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<\/p>\nby Matthew Dix.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My job is to sort the catch. It\u2019s Mary\u2019s job to count the pearls.<\/p>\n
In the mornings, big men who work on small boats bring the catch, which in this part of the year, which is the on season, is enormous.<\/p>\n
The big men know my name, and they greet me by it every morning, but they do not introduce themselves and I don\u2019t ask any questions. It\u2019s not in the nature of our relationship, and it is more important for the big men to know my name than I know theirs because it\u2019s their interaction with me that ends their day and begins my day, and I make more money than they do.<\/p>\n
Once the big men leave, I begin cracking the bivalves, which comprise the catch, and making two piles from their halves: ones with pearls and ones without. This process kills the bivalve. When I\u2019m done killing the bivalves, I throw away the empties. We are behind on our trash bill so I pack the empties into brown lunch bags which I bring into the city center and set down on a bench in the park. I sit in the park on a neighboring bench and stare at my watch periodically over the course of an hour. When an hour passes, I throw the lunch bags filled with empties into a park trash can, making a big show of shoving them in before leaving the rest to spill over the top.<\/p>\n
When I make my way back to the facility, I collect the halves of the bivalves from the pearls pile and deliver them to Mary.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Mary\u2019s job to count the pearls. Most days, Mary is brunette, forties, and professionally distant from her job in a way that suggests she does not take herself very seriously but she does take her role very seriously. But today Mary is different. Today Mary is brunette, forties, but something about her face is different. Mary looks frightened today, like she never went to bed the night before, or like she\u2019d gone to bed but had only just woken up. It\u2019s not in the nature of my relationship with Mary to comment on her face, but she mentions it straightaway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am feeling much different. I can see it in my face!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary is pulling at her hair to convey panic like she\u2019s in a comic strip. She addresses a metal-clad door that shows her reflection. Mary and I are regarding her reflection and we both agree she looks somehow very different and exactly the same.<\/p>\n
Mary tells me she noticed it when she returned home after work last night. She had been looking at herself in the mirror above her sink in her en suite<\/em> bathroom.<\/p>\n Mary makes more money than I do.<\/p>\n Mary is freaking out over her appearance and she won\u2019t sign for my deliverable. I try to reason with her. \u201cI can\u2019t leave until you sign.\u201d But she\u2019s not listening. She is crying deeply. I am asking her how long she has been here, and she\u2019s not listening.<\/p>\n Mary\u2019s sobs fill our large, metal-clad facility. I forge her name and rest the clipboard beside her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next day when I am greeted by name by the big men who deliver the catch, I can hear the echoes of Mary\u2019s sobbing from within the facility. I feel awkward about the sobbing but the big men don\u2019t mention it when I return the clipboard with my signature on it.<\/p>\n Inside I can smell the bivalves rotting.<\/p>\n I sort the catch into piles. I pack the empties into brown bags and bring them to the park in the city center. I wait a little longer today before I throw them out. Someone has emptied the trash and all of the empties fit in one can. I take the long way back to the facility.<\/p>\n There is a sinister sound coming from the facility when I return. I discover it is Mary, sobbing still, though her voice is giving out. I collect the dead bivalve halves with pearls and walk in the direction of the sinister sound.<\/p>\n Mary looks even more different. There are flies swarming yesterday\u2019s deliverable. Pearls poke through the greening bivalve flesh like tonsil stones. I\u2019m wondering if I should forge Mary\u2019s signature again when she looks up.<\/p>\n Mary is mouthing something fiercely at me. Her face is very quiet and angry. I stare at Mary for a while, trying to make sense of her mouthing.<\/p>\n She\u2019s pointing and making the sinister silent sound. She\u2019s screaming \u201cYou! You! You!\u201d very quietly. It occurs to me that Mary doesn\u2019t know my name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the third day I wake up before my alarm. I stare at the ceiling and then I make a breakfast of marshmallow cereal. Then I shower, taking longer than necessary, using leave-in conditioner in excess and then rinsing it out. I look at myself in my mirror above the sink. I look worryingly similar to myself.<\/p>\n I dress formally and leave the house early. I take the long way to the facility through the city center. I stop at a diner where I sit at the bar. All the regulars are addressing one another and shouting their orders. Some of the regulars who come in after me shout their orders. I begin to sweat under my collar. I am overdressed.<\/p>\n I order pancakes and orange juice from a male waiter. I make a mess of my orange juice when I pay the bill. I apologize loudly to the waiter and the regulars stop shouting their orders until I leave.<\/p>\n At the facility, I have to wait quite some time for the big men. They say I look nice even though I have a big orange juice stain on my shirt.<\/p>\n It\u2019s quiet inside. I split my kill piles and walk downtown. I\u2019ve gathered the empties in a big blue tarp which I toss in a dumpster outside a construction site. I spend the rest of my hour walking through the city, comparing shoes and pants and types of dog. It\u2019s long past dark when I return to the facility. I collect my pearl pile and head toward Mary\u2019s station in the facility where a tent of thin scarves has been erected over a makeshift frame of heavy work equipment.<\/p>\n I part the curtain. Mary looks different. She\u2019s hunched over the floor, which she\u2019s left bare, scribbling in a little book with fancy paper that has flowers and butterflies lightly printed on it.<\/p>\n Mary looks up. Her face looks drawn on. She is wearing prescription eyeglasses, which she takes off and gestures with gratuitously. She inquires as to my presence.<\/p>\n \u201cMay I inquire as to your presence, boy?\u201d<\/p>\n I tell Mary I need her signature before I can go.<\/p>\n Mary looks over the clipboard and back at me performatively. I consider asking her what she\u2019s done with the two decaying deliverables from yesterday, but that is not in the nature of our relationship, and I don\u2019t know who Mary delivers the pearls to or how. I consider asking instead if she knows the name of the person next on the line when Mary speaks.<\/p>\n \u201cBoy,\u201d she says, \u201cwe are too few days in this mortal coil for pleasantries and paperwork!\u201d<\/p>\n Mary says it really loudly, like it\u2019s something she says all the time. I decide to ask her what she\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n \u201cThree nights ago,\u201d Mary says dramatically, \u201cwhen I returned home from work, I looked at myself in the mirror above the sink in my en suite<\/em> bathroom, and I was horrified.\u201d Mary twirls her eyeglasses and pretends to shoot me, like her eyeglasses are a toy pistol. \u201cBecause when I looked at my face, I saw the face of God<\/em>.\u201d She says the last part with emphasis and repeats: \u201cThe face of God. It\u2019s like I woke up in the middle of my life and saw God\u2014and it\u2019s me! It\u2019s always been me!\u201d Mary laughs big, with her mouth open so wide a fly gets caught in her throat. She explains how she remembered, suddenly, when I left her alone on the second day after the change happened, the one we could see in her face, that she was sent to this earth as God incarnadine\u2014\u201cI mean incarnate!\u201d\u2014to rewrite the Holy Texts. She explains that her dad\u2014which is how she refers to God, who she explains she is\u2014had beseeched her to make the Word flesh for His people, who had become stupider and more wanton over time and especially recently, and required a new story with better character development to entertain them. She explains how she realized all of these Truths simultaneously, and how the Word began falling from her. That\u2019s how she explains it: \u201cthe Word began falling from me!\u201d<\/p>\n Mary says she ran through the city center where she found a birthday party in the park and stole a notebook and pen from an unattended purse. She\u2019s been writing ever since, she says, pulling a strand of her brunette hair out of her mouth. She\u2019s nearly out of paper in her notebook.<\/p>\n I consider asking Mary what she will do when she runs out of paper. But I remember that questions are prohibited in our relationship, which I am beginning to miss.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t leave until you sign,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n Mary takes the clipboard and scribbles a rudimentary cross on it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At home I lie in bed for hours. I have a nightmare where I die in a car accident and go to Hell because Mary is God and Mary sends me to Hell. In Hell, where I burn for eternity, I am made to read Mary\u2019s Holy Text, which all the demons agree is a powerful work of genius that will damage their prospects of recruiting damned souls for eons. I am tasked with brainstorming ideas that will circumvent Mary\u2019s evangelizing wit but come up short. The demons do not notice and I am assigned no new tasks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the morning I rise early. I dress inconspicuously. I take my tuxedo to the dry cleaner\u2019s. I buy a notebook and a pen and a gun from the store on the long way to the facility through the city center. When I arrive at the facility the big men greet me by name and I sign for the catch, which I halve and sort. I dispose of the empty bodies in the trash cans in the park, taking care to make sure the brown lunch bags are evenly distributed amongst each can. When I return to the facility, I collect my pearl halves, which I walk to Mary\u2019s tent. I shove my hand with the clipboard into the tent, which she signs with the cross.<\/p>\n I do not look at Mary\u2019s face.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At night, I hide in a cupboard near my station to watch Mary.<\/p>\n I see so many things I was never meant to see. I see Mary count the pearls. I watch her dispose of the pearl halves, which she tucks away in napkins in the break room trash can. I watch her deliver the pearls to a small man with big features who she addresses by name. I watch Mary perform sacred rituals with blood, more blood than she could have collected from herself. I watch Mary kneeling in the blood, praying loudly to her name.<\/p>\n \u201cMary, Lord, save Me!\u201d she screams.<\/p>\n She pours over her notebook. There are dozens of filled, blood-stained notebooks stacked inside her tent. I see so much I am not supposed to see.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am afraid to kill Mary with my gun. I approach her tent quietly. There is no moon in the sky. I part the fine scarf door open.<\/p>\n Mary is waiting for me. Mary takes the gun and kills herself in my name.<\/p>\n Mary did know my name<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I collect Mary\u2019s notebooks from the tent. I leave my empty notebook behind.<\/p>\n It is late. I take the long way home through the city center. I am attacked on the street by two big men. One of them makes me perform fellatio on him while the other watches.<\/p>\n When they finish I decide to call a car. A driver named Muriel picks me up and asks me to enter on the left because she\u2019s allergic.<\/p>\n \u2018Nobody\u2019s Perfect\u2019 by Hannah Montana is playing in Muriel\u2019s car. The emotional resonance of the song so neatly matches my own mental state that I burst into tears.<\/p>\n How could I have killed God! How could Mary believe She is God!<\/p>\n Things in the car become tense, but Muriel does her best not to show she notices. I open one of Mary\u2019s notebooks and start writing. Blood pours out.<\/p>\n In my Holy Text, I will say that something much more depressing was playing in the car while I cried, something they play on NPR on Sunday mornings before A Prairie Home Companion<\/em>, an opera with the help of Bill and Melinda Gates, or traditional Irish music. I don\u2019t know any operas by name other than lighter fare and comedies. I decide my audience will be slightly stupider than me, so I say that fiddle music plays before the driver notices my tears in the rearview mirror and changes it to Mozart.<\/p>\n The music in the car is now playing so loud my inner monologue threatens to collapse.<\/p>\n I am sobbing. Muriel\u2019s face is twitching visibly. She puts on the cast album of Spring Awakening<\/em>. She looks like she\u2019s singing along but she\u2019s mouthing the rosary, and she laughs a little when she completes each decade.<\/p>\n She is reciting the Beatitudes in Latin and I am joining her.<\/p>\n \u201cBEATI PACIFICI QUONIAM FILII DEI VOCABUNTUR,\u201d we scream together.<\/p>\n Muriel disregards the notifications from her navigator app.<\/p>\n \u201cBEATI QUI PERSECUTIONEM PATIUNTUR PROPTER IUSTITIAM QUONIAM IPSORUM EST REGNUM CAELORUM,\u201d we scream louder, because Muriel has opened the sunroof, and the roar of the road around us fills the car like water.<\/p>\n Muriel and I are screaming in tongues now, the same tongue maybe, only we can\u2019t tell because we are communicating telepathically ideas which have no corresponding word even in the ancient tongues and the babbling is simply a comfort. The wind and the road and the deafening prattle of our enlightened souls are screeching together like it\u2019s all a sentence.<\/p>\n We fit it all into a single sentence and we can see the whole universe like that, and the road is the same color as the sky and the bridge and the water, everything has the same color and the same feel, and we know everything, we know all of the important things, which we babble together in ancient words that maybe don\u2019t mean anything at all.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a moment that feels different to all the moments that had come before.<\/p>\n I ask myself all the important questions I had learned. Who is the President? What is your name? How many is this many?<\/p>\n I have no idea how to respond. I don\u2019t know anything at all. It was my job to sort the catch and Mary counted the pearls.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHOR Once the big men leave, I begin cracking the bivalves, which comprise the catch, and making two piles from their halves: ones with pearls and ones without. This process kills the bivalve. When I\u2019m done killing the bivalves, I throw away the empties. We are behind on our trash bill so I pack the empties into brown lunch bags which I bring into the city center and set down on a bench in the park. I sit in the park on a neighboring bench and stare at my watch periodically over the course of an hour. When an hour passes, I throw the lunch bags filled with empties into a park trash can, making a big show of shoving them in before leaving the rest to spill over the top. When I make my way back to the facility, I collect the halves of the bivalves from the pearls pile and deliver them to Mary.<\/p>\n A short story by Matthew Dix<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44448,"featured_media":114717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115755,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114522\/revisions\/115755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Matthew Dix<\/strong> is a writer from South Carolina. He studied poetry at the College of Charleston and earned his MFA from Columbia University where he served as the poetry editor of Columbia Journal<\/em>. His work has been published by Fence<\/em>, tuffpoems<\/em>, Center for Book Arts, and other outlets. He is a recipient of grants from Poets & Writers<\/em> and Creatives Rebuild New York. He lives in New York City where he hosts the reading series Barbara\u2019s House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"