The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert Page B

“I have to go, but I’ll be back soon. We’ll talk more then.” She reached out and took my hand. “This place seems to attract lost souls. Soon we shall see what else it brings.”
    * * *
    However hard I tried to remove myself from the political dramas still unfolding in the capital, they continued to find ways to reach me. If the worst of it was over, there was still plenty of bad news to be had. Truck drivers delivered the stories with the rest of their cargo; the other men brought back gossip from visits to their families. Everyone agreed that President Mailodet was showing no signs of letting up. He crushed the unions that dared come out in opposition to his new constitutional powers. In response to a supposed conspiracy involving a small group of students, he abolished all youth organizations, regardless of philosophy and affiliation. Everywhere he looked, he saw a plot. Knowing all too well where coups and assassinations were bred, he shut down the military academy. And the first task he assigned his new security forces—whose members he picked by hand—was to keep an eye on the few army officers he had not already removed.
    Although he, too, was a reminder of a past life I had been glad to put behind me, the one person I did think of often, particularly during Mme Freeman’s absences, was Senator Marcus. Whenever I had trouble with the men, or when the construction faltered, I imagined myself back in the Senator’s study, watching him dissect problems with his always flawless composure.
    By this time I had fashioned an office of sorts, a desk made of an old oak door balanced atop two rusty barrels, and it was from here that I handed out orders. Whenever one of the foremen came to me for an answer, for instructions as to how the men should proceed, I thought back to the times Senator Marcus and his colleagues retired to his study after dinner to discuss matters unsuited to the dinner table. No matter how impassioned the conversation grew, Senator Marcus always sat calmly in his chair, the last to respond. I often suspected he purposefully held back what he had to say, savoring it like cigar smoke, until the time was right to let it out. The weight of his deliberation had a way of nullifying everything that came before it and rendering useless anything that might follow. His way of speaking with finality was something I tried to emulate, and slowly, over time, I began to feel comfortable as the man in charge.
    The majority of the problems had to do with the men. I forbade alcohol, but the men drank anyway. And they fought. Who knows what they fought about? It hardly mattered. They welcomed any excuse for picking up a knife. These were the sort of men I had spent my life avoiding—crass, vulgar, lazy, and violent. They would gladly have smuggled guns or drugs instead of hammering nails, if only they had been offered an invitation.
    One evening I heard them yelling out back. Fearing the worst, I went to investigate. Against my better judgment I had been allowing the men to build a fire each evening in the pit by the laundry. Joseph, the foreman of the carpenters, had assured me that it was an easy way to keep them entertained.
    â€œAt what cost?” I asked on the day he brought his proposal.
    â€œThey’re men,” Joseph insisted, “not children.”
    To which I had replied, “I hope you’re right.”
    That night, beside the fire, two dozen men stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. From within came the shouts I had heard from my office.
    â€œWhat are you waiting for?” someone in the circle said. “Hit him.”
    Pushing my way through was like rolling heavy logs stuck in the mud.
    â€œWhat’s going on here?” I yelled.
    As if they were slowly waking from a dream, the two scuffling men in the center came to a belated stop. One had a torn shirt, the other a cut above his eye. The two men looked at each other and then at their