is your card’, he said and showed the five of hearts. Diman looked in utter astonishment and brought out his own card.
‘Yes, yes’, Diman said and laughed. ‘It’s not trash’
‘And you Well, this is your card. No matter how much you hide your card, you can hide your memory from the grasping eyes of a magician. Wallace, this is your card’, the cheers were unending with each man waiting for Dale to guess his card right. Which he did all the time and with speed.
‘I always like to keep the best for last and I appreciate doubting Thomases more’, Dale said and turned around, walking towards the restauranteur who was confident that Dale would be wrong this time.
‘Sir, are you still certain that I would not find out what your card is?’
‘If you get what my card is, I owe you one’, he said and everyone laughed.
‘Wow. I won’t go completely hungry after all’, Dale picked out two cards from his pocket and placed them face down in front of the barman. ‘I want everyone to watch carefully. I have two cards in my hand and I am going to reserve their identities for now but I just want to ask you, what was your card?’
‘You now want me to tell you what my card is?’, the man grinned. ‘It is a twelve of diamonds’
‘Twelve of diamonds. Hmm. But do not feel triumphant yet. The magician always has something in stock for you’, he said and now held out the two cards again. ‘I held two random cards before he mentioned his cards and now the two cards turn out to be…’, he said and ended the mouth-dropping suspense by slowly turning the two cards to show two different twelve of diamonds.
‘Wait a second, save your applause for the end. Come to think of it? How did I get two twelve of diamonds? I had just one deck with me, there is no way I would get two same cards in one deck. Earlier I had two decks remember and I distributed the cards of the first deck with all of you. Which means that you are meant to have one twelve of diamonds with you. Sir, why don’t you show us your twelve of diamonds?’
He moved his hand to touch the pocket of his jacket where he had kept the card safe only to feel nothing. ‘It was right here’, the man said.
‘Are you sure it was there or here?’, Dale replied holding out the card within his fingers and now the heavy clapping rattled through his ears but it didn’t take long before something else caught Dale’s attention. He took a one-second glimpse at the TV and then swung his face back up when his brain had read out the headlines. Dexter was in the news. ‘Please can you increase the volume?’, he asked the barman quickly, gesturing to the remote control that he placed on a little stool.
The headline read: THE GOVERNMENT OF DEXTER ISLANDS HAS NOW OFFICIALLY SURRENDERED TO TERRORISTS. ‘Apart from his inappropriate dress codes, his regularly politically-incurrent statements and doing absolutely nothing to the raging terrorist attack in the country, President Philip Hundred has proven incompetent to hold the seat of office after coming out yesterday evening to mention that Dexter Islands was now a terrorist nation and that it is beyond the power of the government to quench the conflagration within the state. He said this some hours before he resigned’, the reporter read.
‘However, it has not come with much shock to other nations. The United Nation Organisation have pulled out Dexter Islands from its body, dubbing it as ineligible to be termed a nation and even the president of the United States has called Dexter the next nation on the queue of getting extinct’
Dale kept his face glued on the TV screen even when the news was over. His mind had travelled faraway. By the time he staggered out of his reverie and looked around, all the rest of the workers were no longer there.
‘Are you okay, sorcerer?’, the pub owner asked.
‘Yes. I am’, Dale replied.
‘I have got your beer waiting here’, he pointed in the direction of a glass bottle.
‘Uhm. Thank you. I won’t be able to take it today’, he said and walked out.
The pub owner looked puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with the TV?’, he said. ‘Whatever. Young men. Mood swings. It’s natural’, he said and removed his grey flat cap from his head, beating dust off it and focusing on the rest of the customers. ‘You want an extra steak, mister?’
‘Good night Glen. Make sure you have a goodnight rest, Moses. You should hurry up home, Stalin. You don’t want to let Maria lock you outside’, Astor kept shouting through the evening to the rest of the railway workers on their way home. In a way that made Dale automatically remember Michael and Tristan, Astor was a friendly person and he did it with an innate disposition. Out of habit rather than of hypocritic display of niceness, he was in his usual hospitable appearance greeting everyone and cracking jokes as he passed.
‘Good night, Astor’, Stalin replied before walking out of earshot.
‘Hey, Frankie. Try to get a haircut before tomorrow. Del!’, Astor said and burst into laughter. ‘You made my day today’, he said looking for that careful, fresh smile that normally bubbled out of Dale’s face when he complemented him.
‘Good night, Astor’, Frankie said and waved to him.
‘Let’s go’, Dale said. The motel they stayed at was one mile from the railway site, a straight line from the pub they usually ate breakfast and lunch.
Dale pulled off his clothes and lay on his bed, mute and pensive. He could hear, through the thin walls of the room, the voices from a radio in the other room. They were talking about the problems of the soon-to-be-extinct Dexter Islands, it was what the whole world was eager to talk about but it brought pain to Dale as if a hot iron was shoved down his ass. As he lay in the utterly dark room with Frankie snoring loudly on top of him and frogs croaking outside, he remained awake frozen in a quandary about Dexter and the people in it.
Dale did not want to come from a country that has been extinct because half of him still lived there. He was a Dexterran and he still had his family there. He would never forget Ward-15, neither would living in New Mexico for the next eighty years make him ever forget The Humour Sect, neither would he forget Baskers where he had lived his first ten years. He wasn’t sure whether his three brothers were still alive or not, or whether they were somewhere in the den of The Blazing Empire tortured every night and day. He couldn’t remember their names, neither could he remember his own true name.
He started to sob as he thought of it all now. The frustration of the hope he had in humanity, in the belief that every story was going to have a good ending made his heart bleed. He stood up and lit a candle. He walked to the calendar hanging on the wall beside his work clothes and checked the day’s date. That day was going to mark the second month since he had left Dexter which meant that two Death Toasts had passed and two of the eighty-five members of the Ward-15 had been killed. His sight blurred with the tears melting out from the depth of his dark, troubled heart. He didn’t knnow what could have happened to them, all of them. They might have all been shot one day and that would be the end. As much as he didn’t want to think of it, he reminded himself that in Boorbunk such height of brutality was not impossible.
He dropped the candle and lay his wax-covered palms over his face, crying endlessly. For a moment, he saw himself still in Dexter, still in Boorbunk, still fearing for his life, helpless and on an indirect and more horrific form of death row. That was the way everyone in Dexter were feeling, they were weak and were now officially held up by a terrorist unit.
It was then that Dale made his mind up. He was going to return to Dexter Islands and he was going to change things, the way his father always wanted him to. He knew how close he had come to death when he had tried to change things and be radical in the prison, and he knew that the air was now murky and he was going to come closer to death and probably even die but just as it happened the last time, a transformation was at hand.
His body would be plated with stone and his heart with metal and he would return to Dexter. Because hiding in New Mexico was the easy way out. He picked the pendant and closed his fist around it. There was no going back, he thought. Lying beside the pendant was the letter of Barry Yates and now the contents of the letter even seemed to relate directly to him more than ever.
It read:
Dear friend,
Whoever is reading this letter presently, I want you to share my message with everyone left. I write this the night before the day I am certain would be my last and I do not want to just leave keeping all these messages to myself. I feel guilty, I am depressed, I am rotting inside because out of all of you innocent folks, I am the only one who was truly once a terrorist. I didn’t want to be, in the first place but I needed money to fend for myself. It was then that I was lured into this job and my life has changed. I have watched thousands of people die and I have been forced to slice the throat of another fellow man and leave him to die by the roadside, letting his blood flow down the street. Yes, I was one of the members of the Order of The Quppis and I confess it with the most bitter of dispositions. I had tried to escape but I was caught and brought here to the prison. My crime, not actually terrorism but for trying to abscond from Singalort, the base of The Order of the Quppis.
I tell you, brother that the destruction of Dexter Islands is at hand and the process has began. Boorbunk Bay is not a prison, it is a militarised abduction unit where people are held captives by the terrorists themselves, that’s why y’all are innocent and you just happened to be the replacement of the actual agents who had perpetrated the heinous crimes you were charged with. Boorbunk is not a prison and you are not a criminal, just as many other things are not what they are tagged to be.
Dexter is not a country. It has not been a country for the past twenty years when the Order of The Quppis started operating. Philip Hundred is one of the superintendents of the terrorists’ group and so are most of the other men that you see as leaders of the nation. All of them are marionettes in the hands of Retired General Owen Sawer and his plan, his singular vision is to ruin and destroy Dexter Islands so that in the next five years, all that remains of our great nation blessed with beautiful people and bountiful resources would be ash and smoke.
Now that I am done with what I have written down, I really do not know why I wrote it in the first place but it just makes me feel free and justified. If anyone asks me of any way out to the present menace, I would simply say that there is no way out. There are some powers that are out there that are mightier than ours. Mightier than God’s. Just stay woke and pray to be redeemed.
Your fellow inmate, Barry Yates
Dale squeezed the paper in his hand and threw it out the window. He clenched his lips and looked at his palms. It was the last time he was going to need it.
I am redeemed now but I have other plans.