Fiction by Ale Malick
My friend and I were on a barge, crossing the wide river, when the deadman’s telephone rung. He shouted spools of embarrassing self-defense into the phone, which was tiny in his chunky, rubbery hands. There was a whole world on the other end of that call which we couldn’t engage with, but to which he had much to say. Us, the people on the barge, were nothing to the great expanse of life that existed out there, somewhere, for him. The barge, packed tight with passengers as it was, meant I could smell his sweat and catch droplets of his spital. But we were not there to him.
Without a pause in his tirade, or even completing a sentence, the man threw his phone with as much power as an aging, obese, wheezing, suited man could do. We all watched it fly, then drop quickly into the muddy swollen swell. It had rained for days, and the river stood higher than it should have done.
I didn’t see him fall. I was still watching the ripples the phone had made. But my friend saw him go, though even he couldn’t say if he’d done it on purpose or if the force of throwing had toppled him. The man hit the water with much more impact than the phone had done, and he didn’t stay afloat any longer than it. We watched the spot in case he reemerged and swam to shore. But no one went to help him, it was impossible. In this current, the deadman was going to stay dead.
The excitement brought benches free, which my friend spotted, and we sat down for our sandwiches. He began to talk, which was unusual for him. The deadman’s sudden exit had inspired it I think. “I was in India once, long before we met of course. On a crowded street, waiting for something, but I can’t remember what. A crackle across the road gave me a focus. A bird had landed on the electricity lines and was being electrocuted. It fell after a couple of seconds, stiffly to the floor. A poor looking man, the poor of a poor city, walked over to him with a cup and fed the dying bird water. Touching of course, but in amongst all the poverty I’d seen, children begging, crippled and diseased bodies, dirt, dust and roaming wild dogs, he chose a bird to care for.”
The captain started shouting instructions about being ready with our bags. We were docking. Time had gone already. My friend never explained why he told his story right then, and I could never know if the deadman was killing himself or saving his phone.
I did ask him, but he only said, “Life’s a mystery.” Like he didn’t know himself why he’d said it. He hailed us a taxi and we moved on to something new.
Ale Malick has been a lecturer, playwright, actor, stand-up, elevator operator, labourer converting a Soviet army barracks into a factory. He writes for ROUTE magazine, on all things Route 66, and has been shortlisted for a HarperCollins anthology. He won an international award for his novel Pizza with Jimbob & Twoforks.
