I used to receive hundreds of letters addressed to someone who died a long time ago. At first, I let them pile up in a heap, unopened. Eventually, the mountain of mail took over my cramped space. When I couldn’t stand the sight any longer, I read them one by one. They were from all over the country by people who wanted me to save them. To a few devotees I wrote back. I tried to explain how they were wrong. How I was wrong. How everything went wrong:
It rained the day I found the toothpick in the Ziploc in my locker. When I arrived at Bluebird the parking lot was littered with thin worms writhing in rainbows of oily puddles. They washed down from the edge of the lumberyard. Without an umbrella, I hurried from my pickup into the factory and flattened a few wrigglers along the way.
Inside the baggie was a strip of paper with the note: Slip this in with the others.
I hadn’t always worked the assembly line. Before The Unraveling, I had been a salaried sales rep with Planters, over in Plymouth. I had vacation days and benefits. Our two-story house had bright white shutters. We had an above-ground pool. There wasn’t a single reasonable item on my boys’ Christmas lists that Santa overlooked. Then everything fell apart: separation, divorce, and Sara became my remarried ex-wife. The boys had to start making a half-hour trip to my trailer in Tanglewood on alternating weekends.
On each box of Bluebird toothpicks was a logo of a bluebird perched on a toothpick. Every day millions of toothpicks were corralled into boxes and those boxes emerged out of a square hatch in a wall on a conveyer belt; an endless stream of traffic. My job was to make sure all the toothpicks were tucked inside and to seal the boxes. Tuck and seal, tuck and seal. I had to work fast or else I’d create a logjam. When that happened, everything would temporarily shut down. When I first started at Bluebird, my coworker Ulrich had shown me around. He wanted me to understand that if I worked hard, like he had, my future wouldn’t always be on the assembly line. He’d suggested that someday I might operate machines.
The locker room, off the break room, was where you clocked in and out each day. I kept my lunch, a smock, gloves, and goggles inside. Ten of us worked in the factory and I was locker number eight. The locker doors had slats for ventilation and that’s how the person slid the Ziploc in. Any one of us could have come in after hours and done it; we each had a set of keys for when we worked overtime.
I inspected the toothpick in the dim, fluorescent light. There were no obvious flaws. It wasn’t crooked or discolored. It didn’t smell like anything. As far as I could tell it was the standard Bluebird brand. The note was printed on plain white paper and sliced neatly as if shorn by a paper cutter or else scissored by someone with a very steady hand.
Ulrich was drinking coffee at a small table in the break room. I approached him and shouted. The television was fixed on an aggressive news channel and on maximum volume. When I first started, the ceaseless sound of human anger unsettled me. Even the commercials seemed irate. Eventually, I got used to it.
“Ulrich,” I hollered and held the Ziploc aloft. “You know anything about this?”
I’d never seen Ulrich without bloodshot eyes. He’d been around Bluebird as long as anyone and had a position in the machine room. I told myself that if I ever noticed crimson streaks striping my sclera, I’d quit.
He set his mug down and said, “I don’t,” and the way his brows jumped and his gaze shifted from me back to the television told me he did.
“You ever get one?”
“A toothpick?”
“Yeah. In a baggie. There’s a note. I’m supposed to put it in with the others. Why would I do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“You think I should?”
“I have no idea, Emry. My knees hurt. Rain is murder. If you’re so bent out of shape about it, talk to one of the Boys.” Ulrich referred to our co-workers—none of them younger than twenty-five—as “the Boys.” This included Shirley and Peggy. It did not include me. He drained his coffee and brushed by me to the sink.
“I’m not bent out of shape.”
With his back to me, I couldn’t read Ulrich’s face nor could I hear his muffled voice when he said whatever he said. It sounded like, Just do as you’re told, but it could have been, Welcome to the fold.
It was easy to lose track of time on the line. Hours drifted. The flock of boxes burst out of the hatch in the wall and raced toward me.
For about a week, shortly before my divorce, I had tried hypnotic therapy in an effort to stop drinking. The goal of the therapy was to train my mind to create a safe space and to enter that space whenever I craved a drink. I remember the hypnotist telling me to close my eyes and focus on a candle flame. I had to visualize it waving the way fire waves. Then I was out. In the end, it didn’t work, but I did feel sleepy and detached afterward. That was how I felt on the assembly line. I not only lost track of time, I lost track of myself; became a floating man. My arms, hands, and fingers were on autopilot as they worried over unsettled splinters of wood and my mind strayed. Who knew where I went in those trances. Sometimes I wondered if the hypnotism session actually did work and that something inside of me had turned off. Maybe a better man I used to be slumbered inside. All I needed was for the hypnotist to snap his fingers and make me whole again.
I didn’t mention the toothpick to anyone else. I finished my shift and went home. When I emptied my pockets later that night, I was surprised to see the Ziploc was empty. I might have slipped the toothpick in with the others, as instructed, although I had no memory of doing so.
The next day, a Friday, I discovered another baggie. Inside, with a toothpick, was a note which read, Welcome to the fold.
When I walked past Ulrich in the break room, I noticed that the edges of his lips lifted ever-so-slightly and his rusty eyes followed me all the way to my station beside the conveyor belt.
After work and the AA meeting I returned home with a six pack of neutered beer. I liked to celebrate the end of the week and the beginning of a weekend with my boys. My trailer, a doublewide, was one of the biggest in the park. It cost more than I could afford—when you factored in child support—but I wanted them to have their own bedroom. My lot was only a few blocks away from the Methodist church. In the churchyard was a playground and I’d often take the kids to it. The minister said we were free to use it anytime we wanted, which I appreciated. As a show of gratitude I started going to Services on occasional Sundays when I didn’t have the boys. When the basket came around, I’d pitch in a few bucks that I couldn’t spare.
That Friday night, when I emptied my pockets, I discovered the Ziploc baggie still had the toothpick. I hadn’t slid it in with the others. I couldn’t say why I didn’t do it any more than I could say why I had done it the day before.
In AA meetings we’re asked to believe in a higher power and to put faith in our better angels. The “better angels of our nature.” It was something Lincoln said. As far as I knew, Abe wasn’t an alcoholic, but lots of people thought he was a good man. I didn’t know if the better angel of my nature put the toothpick in with the others or if it did not.
Back when I drank, I used to have a smoke after dinner. Once I cleaned up, I learned that my after-dinner cigarette dialed the alcohol craving to high alert. All kinds of buzzers blared when the nicotine hit my brain and made it nearly impossible to stay away from booze. To quell the urge for a cigarette, I sucked on a toothpick. After I’d eaten a beef pot pie and tidied up the place in preparation for the boys, I took my six-pack and the Ziploc out on the back porch and sat in an old Adirondack chair I’d been gifted for Father’s Day. The sun had set behind the water tower and the sky was darkening. It was a cool night. The air smelled like butterscotch. I watched my neighbor Jenny pull her nurses scrubs from the clothesline. I drank a few beers and popped the toothpick from the baggie into my mouth.
The wide dome of night sky introduced stars. I knew that there were dozens of constellations and that each one came with an ancient story. When I squinted into the heavens I couldn’t recollect a single one. Above resembled an enormous net. Or maybe a web. Once, when I was a boy traipsing through the woods right after a summer shower, I stumbled upon a huge spider web stretched overhead between two birch trees. In damp sunlight countless droplets of water shimmered on the gossamer silk threads. I stood there gaping, waiting for something to happen. That’s how I felt that Friday night on the porch picking my teeth; an anxious awe. The last thing I remember thinking before my throat constricted and I blacked out was: Where’s the spider that made such a vast web?
My better angel that night was my neighbor. Jenny heard me gasping horrifically and found me floundering on the porch floor. She jabbed me with an epi-pen and eventually my dim world lightened. I took slow sips of air which whistled through my lungs.
“You had an allergic reaction,” she said when I was well enough to sit upright. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
I told her not to. Hell if I could afford that.
“I can drive. This is serious,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be all right. Already better.”
She got me water. She gave me Benadryl. She mentioned her peanut allergies. She asked what I’d been eating. She suspected the beef pot pie.
“I think it was the toothpick,” I said.
“What toothpick?”
“It’s around here somewhere.”
She eyed the non-beer on the table beside my chair. “I thought you didn’t drink.”
“It’s non,” I said. I wondered how she knew I was a recovered.
“No, it’s not.” She grabbed an empty and held it in the porch light. “This is an actual Bud.”
“Non,” I said. “Zero.”
“Not non. Look,” she thrust the bottle in my face. “5% alcohol. You can smell it.”
“I…” I said. Up close, the bottle was impossible to read. “It can’t be real.”
“Maybe you made a mistake.” She set the bottle on the porch next to me. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”
My mind seized on the error. I broke out in a cold sweat. It’d been two-hundred and eighty nine days since my last drink. I was really looking forward to celebrating one year.
Mentally, I’d made plans to go on a picnic with the boys. I was going to nonchalantly invite Sara.
“Thank you,” I told Jenny. I felt dizzy when I tried to stand and maybe I stumbled a bit, but I found my feet and said, “I’m fine.”
I fidgeted through the weekend, a mess. I was determined to pull myself together so the boys wouldn’t suspect that I’d screwed up. My voice was raw and raspy and I blamed it on seasonal allergies I didn’t have. I choked down our traditional Saturday dinner—hot dogs, mac and cheese, carrot sticks—and suffered bouts of nausea while the boys slept.
Despite my best efforts to keep myself together, when Sara came to the door to fetch Cade and Brandon on Sunday afternoon, she gave me a crooked look and said: “You good?”
“Yeah, sure,” I’d said. “Why?”
She shooed the boys to the Subaru—a car that used to be ours—and lingered by the front door with me. I had trouble arranging my mouth into the right shape. A grin was impossible and a frown contradicted what I just said. So my lips quivered uncertainly as I waited for her to say more; to say exactly what we both knew she was going to say.
Standing with her in the afternoon sunlight which illuminated the blonde highlights I knew she carefully combed into her naturally dun-colored hair, I remembered the time she told me she was pregnant with our first son. I was so unexpectedly moved that my eyes started leaking and I had to turn away to keep from openly sobbing. That Sunday Sara saw my struggle. Nothing needed to be said. After the pinch I felt in the bridge of my nose and the undeniable wash of emotion breached the levee, I turned my head away. By the time I was able to contain myself, Sara was already behind the wheel and the boys—gawking at me through the windows—were both unsmiling.
Later, when Sara called and suggested that we take a short break from weekend visits, I resisted. They were the only bright spot in my life.
“I know,” she’d said. “That’s part of the problem.”
“Please,” I said and said it again.
Then she slid the dagger into my gut: “The boys want to take a break, Emry. You still scare them sometimes.”
What could I say to that? I’d heard bits and pieces of scary stories about me—the Dad Monster—before. Fist-holes in the hall. The bent rim of a dirt bike. A crack in the television. Hot, sticky, blurry words I’d hollered—Goddamned lazyass nogood motherfuck pieceofshit—hurled at nobody in particular. I had to replace the couch in the family room after I’d shat myself on it.
Until I’d cleaned up, the ruin left in the wake of my drunken fury was plain to see by everyone but me. Since I couldn’t remember the man that I’d been I had to trust those who couldn’t forget.
“All right,” I told Sara, my voice cracked. “We’ll take a little break.”
After the hubbub of the weekend I’d forgotten all about the toothpick. Another one was waiting for me in my locker. The note had one word on it: Believe.
“Believe?” I’d shouted at Ulrich who was seated with his coffee in the break room bathed in cable news.
“Believe?” he’d screamed.
“That’s what’s written on the note. What does it mean?”
“Hell if I know.”
“You know. Are you poisoning these? One almost killed me the other day.”
“Hey, Emry,” Ulrich said, standing. “You’re gonna-wanna calm down, Bud.” He shuffled to my side and placed his big hands on my shoulders. “Just calm down,” he whispered.
“I’m calm,” I said. “But I need an explanation.”
“You’re part of this now.”
Standing so close to Ulrich made me uncomfortable in three ways and I couldn’t decide which the worst was: those stained eyes, his meaty hands, or his foul coffee breath. “Part of what, Ulrich?”
“The toothpicks in the baggies aren’t meant for you. Your job is to distribute them.”
“My job? Is Mr. Fisk behind this?”
“It’s much bigger than him. You ever hear of Agathocles of Syracuse?”
“No,” I said. “Is he on social media because I don’t…”
“He’s there. But he’s also here. And out there.” Ulrich removed one of his hands and pointed at a wall. “In the trees.”
“He lives in the forest?”
Ulrich quickly returned his hand to my shoulder. He said, “Before a toothpick is a toothpick, it’s a tree. One tree in a field attracts lightening. It doesn’t stand a chance alone. You and me and Agathocles—we are the woods.”
As an alcoholic, I spent countless hours with red-eyed men filled with conviction. I was one of them. The things I heard—the things I probably said—at one in the morning upon a weathered stool at Blisters was far out. Drunk, drunken made sense. Sober ears hear dumb crystal clear. “Ulrich,” I said slowly, “a poisoned toothpick almost killed me.”
“It made you sick because it wasn’t meant for you. It’s meant for the disciples. The Agathocans. The anointed toothpick finds them. Then, when there’s an army, they’ll come. They’ll find us. They’ll set us free.”
“Free from what?”
Ulrich removed his hands from my shoulders and gestured around the room. “All of this. Every bit of the unclean world and all the peoplemachines mucking it up.”
“Peoplemachines?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but you must,” he said, and grabbed my shoulders again.
“In some weirdo from Syracuse living in the woods?”
“He’s not just in the woods. He’s in the streets, in church, at school, down at the grocery store.”
“If he’s everywhere, why can’t I see him?”
“When you’re ready, you will. He wears a reflective mask. When you gaze at him, you see yourself. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’re a machine. Then you’ll never be able to see him. Do you follow me?”
A few months into AA I had been approached by a panhandler in the Walmart parking lot on a sunny afternoon. The man was completely blitzed. His slurred words didn’t make any sense, but it was clear what he wanted. A few bucks to buy a bottle of hooch. That’s it. All the complicated human performances—doing what’s right, being kind to others, contributing to the betterment of society—had been jettisoned into a sea upon which he no longer sailed. That was the first time I’d confronted someone that reminded me of Drunken Me. Long after I’d brushed him aside and continued living one day at a time I envied his uncomplicated and single-minded desire. I’d never wanted a drink so bad in my life.
That’s how I felt in the break room confined by Ulrich.
“I do,” I said. “I’ll be on the lookout.”
And then he finally let me go.
Over the next few weeks I unraveled. Shortly after my confrontation with Ulrich I was ushered into Mr. Fisk’s office and given a modest raise. To celebrate, my co-workers took me bowling and, in spite of myself, I shared several pitchers with “the boys” and ended the night in Peg’s bed.
Every morning I’d wake up ashamed. Evenings, I fought the urge to call my sons. I ached to hear their voices but didn’t trust what they might hear in mine. Also, I’ll admit that I was still a little sore about their decision to take a break from me. If I still scared them when I was sober for nearly a year—living my best self—when would I earn their trust? How many days did I need to repent? How many apologizes did I owe? Had it occurred to them that they owed me an apology? I had feelings. I was human. I bruised just like them. Would it have killed one of them to pick up the phone and give me a call just to say hello? Maybe text, Hey, Dad, what’s up? A simple note was all I might have needed to stop my downward spiral.
One odd weekend Peg showed up with an overnight bag. I didn’t remember inviting her over, but she insisted I did. My place was a sty and she didn’t mind. We spent a lot of time in my bed and when she offered a cigarette, I took it. We smoked on the back porch with a bottle of scotch under a clear night.
“Let me ask you something,” I’d said when I knew she was mellow. The Adirondack chair was big enough for both of us. She was half on my lap and I’d had my arm around her. We passed a glass between us. “What do you see up there?” I angled the tip of the cigarette to the star-webbed sky.
Peg was a divorcee like me although she’d done it twice. She had three kids—if she told me their names or ages, I never remembered. She had lived in Tanglewood her whole life and talked about leaving in a way that seemed certain she never would. She wanted me to hate the place so much that I secretly loved it, like she did. I think she thought that we’d somehow be united in that hatred. She denigrated the town—the nosy people, the potholes in the roads, the lack of decent restaurants and bars—and tried to bait me into bitching about the place, too. That way she’d feel justified in criticizing me which was what she’d wanted to do all along. The happiest I’d ever seen her was after I’d said, “I hate the way the lumberyard smells,” to which she’d replied, “Shut-up,” and punched my shoulder. “You’re the one that stinks!”
That night on the porch she’d craned her neck and said, “What do you mean?”
“Constellations. You know any of them?”
“The Big Dipper,” she’d said. “Orion.”
“How about Agathocles? You see him up there?”
Peg took a sip of scotch and side-eyed me. Other than that time with Ulrich, I hadn’t heard anyone use the name.
“Emry, let’s not talk about him.” She offered the glass to me.
“Why not?”
“I know you think it’s all bullshit.”
I had Googled Agathocles of Syracuse earlier that day. He had been a real person who lived in Italy, not New York. He was born poor but didn’t stay that way. Nothing online suggested how he convinced people to follow him, but hundreds did. He and his henchmen slaughtered the rich and overthrew the country thousands of years ago. It was all pretty standard stuff you’d expect from a tyrant.
“You know how he died?” I asked Peg. “A poisoned toothpick!”
“Lower your voice,” Peg said. She rose from my lap and stood across from me with folded arms.
“Apparently his son gave it to him,” I said.
“Agathocles didn’t die. He was poisoned, but he didn’t die. A few loyalists snuck him away to Crete where he recovered and reformed. There, he lived peacefully. In a forest. With the Agathocans.”
“You’re serious?” I sat forward so I could read her face for any sarcasm. My cigarette burned down to the filter. “And you believe in Peoplemachines?”
“Don’t make fun,” she’d said, turning away. “I wondered what kind of drunk you were. Now I know.”
I swallowed a fierce and familiar anger. What flavor of alcoholic did she think I was? I knew better than to ask. Instead, I took a deep breath, snubbed out the cigarette, and set the glass by my feet. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that people will get hurt. Someone could get killed.”
“The Chosen don’t die. They awaken,” she said, turning back to me. “Even if there aren’t Peoplemachines, there is evil in the world. And madness…how do you explain all the madness? Nobody’s civil anymore. You read the news. It’s chaos out there. I want it to stop. A lot of us do. We’re not all crazy, Emry. If you don’t believe me, check out the website.”
That night I was successful in repressing a gathering rage, but I failed to contain a meteor shower of self-pity. All the things I should have done, I didn’t do. I should have confessed to Peg that, except for the first time, I wasn’t putting the toxic toothpicks in the boxes. I was throwing them out when I should have taken them to the police. I should have, at the very least, left Bluebird. At the time, filled with alcohol-fuelled righteousness, quitting seemed impossible. Without money I couldn’t pay child support and Sara made it clear that without child support I’d never see the boys again. I should have lied and told Peg that we might have something special going and if she’d only be patient, we might have a future. She could introduce me to her kids. But I didn’t speak a word because my throat constricted and I felt tears—hot as red ant bites—stinging my eyes. I pinched the bridge of my nose and lowered my head.
Peg could see I was a mess. She would have rather heard me shout than see me cry. “I’ve got to go,” she said. She went inside to retrieve her things. On the kitchen counter she left me a note with the Agathocles-follower website on it.
I stayed outside steeped in tipsy feelings. My blood struggled to sop up the scotch. My pores reluctantly released toxins in a sheen of perspiration. My lousy sweat evaporated. Under the great spider web in the sky I drifted into a pocket of calm. I started thinking about Sara and how I’d really screwed things up. A while back, over the phone, she had told me about a time, shortly after our divorce, when she woke up in the middle of the night and saw someone sitting at the foot of the bed. At first, she thought it was Cade who was prone to nightmares, but the dark shape was man-sized. He was completely still. She had no idea how long he’d been watching her sleep.
When she told me this story, I was outraged. Who had she been seeing since I was gone? Had she given her phone number to half the town? Had she used one of those online dating sites? What if he wanted to harm the boys?
What she did was carefully slide out of bed, gently grab the man by the arm, lead him through the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door. The next day she had all the locks changed.
Sitting on the porch that night I searched every dusty corner of my mind for a memory of that night in Sara’s bedroom. I believed her. She wouldn’t have lied. I was the man at the foot of her bed. I felt awful about it but I didn’t know how to apologize for a monster I couldn’t recall.
Submerged in these thoughts, strangled by stars, I passed out on the back porch and dreamt that I was a spider.
It was a hot and dry Wednesday when I found the matchstick in the Ziploc in my locker.
Two nights prior I’d received a surprise phone call from Sara. She told me that Cade was in the hospital with food poisoning.
“I thought you should know,” she’d said.
“What happened?”
“The doctors aren’t sure. Could have been something he ate. He’s gotten plenty of fluids and we’re told we can take him home tomorrow.”
“What did he eat?”
“Nothing unusual. We had spaghetti and meatballs. I guess it didn’t sit well with him.”
“Sara,” I’d said, trying to contain the volume of my voice, “do you know if he used a toothpick afterward?”
“Maybe,” she’d said. “Why?”
“Some of them are bad.”
“The toothpicks? Bad, how, Emry?” In her voice I heard the strain and accusation.
“Just tell him to stop using them for a while. Or, no, you know what, I’ll tell him myself. When are visiting hours over?”
“You’re his father. They’re never over.”
“Right, good.”
“You sure you’re alright to drive?”
“Yes. I’m fine. Tell him I’ll be there soon,” I’d said. Then I hung up the phone, hurried out of my trailer, and slid into my pickup. I put the key in the ignition. All I had to do was turn over the engine. Then maintain my speed. Stay in my lane. Get to the hospital and visit my son who, like me, enjoyed a toothpick after dinner. I’d taught him how to really dig between each tooth. Even the molars. He couldn’t do that anymore. It was too risky. How many sticks had been poisoned? Hundreds. Maybe more. And wasn’t I culpable? Who would choose the one I slipped into the box? My son? The chances were infinitesimal. Still, I thought. It was possible. I’d made it possible.
What proved to be impossible was me turning the key. Instead, I returned inside where a bottle of scotch was there to greet me. Sometime the next day Sara called and left a message saying that Cade had returned home from the hospital and was fine.
That Wednesday, with the matchstick, I discovered a folded piece of aluminum foil and a slip of paper which read: Friday. 9 pm. Bluebird parking lot. We are the flames!
The aluminum foil had two holes and loose threads affixed to the sides. It was a rudimentary mask. The matchstick was a Red Strike with its distinctive red-colored stick. I had plenty at home. The matchbox was decorated with a cartoonish matchstick man who had flames for hair. On his wooden face was a sly smile which suggested that he was pleased with whatever the user was about to light. Go ahead, Mr. Matchstick seemed to say, use Red Strike. Make fire.
At work, on Friday, I felt an electric buzz radiating off of my colleagues. In the break room Ulrich and a few others were at the table talking conspiratorially. Someone had turned the television off.
Before I clocked out at the end of the day I stopped by Mr. Fisk’s office. I’d spent eight hours on the assembly line trying to convince myself not to obey what had been written on the slip of paper. I’d hoped Fisk could offer guidance. I really needed him to tell me to stay home. But the topic never came up. We ended up chit-chatting about the weather—the drought we were experiencing—and when it might rain again. Then, as I was leaving, he’d said, “See you later.” Or maybe he’d said, “See you later?”
That night I drove cautiously to Bluebird. Earlier, I’d made a pit stop at the liquor store and I knew that I shouldn’t be behind the wheel. When I arrived, I was shocked by the turnout. I had to park all the way in the back. Before coming, I’d told myself that I was only going to drive by and check it out. If there were only one or two cars, I’d have gone back home, but it looked like the entire town showed up.
I felt silly in the mask. The foil made indentations against my skin and it was difficult to breathe. As I paced through the parking lot and saw everyone else wearing them, it became less strange.
When I got to the entrance of the factory I approached a group of middle-aged women who may have been elementary school teachers. I asked a woman wearing a crooked mask what was going on, and she said, “We’re waiting.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure,” she said and although I couldn’t see her mouth, I knew she was smiling. There was such delight in her voice. She didn’t sound like an angry woman with a vendetta. She could have been one of Peg’s friends.
Right then and there I decided I would leave. Not just the Bluebird parking lot, but Tanglewood. The whole place was toxic and while I lived there I could never recover.
As I began to push my way against the crowd I noticed a man at the edge of the lumberyard staring at me. Unlike all the other crumpled makeshift masks, his was smooth; it may have been made of glass. He looked familiar, yet I couldn’t recognize him. When I got closer I became distracted by the distorted version of myself reflected in his mask squinting back at me; squinting back at him. I became lightheaded. The din of the crowd faded. My swirling thoughts ceased. Anxiety exited. The bowtie of guilt around my neck loosened. Shame sloughed off my shoulders like a second skin.
Then the man lifted his arm and, like that, snapped his fingers. The sound traveled from his hand, wormed its way through the folds of my brain, and lit me up. I recognized him then. The hypnotist.
In jail, there’s plenty of time to think. Here, everything smells like onions. It’s not that bad, though. I’ve grown used to it. I have a job folding laundry for which I get paid fifteen cents per hour. By the time I’m released I’ll have $2,190. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with that money.
When they hauled me in and accused me of arson, I denied it. “Like everyone else,” I’d said, “I was swept up in the crowd.” There were two detectives who interrogated me in a small, windowless room. They asked why I wanted to burn Bluebird down. I said, “I don’t know.” They asked me if I’d ever visited the Agathocles website. I said, “Once or twice.” They said, “Not more than that? You didn’t log on several times a day?” I asked if it was a crime to use the internet. They said, “Does, ‘Burn it all to the ground’ ring a bell?” The command did sound familiar; I had read it or maybe heard it somewhere. “If you come clean,” they said, “maybe the judge will show leniency.” I told them I wasn’t guilty. They said, “Why did you put the matchsticks in the lockers?” I said, “I didn’t.” Then they showed me footage from a security camera in the locker room that had been recovered from the fire. In the video was a man stumbling around and difficultly cramming Ziploc baggies through the locker slats. “That’s you, right?” they asked. I said, “I need to speak to a lawyer.”
Eventually, the fan mail addressed to Agathocles slowed to a trickle. None of the people I wrote to responded to me. As far as I can tell, everyone has moved on. These days, I write letters to my sons and while they’ve never written back, I’m hoping someday they will.
When I worked on the assembly line I had plenty of time to think, too. My mind drifted while my body did what it was trained to do. I can’t recollect much from those days, but the image of a candle flame will float into my head at night when I’m having trouble sleeping. I can’t say for certain why I’ll remember certain details any more than I can say why I’d forgotten them in the first place.
The other day I met a new inmate in the laundry room and he asked what everybody always asks in prison: “What are you in here for?” I gave him the same story I’d told everyone else. But later that night a memory sparked and flared.
The night of the fire, when the hypnotist snapped his fingers, I followed him into the lumberyard. We crept around the logging trucks in darkness. He seemed to know where he was going and I struggled to keep up. When we reached a side door, he unlocked it and disappeared inside. I figured the rest of the people who had gathered in the parking lot would charge through the front door and we’d soon hear them tearing things apart.
In my rush to keep up with the hypnotist I was having trouble breathing. I walked forward in the darkness and stopped when I bumped into something. I removed the mask and let it drop to the floor.
When the lights came on I noticed that I was standing next to a huge machine. In fact, machines were waking up everywhere I turned. The debarker started whirring, the unraveller began rotating, and the cutter blades chopped up the billets.
The hypnotist beckoned and I followed him through a network of tubes and chutes. He knew where all the buttons and switches were located. Soon, a dryer started spinning. A polisher, sifter, and blower roared to life. The great cacophony of sound vibrated inside of me. A dizzying cascade of toothpicks spit out of a drum into awaiting packages. The carousel propelled everything forward.
The steady stream of boxes led to the wall with the hatch. Toothpicks sailed right by. Without anyone on the other side they would zoom all the way to packaging and spill onto the floor. We both stood there watching them go.
After a while, the hypnotist rummaged around in his pocket and pulled out a box of Red Strikes. He carefully removed a match and ran it against the course strike pad. The head ignited with a snap. He held the flame a few inches from my eyes and I was mesmerized by the slow burn that inched toward his fingers. “Matchstick Man,” he said, “meet Mr. Bluebird.” He dropped the flame into a toothpick box. I kept my eyes on the blaze. By the time it passed through the hatch and out of sight, the box was on fire.
The hypnotist turned and offered me the matchbox.
I almost didn’t recognize the face I saw in the mirror mask. I had a scratch on my forehead where the aluminum had cut into my skin. My nose was enormous and red. My lips curled into a sneer. My eyes were wet and unsteady. Thick engorged veins pulsed at my temples.
I turned away from my reflection. Then I took the Red Strikes from the hypnotist, struck a match, and slid it in with the toothpicks. I did this again and again and again until there was nothing left.
