The Alex Crow

Nobody could rightfully foresee our five-month imprisonment.

Today, while I was rewrapping Mr Warren’s crushed hand, Murdoch said to me that he had been his entire life at sea, but had never endured such a predicament as the one we find ourselves in at this moment.

“The ship will be eaten by the sea,” he said. “I know the ship will break apart, and we will all of us be buried in ice.”

Friday, February 13, 1880 — Alex Crow

The hull of the Alex Crow gave in last night.

Murdoch came up from below and woke me by pounding on my cabin’s door.

“Doctor! Doctor!” he cried.

At first I believed there was some kind of medical emergency that required my attention, but the commotion of men as they scrambled to remove whatever could be taken from the Crow and off-loaded onto the ice that trapped us here confirmed my worst fears.

The Alex Crow is sinking.

- - -

It was when he was eighteen—a legal adult in the Land of Nonsense—that Leonard Fountain answered an advertisement to participate in a paid study by a company called Merrie-Seymour Research Group. Leonard Fountain didn’t really understand or care about the aim of the study, because a thousand dollars was a lot of money to an eighteen-year-old kid from Idaho.

Unfortunately for Leonard Fountain, the study—which was the first round of such experiments involving the implantation of audio-video feed tissue-based “chips”—was directly linked to schizophrenic hallucinations among the majority of the participants. Merrie-Seymour Research Group decided to go back to the drawing board on newer generations of non-schizophrenia-inducing biochips.

MRS NUSSBAUM, LARRY, AND THE SNORE WALL

Larry was the only inhabitant of Jupiter who’d slept much on that first night.

But since the incident with Bucky Littlejohn and the field-point arrow through the foot, Larry was more than a little stressed out by the four boys of Jupiter. He looked as though he might toss and turn in his non-plastic bed.

After they packed up Bucky in an ambulance, Larry gathered us together and said, “I’m calling a cabin meeting. And right now.”

Max and I learned at “orientation,” an absolutely senseless meeting where we filled out the name tags we were required to stick to our chests at all times and counted out our socks and underwear and toured the dreaded lightless, spider-infested communal toilets and showers, that at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, “cabin meeting” times were usually reserved for group sessions with the camp’s therapist, a frazzled old woman named Mrs Nussbaum. During our six weeks, Mrs Nussbaum ultimately came to the conclusion that at least three of the Jupiter boys were particularly troubled, and trouble for her—I never answered her personal questions, while Cobie Petersen and Max seemed to not fit in with the other planets of campers.

She happened to be waiting inside Jupiter when Larry marched the four of us in for our scolding about suicide attempts and such.

Our first session went something like this:

We sat on our beds while Mrs Nussbaum eyed each one of us, almost as though she were trying to decide which unattractive and mangy puppy to save from the euthanizing chamber at a dog pound. Ultimately, I got that all wrong. Mrs Nussbaum had other intentions as far as the fate of her boys was concerned.

Mrs Nussbaum touched the tip of her index finger to my name tag. It made me flinch, and wonder, as all boys do at times like these, why did I always have to go first?

My name tag said this:

HELLO! MY NAME IS: Ariel Burgess

I COME FROM: Jupiter

Mrs Nussbaum said, “Ariel. That’s a lovely name. Would you care to tell us all something about yourself, Ariel?”

I looked directly at her and shook my head.

And since Mrs Nussbaum brought it up, let me add something about my unwillingness to talk.

It wasn’t that I felt embarrassed speaking English. I was confident in my ability with the language. The truth is this: I did not speak because I was unhappy and I was afraid. I was sorry for where I came from, and for what happened to so many of my friends and family members. I was sad to be an orphan—worse, a sole survivor—even if the Burgesses did graciously make me their awkward second son, Max’s non-twinned twin. And it made me feel terrible how much Max hated me, too.

I didn’t talk because I wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened to me with the orphans in the tent city. But most of all was the feeling that I didn’t belong here, as much as everyone had seemed so intent (and self-satisfied) with the notion of “saving” Ariel; and that I would never come to understand all of the nonsense that America presented to me.

That’s why the boy from the refrigerator didn’t say much.

So when Mrs Nussbaum asked me if I would care to talk about myself, what would she expect me to say? I would love to care about talking about myself, but I did not.

So I said this, as politely as I could:

“No thank you.”

Mrs Nussbaum looked injured.

It was a silly thing. Why would anyone ask a question to someone who has free will and then be surprised—or disappointed—by their answer? This made no sense. She asked, I answered, and then there came an awkward, silent, staring period that lasted for several minutes before Max contributed an opinion.

“Allow me to break the ice,” he said. “Ariel just doesn’t like to talk.”

Besides, Mrs Nussbaum mispronounced my name—she called me Air-iel—which is how most Americans said it. Max corrected her, saying Ah-riel.

It almost felt as though he were sticking up for me—something brothers should do, right?—but then Max added, “He’s stupid, besides.”

So Mrs Nussbaum asked Max to talk about his anger, and again seemed surprised by Max’s response that he A) remembered Mrs Nussbaum from when this was a fat camp, and he had never been fat in his life; and B) couldn’t give a shit about Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys.

Apparently, Max still held on to his celery grudge from two years earlier.

“This used to be a fat camp ?” Cobie said.

Max said, “It still is a fat camp. They switch it every six weeks between fat camp and the eighteenth century. When I was thirteen, my parents got me in during a fat camp cycle. It was the shittiest summer of my life. Even worse than now.”

Mrs Nussbaum smiled broadly. “But of course I remember you now, Max!”

And then Cobie Petersen asked Mrs Nussbaum, “How does it feel having the only vagina here in this entire camp?”

Mrs Nussbaum reddened.

She stuttered, “I . . . I . . .”

When she regained her composure, Mrs Nussbaum reminded the boys of Jupiter that this session was not about her, but if we felt like we wanted to talk about vaginas, she thought that it could be a healthy thing for boys our age.

I glanced over at Larry when Mrs Nussbaum mentioned a possible vagina-talk. He looked sick.

Then Mrs Nussbaum patted Robin Sexton on the knee and said, “Robin? I have a cousin named Robin. His parents named him after the little boy in Winnie the Pooh. How about you? Perhaps you’d like to begin by telling us how you feel about being here, or maybe you could say something about home, since the other boys seem to want to shut this experience out. You know, build walls around themselves.”

When she said build walls, Mrs Nussbaum pressed her flattened palms in the air in front of her face, as though she were acting out a street mime’s performance of “Man Trapped in an Invisible Box.”

And Robin said, “Huh?”

“He keeps shit in his ears, ma’am,” Cobie Petersen pointed out.

“Oh,” Mrs Nussbaum said.

Then Mrs Nussbaum asked us if we felt guilty or sad about what happened to Bucky Littlejohn that day on the archery field.

We all shook our heads, and Cobie said, “He pissed in his bed last night, and Larry made us all clean it up. He was bound to get shot sooner or later.”

Mrs Nussbaum looked approvingly at Larry and told us, “You boys are off to a great start, I can tell! That’s a very nice way to build a team.”

I suppose team-building in America depends on getting someone else’s pee on your hands.

That day, Mrs Nussbaum passed out blank index cards and gave us pencils. The pencils were the small kind you’d get inside box games, like Yahtzee. The Burgesses played Yahtzee every Saturday night. Max hated the game. He told me it was the only game he knew of where it was impossible to cheat, plus you had to do math. Both of these features made the whole thing not fun to Max.

The pencils Mrs Nussbaum gave us had no erasers, which implied to me a prohibition on making mistakes. I noticed how Cobie Petersen rubbed the pad of his thumb on his pencil’s point. I was reasonably certain he was estimating things like sharpness and stabbing potential.

My pencil had teeth marks in it.

And Mrs Nussbaum instructed: “I want each of you to write on your cards. I want you to write about where you would most rather be, if you couldn’t be here right now at Camp Merrie-Seymour with your friends.”

We all looked around at our cabin mates.

Friends?

“Come on, boys! You can do it!” Mrs Nussbaum prodded, raising the pitch of her voice about one-half octave above “drunkenly enthusiastic,” and just below the sound baby dolphins make.

“Do we put our names on them?” Max asked.

“Oh, heavens no! These are only for you. They are personal.”

“Do we have to write in complete sentences?” Max said.

Mrs Nussbaum frowned and shook her head.

When we finished (and I had no idea what any of the other boys wrote), Mrs Nussbaum told us to fold our cards in half and tuck them under our pillows. Of course, when we did that, it sounded like a beer-can-crushing party. She told us we could revise our answers anytime we wanted to over the next six weeks, and that maybe we would all be able to see changes in ourselves by the time we had to go back home.

I didn’t get what Mrs Nussbaum meant by revising our answers. No matter what I did for the next six weeks, if I unfolded my index card and looked at it again, it was still going to say the same thing. Who didn’t know that?

And Bucky Littlejohn saw plenty of change in himself in his less-than-twenty-four hours at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. He saw a hole through his left foot, and at that moment was undergoing surgery somewhere.

This is what I wrote on my index card:

INSIDE A REFRIGERATOR

It was not a very productive first group-therapy session, I think.

After Mrs Nussbaum left, we all stood and attempted to make our way out of the cabin, but Larry stopped us. While Mrs Nussbaum was relatively controllable as far as the manipulative and uncooperative puppies of Jupiter were concerned, Larry was another challenge altogether.

I’m pretty sure all of us were afraid of him.

“You’re not going anywhere, fuckheads.” He said, “Now sit down.”

So each of us sat at the foot of his bed, and faced across the cabin at Larry.

“Let’s get something straight right now,” he said, “I’m in charge of you guys for the next six weeks. You haven’t even been here one day, and already one of you dickwads almost died. If I lose my job because of shit like this, they’ll send me home and my dad will kick me out of the house, or make me get a real job and pay rent and shit.”

Cobie Petersen raised his hand, like a kid in a classroom.

Larry was clearly irritated. “What?”

Cobie said, “How old are you, Larry?”

Larry glared at Cobie. I realized then that Cobie Petersen was very good at testing people’s resilience.

“Twenty-two. Why?”

Cobie shrugged. “Just wondering. Maybe you should get a real job.”

Larry clenched his teeth and inhaled deeply.

“Six weeks. Is that too much to ask? Come on, guys; give me a break. Then you can all go back home to your internet porn and video games while I get a new batch of losers who will never touch real girls in their lives.”

Cobie raised his hand again. “You must get lonely here, Larry.”

“Don’t fuck with me, kid.”

Then Larry pointed at Max and said, “You. Arsonist. No more shit about burning down the cabin. Okay?”

Max nodded. “I was only joking. Besides, if Jupiter does burn down, they’ll probably stick us in Uranus.”

Everyone except Larry laughed. Even Robin Sexton, who obviously had a selective filter for the things he’d allow to pass beyond his toilet-paper gates.

Larry’s finger aimed at Robin. “And you. Jerkoff. There’s no wanking allowed in this cabin. You think I didn’t hear you last night?”

Robin twitched his fingers and said, “Huh?”

Then Larry pointed at me, “And you. Marcel Marceau.”

Well, at least I wasn’t first. But I did look down at my bare knees to confirm I was wearing short pants, and not the Pierrot costume, which may have saved my life in another time.

I waited, but Larry didn’t have any warning for me. All he said was this: “You just keep shutting up and we’ll be totally okay with each other, dude, as long as you don’t kill yourself.”

Then Larry stood up and looked at his wristwatch.

“Now get outside and look at that big yellow thing in the sky. It’s called the sun. You have thirty minutes till lunch.”

And that was our first cabin meeting.

One of the inventions my American father came up with—this was years before I arrived in America—was a device that helped him sleep better at night.

The problem with Jake Burgess’s sleep patterns had nothing to do with him. My mother, Natalie, snores terribly. I sleep downstairs from them, and even with my door closed I can hear her nightly snores. I can imagine a similar sound being produced by a giant tree stump being dragged by a tractor down a rough asphalt roadway.

When Max was only two years old, Jake Burgess went to work on what he called a snore wall. The device was rather small—about the size of a deck of playing cards—so it could stay on the mattress between Jake and Natalie. When activated, the snore wall emitted a pulse of electric-charged microwaves that rigidly locked the molecules in the air above it in a perfect line, so they could not be agitated by sound waves.

Natalie could snore like a sumo wrestler on her side of the snore wall, but Jake wouldn’t hear a thing.

Jake Burgess was very, very smart.

Unfortunately, the first successful time Jake used his snore wall, two passenger jetliners crashed when they collided with the barrier in the skies over their house in Sunday.

Jake never used the snore wall again, but the Merrie-Seymour Research Group paid Jake an awful lot of money for the device.

That was the kind of research Jake Burgess was good at.

Too bad for all those people in the planes, but progress, you know, marches onward and will eventually trample anyone sleeping in its path.

Jake invented all kinds of crackpot things for the Merrie-Seymour Research Group. Max warned me about them. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if Max was actually making the things up in his head just to scare me.

That’s where Alex, our crow, came from.

It’s another story entirely.

THIS IS WHAT WE DO AT CAMP

All the planets were tied for last place, depending on how you looked at things.

You could just as well claim we were all racing in yellow jerseys on that night after the cancellation of the archery competition. Every planet in the solar system of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys, including the abandoned ones, had a score of zero.

I was uncertain what rewards winning at the end of six weeks at camp would bring; if the object of winning in itself provided its own intrinsic riches. But I had been in war, and that was somewhere none of the other kids at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys had been. So perhaps I had a polluted perspective on the whole notion of winning—of beating your rivals—and what that meant in the overall scheme of things.

But this is what we do at camp; winners make losers, and losers make winners.

Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys’ mess hall wasn’t much of a hall. It was a massive structure that some people might describe as a pavilion, a minimalist construction of more than a dozen or so log stilts that supported a peaked and shingled roof with lots of picnic tables beneath it. And all the tables were notched and carved, too. It seemed that the most popular word in camp-carving language was fuck, but I didn’t look at every single tabletop, so I can only estimate.

A few weeks after I came to America, I thought it would be nice if I could invent a new language. I didn’t tell anyone about it, because the first thing people say to you when you tell them you are making up a new language is this: “Say something in it.”

I wasn’t ready to start saying things yet.

I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you. Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages. In any new language, there should only be we.

We do everything, and everything we do, we do to us.

That would have to be the first rule.

At dinner we sat beneath the pavilion roof and ate hamburgers and mashed potatoes with gravy. There was red Jell-O, too. I’m not sure what flavor the red Jell-O was supposed to be. It was sweet and rubbery. And red. Robin Sexton spooned some of his red Jell-O into the diamond-shaped opening on the paper carton of low-fat milk that came with every camper’s meal. Then he closed it and shook it up. Robin Sexton drank it. What dribbled from the corners of his mouth looked like salmon-colored vomit. He also put his mashed potatoes and gravy inside his hamburger.

Max just stared at the kid. Max didn’t eat much.

It was a very strange meal. The planets segregated themselves as planets will do, locked in isolated orbits at separate tables. So as much as we probably did not like each other, the four boys of Jupiter sat alone near the outer edge of the pavilion.

Although other counselors sat among their wards, Larry chose not to eat with us.

Some of the counselors brought acoustic guitars to the pavilion. At the end of dinner they were going to sing to us and teach us camp songs, because this was all part of rediscovering the fun of being boys.

“If anyone attacks, we should all run that way,” Max said. He pointed to an opening at the edge of the yard that led into the trees of the surrounding black woods. We had walked the trail with Larry that morning before the archery disaster. About a half mile down the path was a spring that filled a cinder-block well house with icy water.

“Are you always thinking about escape routes?” Cobie Petersen asked.

Max nodded. “It’s what I do.”

Cobie said, “Who would attack, anyway?”

“Some of those fuckers from Mars look like psychopaths.”

Max had a point.

“Hey. Kid. Kid.”

Cobie made an attempt at getting Robin Sexton’s attention. He waved his palm in front of the kid, but Robin had his face down over his Styrofoam plate so that his nose was just an inch above what remained of his hamburger bun.

Cobie Petersen tapped Robin Sexton’s head and pointed at his ears.

“Huh?”

“Take that shit out of your ears.”

Robin tweezered his fingers into his ears and popped out the two compacted beads of toilet paper. They were impressively large. Also, one of them had a smear of pumpkin-colored earwax on it.

“What?” Robin said.

Cobie Petersen asked him this: “Were you really jerking off in bed last night?”

All the eyes of Jupiter were riveted on Robin Sexton, who, despite the dimness of evening, turned visibly red and bit his lip. This concerned me. I slept about sixteen inches away from Robin Sexton, and so did Max.

“No,” Robin said. But if the boys of Jupiter could act as a fair jury, Robin Sexton would have been convicted on the spot.

Robin added, “I. Uh. I sleepwalk. I had to make myself stay awake.”

Cobie Petersen shook his head. “Jerking off is not a good way to keep yourself awake, kid. It just makes you tired.”

Max nodded. “Punching the clown puts me to sleep, too, but I would never do it in Jupiter, with all you other dudes around. Gross.”

I was horrified. This was not the first time since coming to America I had to sit through a conversation about jerking off. Max even talked about jerking off in front of our parents! They never knew what he meant, though, because he’d make up his own words for it, like punching the clown. Sometimes he’d talk about helping his best friend get an oil change, or going out for a shake with my best friend. But one night, he explained it to me in excruciatingly clinical detail. Max told me that all “normal” American boys constantly cooked soup, and that I’d have to stop acting like such an uptight immigrant kid and loosen up. And a number of the boys in my classes at William E. Shuck High School talked about jerking off as casually as you’d talk about going to the movies, or what you ate for lunch.

Robin Sexton swallowed hard and then only stared—at Cobie, then Max, then me.

Then he replaced his toilet paper earplugs and put his face back down in his food.

Dinner ended with the agonizing song-singing that was a scheduled nightly event at Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Larry came back from wherever he’d been hiding, and the six counselors, with two guitars, a tambourine, autoharp, and a cowbell, commanded all the planets to join in singing three songs I had never heard before. The first two songs were called “Kum Ba Yah” and “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”

And I was not the only boy unfamiliar with these songs, since they played no part whatsoever in the culture of video gaming and social networking. So the counselors passed out photocopied lyrics sheets and made us sing, sing, sing, until we got the songs stuck in our heads for good.

Also, the counselors encouraged us all to sing the word balls instead of ears during our multitudinous renditions of “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” Everyone thought this was very daring and funny. I thought it was as demented as having a conversation about punching the clown over dinner.

But the worst thing was the third song. Nobody except the counselors and Max knew the third song, because it did not exist anywhere outside the solar system of Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. Max knew it because he’d been required to sing this same song during his summer at fat camp. The song was called “Boys of Camp Merrie-Seymour,” and it went like this:

Merrie-Seymour Boys!

We’re Merrie-Seymour Boys!

We’re learning healthy habits,

Smart as foxes, quick as rabbits!

When people see us they turn and stare,

Merrie-Seymour Boys are everywhere!

We’re fit and strong, as hard as granite,

We come from every single planet!

So cheer and make a happy noise—

For US, the Merrie-Seymour Boys!

For US, the Merrie-Seymour Boys!

When we shouted “US” in the last lines, we were supposed to clap. We looked like thirty-two (now that Bucky Littlejohn had been hospitalized) barking circus seals. I clapped, but I did not shout. I did not even sing. I moved my mouth like a beached trout and pretended. But the counselors made the boys sing the song at least a dozen times until we were loud enough to please them, all clapped with a reasonable sense of trained-seal rhythm, and had the inane lyrics permanently ingrained into our memories.