Free Goodhouse by Peyton Marshall

appearing to be something I wasn’t.
    â€œWhat time was it when you came in?” Tuck asked.
    â€œDon’t know,” I said. “After lights-out.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œTen.”
    He stood up and ran his fingers over a piece of molding around the ceiling of the room. He pulled a piece of lathe out from the hole around the toilet. But the wood was brittle and snapped in half, and he threw the pieces away. “Shit,” he said. “It’s getting to be that time and we’ve got nothing.” He tore several strips of cloth from the mattress covering, revealing the stained cotton pad underneath. “Here.” He handed me two pieces of fabric. I watched the way he wrapped the cloth around his wrist and knuckles and I tried to do the same. I stared at the birds on his arms. Some of them had their mouths open as if they were calling to each other. Some of them looked startled. “Just fight hard,” he said. “If you get into the lighted area, you’ll see the guards. Don’t pay any attention, even if they say they’ll let you out. They won’t. Just swing until you can’t. You know, they place bets. If you do well, somebody will probably lose a lot of money,” he said. “There’s always that.”
    I persisted in asking questions, but he cut me off. “I don’t know any more,” he said. “I’ll help you if I can, but I won’t go out of my way. That’s not how it works. What did they train you for, anyway?” he asked. “They do that, right? Give you a job skill.”
    I gave up trying to wrap the cloth around my wrist and just covered my knuckles. I wasn’t a good fighter, and the strips of rag seemed almost laughable. “I sing,” I said.
    Tuck stared at me. “Everybody sings,” he said.
    â€œYeah, but that was my skill,” I said. “What they chose for me.” Tuck told me I was useless. “But that was the best part,” I said. I blew on my wrists. “Learning to do something useless felt like they let me out,” I said. “For a while, anyway.”
    â€œThat’s just how they keep you busy,” Tuck said. “Give you a little taste of something you want.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. I felt heavy with fatigue. After my initial reaction to the drug, I’d had no other side effects. Still, I knew it must be inside me, metabolizing.
    â€œSing me something,” Tuck said.
    â€œI only know church songs,” I said. But Tuck was waiting.
    â€œGo on,” he said.
    I stood up straight. I closed my eyes, and strangely, the little chapel where we practiced was there, waiting for me on the inside of my eyelids. I could smell sage and cedar and the heavy perfume of lilies on the church altar. At the last Christmas concert I’d sung the opening of Handel’s Messiah . And now I heard the violins beginning the overture, and our little organ followed and then the harpsichord—an old, worn-out box that had been donated to us, one of its legs broken and propped up by a two-by-four. My throat muscles felt too tight. For a moment the notes were elusive, but then, all at once, the air pushed through me and I relaxed. My voice grew richer and deeper and it felt natural to sing, like I was exhaling a cloud of melody.
    Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.
    Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
    and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished,
    that her iniquity is pardoned.
    I opened my eyes, forgetting they were closed, and I was shocked to see the room anew, in fact to see it at all, to smell the mold and see Tuck’s astonished expression.
    I went silent then, feeling as if I had invoked some sort of forbidden magic in this place, crossed some line. The entire building was quiet, and I realized I’d sung as if my body itself were a pipe joining the surge of the church organ, pushing to surpass the little orchestra, to