fiction

Short Story: Torso in the Line

Torso in the Line

by

Joseph Devon

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Deric Cobb walked through Tribeca at five-thirty on a Wednesday evening.  It was mid-December and the days had become cold, short and dark.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had walked to work when the sun was visible.  He made his way from the 1/9 subway station down Franklin Street.

The neighborhood was sparse.  People were sparse, shops were sparse, restaurants were sparse.  Once Franklin Street came to an end he had the choice of turning north or south to walk around the block before reaching the West Side Highway.  He always chose to go around to North More Street.  That way he’d come onto Pier 25 from the north rather than having to cut through the line of trucks and enter the site in the middle.

As he turned onto North More Street the view changed.  He was leaving behind the close sheltered streets of southern Manhattan and was headed for the piers lining the Hudson River.  There was nothing left to block the wind as it came across the water and nothing to stop the view so that for the first time he could see open sky ahead of him instead of buildings and streets.

Turning off of North More he headed south on the West Side Highway, crossing west while continuing south.  This far down on the island the highway was just another road with traffic lights and intersections instead of the elevated freeway it became up by sixtieth street.  Already he could hear the low rumbling of the trucks lined up, waiting to turn onto the pier and dump their loads before driving out of the site and back to Ground Zero to fill up before driving up to the pier again in a loop that had been endless since mid-September. Read more

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