Debris
He huddled in an alcove by the airlock,
amid the sacks of rubbish, waiting to be burned,
their ashes to be spread into the regolith—
carbon with which to make new soil—
as all his former coworkers passed him by,
rust-red dust fell from their suits, coating the floors
like dried blood.
“Can you spare some credits?” he asked
one of the women as she pulled off her helmet.
“Enough to buy something at the canteen.”
“Andy, your contract expired, but you can still work.
Just sign on again, do your job—
get paid, room and board, same as before.”
He shook his head, matted hair down in his eyes,
“No, no, that’s how they get you, you didn’t read
the fine print—you have to read it carefully.
You didn’t—you didn’t read it. That’s how they get you.”
She put a hand on his arm, watched him jerk away.
“You stopped taking your medicines?
Those were covered on the corporate plan—“
“I didn’t like how they made me feel.
Soon as I stopped taking them—I saw the fine print.”
Urgent now, hoarse-voiced, “Just a couple of credits, Linda—“
“Will a couple of credits take you back to Earth?
Listen, if you work, you get your meds, you get food,
you get your life back. But you have to help us help you.”
“They got you, Linda, they got you. You didn’t read it.”
A sudden step towards her, a flash of incipient violence—
she pulled away from his upraised hands, his irrationality.
Colleagues stepped in, caught his arms,
hauled him down to security.
Held him in the shower as he screamed and cursed,
“You’re killing me, you’re killing me!”
hiding his face as if the water were hydrochloric.
They couldn’t send him home;
no return rockets had yet been built.
They couldn’t force his medication on him,
and like Bartleby, he preferred not to work.
Some folks felt bad, snuck him rations
as he slumped beside the airlock;
but more resented having to step over his legs
like a sack of trash that hadn’t made it to the recycler.
Some wondered why, if he didn’t want to live,
he didn’t just walk out the airlock without a suit—
till the day that he did just that,
and they found him on the other side of the door,
his face painted blood-rust where the dust of Mars clung.
Some felt relieved that he’d finally removed
the burden of his presence;
some felt guilt for their relief.
At his funeral, cremated remains
were stirred into the regolith,
Linda wept, though few shared her tears.
“All he had to do was work, participate,
be a part of the rest of us.
I don’t know why he chose not to.
I’ll admit, I went and re-read my contract
two, three times.
But there was nothing there,
not even in the fine print.”
They all wondered
what they could have done differently,
how they could have been kinder,
more understanding;
how any of them, surely,
could have been him;
reminded each other that Andy had been
some other mother’s son,
some other sister’s brother.
And then they went back to work.