The City Still Breathing. Matthew Heiti
what they give him – won’t paint her, won’t service her. He wants to get angry, tries, but only some kind of numbness rises up from his belly. He stares out the window at all that asphalt in either direction. No one’s passed them the entire time they’ve been here.
‘Effin shortcut my ass.’
‘Well, there’s no traffic, is there?’
‘Yeah and no help either.’
Stuck on this side road, still at least an hour west of the city. He can feel Fisher twitching, his big mouth winding up, but he gives him a look and grabs the radio. He cuts through the static and gets the dispatcher on, arguing with him about their unit number, reporting the body, explaining the dead battery, clarifying the battery and the body are two separate dead things, trying to give some idea of their location on whatever back road they happen to be stuck on. Back to static.
‘What does he mean, “We’ll get to you when we get to you”?’
‘He means we’re special constables driving an empty prisoner transport and they only give a shit about real cops.’
Fisher zips his jacket and pulls the hood up, arms crossed and sitting glumly. ‘This is the wrong kind of special, Kag.’
It’s just past five and the light’s got that funny look when you know the bottom’s about to drop out on the day. Wally balls up his fingers and toes, trying to urge some feeling into them. The temperature’s still dropping in the cab of the van.
He swings the door open with a squeal of rusting metal.
Fisher bitches while Wally gathers wood, but when the pyramid is built, he wants to be the one to light it. Wally lets him grunt over the matches for a few minutes before taking over and getting the whole thing burning. He slowly gets some feeling back into his feet and hands, watching the chimney-red, pumpkin-orange flames, the little twist of blue playing in the throat of the fire. He pushes a big dead piece of maple in, lifting a cloud of sparks, lighting up the outline of the body a few feet away.
‘Don’t see why we gotta be so close to it,’ Fisher says.
‘So we can keep an eye on it, the van and the road.’
‘Creeps me out.’
Wally looks across the fire at the younger man. Fisher’s big arms wrapped around his legs, knees pulled up to his chin, his whisky-coloured face just barely visible, eyes darting nervously. Wally laughs, a single short bark. ‘Didn’t you come in from the Wiky reserve?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shouldn’t this be your natural element … nature?’
Fisher’s eyes swivel to Wally, twinkling, and he gets that twist to his mouth again.
‘Christ, Kag, we live in houses now – you know that, right?’
The firelight catches the dark shapes of trees, dragging long shadows out of them – the forest leaning in, crowding next to them at the fire’s edge. There is no wind, the only sound the popping of the wood.
‘What d’you think – ?’
But Fisher leaves it like that, shaking it off with his head and burrowing down into his knees. Neither man has broken the heaviness to say much about it. To speculate about the why and how. Haven’t used the words him or body or said anything about dead except on the radio. Something about the silence feels appropriate, or maybe it’s an excuse to ignore the other feelings creeping in with the night.
Wally tries to imagine cutting Fisher’s throat, watching him die, taking off all his clothes and leaving him here, on the rock above the road. It doesn’t fit. He just can’t conjure up that much hate for something. He tries to imagine coming out here, naked in the wilderness, and cutting his own throat, wanting to do that. It doesn’t fit much better, but his stomach doesn’t turn over at it.
‘Maybe an animal done it.’ Fisher’s eyes on Wally again, something almost hopeful in the tone, like this might undo it, or make it more understandable.
Wally sees the fear coming in on his partner, the body making a space for itself next to the fire, and he clears his throat and starts the way the old-timers always started with him: ‘Knew this one cop, working late, stalled out on a country road.’ He gets into the one with the hook in the door handle and then the one about the knocking and the boyfriend hanging in the tree, and then the one about that Myllarinen kid who killed his own parents with a box cutter, true-story-I-swear, and at the end of it Fisher’s fear returns to its normal ever-present level. They sit more easily around the fire, almost cozy, like camping if only they had some effin marshmallows.
‘Ow!’ Fisher grabs his cheek and looks around wildly. ‘Something bit me.’
Another something hits the fire with a hiss. A pause and then the sky’s vomiting pebbles of ice – fire sputtering, miniature explosions off the rocks and the metallic ping ping on the van below. Fisher jumps up and runs for cover, but Wally’s yelling brings him back.
‘Take the feet.’
He’s already got his hands under the armpits – the feeling of the flesh, cold and hard, coming through his gloves. Fisher’s looking at him and the body like he’s gone nuts, shouting over the rushing sound of the hail all around them.
‘Where are – ?’
‘Take the feet!’
Wally starts to drag the body, but Fisher grabs it around the ankles, lifting the stiff thing between them. They struggle down the embankment, hailstones cracking off the body, ripping small pockets in the frozen skin. Wally, unseeing through the downpour, bangs into the back of the van, stumbling and losing hold of his end. The head hits the gravel, bending the neck forward at an unnatural angle, the gashed throat yawning open toward Fisher, who lets go of the whole thing.
Wally swings the rear doors open, but Fisher can only stare down at the body. He’s not saying anything but Wally knows he’s asking why. Why why why.
Fisher peers through the slot into the back of the van. ‘Celia’s not gonna be happy with me working at no Deluxe Fries.’
‘It’ll be fine, Fish.’
‘It’s in the handbook. You don’t fuck with a … a crime scene.’
‘You rather we leave it out there – get all torn up or some animal make off with it?’
‘No … just rather keep my job, is all. Rather we didn’t have him back there. Guess he’s better than some of the shit chuckers we drive around with.’
Wally slides the slot door closed. ‘It’s not a him anymore.’
The two men are sitting in the cab, wrapped in the coarse wool of the emergency blankets, breath already frosting over the windows. The gunfire rattle of hailstones has slowed. It’s quiet, almost peaceful. Wally feels his eyes shut.
Then out of nowhere – a woman singing. He opens his eyes and sees Fisher fiddling with the tape deck.
‘What the eff is that?’
‘It’s my Crystal Gayle.’
‘Fish!’ Wally slams the eject button. ‘We might need the last of the battery for the radio.’
‘Oh.’ Fisher wipes his nose and rolls the snot nervously between his thumb and pointer finger. ‘We gonna freeze to death in here, Kag?’
Wally takes in his partner, sees the joke but feels the concern underneath it. ‘They say if you wanna make it through a cold night up north, best thing is to hunker down in a bag naked with someone else.’
Fisher looks at him with a big grin that moves back some of the worry he’s been sucking on. ‘Love to see them find us all here in the morning – three buck-naked men in a van.’ He puts his chair back, reclining, scratching his smooth chin with a bare hand before shoving it back in the mitt. ‘Drive em, drop em off and drive back, but