Page 1 (1/2)

•1•

Deathdays were birthdays That’s what they said to ease their pain, those ere left behind An old man dies and a lottery is won Children hile hopeful parents cry tears of joy Deathdays were birthdays, and no one knew this better than Mission Jones

Torow a year older It would also mark seventeen years since his mother died

The cycle of life was everywhere--it wrapped around all things like the great spiral staircase--but nowhere was it more evident, nowhere could it be seen so clearly that a life given was one taken away And so Mission approached his birthday without joy, with a heavy load on his young back, thinking on death and celebrating nothing

Three steps below hi his pace, Mission could hear his friend Caned them a tandem, the two boys had flipped a coin, heads for heads, and Cam had lost That left Mission with a clear view of the stairs It also gave hiry one

Traffic was light on the stairwell thatto school, those of theered toork There were service workers with grease stains on their bellies and patches sewn into their knees co more than a non-porter should, but Mission was in no h to glare at the gentleman, to let hio," he huffed to Caging into his shoulders, the load a great one Heavier still was its destination Mission hadn’t been back to the farms in near on fourHis brother, of course, he saw at the Nest now and then, but it’d still been a feeeks To arrive so near to his birthday would be aard, but there was no helping it He trusted his father to do as he always had and ignore the occasion altogether, to ignore that he was getting any older

Past the twenty-fourth they entered another gap between the levels full of graffiti The noxious odor of ho in the air Recent work dribbled in places, parts of it done the night before Bold letters wrapped across the curving wall of concrete far beyond the stairway railing that read:

This is our ’Lo

The slang for silo felt dated, even though the paint was not yet dry Nobody said that anymore Not for years Farther up and much older:

Clean this, Mother-

The rest was obscured in a slap of censoring paint As if anyone could read it and not fill in the blank on their own It was the first half that was a killing offense, anyway The second was just a word

Doith the Up Top!

Mission laughed at this one He pointed it out to Cam Probably painted by so, soood fortune Mission knew the kind They were his kind He studied all this graffiti painted over last year’s graffiti and all the many years before It was here between the levels, where the steel girders stretched out froans went back generations Atop the angry words were pockmarks, scars, and burns of old wars Atop these wounds lay ever ry scribbles, on and on

The End is Co

MissionHe could feel it in his bones He could hear it in the wheezing rattle of the silo with its loose bolts and its rusty joints, could see it in the way people walked of late with their shoulders up around their ears, their belongings clutched to their chests The end was coh and disagree, of course Mission could hear his old man’s voice fro hi before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their tis would come to an end with them His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread People talked of the end co with barely concealed so alone Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to cohts such as thesestrap with one hand and adjusted the ‘chief around his neck with the other It was a nervous habit, hiding his neck when he thought about the end of things But that had been two birthdays ago

"You doing okay up there?" Cam asked

"I’ripped his strap with both hands and concentrated on his pace, on his job There was adays, a tick-tock, tick-tock for tande could fall into a rhyth a heavy load Mission and Cam weren’t there yet Now and then one of them would have to shuffle his feet or adjust his pace to erously

Their load

Mission’s grandfather cah Mission had never known theof ’78, had left behind a son to take over the farhter to become a chipper Mission’s aunt had quit that job a few years back; she no longer banged out spots of rust and primed and painted raw steel like she used to Nobody did Nobody bothered But his father was still farenerations of Jones boys had faro on, that they would never change

"That wordelse, you know," his father had told him once, when Mission had spoken of revolution "It also o around and around To revolve One revolution, and you get right back to where you started"

This was the sort of thing Mission’s father liked to say when the priests came to bury a man beneath his corn His dad would pack the dirt with a shovel, say that’s how things go, and plant a seed in the neat depression his thumb made