See The Monster

“I want you to recount the events of that evening. You must be totally honest with me.”
Morgan watched the man sitting across from him. It was just the two of them in a white room with a large one-way window.
He sat the file down on the stainless steel table and positioned his arms so that the file was somehow guarded from the gentleman opposite him.
“You have everything there in front of you. What is it you want to know?” The man watched Morgan intently, and smiled a little as Morgan, clad in a white lab coat, swung the file open and flipped through an entire catalogue of criminal case history and psychiatric assessments, each piece of evidence signed with notes by a Dr. Paulson.
Morgan looked at a photo. It was of a woman, faded and deceased. Her eyes looked as if they were searching for something in the white flash of a policeman’s camera. She had bruises on her face and thick red lines around her neck. There was blood on the wall behind her. He wondered if all crime scenes look this way. He hesitated, “Why did you do it?”
The man watched Morgan’s emotional reaction to the photo and nodded his head in a way that suggested he somehow anticipated it. He said nothing.
Morgan turned to another photo. It was a man. He lay bent and prostrated in the street with his arm twisted behind him. The abrasions on his head had earlier suggested he was thrown from the building behind him. There was something sticking out of his chest. Morgan looked closer. It was a cue stick, halved and bloodied. The photo was still, unmoving, and yet it intimated a sort of linear severity so obviously removed from the confines of paper and light. This thought seemed to jump out at Morgan. There is a story before and after, all entirely suggestible so long as one looks close enough.
“Which night? Both nights? There were many nights.” The man spoke with ease. He sat with his hands clasped together on the table.
Morgan smiled. “I’ve always wanted to say, ‘Tell me about the events of that evening...’”
“You did good.” The man smiled. “Now which evening exactly?”
Morgan slid a photo over to the man and tapped it. The photo was of an elderly woman. Her head was stuck in the glass shelves of what appeared to be her china cabinet. She wore a nightgown, and there was a broken cup of tea that lay in a puddle at her feet. The photo intimated a quick forward movement, as if she were walking to the cabinet when all at once she were thrown in with enough force the glass exploded over her head and jarred the loose skin of her throat. Her glasses hung from her neck, weighted with the calcified blood from the woman’s own body. She had a look of surprise on her face, as if her last thought was, Why? After eighty-two years.
The man looked down at the photo without touching it. “I watched her from my building across the alleyway. I watched her for weeks. I loved her, really. Everything she did somehow illuminated her disposition; she was an elderly woman of domestic qualities, widowed in New York. She sipped tea. She wore glasses on a golden chain around her neck.” The man looked up at Morgan and pointed to the glasses. The man smiled. “She was entirely herself. There were no complications in her life. She was an idea...and I enjoyed that immensely.”
Morgan looked the man in the eyes, and at the photo he was pointing at. He felt a sort of cold panic wash over him. The man’s eyes were detached, as if he were only memorizing something he had already invested his thoughts and emotions in. “When did you...” Morgan hesitated. “When did you go over there?”
“Why don’t you tell me that?”
Morgan said, “On October the twenty-first, 1991.”
The man nodded his head. He was incredibly still, and had this sterile cleanliness to him, as if his mind were as much trimmed and groomed as his outstretched hands and polite smile.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I knew from watching her, she kept her door unlocked, not because I had seen her lock it, but because she was very simply the sort of person that would not lock her door. She was self-involved. Entirely...”
Morgan interrupted, “Herself...”
“Yes. This kind of person is so very removed from the reality of the world around them, the outside thought of an intruder wanting anything to do with them would be an absurdity.”
“So you went to her building...”
“I climbed the stairs of her building and found her door. I knew from watching her building from my own, the floor plans were very large. I also knew she would be sitting at the table by the window going over her Reader’s Digest at that hour. So I walked in and had a look around.”
“She didn’t hear you?”
“No.”
“And you, had a look around?”
“Yes.”
“When did you...”
“I was sitting in her bedroom, on her bed, looking at pictures. I heard her walk into the dining room. I could smell the tea. The whole atmosphere was...domestic. I enjoyed that.” The man looked down at the photo and pointed to it. “I approached her from behind, here. I thought she would see me through the reflection of the glass. She didn’t. I simply pushed her in.”
“Simply?”
“Very simply, yes.”
Morgan slid the photo over to him and looked at it for a moment. He felt it had a sort of heaviness to it, that, once added to the bulging case-file, could not be lifted and carried away. Instead, it would somehow fall through the floor, through our world. The only place for it was a black depth completely removed from society. It belonged in blackness, or the white of their room. It was like a diver’s tank –lighter in the water, heavier outside. All at once he felt a sort of anger he hadn’t felt in a while. “Why? Why kill her? Or any of these people?!”
The man studied Morgan for a moment in silence. “She was beautiful. Her routine was beautiful. Her days all amounted to the same thing, the passing of life. And she passed her life to the precise timing of a stopwatch. There were no complications, no confusion as to whom she was. She could have never imagined a killer in her house. Suddenly I’m there, and suddenly she was no longer.”
Morgan, entranced with the subtle neatness of the man’s speech, unthinkingly slid the photos closer to him, so that they nearly fell off the table and into his lap. “What about these ones?” he asked, his voice cracking a little.
The man smiled. “Those ones too.”
“You killed them because they were, ideas?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Were they taken by surprise?”
“All of them. I followed this man over the course of a week or so. He was a powerful drunk. We played a game of billiards. The game was not yet finished when he relieved himself in the bathroom and I, all at once, rushed him. I broke the cue stick over his head and plunged it into his bulging belly, and saw that a fall from a window was most fitting for him. Powerful men should fall out of windows with cue sticks lodged inside them. Always.”
“Then you just walked out of the restroom and finished your drink?”
“Yes. It was a half-empty dive and I knew I didn’t have to leave until someone visited the restroom.”
“The woman?”
The man adopted a solemn expression, and watched Morgan adjust himself in the loose fitting, long white coat. “She lived in that motel room. She was hiding out from this husband of hers. She was the battered woman: lonely, trusting, pale and fidgety. I sat on her bed for three hours before I finally threw her against the wall and knocked her out. I strangled her to death, and she never saw my face. She died like the others; completely unaware of what was happening, and so completely convinced of her own safety. She lacked the mind to defend herself.”
“But you said she was battered, so she had to have had some idea of...” Morgan paused, and more to himself, said, “Pain.”
“Her demon was her husband. Her own self-involvement denoted a belief the world was hers alone save the memory of his intrusions. He was her pain. Not me...well, for a while anyway.”
“You enjoy that element of surprise.”
“Yes. Completely.”
Morgan fell silent for a while. He looked at the photographs. He felt his heart skip a beat. He felt a connection with what the man was saying to him.
“Are we done?” The man asked.
Morgan hesitated and for a while just looked at the black window in the little white room. “Yes, we’re done.”
The two stood up and Morgan took off the long white coat and handed it to the man. The man put it on and along with it, a name badge with his picture on it. It read, Dr. Paulson.
“How did it feel?”
Morgan looked down at his case-file and back up at the doctor. He felt he had trouble breathing and had to steady himself before answering. “It felt like I was looking at a monster.”
Dr. Paulson paused for a moment and nodded his head. “That’s good, Morgan. You have to see the monster before you can defeat it.”
Morgan couldn’t look at the case-file any longer and closed it. He slowly walked towards the door, and Dr. Paulson pressed a button on the side of the table so that it opened. Behind it were two orderlies.
“Thank you Morgan. You did very well today.” Dr. Paulson watched Morgan leave with the orderlies and nodded at the black window to indicate the session was over.

The Chess Player

It was the great defense of 1985, perfectly orchestrated on a rainy morning in Montpellier. It was a brilliant photograph, taken at the precise moment Seirawan hid his king in the safe corner of H2, affectively ruining Mikhail’s chances of any progress on the rook file. The game would denigrate to a slow ritual of pawn manipulation. It would all prove entirely hopeless for Mikhail Tal. It was said Tal expected a win from that game. Instead, he’d eventually move to a draw against Jan Timman, and because Timman had more wins in the earlier rounds, Mikhail’s tournament defeat was sealed. Seirawan was that match that changed the stakes, captured in this black and white photograph indefinitely.
Morton studied the photograph for a long while, occasionally shuffling pieces around on the board in front of him to match the annotation below the picture.
He sipped his tea and buttoned his jacket higher around his neck. He had never gotten used to the bite of Russian winters. They put the tables by the door. When it opens, the snow blows in and stings his already red hands. They dry and crack, and he has to lick his fingers to turn the pages. He thinks maybe he’s too sick for the public. He enjoys this thought. Sick men playing chess in cold Russia –there’s a sort of warmth to it.
“There it is, isn’t it? Such modern play for the year.”
Morton turned and met the face of the husky Russian voice behind him. The man had his hands in his suit pockets, and he was looking over Morton’s shoulder with a nostalgic smile on his face. He was studying the photograph.
Morton looked down at the board and back up at the man and hesitated, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Russian.”
The man smiled and studied Morton. “Of course,” he said in English. He gestured to the board the way old men do in cafes, “May I?”
The man was already pulling out a chair for himself and taking a seat. Morton watched the man intently as he set up the board.
He offered white to Morton.
“What are you doing in St. Petersburg?” The man asked the question without looking up at Morton, and Morton had not yet moved. Instead, he watched the man inquisitively. The man was stirring his tea, nearly dipping half his chin in the cup to let the steam rise over him. He had a sort of shrewdness to him, although he was not quite a thin man. Thin men are shrewd, large men are greedy, and yet he was not greedy. He was clever.
The stranger looked up and noticed Morton studying him. He smiled. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to sound so...meddlesome. I meant only to make conversation.”
He seemed Morton’s age, and like Morton he had that sparse and yet undeniable reminder of the way things fade and die, and grow white, as did the seldom stalks of hair on his loose chin. He thought why does something grow when it is dead?
Morton hesitated and smiled a little, “I’m a tourist here.”
The nodded before Morton finished his sentence. This struck Morton as odd, as if the Russian somehow knew what Morton would say before he said it. “An American?”
“Yes.”
Now it was the Russian that studied Morton. “That book you are reading,” he said after a while, “I have read it more times than I can count on these fingers of mine.” He held up his hands and laughed. He laughed like all Russians laugh.
Morton smiled.
“Ah...” the man stood up a little and bent over the table, “I almost forgot,” he did a sort of bow and said, “Roman Nikolaevich.”
“Morton Christensen.”
“A Danish name?”
Morton nodded politely and made his first move. He played the Budapest Gambit. It was not entirely interesting, but safe, he imagined –possibly resulting in a shorter game. Favorable to Morton. He had grown a man of few friends, and tended to avoid these pleasant encounters with just about everyone. Though however brief even a passing nod to a vendor on the street might be, it filled him with a sort of deep self-loathing. He could afford this sentiment at his age. He could afford to have no obligations to anyone.
It was just the two of them and the barista, who now went around the shop setting clock times and dusting mantles. He paid little attention to the chess players. The shop was in Pulkova, tucked away in a not too busy neighbourhood. Morton enjoyed the quiet. And his plan, as usual, was to leave the cafe before the early morning traffic. It would be these young business types, these self-assured people. They would file through the little door talking on cellular phones and checking the time. They were so completely obvious to Morton.
Russia could not have business people, it could not have professionals. It is a land without that necessary material all fast moving societies have; anonymity.
Roman played king-six, and Morton followed with Nf3 hoping to secure the middle board.
There was silence for a while. Both players made their moves swiftly. They were playing a very classical and elegant game, and they surprised each other; it’s not often that excellent chess players cross paths at random, in little cafes tucked away in quiet neighbourhoods. The players realized this thought completely, and played their game with great interest.
Roman adopted a tone of familiarity, and began speaking to Morton as if they were old friends somehow reacquainted. “You know I have met Mikhail Tal,” Roman began, making a move and pausing. “…It was custom in my line of work to meet the chess players. Chess has always played such an integral role in government. A chess player was...expected to play this role. It is a matter of pride. We say, ‘Look what we’ve produced here!’” Roman studied the board. He hesitated with a pawn and decided on bringing out his knight. “Think of what a chess player is comprised of, shall we? Intelligence, creativity...and he must always be a step ahead of his opponent. And when he is not? What happens? The game is lost.” Roman Nikolaevich smiled and looked Morton in the eyes. “In some way Russian chess is a failure for these very reasons. Or because of the very reason it is Russian chess. If politics and chess are so closely related, chess cannot evolve. Take this book.” Roman gestured to Morton’s book that now worked as a coaster for his half empty cup of tea. “The Syrian-American beats Mikhail Tal the great. Why? Seirawan played a modern game.” His eyes lit up. “Russia is slow moving, and it is, at times, heavy handed in its methods. This is the game Tal played –a man considered one of the most creative in chess, he played a heavy handed game, a Soviet game.”
Morton lost control of the middle and castled king-side. “Russians are the best chess players in the world!”
“A certain kind of Russian,” Roman smiled.
Morton sat back in his chair and contemplated the meaning of this statement.
“Incidentally, there has been an experiment –a successful one. This experiment is what happens when you let a player think for himself. Do you know what happened? We got Kasparov and you got Fischer!” Mr. Nikolaevich laughed until it drove him into a fit of coughing. “It was a departure from our dear Spassky...surely.”
The game picked up pace, and substitutions were made quickly.
Roman paused and contemplated a move, and Morton looked up from the board and watched him for a moment. The man was very well spoken. He looked in his late sixties. He wore a brown suit with subtle lines. His mannerisms were broad and sweeping. When he wasn’t talking, his mouth was enveloped in this way that looked as if it would swallow itself, as if he were unabashedly unsatisfied with the act of not speaking. And yet his mouth betrayed his gaze, which was remarkably concentrated, and lucid, somehow.
It had become a game of pawns.
“Do you travel often? Christensen?”
“No.”
“Interested in our art, I presume?” Nikolaevich laughed and again adopted the sardonic expression he had earlier.
He slammed his pieces down on the board with each move. He made them with authority. Morton had played with this type of chess player before, they were common in Russia. Moves were meant to be made with authority, with assurance. There was an air of battle to it. “Check.”
Morton studied the board. He had only one option.
“Check.”
He blocked check with a pawn and Roman advanced his bishop in front of it. The two of them looked at the board for a moment. Morton knew the game was an irrevocable draw. It is custom to show a certain confidence in an opponent and allow them to discover the draw as well, so that the discovery is mutual and decided. The game can be played out, and, provided no mistakes are made, the draw can be finalized. But an opponent must be respected; it must be assumed there will be no mistakes, and that both players no longer pose a threat.
They shook hands.
“Fascinating...” Roman Nikolaevich shook his head and watched the sparse, unmoving pieces on the board.
Morton paused for a moment. “What is fascinating?”
Roman Nikolaevich reached over the board and slid Morton’s book over to him and opened it to only a few pages past the photograph of Seirawan and Mikhail Tal. He studied the page and the board, and nodded his head in a deep moment of reverence.
He’s senile, flashed through Morton’s mind.
Roman showed Morton what he was looking at. Morton followed the finger that was gently tapping the page. It was the annotation of the opening game played between Mikhail Tal and Jan Timman in 1985. The game was a draw.
It should be said here that although Morton was no master, he was indeed a very fine player, and could, with some guidance, one day become a master. He was however, incredibly good at reading annotation. And just a few moments after he took the book out of Roman’s hands, he realized the Russian’s fascination. The game they had just played was an exact mirror of the game in the picture.
“Impossible...” he said aloud.
Roman Nikolaevich smiled and leaned forward a little. “Not impossible!”
Morton shook his head. “You knew! And you manipulated the game so that it would follow...”
“Now that is impossible!” Roman laughed. “It takes two to play! How could I have known which moves you would make? Additionally, I did not realize the significance of our game until the very end.”
“A coincidence...”
“Not just a coincidence; a mathematical anomaly...epic in proportions. The probability of our game is one and a billion.”
“Good players play good games, why, there’s only so many.”
“But a game in your book?”
Morton thought aloud. “How could we have played their game?”
Roman Nikolaevich leaned back in his chair and steeped his tea. He put the tea bag on the table and Morton watched the steam rise from it and the water pool around it.
Roman shook his head quickly, “We are no masters…but I suppose, on occasion, a man can surprise even himself…”
The two looked at the board a little longer.
Roman stood and studied the board standing up, and Morton, taking this as his cue to depart, closed his book and began to get up from the table when Roman Nikolaevich grabbed him by the arm unexpectedly. Roman looked Morton in the eyes, and Morton could see the man was possessed by some idea, or a notion much larger than two strangers playing chess in little Pulkova. Roman shook Morton’s arm, “Another!”
Morton looked down at the book in his hand, and at the chessboard, and at Roman, who, gripping Morton’s arm, attempted to lower the two back in their seats.
“What is it you want with me?”
“I know you.” Roman laughed for no reason at all, and began frantically setting the pieces back up as he stood.
“Another!” He said again.
Morton hesitated and sat down heavily in his chair. He studied Roman and searched the man’s face for some shred of familiarity, if that was indeed what the eccentric Russian meant by, I know you. Or was it just that Nikolaevich understood him?
He played pawn-king-four in response to Roman’s first move.

The game broke into the pace of their first, and the two played quietly. Roman no longer had the look of desperation he had before, and after lighting a cigar and coolly blowing the smoke into the air above his head, he broke into a sort of deep reverie. He had a way of moving in quick bursts as he talked, and pausing like a hummingbird in mid-flight when he didn’t. He spoke of the coincidence of their first game, and of his life since retirement.
Morton asked, “What was your line of work?”
“I was a KGB intelligence officer.”
Here Morton paused with a pawn in his hand and looked at Roman intently. “KGB?”
Roman laughed. “A conversationalist now are we?” He castled his king. “The stories I could tell you, Morton Christenson.”
“And you talk at liberty about this past of yours?”
Roman hesitated a little. “Just between friends, OK? We are friends, Morton?”
Morton castled.
“I don’t know what possessed me, Morton, but I wanted to tell you this story the moment I met you.” Roman slid the tea bag off the table and again began steeping his half empty cup with it. He concentrated on Morton completely as he did this, to a point where Morton had to avert his eyes. He’d study the board for a little while and look up, although it was Roman’s move, and when he again saw Roman was not yet done fixing on him, looked down at the chessboard again.
“Our chess game was perfect, Morton. And I want to tell you a story about this kind of perfection. It happens occasionally…a very seldom occasion, yes, but, you see, if it weren’t for its total improbability, its absolute perfection simply would not be so!”
Morton listened to Roman thoroughly, although he could not make out at all what he was saying. He reasserted his thought that Roman was, perhaps, somehow completely insane.
Roman looked down at the board dejectedly. “I am very old now, Morton. I’m at that point where you take a step and,” he gestured in such a way as to look as if he were spilling something, “…there’s no predicting anything…” Roman went quiet for a moment and began again, apparently remembering his original thought. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the KGB?”
Morton kept silent.
“Well, now, I’m sure you are. To be sure, everyone has some idea of the dealings of our secret service. The story I’m about to tell you, Morton, is entirely true…”
Roman had not made a move for quite a while, and the game, seemed to Morton, to be slow moving. Being the man of little patience that he is, he again made a move to get up from the table, absolutely certain by now that this Roman Nikolaevich was not in his right mind. Here Roman, like he did before, grabbed a hold of Morton’s arm, and all at once began talking very quickly. The air of chess between two strangers somehow left them, and a gravity now loomed over the two players and settled heavily.
“In 1978 I was a secret service agent for our Russian government. I was assigned a case, a certain Lev Ivanov, a Russian-American drug-dealer...” Roman sputtered the words out with such violence that Morton stood stricken in a sort of paralysis. “We had been following this Ivanov for three years, and during that time he had embarked on campaigns of magnificent proportions. You have no concept of the KGB Christenson, but allow me to tell you of its brilliant functionality: Nothing, no object, no living thing, absolutely nothing in Russia escaped our watchful eye. We were everywhere. And we knew Lev, we knew him completely, and we watched him with such detail, such attention, it would frighten any man. That was our game!”
Here Morton sat down slowly in his seat without taking his eyes off his opponent, and entirely shaken by the changed countenance of Nikolaevich. Roman was so completely fixed on Morton, and so absolutely engaged in the necessity of this conversation, it seemed, momentarily to Morton, the inevitability of its conclusion was certain. He listened to Nikolaevich completely, and as Roman went on, Morton fell deeper into this paralysis of thought and body.
Roman, still carrying on, sat down quickly in his seat and leaned forward so that his head nearly met Morton’s as he spoke.
“...Ivanov had a brother, and the two of them had worked out a series of vast purchases throughout Moscow and St.Petersburg. Although this brother, this certain Alexei, was not as much of a threat as his older brother, the two were inseparable, and we watched them, Christenson, with great detail.” Roman leaned back in his seat and, seeing that he had Morton’s attention, adopted a more relaxed tone.
Roman made a move and watched Morton distractedly study the board and make his.
“They had passports. There were very many, and everywhere they went a red flag went up. They had passed checkpoints all over the country, and we had agents in Irkutsk, Minsk, and some of the furthest regions in Siberia that kept a close eye on them. Of course, they were not top priority. If I could be honest here, more than anything our government was interested in espionage, and it was here that we payed the closest attention, but drug dealing, especially American drug dealing, was certainly a reprehensible offence.
“You must understand the KGB, Christenson. It is like a bear that willfully waits in hibernation. One thinks it is asleep, but stir a leaf, break a twig, lift a rock, and his eye will open. The eye will follow you everywhere.” Roman changed his face so that it appeared he was sleeping, and opened one eye as he talked.
“Once we are alerted to a...presence, in that very instant, we know our man better than he could possibly know himself. We are on him completely.” Roman looked down at the board and made a move and then back up at Morton. “So now, where was I? Yes, this coincidence. My division had not yet taken an interest in Lev Ivanov. The man was a ghost and a vagrant and could be dealt with, should he surface and demand the attention of those institutions around him, by the local police. It wasn’t until a certain heroin purchase, made here in Moscow with the help of our mafia, that we began to look at Ivanov more closely. What was so strange about him, Christenson, was his arrogance. With all his passports, which, incidentally, could, at this time, be purchased easily in Moscow, he simply had taken no other precautions. It was as if he wanted to be found. You see, drug deals were made constantly, and I don’t have to alert you to the idea that our KGB and mafia were essentially the same thing, but...” Roman paused. “It was something about Ivanov’s openness that caught our attention. We had to ask ourselves, ‘If a man such as this, and an American, wants our...’” Roman paused and laughed to himself a little, “‘Wants our heat,’ right? Is that how it is said? ‘The heat?’” Morton nodded silently. “We asked ourselves, ‘Why?’ It was here we thought, ‘C.I.A.’ An agent. So thus Lev Ivanov had our attention completely.”
Roman pulled another cigar out of his jacket pocket and bit the end off. The other, half smoked cigar, lay burning at the end of the table. He lit up and puffed the smoke slowly and quietly, so that the air around the two chess players was stagnant and hazy, and the world around them –the shop, and the window where one could see people beginning their hurried morning routine, disappeared. There were only the two of them now, in this thick haze of smoke and hushed discussion.
“I should tell you that, after all, Ivanov was no agent. I knew this, and more than anything, I knew he was just stupid and arrogant, and had this notion the KGB would simply lose interest in him. He was half correct. I was left with the case after further investigation proved he was what he seemed to be; a swindler and a drug-dealer. KGB had bigger cases. I don’t need to tell you of our…operations. So it was just me, a young officer eager to leave this case and head on to espionage divisions, and a network of unlimited, and yet, coveted resources to shake up this Ivanov and his rogue brother, who, at this moment, had taken an apartment in Moscow. The two of them had executed a reasonably large order and they were sitting on top of this sum, I’ll bet, wondering whether to get on a plane or stay. They stayed, and we kept watching.” Roman drew a long puff from his cigar and studied Morton for a moment before beginning again. “These brothers, according to our sources, were very close. And, save the occasional deal Lev would make on his own after much chiding from Alexei, they were, every hour of the day, together...”
Morton, up till this point lost in Roman’s story, had shaken himself from his reverie, and raising his fist in the air, he hammered it on the table so that several pieces on the chessboard overturned. Roman paused and watched Morton closely, and wondered about the meaning of this gesture. He once again wore that same sardonic smile on his face, as if, Morton thought, he were trying to seduce Morton into an emotional reaction.
With an expression of anguish surprising for Morton, he whispered, in a tone denoting total honesty and panic, “What is it you want with me?”
Here Roman laughed and sat back in his chair. “Just a story between friends, Morton, a story between friends. I thought you’d appreciate it…because of our chess game...well now I see I have overstayed my welcome?”
Morton watched Roman, and for a brief moment neither of them spoke.
“Please, allow me to finish my story. I see by your expression you are beginning to come around. I believe the ending will interest you the most, Christenson.”
Morton, feverish with anxiety, clasped his hands together and looked down at the chessboard. The game was now unplayable, and he watched the queen as it rolled back and forth on its side.
“I have spent many years studying this day. Not because it was of special interest for my institution, but because the...circumstances of its closure struck me completely. I have since put the pieces together, and what I’ve constructed, I believe, is the truth of what happened.” Roman looked at the board and steadied the queen with his hand. He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on a shaking Morton Christenson. “On August the 21st. 1981, Alexei Ivanov, fluent in Russian, a man of few attachments, a man involved in dealings reaching far over his head, received word from a close ally, a certain Ivan Volkovsky, that his brother, Lev Ivanov, had been taken by the KGB and killed that morning. Immediately after hearing this news, Alexei climbed the stairs to the top of his building and met the day. He looked out over a busy Moscow. He paused there for a moment and let the gravity of his older brother’s death sink in. He looked down at the little street below him, said goodbye to this world, and jumped twelve stories.” Roman leaned back in his seat. A look of torment Morton had not seen before came over him. “The truth about that morning...what Alexei did not know, was that the information he had received was entirely incorrect. It is true that we had taken Lev in for questioning. It was not my call, and we had been making certain bureaucratic changes I won’t be mentioning now, that affected our position on drug dealing. If it had been my choice, we would have continued to watch Lev until he made a bigger move. In any case, he was taken, and after spending some time with him, we had learned a great deal, namely, that he and Alexei were not working alone, and were instead involved in something much larger than the both of them. This attracted our attention, and through our...methods...he told us everything we needed to know. We had names, we had German kingpins, we had dealings that connected other cases. We knew he was telling the truth. So we let him go with the understanding we would contact him soon, and he would be required to do what we asked of him.
“Word travels fast in the underworld, and it was already out that Lev was taken. This kind of ‘informant’ tactic is rarely used...it was understandable that Ivan was under the impression Lev was already dead, which, in any other circumstance, I can assure you Morton, would be certain.” Roman spent some time taking a long puff of his cigar. “So here is poor Alexei in mid-flight, and, wouldn’t you believe it? Here is his brother, very much alive, heading home as instructed by our organization. This is where our anomaly settles in.
“At the precise moment Lev Ivanov approaches the building, his poor younger brother is hurling through the air above him. Alexei strikes his brother and kills him instantly. Alexei lives, his brother does not. Amazing, isn’t it? I imagine in all the world there are few stories like it. But it exists! I can testify to it completely. Our analysts who later studied the scene, gave this account. ‘When the jumper hit Lev, he did it in such a way as to break Lev’s neck instantly with his chest, thus, on immediate impact, he must have broken several ribs. The rest of the fall was broken by Lev. The blood trails show the jumper had crawled into an alley, and moved this way, on his arms, dragging his bleeding broken legs, for thirty-five feet. The trails end rather abruptly, and show he was taken away in a car shortly after.’ Do you want to know how we knew it was Alexei that jumped?” Roman smiled at Morton and waited for his response, but Morton did not respond, and only sat stricken in his chair. “The blood, Morton! The blood had pooled by Lev’s broken neck, and there were hand prints all over his sleeping head. The evidence shows the jumper had spent time with Lev, holding his head in his hands and, indicative by the dried salt on Lev’s face, weeping. No one had seen the incident, so we had no witnesses. But we were certain, any other jumper would have cried out for help. But Alexei, under the impression he was a target, could not. Only he would have crawled away like that, in such pain and agony. And only he would have been taken away by car...by the very same Ivan Volkovsky who provoked the jump in the very first place! Ironic, yes?
“They must have hid away with what money Alexei had already saved. He would have had to procure some doctor, and by sheer luck, worked himself to health over the course of many years. He has since acquired new passports, and some…minor illegal work. He is still watched, of course, but since I had the case, it had been my business, and I never allowed an arrest. He is no longer a threat...he is a broken man...his ribs and his legs might have since healed with some difficulty...but his soul left him with the crack of his brother’s neck. He lives his life in solitude, entirely beaten by the shock of his role in his brother’s departure from this world. If he is a criminal, it is only because there is no other justice in his life. His life is entirely injustice. You might wonder, why doesn’t he kill himself? The answer to this question is yet another question, why? He must ask himself this every waking moment. You see, he cannot kill himself. He lives in a state of constant shock and disbelief, so completely stricken by the gravity of his injustice. His life is a shadow of that very moment –the very sound of his brother’s breaking neck.”
Roman paused and looked down at the chessboard meditatively. “Can you imagine, Christenson, the weight of such a thing? The perfection of their encounter? It is just like our game; that rare moment where the shape mirrors a mathematical improbability. As if, if his life or this game were to begin again, it would take millions of turns until it took that turn, and acquire that shape.” Roman shook his head, “He must live his life searching for some pattern in everything, or the missing piece that gives his life some degree of significance.”
Roman picked a pawn up off the board and studied it. “He is like a chess player, playing the same game again and again. He is playing fate. He has played our game, and he spends the rest of his life wishing he could somehow reset the pieces and begin differently. But he cannot. The game began the second he entered this world and ended the moment he realized it was his brother that broke his fall. It was inevitability. And the outcome will always be the same.”
Roman began setting the pieces up on the board. “Shall we play another?”
Morton said nothing, and rather morosely, he watched Roman’s slow moving hands stand the pieces on the board. It was their third game –their second had ended in an incompletion, meaning it was a draw. This game was slow moving, and neither player said a word. The game was mechanic, and the two played as if consumed with some idea, both entirely removed from the outcome. In the middle-game, Roman had Morton running, and everywhere he went he encountered a wall or a trap, and with each solution the algorithms formed still more problems until, much like their first game, it became a game of pawns. Both players marched and sealed territory for their pieces. The final pawns were taken and the board was left empty, save two solemn kings.
The two players studied the board. “Don’t worry,” Roman smiled, “we won’t have to go looking through your book for this game.”
Morton, no longer with his hands and his mind busy moving pieces and studying possible moves, was left with his hands clasped tightly around his book. He did not take his eyes off the board, and Roman did not take his eyes off his opponent. The two said nothing for a while, and only sat like this, in silence and suspension, until the shop owner dropped a dish somewhere in the kitchen, making a loud crack.
All at once Morton jumped up from the table. Roman stood up too, and his jacket opened slightly enough for Morton to see the Tokarev pistol holstered below his left shoulder. Morton went for the gun and Roman caught his arm. Morton reached with his other arm and Roman grabbed this too, so that the two of them stood with Roman holding both of Morton’s hands to the table. Morton did not struggle, and Roman made no move to let go of Morton’s arm and reach for his gun himself. The chess players only stood like this, momentarily studying each other. Morton looked to Roman, entirely defeated, and in his eyes was a sort of wisdom, as if Morton was so completely used to being helpless in this way, that he could have imagined for himself no other outcome. Morton watched Roman, his entire body shaking.
Roman said in Russian, I’m so sorry Alexei.
Alexei Ivanov turned his head away from Roman, and Roman loosened his grip. The two opponents stood there for a moment when all at once Alexei turned and hastily walked out of the cafe. He dragged his leg as he walked, and he moved as quickly as he could.
Roman Nikolaevich stood there smoking after Alexei had already gone. He bent down and picked the chess book up off the ground and opened it to the final match of Timman and Tal and studied it. Tal’s king and Timman’s king were on the very same squares as the chessboard in front of Roman. He looked at the picture for a while and smiled to himself. He said in Russian, Perfect.

Pails Beneath Blue Skies

Nathan has this Great Dane that’s real big, almost bigger than me. I’m taller than it now but not by much. The dog’s always out cause he’d burrow under the fence or just jump clean over it –you can’t keep a Great Dane fenced in, just try it, it won’t work. It bolts too, like lightening, just this pale streak shattering the horizon. You can’t chase after it either. Dogs like that are free. If it’s your dog it’s because it wants to be your dog.
We stood in the piss-yellow wheat field not far from the house. We liked to go in a little ways –not so far that we can’t hear Nate’s parents when they call but just far enough in that we can’t see them and they can’t see us. Nate wanted to show me what happens when you throw a stick just past the old water well.
He caught the dog’s attention with the stick. It stood there just stupid, looking at it like it’s fillet o’ cat. Nathan threw it hard and Dane bolted. The well was covered a little by the wheat but we knew where it was. I gave Nate a look like, I hope you know what you’re doing and he just gave me that jackass smile of his. The dog jumped like I’d never seen before. It was like something in the Olympics. I knew it landed on the ground cause I saw the wheat shake ahead of us and his big fat head peak through with the stick in his mouth. That well is a five-by-five hole in the ground. I couldn’t believe he cleared it.
Nathan punched me in the arm. “What the hell did you do that for?” I asked him, rubbing the sting out. Nate has these bony ass fists that hurt like hell.
“You didn’t believe me,” he smiled.
“You never even told me he could do that,” I told him.
The dog got tired and sat down in the piss-yellow wheat grass and we jumped on top of him, trying our best to ride him before he shot off too fast for us to hang on. We tumbled a little and got up. There’s parts of wheat that hurt when it gets you right. It’s not all soft like it seems.
Walking out of the wheat field we ran into Peter Jenkins. Jenks is a big fat kid Nate goes to school with. He always wears these striped collared t-shirts that are too small for him and he kind of waddles like an out-of-breath penguin when he walks. Jenks lives about a mile down the road.
“Hiya guys,” he gave us this big rainbow wave.
“You walked all the way down here Jenks? Jesus, look Clem, he looks like he’s about to pass out!” Nate laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. I laughed a little too.
“Shut up!” Peter shouted. He walked with us on the edge of the field. From where we were standing I could see this fort we built out in the woods one summer. It was a big project. It was me, Jenks, Nate, and Nate’s sister, Karen. We don’t play on it much anymore cause Nate says forts are for kids. I still want to play on it though. Maybe it’s cause I’m fourteen and Nate just turned fifteen. He told me that once you turn fifteen everything changes. I wish I could hurry up already. He caught a growth spurt too. I feel like he left me behind and we’re only eight-and-a-half months apart.
Nathan’s my cousin. My parents drop me off out here every summer. They say the country’s good for me. I think that’s all trash, cause really, we’re not even from the city. We live outside San Antonio, way outside, and in my mind that’s country enough. I don’t like when they tell me that, like we’re city people, cause when my friends here in Marion hear it they make fun of me. They say they’re tougher out here and that I’ve had it easy. That’s all nonsense though. Nate just acts tough. I could beat him up, I think, if I worked at it, like Rocky or Raging Bull or something.
“You guys hear? There’s a dead Mexican come up in the dirt.”
Nathan and I just looked at Jenks.
“You didn’t hear?” he said.
“What the hell are you talking about Jenks?” Nate asked him.
“My dad told me he was out plowing and found a skeleton with the clothes still on, all torn up. You know how my dad’s all into army stuff? He recognized the uniform. It’s a Mexican from…” Jenks paused and took the both of us by the arm and slowed us down, “Santa Anna’s army.”
Nate fell over laughing. He did an impression of Jenks, “It’s a Mexican from…Santa Anna’s army.” I laughed too. Jenks was unimpressed.
“I’m not kidding!”
“Your dad’s crazy as hell! There wasn’t even any fighting out here, and they didn’t even bury anybody,” Nate said.
Peter got all red faced and started huffing and puffing. The thing about Jenks is, his dad is crazy. He wears this confederate uniform he had inherited from some great grandfather or something. It’s all tattered and dirty. He wears it all the time. He drinks a bunch too, and does these flag ceremonies in the mornings. I know because Nate and I went out there one summer. We woke up early and went and saw him. Six a.m. he was out there with the uniform and sword all raised high in the air and everything with poor Peter Jenkins all groggy-eyed, still half asleep, pulling on the flag rope. When old man Jenks started blowing on the horn we had to go –we were laughing so hard we thought he’d hear us.
I smoothed things over, “so have you seen the body, Peter?” I called him Peter. You call him Peter when he gets to a point like his head is gonna explode. Calling him Peter kinda turns the heat down.
He softened up. “No, but my dad has, and he didn’t even touch it. He just left it there and started making phone calls. That’s why I came over here, to tell you guys so we can go together?”
Nate gave me this long smirk. “I’ll tell you what, Clem, if there is a dead Mexican out there, I bet he has a sword or something we can sell.”
I thought about it. I’ve never seen a dead body before. And I can’t be sure I want to. But if I act all wuss like to Nathan he’s going to hound me about it for weeks. “Sounds cool,” I said.
“Lunch time! Lunch time! Let’s go boys! Hurry the hell up!” We could make out Nathan senior hollering in the air out by the house. He had his stick out, which meant if we didn’t go to him he was gonna come to us, which is basically the worst thing ever.
“You guys have to go?” Jenks looked all disappointed.
“Why don’t you go look at the Mexican for us and tell us about it. And if it’s there we’ll go look,” Nate told him.
“I don’t want to go alone…and anyway, if we wait too long my dad’ll have taken it out. He says he wants to have it stuffed or something, I dunno.”
“We’ll go later, come on Clem, he’s got the stick.” Nathan signaled towards the house.
Nate Sr. was banging it up against the wall now, red faced as hell.
“Seeya Peter!” I waved as we walked away. Peter was already walking along the field line back to his house. It would take him over an hour to get home the way he walks. He was already soaked through with sweat.
“Dead Mexican my ass,” Nate murmured.
I turned and followed Nate back to the house with Dane noiselessly trailing behind.

Truth is, I don’t really like it out here. Nathan senior works us half to death on weird projects he doesn’t even know what to make of. Like fixing the fence or moving bricks from one place to another. Half the time we just work and don’t ask any questions. Last summer I came back home with blisters and scratches and my back hurt like hell. My mom said I wouldn’t have to come out here anymore if I didn’t want to but my dad butted in and said the work was good for me. I don’t know what he was talking about. First of all, he works in an office and mom tells him all the time he doesn’t know the first thing about work. Second, how can work be good for anybody? It’s terrible. If you work too much you wind up looking like Nathan senior (mom calls him the Marlboro man.)
Aunt Ellie is crazier than Nathan senior, but in a different way. She sits on the couch all day long watching Days of Our Lives drinking wine with ice in it. Sometimes she mixes it with Diet Pepsi. It smells the whole house up, especially when it’s four-hundred degrees outside. She keeps her Pepsi and ice in a little cooler by the couch, and when she doesn’t, she makes us get it for her. Every two minutes I have to come up and fill her glass with ice and get the Franzia out of the fridge. She told me I have to bring her the box cause if I fill it in the fridge I’ll spill it everywhere (which I did, once). I hate the smell of that boxed wine. It smells like cardboard and vinegar. She gets it all over the place, too.
Aunt Ellie calls us the empty pail kids. She says it’s like we’re waiting for something that never comes. She says it will never come, and not to get our hopes up. I have no idea what the hell she was talking about.

Lunch is that tuna out of the can stuff on grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s not bad, especially if you pour ketchup on it.
Nathan senior needed us to fix the latch on the fence again cause when we let Dane out we broke it somehow –which isn’t true at all. That stupid fence latch was so rotten it probably fell off on its own. So Nate and I went into the storage shed and got the screwdriver and hammer. We took a hook down from the wall Nate sr. was using to hang one of his drills.
Easiest solution: screw an open and closed hook that latch together right into the gate. Nate Sr. had some elaborate thing planned out for us. This project would take us ten minutes.
It took two hours. Nate couldn’t figure out where to put the hook and neither of us could guess how we were supposed to open it from inside. So we just did two hooks, one on both sides. And if you needed to undo both hooks, we had a thin piece of sheet metal by the gate you would use to slide through the crack and lift the other hook up. Problem solved.
Uncle Nathan came out to have a look at our work. This look of despair just kind of crawled all over his face. “What’s the problem?” Nate Jr. asked. “It’s a latch. That’s what you wanted, right? Problem solved.”
Uncle Nathan just shook his head at us. “You boys have some kind of plans today?”
We both nodded our heads.
“Well you can cancel them,” he smiled.
Nate and I looked at each other. “But we were going to see the Mexi…”
Nate cut himself short knowing full well what his dad’s reaction to digging up the alleged dead Mexican would be.
“Go take a bath!” He told us.
It was only three o’ clock. Taking a bath would mean we were in for the night, which would be terrible. And anyway, taking baths is the worst thing ever. They made us take baths together to save water. My parents would never in a million years make us do that. The first time Nathan stayed at our house it was hilarious. I was getting into the bathtub by myself, when all of a sudden, the door swings open and there’s Nathan, half naked, about to climb in with me. Right then my dad happened to be walking down the hallway and he just stops, looks at Nathan and at me, and all loud like, he says, “What the fuck is this?” Nathan was so embarrassed he almost cried.
We took a bath. Nathan made fun of me cause, and this isn’t even true, his dick’s bigger than mine, which, again, just isn’t true at all. It’s the same thing every evening, too. Anyway I got Nathan to play boats with me in the water. He doesn’t do it as much anymore but he still secretly likes it. Nathan has over twenty of these plastic boats.
Boats works like this: the ships are split up and dealt out to one another based on size and shape. You then choose a boat at random and pit it against the other sailor’s boat. The way you fight is, get on opposite sides of the tub and sail them at one another. Whichever one careens off course after it’s hit, is the loser. The game’s a lot of luck cause the person with the biggest boat usually wins. But you can only play one boat once, so you have to hope yours is bigger. It’s kinda dumb though cause we always play our biggest boats first anyway, and then wind up just getting tired of the game and getting out. When you’re in a bathtub for too long it gets awkward when the water goes cold.

We walked through the field in our pajamas. Four in the afternoon and we were in our pajamas. Why? Cause Nathan sr. basically told us we couldn’t leave the house for the rest of the evening and made us put them on. Once we were in the kitchen, both wearing pajamas and sandals, we couldn’t go back to Nate’s room to change, cause if we did that his dad would see us (the living room’s right near Nate’s room.) So if we were going to make the slip, we’d have to go through the kitchen window without them hearing us, and then into the backyard, and out the gate.
We really did a shoddy job with that gate latch, no kidding. It took us ten minutes just to get it open. We let Dane out too. Dane’s never seen a half buried Mexican, either.
On our way past the field, careful not to hit the main road, we ran into Bobby Fisher. Bobby Fisher, not Bobby Fischer like the chess player (I know how his name is spelled cause my dad’s really into him, also, Searching for Bobby Fischer is the coolest movie ever). Bobby was older than us by about two years and he was dating, or so rumor has it, Nate’s sister. Nate didn’t like it but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
“Hey kiddos,” he said, passing us and trotting into the greenbelt. We cringed a little. He always acts way older than us, calling us names like squirts and sports. If you ask me, he’s a real asshole.
We followed him in the greenbelt. “Where you headin’?” Nate asked him. Nate acts all cool when Bobby’s around.
“I’m meeting a friend,” Bobby said.
“Which…” Nate had his answer before he finished his question. Bobby was meeting Sally Brooke –basically one of the hottest girls in Nate’s grade. She was sitting on a rock right before the part where the greenbelt gets heavy.
Nate looked a little put off by the whole thing. True, he’s not into the idea of Bobby dating Karen, but even worse is the idea that Bobby’s playing footsy with the whole neighborhood while Karen’s in summer school.
“Hey, you guys smoke…” Bobby paused by the rock Sally was sitting on and looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, “grass?”
I looked down at the ground, I didn’t see him but I was sure Nate nodded at Bobby and gave him some stupid coolly high-five or something.
“Rad!” Said Bobby.
Truth is, Nate’s never smoked, I’ve never smoked, plain and simple.
Bobby said, “You want a dime bag?”
“Sure,” Nate looked at me. “How much is that?”
Bobby looked at Sally, who smiled at him. Sally’s got the biggest chest I’ve ever seen. It was like someone smaller was gonna crawl out of there, like those clowns in the little car we saw at the circus this one time.
“Eight bucks?”
“Eight bucks?!” Nate hollered. He hesitated a little and looked at me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye but I wasn’t paying any attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally’s chest. “Shouldn’t a dime bag be a dime?” Nate asked.
Bobby laughed. “I don’t know why they call it that. You want it or not?”
Nate slapped me on the back of the head, “Wake up!” I snapped out of it and the two of us searched ourselves for money. The pajamas didn’t have any pockets.
“No money batman?” Sally was talking to me. My pajamas had the bat symbol on the chest and a Velcro utility belt. Pretty ace if you ask me. But girls don’t understand stuff like that, so I just shrugged all embarrassed and everything.
“Can we pay you tomorrow?” Nate asked.
Bobby looked like he was pretending to think it over. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was all secrets or something, cause when he looked at Sally she just laughed and said, “Sure, tomorrow.” The whole thing seemed mysterious.
He left and made us wait there with Sally, who just looked around like she was bored or something. I hate girls, really. They don’t know how to do anything. Well, Karen’s nice, and she did good on the fort. I thought she was gonna hang drapes and stuff on it but she didn’t. She made this swing that was really cool. My swing was crappy so we took it down.
I played with Dane a little while. If you hold the stick high over your head he’ll put his paws on your shoulders and jump up at it.
After about ten minutes or so Bobby came back with the bag and this huge smile on his face. He held it up to us. His fingers were all muddy. “Here you go kiddies, pure St. Augustine.”
Nate and I looked at one another. “Is that a good one?” Nate asked.
Bobby just laughed and nodded his head. He threw us the bag. Nate asked what else we needed and Bobby gave us a lighter and a look like we should get out of there now. We both looked at Sally, who was rearranging her chest or something.
Once we got a safe distance from the greenbelt we walked into the wheat brush and inspected the contents of the bag. Nate acted like he knew what he was doing. He smelled it and smiled, “That’s the real stuff, boy.”
I smelled it too. It smelled like lawn fertilizer. I thought maybe Nate doesn’t know what lawn fertilizer smells like cause he’s never had a lawn, just gravel and wheat. “Is it supposed to smell like that?”
“Of course! Idiot!” Nate hollered.
He said you needed paper or something to smoke it with. This much I knew. We couldn’t find any paper. There was just a cardboard box we found lying near the greenbelt.
Nate picked it up and started shredding it. “This will have to do.”
We rolled the grass up in the cardboard into this huge cigarette deal. It was massive. It looked like we were gonna blow darts out of it like these bushmen do in the nature videos.
Nathan lit up and coughed his ass off and handed it to me. I took a long puff and coughed too. “Jesus!” I shouted.
“It’s supposed to be like that, you gotta stay with it, I think.” Nathan sucked on it some more and handed it back to me.
Nate’s dad burns scrap wood and stuff in the backyard sometimes. It tasted just like that. Like hot paint. My arms felt like jelly.
“This is the life man…” Nate lay down in a patch of straw and looked up at the sky. I did too.
We passed the cardboard cigarette back and forth, watching the birds swoop from the greenbelt into the wheat field and disappear.

“What’s that?” I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of Peter Jenkins blotting out the sun. His belly hung over his waist just slightly uncovered by that crusty t-shirt he wears all the time. He hung over me like that awhile, like I was Japanese and he was Godzilla.
I sat up and looked over at Nathan, who had the cardboard smoked down to almost nothing. He looked like something I’ve never seen before.
“Forget it Jenks, you’re not cool enough,” Nate said.
I had a headache the size of an anvil. “How long was I out? Is it supposed to be like this?” I felt like I wanted to puke.
Jenks bent down and picked up the bag and took some of the grass out. “Grass?” he said.
“Duh,” said Nate.
“No. Grass grass, not grass. You guys are smoking lawn grass. Why you smoking lawn grass?”
Nate and I stood up and looked at the bag. I couldn’t figure out how I didn’t recognize it before. Bobby had it all twirled up to make it look different, but I shoulda caught it. Jenks was dead right, we were smoking lawn grass.
Nate must have realized it the same time I did, cause this look just came over him like he was gonna flip. “But, why do I feel all strange then?”
“Cause you were smoking cardboard!” Jenks doubled over in laughter. Watching him I couldn’t take it anymore and started laughing myself. Bobby really ran one over us. Bobby Fisher. Not like Bobby Fischer. Bobby Fischer wouldn’t sell us lawn grass. He’d tell us to keep our money and disappear.
“Where’s Dane?” Nate asked, looking around.
We called his name out and he came running. Dane always comes when you call him.
Jenks got up and dried the funny-tears from his eyes. Nate punched him in the arm and he just winced a little and laughed some more. Jenks has big wobbly arms, and he takes a punch like a champ. Not like me.
“So you guys want to see the Mexican?” Jenks asked.
Nate and I suddenly remembered why the hell we came out here in the first place.
“I haven’t seen it yet but dad still has it out there in the dirt I think.”
We walked down by the pond between Jenks’s house and Nate’s house. Nate wanted to dunk his head in water cause the cardboard gave him a headache, too. The whole time walking down there he was going on about how he’d like to show Bobby Fisher a piece of his mind, which is really all just garbage cause Nate’s fond of Bobby and we all knew it. I asked him to just forget about it and Jenks changed the subject back to the Mexican, and when he did that, I felt like I was getting hit with something all at once. I had this feeling like we were gonna go take a look and I’d bend down and the bones will just claw up at me and pull me deep into the ground. I saw Evil Dead, too, so I know how that goes.
That well Dane jumped over, I thought about that. One summer we threw rocks down there trying to measure how deep it goes. We never heard the clunk. It was like they just kept falling. I think that’s what it’s like to die, like you’re a rock just hurling through darkness.
When we got to the pond Nate just rope swung straight in, pajamas and all. It looked ace. He let go of the rope and did this back flip thing in the air. I couldn’t do that. Maybe they had something with this country/city thing. Nate’s got this way of unknowingly doing things real tough like. Nonchalant. That’s the word. I know that cause I misspelled it in this year’s spelling bee. I didn’t even make round two.
I swung on the rope but I did it real easy. I can’t do that diving stuff. I worry about rocks.
Jenks just stood in the leafs watching us. We had our pajamas on and we got to that point where we knew when we got home we’d catch hell but right now it didn’t matter.
Dane backed up a little and ran head first towards the water. He jumped in hard and swam in circles.
“I bet that Mexican has gold or something!” Nate yelled, splashing water all around him.
I dunked my head underwater and swam around looking for fish. People say they stock this pond, but I haven’t seen one fish in all the time I’ve swam here. I open my eyes under water, too.
“Come on guys!” Jenks did that big rainbow wave he does and we sauntered out of the water. Even half past six it’s hot as hell. We figured the clothes would dry on our way back.
“I bet if we dug underneath him we’ll find a treasure chest,” Jenks said, picking his nose and wiping snot all over his shirt.
I tried riding Dane again but he just shot out underneath me.
“They didn’t even have much gold…hey wait a minute! I bet he was a deserter or something, why else would he be all the way out here?” Nate said.
I thought about that. In Texas history class all they ever talked about was the Alamo. There was this General Wool or something that marched from San Antonio to Chihuahua. And then there was this Taylor. Anyway, what I remember for sure was that the Americans were driving them deeper into Mexico, and there was nothing resembling a battle in East Texas. Especially Marion of all places. So how the hell did he get out here?

By the time we reached Jenks’s farm our clothes were nearly dry and Nate and I gave a sigh of relief. Now we’d only have to explain the sneak out (if they hadn’t already gone to bed and didn’t notice we were missing).
“Hey, my dad’s out there!” Jenks hollered.
Sure enough, there was a tractor plow out on the field and two people sitting next to it in lawn chairs drinking beer out of a cooler. We weren’t close enough to see the Mexican yet but from where we were standing I could make out old man Jenks’s confederate uniform clear as day. He was tossing back a beer and listening to oldies with his buddy, Jim Fisher –that rat Bobby’s dad.
I felt that heaviness again and wanted to turn back.
“Don’t be a wuss.” Nate sped up a little and I followed after him. “Man…I bet crazy old Jenks probably already took our gold!” He broke into a run.
We, all three of us, ran up to the plow. It was there, just like Jenks said. The skeleton of a man. It wasn’t entirely uncovered but you could see the hand gripping out at the sky and the open mouth of the skull. It was as if he were clutching out at the sun, one last time before being dragged back down into the ground. We fell silent.
“That there’s a real bo-ner-fied Mexican,” old man Jenks smiled at us and rocked back a little in his lawn chair.
The man in the dirt had bits of tattered jacket hanging off him, and bits of metal shone through what was left of the ribcage. You could see the butt of a sword sticking out a little from the ground.
“We’re waitin’ for the Ar-che-o-ology Society to come out here and dig his ass up,” said Bobby sr., a big half-toothless smile on his face.
Nate turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” He was all red and I thought I was too. I didn’t look at him too hard cause he looked away like he didn’t want me to see him.
It really was like the Mexican was reaching for something.
I made a move to grab Peter but his arm was frozen stiff.
“Just leave him, Clem.”
We left Jenks standing there like that, just starring at the skeleton, paralyzed.

Nate and I followed the barbed wire fence line towards his house. It used to have electrical wire to keep cattle in but there’s no cattle here anymore.
We didn’t say anything for a while. I just kept my eyes fixed on the gravel road and picked out at the wire here and there. All I could think about was the image of that skeleton with its bony hand clutched out at the sky, and I remembered what Aunt Ellie said, It will never come.
The little gravel road opened up to Nate’s field and Dane trotted up ahead of us close to the field line. I walked in and Nate followed behind me like he knew where I was going. When we got to the well the both of us just kind of hung there on the rim and looked in. Nate took out that lighter Bobby Fisher gave him and dropped it in. Not a sound.

Our Darkest Hour

After a colourful evening of champagne and loud talking, we awoke with the feeling of betrayal: Though the sun was expected to rise over the city of New York as it did every morning, it simply did not. Alarm clocks were checked and rechecked, spouses were woken up and forced outside in pajamas, and some of us even called our offices to announce, “No, I will not be coming in today because the sun has not yet risen.” And though we very much agreed the sun should rise, the benevolent night hung on and our sun remained obstinate.

The official call to the Southern and Western coastlines was made at five-thirty. They, of course, took the call as a joke. But when our weather bureaus and government offices called the West and Southern Coasts again at 8:00 a.m. to see if, perhaps, the sun may have risen there and just skipped the East Coast by chance, they were far more cooperative. And so by 9:00 a.m. the entire country was aware the sun had not come up, and would probably not be coming up at all.
“The exact time of the sun’s disappearance is unknown,” the Times later reports, “probably because we have no sun-watching committee in place, and had never had a need for such an institution. NASA -perhaps the only similar commission- is unfailingly without comment.”

As if by stroke of good fortune, the president had woken early on this morning to a degree of general hubbub, and, after studying the sky and speaking with his aides, called a panel of meteorologists, astronomers, physicists, and for some unknown reason, generals into a private meeting. As the panel sat quietly, not quite wanting to make that first move that turns science into an embarrassing world of paranormal happenstance, the most obvious topic of discussion, “Where is the sun?” was finally raised by the president himself. A murmur went around the room.
The first to speak was a prominent person on the defence committee. “This is a nuclear fallout from a failed shipment of warheads to Cuba.”
Here the scientists, nearly in unison and with mutual agreement, said that this was impossible, and that even after Hiroshima, the entire country didn’t see one second of darkness during the day.
After these last words were spoken –“darkness during the day,” the scientists, as if stricken by a sudden revelation, exclaimed that what we were experiencing was very obviously a solar eclipse, and that, because of some phenomenon that a certain Dr. Jarsky attempted to explain called, Miss-Gravicentrics, the moon was rooted in its place. Here other physicists put in that they may have heard of Miss-Gravicentrics, and that it’s entirely possible that climate change could have affected an unforeseen curvature in the earth’s rotation, forcing the moon to follow on an unpredicted course over the night, and thus, by force of deterrent magnetism, locked itself in place with an alignment between our point of view and the sun itself. During this oration, one of the physicists left the room and brought back several magnets and a metal sphere, and showed clearly on the table for everyone to see, how, when the magnets are positioned correctly, it can hold the sphere in place. This man nearly received a standing ovation, but was interrupted by a rather astute astronomer by the name of Flimage. The astronomer went on to point out that, aside from the theory being totally ridiculous, they had received no calls from NASA about a sudden and abrupt rotation of the moon. Here the room once again returned to its former state of tired confusion. The president finally suggested a call to NASA and was surprised to learn no one had thought of it earlier. With an air of fresh relief, NASA was called at once.
“No, we have no idea…absolutely no idea Mr. President, sir…” Checking himself, the head of NASA operations remembered a State of the Union address where the president coined the term, “Cannot is off the table,” and corrected himself. “We are expediting search expeditions,” was the first thing that came to his head.
“Search expeditions?” the president hopelessly muttered into the receiver.
“…Yes sir.”
“For the sun?”
“That is…uh…that’s correct.”
At this moment a PR representative –a noiseless, birdlike woman who is often seen energetically orbiting around the president, hurried into the room and told him an emergency meeting with the press has been called to address the issue, as, already, most of the citizens of our dark nation were already quite awake and tiredly rioting in the streets.

“I know most of you know by now that the sun is somehow missing,” the president began, weighing out each word, knowing very well that this address would be heard, referenced, and commented on by families, TV, textbooks, and academics for years to come. “We have never woken to a morning without the sun, therefore have no protocol in place. However, our experts are working feverishly at this very moment to locate the sun. Many theories have been brought up, most notably, the existence of dark matter in our universe. Our agencies, and some rather unanimously, agree the sun will resurface. After all, according to our analysts, the moon, our weather patterns, the temperature, and our satellites are behaving normally. If the sun simply blinked out of existence, this would not be so. We believe what we’re looking at is a nuclear reaction on the sun’s surface causing it to cloud over. After all, it is still somehow warm outside. In any case, there are many working theories. But I’d like to assure you, do not panic. Go to your respective jobs as usual. We’d like to show the rest of the world, when they wake up to a sunless planet, we can stay in control. So, citizens of America, on our darkest hour, I ask you to carry on normally, so that we maintain stability, and the happiness that is our right. Cannot is off the table. Thank you.”
Here the press, which were very obviously selected by a special committee to ask pleasant questions, were chosen one by one. The questions were generally about what sports teams were to do or whether this was going to affect various body cream markets and so on. Each question was expedited quickly and ended with positive results. By the end of the press conference, a great deal of the nation had accepted the loss of the sun as a temporary fact to be reckoned with.
Shortly after the conference, at roughly 11:00 a.m., the president again met with the committee. A unanimous decision was made to establish a meeting with the U.N. and involve the rest of the world in a dialogue on the issue. Here the president remarked he’d like to call the major powers separately and iron out the confusion they are probably already having as foreign journalism sweeps through the respective countries.

China informed the committee that they were already aware the sun hadn’t come up in America and many other parts of the globe, due to their esteemed astronomers working nightshifts in the joint space-station, Sirius. The sun, according to the astronauts, had suddenly disappeared. Key figures in China’s glorious space program told the astronauts that they were mistaken, and had an elevated case of space-tremors, which is rumored to affect a sense of reality. When Chinese astronomers at ground zero learned there was indeed no sun in the sky above America, Canada, the UK, parts of Europe, and a great deal of the pacific, the People’s Republic of China’s Great Bureau of Intelligence was contacted immediately. And so they had known, quite possibly before our president had even woken up. When asked what China planned to do about a morning without a sun, the great Chinese leader interrupted our president and told him he was mistaken, that although the sun did not rise in our area of the western world, it would indeed rise in China, and China would never see a morning without the sun. The conversation promptly ended.
Russia was more cordial. They informed the president they were well aware of the missing sun in our sky, as it went missing in theirs around 1:00 p.m. (sunrise, EST) and believed they had a protocol for such an event, but cannot find it. The protocol is rumoured to have existed during Yosef Stalin’s campaign. He had apparently examined every possibility for defeat, and a sudden and abrupt missing sun, making Russian winters even colder for troops already tired and hungry, was among the possibilities on this list. Now if they could only find the protocol. Russia would call America back if they can find anything.
Japan had already begun construction on a massive robotic sun which would, according to the prime-minister, be able to illuminate a small percentage of the planet. The sun would have a rotational axis and be able to swivel like a light post, it would also have a dim-switch controlled here on earth for posterity. The robotic sun, already coined, “Mr. Illuminato,” would need to be launched into space using several shuttles –an operation beyond complexity in its nature. The minister explained the original plans for the robotic sun called for solar-charging, and after realizing this didn’t make much sense, the project was overhauled. Japan would get back to America on this.
It was already obvious to the countries of Southeast Asia that America had ruined the sun. Burma, in particular (and the rest of the countries just kind of following in suit), was absolutely certain on this point.
Germany and Scandinavia were creating an innovative project called, Astriothermic Gravinatrics. The German president went on about the project in great detail, but tired, having not slept at all, he soon asked leave of the conversation.
France was much with the same sentiment as Burma, and yet declined to speak about it.
Israel faulted the Palestinians for the missing sun.
Palestine faulted the Israelis for the missing sun.
Most of the countries in the Middle East were also with the same opinion as Burma, only differing with the theory that the sun would somehow come back if America were totally wiped out.
The UK had dispatched journalists to China to see if, perhaps, the sun would indeed rise there as the Chinese government insists on it.
Mexico, in a joint operation with several South American countries, hoped, much like Japan, to build an illumination device and place it above the earth’s atmosphere. Not nearly as sophisticated as Japan’s model, and made of elements that would prove unstable leaving the earth’s atmosphere –like wood for instance, the incomplete structure will probably remain incomplete.
Several countries in Central America, with the help of Cuba, were working on thwarting the Mexican Mr. Illuminato project, coined, Senior Dias.
The sun will apparently also be rising over North Korea.
Both Africa and Egypt, upon learning the sun is missing in the western sky and those parts of Africa normally lit at 5:30 a.m. EST, celebrated in the streets, hoping also that the sun, normally blazing hot, would cease to rise over their countries for an extended period of time.
Canada figured that whatever America does to fix the problem is probably fine.
Australia was ordering tanning beds from South Korea.

We didn’t need the sun. We never needed the sun. And if the sun wants nothing to do with us, we don’t want anything to do with it. This sentiment began to spread in the early afternoon of our first day, and, bored with the ceaseless scientific dialogue fleeting across the crowded television sets, our citizens began to change the channel, making, according to the newly appointed Alaskan Federation of Sunless Psychological Reorientation, a leap of acceptance.
“Our people [Alaskan’s] never needed the sun. We can deal with sunless days. And being oriented to a state of sunless psychology, we are better equipped to tackle this problem. These guy’s in D.C., folks, they’re going to crack soon. They’re reliant on the sun, like a baby yearning for breast milk.” Here the man made a puckered baby face to the laughter and applause of an eager audience. “Do we want people like that in office? In light of all this, the A.F.S.P.R. moves to relocate the country’s capital and operations to Fairbanks, Alaska, and the powers therein.”
This oration was spoken loudly by the head of the newly appointed federation, which, according to sources in the Times, was assembled in Alaska between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. that afternoon, and is rumoured to be largely made up of drug-addicts and members of gun rights groups who had happened to be, by chance, meandering near city hall during the signup.
On the set of the shabbily constructed mockup of the oval office, was a table on which sat several vitamin d lightbulbs, an energy drink containing electrolytes, and a cult 44. magnum python revolver. The man went on to say that these were the tools for success in a sunless world, and life without the sun was not the end of life.

Although the sentiment that we might as well just move on was present amongst many of our citizens, there was still, amongst the very ardent, an understanding that the sun should still be discovered, or, if the situation provokes it, turned on. To this end, our country’s leading public specialists were brought in by a special government committee, appropriately named, The Illuminists.
They sat in a brightly lit room with computers at a large round desk. On the wall were several projector screens. The camera was fixed in place. One of the men, a biologist, was explaining the importance of sunlamps.
“…Oxygen is extremely necessary on our planet,” he went on, “positioned outdoors in large-scale community gardens, sunlamps can provide the necessary false light to grow edible foods…”
Behind the set, off camera, a special, more secretive meeting was happening. Not even the president was among them. On this panel sat the heads of the defence committee, NASA, and various energy groups. The newly formed association, made mostly of wealthy corporate committees, was very deliberately entitled, “P.O.L.I.T.E.” or, Progressive Oil Liberation in Terrorist Environments. The panel lumbered in their seats heavily, each of them in suits with hands crossed, or pouring a glass of water or juice brought in pitchers by the caterers. They spoke with gravity, each of them, in turns, weighing out the costs of, what they called, a “grand-scale endeavor.”
“…According to our sources,” spoke one of the brilliant data analysts shuffling around the men handing out spec. sheets, “without sunlight we’re looking at a total meltdown of resources. Oxygen is a gradual problem. We believe our densest forests have several weeks before a massive ecological collapse. During this time we’ll have sped production of sunlamps, and can provide the necessary light to create an atmosphere of stability. The same goes with warehousing livestock. Our problem lies here; where are we going to get the energy to fuel the increase of power?”
“And the demand?” asked Halbertson, a heavyset financial advisor on the committee.
“The demand is total,” answered Goldman, a defence advisor.
“If we invest in these three areas,” the original analyst said, still passing out papers, “we will be sure we’re on the ground floor for what would prove to be a viable leverage over our consumers.”
The print-sheet he handed out showed an animation of a confused consumer shoveling money into a pyramid. The pyramid was made of three boxes, and in them were three words: Air, Light, Food. Above the pyramid, in a circle symbolizing Ra, was instead the word, Energy.
One of the men on the committee had a map of the world spread out, and on it there was a red circle drawn around the Middle East.

By 4:00 p.m. E.S.T., several journalists for the BBC were en route to China via high-speed, private aircraft (China was no longer accepting incoming flights otherwise). The windows in the aircraft were locked shut and the cabin lights were on. The journalists were eagerly expecting the Chinese sunrise. The time in the UK was roughly 9:00 p.m. It was at exactly 9:35 a.m. in the U.K. when, out of nowhere and with no warning, the sun simply was no longer above the British skies. This puts the time of the sun’s disappearance, according to the BBC but with a disagreement from the Times, at 4:35 a.m. in New York. The disagreement lies precisely in the account of a family living in Queens who later reported to the Times that they had woken at 4:45 a.m. and saw the beginning of an average NY sunrise. Many other reports also confirmed there was sunlight above NY as late as 5:50 a.m. (although these reports were muddled –most of the witnesses apparently confirmed intoxicated by operators at the 911 center).
When the journalists arrived in the Beijing airport at 5:45 p.m. our time, or roughly 5:45 a.m. Chinese Standard Time, they were promptly shuttled into the facility via a windowless terminal gate and received in a large, flowery reception centre with ingenious gilded statues and gorgeous handmade furniture. At this point they were told by a very well dressed government official, that indeed the sun had risen over China, and yet, because of an “urgent inconvenience,” the journalists could not be allowed to see it.
It could be said that outside this room there was a commotion happening. China, as anyone could have guessed, had received a number of foreign visitors over the preceding many years. Travelers come and go, and, unless in the case of a large protest or political overturn, could come and go freely. Not on this day. No one inside the country was allowed to make calls outside. Foreign websites and international email were closed to the public. Within several hours China had become a self-contained domestic affair. If a case arose where a certain family needed to fly outside the country, they were told that the air traffic control systems were temporarily shut down, and to wait. If a person were to drive down south of Yunan to the Laos border they would be stopped and told that the country they were looking to visit had also been temporarily shut down, and also to wait. So the people waited. And the crowd outside any number of the many Chinese airports was overwhelming.
The journalists, having not been outside, were expedited back to the UK. On arrival, a great time later, they reported the Chinese authority had convinced them of the sunrise, although they never saw it.

“Forty-two thousand six-hundred and sixty-eight suicides in America alone since dark-dawn,” the Times reported at 9:00 p.m. EST. “One-hundred and seventy-three thousand murders. Nine million reported robberies…” the list went on and on. The reporter now had a trust amongst America’s citizens. He had coined the terms in the early afternoon, “The Incident on New Year’s Day,” or, more appropriately, “Year Zero.” “Time,” he said, “has to be managed differently now.” Anyone that was still interested listened eagerly. “Our world has sunk into a deep decline,” he went on, “and only our friends at the committee [P.O.L.I.T.E.] can dig us out.”
By this hour P.O.L.I.T.E. had already integrated a strategy of demand manufacturing –or D.M. as they put it- into every area of our media. Their commercials, made within several hours of their 12:00 p.m. meeting, were broadcasting between news segments on every channel. The commercial featured a cartoon of tired citizens walking in the dark, illuminated only by candlelight. They looked within the throes of visible starvation, and they were sick, many of them carrying children. Suddenly lights flare up everywhere, and by each light post there are mountains of food. Now they are happy and thanking the “Committee of Sustenance” [P.O.L.I.T.E] for the nourishment.
P.O.L.I.T.E. was already acquiring massive quantities of the military infrastructure. Our government had contracted it out to them in exchange for a controlling stock in the goods and resources that, in the span of only three hours, they had already bought up. Factories producing sunlamps, magnum revolvers, and energy drinks were already in full swing, and it was outside one of these very factories that the committee now sat patiently around a large wooden table right on the tarmac. The wind was picking up, and everywhere around them there was movement. Massive trucks had been brought in and military Humvee’s were shuttling around ammunition at alarming speeds. Underneath the light of a helicopter, the final arrangements were made. The Middle East, save Israel, was to be erased in its entirety, in its place; oil wells.

The president slept badly. He had dreams of himself on a large stage surrounded by armored men in black body suits. There were floodlights on everywhere, and he was dictating something into a microphone. He wore a banner around his arm that read, P.O.L.I.T.E. He was talking in short bursts, hammering his knuckles down wildly on the podium. The people were screaming and running, every one of them, thousands of them. They weren’t Americans. He was shouting in some foreign language they understood. He raises his hands to the sky and the bullets rain down. He can feel the wind from helicopters on his head and neck. With each wave of the hand, more bullets come down. It’s dark despite the lights now.
He woke at 3:00 a.m. to a phone call brought in by his secretary. He was sleeping in his suit on a hardback chair in the oval office.
“Thank God, what have you come up with?” The president answered the phone with an air of feverish relief. It was the Russian president on the other line, and the secretary had already informed our president that the protocol had been found.
“…News not so good, I believe,” the husky, thickly accented voice replied, an intimation leaking in through the receiver making the president somehow even more impatient.
“What is it?”
“The protocol makes for gun and bullet.”
“What?”
“In box that reads, ‘Missing Sun,’ just gun and bullet.”
The president rubbed his forehead, sighing in resignation, knowing soon he’d have his hand on a red phone, and that soon he might be using the phone to make a call, the most important and horrible call in world history.
“…All Stalin’s plans are gun and bullet…” the Russian president went on.

The people of NY waited through the night in expectation. Some had fallen asleep, others were on rooftops, some were rioting in the parts of the city that weren’t already charred and burning, and many others were together in Time’s Square. They had brought in actors for the affair. One of them, famous for his crime drama series, 36 Hours, stood on a podium reading haikus about the sun. The time was 3:30 a.m., and the entire world was deep within the planet’s first ever collective witching hour. There was a light on the stage attached to a phone connected to a satellite line tied with an ethereal tether to a U.S. Embassy in the U.K. The Ambassador was expected to call the moment he saw a sudden and abrupt light in the sky. The ring of the phone was supposed to trigger the dropping of the very same ball they used for New Year’s Eve the previous evening. If the sun was going to disappear for a day, our citizens wanted a party if it decided to come back.
The expectation of a rising sun over New York was an arbitrary affair. It was almost outrageous to think that if the sun’s light had somehow ceased to be at a random moment in time, it would appear again at exactly a full rotation of its orbiting planet later. But the people of New York were no longer concerned with science. For nearly twenty-three hours they had heard nothing but scientific reason and had gotten nowhere. The sun had not been shining all day, never mind the facts; the crowd, and much of America too, had passed over into the realm of metaphysics.
Christian groups all day had crowded the streets, hollering about the apocalypse, testifying to the horrors of mankind. Whatever the occurrence was, be it a black hole vortex between the sun and the earth, sucking up light but somehow not heat (which was, at this time, the predominate theory) or punishment for being the awful race that we were, it couldn’t hurt to believe a little that, in this next very hour, the sun would rise in New York, blink into existence in Europe, light the shores of the Atlantic, and stay apparently exactly where it is in China and North Korea.
People were on the streets all over the country, and much the same in parts of Europe too, tearing a hole straight through the fabric of an endless night. They stole TV’s, lamps, and children. There were people who called themselves vampires who paraded through the night hopping around the lampposts, and biting others when the mood should strike them. The police were especially asked to shoot these ones should they be caught terrorizing the open streets.
Some groups tramped through the shopping centres carrying crosses on their shoulders and telling the world to repent. These same people were also given a great deal of TV time throughout our dark day. They were hysterical, telling us that, somewhere along the line, we had lost our way, and that the light must again be shone on our path. They were so vehement about this “light” and the obvious metaphor of our circumstance, that many of them had blinded themselves, arguing that a true Christian needs only the light of god. Needless to say, these types gained a great deal of political and social influence.
The A.F.S.P.R., after a short gunfight in Anchorage, officially gained control of the Alaskan state. By 3:00 a.m. they had successfully succeeded from the state union, illegalised birth control, and participated in at least thirteen known book burnings.

The president sat with one hand tied to a red phone in the pentagon. He was very much awake and alert. One hour had gone by since the conversation with the Russian President. He was alone in the room –P.O.L.I.T.E. had suggested he get his thoughts together. He was instructed to call them –now already en route to a general location over the Middle East, if the sun hadn’t risen over New York by 5:35 a.m.; exactly twenty-four hours since its abrupt disappearance. It should be said here that the president’s thoughts were mixed.

The city was burning, and yet there were many of us gathered in the light of the blaze, holding hands and intently watching that light on the stage. The poet’s voice had taken a backseat to the affair, and he rambled on as if totally unaware any of us had stopped listening.
“…Blazing, blazing into our hearts, you who blaze our heartfelt path, you who have lit the shores of our blazing…” At this time the citizens of our city were getting anxious. A murmur went around the crowd. No one really knew what time the sun usually rose on January second.
“…You who are so bright, warming our whimsical fancies to our heavenly content…”
By 4:55 a.m., people began to get desperate. Already there was wailing and moaning in the crowd. Others remarked that perhaps we weren’t seeing the light because of the smoke, and some others said that last year the sun’s light didn’t reach our city until close to 6:00 a.m. Impatient, our citizens began to turn their frustrations on the actor, who, lost in his thirty-page poem, read louder.
A cabbage was thrown, then a shoe, and finally there was a barrage of objects being hurled at the stage. Many missed and hit several of the actors nervously in line to read their respective poems. Panic had struck Time’s Square. And right when the hysterics had culminated into a thick, irreproachable frenzy, a hush went around the audience. The light on the stage began to blink. The phone rang over the loud speaker.
“Hello?” the actor answered anxiously, already covered in a thick layer of garbage.
A pause. The crowd now wavered in anticipation.
“Hello?” the voice said.
“Yes, Ambassador?!” the actor lit up.
Our people were feverish with expectation.
“Is Juan there?”
“Who?”
“Sorry, I think I have the wrong number.”
At this point, the New Year’s Ball –which was now connected to the phone line, dropped suddenly, and fireworks of all kinds shot from the stage together with music from the loud speakers. Confusion reverberated through the audience; they were promised festivities when the sun began to rise, and although there was a great deal of commotion, the sun had still not yet risen.
The actor hung up in resignation, expecting another onslaught of garbage from the uneasy crowd.

It was 5:10 a.m. and the president sat over a cup of coffee, drinking with his free hand, and hovering over the light of the red phone with his other. After a few moments the phone rang. It was a field officer for P.O.L.I.T.E. The president was confused –he thought he was instructed to call P.O.L.I.T.E. at 5:35 a.m., and here they were calling him.
“We already did it,” the man said, cutting in and out with the chopping sound of helicopter blades. The president could hear laughter in the background. “Time bombs,” the excited field officer let on. “We just parachuted them in and got the hell out of there.”
The president was entirely shaken, and, trying to contain himself, asked, “How long ago did you… ‘do it’.”
“Oh we dropped them in around four-thirty or so.”
The president held his head in his hands, and for a brief moment his mind went blank.
“…And the Middle East is…gone?”
“Oh yeah. We’re up here with the Israeli military,” the man hollered, “…they’re really impressed with how neatly it all played out.”
The president hung up the phone and buried his head into his arms as he sat over the table. He tried picturing the faces of the lives he destroyed but couldn’t; all that was there was a clouded entanglement of floating people in white sand.
He called his secretary and asked her to organize a live nationwide address. He was feverish with anxiety, and, getting up, having to steady himself a little, he noiselessly walked out of the room.

For several weeks the people of our city crowded together in Time’s Square early every morning in anticipation of the evermore improbable sunrise. We held candles and sang together, and hopelessly begged the sun to come back. The sun did not come back. The benevolent sun had left us (or we had left it –which, incidentally, is the predominate phrase in reference to the event).
It should be said here that for the people of our planet not quite all hope for an illuminated world was lost: After all the very many solutions proposed by the illuminists, the A.F.S.P.R., Japan, and Scandinavia, it was Mexico’s that, for a brief moment in history, bore fruit. On December 28th of that very year, after so many attempted sabotage campaigns by Cuba and agents of Central America, Senior Dias was successfully launched. It maintained light -only mostly along the equator and hardly enough to maintain more than a twenty-mile strip across the globe- for exactly eight months. It wasn’t until the technicians aboard the orbiting sun, dubbed illuminauts, received a shipment of bad livestock that the project was put to a final halt. (An international day of mourning for these illuminauts, who had apparently died attempting to push the livestock off Senior Dias, has since been held yearly.)

And so the sun was gone, forever, it would seem, and as the years went on, it was marked as yet another scattered remnant of the great mass of history carrying us from the very beginning to the present. As things moved along a course for the history books, we eventually grew tired of the entire affair and accepted our fate of a sunless world. We are living a ceaseless New Year’s Eve, like a record that skips and is never righted.