Above the Ether by Eric Barnes

Author:Eric Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628729993
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2019-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Watch a shooting scene caught on camera.

See a murder in the street.

Have your sibling describe the feeling of being carjacked in her driveway.

Even if all of it was done by someone that each victim once called a friend.

The epileptic talks, almost to himself. “Some places I can go and no one gives a shit about my color,” he says.

They’re sitting on the back of a flatbed truck. Tucked in between the metal arms of the brightly painted teacup ride, now folded up like a kid’s pop-up book left high up on a shelf.

“It’ll be this way for days,” the epileptic says. “Weeks. Long enough that I almost forget about the racists.”

The carousel operator stares backward, down the highway they’ve been traveling.

The air is hot enough that, like others working for the carnival, he and the epileptic decided to ride outside, in the wind on the back of the trucks. Cooler than the overloaded cabs of the company vans.

“And then,” says the epileptic, “some fucker will want to call me a nigger.”

His friend listens. Staring backward. It’s ten in the morning. The sun burns hot.

The epileptic says, “There are a lot of ways to call me a nigger.”

The kid nods some. “I don’t say that word.”

The epileptic nods.

In a minute, the carousel operator says, “My father told me not to.”

The epileptic asks, “You break your hand in that fight?”

The carousel operator looks down, at his hands resting on his knees. His jeans. “I can’t really move the right one,” he says. “I could yesterday. But not now.”

The epileptic nods slowly. “Motherfucking badass fight,” he says.

His friend looks away. Along the highway, the trees are brown. As if burned by a fire that swept through here weeks ago. The carousel operator says, “I would rather not ever get in a fight again.”

The epileptic nods. “Badass fight.”

His friend nods.

“I mean,” the epileptic says. Pauses. Wipes his dark hands across his pants. The pants were white once. But they’re now tan with a filth the carousel operator shares. “I mean,” the epileptic says, but then stops again. “Why do you fight like that?”

The kid, his friend, takes a minute. “My friends,” he says.

The epileptic nods. “Three friends, you said before. Right?”

The kid nods.

“You just about killed that man,” the epileptic says to him. “You know that, right?”

The kid remembers others who lay bloody on the ground. The kid remembers cars moving so fast that the motion of it was all you could understand. Or know. Or feel. The kid remembers crossing along undeveloped high ridges, woods near their homes, where no one ever went. Except him and his friends.

The carousel operator finally answers. “I know that.”

The epileptic nods. “Then at least the two of us know that much.”

The kid turns slightly toward him. Smiles some.

It’s not a warm smile. But it’s the best that he can do.

“I’ve seen bad things,” the epileptic says. “I’ve seen abuse. But, man,” he says, turning fully toward his friend, “I’ve never seen anything like what you did to those men.

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