"Alright! Break it up!"
Jesse yelled at the crowd.
"Make sure that no of them leave. I want them to see this."
Jesse electrified his baton and wen to work on the crowd of inmate. He started shocking all the inmates and incapacitating them. They fell to the side, one after the other. Finally, Jesse had broken through. The inmate laid in the ground with cracked ribs and collar bones.
At the center of the crowd, the big guy kept threatening James, never letting go of his collar.
He just kept yelling at James, "Who the hell are you. What are you doing in here! Tell me! Tell me!"
There was no choice. Jesse had to knock the big guy over the head with his baton. Finally, the big man released James. Blood spilled from the the big guys head. Then, Jesse stood over him and said,
"I told you to let him go."
"He doesn't belong here," said the big guy, while blood dripping over his fingers and unto the floor. "He doesn't"
"Who you talking about?" asked Jesse, as he cracked the big man over the head again, more blood gushing out.
Jesse gestured at James with his baton, while staring down the fat man, who only now saw blood.
"Do you see anyone here? There is no one here, man. Do you get it?"
The fat man stayed silent. Then, Jesse struck him the head a final time. The fat man lost consciousness and just laid on the food covered floor. Jesse stood up to face the other prisoners who where trying to collect their senses.
"That goes for all the inmate in here. This man does not exist. You don't know him. You don't talk to him. You don't even face him!"
Suddenly, the other guards signaled to Jesse. "Look behind you!"
Jesse turned around and saw James two feet away with a white plastic fork in his hand. He swayed in place, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. James stuck a fork in the air trying to protect himself. Blood gushed from his broken nose and over his lips. Jesse approached him with one hand palms open.
"It's over James. Look over there. He's down."
A couple seconds later, James collapsed to the floor. His orange overalls were covered in blood. Jesse walked over to him and knelt before him. Jesse examined James for anything, other than bruises. He could have gotten cut and he would have lost a good amount of money, if he let anything happen to James.
Jesse earned his money well that day.
5
Caretaker of the Dead
FOR THE LAST TWO DAYS, I WORKED AT THE PIER AND COMMUNED WITH THE DEAD, loading the dead bodies unto a crimson barge, one after the other.
This morning, I'd be back at the pier where I would look for the girl again. I hoped that one day she would emerge through the pile of dead bodies and my search would be over.
Until then, the shadows would speak to me. With every dead body or body part that I loaded unto the barge, I sometimes saw many things that I wished I did not. A world filled with terrible things, ugly things that are hard to get out of ones head, once they're seen.
On my second day at the pier, I saw a dead girl with cloudy eyes and pale white flesh. She casually walked toward me like the living dead and told me that she was found one morning by a couple garbage men. She told me that they did not say a prayer for her. She asked me why they did not say a prayer for her. And I told her that I did not know why. Instead, I recited a small prayer and she made her way into the barge. By midday, she was gone with the others.
And that was all that I needed to know about her because she wasn't the one that I was looking for. That morning, I was looking for another girl, the one that I was suppose to find. And I hoped that I didn't miss her, the girl with the violet hair.
I hoped that she did not slip through my fingers. There was a possibility that I could have missed her. Another crew could have loaded unto the barge in the afternoon. This possibility filled my mind with doubt. If I did miss her, then I would have to go out there to check. And that would mean that I would have to go to the island of the dead. And I didn't really want to do that because I was scared of what I would find there.
But I would have no choice in the matter. In the end, I had to make sure that I did not miss her. I could not let her go. She deserved more than to be thrown away with the rest of the forgotten and nameless. She definitely deserved more than that. I thought that she deserved a name. I thought that she deserved a proper burial with a prayer recited over her bones. And that would be my last good deed.
Whenever I worked the line at the pier, all I had to do was just be around a bag or a wooden box. And I would see the dead, as if they were alive. And that was all it took. Every morning, the dead waited on the pier to be taken away.
Yesterday, another shadow spoke to me.
I saw a dead girl without any legs. The vision I had of her was tied to the black bag that contained a piece of her. I looked at the wooden pier and I saw her crawling toward me, using her arms and hands to get close to me. She wanted to tell me something. But, I did not want to listen.
Her spirit was tied to the body part inside the black bag that was passed to me. I received it in my arms and I used all my strength to pass it along to other inmate standing on the hull of the crimson barge. When I touched the black bag, it gave me a jolt and it was as if she did not have to say a word. Her story had passed through my heart. The ungodly thing crawling on the floor did not have to speak, not at all.
I felt bad for her. I tried to ignore her. I tried to feel nothing for her.
But, it was difficult because she looked so miserable crawling on the wooden deck of the pier without any legs. Once she got close to me, she grabbed onto my legs and I looked down at her. She looked horrible, in was one the shell of a woman. Her dried lips asked me a question.
"Are you the ferry man?"
All I could tell her was that I was not the ferry man that they told her about when she was a kid. I told her that the ferry man was a fairy tale. I told her that I was something else, something complete different that no one had heard of before.
"Oh..."
She looked down in disappointment. Then, she looked up at me, again.
"Do you know that I was found by a woman walking her dog?"
You would be surprised by how many people stumble upon a body or a body part when their walking their stupid dog, picking up after their shit. In the last couple of months, most of the crime reporters liked using that phrase -dead body found while walking their dog - in their news articles.
I held on to the heavy black bag with her head inside. I held on a little longer, she told her story to me and she did not have to say a word.
That morning when the night receded back into its dark ocean, an indigo blue lit the city and a woman walked her dog. Along the way, she and her dog, Shadow had found a tattered brown suitcase sitting on the sidewalk, about a block away from her apartment in the Queens.
As she walked toward the suitcase, she noticed that it was covered with dark wet blotches. She didn't think anything of it at first. One one ever does.
It appeared like tossed garbage, at first. That was all.
The brown suitcase was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, untouched by anything. It calmly sat there, as if some one had just left it there on purpose for anyone to find. Shadow was her dog and he was the first to approach it. She gave the leash more slack and allowed the dog to sniff around the suitcase. Then, she saw something dripping out from the bottom of the suitcase onto the concrete sidewalk. A second later, she yanked on the leash to pull the dog's snout away from it.
"Come on. Shadow. Let's go, Shadow."
But, the dog fought back and caused the suitcase to tip over. The rusted latch of the suitcase busted open as soon as it landed on its side. It busted open, as if the contents were too much for it to hold. Then, something horrible spilled out of it, something that she did not want to acknowledge at first. She tried to pull Shadow away from the suitcase. She ended up pulling on his leash so hard that Shadow cried out in a quick whimper. Bu
t, Shadow would not move.
When she looked again at what had fallen out of the suitcase, a scream pierced the air. She was terrified by what she found.
That morning, she found a dismembered body part stuffed inside a oil-stained brown suitcase. It wasn't that long before, her cries brought the attention of school children who were also walking down the street in the opposite direction. They were going to school, when they heard her. They crossed the narrow street to see what the woman was screaming about.
"What's that bitch's problem?" One kid asked, another.
"Look." he pointed at the body part.
"Take a picture…Quick. Before the police get here."
The school kids weren't the only ones to notice the commotion in the street. Some of the residents stood behind the window of their homes, watching. They saw everything that was happening. Some stayed inside watching from a safe distance, while others climbed down from their front steps. They had stepped outside to see a woman's scream die down.
Quickly, there was a small crowd gathering around the lady, the dog and the suitcase.
Everyone stared in awe at what laid out there on the sidewalk. Everyone couldn't help wonder, who was it that could do something like this to another human being. The world was darker that morning and it had been getting darkr everyday since.
In several panicked breaths, the lady took action. She called police. While everyone just kept staring at the body part that fell out of the suitcase. They were unable to look away. She held on tight to Shadow's leash as she tried to get some one on the line. She was routed through 3 different automated operators, until she found a human voice.
She reported whatever she found in the suitcase, maybe a hand, maybe a leg or even a torso. This time, though, it was a pair of legs fold over each other. They were packed tightly inside the suitcase. They were white and pale, as if they were drained of blood.
The lady was terrified, to no end. But, she was a responsible person and she had to report this to the police.
When she spoke to the them, she reported the legs and even more than what was necessary. She provided details about the the body parts that she had found, as if she were the one investigating a murder, taking accurate account of everything. Trying to make sense of it all.
It was as if her mind was shattered into a thousand pieces and now she had to somehow try to put it all together. The incident on Cauldwell Avenue had terrified her and captured her imagination, all at once.
"911, please state your emergency."
"I found a body part on the sidewalk. A pair of legs. I was just walking my dog. My god. It's terrible."
"Where?"
"Inside a suitcase. It just opened in front of me. I didn't do anything. I just found it."
"I mean what address. Where are you?"
"East 158 Street and Cauldwell Avenue. Please, get here soon, as you can. I don't want to look after it. And there are school children staring at it, right now. I don't know what to do. Please help me."
"Calm down, Ms. What's your name?"
"I couldn't help looking at it."
"What Ms? What was that?"
"I looked at it. Oh God, there's no feet."
"Clam down. Some one will be right there to help you."
"Oh God, there are no feet attached to the legs."
Once the police arrived at the scene, they created a perimeter with yellow tape around the body part. The woman and her dog now watched from the other side of the yellow tape. They watched the police record everything with pictures, interviews and whatever evidence, they could find. There was a young police officer interviewing her. Then, in the middle of his questions, she asked something about the body part.
"What was that, Ms?"
"What do you do, if you can't find who those leg belong to? What happens to them?"
She was curious and the officer went on to tell her that once the body part was taken away, the police would go through their own records to search for more information on the body part. They would cross- reference the body part with others that were found in the past year. For the next 48 hours, they would freeze the body part and do their best to identify it.
"And if that isn't possible?" She asked.
"Don't worry about that, Ms."
If that wasn't always possible. Most of the times, there was no way to tell who the body part belong to because there were no identifying marks.
If a body or body part found in the street, that couldn't be identified, then there was nothing left for the authorities to do.
There was only one option left.
In the end, the police would examine it, recorded it, codify it and send it away to be buried.
Once they were done with it, the unidentified pair of legs would be unceremoniously driven in a rented yellow U-haul truck to a narrow wooden pier in City Island. The body would sit inside the truck with the others bags and wooden boxes in the sweltering heat.
It would sit there, until the prisoners from Riker's Island arrived and moved the bodies unto the red barge, the Lehigh Valley #23, the crimson barge. Then, the dead would make the last of their journey to Hart Island, the island where the nameless finally rested.
Every time I was taken to the waterfront to move dead bodies, I always thought of her, the girl who I never really knew. But one day, I would work this pier and I would find her or at least a part of her.
6
Barge from the Island of the Dead
ON THE BUS, OFFICER JESSE GUERRO TURNED AROUND TO LOOK AT THE FREAK, the man with the pale white eyes.
"What a God damn freak," Jesse said under his breath.
James was looking out the window and Jesse wanted to take another look at him before the bus arrived at the pier. Jesse had know James Night for a long time, since they were kids. But, those times were past. Now, he didn't who this freak in front of him was. Either way, Jesse's job was simple. The warden ordered him to escort James safely to pier and move bodies and that was all. That had been Jesse's assigned job, since James first landed in Riker's Prison. It took a while for James story to come to light. But eventually, Jesse was able to put it together, on the bus ride over.
You could kill a man. But you couldn't kill the man's idea. The idea of a man walking out there, who can communicate with the dead. That was James Night and that's who he was
The guards took James and the inmates to the Fordham Street pier in Island City. The bus went through a restricted waterfront property, owned and controlled by the NYC Department of Corrections. The guard took him for one purpose and the inmates heard a rumor as to why.
The bus ride to the pier was bumpy and the guards were anxious for the day to begin. So was James. He calmly sat in his orange overall, looking forward to a day out in the sun. The other mates sat away from him, about a seat away. They keep their gaze to themselves and wore green overalls. They swayed, hypnotized by the sweltering morning heat. The air-conditioner had broke down a year ago and was never fixed. The weather had become unpredictable and it was hotter than usual.
James wiped the sweat of his brow and looked out the window. All he could see was the scratched up glass, cutting the world into thin slices, overpowering the natural world, deforming it, destroying it. So, James imagined a cloudless sky with a cerulean blue stretching as far as he could see.
The pale white bus with the rusted chain linked windows struck a pothole when it turned left onto Fordham Street on the way to the pier. It wouldn't be that long, any more. The metal latche and chain around James Night's wrist and ankles made a noise, reminding him again that he wasn't free.
The overcast sky cleared away and the morning sun burned the back of his neck. He looked over at the bay and the water glimmered with light, making him squint. But, he could not help wonder what today would bring. Out there, nothing could hide under the sun. Out there, there was hardly a shadow to be seen for miles.
But this time, it was different.
As soon as James stepped off the bus, he spott
ed a man standing on the pier who turned around to look at James. The driver told everyone to get ready to get off. Then, all the inmates were taken of the bus. Both prison guards carried their batons on their side and their shotguns leaned on their shoulders. Jesse signaled the driver to take them to the pier, which he did.
Before James could join them, Jesse held James back with the side of his shotgun.
"James. hold on a second."
"But I have to unload the truck."
"I know James."
Jesse felt bad for him.
"First, I need you to come with and speak to friend of mine."
"What about the truck?"
"Don't worry about that now. We''l get to that later." James noticed Jesse tightening his grip on his baton, as if he were going to pull it out and crack his head with it. James. I need you to listen to me. Right now I need you to walk to that man standing out there on the pier."
James looked at the man and the truck of dead bodies. He looked long at the truck. He saw that there were two trucks at the pier this morning. He was saw that the girl was in there. He hoped that she would just show her face. But, that was not how it worked. He had to get in line with the other inmates and touch each dead body with his own hands.
"James!"
Without saying a word, James started walking toward the man standing at the end of the pier. Jesse stopped walking part of the way and allowed James to walk by himself. James got to the end and stood next to the large man. It was the warden of the prison.
"Hello James. There's a good friend of my that wants something from you."
James stayed quiet. He knew that this was a trap from the first moment he laid eyes on the man on the pier.
"Well, what does he want?"
"You took away his daughter and now he wants your eyes."
Purge of the Vampires Page 5
