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Photo: Kristin Fouquet
A Good Deed
By Wayne Scheer
Hector lay on the sidewalk, covered in blood. He opened his eyes and felt dizzy and nauseous, but surprisingly little pain. His heart pounded and he tried to call out, but he only managed coughing sounds.
"Stay still, buddy," a male voice spoke. "I chased away that crazy homeless bastard and called 911. You're gonna be okay."
Hector tried remembering what had happened. Something about recycled cans and newspapers. And a knife. Nothing made sense. He struggled to get up, but the same voice put a hand on his shoulder.
"Easy there," the man said.
Hector wanted to knock the hand away, but he didn't have the strength. He fell back on the ground.
The next thing he knew, he was being put on a stretcher and carried into an ambulance. He hurt more now, stabbing pains in his side and leg. "You're lucky." He heard a different voice. "The wounds are superficial. But you lost a lot of blood."
"Wife," Hector mumbled.
"Officer Greenfield notified your wife, Mr. Garza. She'll meet us at the hospital. He's still at the scene taking statements."
His clothes were torn open, exposing white bandages. An IV drip was attached to his arm. The pain subsided a bit. Blankets were placed over him.
He tried talking, but his tongue wouldn't move. He remembered a sleeping man jolting up and attacking him with a knife. Why couldn't he remember more? Where was his wife?
Hector tried taking an inventory of his life, recalling his name, address, telephone number, his wife's name, her cellphone number. He remembered where he worked, the phone number and extension of his office, his secretary's name. Today is Saturday, he thought, September 21. He had two children, Barry and Emily, nine and seven. His life came back to him, but how he ended up on the sidewalk bleeding remained unclear.
"You're doing just fine, Mr. Garza. We're almost there."
The ambulance pulled into the hospital and he was wheeled towards glass doors that opened as he approached. Just like on television. People shouted orders. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, his wife was holding his hand. He could see her tears. "I love you," she said.
"I…love…you," he whispered, surprised he could move his tongue.
It all came back to him in a flash. He was driving to the recycling center when he saw a homeless man sleeping beside a shopping cart full of cans. He thought he'd do the man a favor and leave the bags of cans and papers for him. The man jumped up, thinking he was stealing his cart.
"No!" he shouted, when he saw the knife.
But none of it mattered now as he squeezed his wife's hand.
The Glass Girls of Juarez
by Chad Redden
Pepe comes from neighborhood in El Paso where you can see lights of Juarez creep across the border fence at night. When he lived there, he used to go across the border into Juarez to an old meat packing building that had been remodeled. The building became a series of hallways with closet sized rooms along them. If the doors were unlocked you could go into the rooms, but there was only enough space to stand. The rest of the closet sized room was a glass wall covered with a shade. There was a box you put quarters in. Once you put a quarter into the box, a woman on the other side of the glass would raise the shade up a little for a minute per quarter.
Pepe told me, "You put twenty-five cents for the legs, wey, twenty-five cents for the ass, twenty -five cents for the breasts, another twenty-five cents and wey, they put themselves against the glass while you put yourself against the glass." He laughed and then said, "I will take you there, wey, we will take the large sacks of quarters… you will like it."
"Hey, wey, this one time," Pepe told me, "I went to that building, found this one room and went inside. I put in a four quarters and I saw this girl…her face…she was just one eye and a nose. She tried to hide her missing parts with long hair. I just kept putting the quarters in wey…all the quarters…I couldn't stop looking."
Ham and Ryan
by Paul D. Brazill
The words of a Bessie Smith song stumbled through Ham’s brain as he stripped to the waist in the morning dew and started to dig. With little effort, he hurled Ryan’s scrawny corpse into the grave and then paused for a moment to light a cigar and reflect on the day’s events.
As ham watched the spectres of smoke drift upwards he considered his predicament. The money that he’d taken from his former partner’s moleskin wallet was a nice little bonus and not to be sneezed at, but he was still none the wiser as to where Ryan had stashed the rest of the loot from the bank job.
This, he mused as he picked up the rusty shovel, was one of those rare moments where it was, indeed, difficult to decide whether the glass was half full or half empty.
The end.
Contributor Biographies and Credits
MiCrow Winter 2010 "Half" was edited by Walter Conley.
MiCrow 2010. All rights to content at Full Of Crow belong to the respective writers and artists.
MiCrow is the flash fiction supplemental section of Full Of Crow and is produced by Lynn Alexander for Full Of Crow Press and Distribution. 2010. Contact: microw@fullofcrow.com.