Ozzie Fitch: Chapter 17
I walked home from the hospital. Didn’t want to take the train. Didn’t have the green, didn’t bother to chant. Just walked. Wandered up from Downtown. Nothing special. Done it before.
Walked past old stores locked up for dinner. Office buildings with guards out front, standing still and watching life flow by. Saw restaurants with people inside, eating together, their minds on the day past or the day ahead. I saw lots of things, but people didn’t see me.
I didn’t feel good. Wrong kind of not good, too. Wasn’t sick, or needed a sizzle. Not hungry, not dizzy, nothing like that. Don’t know why I felt so bad. Never felt like it before. Something about seeing Ribber in the hospital bed. Don’t know.
Felt like I was going the wrong way. I kept checking the street signs, but I wasn’t. Heading north like I always was. Hard to get lost in the downtown. Streets laid all grid-like. Clean and orderly, like a machine. Cogs go this way and that, going to work, going to the train, going home, going for coffee, going for dinner.
It was getting colder. Winter coming. Winter’s hard in the gutter. I like it. It cleans out the posers and the vacationers. Everyone who wants the realness of the chant without the pain, like for free. Once the snow comes, the posers leave.
That’s the thing about pain, why it makes the chant strong. When it hurts, you run. When you’re too weak or it hurts too much, the only thing left is to run. Escape. You go back home where it’s warm and there’s food and the curtains keep out the light. Safe and happy with your illusions. The cogs turn and everything’s the same. Same same same.
But if you stay, if you freeze in the snow and starve in the gutter and feel the boots that kick you in the side every day of your life, you can use that pain. You live it, until it becomes you. You see the oppression and the hate and the scorn with clear eyes.
Then you can do something about it.
See, the posers and the vacationers don’t think the pain is real. It’s like a stop sign. They feel the pain and think “oh, well I guess I won’t go there. It’s not for me. Pain is for other people.” Suffering, right? All kinds, like racism and sexism and whatever it’s called for religion. Squeaky cog gets the grease. Like smooth. Clean. No grit.
Cogs all look the same. Perfectly round. Teeth for chewing faster than the next cog. You don’t look right, you never fit in.
Paula said something once made me stop. Took apart a radio once, she said, and talked about resistors. Don’t know a thing about resistors, I said, but she said I didn’t need to. Just this: they all had different numbers. You need a twenty-five, you better not get a thirty. Important, right? Only you can’t tell from the outside. All resistors look alike. So they have color coding, right? Stripes. Red then blue. Yellow black yellow. Different colors so you know what resistor you have.
But color doesn’t mean a thing. I could paint red stripes on a thirty, and it’d still be a thirty. Everyone, though, here’s the thing, everyone would treat it like it was a twenty. Or twenty five. Whatever numbers and colors, I don’t know radios.
See, you can paint yourself to look like a cog. Wear suits and ties, get white pickets and keep up with the neighbors. Like then there’s no pain.
Only it’s hiding, right? You still a twenty on the inside, whether you’re yellow black yellow or not. Or whatever the colors and numbers are.
I was thinking about that as I walked. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it was seeing Ribber there, in the bed, face all puffy. See, Ribber thought he was a chanter. Sure, he chanted, but he wasn’t a real chanter. Sure, took his lumps, because that’s what chanters get. Didn’t try to hide from it. I respected him for that. He wasn’t a vacationer.
But real chanters don’t have to look for their lumps. The beatings come every day. Ribber chanted for sex, got sex, got lumps. Anyone gets that. Real chanters are abused by the grid.
That makes me feel better, when I think that. I don’t know why.
I keep walking.
Then, I look up. Why? Must be the chant, because I saw JJ walking down the street.
Truth. Hundred truth. There’s JJ. Walking down the street like nothing. What the hell?
He kept walking. I thought about him turning to see me, the bubble that surrounded me. What if he was the one who went home to his squeeze and dreamed about me all night?
Then it happened. He glanced. Just a flicker of the eye in my direction. I know he saw me. I saw him look at me, so he must have seen me looking at him. But he didn’t say hello. He didn’t walk towards me, didn’t ask to join the circle again, just kept walking. Like ignorant. Didn’t know who I was.
I didn’t call to him. He walked on past.
I didn’t get up and walk after him. I didn’t ask him to come back to the circle. Did I want to? I’m not sure. It would be better if he was back with the circle. Even though he was grit, a little grit can make things smoother, like sandpaper.
Sure, he would have just yelled at us again, called us layabouts, said we didn’t deserve good things happening to us, because we didn’t work to make it happen, but I knew where I was with JJ. Not like Cindy or Leon, now. With JJ, he was grit, and we all knew it. We laughed at him. We were a circle with JJ. We called him grit together. Now Cindy and Leon talk like dust in the brain. Real cold. I don’t know what was their problem. And Ribber in the Hospital.
God I was tired.
I wanted another tab. Set it on my tongue and let the world open up, let my body melt into the glow and see and feel everything the way it really was. Pull down the curtains. But I didn’t have any more tabs. Never take tabs with me when I’m sizzling. Knew a guy once, took a pocketful, thought it was a good idea to have another when he was already sizzling. Like the third gate, like Narnia, like Nangijala, like turtles all the way down. Like you find the truth through the tab, and you want more truth, so you look for truth behind the truth. Then, with two tabs in his mouth, that made it seem like a good idea to take a third. Then a fourth. Dropped dead when the seventh touched his tongue, like a light-switch.
Truth all the way down. Hundred truth.
I just kept walking.
Next day, next week? Sometime later. The circle all together.
First time Darla there since the date. Only see her every now and then. Good. Don’t like seeing her like this.
“We gonna chant?” Leon asks.
Something in his voice. Different than last time. Oz, he thinks something’s wrong, but not important, right? Darla’s here. How she feeling? I don’t know. She looking out the window like something important.
“Need seven,” Binny says. “You chant if you want, won’t work well.”
Think about last big chant we did. Everyone chanting for themselves. We set up everything, just so. Draw on the carpet in colored chalk. Tea lights and flashlights pointed and ready. Grease stained wrappers, old train cards, and disposable razors. The detritus of the system made our tools of our subversion, our salvation.
Some special day, it was. Something with moons and stars maybe. Or constellations. I don’t remember. Spreading a curse on them that ignore us. Let the walls come tumbling down, they waste time building it back up.
Binny doesn’t call a big chant every day. Not every month. Once a year, maybe. Says it’s for good vibes. Luck, like. Works smoother, something about lay lines and mystic shit. I don’t care, me. I know it always works, even if you don’t see it.
So we’re all there, right? Not all of us, but we’re there. Cindy’s smoking a stick while Leon’s just staring at nothing. Darla’s looking out the window, like she’s missing something, but who cares, right? Binny’s sitting there too, like a sage, looking at all his children. But we’re not all there.
“Where’s Ribber,” Cindy asks. Sad like. Not the same since she tried to chant. Angry, sad, or something. Ribber, he out of the hospital by now. First day out, comes in with some stupid story about some girl he roll, run into her on the way out the hospital door. Bumps into her, rolls her five later. Such a liar.
In the smoke, Binny sips his bottle, pulls his pipe. Shrugs. It’s not his job to keep people in line. See, that’s the difference between Binny and Kyle. Kyle, he keep you on a chain. Binny, you run free. Why Cindy want to be all clingy, like she gotta hold Ribber’s hand or else he get lost?
Leon, he groans. “Gotta chant sometime, or we not a circle, yeah?”
“Shut it,” I say. Don’t like that talk. We a circle, all of us. Even if we don’t want to be. You want to leave out the window, too bad. We together in this.
“Shut what?” Leon waves his hands, the nut, like it means anything. “We a circle? Circles chant. We don’t chant any.”
“Chant plenty,” I say. Truth. Got a fold in my pocket right now, caught a bit of bitter to shield me. Always works. Bitter best protection.
“Not with us, you don’t,” Leon says. “Why we here? What we doing here?”
“You gritting us,” Binny says, calm like. Cindy snorts. Darla, she just looking out the window, like none of this matters.
“Maybe need a bit of grit,” Leon, the nut, says. What a nut.
There’s a crack. A slam. Loud clatter noise from Binny. Shocks the hell out of us. All of us. We never see Binny mad, but there he is, eyes blazing as he stares at Leon. Bottle on the ground where he threw it, rolling to a stop against the couch. Never seen Binny mad before. Like real mad. “You got something to say?” he asks.
Leon’s shocked as we are, I can tell. Thing is, the nut had something to say. I could tell. I could see it in his eyes. His eyes, his eyes look at me. Leon, the nut, he looks at me. Something in his eyes. He’s going to do something, something stupid.
“Yeah,” he says.
Binny doesn’t move. Like a stone, a mountain, a piece of the sky cracking thunder and lightning while Leon stands there, the nut, hands on his hips like he’s going to keep the storm still.
“I’m tired,” Leon says. Deep breath, and keeps going. “I’m tired of sitting here doing nothing.”
“You chant,” Binny says, “you chant.”
“Not like this,” Leon says. “It’s nothing. Something happens or it doesn’t. Things the same. We dusted, us. All of us we just come back and forth and never do nothing.”
“We chant,” Binny says, solid as ever. “That’s not dusting. We live.”
“We not living, we hiding,” Leon sniffs, getting his grit everywhere. “You say we need seven to do anything. No one else say that. Talked with Little Fred. Could set up something real.”
Binny mad now. “This real,” he says, fist tight. “Chant real. You want groups, teams, corporations, names of circles? I know you do. You call this Binny’s circle, you do.”
“What else we call it?” Leon spread his arms. “You sit here, dusting out, people come and go, what else we call it? We a team or not?”
“You leave, you leave,” Binny says. “Someone come, they come. No sign-in, no sign-out. You give names, you give walls.”
See it then. See what they doing. Leon, the nut, he wants the chant to have its own grid. He want a system. He want rules and organizations and working together.
See it then. Leon dangerous. Leon cares.
“We make it work,” Leon says. “We help each other. We in the cracks, but we got our own cracks. People still hurting, yeah?”
“We not take that from them,” Binny says. “You thirsty for dark magic.”
“Doing anything is dark magic,” Leon says. He’s angry too, now. “There are so many out there! The cogs hang their curtains, but we know it’s wrong. They know it too. We’re all connected together, right? That’s the point of the chant. We stronger than them, only we play like we’re weaker. We kings of the gutter!”
“Gutter’s real,” I say. My two cents.
Leon looks at me, confused. He think I wouldn’t talk? What’s his problem? “So’s the curtains. So’s the grid. So’s everything we fight against.”
“We’re not fighting,” Binny shakes his head. “We chanting. We’re the gutter. We promised nothing but mud. We deserve nothing but the chant.”
“We work together, we help people,” Leon says.
“Mouth dry?” I ask Leon. Seems thirsty.
“Then what?” Binny asks. His voice is deep, like thunder. Leon, he doesn’t see the danger, doesn’t know the storm that’s coming. “You think the grid suddenly goes soft? Ridged sags, stiff goes limp? All done? The grid was built strong, and straight. The river curves. They never go from one to the other.”
Cindy had enough, I think. She gets up and storms out. Doesn’t like what’s happening. Don’t think she hated conflict, got enough fire in her for that, but she leaves anyway. Me, I keep watching. Darla, she keeps looking out the window.
“They never let it happen,” Binny shakes his head. “System never let it happen. You try, you break. Grid breaks you, that’s what it does. Breaks you like it broke JJ. Like it broke Paula. You want to chant, you have to let it go.”
“No,” the nut cracked. “No more. I done with this, I done with you. Circles, chants, the whole lot could do something, and you sit there and say it’s the way it has to be. That’s bullshit. I say we do real chanting. I say Little Fred and his circle come up and we meet. Like real meeting. Do talks.”
“Like a gang?” Me, I’m looking at Darla, wondering what she’s thinking. “Like corporate merger? Like plans?”
“Like we serious,” Leon says.
Binny, old Binny, he just sits there. Should have been thunder and lightning. Should have been Ribber and Cindy there. Should have been JJ and Paula, even. Should have been Kyle and Linda and Jersey Wellen and Puffs and Sals and Digs and Little Fred and everyone. Every chanter from here to out east. They should have been there.
But it was just me and Darla left. We sit and watch while Binny takes a puff, and looks at us. Darla, she doesn’t even look up. She’s staring out the window like there’s something out there she can’t help but look for. Wistful. Dream like.
Me? What was I supposed to say? “We going to sizzle, or no?”
Leon looks at me, then. All betrayed. Like I kicked his dog. Opens his mouth and closes it, like a fish. What was he expecting? Leon, the nut. Always trying to be on the front lines. Sure, there’s room for a fight, I’m no coward, but what’s the point? What difference will it make? We’ll all still be here. I think he’s finding a front line to fight in. He could be like me and Binny, wise to sit back and watch. Let the system eat itself.
That’s that, then. I said my piece, Leon said his, Binny said his. Nothing more to say.
Leon left right then. We didn’t chant that night. Binny just shrugged, and said he wasn’t feeling it. Stood up from his chair and went into the back room. Going to sleep, maybe, or smoke some more.
“The nut,” I say. Darla doesn’t say anything. Got nothing better to do, so I go to the stash. Pull out a tab.
What do I want? I want soft. I want gentle. I want floating clouds and gentle breeze. I want a place where none of it matters, really. I want play with butterflies.
I pick up a fox. Lick the backside. Going to be a strong one, I know. Go back to the couch and settle down next to my Darling Darla, and lick away, waiting for the static.
Darla, she just sat there, staring out the window.
When you open your brain, you tap into the universe. I heard it said, once that the static you hear when your radio isn’t properly tuned, is the background radiation from the big bang. Birthing pains of the universe, that’s what they said. I don’t remember who it was who said it, but it stuck with me. Always stuck with me.
When you smoke, or take a pill, or lick a tab, you tap into that static. The sound of the universe being created. The beauty of it, I think, is that it’s always been there, in the background. We just don’t listen. All the people, all the things, all the hidden bits of the universe are right there for the experiencing.
The problem is, we don’t know how to listen. How to open up ourselves to each other. We sit in our own silent skulls and nurse our own pains, afraid to open up to one another. To find someone else and see their pain as our own.
That’s true humanity. That’s the beauty of pain and suffering. It gets rid of all the trappings the clothing, the fake sparkling jewelry. It’s just you. And that first night in the gutter, you feel so afraid and alone, that you look for any connection you can find.
You’re so afraid that you forget to look for what you expect. You forget the perfume, the haircuts, the suits and ties, and you see people where you didn’t see them before. Suddenly, you realize that there’s a whole world outside the world you thought was your own, full of people who just didn’t fit in. Boys and girls who fell through the cracks, because they didn’t play the game that was expected of them.
That’s when you realize that that is why you’re there. You didn’t want to play the game. You knew there was something real out there, and you found it.
That’s only the first step. That’s just hearing the static. There is no real system but the solar system. The next step is easy. It’s chaos made orderly because there is no order like disorder. Static. Constant, stable, and clean. All of us are just static on the back of the world. We’re all just noise, running back and forth. Dust on sunbeams, hoping to stay aloft for one beautiful moment longer.
When you sit and close your eyes, and listen to the static, you are listening to the truth.
Let it fill your head, until there is nothing but distant shapes in the snowstorm. Let it blanket everything, and you see the truth through it all. We can build roofs and shelters from the static, close our eyes, blinders and everything. But it’s still there. Will always be there.
We’re still human. More human, perhaps. We see past all the trappings and curtains that we put up to hide the dark spots of our souls. We don’t care how much money you make, or how nice your car is. We don’t have cars. We don’t look for handouts from a manufactured system designed to benefit a few over the many.
Because in the gutter, we’re all in this together. You think you’re hot stuff? You’re still in the gutter. You don’t have anything except yourself and your family.
To those who keep looking, there’s the chant. Even in the changing, it remains constant.
I’d protect it with my life, if I could.