The human heart on the street wasn’t mine. It came from the crumpled body thirty feet away. Another thirty feet behind the body was a pair of boots, which may or may not have had feet in them. Just behind the boots was the sedan. The bumper was barely dented from where it had struck the man.
A severed vein sticking out of the heart looked big enough to stick my thumb into. Black skid marks streaked the fat on the lower part, as if someone had plucked out the heart and skipped it like a stone across the street. A few flecks of goo dotted the concrete around it and there was a smear where it slid to a stop. Somehow the heart had sailed all that distance and stayed intact.
We hadn’t slept at all that night. There’d been one medical call after another, and fire watch from three to five A.M. (Fire watch is one of the cruelest assignments an engine can get. We sat around making sure a fire that other crews had put out didn’t rekindle). After that, the heart called me here.
“Mantis,” said a voice.
It startled me.
“What?” I looked up.
“This mess isn’t going to sweep up itself. Get the kitty litter.” The voice came from behind me. My driver, Jimmy.
I got the absorbent from the fire engine and dumped it on the pools and streams of car juice.
“How did it stay in one piece? I can make out the vena cava,” Jimmy said as he started spreading out the absorbent with a push broom brush-side up so the absorbent could be ground into the street with the flat wooden bar.
I picked up the other broom. I wished every person who’d ever written a song about a broken heart could see this. A heart doesn’t break. Everything around it mangles and disintegrates until the heart lies alone on starless asphalt.
“The heart is one tough muscle,” I said.
“I want to take it and put it in a jar. Do you think anyone would notice?” Jimmy said.
“The owner might want it back,” I said.
“I doubt it.” Jimmy flipped his broom and used the bristle side to push the used absorbent into a pile. I got the shovel and industrial trash bag.
“How did it get out?” I said when I got back.
“I don’t know. I tried to check. But it’s like the guy is missing half his bones. He’s just a pile of meat.”
Jimmy grabbed the trash bag and I started shoveling the absorbent into it.
“You’re not really going to take it, are you?” I asked.
It was gross. It wasn’t his. Someone would notice it missing. The saint of lost hearts would come for us both.
“I’ve got to.”
“No, you don’t got to.”
Sometimes it could be hard to know if Jimmy said something because he believed it or because he was worming me. Not this time; I could tell he wanted it by the way he didn’t pause to enjoy my outrage. I wasn’t going to let him have the heart.
“How badass would that be,” he said as he tied up the bag.
I put the shovel and brooms back on the engine and then came back to Jimmy, who stood by the heart.
“It would make the best conversation piece. Maybe I could put it in a lava lamp. I’m gonna get a bag.”
“You can’t take the heart.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
Because it wasn’t his. Because it had done its part.
“It’s not like he needs it. I’ll be putting it to good use. Reduce, re-use, recycle.”
He made for the engine. Everything was cleaned up and we were ready to go but he didn’t pull the chock blocks from the tires. Instead, he opened a compartment.
I had one last moment to listen to what the heart had to tell me. Maybe it would tell me what to do, tell me how to save it. As I waited for instruction, I started to become one with the wrecked car, the deflated body, the grief of those who knew him, the sorrow of the person who’d struck the man and tore his heart from his chest. The heart had grown and I’d stepped inside it.
The sound of two paramedics and a cop talking pulled me from this vision. Jimmy took a bag from the engine and came towards me.
“Y’all aren’t going to believe this,” I shouted to the paramedics as I waved them over.
The cop and the paramedics were standing by the body. They looked at me but didn’t move. If Jimmy could have shot lasers out of his eyes, he would have torched me right there. He walked faster. If he could get to the heart before they did, he knew I wouldn’t proactively rat him out.
“It’s the dude’s heart!” I shouted.
That got their attention. They trotted over, arriving just after Jimmy did. There was no way for Jimmy to get it now and I was sure that no one else was going to trap it in a lava lamp.
There wasn’t anything more I could do for it. Although it would remain free a little longer, the heart would soon be incinerated. Back to ash. After a lifetime of service, that seemed a better fate. Dawn came and sunlight fell on the heart for the first time.