Trash in a Ditch, Pt. 11 (Fiction)

[check out this part on my personal page, where it looks better]

Halfway to the workshop, I remembered the newspapers. The day before, at noon, I had ruminated about them, and that had convinced me I’d put the matter to rest, but today’s editions might report a child’s disappearance, or that a murderer was on the run. Should I veer around, go back to the city, and buy the local paper? Even though I pictured myself turning the wheel, in real life I was sliding a palm over my lips and chin as if probing for hair to pull. No, the afternoon shift would start in five minutes, and I was already struggling enough to focus on the assembly line.

I had flipped down the visor, but sunlight blurred the road as if a stun grenade had gone off and left me dazzled. My right cheekbone throbbed in a hot ache. Would I have to endure this peak of anxiety for the rest of my life? Is that what I’d condemned myself to by running over that boy—constantly fearing some microscopic clue, a hair, a speck of dandruff, or traces of blood, might betray me?

I parked by the fence of the empty lot next to the workshop, then got out of the car. An arid gust swept dust and blew across my bare face and arms like a hairdryer shaking itself. Dozens of workers had taken shelter from the sun under the workshop eaves, forming a colony of purple penguins.

Something must have slipped my mind. I went around to the trunk, where the sun burned a white hole. I inserted the key.

My heart pounded as if it had guessed I’d find an empty space. While I’d been eating, someone might have stolen the duffel bag, unzipped it, and upon discovering it contained a corpse, rushed to a police station.

When I lifted the lid, the trunk exhaled a breath of metal and floor mat mixed with the stench of feces and urine that might have sat in a toilet for a week. As I wrinkled my nose, I felt the outlines of the duffel bag. It held the solid shapes I expected.

And to the left of my hand, two tanned hands—short, slender fingers with dirt crusted under the nails—mirrored my movements. They ran their palms over the bag’s outlines until they found the zipper pull. They slid it open the way you’d peel off a bandage, and the zipper’s mouth parted to reveal bulges and folds of transparent plastic.

I blinked, rooted to the earth as if my bones had tangled with the soil. Caroline smelled like an animal that had walked in the sun for an hour. Some lumps and protrusions made the pockets of her coat bulge.

The woman tore the transparent plastic with her fingernails. A greenish skin emerged, covered by a slick membrane that had stuck to the plastic’s interior like mucus. The stench that escaped and crawled into my nostrils jolted me like a hammer blow. Caroline had slipped her hands around both sides of the wrapped corpse, peeling it away from the bottom of the duffel bag with a sound like a boot sinking into a swamp.

I grabbed the woman by her wrists. With a yank, I forced her to let go of the body and step back. I slammed the trunk shut, the bang echoing as if to alert every worker.

While pressing my palms against the scorching lid, I quickly scanned the yard and the workshop’s facade. Groups of workers were limping toward the entrance. A small whirlwind prowled the yard, rustling wrappers and cigarette butts.

A jolt of electricity rippled over my skin. My guts bothered me like I’d just ruined my digestion. I dared to face Caroline. To look at me, she swept aside a cascade of hair. Her dry, peeling lips had parted slightly.

I wanted to scold her for messing with my property, but the words slipped away once my shaky voice tried to release them. Caroline’s pupils gazed at me from inside two crystalline spheres. Compared to the vulnerability and transparency they evoked, every other pair of eyes I’d seen might as well have been just iris-and-pupil designs painted on wooden balls. The way she studied my face showed that she understood. She was examining me to figure out what kind of person would hide a child’s corpse.

My throat closed up. My neck quivered, begging me to look away. Like someone who’s spent a week locked in a reeking, dark cell and then stumbles on the light switch, I was blinded by the light. I had run over a boy, crushing him under my car’s wheels, then fled with his body. It felt so delirious I had to brace myself to keep from melting into a toxic puddle.

Caroline’s pupils alternated between focusing on my own and my cracked cheekbone. Her chest rose and fell in slow breaths.

When I opened my mouth, a stammer escaped.

“It was an accident.”

I was trying to muster some explanation that might justify me in Caroline’s eyes, in my own, so she’d stop seeing me as a monster. But the high-speed replay of me driving that night along the dirt road, of coming home with a corpse in the trunk, made any excuse seem absurd. An accident, Caroline might repeat. If it was an accident, why didn’t you call the police? I didn’t know. Who was this strange creature I was forced to be? A person hauling around the decomposing corpse of a child he’d killed, planning to dump it over the weekend like a swollen trash bag. Why hadn’t I realized during the night of the hit-and-run that what I was doing was wrong, just as I must have done wrong in countless moments?

I’d been invited to peer through someone else’s mind, someone who lived inside me and acted on my behalf, an enemy who hid from my attempts to understand him, and who might trick me into following any road I’d later want to walk back. Yet while that other “me” was in control, I felt in charge. How could I ever decide anything with certainty, knowing I’d reasoned that I should hide the child’s corpse? I needed to defend myself from this internal enemy, keep him away from everyone else.

Caroline slid her cascade of hair behind her ears, which flared out slightly. I had grown accustomed to women’s faces hidden behind layers of makeup, but on hers, craters from acne or chickenpox were scattered across her forehead, cheeks, and chin. A faint mustache showed on her upper lip. Caroline began to speak in a high-pitched voice, stringing together sounds resembling syllables. I felt like a blow had disabled my language center.

“I can’t understand you. I don’t recognize a single word.”

She fell silent, then stepped away from the trunk and studied the corpse through the lid for a few seconds. As if content with whatever conclusion her broken mind cobbled up, she flowed around the car like some aquatic creature, heading toward the workshop. Caroline rummaged in a pocket and pulled out some scrap. While she examined it with her head bowed, she slipped between two groups of workers and disappeared into the workshop’s shadows.

My legs gave out. I leaned against the trunk lid, which groaned under my weight. Why would I peel myself off this blistering metal?

My mind tried to exile part of itself, as though slicing the brain in half. Was this how others saw me? I understood why they’d avoid me, treat me with hostility. If only I could get away from myself. But I would never become anyone other than who I was born.

The workshop horn blared, summoning us to come inside. I straightened up and dragged myself across the yard. My feet seemed ready to turn themselves inside out. Why was I staying there, now that someone knew I was hiding a child’s corpse? It felt like I’d been bitten by a black widow—thinking I’d survive only because I hadn’t collapsed yet. But it would happen. And if Caroline hadn’t found out, someone else would have.

When I entered the workshop, the lighting affected me as if candles had been replaced by halogen lamps. I followed the path between the lines to my station. The purple backs, the brown veined wood of the tables, and the gray rubber of the conveyor belts—unshaded now that my tinted lenses weren’t blocking them—took on vibrant colors as though an expressionist painter had recreated them.

My neck had gone stiff, and I avoided lifting my head. At any moment I might burst into spontaneous combustion, leaving only a heap of ashes and a single foot inside its sock and shoe.

When I reached the line and climbed onto my stool, the stares of the three men stung my face. Héctor, facing me, was frowning, and to the right Christopher and John—or Joseph—were peering at me as if a player on their team had just gotten injured.

Ah, the dead eye. Without my glasses hiding that ruin, the novelty horrified them.

“I lost them.”

Héctor let out a derisive snort.

“Losing your glasses gave you that black eye?”

I touched my cheekbone, and a flare of pain lit up the mesh of nerves interlaced with the ones that had died when shrapnel pierced them.

A black hand settled on my right shoulder. Christopher, standing beside me, squeezed my shoulder to offer comfort.

I tensed. I opened my mouth to tell him to remove his hand, to say he should have asked permission first, but that would lead to more questions and complaints.

“Do you need a break?” Christopher said. “Go home. The three of us can handle this afternoon’s workload.”

Héctor dropped his screwdriver, which clattered against the table. He shook his head.

“Great. More work for us because you were a bastard to someone who didn’t take it well.”

My mind seethed in a static of white noise. Their attention squeezed me like the bars of a shrinking cage. If only I could swat every question and comment with a flyswatter so these people would shut up and leave me alone.

I lifted Christopher’s hand off my shoulder and set it aside. I sat up straight on my stool, then pressed the button that switched on the conveyor belt, which started rolling with the hum of cylinders and the friction of rubber.

“What happened is my business alone. Let’s just run this fucking line.”

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Author’s note: this novella was originally self-published in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in a collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.

Today’s songs are “Climbing Up the Walls” by Radiohead, and “Angel” by Massive Attack.