The Weight of Water

A WRITER'S WIT
You must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life, comedy.
Neil Simon
Born July 4, 1927

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Horacio Salinas

July 4, 2016, T. Coraghessan Boyle, “The Fugitive”: Twenty-three-year-old Marciano, a gardener’s assistant in southern California, is a multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis patient who refuses to take his meds and rest. ¶ To eke out a living, Marciano must trap varmints for his boss Rudy and drown them while still in their cages. However, because of his lowly status (documented but can’t prove it), Marciano is treated by the state-regulated medical system as a criminal—and because he breaks his agreement to rest by returning to work and by entering public places without wearing his mask. He is caught and returned to the clinic where, by spitting into the faces of the medical workers, he escapes once again. The story closes with Marciano trapped in a grassy corner of a neighbor’s yard, where he intends to rest his head for only a moment:

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“He closed his eyes. And when he opened them again all he could see was the glint of a metal trap, bubbles rising in the clear cold water, and the hands of the animal fighting to get out” (59).

This final predicament is like being trapped in one of Rudy’s varmint cages as it is dropped into a garbage can full of water. Only this time the trap is his own ribcage, his own lungs, being drowned by his own poisonous mucus. The metaphor is apt if a bit too obvious. And a better title—“The Weight of It”—might be buried in the author’s text on page 58. Boyle’s novel, The Terranauts, is out in October.
Photograph by Horacio Salinas.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2016