by David Faden
June 23, 2002
Sara's left hand tugs the bag's shoulder strap closer to her neck. Her right touches the patch of hair above her right temple.
The air is still cool from the night but the sun feels hot on her neck. She wonders why she's never noticed before whether the sky grows a darker or a lighter blue as the sun rises higher.
The tan apartment complexes are behind her. Now she walks by houses with lawns. Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch... She walks around the round patch of dampness. Ahead another sprinkler stops sputtering water then swings around to start anew. Doors open and shut. Red brake lights glare. A garage door slides up.
Her left shoelace is untied. Next to its frayed end, a dried worm lies. The worm's body is stretched towards the grass. It is a couple of centimeters away from the sidewalk's edge. A car drives past as she's bent over tying her shoelace. She blinks. A cardinal sings. She breathes out and walks on.
Two parking meters, one expired, one with 10 minutes left, both parking spots are empty to her right. She can't see any lights on inside the building. A sign with orange letters is pressed against the glass. It tells the number to call to rent the place.
Across the street, two trees with no leaves rise above a chain link fence. A green vine climbs one. Razor wire is coiled around the top of the fence. Black plastic strips are stretched through the holes in the fence. Gray leaved flax with blue flowers stands out against the black plastic. Two yellow sulfur butterflies spiral off of the flax, then up, over, and behind the fence.
The air smells like exhaust. Car horns honk but she can't see where. The timber of the bus's engine rises as it drives away.
She's in the shadow of a building but doesn't shiver. The air is warm and humid like the breath of the strangers around her.
"Hey, sista, sista, don't make Jesus blista. Give a brotha a dime." She walks away from the man. She looks at the stoplight up ahead. The man walks sidewise with her. He smells like whiskey, vomit, sweat, and shit. She breathes through her mouth. She looks at him without turning her head. His face is dull with grime. He looks bored. His eyes slip from her to the wall of cars to her right. Dirt stains cover the right side of his faded pink shirt. His right hand cluthes the top of a styrofoam cup. She can't see how much money is in it. The cup has lipstick on the rim. His fingernails are yellow. He stops following her.
A taxi is stuck behind a delivery truck. In the back a man has a cell phone pressed to his ear. His tie is red. The shoulder pads of his suit are pressed forward by the vinyl seat. His suit is navy blue. His shirt is white. He glares at her. He looks ahead at the delivery truck.
Behind her she hears "Hey, brotha, brotha, please God and help anotha. Give a brotha a dime."
The red fades. The green's alight. The stickman walketh. She and the crowd she joined a moment ago move across the street.
Two pigtails hang down from behind the puffy blue bow. The arm from above meets the arm from below. A girl walks with a woman. The woman has a brown canvas bag slung over her left shoulder.
One side of a cardboard box is taped to a lightpole. "Farmers Market" is scawled beneath an arrow drawn in the same black ink. A square of duct tape holds the top of a photocopy of a photo of a girl. "Missing since..." An ad for a weight loss clinic hides the rest of the message.
An opening in the buildings is before her. The ground is lit by the sun. She blinks.
The girl wears a green dress with spots of lighter green. The woman wears a brown dress in the same style as the green. They turn at another cardboard sign. "Farmers Market."
The murmur of conversation is louder than the hum of wheels and engines, the clang of bicycle bells, and the honks of horns coming off the street.
She can see a cement retaining wall through the spaces between the trucks parked on the side of the lot away from the street. She's lost the girl and woman amongst the crowd. A woman with a straw hat picks up three carrots. The crowd mills about between rows of tables. Sara steps around the woman with the straw hat and walks towards the trucks.
The man with the plaid shirt sits behind a pile of green peas in the pod. White radishes are set by the peas and carrots by the radishes. She takes a paper sack, unfolds it, and stuffs it with it peas. They feel cold and firm between her fingers. She hands the sack to the man. His fingers are calloused. He wears a gold watch. She rummages in her bag. The paper bag is on a silver scale. He's staring at her breasts. He looks quickly at the ground then her face. She narrows her eyes. He looks at the ground again. "3 dollars, ma'am." She hands him the money and grabs the paper bag. She looks at his forehead. It's sunburned. She drops the paper bag into her own bag and steps back out into the crowd.
Her frown mellows as she looks at a table covered in crates of zinnias, dwarf sunflowers, and daisies. A bee walks in a circle on a purple zinnia, double-petaled, a yellow ring of pollen round its center. A green spider hides at the bases of two daisy petals. A fly lands near the spider. The spider eases its way out from between the petals.
She runs into someone, a man. His coat bulges. It's heavy. He looks at her.
She can hear him breathing. His eyes are wide. They're watery. Sweat glistens on his nose and chin.
He raises his arm. His coat sleeve slips down to reveal his hand. His thumb is over a button at the end of a plastic tube with wires down his sleeve.
He smiles. "Praise be to..." he shouts. He raises his arm higher. She watches his thumb press down on the button. He lowers his head and squints his eyes shut.
Then he opens his eyes. He stares at his hand. The people around him stare at his hand too. He presses his thumb down on the button again, again and again. "He's got a bomb!" someone shouts.
The man growls and tries to push his way through the crowd. Sara is pushed back as more people rush forward to pile on top of the man. Someone dials 9-1-1 on a cell phone.
Sara stares into the mass of legs and arms. Elbows, knees, and heels move in and out. She imagines fists, knees, and feet banging into the man. She can't see the man's face. Goosebumps cover her legs and her arms. She can hear her heart pounding. Her lungs hurt. She's crying.
"You fucker!" she screams. "Kill the fucker!" She runs into the mob, but she can't touch him.
She's knocked backwards. The mob stands and steps back. Between two men, the man hangs by his arms. His jacket's gone. She sees it being passed over the crowd, finger tips to finger tips. It's army green, a trench coat.
"You stupid fucker!" she screams. He doesn't move. Blood is running from his head. One strap of his sleeveless undershirt is torn. The crotch of his pants is dark with blood. His right leg turns above the knee. His left ankle is flat with the ground.
She turns in the direction of the sirens. A police car drives up onto the sidewalk. The men drop the man. His head bounces against the concrete. It leaves a bloody spot. She winces. He doesn't move. A man wearing a white T-shirt steps to the right. A policeman emerges from a tunnel in the crowd.
The policeman's uniform is blue. He's not wearing a hat. He points to the man. "OK, is this the guy?" he says. "Uh, huh." "Yeah." "Yes, sir."
Watching the man, he steps to the man's back. He pulls up one of the man's arms by the wrist. The arm bends below the elbow. He drops it.
"Jesus," he says. "Is this guy dead?"
"OK," he says to the man, "I'm going to check you out. I don't want any funny business, OK?" The man doesn't move.
The policeman turns the man over onto his back. He straightens the man's legs and arms. He presses two fingers into the man's neck.
"Fuck, I think his windpipe's crushed." A woman giggles. The man in the white T-shirt joins her. Sara stares at him. "No pulse." The policeman puts a hand over the man's mouth. "Not breathing."
Another policeman steps out of the tunnel in the crowd.
"He doesn't have a pulse," the first policeman says to the second. "He's not breathing."
"Have you tried CPR?" the second policeman says.
The first policeman runs a finger down the man's chest. He lifts up his finger. He looks at the second policeman. "I think all of his ribs are broken."
"Christ," the second policeman says. "We had a report of a man wearing a bomb jacket. Where's the jacket?"
The jacket has been hovering on the crowd's finger tips the whole while. It begins to move towards the policemen. The second policeman looks at it.
"Christ, what are you morons doing? Put it down!"
The crowd convulses away from the jacket. It slams to the ground and spills open. Its insides are packed with encyclopedias.
"Oh, my god! What have we have done?" a man shouts. "He knew what he was doing," another man says. "He knew what he was doing -- that crazy fucker." "Amen." "It's all right." The woman and the man in the white T-shirt stop giggling. They stare at the jacket and its encyclopedias.
Sara looks across the gap in the crowd round the body. The woman in brown is pressed against an overturned table. The girl in green with the puffy blue bow stands before her. The woman is covering the girl's eyes with her hands. The woman was looking at the body. Now she looks across to Sara. Sara opens her mouth. Sara closes her eyes. She hears more sirens.
"Why?" someone says. "Why?"
"Who knows." "Just because."
She hears someone sobbing. She hears the woman who giggled giggling again. She hears the policemen speaking softly to one another. The sirens stop. Doors slam. She doesn't move. She doesn't open her eyes. She just listens.
She imagines the crowd round the man, the city round the crowd, the country round the city, the world round the country, land and water, then the world just a tiny blue dot amongst a sea of black and stars. She swallows. She listens to herself let out a long breath.