truthfront

Category: Fiction

  • witness

    He watched in the pre-dawn mist a black tactical vehicle roll slowly without lights onto the church grass. Armored shadows dropped from either side of the vehicle and disappeared inside the unlit building for as long as it took the witness to smoke and look on from his darkened porch across the street. 

    The shadow-men emerged from the church handling the priest, disheveled in his sleeping clothes, and a minute later, the alleged agitator cloaked in a blanket—a local activist outspoken in his views opposing government policies. Both had recently drawn the attention of authorities, prompting community leaders to rally in support of their freedoms to speak and peacefully convene without government intervention. 

    The priest, an old man with deep ties to his community, offered his church as temporary residence for the alleged agitator, a young man in his twenties with dual residency in the U.S. and Mexico. The priest knew of three citizens in his town that had recently been detained by agents in the night against their will and without due process. 

    They would never desecrate the people’s holy ground with their presence, the priest said publicly of his church. 

    The witness watched the vehicle slip away silent and dark with the shadow-men somewhere inside. Our witness imagined the priest and alleged agitator seated and crushed between the soldier-men armed with assault rifles and dressed in ballistic preventive equipment, dominating their physical space, eliminating the sovereignty and agency of the kidnapped. 

    Our witness watched daylight breach the night’s false innocence with angled shadows on the church grass and the vehicle’s tire impressions there.

  • Carter Creek

    A woman walking her dog on the asphalt path found him half submerged in the water of Carter Creek with the rest of his body tangled in the waterside shrubbery. The woman told investigators that she knew he was dead because his head and torso were not moving underwater and his legs were pointed upward and impossibly corkscrewed together. The police roped off the area and examiners lifted the man from the cold water to find him headless. I’d say he’s been here longer than 24 hours, said an examiner, removing her sunglasses to wipe them with her shirt. I’ve no idea how his legs could twist up like that.

    News of the grisly discovery quickly spread and the detectives requested assistance to keep the crowd of reporters away. The two worked in the bright cold of a November morning one mile south of the capitol where giant trees lined the creek’s diagonal path northward toward the glimmering symmetry of downtown. The detectives studied the body for as long as possible before it was transported to the coroner. One detective traveled with the body and the other stood where the dead man lay minutes ago. He listened to the trickling water, the chorus of curious birds watching from branches above. Other examiners stalked the area, snapping twigs beneath their feet. The detective kneeled closer to the water and studied the thorny bushes, asking an examiner to take photographs. Fabric from the dead man’s clothes waved in the chilled breeze. Two officers in wetsuits and breathing gear searched the water for the man’s head or anything else of interest to the detectives.

    The detective scoured the scene for hours. The other called from the coroner’s office. Seems his head was chopped off with an axe, he said. Probably after he was shot in the chest. Two bullets near the heart likely killed him. Then he was decapitated. The body was then moved to the creek and dumped there. 

    The detective put the phone back in his pocket and an officer handed him a fresh paper cup of coffee. He opened the steaming lid and sipped. It was the second headless body found in the city that week. He shivered and got back to work.

  • wide minutes

    The detective stopped walking to read the marquee. The main feature: Two Known Bones, an action film he’d never heard of. Two other movies played on smaller screens: Wide Minutes and Until Death Do Dawn. He continued walking south down the boulevard with his feet aching and the sunlight waning. A loner, moving or not, eating or performing any mundane task in his week, month, year. Alone even when not. Some mornings he sits at the sunlit window reading and sometimes writing in his pocket notebook, either working through a case or working through himself. Last night he dreamed of a brown bear following him through the city, trying to hide from him. His question wasn’t: Why is a brown bear in the city? but: What does this bear want from me? He strode south and west and asked himself various questions pertaining to truth and how we can know what truth is. One response arrived as a breeze on his sweaty forehead: Walk through your aches. Walk through your pain. Walk to gain clarity, focus, understanding. 

    The detective moved on. Who is he? Who he is matters less than what he does, what he thinks, how he moves. A timeless hero in any language, any culture. The city marked by tapestries of sound and light, heat and rancid alleyways. The city bewilders and disappoints. But it breathes life into you. He walks at night, a shadow on the cement and pavement, faded and elongated, then more defined as he moves beneath and past the streetlamp. Then he’s gone. The next object moves in, casts its shadow.

  • Glitch

    High shutter rate—a hundred replicas captured instantly. A hundred and one replicas. How many photos have you taken in your life? asked a voice. I couldn’t fathom. Even a non-photographer snaps a million photos. What would be more impressive is how many words I’ve read. * I woke on the floor in a janitor’s closet. I didn’t remember going into the closet or even the building. My artificial hip hurt from laying there. I had no idea what day or time it was. The place smelled of mop solution. I stood and pissed into the mop bucket. The door was heavy and I slipped out to the hallway beyond, shrinking from the fluorescent light. A school? White tile, cool air conditioning, darkness at the door windows down the hall. My camera smelled like disinfectant. It could be a dream, I thought. My reflection in the door windows defined and absolute as I approached. Total dark beyond. Heat and humidity outside like steam. I texted my desk editor and looked for my vehicle. 

  • New hire orientation

    She prefers thin mints

    The road to enlightenment begins here, he said. It’s not your typical idea of a road but what occurs on roads. The purpose is to traverse, to move across or through. Without the ability to stall or stop, without the possibility of breaking down. Breaking is for cowards. Losers take breaks. Idiots break bones. There are no breaks for us any more than there are confinements. At the very least you’re going to learn a lot about yourself. At the most you’ll become something extraordinary. What have you got to lose but time and pain? The answer is nothing. Nothing. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to absorb. Embracing this next choice is a momentous step in your progression. Breaking is not an option for people like me, for people like you. Roads don’t often break—they connect. Minds don’t often break—minds break molds. Minds create breaks in the space time continuum.

    About the breaks, sir, she said. How many—

    Breaking is for dancers, he said, not for folks like us. If we break anything, it’s the traditions that got us into this broken state. We don’t break circuits, we don’t break character. We are here to smash into fragments the clumsy efforts of previous generations. We’ll accelerate their dismantling but we will not rebuild, we won’t rebuild, breaking and pulverizing again and again until there is absolutely nothing, not even the salt we walk on, not even humanity’s ashen remains hanging toxic and airborne about us. We inhale the ruin and exhale tapestries in neon, colliding neon nuclei, with the force of two human groins impacting violently, rapidly and repeatedly, as if humanity was angry but sexualized its anger, brutalized it into the amorphous faux-shape we call love. 

    But sir, she said. What does this have to do with—

    Retreat into our collective sanatorium, he said, we will not. Let us stand hurling rocks and bone fragments like David at his giant attacker. Don’t join me at your peril. But know this—there are a few boxes of girl scout cookies in the break room if you want some.

  • Harry recovers

    Harry lay in the hospital for two days waiting for his brother the attorney to visit. A young woman arrived instead, unannounced in the afternoon, rushed and terse. 

    My brother sent a lackey, Harry said. 

    Your brother is very busy and it’s Sunday, she said. I’m Elizabeth. 

    I remember you, Harry said. He invited me to your wedding a few years ago. I couldn’t make it. 

    Couldn’t or didn’t want to?

    Didn’t want to. 

    She reached into her shoulder bag and ruffled papers, extracting one. 

    This is from your brother, she said.

    Elizabeth read: The Premier Grande Hotel in New York City is in the process of filing a lawsuit against you for extensive damages to the property. They knew to notify me from your previous outburst there. I am currently trying to negotiate with them on your behalf. 

    My behalf!

    Elizabeth read: The hotel states that you will no longer be welcome on its property. Two destructive incidents in the last two years have forced them into this position. 

    Fuck them! [cough]

    Elizabeth read: To quote the hotel’s general manager, “For the safety of our guests and our staff, Mr. Gannett is no longer allowed on or near hotel grounds.”

    Harry shifted his weight on the hospital bed and winced. 

    Elizabeth read: I am concerned for you, Harry. I’ve done everything I can for you up to this point. It’s time for you to pull yourself together and get the help you need. 

    Harry looked up at the ceiling. Checkered panels, air vents, fluorescent light tubes. Uninspiring and disgusting, all of it, he thought.

    Elizabeth tucked the paper neatly into her bag and sighed, looking at Harry.

    Your brother wants to know if you need anything, she said.

    My brother wants to bury me, he said.

    That’s not true. 

    We want to bury each other. It’s a race to the shovel.

    Stop it, Harry. 

    Listen to me, dummy, he said. 

    How dare you. 

    I’ve known you just a few minutes and I already hate you.

    Your brother wants you to call him. 

    Tell him to come make me. 

    Grow up, Harry. 

    I bet you’re already divorced.

    What?

    Thanks for stopping by, Amanda.

    Fuck you, Harry. 

    Pardon me, said a nurse. 

    Elizabeth turned toward the doorway and looked at the nurse. 

    Please don’t speak like that to the patient, said the nurse. 

    Elizabeth stammered and reddened. 

    Are you related to this patient, ma’am? asked the nurse. 

    I’m out of here, Elizabeth said, and walked past the nurse out the door.

    Harry smiled and coughed.

    Are you okay, young man? asked the nurse.

  • Renzi on translations

    A detective novel is always good for the first twenty pages because that is where the author presents the world in which the intrigue will develop: for example, let’s say, the Japanese laundromats in Buenos Aires. […] One wonders why it is that the Japanese population in Buenos Aires opens laundromats. After that question is answered, a crime appears, and, from that point onward, the bad novels respond to the mystery with predictable schemes. Only the best writers are able to add something extra to the construction of the intrigue, going beyond simple suspense or simple solutions to the problem. A writer who is able to write something beyond the simple plot is one who achieves a novel that is worthy of translation. 

    Piglia, Ricardo, trans. by Robert Croll. The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years. Restless Books, New York, 2018: 185.

  • Crowded park dream

    Strolling a city park at dusk amid adults waving flags. I absorb the gauntlet with the focus of their spectacle onstage behind me. I’m slapped and smacked by whipping fabric, then safely on the other side at an ornamental water fountain on a small lawn. I rinse my hands in the fountain, aware of people and birds. No interviewers with cameras ask how I was able to overcome the challenge. 

    Onto sidewalks soiled and grimy, down darkened alleys. Dripping pipes and huddled itinerants. Postcards still find this place. The mayor holds a candle and greets me. I’m just making the rounds, he says. I trade my iPhone for his candle, which I struggle to keep aflame as we walk. The bridge is a marvel and we cross it, gaining a retinue of locals in our aligned pursuit to conquer land and water.

    Outdoor museums by moonlight on the tongues of ghosts. Traffic exhaust in our clothes. The cemeteries in this city vary widely by style. Buried dead in the east salvage no rest from the highway noise. Out west everyone’s dead and nothing can be done. Only away from here can one sleep peacefully, as with all places.

    Dogs run wild at night. The people wish they were dogs. Bats dart soundlessly about tree canopies, disappearing into the moon. Somewhere the dead regain form and slither atop fallen autumn leaves toward fates unknown.