Chapter 28

When they got back to the covered walkway they’d been sleeping under – Solomon wished the bricks would stop wiggling, he felt as if they were going to fall on top of them – Wilson told him he wanted to rob the woman, the one in their confession circle, the one who’d written the article. “She’s a woman, so she’ll be easy to knock down. Rich enough that her family won’t stop sending her packages just because we start taking one every once in a while. Ideological enough that she won’t report us. She’s the perfect mark. Got it?”

The way Wilson was looking at Solomon, it was as if he were afraid of getting a refusal. Maybe he knew Solomon wasn’t going to want to knock down a woman to steal from her even though Solomon supposed he was still technically under orders from Wilson. Having said that, the militia had been feeling pretty far away these days. In fact, all Solomon could think about right then was a recent lecture on the patriarchy that he remembered being somewhat alert during.

“Isn’t that sexist?” Solomon asked.

“Isn’t what sexist?”

“Taking her package because she’s a woman.”

“No, no, women can do fewer push-ups than men, but they can do more situps. They can’t carry as heavy loads as us, but they can run for longer distances,” Wilson replied. It sounded as if he were reciting something he’d learned when he was younger. “It all evens out in the end, so it’s sexist to treat them like they’re different.”

But Solomon wasn’t so sure.

I wish Adah could send me a package or just a letter but she doesn’t even know I’m here. Nobody knows we’re here.

The next time Solomon was aware of himself he was in the gymnasium, and he recognized it, it was where they listened to the lectures. He was glad it was indoors. The few trees that still had their branches were sprouting orange and yellow leaves. Inside the gymnasium there were yellow lines all over the floor but they didn’t make sense to him at all. He was sitting cross-legged on the court in a row to the left of a long line. In front of him and behind him were rows of prisoners.

Solomon thought maybe it was his rash that had brought him back this time. He didn’t know where it had come from or what it was. He just knew it was all over his legs and arms and back and that it made him want to scrape his skin off. Wilson said not to scratch but when Solomon was in the fog he didn’t know what he was doing. He only knew that he’d been coming to awareness with blood under his nails, and usually also Wilson in his ear telling him off. “Leave it alone, you’ll only make it worse!” Solomon wished he could wash but the bathrooms were all inside the apartment towers too, it was rainwater or nothing for them.

The bot search agent the camp used to deliver the lectures through the gymnasium speakers was talking about toxic masculinity. “Toxic masculinity, a set of cultural norms and expectations that emphasize traditional male traits like dominance, stoicism, and toughness, can significantly impact interpersonal relationships, particularly in the division of household chores. This harmful ideology often perpetuates outdated gender roles and expectations, placing undue pressure on both men and women.

“In such scenarios, men might feel compelled to avoid “feminine” tasks like cooking or cleaning, viewing them as emasculating. Conversely, women may be burdened with the majority of domestic responsibilities, reinforcing the notion that their worth is tied to their ability to manage the home. This not only creates an unfair distribution of labor but also fosters resentment, stress, and tension within relationships. Breaking free from toxic masculinity’s grip means challenging these stereotypes and fostering more equitable partnerships, where household responsibilities are shared based on mutual understanding and respect rather than gendered expectations.”

Hearing that, Solomon thought he might be sexist. In fact, it almost sounded as if everything he’d ever done for Adah was sexism. Hadn’t he come home from sentry duty and let her cook everything without even thinking about it once? Maybe even fixing things around the house was sexist, because he’d assumed she couldn’t do it herself. That was sexism. Right?

Hm. Did being anti-sexist mean treating women as if they were different from him, or treating them as if they were the same as him? Was Wilson right that it was sexist if they didn’t rob the woman from their confession circle? Couldn’t be. It had to be that Solomon was supposed to treat women the same as him sometimes and treat them as different from him other times and he had to listen more to find out when he was supposed to treat them the same and when he was supposed to treat them different.

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Which would be fine except he was tired. Thinking about all that he still had to learn made him feel even more tired. The lectures and confessions were wearing him down. He didn’t know why though. Wilson was right, it wasn’t as if they had to do anything but sit and listen and sometimes talk.

Maybe it was because even though this camp was all blue zone civilians, the lectures were all directed as if the audience were a bunch of red zoners. After hearing every day for months on end about how Solomon was disgusting for thinking that, say, kink sexuality was disgusting, it was starting to get to him. He thought often about the lesbian couple who’d sheltered him, and he wondered if maybe he was a horrible person to believe that God and not people got to decide the limits on sex. Maybe he deserved to be in this open-air prison, to be given a ration of only 1500 calories a day. Maybe he was a worthless bigot.

He couldn’t focus. His rash was killing him.

At least he wasn’t in a red zone labor camp. The red zone didn’t play when it came to punishment. They didn’t care about offering you a chance to rehabilitate, which meant there was no re-education part. It was just straight to hard labor.

The bot search agent was still talking but the words were slowing down, the voice distorting, echoing, and Solomon was sliding away, the rows of prisoners in front of him and beside him coming together and –

“Where’s Darryl?” Wilson was asking, but he wasn’t asking Solomon. They were standing on the road that ended in a black asphalt cul-de-sac outside the gymnasium. Wilson was talking to the teenager from their confession circle, who looked behind him first then shook his head.

Wilson slowed down, so Solomon did too, until nearly everyone else was ahead of them on the broken-up road. Now they were on the cul-de-sac with the last of the crowd leaving the gymnasium. Only then did the teenager reply. “You didn’t hear? He’s in a punishment cell. Someone reported him for what he said about how if they shut down the hard labor camps in ten years, it’ll be because they’re losing money on them, and not for any other reason.”

Someone had reported him? But it had been only people in their confession circle who’d heard what Darryl had said. There’d been nobody else at the table.

Solomon looked at Wilson’s face, and from his wide eyes he could see he’d realized the same thing. The people in their confession circle… are they spying on us?

… are we spying on each other?

Now Solomon was thinking about the metal shipping containers he’d seen scattered throughout the island. Wilson had told him each container had a metal bar running along the inside length of it, to lock in prisoners’ feet. “They pack in as many people as they can fit, shackle them to the bar, then they stay there for as long as their punishment sentence lasts, days, weeks, months. You get half-rations delivered to you, and a can to piss in.”

Not all of the shipping containers were the same size. Solomon had lost a lot of weight since he’d come to this re-education camp, but if he got put into one of the smaller ones, and wasn’t allowed to come out for even a month, he’d come out crippled.

Wilson didn’t say anything in response. He didn’t speak at all until they were back beneath the wiggling bricks of the walkway. The undergrowth pushing its way through the cracks of the cement was starting to die, meaning it wasn’t as comfortable to sleep there anymore, especially as it was getting cooler at night. But Wilson tonight didn’t seem to notice. He was kneeling and ripping out the stems one at a time. His brows knit together, forming a deep furrow, while his lips pressed tightly together. The color was drained from his cheeks, leaving them pale, and his eyes, still wide, were darting from side to side.

“I have to hand it to her,” he said abruptly. “She knows what she’s doing, and knows how to protect herself. She might be idealistic, but she’s not naive. Not a good mark after all. I was an idiot to speak so frankly to her. I should absolutely know better. In the hard labor camps, you can say whatever you like, because there’s nowhere worse they can send you, but in a re-education camp you have to be so much more careful. Especially if you’re a White man.”

“You think she’s the one who made the report?” Solomon asked.

“A hundred percent,” Wilson replied. His hands were clenched now but Solomon could see he was trying to stop them from shaking.

Solomon’s stomach knotted, his breath catching in his throat. He sat down and closed his eyes and tried to breathe but all he could feel were the hives on his skin going up his neck and before he could stop himself he was scratching and scratching but Wilson wasn’t looking at him he was staring at the ground and God Solomon wished he wasn’t in this camp he wished he was anywhere but living this miserable life that he found himself hating more and more each and every day –