The first day it was there was a Tuesday.

Hot, sunny, sweaty, uncomfortable Tuesday. The breeze blew and made things even more stifling. Breathing would have been easier underwater.

“Hey, hey Juan. Dyou see that?”

“Yeah, man. Weird.”

And that was it. No one else really cared. The drone of the bees and the Dog Day sun beat down on the town, and the fence wasn’t noticed much after the two line exchange. Big, black letters written in a child’s scrawl on a metal tag tied to the fence shouted “End.” The tag was the only thing alive in the town; it whipped and clanged and moved with the breeze like it was a tempest, not a small wind storm in Middle of Nowhere, Who Cares, Some Country. Maybe no one cared about the fence because it was so innocuous. The wires wove themselves to form a cage around a part of the town, but you could see through the fishnet holes the ramshackle houses no one had lived in for at least a few decades. The fence almost wasn’t there.

Tuesday, something AD I think, though if it were AG or AT no one would have cared in Middle of Nowhere. It was too hot to think, honey flowed through veins and slowed down the sharpest minds to the rate of the trickle of viscous fluid. Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

“What you wanna do?”

“Mmph.”

“Yeah, man. Too hot. Carlos?”

“I’m movin under the shade. Sun’s baking my head too much. Hot.”

“Cmon Paul. Lets go on look at that fence.”

“Too hot.”

“Kay.”

The radios hummed in tune with the honey bees, talking of the weather, the temperature of the day (No one believed what they said though; the weatherman was always lying. It was never only ninety nine degrees there), and the boys and men waved their old leaf fans, stirring the hot air in different directions. Days became nights, which became days and then nights and daynights and nightdays and time. It flowed, hot, it slowed, hot, and weeks passed, and it was hot.

November. The heat stayed. No one turned on the radio anymore, it didn’t matter. Last thing they heard was “kkkksht forty below last night ppppshhhppp strange cold snap kkkkkkkk” and after that it was just static. November, and it was so hot, Pepe swore his bones were melting, and that’s why he couldn’t get up one day. At first they went to visit him. But the slow march to his house became slower, the stream of people shrunk down to a small trickle, and they forgot about him. One day, they remembered again, but they couldn’t find his house anymore.

In its place was fence. In front of the house, around it, it joined with even more fence. Maybe the fence was only separating a small group of houses, a slowly growing cluster of neighborhood, or maybe it was all around the town itself. But in a place called Middle of Nowhere, who cared? And it was hot. Too hot to do anything at all. They could see Pepe’s house through the fence, in any case. The fence was too high, and even though he never returned their shouts, the others knew he was just fine. Faking his nonexistance. Any day, he’d just pop over the insurmountable fence, and they’d talk about how good a cold Coke would be. And it was hot. So nothing happened.

“Yo, man. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Ate?”

The new part of the fence had a sign on it, too. But this one was better written. The scrawl on the metal shield said “Don’t.” The “t” even had a little curl at the end. Everyone agreed that it was very nice, and thought nothing more of it. The honey in their brains was warm. No – it was hot. And they swam through the air, sloths of infinite awkward grace, to move from the porch to under the tree when it got too hot. It wasn’t so bad. They figured it was maybe December. One of the boys worried about whether it was Christmas or not, because he hadn’t said his prayers. Not since the Church disappeared behind another fence. (It had since gained the look of a ghostly shack, covered in the pale tan dust of the place, and so isolated behind the fence.) But Carlos assured him – no, man, no worries. God’s with us – and that was the end of that. Too hot to sin, anyway. Too hot. As long as they could make it from the porch to the tree, to inside at night, it was okay.

And then the house went behind a fence, too.

But it didn’t really matter. Because, well, why sleep inside anyway? It wasn’t cooler. The AC had been broken for a few months, in any case, around when the fence appeared.

“Weird, huh?”

And sleeping outside was better. The stars twisted into crazy constellations. Everywhere, they were so alive, and so cold, so bright. Electricity had stopped a while ago too. No lights, so the night sky was so pretty, and who cared that they couldn’t go inside? Outside, outside was better, and it didn’t have weird musky old house smells either. All natural air, and they used dust as their blanket; it wasn’t so bad.

“Carlos?”

…

“Ca… Carlos?”

“Where is he, man?”

“Didn’t he go into that old house over, over that way? Aah. Aah. I can’t remember what it’s called. Six… six forty seven? Albasco Court? Or something man, don’t make me think no more… it’s too hot.”

“Shit, man.”

The birds had stopped their cheerful racket. The raucous cries of crows were gone too. They had stopped around the time that Albasco Court was cut off by fences. The bees were still there, you never saw them, but they were always humming, everywhere, you just swatted at them and went back to sleep. Closed eyes made things better.

Especially because the fence had closed off everything except a part of the dirt road where the last of the boys were. Even the tree where they rested was split in half by the fence. Everywhere surrounding them were the netted fences, the patterned wiry cages. And there were the signs that hung off of them, another one every few feet. Every new section that disappeared was replaced by a sign. An apology in writing, with words that made sense in a really, really, don’t think about it way. The writing on them had gotten progressively better. That one, on the left? No, no, honey brain, your other left – yeah. That one was the last to appear. Look at how pretty it is.

Go To Sleep, Please.

Really pretty, those words are. Even said please, now isn’t that what you want in a sign? Real pretty, and polite… And some of the boys did what it asked. Now that there was maybe only forty by twenty feet of space to sit in, the fence stopped closing in. Just as well – but the boys just started leaving. Maybe it was so hot, they wanted to see what was over the fence. It had started to get foggy outside of it; maybe there was a respite on the other side… But Paul swore that he had seen Jimmy disappear right in front of him, and he was scared, so scared. The fear sent little chills down his spine, little shivering lightning bolts that went through his veins, and his fingers were left so cold afterwards. But soon the fear left, because he forgot, and the coolness left, replaced by the heat, and he wasn’t scared, and he wasn’t cool, and some days later, he wasn’t there.

It was, maybe, April. The boy who worried about missing Christmas had been keeping a sort of tally of days passing, though sometimes he’d miss a day, or mark down one day twice. But he didn’t raise a fuss about missing Easter.

Because he wasn’t there anymore.

It was, maybe, April. It was, definitely, hot. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe… breathe… did it feel any different? Hold that breath in, don’t breathe…

“Hey, you know if you don’t breathe, it’s less hot?”

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you that last… week or something, man? Jeez.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay... I’m hungry.”

“haha”

“haha”

“That’s funny, Juan. You know we haven’t eaten since the heat started.”

Juan was the last one left, after a while. He was sad, because who was he supposed to talk to during the interminable days? Who was going to talk to him about how hot it was, or where all the bees had gone? Who… who… What was he gonna do?

“Hey, God.”

…

“Man, you all I got now. Why you gotta make it so hot?”

…

“My bones all gone and melted now.”


June crawled by. Somehow, another metal sign had appeared – even though they had stopped appearing after the fence stopped moving – and it was attached to Juan’s t-shirt. On the front of his bland white tank, the new metal plate said “Goodbye.” Red paint this time. The words were all nice looking, like someone who really knew how to write had written it out. Juan didn’t notice. It was so hot, and his bones weren’t working anymore, anyway, he just slept…

July.

August. And one day, all that was left there in the little cage was the metal plate on the ground, and an indent in dry dusty grass where Juan’s head had rested a moment before.

“Hey man.”

“Hey.”

“You God?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Man, why you had to make it so hot?”












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“And here you have it, Channel pppht news, I’m Juanita Sanchez, back to you.”
“It’s such a sad story. To have an entire town ffssshk kk in the middle of the August heat wave… ssssssssssssssssssss….” (Click)

“Ricardo, stop messing with the T.V!”

“I’m not Momma, it’s doing it by itself!”

“I see you pushin those buttons – I got eyes on the back of my head, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Did you turn on the AC, Ricardo? It’s so hot these summer months…”