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Authors: John Shannon
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note in his file, for once again feuding with the Feds.
*
Megan watched the man from a county animal welfare truck scrape up the remains of the dog. What an alien place, she thought. The heart of my darkness.
She was having trouble resisting the tug of the vodka bottle across the room. She turned on the radio, but the only thing she could get was Mexican rancheras or American country music. She wondered if she had grown any less intolerant of cowboy culture.
She listened to a male voice keening about a manly trucker carrying steel to Texas, and she wondered if the driver would be any less manly driving Tampax to Delaware. It was exactly the kind of unexamined American lying that always left her cross.
It was growing accustomed to your unhappiness that made you so self-absorbed, she thought. After us, the savage god—she’d read the phrase somewhere and it resonated.
FIVE
Set Big Cap Free
Tony Piscatelli could tell that the morphine was wearing off, and he was starting to feel the gnaw of medium-well-done soft tissue along his shoulders, but he resisted pushing the button on the nurse call. He was in a lucid time, and he wanted to stay in it. It was difficult to think productively against the pain—especially with his roommate groaning and humping away—but if he opiated again, his consciousness would become a vapor. He repeated a short prayer in his head, starting with an entreaty for the unknown groaning roommate. The nurse had told him it had been a motorcycle crash, and his roommate was only about nineteen. The age when everyone knew they were invulnerable.
Piscatelli recalled a visit from some arson desk guy, but didn’t remember his name. Something about Jerry Routt and a rosary. Probably a morphine dream. Routt was about as likely to carry a rosary as a lava lamp. The man had once laughed out loud when Piscatelli told him about Martin Luther’s big moment of crisis, throwing his inkwell at the devil.
“Dude,” Routt had said. “I know that’s not true. Europeans can’t throw. They can only kick.”
Yet something about the dream visit from the arson guy held him. Lying on his stomach, he did a few slow pushups before the airbed could start whirring and fussing with him again. He saw the arson guy’s business card on the nightstand, so it was real. Something inside you is trying to get out, Deacon Piscatelli.
“Tony, look at this!” Was that Routt? Frustrating maybe memories. The fire had been about to flame over. He’d just started getting worried, but Routt had yelled at him to come back. That was so like Routt, fastening on second things first. But he’d stepped back and they’d both seen something there on the ground. What?
Pain swept through him, and he thumbed the red button, then again, harder. Nurse, come now! Oh, Sweet Jesus, now . Our Father, who art in Heaven…
*
Ellen Chen, short blue hair and all, walked with intense self-absorption off the L.A. State campus into the empty parkland across Paseo Rancho Castilla. Spanish Ranch Walk. Another example of Southern California naming nonsense. The future, when it finally came, would be without such nationalist nonsense. Reason would rule, she thought.
Sabine hadn’t phoned or texted in ten days now. That was their agreed definition of a political emergency. She sat to look out over much of the San Gabriel Valley below. Home.
She and Sabine were the last of the Orange Berets—the two musketeers, she thought sadly—pledged to fight for immigrant solidarity, human rights, not to mention the Revolution. Rah, rah.
Her dad had been badgering her that very morning about her grades, so she could get out of a second-best college and go to a really good school like Caltech or Berkeley. Her whole future depended on her grades. Her car would stop running, the stars would crash to earth. As politics had crumbled away into hopelessness for her, his incessant hectoring was becoming intolerable.
Now she had to worry about Sabine. Back when the
*
Megan watched the man from a county animal welfare truck scrape up the remains of the dog. What an alien place, she thought. The heart of my darkness.
She was having trouble resisting the tug of the vodka bottle across the room. She turned on the radio, but the only thing she could get was Mexican rancheras or American country music. She wondered if she had grown any less intolerant of cowboy culture.
She listened to a male voice keening about a manly trucker carrying steel to Texas, and she wondered if the driver would be any less manly driving Tampax to Delaware. It was exactly the kind of unexamined American lying that always left her cross.
It was growing accustomed to your unhappiness that made you so self-absorbed, she thought. After us, the savage god—she’d read the phrase somewhere and it resonated.
FIVE
Set Big Cap Free
Tony Piscatelli could tell that the morphine was wearing off, and he was starting to feel the gnaw of medium-well-done soft tissue along his shoulders, but he resisted pushing the button on the nurse call. He was in a lucid time, and he wanted to stay in it. It was difficult to think productively against the pain—especially with his roommate groaning and humping away—but if he opiated again, his consciousness would become a vapor. He repeated a short prayer in his head, starting with an entreaty for the unknown groaning roommate. The nurse had told him it had been a motorcycle crash, and his roommate was only about nineteen. The age when everyone knew they were invulnerable.
Piscatelli recalled a visit from some arson desk guy, but didn’t remember his name. Something about Jerry Routt and a rosary. Probably a morphine dream. Routt was about as likely to carry a rosary as a lava lamp. The man had once laughed out loud when Piscatelli told him about Martin Luther’s big moment of crisis, throwing his inkwell at the devil.
“Dude,” Routt had said. “I know that’s not true. Europeans can’t throw. They can only kick.”
Yet something about the dream visit from the arson guy held him. Lying on his stomach, he did a few slow pushups before the airbed could start whirring and fussing with him again. He saw the arson guy’s business card on the nightstand, so it was real. Something inside you is trying to get out, Deacon Piscatelli.
“Tony, look at this!” Was that Routt? Frustrating maybe memories. The fire had been about to flame over. He’d just started getting worried, but Routt had yelled at him to come back. That was so like Routt, fastening on second things first. But he’d stepped back and they’d both seen something there on the ground. What?
Pain swept through him, and he thumbed the red button, then again, harder. Nurse, come now! Oh, Sweet Jesus, now . Our Father, who art in Heaven…
*
Ellen Chen, short blue hair and all, walked with intense self-absorption off the L.A. State campus into the empty parkland across Paseo Rancho Castilla. Spanish Ranch Walk. Another example of Southern California naming nonsense. The future, when it finally came, would be without such nationalist nonsense. Reason would rule, she thought.
Sabine hadn’t phoned or texted in ten days now. That was their agreed definition of a political emergency. She sat to look out over much of the San Gabriel Valley below. Home.
She and Sabine were the last of the Orange Berets—the two musketeers, she thought sadly—pledged to fight for immigrant solidarity, human rights, not to mention the Revolution. Rah, rah.
Her dad had been badgering her that very morning about her grades, so she could get out of a second-best college and go to a really good school like Caltech or Berkeley. Her whole future depended on her grades. Her car would stop running, the stars would crash to earth. As politics had crumbled away into hopelessness for her, his incessant hectoring was becoming intolerable.
Now she had to worry about Sabine. Back when the
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