The Brothers Locke, page 11
“Please calm down.”
“Every single day I come home from working in those furnaces in Icagoro, trying to make you happy. I do what I can, you know, to keep everything going. And all I ask — the only thing that I ask — is that I can have some peace when I come home and not have my things messed with.”
“Please keep your voice down, Miguel.”
“Why? Are you afraid the neighbors will hear what a terrible wife and mother you are, Lorena? Trust me, they know. They see it.”
“It’s not that —”
“You don’t think they see it? You’ve got to be kidding me! Every time I take out the garbage, every time we leave to go somewhere I see the way they look at me. They look at me like that because of you! You and those boys!”
“Leave the boys alone. They’ll hear you!”
“I don’t care! They need to hear this. They walk around like they’re lost in a daze or something. They just act so weird. One of them acts like he can’t hear me, the other two barely speak. I mean, the one I’ve never heard say a word. I’m beginning to think he’s loco.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Lorena, open your eyes. Our boys are not normal! And hey, I’m not taking the blame for that. My family has never had any kind of deformities. It’s got to be from you.”
Lorena had no comeback for this. Mouth could tell by her lack of response that his mother had gotten to the point where she just stopped responding. He heard the kitchen faucet turn on and the sound of pots and pans moving. She was cleaning dishes to drown out her husband’s weekly ramblings.
“Yeah, you know it’s true. But you don’t understand how that affects me. Me! The neighbors know, everyone we run into knows, and they look at me as if it’s my fault. As if I’m not good. I’ll tell you one thing, mama. I’m getting to the end of my rope with this whole thing. If I come home one more time and find my things messed with, I swear …”
The sentence trailed off as the sound of pans clanging together continued. Mouth looked at his brothers, both of them doing their best to focus on building a wall out of a pile of play blocks. Sharp was helping Echo find the blocks, guiding his hands to where they belonged to build the wall.
He wasn’t mental, and neither were his brothers. Why did their father think so? Didn’t he see them as his sons? The other kids had dads who took them places and spent time outside teaching them how to play games like Haloball or climb trees or even go hunting. Miguel wasn’t interested. He was embarrassed by them. It turned Mouth’s stomach. Even as an eight-year-old kid, he knew enough to know he wasn’t wanted. The knot in his stomach would twist so hard when he heard these rantings on Sundays that his eyes would tear up. He also knew he didn’t want to step out of that room for fear of his father’s reckless rage.
The door to the boy’s bedroom swung open, and his father marched in. He was a large man with hairy shoulders. His large head was shaped like a jar with enormous ears sticking out on each side. The stench of alcohol seemed to come out of his pores and fill the room.
“Come here! I need your mother to see something,” Miguel bellowed as he reached for Mouth.
“Leave him alone!” Mouth heard Echo yell.
“Come on! It’s time!”
***
“It’s time, Mouth. Get up, we’re here!” Echo said.
Mouth snapped out of his dream, opened his eyes, and lunged backward from his brother, who had his hand on his shoulder. For that split second between reality and dreamland, he couldn’t tell who had a hold of him: his brother or his father. As the bright sun of the East reminded him of his current reality, he yawned, stretched, and finally sat up in the chair he had been sleeping in.
“We’re about to land?” Mouth asked Echo.
“Yeah, you slept the entire trip. I’ve been yelling at you to get up for a minute. I know you have bad hearing, brother, but really?
“It’s time to get up. They’re unloading the ship. We need to get going soon. Jocelyn and Kale said they’ve got showers and fresh clothes for us once we get there. I, for one, am going to take them up on that and shower for about two hours until I’m wrinkled.”
“Good idea. You kinda stink.”
“You’re not all that fresh yourself, Mouth.”
The two smiled and then turned their attention to Sharp. He had been awake for some time and was adjusting his shirt and pants, which had been wrinkled during his slumber. His eyes were fixed on the adjacent compartment where Bando and Bulk Brown were deep in discussion. He didn’t see Dana anywhere.
“I’m sure she’s still around, Sharp,” Mouth laughed as he nudged Echo.
“Sharp, you do know she’s a little old for you?”
Knowing that they were just trying to get under his skin, Sharp ignored his brothers. He stretched, yawned, and left his seat to go into the other cabin with the adults. As soon as he approached the glass door, the conversation between Bulk and Bando ended. He entered the next compartment anyway and waited for them to say something to him.
“This is the one that can’t talk, right?” Bando asked.
“Yeah,” Bulk replied. “Actually, he’s the only one that doesn’t get on my nerves.”
“I wonder why that is,” smiled Bando.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to get any answers here either, Sharp looked into the next cabin. There were many people moving about, but it didn’t take long for his enhanced vision to pick up Dana. She was staring out a window on the far side of the next cabin.
Bando and Bulk watched him as he went to meet up with her. With a heavy sigh, Bando put his hand to his face and scratched at his beard.
“It’s like I said. That one is sweet on her.”
“And she’s soft on him,” added Bulk.
“Should we worry about this?”
“Not now,” Bulk ended the conversation quickly as the other two Locke Brothers approached.
“Time to go, huh?” Mouth said.
“Kale and Jocelyn have your bags already. They’re outside with our ride. You should go meet up with them.”
“And do it now so you two can continue your private conversation,” said Echo.
“He’s the one who can hear things, right? You didn’t hear anything you shouldn’t have, did you?” asked Bando.
“Maybe,” Echo answered with a smirk before leaving the cabin.
The brightness of the sun, the clear air, the opulent blues and whites of the sky overhead were not only inspiring to their senses but also overwhelming. Echo’s hearing was thrown off; sounds were louder here than in the West. Mouth was adjusting as well, given how bright everything was and how intense the midday sun beat down on his skin.
“So, did you actually hear anything important?” he asked his brother while placing his flat palm against the bridge of his eyebrows to shield himself from the sunlight.
“No, I have to focus in order to hear conversations, you know that. The trick is that they don’t know that.”
“Where’s Sharp?”
Echo paused for a moment and turned his head slowly, listening as best he could for anything that would indicate where the third triplet had gone. Locating his brothers through sound was second nature to Echo. He had become so attuned to their body chemistry that he was able to locate Sharp by listening for his specific heartbeat.
“Over there,” he pointed to his left. “Dana’s with him.”
“Of course,” Mouth smiled as spotted them both with his eyes.
“Hey!” Kale called to them. “Mind helping us out here?”
Kale and Jocelyn were having a terrible time unloading their equipment from the ship and into a truck that was stationed nearby. The cargo staff for the airport had not been as careful as they could have been, and one of the containers had fallen to the ground, its contents spilled across the tarmac. Not only was the staff clumsy but also lazy as they stood and watched Jocelyn and Kale scramble to pick up gadgets, papers, and tools on their own.
“I’ll go help them. You go make sure our brother doesn’t propose to her or something equally insane,” Mouth said.
As Echo approached Dana and Sharp, his ears began to pick up another sound that at first was faint but concerned him. While he had become accustomed to tuning out certain noises — in particular, the noises the human body would create such as indigestion and swallowing — irregularities in such sounds stood out to him. Right now, a unique irregularity had caught his attention coming from the ship itself.
Someone near the ship had the most unusual heartbeat he had ever heard. It thumped twice in quick succession, then no sound at all, then six consecutive thumps, then nothing, and then a long drawn out beat that sounded as if it was a bubble slowly bursting. There was the sickly noise of what sounded like rocks grinding against bone, fluids constricted and then released, lungs filled with thick fluid and then expelled in a raspy groan. Whoever this was sounded not only extremely ill but unnaturally proportioned.
Echo stood in the middle of the airfield among throngs of passengers coming and going while he tried to identify the person in question. They were close to Mouth, Kale, and Jocelyn, so it could have been one of the crew members, but the sound was also muffled as if behind some obstruction.
“Are you ready?” Dana said, startling Echo as she placed her hand on his shoulder.
She apologized and then introduced him to a man who went by the name Ikon. He wore a well-pressed tan military suit with a high collar. A single medal adorned his shoulder: three stripes of gold with a silver heart overlapping them. His weathered face suggesting he either was advanced in age or had seen more harsh conditions than his age should have allowed.
“It won’t take us too long to get to Pharracrop,” Ikon said. “They are waiting for you, so we shouldn’t waste any time here. What is the holdup?”
“Uh, the cargo crew dropped some of the equipment. Mouth went to help them clean up,” explained Echo, still distracted by his mystery person.
“Well, that’s not surprising. I tell you, standards around here have dropped off so much. We’re getting lazy,” Ikon said.
“Let’s just get in the truck and get ready to leave. You can go on about security standards later, Ikon,” Dana said.
“Speaking of which, I hope the valuable items you have are not in that mess that’s spilled out on the tarmac.”
Dana scoffed at the notion and patted at her satchel. Ikon nodded, cleared his throat, and started towards the truck. Dana followed him, but the brothers lingered behind.
“What’s wrong Echo?” signed Sharp, his hands directly in front of his brother’s face.
“You don’t have to be that close. I can see what you’re signing,” Echo replied.
“Okay,” Sharp took a step back and signed again, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s probably nothing, honestly. I just hear something, or someone, that sounds strange. Curiosity more than anything.”
“After this last week, you’re getting scared over someone’s bowel movements?”
“Funny. No, it’s more than that. I don’t know. Let’s just get out of here. Whatever or whoever is making that noise won’t matter in an hour. I’m hoping after all this we finally get paid and can be on our way.”
“I hope so too, Echo. I hope so too.”
***
Pharracrop loomed just a few miles from the airport, and what a sight it was against the crystal clear skies of the East. The city sprawled out as far as the eye could see with jutting silver towers in the east adjacent to the financial district. A giant dome could be seen in the middle of all this, peering upwards at the sky with dozens of smaller buildings surrounding its perimeter. The East was a prodigious valley of homes, almost like suburbs, that extended to and beyond the borders of their sight.
It was another hour’s drive through the city to get to their destination, which the Locke Brothers were still in the dark about. Despite several attempts along the way, they were not given any more details as to why they were in Pharracrop. “Just wait and see” became the mantra, and eventually, they simply gave up.
They were just one of many vehicles heading towards the center of the city. Many of these other trucks were carrying goods and materials to be delivered. Two cars on the opposite side of them were pedestrian with some of the strangest characters inhabiting them.
Sharp watched one car as it rocketed down the roadway in a parallel lane. A strange menagerie of races filled the vehicle from front to back. The driver had three arms — two on the wheel and a third smacking away at the passenger beside him. The passenger was a portly female with bright yellow skin and several spots dotting her bare shoulders. She wore a box shaped hat with feathers spilling from all sides. The backseat contained what Sharp assumed were the couple’s children who had the skin tone of the passenger but the appendages of the driver. They ranged from child to young adult, and all were arguing and pushing and shouting as the youngest was attempting a daring escape from the vehicle through its sunroof, only to be dragged back down by the driver’s third arm.
While not every car was filled with such a show, Sharp did notice the rather playful strangeness of Pharracrop’s citizens, which he hadn’t expected. He had always assumed it was filled with self-important socialites, perfectly primped princesses, and narcissistic nabobs. In actuality, it was a much more complex and diverse ecosystem than he had envisioned.
The deeper into the city they got, the more cluttered the streets became not only with vehicles but all other modes of transportation. An entire lane of the roadway had been taken over by a perfectly formed line of unicyclist in gray uniforms and cone-shaped hats. All were men, and all had the most serious of looks — tight-mouthed and sullen-eyed. Another lane had more conventional vehicles except for a chariot awkwardly lingering in the middle of the line of traffic; traveling at a much slower pace and drawn by a beast that was a cross between a rhinoceros and a bison. Its horn and snout were raised high in the air as it deliberately and defiantly continued its lackadaisical journey. Runners frequently bobbed in and out of traffic, fearing not much for their safety because hitting a pedestrian in Pharracrop was met with a pretty hefty penalty, so the avid joggers of the city abused the privilege often with excessive arrogance.
“Not what I expected,” Sharp signed to Mouth.
“I know what you mean. Hey, I thought we were going to see some big shot, Bulk.”
“We’re almost there,” Bulk said to Mouth
“And where is there?” asked Echo.
Bando pointed out the window of the vehicle to a massive cluster of buildings on the left. Six towers shot towards the sky, a few dozen stories higher than any other building in the area. A seventh building sat at the base of the six towers, its roof a dome reflecting the crisp blue sky above and a distorted representation of the six towers that surrounded it.
Its placement was strategic. Previous generations knew the tragedy of war instigated by powers from the East and the West. The Paramount, as it was referred to, was placed at the base of the six jutting Pillars of Pharracrop as protection from the invading armies that last attacked the city some thirty years prior. Although the myths and facts of that last war had been muddled by time and the nature of storytelling, the benefits of such an architectural arrangement were obvious.
The caravan of vehicles pulled up to the base of one of the pillars, and from there, the brothers noticed that the pillars were connected at their base by a circular wall some twenty feet high. They stepped out of the vehicle and admired the craftsmanship of the architects who designed and constructed this place.
“We’re good to go,” Bulk called out to the group. “Try to act presentable in here. These are the Biggest of Big Shots, you know.”
Mouth and Echo took a moment to address their attire. They had been wearing the same hoodie and jeans for days now. The stains of dirt and blood dotted their clothes. They looked as if they had just come out of a sewer and smelled just the same.
The interior of The Paramount was larger than the outside would suggest. There was a long corridor before them and hundreds of people passing through. Some looked like average citizens while others had a more sophisticated, political look to them in their suits and briefcases. This was a side of the Dea that the brothers had never seen before. While it resembled Avidity in some ways, there was less distraction here and more purpose. Everyone was about their business of doing something that was important, it seemed.
At the end of the busy hallway was a series of elevator doors. Each had a line of people waiting in front of it. At this rate, it would take forever for the group to get to their destination. However, their guide elbowed his way through the crowd and to the security officers standing in front of the center set of doors. After a brief conversation, Ikon waved to the group and off they went, into the elevators and up to the offices of The Council.
“It’s amazing seeing all of this,” Kale commented to no one in particular as the elevator ascended. “Every time I come to Pharracrop, it just makes me humble.”
“Why humble?” asked Mouth.
“Everything just works here, you know? Yeah, I’m sure there’s chaos from time to time, and any political place like this has its share of corruption.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Bulk Brown commented.
“But overall this city is probably the best the East, if not all of the Dea, has to offer.”
“He gushes about this place nonstop if you let him,” smiled Jocelyn.
“You don’t find Pharracrop stunning, Jocelyn?”
“A little bit, but like Bulk hinted, it's not perfect. People can be as terrible here as they can be in the West. Don’t forget that.”
“If you say so.”
The doors opened and the reality of the situation finally soaked in.
This was the Hall of Pharracrop and the seat of the High Council. These were the men and women who made decisions for the majority of the citizens of the East. The room was shaped much the same way the exterior of the building was: six seats in a semicircle, raised on platforms and overlooking a circular space at the center of the room where those seeking the Council’s help would stand. The far wall was made entirely of windows from which one could look out at the expanse of the west side of the city. Every house, office, garden, tree, fountain, and roadway combined to paint a fantastic panorama.
