Salvage
Jon Chaiim McConnell
Out far on the ice where the sawing is toughest there are, scattered beneath, all of the lost things of the city. Things that have been swept out within the year and then frozen deep into the lake.
I ask July again if this is true.
He says that of course it is, where do I think he got his lamp from?
And then he stakes that lamp high on the ice and lights it by the fumes. The earliest morning domes in around us.
Unfurling his blanket of oily tools, Emory sits close in the lamp glow and assigns me a saw. He tells me to make note of its number, since assignments are strictly regulated. You watch after it, he says, and start believing what we tell you.
What have you found in the ice, then? I ask him.
This coat, he says, for one. A display of platinum watches from the mall. A dog that he buried at home.
I ask why he couldn’t have left him buried here.
And July says that he was missing. Not abandoned. He tells me to remember the difference…
Jon Chaiim McConnell 