The Alex Crow

WE FIVE BOYS OF JUPITER

It came as no surprise that our interplanetary archery competition was canceled the day Bucky Littlejohn shot himself through the foot with a field point arrow.

What was surprising, Max—my American brother—told me, was this: No kid before Bucky Littlejohn had ever been cunning enough to devise such a foolproof plan for getting out of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Max said.

Probably because Max was not as self-destructive or desperate as Bucky Littlejohn, I thought.

It was also surprising that Bucky Littlejohn did not cry or scream at all as the arrow drilled through his foot all the way to the plastic yellow feathers of the shaft’s fletching. It mounted Bucky Littlejohn like an insect pinned for display to a spreading board, tacking the boy to the soft ground of the lakeside field. And Bucky, transformed into a silent, human version of a draftsman’s compass, spun around and around a bloody pinpoint in his sea-foam green plastic clogs, while he stamped out an impeccable circle with his free right foot.

So there was an empty bunk that night in the Jupiter cabin of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, where Max and I slept with a reduced-to-two additional bunk mates and Larry, our counselor.

If only the archery contest depended on our team’s willingness to inflict self-injury, we would have beaten the unbloodied boys from the Neptune, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Pluto cabins.

There was no populated Earth cabin at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, and the camp’s directors had decided to shut down and abandon the Venus and Uranus cabins as well. Those planets came with too much psychological baggage for teenage boys.

The night before—our first night at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys—I felt certain that some terrible mistake had been made. Lying in my dingy bed, in a damp room that smelled of urine and sweat, I couldn’t sleep at all due to the incessant rustling of bedding, and one of our roommates’ depraved sobbing that never slackened in the least.

I believed that Max and I had erroneously been committed to some sort of asylum for insane children.

This was America after all, and there was no shortage of insanity as far as I could see.

It was mid-June here in the George Washington National Forest. I had completed the final months of my ninth-grade year at William E. Shuck High School. That was when our parents sent Max and me off to Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

They told us the experience was intended to get us to bond as loving brothers should. Max and I hadn’t made much progress along those lines.

Max, after all, did not like me. He told me as much during my first week with his family.

He’d said this: “Listen, dude, just because they took you in doesn’t mean I have to act like you’re my brother—because you’re not. You’re a stranger, just like anyone else I never knew.”

Yes, it was a mean thing for Max to say, but I also empathized with his feeling intruded upon.

And as usual, I didn’t say anything, so Max went on. “They’re nuts, anyway. She doesn’t know how to react to setbacks, and Christ knows, every time she turns around she’s getting kicked in the teeth. And he—he’s a freak.”

I shrugged.

And Max had told me, “He’s an inventor, you know, and he purposely creates things that destroy people’s lives. Like you, Ariel, only you’re not going to ruin my life, and neither will Mom or Dad.”

So I was convinced Max hated me. He probably had good cause. What fifteen-year-old boy (we were the same age) would welcome the halving of his world with a foreigner who didn’t like to talk?

I should explain that Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys was a sort of disciplinarian’s boot camp—a detox center for kids who were unable to disconnect from cell phones and technology. For boys like that, being outside or sleeping in smelly huts crowded with strangers—things I had plenty of experience with—was the same as eternal condemnation to hell. And Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys was not fun at all, which is exactly why Bucky Littlejohn shot himself in the foot.

You almost couldn’t blame him.

Neither Max nor I had a problem disconnecting from such things as technology and video games, and interacting with real human beings. The first time I’d even touched a cell phone happened after turning fifteen and coming to America.

The first time I’d used a cell phone was to call for help when Mother slumped unconscious from blood loss behind the wheel of her Volvo as we drove home from the sauerkraut store in Sunday.

I also found out later that Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys was free of charge to our parents. It was owned by the lab company our father works for, the Merrie-Seymour Research Group. Every six weeks, the camp alternated its focus between technological addiction and weight loss. Two summers before, during one of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys’ “fat camp” cycles, Max, who is awkwardly thin, was sent.

The summer he was thirteen, my brother Max lost fifteen pounds.

To this day, Max has nightmares that prominently feature celery.

The campers’ beds in Jupiter were arranged along one wall, packed so closely together that they were nearly impossible to make (something we were required to do every morning). We learned that we had to take turns navigating around our sheet-tucking duties. And the only reasonable way to get in or out of one of the beds without risking a fight or awkward bodily contact with another boy was from the foot of each one. Bucky Littlejohn’s cot sat empty along the back wall. After he left, which was on our second day—not twenty-four hours into the six-week journey to rediscover “the fun of boyhood” at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys—none of the campers in Jupiter wanted to claim the vacated bed by the wall; Bucky peed in it the first and only night he spent in Jupiter. Maybe he only attempted the bedwetting as an initial means for getting kicked out.

Bucky Littlejohn was no quitter.

The arrow-through-the-foot tactic was unarguably brilliant.

The boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour were desperate.

My sleeping spot sandwiched me between a kid Max and I had seen around William E. Shuck High School, Cobie Petersen, a pale-skinned, freckled sixteen-year-old who lived up Dumpling Run, a creek that was only about three miles from our home in Sunday; and a thirteen-year-old boy named Robin Sexton from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Robin twitched his thumbs constantly, as though he were handling an invisible video game controller, and he kept tight wads of toilet paper jammed into his ears because he said he couldn’t stand all the noise the world pushed into his head when he wasn’t wearing earbuds.

Of course, there were no earbuds—no electric-powered devices of any kind—permitted for the campers at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. In fact, every one of the thirty-three boys assigned to the six planets of the camp was closely inspected upon arrival. Each of us was obligated to bring perfectly matched camper kits: duffel bags, which contained precise numbers of T-shirts, shorts, toothbrushes, and changes of socks and underwear, in which, for reasons I could only speculate, we had to write our names with permanent marker.

They counted everything.

Max’s bed was closest to the door.

On our first night at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, Max joked that he would be the lone survivor from Jupiter if our cabin burned down in the next six weeks, to which Larry, our counselor, warned, “Don’t get any ideas, fuckheads.”

And then Larry proceeded to strip-search all five of us. We even had to turn our socks inside out.

This may have pushed Bucky Littlejohn over the edge.

So we five boys of Jupiter, who would be four the following night, stood there in our underwear while Larry emptied the contents of our duffel bags and tore the covers and bedding from our cots, just to make certain none of us had smuggled in a cigarette lighter.

During the commotion, boys spilled out from the Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Neptune, and Pluto cabins. They taunted us from outside our screen windows. As long as the lights—kerosene lanterns, which were closely guarded by the counselors—were on in our solar system, everyone could see everything that happened in Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

The other planets chanted and clapped at us.

“Strip search! Strip search! Strip search!”

Larry left the place a complete mess, and we had to clean it up—in our underwear—while the planets outside observed (after all, it wasn’t as though they could divert themselves with television or video games) and our counselor watched suspiciously from his bed, which sat uncrowded and isolated on the opposite side of the cabin.

“Hurry up and straighten out your shit,” Larry said. “I want lights out in five minutes, and you’re all getting up at sunrise tomorrow morning. You’re going to have fun, fuckheads.”

I was fascinated by the word. One more of those American things that made no sense to me whatsoever, I thought. If they’d allowed me to bring my notebook along to Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, I would have written a reminder to eventually research the etymology of fuckhead.

Still, I had no idea what to expect from Larry’s concept of “fun.” It had seemed to me that in just a few hours we had been through enough torment already. At dinner, they fed us something called “Beanie Weenie.” I had never heard of it before, but it was better than sauerkraut, so I ate it.

It made no sense.

Jupiter, an exact replica of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys’ other eight cabins (three of which were abandoned), was a strange and primitive design. To me, it most closely resembled an insect cage. The walls, which stood only about three feet high, were built with horizontal redwood slats. The entire upper two-thirds of them were nothing more than mesh screen all the way around, which is why the boys of the other cabins could watch us losers from Jupiter enact our dramatic failure in our underwear for their entertainment. Unless you were a counselor, who got to sleep in actual pajamas and had his own lighted-by-electricity toilet and shower facilities, there was no privacy anywhere in the camp. And we would eventually find out, too, just how miserable and damp it could be during a summer downpour.

Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had a motto, which was carved in a sort of rustic hewn-log font on the crossbar over the entry gate. It said this:

Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys

Where Boys Rediscover The Fun of Boyhood!

It almost made me nauseous—not just the word rediscover, which is a ridiculous word—all the boy, boy, boy on that sign. You could practically smell balls just by reading it. To be honest, the camp always did smell like balls, anyway.

Someone—no doubt a Merrie-Seymour success story who’d endured the camp before Max and I arrived—had taken the time to vandalize the crossbar by etching in two additional words: OR DIE.

Apparently, the internees at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had been encouraged to carve. This was something that we’d never be allowed to do. After Bucky Littlejohn’s archery performance, the counselors removed everything sharp from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

There were all sorts of things carved into the walls around our cots. Two pieces in particular fascinated me. First, there was a kind of religious depiction of an Xbox controller that was nailed to a cross floating in the clouds, while tangles of skeleton-thin boys looked up at it from the apparent hell of Jupiter cabin. The second thing I admired was a short inscription—a mathematical equation for our cabin—that said LARRY = SATAN.

And there were plenty of names, too, and dates. The name nearest my pillow said ELI 1994. Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had been there for decades.

It was almost like sleeping in a graveyard.

So as I lay there that first night, trapped between the twitching kid with toilet-paper earplugs from Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Cobie Petersen—and while I listened to Bucky Littlejohn’s pathetic sobbing—I imagined what 1994 Eli was doing right at that moment.

Probably Facebooking, I thought.

Larry extinguished the lantern. There was no electricity in the cabins, naturally.

Our audience disbanded and journeyed back to their respective planets.

The mattresses on our cots were covered with thick plastic. It made sense, I suppose, but whenever any of the boys moved or shifted, our beds made sounds like someone was crumpling a soda can. After about five minutes, Cobie Petersen said to no one in particular, “I can’t take this shit.”

Larry said, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Larry had a non-plastic mattress. Apparently, Larry could be counted on to not pee his bed, or do the other things some of the campers at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys inevitably did.

Max rolled onto his side—crumple crumple!—and put his pillow over his head.

Then Cobie shot up in bed and yelled, “What the fuck! The crying kid’s pissing!”

And we all heard the dribble of Bucky Littlejohn’s urine as it trickled down between the cots and puddled on the floor below us.

Larry said, “Jesus Christ!”

The lantern came back on.

And Larry ordered Bucky Littlejohn, who was steaming and stained in his drooping, piss-soaked underwear, and the rest of us, the four insomniacs with dry underwear, to go to the lavatory—a dark and scary combination toilet, insect sanctuary, and shower facility for the campers—and fetch a mop and pail.

On the way there, Cobie said, “If you weren’t covered in piss, kid, I’d kick the shit out of you.”

I wondered if Cobie Petersen really meant that, because if he actually did kick the shit out of Bucky Littlejohn, it would really be a mess we’d have to clean up.

It was a very long night.

THE GREAT WELCOMING MANNEQUIN

It was hot and stuffy inside the walk-in refrigerator where I hid the day of the slaughter at the schoolhouse.

It may be difficult for you to believe, Max, but electricity only came to the village once or twice per week, so the refrigerator had never performed its duties as far as I could recall. Maybe it did function as something other than a clown’s hideout at some point in time. Maybe there were legends passed down from the elders of the village about an era when the refrigerator was cold, and also contained food.

Despite the fact that there was nothing edible inside the refrigerator, I could not bring myself to pee there when I needed to.

Nobody pees inside refrigerators, even ones with no food in them. I would be in trouble if anyone ever found out I’d peed inside our school’s refrigerator.

But, as desperate as my urge to pee was, I was too afraid to go outside.

I thought about things. I wondered who was safe in the village, and if my cousins, my uncle, and aunt had been looking for me—or if they assumed I’d gone off with the other boys to become a rebel with the FDJA.

So I tried to devise a mathematical formula based on the concept of predicting when, exactly, the need to pee would surpass my fear of being shot while dressed in a clown suit. As I thought about this, I curled up on my side and fell asleep on the floor.

It is possible that I was inside the refrigerator for days. Who could ever know? Refrigeration—even when the refrigerator in question does not produce coldness—has a way of slowing down time. But I do know this: The mathematical breaking point at which I overcame my fear of going outside occurred sometime before I opened my eyes.

I needed to go.

So picture this, it is a disturbing image: a fourteen-year-old boy wearing a white clown suit, peeing into the gutter along a street in a village where none of the residents is alive.

Everyone had disappeared or lay dead. Their bodies were scattered randomly as though they simply had the life force sucked away from them while they went about their daily drudgeries.

It was poison gas. We were familiar with such things. It had happened before and certainly would happen again.

A useless refrigerator saved my life.

A second miracle, or possibly just another accident. Who can say about things like this?

It was afternoon—but what day I could not tell—when I came out of the refrigerator to pee among the dead in the street in front of my old school. I say old because it certainly was not going to be a school after this. There was nobody left to learn anything.

“Hey there. Where did you come from?”

I spun around to see who’d asked the question. I hadn’t finished, so I found myself peeing in the direction of a pair of uniformed Republican Army soldiers carrying rifles. They’d been walking, searching house to house along the street toward the school. The men wore gas masks over their faces, so I could not tell which of them had called to me.

“I came from a refrigerator,” I said.

“How long have you been outside here?”

“Not even long enough to pee.”

They stood there, watching me as I buttoned up the front of my clown pants.

The soldier on the right turned to his partner and said, “It’s a miracle this little boy survived.”

“I thought so, too,” I said, choosing not to argue about such things as accidents and divinity.

“Why are you dressed like that?”

“We were having a play.” I nodded at the school. “In there. Someone stole my clothes and I had to stay like this. And why are you dressed like that ?”

I pointed up and down, at the men’s uniforms.

“You’re a funny clown.”

I shrugged. “I do my best.”

I turned as if to leave. “I need to go to my uncle’s house.”

“Where? In the village? Here?”

I nodded.

The soldier shook his head. “There’s nobody left, boy. Just you. You’re a damned lucky clown.”

“Pierrot.”

The man on the right pulled the mask from his face and wiped the back of a shirtsleeve across his eyes. “I suppose if you can breathe, we might take these damn things off now.”

“The kid’s a little canary,” the second soldier said.

“Was there any food inside your refrigerator?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry?”

I tried to read his face, but there was nothing there. Only whiskers and sweat. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved or slept in days. People commonly had that look in those days—in my first life, Max.

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should come with us. There’s nothing left here, anyway. You don’t want to stay here now, clown-boy.”

“My name is Ariel,” I said.

- - -

Jacob and Natalie Burgess—my American parents—drove me and Max—my American brother—all the way from Sunday, West Virginia, just so that I could see New York City.

They did it only two days after I arrived in the United States.

It is hard to explain the strangeness of my experience. In a matter of days, I had been taken from the filthy squalor of a refugee camp, and then escorted to America aboard a military aircraft by a man named Major Knott, to the Burgesses’ home in a sauerkraut-eating and rifle-admiring hamlet in West Virginia. And then I was whisked away in an automobile with a satellite navigation system for an eight-hour ride so I could gawk in awe at the towers to the sky of New York.

Alex, our crow, came, too. He stayed inside a small plastic crate—the kind you’d keep a dog in—stowed in the cargo area of the Volvo. Alex did little more than stare and stare. The first time I saw him, I thought he was a taxidermist’s model.

On occasion, Alex would say awful things.

From his dog crate, he said, “I want to die.”

It was one of the strange side effects of Jake Burgess’s early work with de-extinction and chipping animals: The resurrected species generally was less than enthusiastic about their sequel-return to the here and now, and the chipped animals—animals that were surgically implanted with mechanical surveillance devices—often manifested extreme psychoses. Alex, our crow, did a bit of both.

Alex stayed in the car while we walked toward the river that looked across to the state of New Jersey. Natalie left a plate of spaghetti inside the crate for Alex to eat.

At the water’s edge, Father—his name was Jake Burgess—said, “This is what I wanted you to see, Ariel.”

And Father waved his arm out across the water as though he had created everything before my eyes, to direct my attention to an enormous welcoming mannequin that rose from the sea.

It was a strange thing to look at. Of course I had seen photographs of the thing before, but standing here at the edge of the continent, the thing struck me as being threatening—a type of warning. After all, the giant blue woman had sharp horns growing from her head and was holding a burning stick, the way you would hold fire to frighten ravenous predators away from you in the dark.

If I owned a house and wanted to keep myself safe from robbers, I would have someone who looked exactly like the great welcoming mannequin watching my door.

Max said, “I’m hungry.”

Mother offered, “There’s spaghetti in the car.”

“I don’t like spaghetti,” Max said.

Max was a finicky eater ever since his summer at fat camp.

Father took us to a sandwich place for lunch. Mother’s purse was stolen while we ate.

She said, “Oh dear. Our car keys were in there.”

Father’s car was towed to an impound lot, and we were stranded in New York City for two days.

Thursday, February 12, 1880 — Alex Crow

There is something morbidly fascinating in our predicament, wouldn’t you agree? To imagine the probability of our present situation was impossible. Think about it—we have created our own island, as it were; our own kingdom, phylum, and class of men who hurled themselves arrogantly against the world and became trapped like flies in pine sap. And yet with each short day and interminable night the men put themselves back out onto the ice, never flagging in their effort to control our fate.

Our last contact with humanity came with our stocking of provisions and fuel at St Lawrence Bay on 27 August, 1879. The Alex Crow became trapped in the ice pack only two weeks later. Captain Hansen maintained a strict and disciplined routine, taking constant measurements while the ice continued to drag our ship farther north toward his desired objective, the North Pole. In November, our expedition discovered a true island, which Captain Hansen claimed for the United States and named Alex Crow Island. It was with much bitterness that we watched that piece of land recede away from us and disappear from view as our other, icebound island of Alex Crow pulled us tediously onward.

We forge ahead, if nothing else, simply for the sake of doing.

The condition of Mr Warren’s hand is worsening.

It may be selfish of me (and this is very likely a confession of sorts—for is selfishness not the truest component of survival?), but having a patient to occupy my thoughts during the endless monotony aboard ship proves to be an acceptable diversion, unfortunate as it may be for the newspaperman.

I am afraid that given our circumstances I may soon become overwhelmed by such selfish diversions. Our provisions cannot last. Eventually, we will all succumb to the ice. After the last hunt on the pack ice, the native drivers of the dog teams threatened to abandon us and make an attempt for Saint Michael, their home.

Now Captain Hansen has armed guards watching the native men and their dogs. He has instructed the guards to shoot them if the dog drivers attempt to leave. The situation grows worse with each passing day.

This afternoon, an inspection revealed stresses on two of the hull’s reinforcing beams. Before departing San Francisco, the Alex Crow had been refitted with new boilers and massive crossbeams below decks in order to withstand the tests anticipated on the journey.