The Colony

Chapter 3

Mrs. Post remained frozen behind the circulation desk. She was listening to a patron for some time who was talking about a novel he wanted the library to order. The librarian had deserted the speaker, only a shapeless mass of thought was steadily keeping track of the conversation. And as a hitchhiker, she joined the dialogue out of necessity. She didn’t notice the boy when he entered the double doors. The glass was smudged with fingerprints and needed cleaning. A lousy choice of materials, glass. The wall clock read 4:48, and he sighed with the assumption he was early. He rounded the corner and waded through the stacks of books. P, Pl, Pla, Plat, Plath. His finger ran along the base of each book. PLATH. It was gone. He looked again; PLATH, Silvia Plath, The Voice of the Poet, Silvia Plath, Ariel. It didn’t make sense. It was here two days ago. He walked around the shelf and looked at the clock. 4:55. “Now what?’ he thought. The sour-faced librarian was nowhere to be seen and had been replaced by a rounder, more pleasant-looking woman with bobbed white hair and well-manicured nails.

“Looking for this?” The question was solicited by a voice belonging to a wiry boy standing on the far side of the shelf. But as the boy began to speak, he was abruptly interrupted by the newcomer. “Don’t look up,” he commanded. “Just walk slowly and follow me. But not too close.” The speaker was a youth of the same age, a bit shorter, a bit thinner, and walked with a slight limp. They passed a woman sniffling from a cold. Her nose was red, and her eyes were teary. She was scribbling on a pad, taking copious notes from several open books. His eyes caught the woman’s, and as if looking in a rear-view mirror, they meet for just a moment. “Bad cold,” she said. A handful of tissues were balled up and scattered on the table. She scooped them up and placed them together into one bundle of dirty tissues. “Can you hand me that wastebasket?” she asked.

But he acted as if he didn’t hear and moved away from the runny-nosed woman. “Little shit,” she grumbled.

“Get it yourself, you got two legs!” cried the limping leader. “They’re all the same, think they can boss us kids around. But they’re damn mistaken.” The boy was impressed with this outburst of defense and suddenly felt as though perhaps this rendezvous would pan out into more than an acquaintance.

They settled at a small round table at the end of the room, where it was occupied by a lone man reading the newspaper attached to a long stick. It looked cumbersome as he tried to maneuver the paper without drawing attention to himself, but it had an uncanny knack of crinkling up as he turned the pages that were spread out in front of him, taking up all the room on the tabletop. “My name’s Frito.” He put out his hand in a polite gesture.

The boy hesitated; he wasn’t sure what to say. There was a long awkward pause after they shook hands. “Frito?” was all that came out of his mouth.

“Frito. Frito Lay.”

The boy started to laugh but stopped when the look of bewilderment shook him straight from what he thought was a joke. “You’re not kidding, are you?” There was no utterance of laughter. “Your name really is Frito Lay.”

The other smiled maniacally. “Just wanted to see if you had a sense of humor. No, that would suck, having a name after a corn chip. My name is Frito, but not Frito Lay. Just Frito.”

“Are you Spanish?”

“What if I was.”

“Nothing, just thought that you might be, I mean with your name being Frito.”

“Does it sound Spanish?”

“No, yes, I don’t know.” He was confused and shrugged.

“And you, are you Spanish?”

“I don’t know, I never asked.”

“Asked who.”

“Anybody.

“Then maybe you’re Japanese.”

“Japanese?” He never thought that, but he could be. Weirder things happened. He liked rice. But Spanish people liked rice too.

“What should I call you?”

“Yoshi.”

“That sounds Japanese.”

“Yes, I know. Like it?”

“Very much.”

Frito reached into his pocket and took out a quarter. “Heads you start, tails I start.”

“Tails.”

“He spun the coin, and it wobbled for a few seconds, however, before it could land, a hand swooped in and took it. Frito frowned. “You’re early,” he said. The chair legs screeched along the floor as it was pulled out from the table, and a boy sat down. “Yoshi, meet Gustave.”

There was a nod between the uninvited and the newbie. “So, you’re one of us?”

“He is, I think,” explained Frito, “we were just getting to that when you showed up.”

“I can leave.”

“No, might as well stay. But next time, watch the clock.” Tardiness was one of Frito’s pet peeves. “I can start off you want.” Yoshi nodded with approval. “My father is dead. My mother is also dead. Well, she’s not really in the true sense of what would be considered dead. I carry a knife with me and sleep with it under the pillow. That’s how I got this.” He raised his arm and pulled up his shirtsleeve to expose a white bandage wrapped around his arm just above the elbow. “Nothing serious, just a stupid accident when I was asleep. Now I know to put the knife in a sheath.” He rolled his shirtsleeve back and picked up the quarter. The man sitting several yards away had returned the newspaper to the rail and had fallen asleep in the chair. “They make it too comfortable in here,” he said, pointing to the sleeping man. “I got a mind to pick his pocket.” Yoshi’s eyes widened. “Serve him right to sleep in public like that.” He twirled the coin, and it spun for several rotations, landing on the table. “Heads, I have to keep going. So, the question you have is what makes us friends. It’s simple. We all have assholes for parents. One of them, if not both, are losers.”

“Big fat damn losers,” added Gustave.

Yoshi looked at Gustave and wondered if he too picked his name. He was a swarthy looking boy with a few light hairs sprouting above his lip. He had sad, dark eyes and was missing a tooth. His shirt was rumpled, and his pants were a bit too short for his height. “Losers,” quoted the boy. “I can relate to that.”

“When a kid has an asshole for a parent, it’s usually for a reason. I mean, a parent just doesn’t act like an ass unless there’s a catalyst. Usually, it’s money. But for us,” he looked around and then lowered his voice. “For others like us it’s not money, I mean sure money has something to do with it; everyone needs money.” He paused and crooked his finger for Yoshi to draw closer. “They’re assholes because of one of these reasons, they deal, they buy, they self-medicate. They’re on opiates, amphetamine, barbiturates, cocaine, hallucinogens, cannabis, phencyclidine, and prescribed psychoactive drugs. Or they like to drink… all the time. If I left something out, let me know.”

Gustave was busy counting on his fingers when he said, “Does cough medicine count?”

“Good one, Gustave!”

“Bottom line, they are selfish sons of bitches that must be dealt with.”

Mother must have taken the roogs in her room. The boy heard his sister in his head; her voice louder then Frito’s needed to be silenced so he could think. The shape of the man sleeping in the chair was that of a bear. He was a stout fellow with a thick brown beard and a mop for hair. Maybe he should be pickpocketed, the boy thought.

“There are many of us,” said Gustave. He stuck his tongue in and out of the space where a tooth should be. It was a habit that began to annoy the boy. “Are you in?”

“Am I in?” He felt like he had walked into the middle of a play and not quite sure about the plot. He assumed he knew where it was going but was trying to figure out the direction he was to follow.

They, on the other hand, were looking at him as if they were the audience, and it was time for his soliloquy, but before he took his cue, Gustave interrupted. “It’s really quite invigorating once you get to meet more of us. Then you won’t feel quite as lonely. And now that it’s the beginning of summer, we have so much time.”

I like to go to the mountains in the summer, he thought. Instead, he said, “My mother is a freakshow.”

“Good start,” said Gustave.

“My Pop, well, he’s away.”

Both listeners shared the same inaudible signal, a wink.

The man in the chair stirred, and suddenly there was a tap tap tap tap of a pair of heels walking towards them. “Here,” whispered Frito. “Take it back to the shelf and only open it right before you put it away.” He handed the boy The Bell Jar, and before the footsteps could get any closer, he and Gustave pulled their chairs away and rounded out of sight.

“I see you...