THE PILE

The summer sun was late to Elmer St. and it rose quietly, waiting for nothing at all. 

Deputies Connie and Earl climbed cracked concrete steps up to the front porch of a small pale green house. The residents hadn’t paid, simple enough.

 They stood in uniform blues,  catching rising rays of sunlight. Earl tapped his fat fingers on the eviction notice as he caught his breath, his stomach heaving under his uniform, “Why don’t you go ahead and knock for me?”

Connie did as asked, slammed his fist four times into the chipped white door. Silence came back. The pair leaned against the porch railing, listening to birdsong and unsure mid-morning winds. 

“Your turn,” Connie breathed, moving away from the door. 

Earl huffed, hiked up his belt as high as he could and slammed on the door. White paint chips rained down on the porch. Silence answered again. 

They yawned in unison and Earl tried the door. 

Locked. 

A modest breeze moved in the house, delicately twisting the embroidered curtains in the front window. Earl noticed the curtains moving and leaned over to get a better look. As the reflection of his round face in the glass met him the movement stopped; only a black streak stared out between the curtains. It revealed no interior details, no movement from inhabitants hiding from the evicting officers certainly. Earl cupped his hands around his eyes, pushing them as close to the glass as possible, peering deeply into the blackness between the curtains.

Two loud cracks from behind the glass.

The sound disoriented Connie. Instinctually, he went prone. Glass kissed his back. One hand hit his holster, the other the back of his skull. When he looked up he saw Earl gasping for breath, staring straight up at the rotting porch ceiling. 

Connie muttered something into his chest radio, struggling to his knees with his gun in his hand. The window had a gash with cracked runoffs that threatened the whole structure. The curtains flowed cleanly in a more even breeze. Everything was slow. Earl had been shot in the neck, his hands clenched tightly around his jowls. Dark red pools appeared on his skin and then the porch. Connie’s eyes darted back to the window, no movement beyond the curtains, he crouched down, his radio came back to him, they’re coming, no time, no detail, asking for more. 

“Don’t talk!” Connie growled as Earl loudly choked on his blood. “Just hold on, it’s gonna be fine.” Connie held onto Earl’s shoulders to keep him from moving; Earl’s eyes ran around in every direction, his left hand patted around desperately for his gun. Vicious blood bubbles popped between his teeth as he hissed indiscernible directions at Connie. 

He grabbed onto the straps of Earl’s vest and started to pull away from the house, watching the window as he went. Some delicate wind picked up and found its way into the glass cavern revealing even more of the darkness inside. Connie tried focusing his eyes on the house’s mystery. As foot left the porch and started down the stairs, Connie saw a shining white pinhole inside the window. Its brightness was blinding, still it revealed nothing inside and created no shadows. 

He inhaled sharply, ripped his face away from the window, pulled at the straps, he heard the shot, he felt it. Some hot expression struck him across the cheek, carved its way above his ear and dashed away across the sky. Connie lost his grip and fell backward down the stairs, tumbling in a reverse somersault for several feet until he was stopped by a landing on the stairs. He opened his eyes and found the milky white morning sky looking back.

The whole scene turned red. Blood slouched into his right eye, over his nose, his lips. Connie brought up his hands and wiped it away best he could but his vision remained smeared. Trying to keep his eyes open, he crawled down the remaining steps until he reached the sidewalk. Getting on his feet, he could see no cruisers, no ambulances, no backup. 

But blood was still coming. With his one good eye, he could see a group of teenagers standing across the street, clutching the handlebars of their bikes. They had watched the small-bodied deputy tumble his way down the steps. 

Connie touched at his wound. It ran a ragged track from above his mouth and now dripped into the corner of his right eye. Panic sped up his breath as the blood continued to trickle. Connie wondered if it would stop. He’d been shot in the head. He fingered the wound where it hurt least; it wasn’t deep. A very loud and very raw scratch. He turned on his heels and looked back up at the house. It was then the real noise of the neighborhood greeted him. He was no longer listening to the absence of sirens or burning rubber, but the sound of chirping birds, the wind sliding off weathervanes. This was not a world in the wake of a gunshot. 

From the sidewalk, Connie could not see Earl’s body or the broken window he had left behind. He tried to slow his breath, to stop his bleeding. He finally heard sirens. 

The collective gaze of the teenagers burned into his back. With his hand firmly over his wound, he approached. His legs and back throbbed after his tumble, but he kept straight; his shoulders squared and his face turned up to stop the blood from dripping. 

Most of the teens fled anyway, not wanting to talk to the bleeding authority. 

Connie’s vision blurred their faces into a collection of cheap Halloween masks, frozen in confused fear. None of them spoke.  

“You live around here?” he asked the crowd, he watched for cruisers. None answered, but no one made a motion to leave. Connie stepped forward. Feeling disoriented and hazy from the bloodloss, he reached out, saw them flinch and brought his arm back down. 

“You ever seen anyone in that house?” Connie said, pointing to where Earl’s body lay. 

“Nobody goes in that house.”

 

…

 

The evening’s chill smeared across the street and welcomed a burning night filled with faded streetlights. Authorities surrounded the house, bathing the facade with flashing red and blue police lights. Connie sat on the edge of an ambulance and grimaced as a nurse stitched up part of his wound, wiped away some dried blood from his temple. He watched as more medical staff hovered over five other officers,  treating gunshot wounds in their shoulders, hands and legs. The men had much of their tactical black armor cut away by the nurses. They looked like prized slaughtered livestock; expensive meat cut away for sale.

Connie was still on his back inside the ambulance when the eight officers ascended the steps an hour prior. He had heard the first shots, the screams. He had heard the door slamming open, more shots, more screams.  

A younger medic flung open the ambulance doors and shouted for help with the new patients from the house. Connie thought he would exit the ambulance to see criminals being hauled out of the house on stretchers, that the affair was over. But when the nurse returned sweating, with eyes he didn’t recognize, Connie knew the siege hadn’t ended. 

When the nurse finished his stitches, Connie stood up. He saw families in the street beyond the barricade, watching on hopelessly as black armored officers climbed onto the roofs of their houses to set up overwatch. In other houses across the street, they created makeshift sniper nests in children’s bedrooms and unfinished half bathrooms. Wrapping himself in a blanket he’d taken from the ambulance, Connie crept around the wooden fences of the blockade and stood with the crowd. Much of the neighborhood gathered on the lawn of a corner home that stood just across the street from the besieged house. Officers stood in front of the door, prohibiting any of the inhabitants from entering, more stood on the roof over the porch looking through binoculars. All of the windows in the house were dark, and the blue-uniformed officers inside moved past like distant phantoms. 

The lawn of the corner house was a small grassy hill. Connie was able to make his way to the peak and look out over the besieging forces below. From above, the barricade was like a militarized border dusted with neon lights. Dozens of men—patrolmen, lieutenants, captains—puttered around behind wooden fences and war-like police trucks. At the edge of the barricade, a small circle of men in long brown overcoats looked at the house with wide eyes. Their thin hands pulled at their faces, deep black circles appeared under each and every socket. Connie couldn’t place any of their faces. As officers passed, the men in the brown coats tried to get their attention, but the officers continued on, the men threw their hands up in anger. Property managers.

The house looked like an impressionist painting: light shimmering off black windows with quiet fear, never revealing an objective form. The neighbors stood on the lawn, quietly murmuring. Have they damaged your house? You ever seen anyone in there? What happened?  He turned to ask an older woman if the lawn he was standing on was hers, but was interrupted by massive spotlights switching onto the house. The house turned into something different. It looked like a piece of stage dressing waiting for some unknown stars. 

A scream rattled against the houses in the neighborhood;  someone was on the megaphone. 

The voice offered sanctuary to hostages. They called for death, a warning. Deep and penetrating silence came for long stretches after every statement from whoever held the megaphone.

All the neighbors listened intently to what was being said. Some of the children ignored the sound and were annoyed at its volume, covering their small ears with their hands and rolling off to play in the empty street. 

The officer in charge of the megaphone gave one more piercing demand of those held up inside the house and clicked off his device with a squawk. The whole street seemed to hold its breath for an answer, none came; and the barricade resumed its regular fluttering of radio scratches and tactical chatter. 

Connie looked further down the street and saw a boy lying spread eagle in the middle of the road, a white dividing line dissecting him. Pushing past the neighborhood, Connie made his way to him and stood a few feet away. The boy spread his arms and legs out on the blacktop, moving them like he was making a snow angel. 

“Feels good.” the boy said. 

“This?” 

“I don’t get to do it ever. Always busy. Now, nobody’s looking.”

 

…

 

Three blue bodied officers jumped the barricade to retrieve Connie. They brought him back into the fold and sat him on a provisional stool of glossy tin. A troupe of plainclothes officers of varying ranks peppered him with questions. Who was up there? Where’s Earl? How many shots were there? What calibur? What did the shooter look like? Why didn’t you pull his body down? Questions better suited for someone else, someone who could feel more. 

He had been given a small respite from questions when the nurse was fixing his face, but his stitches only made the inquiry more grating. Connie’s head rang with sirens and bullets, he could barely see the men in front of him for the glaring white-hot spotlights. The faces looked chewed up, with endless ages of smoke hidden in the folds of their faces. 

He answered best he could, their indifference or anger at his responses didn’t bother him. He hoped the officers who had received worse injuries were spared questions while they bled in their beds. 

One man was called away by a subordinate, another walked away lighting a cigarette and never came back, another one tugged on the sweaty sleeve of a superior and formed a rival meeting a few yards away. He had been left with a Captain he recognized from awards banquets, choice meetings. The man always had too much food. 

His coat wrapped tightly around his gut but pooled around his chest. It looked concave. He produced two silver sticks of gum from his pocket and pushed one in Connie’s direction.

“Moving the jaw too much hurts. The stitches, no thanks.” 

“Is that why you don’t tell us nothin’?” he asked through chews.

“Look, I told you what I…”

“I know you did, I’m just kidding. Seems like a hell house up there, eh?”

“You ask them the same questions?” Connie asked.

“I assure you, when they’re able to answer we’ll get what we want.”

Connie nodded and looked down the road beyond the Captain. The sniper’s barrels bobbed up and down but remained otherwise fixed.

“I think the crackshots are gonna blow out a window or two. For the gas.”

“Gas?”

“Something like that.”

Four loud cracks against the air came from the sniper nests, shattering glass. Then clicks, soft hissing and a clamoring echo from inside the house as the gas canisters clattered against the hard wood floor. 

Connie saw that all the house windows looked like jagged teeth, it became impossible not to see a misshapen face in that house. To look at it was as difficult, like looking at the everlastingly disfigured, at the emotionally displaced. Most of the men, especially the property managers, looked around desperately for some physical distraction, a task to keep their minds off their crumbling assets. 

Connie knew what tear gas sounded like, he could hear it softly fuming inside. He watched the Captain’s gaze.

He heard go-aheads from officers around him, watched the Captain squint harder and harder at the house, he didn’t smile, he wasn’t watching smoke billow out of the house and up into the sky, he turned his head on its side, looked at the house from a new angle, ran his tongue along the top of his teeth and sucked in deeply before finally turning away. The hissing stopped, Connie looked. 

“Either something’s wrong with the canisters, or those killers got the biggest lungs in the world,” the Captain said, leaving. 

The house stood as before, the bullet holes made wooden craters on the facade. The razor toothed windows still hung open, but no smoke, no gas, no shooter running out on the lawn coughing with their hands around their mouths.  He thought about what the teenager had said. He heard a helicopter, he saw the blades and he heard a cheer. 

 

…

 

Some special unit Connie had never seen before hovered in a helicopter above the house, waiting for the order to drop. Thin tactical ropes like tendrils fell on the roof, two raiders slid down them gracefully. The sucking clamor of the helicopter blades muted the footsteps of the officers. They revealed some elongated explosive device and installed it on the roof. 

When the pair finished, they attached themselves to the ropes still hanging from the helicopter and ascended to the cabin. The device let off a short controlled blast, sending chunks of wood and dirt and shingles flying from the roof and onto the concrete steps. The sound from the explosion ricocheted around the neighborhood and tumbled around in Connie’s already overstimulated ears. 

With a chunk now blown out of it, the already impossible image of the house had an even more morbid appearance, now with a caved-in skull. 

One by one, the officers descended until the house looked like a horrid beast with a silver halo. Connie saw flashes from inside, movement, signs of life. He waited for shots. None came. The invisible dance of gunfire and smoke the crowd anticipated never came. Soon, crackles of all clear came through chest radios and the snipers left their nests. Armored officers made their way in single file up to the porch with weapons drawn, waiting to be let inside. The officers inside signaled, they entered, more signals of all clear. The tension that the crowd sat in all night fell away. A few pats on the back, a few smiles, tired sighs. 

Moments of silence, the medical staff were allowed up the stairs. Connie watched as the first team ran up the steps with a stretcher. He saw them heave Earl’s now long dead body onto it and cover it in whites. The team came down the stairs just as fast and the next few medical officers rushed to the house. 

Connie followed behind them under the barricade, up the steps. On the porch Connie stepped over Earl’s blood, it had darkened significantly after several hours. It had mixed with the blood of the injured and dead officers that came after him; several bullet casings sat in the drying pool. Earl’s final shadow. 

He stopped at the door, and waited for the guarding officer to give him permission to enter. One of the armored infiltrators stopped Connie, grabbing him on the shoulder. 

He mumbled something about medical staff. Connie looked at himself reflected in the man’s tactical goggles. His scar looked bigger than anything else on his face. The officer let go and Connie proceeded inside. 

The helicopter departed, opening up an endless silent soundscape for Connie in the house. Many of the invading officers exited the house and began securing the surrounding area. Total silence fell on the house as the medics looked for signs of survival. The officers that remained in the house were on the first level, they looked around them at all times, hands at their weapons.

Connie saw no bodies, smelled no gunpowder. The first floor had no furniture or sign of life besides the beautifully maintained curtains. Connie noticed the embroidery at the bottom of the curtains that almost scraped the carpeted floor in the main room. They were untouched by bullets or canisters.

Bullet holes he saw on the walls had come from outside, they left small wooden splinters on the floor. He inspected each room, moving in  a circular search pattern looking for a clue that someone, anyone, had been there. The kitchen was devoid of appliances, shining wires emerged from filthy holes in the wall, a spotless floor. A few empty closets, no hangers, no cobwebs. Glass scattered on the living room carpet. No indentations in the pale brown carpet either, no scratches on the wall from hasty movers, no holes from nails, no uneven splotches of new paint. 

Connie followed the voices of the medical staff up carpeted stairs. Maddening stains. It looked like some bloody thing had been dragged up the staircase. In the low light, he could tell no direction. Power to the house had been cut hours ago so the color was a mystery too.

At the top of the stairs, he entered a hallway. Feeling in the shadows, he found a dank unfinished room where paramedics gathered. A trail of sparkling residue led out from the threshold of the door beyond the medics to a intimidating form at the end of the room. 

The spotlights outside projected harsh beams into the room. Connie saw disoriented expressions on the medics’ faces. With shaking heads, some passed Connie out of the room, down the stairs and out of the house. The two remaining medics stood a few yards from the form taking notes and whispering to each other. Connie advanced. 

His eyes adjusted to the darkness. As he approached, the object became clear: an uneven and obtuse form hidden under a coarse blue tarp. The cover was not tied down and the edges flapped easily at any quiet draft in the room. The tarp’s thick material made it difficult to know what was under without looking underneath. 

He reached down and grabbed the corner of the sheet. Medics commanded him to stop. 

He ignored them, pulled, saw what he knew at first glance was blood, stained on the wooden floor. Pulling further revealed furious details, painted with sharp edges. The stump of a human leg, two, three, four. 

He ripped back the sheet, sending flies and thick liquid shooting into the ether. 

The room smelled like rotten metal. He covered his nose and mouth and backed away. At a few feets distance he could see it all. A heap of human bodies, devoid of limbs and heads, carefully stacked three high and ten across. The spotlight struck the top of the pile, casting pale white light across several upturned, headless torsos. Twenty nipples, rolling hills of slick pale skin.

The pile’s precision caused his eyes to dart in all directions in a struggle to find evidence of unintelligent design. He heard the medic drop his notes and vomit. He forced down vomit himself. He focused, saw the bodies were clean, dry and old. The toros looked ghostly in the bright white light from the barricade outside. 

The lights from outside were cut off. The room was lit now only by pulsating moonlight, flashing police lights. Too disturbed to stay, the medics departed the room and fled to the porch, Connie followed them.

Outside he saw officers chatting, smoking; an arrest party with no villains in irons. The gum-chewing Captain must have been in charge of something. He stood over blue bloods taking notes on small metal clipboards. He smiled, pointing out details to be embellished, left out. The captain looked back up at the house and noticed Connie on the porch. With gum sticking in his molars, he waved his flabby arm at Connie and smiled. Connie waved back halfheartedly as he made his way off the porch, trying not to step on any blood. 

Many of the men who’d been in the house looked like they had seen what Connie had seen, but he couldn’t be sure. He passed officers on the lawn, tried to think of something to say about the pile. 

On the sidewalk: officers dismembering the wooden barricade blocking incoming traffic, clearing a way for drivers to come through. As families, night owls, drunk drivers slowly passed through the street in front of the house, Connie sat on the concrete steps and tried to catch glances. He tried to communicate what he had just seen to someone, a third party with no desensitized nerves, no cynicism. None of them met his glance, though a few curious parties that stopped got special attention from the Captain who dutifully explained the situation to the citizens. 

It made him furious, or something approaching furious. With whatever emotion he had left, Connie picked himself up and made his way to the edge of the remaining barricade, where the Captain was enjoying a late night coffee, the remnants of his gum tucked behind his ear. 

“What are you telling them?” Connie asked. 

“Nothing. Exactly what happened.” 

“So you’ve been inside?”

“No. Should I? Anything worth seeing?”

Connie’s eyes bulged, his scar throbbed.

“What do you mean? If you haven’t been inside you haven’t told anybody exactly what happened. You don’t know what’s in there?”

“Oh I’m sorry son, you misunderstood me,” the Captain said, taking his gum from behind his ear. “I told everyone exactly what happened, nothing. Oh, excuse me. Commissioner!”

The Captain pushed his well chewed gum back into his mouth and left Connie with a smack on the shoulder. Connie chewed on his tongue and watched as tired officers yawned their way into their silent cruisers and drove off into the early morning. 

The rest of the neighborhood returned to peace, with most of the adults guiding children back into their houses and into bed, hoping to clean up the broken glass and scuff marks later. 

A few children continued to play and run around in the empty street, now caked in an early morning dew. He saw the child he spoke to earlier, still spread out on the blacktop, joined by an ensemble of other children making tar angels. From the porch, the children looked like silent starfish in a sea of ash.

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