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]]> http://danielhoman.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/moved/feed/ 0 danielhoman http://danielhoman.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/mayonnaises-last-day/ http://danielhoman.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/mayonnaises-last-day/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:47:56 +0000 danielhoman http://danielhoman.wordpress.com/?p=205 ]]> This is the novel I’m editing…

Mayonnaise’s Last Day

I knew Mayonnaise. That is, I knew a girl like her. She lived down the hall from me in college and sang opera at seven in the morning on weekends because she knew we were all recovering from parties she hadn’t been invited to.

The beginning of this Mayonnaise’s story begins, if it can be said, near the end, in her apartment or rather just outside it, as a young policeman who had forgotten his belt that day was speaking into a digital recorder.

“…and that’s pretty much it,” he was saying while shuffling his hips so that his pants did not continue their inevitable slip. “Scene of the crime. Two injured. Serious gunshot wound to abdomen. Fruit everywhere. The date is…April eleventh, two thousand and nine. Right now, no one’s saying much. Accidental shooting, possibly. Jealous boyfriend. Right now, no motives. Still waiting to conduct questioning. The date is April–did I say that already?”

He paused his recording and pocketed the device as his older partner walked out of the apartment. Because television shows like CSI New York have already desensitized this generation of twitterers, we can assume the crime scene was the usual: blood, broken glass, and feathers. The young policeman put his hand in his pocket and gripped the small, pregnancy test-sized digital recorder firmly as his partner neared.

The graying mustache of the older man curled as he nodded grimly. “There’s a lot of red from the big one. Where are those stretchers?”

“They’re coming now.”

“No elevator. Go downstairs and direct them up. Should be three.”

“…three?”

“That’s right. Three. How would it look if we loaded the little guy with one of the others?”

The two glanced back at the apartment, where another pair of policemen were attending to the injured and taking statements.

“Bad karma or something,” the young policeman said. “That’s what it is. Bad karma. Say Bill, you want to get a drink after shift?”

In truth, the older policeman didn’t care for his younger partner very much, but figured he could probably squeeze a free beer or two out of him. People in shock tended to be generous, in his experience.

“Sure. Sure thing.” The older policeman smiled, revealing a healthy stretch of receding gum line. “Helluva bad day for us all. Them more than us, of course, but still…” He patted his partner on the back, remembering the awkward goodbye he’d had a few years earlier with his son, who was at a freaky college in the Midwest where you could practically major in sodomy. And dwelling on his younger partner further, he had always reminded the older policeman a little of his son. It made sense he had always been hard on Ramsey.  “Let’s get that drink,” he said. “But listen, Ramsey. None of that hard cider shit. You’re a cop. How would it look?”

The young policeman who had forgotten his belt shook his head. “But I like cider,” he admitted sadly.

The older man continued to dwell on his son. It wasn’t the boy’s fault–it was Martha’s. Baby Yoga and Capoeira for children were direct paths to fruitiness. Fruit. There was a helluva lot of fruit spread around the apartment, a cantaloupe split open, a pint of strawberries, a few bruised apples. The group had been celebrating something, a birthday perhaps, though there was only a single cupcake. Something fishy going on. It just didn’t add up. He figured a jealous ex-boyfriend decided to surprise her. Most shootings were ex-boyfriends. But who? The big fella. Questioning would begin after the paramedics arrived. Until then, they had to play the game. He regarded his partner, who was still staring off quietly.

“Cider. Shit–who doesn’t like cider?” He placed his hand by his mouth to whisper, “It’s goddamn delicious. Just don’t let the boys down at the station hear you say that.”

Glancing back at the apartment, the young policeman grimaced. “Bill, I swear I’ve seen her before.”

The older policeman tried to smile pleasantly, but he hadn’t had much practice and flubbed it, so two men stared silently as the  paramedics came up the stairs. Half-heartedly, the older policemen indicated the apartment in question and then turned, patting his partner on the back. On the floor was a crumbled piece of notebook paper. He picked it up, then stood to the side as the paramedics came through once more with the stretchers. Crumbling the paper, he tossed it in the corner of the hallway.

“Tell you what, kid. That cider’s on me.”

Failbetter is a great journal, and has published stories and had interviews with people like Michael Chabon, Sherman Alexie, Josip Novakovich, T.C. Boyle, Richard Baucsh, Mary Gaitskill, Elizabeth Strout, Paul Auster, and more.

So, check out the story here, and if you enjoy it, be sure to let the magazine editors know.Become a  facebook page.

The words you now read were written by a dead man. I don’t suppose that is of any comfort.

My name is Armando Calditchi, but by birth I am a Spaniard. Without a doubt, my name will be left out of the history books, but this does not matter. Most men’s lives are no grander than a word, or a mere letter, even a period, the punctuation of death. But I found a greater treasure than any of the other explorers. I discovered something in La Florida. A way to live forever.

The Timucan wise men say all men seek the fountain of eternal youth for the same reason: Man is mortal, God is dubious, Life is short.
I entered this world in a shack outside Valladolid, in the province of the same name, nary a hundred miles from Palencia, where Juan Ponce de León plopped out of his mother’s ugly crevice. King Fernando and Queen Isabel were married in Valladolid. Columbus, a man I would travel to the end of the known world with and come to love more dearly than my father, died there, in 1506.

I was born in 1476, not that it matters. My life would surely have been a mere smudge mark on the scroll of history had I not, at fourteen, fought in the conquest of Granada alongside Columbus and that villain de León, who left me marooned in this godforsaken island. In Granada I met my angelic infidel Catalina. There I took my first life, pike in hand, the glory of country swelling in my heart. Oh sweet war! Boys scarcely older than I dressed the black earth with blood to purge the Moslems, and finally we forced a surrender. At first, in the treaty that followed, the Moors could remain in the city so long as they declared loyalty to our esteemed King and Queen. But there are no idealists in war, only pragmatists and illusionists. My countrymen might have seen the Jews as a cancer, but the Moslems were the plague. I will admit, the outcome of this treaty did not displease me, as I was a devout Catholic. We are a peaceful people. We spill blood and then mop up with rosary. We pray for the souls of those we have butchered. We love all of God’s creatures. We ask only that they be relegated to the dungeons and alleyways that befit stray dogs.

Such is the black death of my gallows humor. Forgive me, Catalina, but travel takes from a man more than time.

Of course, if you are a student of history like me, you no doubt learned that soon those Moslems who would not convert were deported to Africa or rounded up and sent to secret prisons or murdered. Then again, I suppose that those who fight and die for the glory of God do not readily hand out consolation prizes to the loser. Finally rid of the Moors, the Jews expelled, Lady Spain become whole again, and would send Columbus and the conquistadors to drape the rest of the undiscovered world in our flag of duel red crossed stripes lined with barb. And that, I believe, is where we went wrong–where I went wrong. One man alone cannot fight a country that desires, above all else, wealth. It happened to Columbus, to De León, and now, to me.

Under the employ of Juan Ponce, the charlatan, I would go to La Florida in search of the fabled fountain. Then De León tossed me to the savages. He broke my dreams like a fat woman standing on a moldy board. He left me marooned with nothing more than a dagger, some parchment, a quill, and a moldy biscuit. Students of history, you might know him as Señor Juan Ponce de León, famed explorer, founder of La Florida, discoverer of the Fountain of Youth, but I will always know him as La Puta Fortunada, and by God’s ankle he was a lucky whore.

But of course, my life has only gone astray because of a woman. Oh Catalina, I tried to bring it back for you. But this was a cup I alone could not carry.

In my final days I will set the record straight. Ponce de León did not discover the springs. It was I, Armando Calditchi. I was starving, and delirious, and oddly aroused when I emerged from the frothy afternoon tide and climbed the dunes of a fair beach and stumbled, half-drunk, out into a dark, crooking forest of hunching elms. There I found the path, as the Timucan wise men had foretold. After urinating in the bushes nearby the pool, I jumped in, broke my leg, and have been waiting in the forest ever since. The Timuca believe I am a ghost. On occasion they come munching their burnt brown hard breads. Apparently they do not believe that ghosts are in need of snacks. At the crest of death, and all I want is a Sevillian orange marmalade cookie. That and to gut De León like a pig.

My leg is mossy and infection spreads to my groin. And even if I survive, it will be only for my words, for the completion of my history, the grand end-stop. And De León, that evil, brave, beautiful, arrogant, miserable, cheating, lying, beautiful bearded bastard never came.

Most men’s lives do not run on parallel tracks. If they did, we should always have peace. Sadly, one need only unfold a map of the world and spit at random to find a parcel of war-torn land, for man is always at war with himself. Even if the fountain is discovered, we will persist to fight and die and muddy its majestic waters. Perhaps there is some small hope of being rescued, but I’m no longer a hopeful man. The last thing Columbus ever said to me was, “Dear boy, I pity your dreams. This fair land was meant to lie beyond war. Now we have led the Devil himself to the gates of Heaven.”

Dear reader, if you discover my body, please take my hand out of my trousers. There is a reason the crew used to call me “lefty.”

Now look behind you.

Boo.