‘Searching’ Archives
SEARCHING ”“ a Serial Novelle CHAPTER 12: The Raid
By Patrick Cabello Hansel People running in all directions. Shouting. Horns. Babies screaming. Right in front of him, an old man tripped on the ice and fell face down, splitting open his upper lip and breaking his nose. Blood poured out upon his worn Vikings sweater and onto the fresh snow. What is going on? Angel thought. Did someone get shot? He began to walk towards the uproar that was centered at Bloomington and Lake. Three or four SUV”'s with dark tinted windows were blocking the intersection. Cops were putting up barricades. A mother holding a baby and pulling a toddler along by the sleeve of his jumpsuit yelled at him: “!La Migra! ¡Corre! ¡Corre!”. And so he ran, away from the immigration raid, from the chaos and noise. He ran smack into the back of a girl in a sky blue coat, knocking both of them to the ground. As he struggled to pick himself up, he said “I”'m so sorry” and held his hand out to help her. He noticed there was a [...]
SEARCHING ”“ a Serial Novelle CHAPTER 11: Calling
By Patrick Cabello Hansel This time, Angel did not vacillate. He walked south, past Waite House, the Islamic Center, the airplane graveyard. At the Greenway, he paused for a moment to look down. The plows had not come yet, but intrepid cyclists had carved little paths in the snow. From his point of view, they looked like chromosomes stretching themselves out. Angel wondered if the genes we receive from our ancestors and pass on to our descendants stretch and contract with the joys and trials of history: marriages, wars, miracles known to many and those known only to a few. As Mr. Bussey had told him, the little store on Lake had phone cards. Dozens of them, some with outlines of countries, cartoons, women in bikinis, the lucha libre hero his younger brother David idolized. He ended up buying one with dancing and singing hot peppers. He remembered where the last pay phone in the neighborhood was: incongruously off an alley on a side street. The aluminum shell was dented in two [...]
SEARCHING ”“ a Serial Novelle: CHAPTER 10: Abuela
By Patrick Cabello Hansel “Mr. Bussey, I never used to believe in ghosts”, Angel said, as he wiped up his coffee with the napkins the waitress had brought. The other patrons at Maria”'s had gone back to their meals. “Oh, I”'d listen to my abuela when she told us stories about the spirits” he went on, “and when she made her special bread and chocolate for El Dia de los Muertos. She always said that our family was descended from Aztec warriors and Spanish conquistadors, and that the blood in us was really angel fire. Crazy stuff like that. But I didn”'t think much about it until these last couple of weeks.” “What happened to change your mind?” Mr. Bussey asked. “All this weird stuff has been happening to me. First I heard an owl calling from the cemetery”¦” “The sign of death”, Mr. Bussey interrupted. “Yeah””but whose? Then I met this girl named Luz, who I [...]
