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The Quiet
by Chris Castle
The paramedic jogged round the corner, leaving behind the traffic, the van, his partner. He stopped in his tracks, kicking up some dust. Looked at the man, impaled on both shoulders, through both palms.
“I’m over here.” The man said.
“Yeah.” The paramedic replied, walking over.
He wiped sweat form his forehead, opened his mouth to speak, nothing. He looked down to the bag, steadying himself by looking at the instruments.
“I always liked homework.” He took a breath, like breaking branches. “Liked homework. Liked it was a challenge. Used to sit on the kerb and try to figure it all out, get it all done by sun down. Worked by the light. If it was raining I wouldn’t do it, simple as that. Straight a summers, flunked winters.” He laughed.
From the angles of the steel and the way it twisted, it sounded like a warning.
“Try not to talk.” The medic muttered, as he pulled equipment out of the bag.
“The mute speaks.” He said his eyes widening, then tighten. “What the fuck else I’m gonna do, tap dance? What are you, twelve?” The man’s voice dropped suddenly, blood running from the left corner of his mouth. “All I got left to do is talk. What’s your name kid?” His eyes began to roll as he talked, looked down. “Mute that can talk, how about a deaf who can hear? What’s your name, kid? Mine’s Rankin.”
“Doyle. Doyle Brennan.” He said, surprising himself. Were they supposed to do that?
“Doyle. What is that, Italian? Every Irish I’ve met liked a joke. You a joker, Doyle?” The man said, trying to smile, blood running through his teeth.
“No. Not really.” Was all he could say, checking the shoulders, the palms, trying not to puke.
“No shit.”
“Mr. Rankin, I think you may have-“
“Hee-haw. That’s my nick name. Call me that like everyone else. Shit! My first names a chicks name and Rankin sounds Jew. I don’t want to die getting talked to like a Jewish chick.”
“Mr. R- Hee-Haw, you’re-" He was stopped by laughing. But this time it was natural, as if the steel had steadied and siphoned the sound through.
“You sound funny saying my name, man. Maybe you are a joker. A sly one. Funny without running around waving their arms and tripping over shit.”
The sun shifted, rolled over both of them. He closed his eyes without realising it, letting the warmth sink into him. When he opened up he saw Hee-Haw bathing in the light.
“Your injuries are-”
“Fuck my injuries, man! I don’t care. Do you what you can or don’t, just let me enjoy my sun right here.” He stopped tilted his head a little like he was trying to swallow the day.
“Please don’t move.” He said, trailing off.
“Eating the sun. Eating the sun right up. That’s what she used to say…shit Doyle if you can’t talk about nothing else, then tell me something. I don’t like quiet. The Quiet.”
Doyle began to explain the problems. He laid out terms and consequences, time elapsed and solutions. He began to cut away the shirt, saturated with blood. And he just lay there, taking in the sun, like he was listening to a door to door.
“You know, I’m glad you came up to see me Doyle. You can’t talk for shit, but it’s nice not to be alone, you know?” His voice was a soft and steady flow now. “Before you got here, no-one else came over. I saw a few people and they kept walking. You believe that? Kept walking past a goddamn two bit crucifixion ‘because it might clog up their precious day...'” he tilted his head, looked straight at him.
“It’s okay man. It doesn’t even hurt. Don’t know why, all I can feel is the sun. It’s good. Feels good.” He nodded. Doyle nodded back.
“The van should be here, in a few minutes. It's close. We’ll get you to a hospital.”
“Minutes? Time don’t mean nothing to me now. Times something else now. Minutes turn to hours, to days. Just minutes when you’re dying .I’ve been here for days. Spent the last six hours talking to god. He says the sun, sunshine, is a weapon. A weapon to confuse, diffuse and annihilate. Fusion. Going to clean every speck of dirt we created clean away. But I argued with him. I said I don’t believe the suns evil. It’s no threat. Not to me. Thing of beauty that’s what I said. So we talked, back and forth. Then we fell out. Can’t tell god he’s wrong I guess. Stubborn bastard. But now I feel the heat. So I guess he’s apologising now.”
Doyle pulled away, began to wipe down his skin, the blood from the spikes. He looked around once, twice. But there was just the two of them. His voice was thinning now, becoming something else.
“Remember the terrorists? I watched it all on TV. all the channels drawn to one big story. I had this idea…staking 100 TV sets in a square watching it until it became one big face of…violence, tragedy, whatever the fuck…they showed it all didn’t they? Then they stopped. People complaining about too much death…in a tragedy!”
“Day before, guy came at me in the street. We rolled around. Punching, kicking. I bit him. Drew blood, pulled flesh. That’s what I did the day before. Remember that.”
“I was drunk. I was so drunk I didn’t even know it’d happened. Had to watch it on replay.”
Doyle finished the stitching, peeled the gloves off, and pulled the spare pair from his belt. He felt Hee Haw staring at him got a long second
“At least we talking now. Shit! Twenty words. Go for fifty and you cam quit this shitty job and be a shrink. You ever been happy, Doyle? Simple happy?”
Doyle kept stitching.
“Shit man, please. I can feel the Quiet coming in.”
Doyle took his hand, began to lift it from the spike.
“Paper boats. I used to fold paper boats, float them in the water. Pa showed me. Showed me how to fold them tight so they’d last a while.”
Doyle lifted the hand off, the tears of skin loose, fresh blood spilling.
“Didn’t mind when they melted. Beautiful, like seeing snow or something. Always got paper, always got paper, so I was never lost to it, wherever I was.”
Doyle began on the other hand.
“That’s good, man. Good to be simple.” He wheezed. His voice began to slip. Doyle tapped him, needing him to stay awake.
“What about you, Hee-haw? What about you?”
“Shit! Must be bad if you’re starting a conversation…X-mas trees. I used to love looking at them, all lit up. In rich houses. All glowing like a soldier or something. Used to stare at them so long, friends said they could put presents at my feet…beautiful and on fire. So one year we offered to collect them all up, as a service, after X-mas. Took them out to Potters field, lined them all up. Then we got torches, headlights, lit them all up. People came over just to watch them. Beautiful. Like it was another place. Best thing I saw.”
“I hear the ambulance, Hee-Haw. A minute, tops.” He pulled the other hand free, sutured the blood.
“Sure, Doyle, sure. They gonna cut the rest out?”
“Yeah. They’ll cut the metal away best they can.”
“Good. I want to see the sparks cut into the sun. I can hear the siren. Loud.”
“Yeah” said Doyle. He looked down. The blood had pooled at their feet.
“Gonna put one of your paper boats in this shit, Doyle?” His voice was up and down now, fading. Doyle shrugged, half smiled. The ambulance pulled up, the lights making Doyle squint.
“Ambulance’ll take you now, Hee-Haw.” Doyle said, edging away.
“Good. Want to get out of here, Doyle.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“You talk too much.”
Chris Castle is English but works in Greece. He has sent out his work this summer and been accepted over fifty times. His influences include Ray Carver and PT Anderson. He can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com.
