Those Who Throw Rocks
WITH A HISS of aerosol, the piercing siren of the Uppertunity Trucks begin their rounds, marking the start of the Work Season in the Measol District. By the boarded-up clinic, in past the cracked stone of the sidewalks, between the tall lamp posts that flash a spotlight on anything that moves, past those huddled by the burning piles of waste comes the procession of trucks. Past the sandbags heaped beneath the guard towers, between the abandoned storefronts, the trucks rolled south through rain that pressed the filthy air down onto the street. Some of the trucks had visible dents, while other had covered their damage with scraps of poorly cut wood or steel. Some had working red lights that flickered against the wet air. Some had speakers that crackled and played a catchy jingle. All were painted with the Uppertunity logo: a smiling face riding an arrow upward out of a black circle.
To most, the siren is a call to hide. Men and women in thin coats, dirty clothes, and blistered feet turned away into the alleys, drew down into the gutters, scurried through holes into empty buildings. They are those not ready to volunteer. The young children able to climb ascend sturdy drainpipes to hide on the roofs of the few sound buildings where they camp and fight and catch birds. Those with the strength to help others rarely risk it. They think only of protecting themselves and their meager supplies. Still others come forward and climb onto the trucks. Those with visible ribs or sour-smelling wounds, those so tired they can’t stop shaking, those who have no choice. They are those ready to volunteer. A man lay sleeping by the street until he was awoken by a pack of hungry dogs. He stepped onto a truck. A woman traded her last can of food for a small bag of drugs only to be robbed and left with nothing. She stepped onto a truck. An elderly man pulled a soiled sheet across the face of his cold daughter while his grandchildren cornered a rat for their dinner. He stepped onto a truck. One by one, the citizens of Measol who could take no more stepped out into the rain and onto the trucks, faithful that it could be no worse.
No one is sure what the Work entails. No one has ever come back from the trucks. Of course, the people speculate. Some believe that those who get into the trucks are taken far away, too far to return. Perhaps they are kept in cages or in camps. Perhaps they are released daily for 15 hour shifts in which the prisoners work on hands and knees pulling root vegetables out of the frozen ground. Perhaps they’re punished if they work to slow, whipped if they try to pocket a turnip. They’re stripped and searched at the end of every day before returning to their cages. They’re given a bowl of grain each day and a citrus peel on Sundays. Perhaps they’re paid for their labor, but perhaps they’re charged for their cage, food, and required work uniform. Other believe there is no work; that those who leave are pushed like buffalo off the edges of the trucks into massive furnaces whose heat boils water, spins turbines, and powers the watch lights. Perhaps the guards who enforce the grisly process were told if they volunteered, they’d only have to work for a month, after which they’d be awarded their own house in another district. Perhaps, after that month, they’re burned anyway, by the new volunteers. Still others suppose that perhaps the trucks drive to a dry and well-lit building where the volunteers stand by assembly lines or conveyor belts, sewing machines or dye pits, or perhaps even a farm somewhere beyond the district limits, where they put in a hard but honest day’s work. Perhaps they work hard but are fed daily. They have fees and taxes to cover their costs, but they’re paid a wage by the hour that’s better than they could hope to get anywhere else. Perhaps the volunteers live in row barracks that have heaters with fuel stacked outside, and cots with cotton sheets that sit up off the ground. Perhaps they cook meals together and sit outside on the clear, warms nights after their work is completed and their time their own. They talk together and make shapes in the stars. They talk about us, their friends and families they left behind for a better life. And perhaps they choose never to come back, because who would? And they sit, and eat, and wonder when we’ll join them?
Atop the sturdier buildings, concealed in clothesline tents and oil-drum houses, the children watch. And when the procession of trucks rolls by, and the sad volunteers emerge from the cracks in the buildings, the rocks come down. The volunteers bring trashcan lids or anything flat to protect their heads, and the trucks are pelted and dented while they wait for them to board, and then they drive on. The sun that rises above the mountains to the east forces its rays through the tops of the smog clouds and a new day in Measol begins.
Misery! How am I to tell you about pain? How can I describe the people of the Measol District?
They are not spiritless, though they are secretly miserable. No one frowns anymore, and there is no point in complaining. To do so would seem ungrateful. And the people are grateful for what they have, for fear they might be marked a dissident. Descriptions like these conjure the image of a despot. They conjure the thoughts of tyrannical dictators, enforcing strict laws and observing every movement. Buy there is no tyrant. There are no laws, no police. The people of Measol are not violent, they are not thugs. They take care of themselves. Those that can’t take care of themselves must not want to. These people are not victims. They have the freedom to do what they want. And if their lives were mired in pain and misery, it would mean they wanted it that way, and so their feel they live good lives, better lives than those who live in other districts where they have rulers who steal from the people and tell them how to live. They know they must be grateful, that they must not appear miserable. Though, it is not uncommon for a citizen of the Measol District to wake from fitful sleep at an hour that can’t rightly be called night nor morning, and sneak from their home and family to a deserted place, hidden and out of earshot, to place their lips up against the impassable brick of a broken building and whisper to no one, “Yes, I am tired. Yes, I am miserable.” But to repeat, these are not spiritless people. They are not defeated by poverty, and they don’t live like they’re oppressed. They don’t beg for help from anyone and feel free to come and go from the district as they wish. There is a misconception, perpetuated by those who want to try to help as well as by those who want to keep their power, that impoverished people need to be pitied. It is the failure of the philanthropist to try to fix the poor without destroying the rich.
How could I describe the miserable free people of Measol? They are not pitiful or downtrodden. They are proud and resourceful. They are not stupid and wretched invalids. They are fierce survivors. They are pragmatic and practice practical morality. Their customs might not make sense to you. How can I describe such a seemingly contradictory civilization to you? It may be that these people seem like victims to you, that they eke out a painful, short existence in a caustic mud puddle. Measol may seem like a post-apocalyptic dystopia, despite their satisfaction. If I can’t manage to describe the logic of these people’s existence to you, you’d better fill in the gaps for yourself with details that make sense to you. Perhaps it’s worth considering the dances that might go on in the basements of collapsed buildings. If batteries can be found, the people can gather around a boom-box and play dance hall records. Those to the side clap and stomp with the beat and pass around bottles of spirits or cans of inhalants or hand rolled cigarettes filled with stale tobacco and nameless crushed medicine. Those in the middle spin and shake according to calls of the digital DJ. During one song, they all dance together in lines performing the same movements. For another, one dancer takes turns dancing in the center the others. They bounce up and down from their feet to their hands, and spin and breakdown, pop and lock, shimmy and chassé, while the circle laughs and cheers around them.
Believe that on lucky days, when enough gasoline has been collected, the people will roll motorcars out from secret garages and prepare to race. Pit crews assemble to rundown check lists that optimize safety and speed. The motorcars are cobbled together from whatever they find. Those that want the best parts get them and that’s why they’ll win. The cars aren’t sleek but they’re sturdy. They rattle, whine, and kick up thick plumes of smoke, but believe they’re fast as hell. Markers are placed on a circuit of streets that encircle the district center. Flags are raised and crowds assemble to watch the cars roll onto the starting line, and then one lucky participant waves the flag, and the cars take off through the streets. Crowds of people turn out to watch, more than you might believe could fit in the district. The crowds cheer and wave their flags at the passing cars and, after they’ve passed, they hurry to the next spot they can catch a glimpse of the roaring metal monsters racing by. Often the people will put together what little they have as to serve as a prize for the winner: a reward for their hard work.
Give them religion, for most believe in a God. Not a God who punishes according to a strict and well-known dogma, but one whose influence can be tracked with hindsight. The proof of God is everywhere in Measol, though most citizens don’t make a habit of asking it for anything. A tenet of their religion, or at least their morality, is that change is an individual endeavor. You don’t ask for what you want. You either take it, by hook, crook, or honest work, or else you shut up about it and get on with your life.
I like to picture the people of Measol eating together. Not out of any strong sense of community, but simply because the places from which food can be scrounged are bound to attract crowds. They gossip by the barrels set out to capture rain. With different improvised cups and bottles, they drink their share and take some home to those that can’t leave the house. In the mud where the groundwater has forced up a pool, people gather to capture eels and frogs. They make a game of it, seeing who can capture the most by using different tools or tactics. At the end of the day, the one with the most food has proven the soundest method. They trade food for secrets, tell dirty jokes, sip bottles, and sit together around campfire with spits and grills laid across it to roast their dinners.
Most of the trucks have reached the southern limits of the district now, and they’re circling around to make their way up the other side of Measol. The gray faces of the hiding residents return from their hiding places and look around to see who else wasn’t brave enough to volunteer. They go about their business, scrounging trash heaps for items of value and shaking the boards of abandoned buildings to try to scare out something to hunt. An elderly man spies a bottlecap on the ground and leans to pick it up but is shoved out of the way by a younger man. The two square up for a moment before the older man tips his cap and moves on. The morality of desire and ability has proved who needed it most, who God most wanted to have the bottlecap. On a rooftop on the other side of town, a child wearing a red wool cap to cover a head wound sees the approaching procession of Uppertunity Trucks, and he runs to a makeshift siren made of sheet metal suspended from a cable. He slams a rebar pole against the metal and soon a small army of children is hauling buckets of broken brick and concrete rubble to the edge of the building and preparing to launch. When the trucks get close, the child in the red wool cap gives the signal and the army launches a hail of missiles from the rooftops down onto the trucks below. In his eyes, there is an anger for things outside his ability to change, a hunger for things he cannot reach, and a misery that he hopes he will never learn to ignore.
Do you believe? Do you accept the Work, the District, the secret misery and irrational pride? No? Then let me describe one more thing.
On all the street corners, by the supply sheds, the medical tents, the trash heaps, suspended on long poles of cables are broad, hexagonal glass screens. Every evening at six, the screens turn on. They hum the high pitch of expensive machinery. They glow a soft blue light that is the closest thing to white most citizens have seen. Then speakers beneath the screen crackle and feedback quickly wails and recedes. A cheery jingle plays, and an image appears on the screen: the Uppertunity logo. Despite their hunger, their weariness, their sickness, the people climb out of the cracks to watch the hexagonal screens. As the logo dissolves, a brightly lit room takes its place. The room is like nothing anyone in Measol has ever seen. It is large and brightly lit. There are gold-rimmed pots that hold plants, real plants, with broad green leaves and pink and purple flowers. The room is indoors, completely, and dangling from its high ceilings are lamps made out of jewels. They hang in rows along the long eaves of the ceiling and cast shimmering light across everything. In the background, a fireplace burns real wood. The mantle above it is made of swirling, white marble that catches the firelight with flecks of gold. Upon the mantle is a collection of artifacts. Golden statues, crystal clocks, medals, bottles, pictures—of what the meager viewers cannot see. In the foreground, there is a desk and an empty chair behind it. The chair’s back goes high into the air and forms a pillowed headrest. It is upholstered with cushy maroon leather. The buttons that tuck the fabric against the dark wooden frame are golden. Its arms are padded with same maroon leather. One has a place to rest a drink, the other has a place to put out a cigarette. The desk is made of polished, deep red colored wood. It is broader than some of the nicer sleeping pads the viewers sleep on, if they’re lucky enough to have one. Neatly piled on one corner of the desk is an organized collection of letters and papers. On the other, a golden picture frame faces away from the viewers. Beside it is a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a crystal decanter, and a single tumbler. A golden fountain pen sits on the center of the desk beside a blank notepad.
After a moment or two of the fading jingle and the flickering firelight, a man enters the screen and sits down at the desk. He looks young, maybe forty, though he is really sixty-five. He is in good shape. His skin is healthy, not blemished and cracking like those that view him from the streets. He is muscular, though you can’t tell through his expensive suit. He wears his brown hair short and has a thick mustache. He wears horn-rimmed eyeglasses with golden frames. The thick lenses magnify the coldness in his eyes. He stares out of the hexagonal screen onto the street. When he speaks, his voice booms out of the speakers loud and self-assured. As he speaks, his hands move. They fly high above his head with fingers splayed. They shake and flex, punch and point. They tuck into a ball when he brings them down on the desk. He bangs his fists and chops the air. As animated as his hands are, his head remains perfectly still. It looks out, locked in place, facing directly at the screen. His eyes bulge, and his cheeks are flushed; his mouth moves in simple up and down motions while his hands go wild around him.
He speaks to the people about the promise of the Work. Uppertunity has the answers the people seek. He speaks to the people about the pain of their lives. We have the choice to leave it behind. Mostly, he speaks about choice. He tells the people that if they suffer, they suffer by choice; that we are willingly starving ourselves and that, if we wanted to, if we worked hard, we could live a life without pain. He speaks to the people about freedom. The people are free, freer than the people of all the districts who, he tells them, are robbed of their rights, and denied the freedom to be whatever they want to be. He tells the people that Uppertunity, and not he alone, provides this great service to them. He reminds them how lucky they are to be so independent and to have the choice to do anything they want. They aren’t taxed, they aren’t regulated, they are free. He urges them to choose to get onto the trucks.
Then, when he finishes speaking, and he has taken a moment to catch his breath and adjust his tie, several covered dishes are brought to the desk. One by one their silver lids are removed to reveal sumptuous, hot meals. Roast duck, pork ribs, braised lambchops, haricots vert with lemon, mashed sweet potato with brown sugar, fluffy mounds of brown rice, steaming buttery buns, olives, cheeses, and bottles of red wine are all brought before the man behind the desk. And the man eats while the people watch. They stand in the wind and rain, drooling and breathing heavily, observing every detail on the plates. They “ooh!” and “ahh!” at the colors and imagine the smell of the steam rising from the desk. The man’s head again remains still while his hands fly around him, tearing loaves, slicing meat, pouring sauce, and moving food to his mouth which moves in simple up and down motions. When he finishes, the dishes are cleared, the people “boo!” and call for more food. He ends his nightly broadcast by telling the people that they too can eat what he eats if they choose to Work. And then the jingle plays, and the lavish room is replaced by the logo of the happy face rising up from the darkness.
Everyone in Measol knows about the man. Some watch his daily broadcast faithfully, other are content to simply know that it happens. They all agree he has to be there. Some have a firm grasp on why he needs to be there, while others nod along and agree though they couldn’t explain it themselves. But they all agree that everything they have, their midnight dances, their motorcar races, their community meals, their freedom, their pride, and their opportunity to improve themselves depend entirely on this man’s comfort.
This fact needs to be explained to children, who often look with contempt at the meals he eats in his comfortable chair beside his fireplace and glistening lamps. Some of them weep when they see the food he eats. Some of them punch something when they see how well he lives. For some children, it doesn’t matter how many times the man’s necessity is explained to them, it still doesn’t make sense. They feel disgusted, they feel betrayed. They feel indignant that their families should suffer while he lives so well, they feel humiliated by their parents’ apathy, and they feel ashamed of their inability to do anything. They would like to attack the man, to steal his food and sleep in his bed. But there is nothing they can do. If his comfort was disturbed, if he weren’t able to eat his meals, and sleep peacefully each night; if he weren’t able to get medicine when he needed it, if he weren’t able to own whatever he wanted, if he was subjected to the same needs of the people, the people’s freedom would vanish. Everything the people loved and everything they’d worked to build for themselves would be destroyed. Those are the terms everyone agrees to each day they accept their freedom without question and watch the man eat his meal.
Often the young people refuse to accept this reality. The flee to the rooftops where the weary adults can’t reach them. They fend for themselves, trapping pigeons and bats that roost in the nooks and corners of the buildings. They catch rainwater to drink and wash themselves. The scratch hopscotch outlines onto the rooftops with pieces of slate, and they build makeshift hoops to throw makeshift balls through. They venture down the drainpipes and fire escapes to the ground to scavenge for tools and toys. They lower buckets from the roofs and load them up with rubble to be launched at the Uppertunity Trucks. They grow up on the rooftops, learning about life and educating the other children about their fight against the trucks and those that comply. And each year, they grow bigger, and their anger fades a little bit. They throw rocks day after day, and nothing changes. The trucks patch their dents and roll on. And the children turn into adults and their anger turns to misery. They grow so heavy that the roof can’t support them anymore, and they break through and fall down into the abandoned building below. Then they stand up on their own and refuse any help or condolence because they pretend they’d meant to do it. Men who fall through find women, and women find men, and together they create new children to throw rocks from the rooftops. And, in that way, life in the Measol District continues.
So, now do you believe in them? Can you admit there’s a chance that some of this is real? Well, there is one more piece to tell. It has happened before, and it will happen again.
Over every few decades there will come a day when the people of Measol are watching the daily broadcast on the hexagonal screen and see a small army of children break into the room in the background. The man may be speaking and shaking his fists, or he may be eating his meal, but when the children come in he stops and turns and tries too late to do anything. The children mob the desk and clamor over the food, shoving handfuls into their mouths and pockets. And they push the man, they circle around him and taunt him. A rock gets thrown and hits the man’s head while the people watching from the street “ooh! and “ahh!” Soon the man is bleeding on the ground, and the children are kicking him and hurling rocks at him until he stops moving. Then the children pounce on the food in full force. The grab at the tastiest morsels and slap each other’s hands when they go for the same pieces. They push each other out of the way, and they begin to fight over the food. The people on the street watch as the army of children tears itself apart over the food and the wine and the golden trinkets until there is only one child left, “bloody, but unbowed.” And the people one the street watch while that one child takes off his red wool cap, sits at the desk, and finishes the meal. Then the jingle plays and the Uppertunity logo fades onto the screen. The people in the street go home feeling satisfied in the knowledge that their system works. Upportunity is real. Change is possible. Self-improvement is there for the taking by those with the desire and ability to take it. The people of the Measol District have been taught a valuable lesson by the ones who throw rocks.