Andrew Sullivan - Waste

A red coat fluttered up from the middle of the circle. Jamie abandoned Moses on the bench and walked across the frozen gravel. His right ankle clicked with each step. Three pins and a number of surgical staples still held the foot together. The nurse in the emergency room hadn’t questioned Jamie when he blamed it on a tractor. Out in the snow, the children were quiet and no one was laughing. Jamie could see a boy attempting to take off his jacket, stumbling around in a tiny circle. He had the heavy coat halfway over his head but couldn’t get it around the tip of his chin. Kansas joined the circle, watching the boy try to remove his coat.

Jamie Garrison glanced back toward his bench and the fluttering pages condemning Moses Moon to twenty-five to life without parole. He was being tried as an adult for three murders, one of which was considered a premeditated act for which he exhibited no palpable remorse. The prosecution remained firm in these assertions after the verdict was read aloud to cheers and the sobbing of Mrs. Singh’s son in the front row of the balcony.

It had been three months and there was still no mention of a lion. No reports of a taxidermied head discarded on the streets or found in someone’s garbage can. Jamie waited for a jogger to spot the bloated cat’s body floating in the lake beneath the ice. He checked each page every morning for a glimpse of the beast, but he found only Moses— Moses Moon smiling from a high school photograph. Another gust of wind blew through the park and tossed all the pages into the air.

With his back to the children, Jamie stumbled after his fleeing newspaper. The boy continued to fight with his jacket. He was running out of breath. It was hot inside that coat.

The neon snowsuit circle stood around and watched him struggle.

Thanks to Miriam Toews for all her guidance while I bashed my way through the first draft and somewhere into the second.

Thanks to Jeff Parker for the constant support and for reading the early draft while riding the subway in Russia. I plan on rewatching Splice soon.

Thanks to Rosemary Sullivan for her support and guidance at the University of Toronto.

Thanks to my editor Guy Intoci for the edits and advice through the whole process of turning this into a book. Thanks to everyone at Dzanc, including Steve, Dan, Michelle, and Meaghan. You made it easier to be a Canadian in America.

Thanks to Chris Bucci for embracing ZZ Top when many others declined and for continuing to support my work.

Thanks to early readers and advisers like George Pakozdi, Brendan Bowles, Jennifer Birse, Karen Principato, Daniel Mittag, and James Rathbone. Thanks to all my friends who have supported my work along the way, from workshops to readings and finally to these pages. Thanks to Victoria Hetherington for all the support during the editing process and Naben Ruthnum for the day-to-day advice.

Major thanks to all my family, especially my parents Ed and Shelley, for their unending support and encouragement. A lot of this started with the Hardy Boys.

I also want to thank the Oshawa Public Libraries, specifically the Legends and McLaughlin branches, where the majority of this novel was researched and written. Thank you for keeping your bathrooms clean and your water fountains running.