HYPERCHRONICA

Chicken Vanishes, Heartbreak Ensues

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:05:00 -0400

I feel like I need to apologize again for what I did. I was the one that took Gertrude, not my friend. I just couldn’t muster up the courage to admit to it in person.

Let me start by saying that I never intended to hurt Gertrude and that while she was with me I took very good care of her. As you can see she is in perfectly fine condition. Maybe a little confused, but I won’t pretend to know what she thinks about the whole thing.

I feel like I should explain myself a little better. Maybe this way you (and the entire neighborhood) can forgive me.

I moved to Brooklyn from Central Illinois about two years ago and have yet to make any friends. I go out on walks around the neighborhood every night and I always stop and pay Gertrude a visit. Your house - that old siding, the green chair on the porch, the flowers in the front yard - it all reminds me so much of home. I was so happy the first time I noticed it and it immediately became the culmination of my walks. But really it was Gertrude’s clucking that made me happier than I’d been in over a year. Something about her movements and her sounds is particularly soothing.

See, when I was five years old my mom gave me a baby chick. Why she did that I don’t know for sure. I was too young, she shouldn’t have trusted me with a baby chick. He was so fragile, his pale yellow fuzz a sorry excuse for protection. The sounds he made sounded like cries for help I don’t think I meant it any harm, I probably couldn’t see beyond the cuteness of it, couldn’t really understand it was alive like me and I guess that was the whole point of giving it to me in the first place. I ended up crucifying the baby chick with clothespins onto the clothesline that slung from the outside of my bedroom window. He swung helplessly by his little wings, peeping in agony, and I’m not sure if it didn’t register with me or if I actually took pleasure in its suffering. I don’t know what we’re made of, still.

All I know is that my mom caught me and that was the only time she hit me, that I can remember. She smacked me very hard in the face, I can feel the sting like it happened yesterday. Then she carefully took the little chick down and held it for a while, cusped in her hands, close to her chest. When she put it on the ground it stumbled around in a sad, drowsy state. I don’t remember what happened to it after that.

A few years passed and I forgot about the chick, but my mom sure didn’t. When we moved out further into the country she had a chicken coop installed in the backyard and I was put in charge of cleaning it and taking care of the chickens. We had three chickens and a rooster at first, but it didn’t take long for the rooster to disappear. My mom and I knew my brother had something to do with it, but he never confessed. He was becoming more distant every day. Eventually he didn’t bother coming home for days at a time.

In the beginning I dreaded cleaning the coop, the smell, the feathers. But the chickens grew on me, despite their mess. They are noble animals, I really believe that. Most people would chuckle at the thought, but then most people haven’t spent much time with chickens. I ended up spending most of my teenage years with those chickens, hiding from my brother in the back of the coop. At night I’d use my flashlight to read a book in the dark corner, waiting for him to fall asleep before heading to bed.

After dad died my brother took out all his anger on me. He couldn’t care less about the chickens, and he refused to do any chore my mother put in front of him. I haven’t spoken to him in ten years. Now we live in the same city. Well, he lives in Manhattan and I live in Brooklyn, and nobody’s going to tell me those are the same city, but you know what I mean.

Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked. I’m so sorry I stole your chicken, or I guess I should say borrowed your chicken. I didn’t think about how important Gertrude is to so many people in the neighborhood, as important as she is to me. Not to mention you and your family, of course. But it makes sense. She’s a special chicken.

The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:36:54 -0500

The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook :

No one knew how he had managed to get inside, let alone how long he had been in there. Though it was a busy subway station, that particular entrance had been closed off for decades, the stairwell shrouded by a metal cage at the platform level and shuttered from the world outside by a padlocked trapdoor. The grime of abandonment had accumulated in the area under the stairs, with food wrappers and newspapers strewn about and rats occasionally scurrying between them. It was not surprising then that most people jumped with fright when they realized that deep in the shadow of that cage there sat a man in peaceful repose, thick black hair covering his face, a black trench coat a few sizes too big draped over his frail frame and surprisingly shiny black boots covering his feet - an altogether perfect camouflage.

Though most passerby were afraid to look for too long, the more curious could be seen walking around the enclosed staircase in search of a door or gate that might explain how the man entered his cage. The gate at the foot of the stairs was bound up by an enormous chain and lock, covered with the same thick black paint the city had used year after year on all its metal surfaces so that whatever was painted became an engorged statue of itself. The incredulous observer might then squint up into the darkness at the end of the stairs in search of whatever entrance or exit must exist there, but by this point the next train came by or the girl playing the accordion started her next song or an unintelligible announcement was made over the intercom system and the curious observer shook his head and walked away. At some point someone became curious enough to call the local police precinct, but a homeless guy in the subway station doing nothing in particular, no matter how strange his specific location may seem, doesn’t raise much alarm from an officer answering phones in New York City. When those patrolling the station finally noticed him they figured he was better off in there, separated from commuters by metal bars, than if he were occupying one of the few available benches, or, maybe worse, living with the mole people in the tunnels where every once in a while they’d be surprised by a train and stop traffic for hours. A mess to clean up. He kept to himself, tucked away in his little corner of the world. Anyone who dared speak to him received only silence in return.

The real trouble started when a group of bees decided to make his little corner theirs too. Not that they disturbed him at all. He showed no signs of being bothered by them, and in fact seemed to barely notice them. They flew around him in the darkness, landed on his face and probed around his nostrils, strolled on his eyelids when he closed his eyes, even buzzed around inside his ears. Occasionally he might gently swat away at one of the more pesky guests, but mostly seemed nonplussed by their presence, perhaps grateful for their company.

The problem was not with him, and the commuters might not have noticed the new addition to the cage either, except that these were no ordinary bees. From this crevice in the crust of the city wherein a mysterious man languished in public imprisonment, the hum of the subway system was now accompanied by the high-pitch buzz of bees that were so red in color they seemed to have feasted on the blood of some unfortunate creature in the world up above. When illuminated by the brief light of passing trains the bees that lingered in the not-so-dark places appeared fluorescent. They were beautiful and mystifying, and after about a week their presence brought enough attention to that secluded corner of the bustling city to expose the lonely man’s hideout.

At any given moment a crowd of people gathered around the bars to get a closer look at the man and his strange insects. They could no longer look past the man sitting in the darkness amongst them. Some took out their cameras or cell-phones to snap a picture of the odd exhibit, blinding the man with their flashes and forcing him to squint his tired eyes. Still he barely moved, and as the pictures and stories made their rounds on the internet more and more people came to gawk. Rumors quickly spread that the man was a performance artist from London who had quietly set up the exhibit over several months, though many insisted they had seen him under those stairs for over a year. Some guessed that he was trapped, probably mentally challenged and surely in desperate need of assistance. Day after day visitors came and left food, flowers, notes, toys, books, prayers, candles, and other assorted offerings inside and around the cage. More than one underground busker wrote lyrics in honor of the man and the bees, performing songs throughout the subway system that invited commuters to come witness the rare display. After a week of this commotion the police were instructed to prevent large crowds from gathering. However, due to the incredible increase in revenue at that particular station they were not to disturb the man or his bees until further notice from the MTA.

Then on a particularly crowded day one of the visiting commuters was stung by one of the bees and fell from the platform onto the train tracks. The crowd was too busy staring into the cage to notice. An incoming train’s rumble grew louder. A homeless man sitting on a nearby bench sprung to his feet. The conductor hit his emergency brakes and the deafening screech of metal filled the station. Everyone turned their attention to the track and time seemed to slow down. The homeless man reacted quickly and jumped onto the tracks. Just before the train reached them, the homeless man pulled the fallen woman out of harms way into the space underneath the platform. For the first time in days not a soul in the station was looking at the man in the cage.

The incident caused an immediate uproar demanding that the gates be pried open to remove the dangerous man and his bees. It was suggested that he was angry with the crowds and had trained the bees to follow his commands and enact revenge on those who disturbed his peace. People spat on the man and hurled insults into the shadows. Someone threw a bottle into the cage and just barely missed the man’s head.

The man looked more like a trapped animal than ever before.

Police were barely able to contain the angry crowd. They were forced to close down the station in order to figure out how to extract the man from the cage. A negotiator was brought in to try to talk him out peacefully, but still silence was his only response. Finally the mayor made the decision to have the gates cut open and the man removed by force before dawn so as to not disturb morning rush hour. A special operations crew was summoned for the job and the police stood outside to prevent anyone from entering before it arrived. A crowd grew thick in anticipation, the bright lights of news crews spotlighting the cordoned off entrance. Fans and critics held up signs with hand scribbled slogans and shouted chants in support or protest of the man beneath them. The buzz of the red bees was no longer audible amidst the chaos aboveground.

A group of officers wielding heavy machinery eventually arrived and descended into the station escorted by armed guards. The crowd outside quieted down as the machines were put to work and the sound of screeching metal once again overtook the station. Suddenly the swarm of red bees rushed up onto the street, exiting from seemingly every hole in the ground. Part of the crowd dispersed in a hurry, running wildly and screaming in fear, but the bees didn’t want anything to do with them, and as quickly as they came they were gone, their red bellies invisible in the night sky. Most of those who ran soon returned, simply unable to stay away. The men and their machines below stopped and for what seemed like minutes everyone remained in silence. Even the officers blocking the entrance were looking down into the station in curiosity, their backs turned to the crowd that had become entranced by the suspense.

The yellow hardhats emerged slowly up the stairs. The entire crowd pushed and shoved, standing on their tiptoes to get a better look. The first officer out slowly wiped his brow, looked around and declared, “He’s gone. There’s no one down there.”

More With Dementia Wander From Home

Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

More With Dementia Wander From Home:

They know where I am. Sun is high up now, looks like noon or close to it. I just have to reach those rocks and make a right. A right at the rocks. I’ll bet I can see the house from those rocks if I can get up there. Used to be able to climb like a little monkey. That big oak in the backyard, could see the whole damn valley from the top there. Out here, not one tree… Just rocks. Those tests we were doing killed everything. If there was a tree here before it sure as hell wasn’t here after we got done. Surprised it didn’t kill these lizards too.

How is it I can see the moon in the middle of the day? What’s the moon doing out this damn early, I wonder? The moon spins around the earth, the earth spins around the sun, and the sun just sits here on top of this desert. Burnt the whole place up orange. Used to be you could get one of those magnifying glasses and hold it to a piece of paper or a twig and the thing would start to smoke and soon enough it would catch fire, just like that. Point that at a lizard and see if the thing don’t run right back under a rock. The sun is just cooking us down here, like someone’s holding that damn magnifier and playing some sick joke. Well I’ll be damned if I’m gonna hide at this point. Just keep moving or they’ll get you.

Not a single tree out here now. Used to hitch the horse to the tree out front as a kid, felt like a regular cowboy eating lunch while the horse rested under the shade. They don’t even sit down to rest, makes you wonder why people have to lay under the covers for near eight hours a night to keep going the next day. Pathetic. Give me a piece of ground to lay my gear down and I’ll take a nap good enough to recharge for a whole week. People complain too much, cause they don’t know any better. Would you look at that, the sun and the moon together like that? Now how do you expect me to make a sundial without a twig in sight? I guess one of these pointy rocks will do the trick. Prop up the rock in the sand like a miniature Stonehenge. Now what a sight that was. A thing like that. Piece of the way back past just sitting there, untouched. Here we are trying to blow things to smithereens.

Gotta make it back to base and tell ‘em all about this. Haven’t seen a thing move out here except for these old grey lizards scurrying around. Could be they all left when they heard our engines. This dry wind carries the sound clear across the sand, over the dunes, past the rocks, over the canyon, through the valley… But mostly all you can hear is the wind.

Lawrence of Arabia, now there was a piece of work. A good soldier with a rebellious heart… win a war all by himself if he wanted. A blue-eyed devil riding around this desert on a fine stallion, hootin’ and hollerin’ like that, what a sight. Must’ve scared the hell out of anyone who wasn’t with him, that’s for sure. Something else to see that happening on a big screen when it’s five below outside, a big blizzard coming. Snow and sand, it’s all the same in the end really. End up stumbling around blind as a bat either way. Can’t see what the hell you’re shooting at, what’s shooting at you, don’t know where you came from or where you’re going. Hell on earth.

Being deep in a jungle you can’t see a thing, but the thing is out in the desert you can see too much. That lonely horizon. They say hell is other people, but I think really hell is yourself, too much. A man will start seeing things that aren’t there when there’s nothing to be seen. Dad used to read us that story, says the desert is just a big old labyrinth that kings used to confuse their worst enemies.

The old man sure liked to read. Boy, he would read about three newspapers every day, cover to cover. I think he even read the obituaries and the classifieds. He’d be able to tell you any kind of story, you’d be laughing your ass off and he’d just go on and on, something that happened thousands of years ago and here he is telling it like it happened yesterday and he was there to see it. Tears rolled down his eyes every time he laughed. Funny how close laughing and crying could be.

These shoes are no good for walking on sand. Whatever happened to my boots?

That hawk up there can probably see clear to the end of the world.

Pissin’ in the wind, nothing quite like it. To take a piss in the grass, in the middle of a forest or something like that. Dad always said that was his favorite thing, and he sure did piss in the outdoors a lot. I’d hear him walk outside next to those bushes before the sun came up and take a piss back there. Not quite the same pissing in the sand, out in the desert, but still makes you feel alive for some reason. You eat with forks and knives, hide yourself when you piss and shit… forget you’re an animal after all. Something so basic, natural, ‘bout pissing in the grass or the sand I guess. Something we forgot but can still feel in our nerves deep down somewhere, some kind of freedom. Maybe we can mark our territory like a dog or a wolf and just lost practice, that’s all.

Then you get old like me and start pissing yourself… that’ll remind you about being an animal! Only marking yourself as territory, cause that’s all you got!

Make it to the path and I’m on my way. They’re probably right on my tail now. Can’t see a damn thing in this heat, not even the horizon can stay straight, sweating like a whore at Sunday Mass.

The ground is hard now, baked solid by this damn sun. Used to be you’d throw some seeds over your shoulder and a plant would grow right there in the dirt, green all over the place. Dad mows the lawn twice a month sometimes, the weeds are so stubborn.

Just keep walking straight ahead. Must be the river over that ridge. That trip out of Ohio, clear across this great land. Where’s the ocean? we’d ask. Are we there yet? It’s right over those mountains, he’d tell us. But it wasn’t. He’d laugh and laugh. Then you’d forget, when you’re a kid you’re always forgetting, everything’s always new. You’d look at that sky over past the range and see the ocean in it, almost hear the waves. ‘Til suddenly it really was there.

Playboy Previews Accidentally Shown On Children's Cable Channels

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Playboy Previews Accidentally Shown On Children's Cable Channels:

After days on the road in a filthy rental van there was nothing quite like the southern hospitality of a beautiful woman. Lee hadn’t seen her since their college days together, but she was as gorgeous as ever. She now had the glow of a mother, the proud smile of an independent woman.

Amber peeked through the blinds before opening the door. Lee had exchanged a few emails with her but was too nervous to actually call before showing up at her doorstep. She was genuinely happy to see him and held on to their hug for what seemed to be a long time. The smell of her perfume brought back a rush of memories that made him dizzy, a tangible feeling of the passionate youth they had shared and, Lee now recognized, had lost. From behind the screen door appeared a little boy holding a toy truck. He stared at his mother as she embraced this stranger. Night was falling on the horizon and the chant of the cicadas was throbbing with its arrival.

Ian had been hearing Lee talk about her for years and now finally understood why his friend was so enamored. He watched in silence as they embraced and nodded a hello when Amber’s bright eyes met his.

Ian and Lee worked together often but this was their first assignment together in two years. They had both changed drastically since last seeing each other. Ian had separated from his longtime girlfriend and when he got the call that would bring him to the American South he was still in the throes of a dark depression, a downward spiral of binge drinking with less than caring friends in less than reputable Manchester pubs. Ian was a recognizable TV persona in Britain, the off-kilter tour guide of a travel show that took viewers on worldwide adventures they couldn’t otherwise afford. The show had been somewhat popular on cable for several seasons before being relegated to a mid-afternoon slot that preceded a new primetime line-up of reality shows. Ian was sometimes parodied on British comedies and had become the butt of more than one joke throughout the country. In America he enjoyed relative obscurity and thus relished the occasional trip overseas.

Lee was Ian’s regular cameraman, and on this particular show he had also become producer so as to prevent the network from sending someone else to baby-sit the two of them. They had become great friends over the years and were an efficient team mainly because they actually had fun together. They were the proverbial dynamic duo.

This time things were looking different.

Lee had also divorced his wife since their last job together, and though she had kept custody of their four-year-old son he was more contented than he could ever have imagined. Still, not used to being alone, he would find himself pacing back and forth throughout the empty house, his mind rife with possibilities. He was also having trouble sleeping, but he enjoyed the extra time insomnia allowed him. He would wake up in the middle of the night and lie on the living room rug with his dog. They listened to the neighbor’s cat meow incessantly in the backyard, and Lee studied the bastardized reflection of the moon on the grimy window. He felt restless and invigorated. He was ecstatic to get such a long gig on the road with his old friend, especially one that would take them through the entirety of the American South, through places he half-remembered or dreamt of knowing.

Amber welcomed them into the house and introduced them to her son Jordan. Ian remained quiet and being that it was the first time he’d shut up since meeting at the airport in New York Lee took this as a sign of trouble, perhaps unfairly.

“You have a lovely home,” Ian finally muttered as he put down his bags.

“Oh, thank you. Yeah, we like it here,” Amber responded with a shrug. “Can I offer you guys somethin’ to drink? Water, juice, a beer?”

“A beer for me, love,” Ian responded quickly, glancing at Lee as he did.

“I feel like I know you from watching the show, isn’t that funny?” Amber said pulling two bottles of beer from the fridge, handing one to Ian and offering the other to Lee.

“Well, most people hate me from watching the show.”

“Really?” this time Amber was the one looking at Lee as she spoke to Ian.

“Ian is quite the celebrity in old England,” Lee responded with a smirk.

“Something like that,” Ian chirped before taking a long swig of his beer.

The three of them stood in uncomfortable silence for a moment until Ian and put his bottle down on the counter.

“Well… are you guys hungry?” Amber asked, “I could run and pick something up, something quick. I’ve got nothing in the house.”

“How about I go get something so you can stay here with Jordan?” Lee responded.

“Orrr… I go with you so we can catch up,” Amber said before turning to Ian, “If you wouldn’t mind hanging out with Jordan for a couple of minutes, Ian?”

Ian glanced once again at Lee, trying hard to read his friend’s expression, unsuccessfully.

“Sure. I’d love to.”

“He doesn’t get to hang out with guys very often… especially not celebrities,” Amber joked as she picked up her purse from the counter. “He’s in the other room, hypnotized, won’t even notice I’m gone for a few minutes. We’ll be right back,” she added.

“Okay,” Ian responded, once again sharing a loaded look with Lee. Ian was surprised Amber would choose to leave her son with him, but he had understood upon laying his eyes on her that, just as Lee had insinuated, she was a carefree, intuitive spirit. And maybe she really did feel she knew him well. All the stories Lee had told him about Amber were beginning to make sense and the ethereal woman was becoming real.

The truth is Ian had no experience with children and was essentially terrified of them. He was convinced children did not like him, inherently, inexplicably. In fact he’d felt jealous of Lee’s natural ease with children, of his connection with his son. He was in awe really whenever in the presence of parents with their children. He couldn’t comprehend such casual intimacy.

Ian entered the living room and found Jordan splayed out on the rug, his head resting on his hands staring at a cartoon on the TV. Ian paced to the couch cautiously and sat down. Jordan looked back at him, quietly acknowledging his presence, then back to the cartoon, unconcerned. Ian figured he could just wait it out until Amber and Lee returned, figured there was no need in disturbing the kid with useless banter. He relaxed on the couch and watched the cartoon in silence. Within moments he found himself laughing out loud at the slapstick on the screen. He became engrossed. He remembered watching cartoons with his sister as a kid, remembered the old house in Manchester, the old man in the garage, a can of beer in his greasy hand, the savory smell of his mother’s cooking wafting in from the kitchen, seemingly disparate memories interconnected by the joy of laughing at bright moving drawings.

The kid looked back at him every time he laughed, as though he were trying to understand what Ian found so funny. Ian finally noticed then that Jordan did not react to what was happening in the cartoon even though his big green eyes were transfixed on the screen, barely blinking. When a commercial break came on Jordan began rolling around with the toy truck in his hand, mimicking the sound of an engine. Ian stood up to go to the kitchen.

“You need anything, buddy? Some juice or something?”

“Nothankyou,” came the response amidst the engine’s groan.

Ian stood in front of the fridge for a moment studying the artifacts held up by colorful little magnets. A crayon drawing of a helicopter shooting at a burning building, a stick figure hanging desperately onto its landing skids, Jordan’s frail signature in the corner. A photograph of Amber holding Jordan as a toddler, her bright red hair blowing in the wind. Another of Amber in a yellow bikini running through a sprinkler with Jordan, her ample breasts in full display. Ian leaned in closer to get a better look.

From the other room came a loud whine from Jordan, “Eeeewww!”

Ian snapped out of his trance, quickly grabbing another beer from the fridge and returning to the living room. Jordan hadn’t budged from his previous position, still mesmerized by the screen on which there were now two oily naked women entangled in a sixty-nine position feverishly licking each other’s vaginas.

Ian stood frozen for a moment and frowned in confusion.

“Where’s the cartoon?!” Jordan yelled.

“What did - did you change the channel there, mate?”

“No! What happened to the cartoon?! This is gross!”

Ian stepped up to the television and tried pressing the first button he saw while using his body to block the screen. The sound of the women’s gasping moans rose to ear-piercing levels and Ian started pressing all of the unmarked buttons at once. A settings menu now overlapped an extreme close-up of a tongue twirling inside a vagina. Ian finally pressed a button that turned the television off in a quick static burst.

“What happened?!” the kid yelled out again angrily.

Ian turned back to notice his bottle of beer spilling onto the carpet. The abrupt silence was then interrupted by the sound of the backdoor swinging open and Amber calling out to them in a sweet voice from the other room.

“Boys? Who’s hungry?”

Body Found In Plane Landing Gear Hatch

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Body Found In Plane Landing Gear Hatch:

They told him to leave work early because of all the commotion. A crowd of journalists and reporters followed Sujiro on his way to the airport’s parking lot bombarding him with questions about the dead man. Someone had told them he found the body in the landing gear compartment. He repeated what he’d told the flight attendants who’d surrounded him with questions earlier. They all wanted vivid descriptions.

The man’s foot had been sticking out of the hatch when it was opened, an image Sujiro was not able to process immediately, his mind entering the cautious delay inherent to strange encounters. Regardless, in disbelief or denial he approached, climbing up to the hatch slowly and actually studying the body for several minutes. It was the first time Sujiro had seen a dead body. The truth was he had seen his mother in a flowery coffin a few years back, but that was the last thing he wanted to think about.

The dead man was frozen in the fetal position, his arms hugging his legs tightly close to his torso, his face seized in a permanent, calm acceptance. His eyes were closed, his lips pursed as if for a distant kiss. A thin layer of ice covered the creases in his clothes and skin, which was black and burnt blue by the cold. Sujiro reached out and touched the back of the man’s neck with the intention of searching for a pulse, but an icy shock made him withdraw immediately. He felt embarrassed for being so naïve and for the first time looked around to see if anyone had noticed him taking so long up in the hatch. His coworkers were busy in the luggage compartment or elsewhere around the plane and hadn’t taken notice. He had one last look at the body and thought of telling it to stay put or that everything would be okay before climbing down the ladder.

His boss asked him to repeat himself several times, each time responding with an angrier and more incredulous expletive, like Sujiro was playing a practical joke. Within minutes the boss was warily climbing the ladder to look for himself. A quick glance was all the confirmation he needed, and he immediately came back down on shaky legs, his face completely pale. He looked right through Sujiro and wiped cold sweat from his brow while mumbling another long curse. What do we do now, boss?, Sujiro asked. Call airport police, the Boss responded plainly.

After briefly recounting what he’d seen to the journalists Sujiro drove away in a daze.

While stuck in traffic he imagined the man crumpled into the trunk of his car in that same awkward position. He turned the radio up full blast to ward off the image but found the man now sitting next to him in the passenger’s seat. Sujiro shut his eyes, let out a scream and honked his car horn all at once. When he opened his eyes a little girl sitting in the car next to his stuck her tongue out at him. He was alone again. He felt like hiding or escaping and then felt his hands get cold. Rummaging around the glove compartment he dug out a CD of Ravel’s Bolero and quickly inserted it into the player. He took a deep breath as the mellow crescendo poured out of his speakers. He rubbed his hands together as he drove, holding the steering wheel with his knees.

By the time the song reached its climax Sujiro was pulling into the garage of his building. He waited for the song to finish in order to collect himself before facing his family.

Knowing his wife would question his early arrival, Sujiro tried to conjure up a mild version of his experience so as to not scare the children. Planning his words carefully in his head Sujiro entered the elevator on the right. On its way up to the ninth floor where Sujiro lived the elevator stopped dead and went dark in a sudden jolt. Sujiro immediately cursed himself for being so careless. He’d been avoiding this elevator for days after learning that a neighbor had been stuck in it for over two hours. He’d even made sure his wife and children avoided it.

Sujiro took his cell phone out to find that he had no reception but was slightly comforted by the light it provided. He used the light to find the elevator’s alarm button and confirmed that it did nothing just as the neighbor had told him. He realized at that moment that he’d need to scream and bang until someone heard him or just wait until a neighbor noticed the elevator was stuck again. He also realized there would be little chance of anyone noticing until after business hours when residents would be returning home. Besides, Sujiro didn’t have the energy to scream or bang. He also didn’t think it wise to terrify the children with his cries for help. When the cell phone’s light went off he remained still in the complete darkness, accepting its peaceful embrace. He then leaned back against the cold metal and slid down to the floor slowly like he wasn’t sure it was still beneath his feet. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. He was a bird now. Soaring high over the sea at sunset. He reopened his eyes to indistinguishable darkness. For a moment he wondered if he was dead. Maybe the elevator had fallen so quickly he hadn’t realized it. Maybe this was it. A small dark box. He thought of his children sleeping, so peaceful. He often wondered about their dreams and looked forward to the day when they could better verbalize the things they saw while they slept. He felt heavy, felt himself sinking lower onto the floor. He clutched his knees and shrunk into a ball. He was an armadillo deep inside the earth now. So he waited.

On Subway Tracks, a Loss Compounded by Mystery

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

On Subway Tracks, a Loss Compounded by Mystery:

On this day, like any other, he would walk the two blocks from his apartment to the subway station on the neighborhood’s rubbish strewn shopping avenue. Some days he would try to count his steps from the stoop to the station’s entrance, so as to eventually compare this route to the one that went around the block, past the Chinese laundromat. He would think about counting but never get past the first few steps, well aware by then that he would never walk the alternate way even if it meant saving a few minutes on a rainy day. Instead he would walk past the coffee shop, either slowing his step to look in the window and greet the friendly owner or purposely avoiding it altogether, depending on his mood. Then he would walk past the old men who stood in front of the ‘No Pork Hot Dog’ sign on the window of the pizza joint and wonder what they found to talk about every day and if they noticed him walking past them at the same time each morning.

Finally he would descend into the subway station, hoping a train would come neither too soon nor too late thereafter, allowing him to reach his preferred spot towards the front but not forcing him to wait so long that it would be filled to the brim, in which case he would prefer to be late to work. When that happened he would marvel at the tenacity of those who slid liquidly into spaces that seemed not to exist. Standing just outside the doors, he would actually enjoy the train’s delay as it allowed him to scan the faces of the unwilling contortionists and hear the occasional muffled rant from deep within the car. He would search for the images flashing behind the aggrieved eyes of those packed inside, the enumerated justifications for the worthiness of a life lived in this way. The baby’s face while napping, the wife’s kiss, the dog’s smile, a mother’s embrace.

When that train would finally pull away, he would lean over the edge of the platform searching for the next one and marvel at the bent bodies of others doing the same in sync along the station, an anxious underground ballet. Then he would feel for the subtle breeze blowing from within the tunnel signaling an oncoming train, and close his eyes just before the gust hit his face upon its arrival. He would wait patiently by the doors for the rare passenger who exited at his station, finally making his way into the car in search of the most comfortable place to stand with a newspaper in one hand. He would prepare his legs for the sudden jolt of departure by separating his feet into a stable stance, then look around in search of those who apparently never learned about inertia and were surprised when they were nearly knocked over, gasping in disbelief as they reached for something to hold on to. This would anger him, would seem an affront to his assimilation of this routine not to mention to the obviousness of movement. But it would dawn on him that it was precisely the routine that dulled one’s sense of movement, made one forget that this tin box was not a magic portal but a moving chunk of metal epically battling friction within the guts of the city. Sometimes it was the world outside the grimy windows that did the moving and the train went nowhere, in the way that life in the city seemed to rush past in streaks while he stayed stuck. Sometimes direction itself was a victim to routine, as when he would move to the opposite side of the train when the crowd flooded in at the busier stops and forget that he had done so, preparing himself for a jolt that came from the wrong side of his body and winding up embarrassed but pleased with the surprising freedom of being unaware.

Between paragraphs of his own reading he would enjoy glancing around at the literature in others’ hands, reading as many lines as he could manage without drawing too much attention. Sometimes he would become engrossed in these half stories, these in-between accounts, and would then have to combine or complete disparate thoughts once the person flipped the page or exited the train…The dachshund’s round belly… A full memory channel with smells, tastes and even feelings … within this circle, things must be kept moving. Equally engrossing were the pieces of alien conversations whispered or shouted between couples and groups of friends, often in languages he could not understand. These stories would amuse him enough that later he may try (unsuccessfully) to remember where he had read or heard them. A constant cacophony of distant voices aching to become a cohesive choir. Furtively shared reading begot an intimate familiarity, as though the writing were done by the reader, as though this thing they were reading, this choice, were like a diary entry opened to the world. Without a book, only so much could be surmised about the woman with short red hair and square-framed glasses. But if her face was partly hidden by a romance novel, a yoga instruction manual, or the day’s tabloid, a different kind of bond was created. Once or twice he would witness someone in the sacred act of finishing a book, he would notice them reaching the end and he would focus on their eyes until they moved past the last line on the last page, the split second when they passed the last period and perhaps flashed through the entirety of the story, as one supposedly does in the moment before death, and finally looked up snapping out of that universe and back into the crowded train, back to being completely surrounded by people and still feeling utterly alone. The efficiency of the subway depended on these mysterious variables.

His office being equidistant from two consecutive stops, he would choose whether to walk uptown or downtown on this given day, also depending on his mood. If he chose to walk uptown he would stroll across less crowded blocks and past the pungent smoke of chicken being prepared for the day’s shawarmas in one of the Rafiqi food carts. If he walked downtown he would have to avoid the throngs, amble past the fruit stand with the ugly Indian man, meander around the table where the sad old African sold knock-off purses and step over the gas lines that fed the thirsty buildings. This haphazard decision barely seemed of consequence, but he would try to imagine a day when it might, would try to infuse this with a significance that small decisions lacked.

He would remember the time he and his mother barely missed their usual bus headed upstate, only to see the same bus on the television screen later that night, a mangled carcass of metal in the bottom of a ravine. He would imagine how he might feel that same tenuous relief, that fragility, after learning of a terrible fate of this particular train between this stop and the next. He might imagine himself lucky and wonder about whether his knowing to get off that train might have been a sign from a guardian somewhere he couldn’t see or imagine. Maybe his mother would be watching over him somehow, maybe she could communicate some strange urgency that would prevent him from some adverse fate. He would remember the people who said they felt a strange need to avoid work when the buildings came crumbling down and wonder how many other times they’d felt that urge before but wouldn’t remember because only correct premonitions are worth remembering, and the wrong ones weren’t premonitions after all.

He would turn the corner at the old church building now repurposed to house a fire sale by a failing clothing retailer. He would try to avoid the appropriately rotten gingko fruits that lay smashed on the sidewalk in front of its entrance, their curious smell of sewage emanating boldly from the concrete. He would recognize the delivery-men unloading their trucks, the Super rattling open the freight entrance, the secretary punctually smoking a cigarette in front of the building, the furniture store cat indolently giving life to the window display, and then he would enter a building that for years would remain faceless to him.

He would wonder if these moments added up were to be his entire life.

Once inside the office he would open his window, sink into his chair, check the phone for voicemail, power on his computer, check his email and glance at the news headlines before beginning his work. Every now and then he would step towards the window to look down at the street below. There the world moved at an equally predictable pace, and from this vantage point, from where every element seemed so delicate and every trajectory so limited, fate seemed a reasonable proposition. Every movement was rigged by a larger context and transformed into something preordained, even the unexpected. From there he would witness past, present and future.

A couple argued loudly on the wet sidewalk below, moving back and forth between each other like two atoms bound by inexplicable energy, pushing and pulling, coming and going, engaging in and braking from a reassuring embrace. The man bounced around feverishly, stepping on and off the sidewalk as he argued, his words rising above the street but their meaning getting lost somewhere in the drone of the city. The woman watched in embarrassment as he stepped into the street and held up traffic, still arguing. She yelled for him to stop it, true desperation in her pitch. The man seized on this fleeting power and laid down flat on his back in the middle of the street, his arms stretched out wide like he was making a snow angel on the grimy asphalt. Cars bottled up the entire block, but no one honked their horns, a strange display of respect or just plain awe. The delivery van at the front of the line tried to navigate past him, but the man scooted himself like a crab in order to block it from going around, savoring this moment of control, his own personal tiny Tiananmen Square. Eventually people grew tired of the spectacle and laid on their horns. Satisfied, the man got up and sauntered back to the sidewalk, where the woman awaited in obvious defeat. Whatever point he was trying to make, he had made it. They exchanged a few more words, clinched each other like two tired boxers, and then, just like that, walked off in opposite directions. Their desperate gestures seemed choreographed but their goodbye poorly rehearsed. Their stories got mingled with all the others on the street.

Closing his window now, the man would go back to work at his desk, not before looking up at the clock on the far wall. The truth had been ticking away.

8 Deaths in a Small Town, and Much Unease

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

8 Deaths in a Small Town, and Much Unease:

He parked once again by the grain elevator at the end of the lonely gravel road. The early morning fog hovered over the surrounding fields and reminded him of some dream place inside of a cloud. He’d dreamt of flying only once and in that dream he’d seen lost landscapes hidden inside the clouds as he swooped through them, shadows of places he only half remembered just beyond his grasp. He took a sip of his coffee and looked around. No one as far as the eye could see, as usual.

He turned off the clunky ignition and stepped out of the truck, letting nature’s steady buzz take over. Walking into the field along the ditch he paused again to take in the deceiving emptiness of the place. A crow flew against the wind above him and headed towards the sun. His boots crushed the sleepy dew covered grass beneath them sending tiny bugs scattering about. The dirt below smelled rich with life and looked to be moving by itself. They said anything could grow in these parts. He tried to imagine what the place looked like hundreds of years ago and feel the loneliness of discovering an uninhabited stretch of earth. Far beyond the horizon he heard the hum of the highway.

He walked steadily with his eyes closed for a while trying to stay in a straight line, opening them again when he heard the babble of water.

As he reached the canal he saw the ghostly figure floating in the murky water. Her throat had been slit and she was naked from the waist down, the remnants of her clothes hanging loosely from her frail limbs. He stood above her, paralyzed. She was still tragically beautiful. Her long dark hair flowed in the water like seaweed, so naturally it appeared to have grown there with the rhythms of the water.

“What are you doing back here?” she whispered.

He took a step backwards and almost tripped on himself. He hadn’t seen her mouth move, but had heard the words clearly. He tried to say something but what came out was a questioning grunt from somewhere deep inside his chest.

“You going to stand there and look at me all day?” the woman said, now an irritated moan rather than a whisper, a strangely familiar twinge in her tone.

He still didn’t know whether the woman’s mouth had moved or not when she spoke. He was staring at her pale legs lingering on the water’s surface, noticing the bruises that climbed their way up to her midsection. He suddenly felt very cold, as if he were the one drenched in water.

“Listen, it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do now. Might as well pretend you never met me,” the woman said in a tired voice.

He tried once more to respond but there were no words he could reach.

“Maybe you could tie a rock to my waist, push me underwater?” the woman asked plaintively. “That way no one else will find me…”

He still couldn’t move. His heart was beating in his head now, his entire body trembling with each beat. She wasn’t moving her lips but the words were loud and clear, like she was speaking right into his ears.

He stumbled backwards again and fell onto his back this time, continued to move away slowly dragging himself through the grass without ever looking up from the woman, as though she might leap out of the water and grab him by the foot at any moment if he were to turn around.

Every idyllic nook and cranny he had ever seen in his life, every isolated corner of his world, the places where he’d found himself truly alone, for better or for worse, came galloping through his mind, but now there was a dead woman in every one. He heard their voices crying out, recognized some of them, and before he realized it he was running as fast as he could through the field, away from the canal, barely able to breath, feeling as though he were moving in slow motion no matter how fast he ran.

Picking (Up) Winners Without Placing a Bet

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Picking (Up) Winners Without Placing a Bet:

Charlie ran away from home during a blizzard that turned the night into a black and white cocoon. Everything felt far away and the short walk to the subway station seemed to last an eternity, its completion a much deserved period at the end of a run-on sentence which wound its way around his thoughts. Charlie’s mind was reeling, the argument with his father repeating itself and producing alternate endings far worse than its actual outcome. Charlie imagined himself striking his father, imagined his frail body collapsing to the ground, imagined his mother’s sobs and tears. In reality Charlie had given up and finally slammed that rickety door behind him for the last time. He had no intention of returning home after hearing what his father had said to him.

Not knowing where to go at this time of the night, Charlie hopped on the A train and headed into the city. The train was as empty as the muddled world outside, and Charlie tried to imagine that something terrible had happened to the entire universe, that everyone had suddenly stopped existing except for him. He slumped into a corner seat in the empty car and closed his eyes, held on to this apocalyptic desire that somehow made him feel safe. He tried to remember how similar scenarios had played out in movies he’d watched many times. He imagined the abandoned city above him, New York in all its gloomy grimy grey glory, the incredible contradiction of greatness and catastrophe, the grandeur of its oppressive skyline. He fell asleep dreaming of the end of the world he hoped for.

When he awoke he was already in midtown. Stumbling out of the train and up into the street he learned that although empty the city was still very much alive. He stood on the corner of 8^th Avenue and 44^th Street and watched a lone yellow cab uselessly spin its wheels in the middle of the empty intersection. The surreal sight of this pathetically trapped animal was comical but also strangely frightening. Others passing by also stopped and watched as the cabbie opened his door and leaned out while still pressing down on the accelerator, watching the exasperated spinning of the rear tires. Soon a large man in coveralls stepped out into the street and began pushing the cab, and when it finally skidded forward clumsily the cabbie closed his door and let out two friendly honks in thanks for the stranger’s help.

Charlie remembered a childhood friend he hadn’t seen in a while who worked at a diner nearby and headed in that direction. When he arrived and asked for his friend a tired looking waitress said he had just missed him. She told him to sit down at the counter and placed a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Where you know him from?” she asked, her back turned to him.

“Oh, we went to school together. In Brooklyn.” The woman turned around and nodded.

“You work around here?” she asked after studying him for a moment.

“Nah. I was just, you know, in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

The woman was silent again, still looking at him as she took a sip from her own cup of coffee.

“You alright, kid? You look frazzled.”

Charlie looked down into the dark abyss of his coffee and thought for a moment, tried to piece together some sort of explanation but came up short.

“Yeah. I’ll be alright. Rough night, that’s all.”

“You got a place to stay?” the waitress asked without missing a beat.

This caught Charlie by surprise. He honestly hadn’t thought about that yet. Leaving the house the way he did was so freeing he hadn’t yet considered the need for an actual destination or plan. For a second he thought he might just run away forever.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Charlie lied, and from the waitress’ reaction he could tell immediately that she knew it was a lie. She nodded again and then walked over to a booth at the other end of the restaurant where a bearded man he hadn’t noticed sat in silence surrounded by several large plastic bags filled with small paper stubs. The man looked up at Charlie and smiled a broad warm smile, lifted his cup of coffee and tipped his head as if giving a toast. Charlie nodded back. The waitress refilled the man’s cup and came back to the counter. Before Charlie could ask, the waitress obliged his curiosity.

“That’s Jesus. Comes in here every night. He’s a stooper.”

“He’s a what?”

“A stooper. You know these betting places around here? He collects all the tickets people throw out.”

“Why does he do that?” Charlie asked, truly confused.

“Because people are stupid. They throw out winning tickets,” the waitress said and let out a chuckle, smiling for the first time.

“Oh, I see,” Charlie said, clearly not understanding the logistics of this man’s enterprise.

Charlie remembered that his father used to gamble, though it had never become a problem due to his intrinsic cheapness. He remembered his father grumbling about the stupidity of gamblers shortly after deciding to never do it again himself. He was a hard-working man, accustomed to the rough life of farming but perennially unsuited for the challenges of the city.

“Hey, Jesus, you need any help sorting those tonight?” the waitress hollered across the restaurant, motioning with her head in Charlie’s direction.

Jesus looked at the waitress for a moment then turned to Charlie, taking him in.

“Yeah, I could use some help. My guys don’t want to come out in this weather, you know?” Jesus replied, talking to Charlie now.

It hadn’t yet sunk in for Charlie that he even needed help, and took him a few seconds to understand what was happening. When it did click a rush of dread came over him, followed instantly by a feeling of invincible possibility. In one fell swoop Charlie understood that he was his own man, that he could dictate the rest of his life.

Jesus and the waitress looked on as this transformation took place before them, its reverberations apparent in Charlie’s countenance. Charlie looked at Jesus again and looked at the plastic bags filled with failed dreams. Jesus smiled again.

“My wife is a great cook. She can make some gallo pinto will make you fall in love with her,” Jesus offered, again eliciting a chuckle from the waitress. “Made me fall in love, anyway.”

Charlie laughed at this and soon the three of them were laughing together. Jesus stood up and threw a couple of the bags over his shoulder.

“C’mon, kid. Help me carry these. The train comes in a few minutes.”

Window Watchers in a City of Strangers

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Window Watchers in a City of Strangers :

That week he learned that his grandmother had passed away. Although this was something he foresaw, as it is what grandmothers are wont to do, it hurt him more than he expected. He hadn’t seen her in years and only occasionally spoke to her on the phone, but her presence loomed large in his life. The timing of the news was particularly distressing for him. For days he had been unable to sleep, feeling more alone than ever in his empty loft, painting frantically late into the night and wandering the cold industrial streets of the neighborhood in a daze during the day. He was worried about getting old, or so he thought. Upon receiving the news of his grandmother’s death, he began to realize that he was worried not so much about dying, but rather about leading an insignificant life. He had begun to question his every action, not only all of his work but also the mundane daily tasks that normally brought him comfort.

It was the middle of winter and he had no friends in town. The girl he was seeing had flown south for the holidays and wouldn’t answer his calls. He had stopped shaving and had been talking to himself more than usual. Realizing this he had then begun to leave the radio on permanently so as to fill the studio with the voice of strangers.

He opened the tall window and leaned out, watched the junkies below stumble into the alleyway next to his building, then stretched his body out far enough over the ledge to gaze down his street and see all the way across the city towards the water. He watched the minuscule lights of the passing boats bob up and down and was instantly reminded of a trip he took with his grandmother as a child. In truth he could not actually remember the trip itself, but was taken back to an instant on a ferryboat crossing during a stormy evening. He could smell his grandmother’s sweet flowery perfume and feel her warm hand holding on to his, holding his body near hers protectively as the boat struggled through riotous waves. Until that moment he had no recollection of that particular memory. He closed his eyes and felt the cold night wind rushing past his ears and then the faint hum of the city. The memory faded. As he slouched back inside and closed his window he noticed a woman in the apartment across the street from his sitting on her bed with the light on, looking directly at him. For a moment they stared at each other. Not knowing how to acknowledge her, he waved awkwardly then latched the window shut. She waved back tentatively before shutting off her light and laying back in bed next to a sleeping man.

He shuffled over to the kitchen in the dark and finally turned the radio off. Then he turned on the lamps that lit the canvas in the corner of the room and began to paint the image of what would become a cold, turbulent ocean. Occasionally he would glance out of the window to check if the woman across the street had her light on again, but for the rest of the night it remained off.

When the sun was up he finally snapped out of his trance and propped himself on the window ledge with a cup of coffee. Across the way he could see far into the loft of the neighbor, past the now empty unmade bed. This was the first time he studied the space. In the back of her apartment he now saw that she was busy at work on a large canvas leaning against her far wall. He watched her approach the painting with a brush in her hand and then step back to look at what she had just done. Her rhythm hypnotized him. He couldn’t make out the actual work, but her movements were to him a work of their own. He watched her for over an hour, unable to look away.

Later, returning home from a walk around the neighborhood, he stopped at the entrance of the woman’s building and took note of the name on the buzzer of the appropriate floor. Once upstairs he again stepped to the window and searched for her. It seemed as though no one was home and for a while he watched her empty apartment, tried in vein to actually see the painting, now shrouded in shadow. Then the man who had been asleep on the bed the night before walked into view from what could only have been the bathroom. Wearing only his underwear, the man opened his window and lit a cigarette. He paced back and forth as he smoked, never once looking across the street where he would have seen a near mirror image of himself watching in rapture.

That night he leafed through the phone book and found the number for the couple’s apartment. He thought he might call to introduce himself. He thought they could be friends. He thought about how convenient it would be to have company so close by.

As the sun went down he once again leaned out of his window and looked to the water. It had been so long since he was on a boat. He tried to go back to the memory in the ferryboat but couldn’t force the feeling that had brought him there the first time. It was snowing outside now and he watched the snowflakes flitter to the ground. He felt a deep sadness sink into his stomach. He could get on the Staten Island ferry and travel back to that memory. He longed for the instability of floating on water, the ominously soothing rocking of the boat.

He thought again about calling his neighbors. Their apartment was now dark and empty.

Beating Followed Molesting, Police Say

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Beating Followed Molesting, Police Say :

Vincent waited for the bus with both hands burrowed deep into the pockets of his hoodie. A light drizzle fell all around him, onto the gravel beside the road and onto his freshly cut hair. He squinted trying to see through the haze passing cars sprayed into the air, looking at the distance for a bus that would take him to the prison where his father had been locked up for the past fifteen years. Vincent made the two-hour trip every Saturday in order to sit with his father for no more than thirty minutes.

His father’s presence in his life was not defined by the content of these weekly visits. Vincent heard stories about Manuel from practically everyone he knew, and even those who had no stories to tell had a formed opinion of the man. In the small town and its surroundings most people could recall the news of his father’s arrest, and he had often experienced that confused embarrassment on people’s faces when they connected the dots and realized where he, the son, fit in the story.

The truth is that after all these years, after all the recounted versions of that event, after all the explaining his father had done during the visits and through his letters, Vincent could no longer remember his own experience of that night. So many renderings dangled in his mind that distinguishing his own from the imagined fiction brought the sharp pain of a headache, jumbling all possibilities into a blur. He was only three years old when it happened and was pretty sure most people couldn’t remember that far back anyway.

He trusted his father’s side of the story, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be able to trust anything. He had heard his father tell it many times, slowly building on the foundation of what became the defining moral tale for Vincent, however cryptic it may have been to him.

His father Manuel had befriended a man named Luke when the two of them worked together roofing a house one summer. Manuel was ten years Luke’s junior but they got along as though they were childhood buddies. They went fishing at the lake together and played cards in Luke’s smoky apartment. They had both been locked up and could bond over memories of childish mistakes. Manuel was finally clean and starting his life anew, devoting his energy to work and family in a way he himself had thought impossible. Luke had no family of his own, but was also dedicating himself to a new life, if only to stay out of jail. He kept to himself and made few friends, believing this loneliness would keep him out of trouble. In fact, Luke had barely left his apartment that entire summer until he met Manuel, who was friendlier than anyone he’d encountered since moving into town.

Manuel would often say that after the incident with Luke he’d never be able to have a friend again.

On that night Vincent’s grandmother cooked a big dinner and Luke was invited as a special guest. This was Manuel’s unsubtle way of announcing that Luke should be welcomed as part of the family. It was his way of pulling Luke out of his solitary existence and into the respectable new life he imagined two adults might share. Never mind that no one who knew Manuel thought any of this would last very long, he was determined to put the past behind him and settle for the family life he’d never had.

For fifteen years Vincent heard his grandmother say that she’d never seen Manuel as happy as he was that night. She only realized he had been lonely for most of his life when she saw how different he acted around his first true friend. But she also repeated again and again that she’d known from first seeing him that Luke was a troubled man. There was something in his eyes, she would say. Although Vincent was consistently impressed by the eerie sixth sense she seemed to possess, he was also weary of his grandmother’s hindsight. Manuel told him that she talked too much, always had. Vincent took this to heart and cultivated his own silence over the years. Talkative people lacked mystery and were generally untrustworthy. He had never met a strong talkative person and concluded that the weak used words as a shield, a screen to hide their frailty. So when strangers would strike up a conversation with him Vincent would simply walk away. He knew words could ruin people’s lives. He knew it when he was three years old, or imagined he must have. But it was important to tell the truth, if only because the truth had the power to burn through past present and future. Silence was a powerful weapon.

Vincent remembered playing with the poker chips scattered on the table while the adults laughed and hollered. He remembered the thick smoke in the air and the unusually messy kitchen. He couldn’t remember much more.

According to his father Vincent had woken up crying the next morning. Vincent tried hard to remember what he might have told his father, the words he might have used. You told me that he touched you, his father would say, and Vincent felt his stomach sink every time he imagined or remembered his father’s reaction. He thought he could remember the screaming coming from outside. He thought he could remember hiding under the bed, putting his hands over his ears and closing his eyes as tightly as he could. He thought he remembered his grandmother calling his name. He thought but he couldn’t be sure.

When the bus finally arrived, Vincent made his way to the very back and slumped down into his seat for what would be his last trip to the prison. In a few days his father would be released and everything would change.

13 Injured in PATH Train Crash Near Herald Square

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

13 Injured in PATH Train Crash Near Herald Square:

Mom repeated that things were just fine. She tried to convince me by giving me a new dress, and by then I was old enough to know that such tricks were a bad sign. She didn’t know but I would catch her crying in the kitchen while she made dinner. I would sense the growing anxiety in my father’s hands every time he ran his fingers through my hair at night and whispered “sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” his breath still sweet from the after dinner cognac. And I could see it in their eyes when they looked at each other.

They sat me down after school one Friday and tried to explain the situation very gently to me. At that point I wasn’t as much bothered by the idea of them being apart. It was their inability to accept that I knew full well what was happening that really infuriated me. It made me feel like a child and I had just begun to see myself as something other than that. Not yet an adult, but something more than a child, with insights into dark, secret places that most people ignored. I wanted to let them know that I was privy to this new knowledge, that I knew people lied, that people had to lie. Sitting there at the kitchen table listening to them beat around the bush, I became angry at myself for not knowing how to tell them. I knew everything would be okay. I knew things would be different and I was fine with it.

For a few months my father kept an apartment in the city and only came home during the weekends. When he was home he would drive me to the ice-cream parlor or the arcade and we would talk about all the other times we’d been to those places together. I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere new we’d never been to before. I couldn’t keep my father from going back to those same old places.

When he showed up my mother would find chores around the house to keep her busy. He would find her tearing up weeds in the garden or searching for something in the attic and ask her if she wanted to join us. She would pretend to be too busy with the task at hand and politely decline. When we’d get in the car I couldn’t help but picture mom crying while she repeated the same motions again and again like a robot in short-circuit.

After months of this same routine my mother began to cheer up. She started leaving the house more often, meeting friends for dinner and going on walks around the lake. When it started to get cold she decided to clean out the house and held a garage sale that did away with most of the objects she associated with memories too strong to bear on a daily basis. She said it made no sense to her why people did this sort of thing in the spring. “When winter comes you’re locked up inside, so why not make more space”. She was reinventing herself slowly, starting with what she knew best, which was the house.

One day my father invited the two of us to breakfast in the city. There was a shabby old diner we used to go to, and he must have figured it’d be a good place to pretend things were normal. My mother was still too used to pretending to know how to stop.
I got dressed quickly and sat on my mother’s bed watching her try on different outfits, stand at the mirror curling her hair and nervously apply makeup. I could sense her fear from across the room. Neither of us said a word to each other. As she drove she kept playing with her hair and checking her makeup in the rearview mirror, then clenching the steering wheel with an anxious grip. I asked her if she was okay.

“I’m fine, just not sure I want to drive all the way. Do you mind if we take the train in?”

Once in the train my mother closed her eyes and sat back in her chair. She held my hand tightly once the train started to move, turning her head away to look out of the window at the bright day outside. When the train went under an overpass I quickly caught her reflection on the window and saw a streak of tears rolling down her face. I squeezed her hand tightly and she squeezed back, remaining perfectly still and quiet.

The train let out a painful groan that slowed time down then suddenly jolted forward with a terrible force. My mother and I slammed our heads into the seats in front of us and passengers flew out of their seats onto the aisle and bags crashed down from the rafters spilling onto people’s heads. The train’s moan was joined by the gasps and screams of those being pummeled by its momentum. I felt my whole body shake from the force of it, felt the fragility of my bones at the mercy of this metal monster and its grinding loss of control. My head spun with weird memories as if awoken by this shove. Then in a flash the train stopped and everyone looked around with great big eyes full of surprise. People were scattered about in awkward positions. The sight of men in business suits crumpled up in between seats like day-old newspaper was eerie. The human body caught by surprise, an abrupt break in routine. Everything seemed very clear and obvious in that moment. Everything made sense. I felt more alive than ever before. My mother’s nose was bleeding from the impact and her expression was one of terror, but I knew everything would be all right from that moment on. My mother was petrified with shock. She asked me if I was okay and then looked around frantically trying to piece together what had just happened. I grabbed her hand once again and squeezed even tighter than before.

“Mom,” I said, “everything is going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.” She stared at me and her body relaxed. I smiled and she began to cry. She wrapped her hands around me in a starved hug. She was laughing and sobbing at the same time. Finally, catching her breath, she said, “Yes, baby. We’re going to be fine.”

Once Reviled as Nazi Collaborator, Now a Savior

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Once Reviled as Nazi Collaborator, Now a Savior:

His mother waited for years to tell him the details of that fateful journey. From as far back as he could remember she had mentioned bits and pieces in order to impress on him above all that he was lucky to be alive, that they all were. People had been ravished by the war, the scars were clear on their faces and everywhere in Budapest, as they still are. Nevertheless, his mother was a cheerful person and taught him to be thankful for every breath he took. But it was the story of Rezso Kasztner that defined his mother’s view of the world. Her life, as well as his own, began to make sense to him only after she shared the story of the train and the man who arranged for it. The paradox of Kasztner was a symbol of the capricious nature of people and their lives, the veil through which his mother saw the workings of the universe.

On June 30th, 1944, his mother boarded a train in Budapest that was to take her and almost seventeen-hundred other Jews to safety in Switzerland. Over the past few months Rezso Kasztner, a journalist and lawyer, had used his influence and savvy to negotiate the ransom of these passengers with the Nazi authorities. He had met with these Nazis and discussed numbers, bargained for the lives of people who otherwise would have perished. Some of these people knew Reszo personally, others did not. How he came up with the list of names Egon’s mother could not say. At that point she still thought, along with most Jews in Hungary, that she was being relocated to a concentration camp and did not yet know the massacre that awaited once under captivity. Reszo Kasztner knew. He kept it to himself but decided to save 1,685 or so fellow Jews from death in Auschwitz.

Several months pregnant by the time she boarded the train, she was terrified of the possibilities that awaited her first child. Should the journey be delayed her son might be born in the train and not survive. The thought of attaining freedom at the cost of her unborn churned her stomach with guilt. She described the fear etched on people’s faces as they settled in their seats. Most were solemnly quiet except for the children who were too young to understand the situation but old enough to be scared. Tears streamed down people’s faces with thoughts of those left behind. Years later they would know that almost half a million of their countrymen fell victim to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. In the train with these lucky few were three suitcases filled with cash, jewels, gold, and shares of stock, amounting to about one thousand dollars per person, which Kasztner collected to be paid to SS officer Kurt Becher as their ransom. When she uttered that number, Egon felt his skin crawl. The mathematics of such a transaction bewildered him and left him short of breath.

His mother then described to him in detail the days spent in limbo at the concentration camp. A pregnant woman she had noticed when boarding the train gave birth during that time and other prisoners helped look after her and the newborn. She realized then that she was less alone than it seemed, witnessing the power of people’s goodness in the midst of such evil. In August she was picked to join the first group that was allowed to continue on the train to freedom. Recalling the day she reached Switzerland, his mother smiled and shed tears of joy.

Egon asked simple questions. He wanted to know what they ate on the train. How they went to the bathroom. What the temperature was. As he listened to his mother he tried to imagine himself on that train, outside of his mother’s womb. He stumbled down the crowded aisles and looked into people’s eyes. Amidst the faces of complete strangers he recognized those of his loved ones. He sensed their fear and felt his stomach turn. His mother stopped talking and stared into her son’s eyes. For a long while they sat in silence studying each other and the story unfolded before them, its memories and repercussions bridging the gap between mother and son, the train making a connection with his birth in Switzerland and his childhood in Budapest, so that when his mother broke the silence she skipped ahead more than ten years and recounted Reszo Kasztner’s assassination on a quiet Tel Aviv street. At that time the story of the train had been retold, now from the perspective of those left behind. He had withheld information which cost the lives of the masses, had made a list of those to be saved, had negotiated with Nazis, had vouched for them in court, had sold his soul to the devil. He was called a traitor. His daughters were taunted in school, he was spat upon in the streets and finally gunned down by three fellow Jews in 1957. One year after his death the courts cleared Kasztner of all charges. His killers were pardoned some years later.

The figure of Reszo Kasztner flickered in Egon’s mind. He tried hard to imagine what the man looked like. He could picture nothing but a tall, faceless body. He was a hero, a traitor, a hero again. From this story alone he could not understand Reszo Kasztner, much less imagine what he looked like. He searched for his features in the placid eyes of his mother, who once again sat in silence, smiling tenderly. But in her eyes he found only the enigma of life.

Howard Unruh, 88, Dies; Killed 13 of His Neighbors in Camden in 1949

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Howard Unruh, 88, Dies; Killed 13 of His Neighbors in Camden in 1949:

I just want to go home. Yesterday I turned 28 sitting in a muddy ditch outside of Da Nang with my best friend dying in my arms. You know I don’t care about birthdays but this one had been creeping up on me in a strange way, had me thinking about it more than I care to admit, and sure enough it turned into the second worst day in my life. When that man came into my house and murdered my family he was 28 years old. That was 16 years ago, and at the time he had seemed like an old man to me, or just a monster with no age. But over the years I started to think about it and the closer I got to turning his age the more scared I got. ‘Cause in the end even though I’m here doing what I’m doing I still feel like a kid. Now I realize that he was just a kid too. They said he lived with his mother, didn’t have a job. That morning before he went out and killed all those people his mother made him breakfast, fried eggs and cereal, they said. I don’t know why they told me that then, but since that day I haven’t been able to eat a fried egg without thinking about that old woman setting the table for her 28 year old little boy right before he up and killed thirteen people. Thing is he had seen the shit himself. That part of it I only started to understand now, of course. He was a tank soldier and he was at the Battle of the Bulge. He was a nobody back home, probably had no friends to speak of, people made fun of him. But he was a good soldier and he came home from that war with a chest full of medals and I’m sure that was hard to top. They said he used his basement in Camden for target practice after he came back, and I recognize what he was thinking about every time he pulled that trigger down there. If he was crazy before the war, I don’t know. If he was, it probably helped him on the battlefield and only got worse after. I know he didn’t kill my dad because of the argument they had a couple weeks before, he killed him because he was crazy. But why he was crazy is what haunts me now more than ever. Last thing he said before they locked him up was “I’d have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough.” That sentence keeps coming back to me, I can’t get it out of my head. I’m sorry I’m writing about this right now, I’m sure you’d like to hear about our situation over here and how I’m doing and all, but this is what’s been on my mind. I just want to go home after yesterday. I feel like maybe I brought it on myself thinking about this so much for the past few months. It would have been bad enough if it wasn’t on my birthday and I didn’t have all of this churning in my mind. All these details that I thought I had forgotten came back yesterday when I was laying in that ditch. I could hear my mother gasping for her last breath inside the closet. I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you, but you’re the only one I can talk to about this. I miss you terribly. I wish I could just lay with you on the couch next to the fireplace. I don’t think I’ve been dry since the day I got here. Funny thing is, that’s one of the memories that came back yesterday, was how bright that day was. A beautiful day really. Hard to remember that, considering. Over here it’s always a wet hell, and even when the sun comes out you know it’ll get dark and pour on you in the blink of an eye. But sitting there in that ditch, on my birthday, in the rain, I could see that bright sun beating down on the streets of Camden, I could remember sitting in the back of the police car, not knowing what to think. Mom, dad, grandma. Just like that. You have a beautiful life, it’s a beautiful day, and then suddenly this other person’s past comes rushing out of them and changes the rest of your life, creates your own past you can’t escape from. Over here that happens everyday, and people are starting to get used to it. You have to live now, they say, and worry about it later. But I’m scared of what will happen when I can’t forget this. I’m scared of getting used to it, and I know that’s the only way. Have to go now. Will try to write again soon. Love, Charles.

One Dead and Three Hurt in Queens Apartment Fire

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400

One Dead and Three Hurt in Queens Apartment Fire:

They called me in to identify the body. My mother’s wrinkled face was black with ash and blue with death. Her eyes were closed but her mouth still agape, still gasping for air. Her thin hair was mostly burnt and she looked like a man. I could still hear her screaming my name in frustration from across the apartment, as she often did when I still lived there. For the most part I tried to forget that part of my life. I didn’t miss my mother. I could barely remember her at all.

Olivia had been the one dealing with mother’s foul temper for the past few years, and I cringed at how that was damaging her forever. At her age I had been living in Warsaw for a year with Artur. At her age I’d almost had a child, seen my future play out like an old movie without subtitles. At her age I was already planning my return to New York.

I stood beside Olivia and watched her chest move up and down slowly. Her arms had been burnt and her skin looked grey, but she was still beautiful, even in that state. Her long lashes trembled and although they were closed I could see her bright blue eyes. She was always prettier than me. My friends told me she had recently been responding to the boys in the neighborhood, who for years had worked feverishly to grab her attention. Puerto Rican boys, Brazilian boys, Italian boys, and of course all the Polish boys who felt they were most entitled to her affection.

It had been the same with me, even if I had succumbed to men and their ways at a much younger age. Olivia was quiet and kept to herself. She had few friends, and the ones she had didn’t know what was going on inside her. She used to lock herself up in our room and not let me in for hours. Mother had given up on her, just like she had given up on me. She was rarely home and when she was she wished Olivia and I weren’t there. Her job took everything out of her, drained her dry. She would complain about the men at the sites harassing her, saying disgusting things to her when she was in the middle of an inspection or grabbing her when she got on the elevator. She was cursed with a beautiful body and a cold heart at the age of 44.

In the past few months it had gotten worse, Olivia had been telling me about it when we talked on the phone. Mother had been fired from the job after she complained about her mistreatment. Jurek had encouraged her to file a lawsuit. He had been showing up more often now, and Olivia seemed to think he was genuinely trying to console my mother. I often tried to imagine mother being taken advantage of by a man like Jurek. It made me feel better imagining her fall prey to the same schemes she jealously berated me about when men became interested in me. Though I hadn’t thought about him for years, I seemed to remember Jurek better than I remembered my mother. He was tall and lanky, his body seeming to occupy all the space in the room. He was a barber and always smelled like talcum powder. He would show up on weekends and play with us before sitting at the kitchen table with my mother and talking for hours. Then they would leave the apartment to go on a walk. Olivia and I never knew where they walked to, but I knew it probably wasn’t very far. Then he had stopped coming for a while and mother’s temper had transformed into a quiet sadness. Now he was back, and he must have been talking to mother at the kitchen table as usual that night, because he was also in the hospital struggling to stay alive. But the other man lying in the hospital I did not recognize.