“We make magazines available. I’m sure you remember what those are.” Robinson launches back into his spiel. “Does anyone here know what Caesura means? The word itself?” No one answers. “Caesura,” he continues, “means a pause. A break. And that’s what this is. You have entered this program voluntarily. This was not only to secure your cooperation and testimony, it was to ensure your protection and provide you with a break in your lives, a pause, a new start, which you have chosen freely to undertake. We encourage you to approach life here in that spirit. Now, if there are no more—”
Ramrod raises his hand again. “What about conjugal visits?”
Robinson sighs. “As I explained, there are no visitors.”
“Even prisoners get conjugal visits,” says Ramrod.
“You’re not a prisoner, and that’s not how this place works. If you were properly oriented before agreeing to enter this program, which I’m sure you were, then nothing I’m telling you should come as a surprise.”
Ramrod raises his hand again.
“Yes?”
Ramrod says brightly, “So who are we supposed to fuck? Each other?”
“Well, you’re fucking with me right now, aren’t you?” Robinson says. The group titters. Then he quiets them again. “If you’re unhappy with anything you’ve heard today, there are mechanisms by which you can withdraw and return to your former circumstance. Of course, there may be other repercussions for you to face. As I said: This gate only opens one way. So, before you leave, I’d encourage you to consider what kind of circumstances might have led you to agree to come to a facility like this in the first place.” He lets the line linger, then says: “Now, if there are no further questions, I’ll introduce Sheriff Calvin Cooper.”
Cooper rises slowly from his seat at the back of the room and takes his time walking to the front of the class. The four arrivals are visibly restless, swapping agitated glances as their reality sinks in: What exactly have we agreed to? Yes, it’s a new life, but a new life to be lived in a concrete bungalow with a lawn the size of a cemetery plot, in a town encircled by a fourteen-foot fence and surrounded by semi-arid plains for a hundred miles in all directions.
Cooper watches as they wrestle with this realization. He’s seen this process before, many times. It always ends the same way: They stay. What choice do they have, really?
He waits for them to settle. Then he says, finally, in a slightly raised voice, “There was a murder here last night.”
That quiets the room right quick.
Even Robinson looks surprised.
“Longtime resident,” Cooper continues, “name of Hubert Gable, sweet guy, never harmed anyone, just liked to enjoy a drink. Shot dead in our local bar early this morning. Some of you may have heard the shot. The details are not yet public knowledge so I’d ask you not to repeat any of this until I have a chance to address the whole town.”
He lets the information register, watches their faces as it settles in. He waits for eager hands to rise with questions. None do. He continues.
“Look, I don’t tell you this to scare you. Just to let you know what exactly the stakes are here. This may not be a prison, and it may not be purgatory, but it’s sure as hell not a paradise, either. This is the Blinds.” Cooper leaves those words to linger in the air as well. Then he points to his arm patch. “It may say ‘Caesura’ on the badges, but the Blinds is what everyone here calls it. Because we don’t see the outside world, and they don’t see us, not anymore. So this town’s continued existence—our survival—depends on shared principles, mutual interests, and trust, just like any community. Except in this community, when those principles are compromised, people get hurt. People die. Understood?”
No one speaks. The room is silent. Cooper says, “The most important thing to remember is: The Blinds is both a last stop and a fresh start. Which, for most of us, is exactly what we need. That’s why we’re here. Now y’all have yourselves a pleasant day.”
If Cooper were the type to wear a cowboy hat, this would be the perfect moment to don the hat and tip it to the newcomers. But Cooper’s never been one for a cowboy hat. He’s from the Northeast originally, New England, so he was not born a hat man and he’s never learned to fake it. It’s the great regret of his life. One of them, anyway.
So instead he just lets his practiced words linger, then turns on his heel and heads straight through the door, out into the sunlight, leaving the new arrivals to scan the two lists and decide on their new names.
3.
ROBINSON SLIDES TWO PIECES OF PAPER across the desk to the Probable Hiker. The other three newcomers sit silent and wait their turn. Robinson has his ledger open. He watches her as she considers the two lists.
“What do I do with these?” she asks.
“Mix-n-match,” Robinson says.
“What do the red Xs mean?”
“Those names are already taken.”
She looks up at him. “Why can’t I just choose my own name from scratch?”
“Because, left to your own imagination, we’ve discovered that people choose names linked to their past, even inadvertently. You borrow a name from an old best friend or some classmate from third grade. Or you name yourself after your first dog or the street where you were born. All of which connects you to your former life.”
The hiker nods slightly, as if to say, Seems reasonable. Robinson can sense she’s inquisitive to a fault. Not the type to sit in the back of the class and simply scribble down whatever you tell her. She’s front row. She wants answers. She wants to know if this will be on the exam.
“So why movie stars?” she asks.
“Their names are generic but familiar, so they’re memorable. Like you’ve heard them somewhere before.”
She looks at the other list. “And why vice presidents? Why not presidents?”
“What could be more anonymous than a vice president?” Robinson says with a practiced smile. A joke that he’s made many times before.
She laughs politely. She considers the lists again. She bites her lip in concentration and she is suddenly attractive enough that Robinson instinctively looks away from her and at the clock. Then he looks back at her. “Or I can assign you a name,” he says. “It will be randomly chosen using an algorithm from the available options.”
“I like Bette Davis and Aaron Burr,” she says. “I’ll be Bette Burr.”
The goombah scans the lists. He seems acutely befuddled. “There’s a guy on here named Hannibal,” he says.
“Hannibal Hamlin, that’s right,” Robinson says. “Our fifteenth vice president.”
“Can that be my name?”
“Hannibal?”
“Yeah.”
Robinson leans in, like he’s sharing a confidence. “It’s available, but between you and me, I don’t recommend Hannibal. There’s a reason no one’s taken it. In the very unlikely event that anyone ever comes looking for you, you want them asking around for a John or a William, not a Hannibal.”
“I want to be Hannibal,” the goombah announces.
“Fine. But you have to combine it with another name.” Robinson points to the other list. “One of the movie stars.”
“I want to be Hannibal Gore.”
“Al Gore’s not a movie star.”
“Hannibal Bronson. Like Charles Bronson—”
“Charles Bronson’s not on the list.”
“He’s a movie star.”
“Sure. But he’s not on the list.”
“Okay, then Hannibal Schwarzenegger—”