Eugene Marten - Firework

Praise for IN THE BLIND

The better the book, the less necessary it be said to be so, at least when the agency of speech has, as any fool can see, taken out an investment in the author. Who believes? You dont; I wouldnt. Eugene Marten has made, in his making of In the Blind, a great book, one whose merits will occur to the readerso long as he is possessed of an aptitude for readingpromptly upon an encounter with the inaugural sentence. Gordon Lish

In the Blind does for keys and locks what Melville did for whaling. Martens obsessive and precise attention to a single thin sliver of life somehow blossoms into an entire metaphysics, so that, in looking at the inner workings of a lock, one finds splayed below oneself the dizzying prospect of an entire, intricate universe. Brian Evenson

Praise for WASTE

With unnerving clarity and precision, Marten starkly executes a chilling portrait of loneliness and anonymity, reminding us, in the process, that that which we might ever so casually discard and dismiss may not necessarily respond so casually in kind. Geoffrey Brown

This is surely one of the darkest and most jarring books Ive read. It is also pitch-perfect. Waste wastes nothingnot a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath. Dawn Raffel

Also by Eugene Marten

In the Blind

Waste

FIREWORK

Eugene Marten

TYRANT BOOKS

New York

TYRANT BOOKS

676A 9th Ave. #153, New York 10036

Copyright 2010 Eugene Marten

978-0-98851-830-8

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First edition, 2010

Excerpts from this book have appeared in The Antioch Review, Brooklyn Rail, Harp & Altar, New York Tyrant, Phantasmagoria, Sidebrow, Salt Hill, and Unsaid

Designed by Ryan P Kirby

Cover art by Shelton Walsmith and The Flying Chabowskis

Author Photo by Kelly Marten

www.nytyrantbooks.com

FIREWORK

To Gordon, to Gian

But always because of Kelly

Contents

THE ANCHORMAN SAYS, A public employee. Then there is no sound. There is a woman on a corner, wearing white boots and waving at traffic. A station wagon pulls over. We dont know what color it was but can tell by the front plate it is property of the city, state, or federal government. We cant see his face. The woman leans in the window, moving her mouth.

There is no color, there is no sound. Then the anchorman says, Trying to buy sex with your tax dollars. She slaps the top twice and steps back. A light flashes down the street. Because the lens through which we are looking is of the kind that compresses space, the unmarked car barreling toward us seems to get bigger without getting closer. (We dont know the light was blue.) Two men get out in a hurry, approach the wagon from either side. One of them talks to the driver. He opens the door and hauls the driver out by his shirt, forces him facedown onto the street and kneels on his back while his partner applies the handcuffs, helps himself to a wallet.

His lips movethe reading of the rights, we assume.

We dont know where the woman went but the drivers face is bloody. We dont know his name. We dont know that the unmarked car was green, that inside it smelled like fast food, that when they shoved Jelonnek into the ridiculous plaid of the backseat there was a metal bucket on the floor by his feet. That the cop pressing down on the top of his head said, You spill em you swallow every last one, and the other cop said, Like it matters, and the one pressing down said, Like you know, and the other one said, I know if they dont shine you cant see em, and his partner said, They dont see em they smell em. I kill with those little black bastards. Then they got back up front and ate their lunch.

When they were done they wrote him a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic. A tow truck came for the wagon. The one who was going fishing jerked the gearshift, water sloshed in the bucket. They ran a light and turned, drove past a boarded-up gas station with weeds sprouting where theyd pulled the pumps, a check-cashing establishment (ten percent off the top), a modest brick building purporting to be the Refuge of Last Days; pulled up in the driveway of an old warehouse housing nothing now but dust in the dark. A paddy wagon like a black metal box on wheels, half-hidden in weed trees. Jelonnek was extracted gently from the backseat. One of the cops put his wallet back in his pocket. On his way to the back of the truck he looked into the lens of a camera perched on a mans shoulder like a rocket launcher. Because he was still too numb to just turn away or duck, his eyes bulge into your living room in living color, hands behind his back like the bearer of some terrible surprise.

In the wagon there were metal ledges on either side to sit on and only a couple of spaces left. It reminded Jelonnek of his paper route, of the truck that had brought the bundlesexcept for the partitions on the sides like stalls in a public lavatory. All you saw were everyones knees. When you sat you had to bend over while they took off one of the cuffs, looped it through a shackle and put it back on your wrist. Then they rolled down the dark and the only light came through two small windows in the back.

Why did the john cross the road? someone asked him. The punchline had something to do with a social disease; Jelonnek was barely listening. Someone else laughed for him but it was an old joke the first time you heard it. Everything was: the way they called each other John, the fart you kept not hearing, the guy who would once in a while bang his head against the inside of the wagon. He would bang the back of his head against the metal and at the same time mutter, Shit or Fuck or God like some kind of hierarchic chant. The claustrophobe was even worse.

Theyd written him a ticket for impeding the flow, for not wearing a seatbelt. He still felt the street on his face.

You got used to the dimness and when they opened the door the light started everything over again. The new guy looked like some sort of businessman, had silver hair and wore a nice suit.

Put this man in first class, someone said. Why did the pimp cross the road?

Two or three guys said everything. You could feel someones knees shaking. If you kept your back straight your arms didnt hurt as much.

I wanna say no contest, a voice said, addressing the matter of pleas. The speaker sat across from Jelonnek. You couldnt quite make out his face but he was apparently something of an old hand, someone with a working knowledge of local jurisprudence, familiar with the statutes, the degree of misdemeanor, the names and temperaments of judges. The maximum penalties and alternative sentences.

I wanna say diversion, he said.

Da virgin.

John school. You spent eight hours in a classroom, getting lectured by former hookers, watching footage of AIDS patients sloughing off their skin like snakes.