Fiction: Selections from Jonathan Tuttle

Suspension

Whenever rooms were scarce, the school reserved a dog park for in-school suspensions. The children were to spread out over the muddy ground and stare silently at a t-shirt or a towel the teacher had hung from the fence. 

The suspensions were assigned in two-hour blocks, from one block for lighter infractions to two or more for serious offenses. At the start of the day a teacher would come into the park and clear out any left-over toys or leashes. They started their timers there, then went back inside the school, returning only to announce that a block had finished. Anyone approaching with a dog saw the children and turned to the river instead. 

The small, rectangular park abutted a row of stores. On the end of the last store there was a mural of a butterfly alighting on a child’s violin bow. A spur of track in front of the park led to the cement plant, and there was a hopper on the tracks, but always in a different position, a few feet closer or farther from the plant. This was clear to the children who were in suspension repeatedly. Occasionally doors opened into the alley behind the shops, and people came out with their trash. No one made eye contact. Beyond the tracks a hill sloped up to a house with a trampoline and a zip-line. A car with a tower of cameras on it once turned the corner behind the children, crossed the tracks, and drove up the hill, taking in everything. When the sun was at its highest, the children pinched their shirts and pulled them up over their necks to keep from burning. One block of suspensions did run over lunch, but the children adapted. Feet flat on the ground and arms at their sides, they let their hunger drop into their knees and forgot about it. From the corners of their eyesthey watched rats climb into the mounds of extra ballast. The patchy grass inside the park continued a short way beyond it, to a concrete barrier there from before the park went in. It had a steel loop extending out of the top. The wind blew out signs people had tied the fence—for school board members or for the Greek festival in fall. Around two in the afternoon tires scraped the curb behind the children as the busses lined up to idle. It was at that time, in winter, the sun passed over their heads and dipped into their eyes, which they could not close. Their shadows lengthened back to the fence, stretching between the other students. 

 

Wheelchair

The owner of the wheelchair sat under blankets on the passenger side of a patrol car. He held his nose over the thermos the officers had given him, and he watched the hook dangle from the crane they had brought out. The hook spun, swinging over the eight-foot, barbed wire fence, to where his wheelchair lay crushed in the grass. An officer nodded. The hook lowered. The wheelchair had sunk slightly, the policeman saw. The ground was soaked through. It didn’t feel like rain anymore, but in the headlights of the three cruisers aimed at the woods you could see a fine spray drifting. All that area—between the sidewalk and the turnpike—was going to be developed soon. A banner zip-tied to the fence said, If you worked here, you’d already be at work. The rest of the squad stood back at their cars, leaning on their doors or against bollards. They could smell the brook in the woods, where the city piped overflow sewage after storms. They spat out their gum and tracked the wheelchair as it rose into their headlights. Its metal had been twisted, the black, padded seat torn. The chrome along the wheels glinted, then out of the light again it was unrecognizable. It could have been an umbrella. Past the barbed wire the chair soared another six feet, dripping, picking off branches until the crane swept over the fence. The men saw the chair against the clouds, made pink by the stadium lights downtown. Their raincoat hoods fell back to their shoulders, and they approached with their arms out, ready for it. “A group of them,” said the radio beside the wheelchair’s owner, “juveniles, ten to fourteen of them.” The radio crackled; the voice went out and in again. “They won’t leave the platform.” The man put his thermos to his lips and, though it wasn’t cold, sunk down in his blankets. He watched all six officers lift his wheelchair onto their shoulders and carry it, like pallbearers, towards him. Bungees came in at his head as they tied it to the roof.

 

Breakwater

A young man was halfway out to the end of the breakwater. He carried a leather messenger bag with the strap across his stomach. The waves then were high and black. They sliced into the broken rocks piled up on the ocean side, and taller waves washed the granite slabs on top. The young man’s Converse fell into puddles, splashing his wide, pale calves. He stepped over crevices, where the surf drained off to sluice around inside the pile. Each speckled, uneven slab had marks on the edges from the spikes driven in to split them. Steel bars, rusted and staining the granite, crossed the gaps, bolting the blocks together. Some bars had withered, and they tapered to a brown reed. The spray bit into his cheeks. It coated his glasses and slicked his hair against his neck. He came to an iron chain hanging limply between pillars, and with his feet splayed and his head jutting forward he stood there. A little mucus collected in the hairs on his upper lip. The wind filled out his hoodie, cutting it back and forth. A wide murmuration of starlings twitched, balanced, then spiked again. 

His two friends were at the start of the breakwater. They were locked, hunched and fighting, gripping each other’s elbows, pressing their heads into each other’s chests. Their knees bent, they pushed, but equally matched, both a foot taller than the boy at the end, they could only circle in place. Their wallets swung out in front of them, the chains swaying with the belts of their trench coats into and away from their legs. They stretched out their feet to new indentations in the slabs, into foam. Pieces of baitfish floated between them, and the puddles reflected back the heavier clouds. One footstep faltered. An ankle had rolled, and the other boy advanced. He drove his friend back like a plow, till that one’s boots skidded off the top of the breakwater. At the harbor side, where there were no broken stones piled up to stop him, his shins scraped the edges of the staggered granite blocks as he fell, and he spread his arms and legs as wide as he could to keep from falling further. One steel capped toe went into the blunted waves. A loose buoy bobbed against the ridge. He held still.

Jonathan Tuttle is a writer, zinester, and cataloger in Boston, Massachusetts. Find him on Instagram @jontuttle