Longreads

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The fall of that year slips through my hands, and the bleakness of winter comes like a fist. The interrogations by police and questions from Adam’s family subside. The organized search parties that combed the area’s state forests fold up their maps and go home. The snow is blowing sideways on a December night when my phone lights up with a message from Adam’s sister. Their mom’s cancer has relapsed. I can’t reckon with this family’s pain. 

I can’t even feel mine. I had read once that certain kinds of grief can physically change the shape of your heart, and now I can sense my inner world splintering into a kind of numbness that outstrips my recognition of the world, of myself. I get in my truck, blankly clawing my way through the driving snow to see Sandra one last time. She smiles weakly. I am the most selfish human on the planet, I think. I set off this domino effect of tragedy. 

Three Strings: Past, Present, and Future

Finding beauty, human connection, and one’s heritage in the resonant sounds of the dulcimer.

longreads.com|Ayla Samli

He showed me how to strum and set me free to play. Three strings—past, present, and future—unified in one connective strum. I inhaled deeply to keep from crying. Yes, this is beautiful.

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Each evening until I moved off for college, my father drunkenly slurred and screamed, chasing me around the house until I caged myself in my room and he pounded outside. I’d stayed there safe, until his attention refocused on my mother, then I’d run out and draw his anger toward me again. I was faster, could outrun him.

The Most Infamous Cop in New Orleans History

In 1994, a corrupt cop ordered a hit on a civilian. He went away for murder, but he left a trail of other victims in his wake. They are still crying out for justice.

longreads.com|Longreads

Davis wasn’t the only New Orleans cop who crossed the line between enforcing the law and breaking it. The NOPD’s vice squad, for instance, was well on its way to being disbanded for thefts and shakedowns—the deputy in charge would eventually be convicted of snatching cash from the till during raids on strip joints and bars in the French Quarter. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Davis found a co-conspirator, another corrupt cop to be his partner in crime.

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• The people who love the “pests” of New York.
• The racism that exploded a high school baseball team.
• The forces behind a cult that starved themselves to death.
• The mentality of a champion bull rider.
• The power of silence.

My Name Is a Mountain

On language, belonging, and embracing the different versions of ourselves.

longreads.com|Montserrat Andrée Carty

We seek to become the truest version of ourselves, but what if there isn’t one true version, but multiple? Like father, like daughter, there are two versions of me.

At 5, I spoke all these languages fluently. Today, I only speak two of them, but understand all of them in some way, as they still live inside me.

There were men who said they’d narrowly escaped the Handcuff Man, and rumors that some of his victims hadn’t survived. But there were also people who thought that he was nothing more than an urban legend. Jordan’s assault would bring the truth to light: Not only did the Handcuff Man exist, but there were people in Atlanta who knew his name, including members of the police force. He hadn’t been caught because, it seemed, no one was trying in earnest to catch him.

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I knew then that I didn’t want my last few minutes to be full of sadness and regret. If I wasn’t going to survive this, I didn’t want my final thoughts to be berating myself for a bad choice.

It’s OK, I thought. You didn’t mean for this to happen. You are going to die and you should just be grateful for the time you had.

The heavy, black ache in my chest fully replaced the burn. I forced myself to keep my eyes open and watch the sunbeams like I’d seen a thousand times before, when I’d been underwater by choice and could come up for air when I wanted.

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We all make lists, if only to buy bread and milk. But we tend to forget how mythic and subversive (as we have just seen), joyful and maddening, enchanting and sobering, and utterly chilling lists can be—and what they can do. To love a list is to partake in letter and word, form and change. To make lists is to join a long line of list makers, to indulge in a timeless art, to break down the artificial wall that separates thinking and doing, thinkers and doers.