Ozzie Fitch: Chapter 20
It feels like you’re alone. Like really alone for the first time in your life.
Even when there is no one else around, there’s a part of you that’s still there. It’s looking over your shoulder and critiquing everything you do. It shows you every facet of your life, and makes you watch. It rubs your nose in every failing, and laughs at every foible. That part of you that hates you is always there. That part of you that draws the lines and puts up walls. The part of you that warns you about what might happen, or what could happen. The part that is always looking ahead of you for stray banana peels and sharp rocks. All the neurosis and psychosis that life lays over the real you are there, even when there’s no one else around. Especially when there’s no one else to drown out the voices in your head. When there’s no telephone ringing. When there’s no car rushing you somewhere else.
And there’s just you. The you that you were born with. The blank slate that your parents piled traumas on to teach you how to be an adult. To prepare you for the machine that society has become, and train you to be the proper cog.
And you see all your pain is just that, yours and yours alone. That what you share is your light and your beauty. That your pain can only shape you, and you must not blind yourself with its fury. The pain is not power, it is only a symptom of the truth. Hold to your faith, faith in those you make your own. Faith that there is love even among those who do not know you.
Walls can only hide. It is our faith in them that separates. Concrete and thick, they crumble and fall and once we are one we see that we never truly existed as we once thought. Instead, we are but echoes and shadows, flashes and specks, mere suggestions of the whole.
We can break down the walls! We can look into each other’s hearts, and see that in each reside an inherent worth and dignity that spans beyond all measure. We can, if we choose, move beyond the harsh and cold world that keeps us counting money counting up the scores counting prizes in the hopes we get a number that tells us what we deserve.
We all deserve what any one of us deserves for we are all one in the eyes of the universe. What matters who starves if we all starve together? What matters who rules if we all rule together? As we grow older we can at last turn away from our parents to our siblings for aid and comfort. We can destroy the illusions that made friends and family out of little more than neighbors. We can embrace each other as who we used to be, the innocent and the helpless, where the magic resides.
Do not want, little ones. Chant for nothing. Light the candles if you wish, burn the sage and crush the old chicken bones, but do not chant for anything.
Just sit and breathe in the magic, let it become a part of us all.
Fade with us into the static.
The birthing scream of the universe.
Reborn.
I woke up to a brand new day.
I never dreamed so vividly before, stronger than a tab. Message like. There was something there, maybe, a connection with the everything.
I knew it in my heart, but it wasn’t going away. I couldn’t put it into words. I felt good. I felt whole, like there was more to me than just myself. Like the people walking to work in the dawn light weren’t cogs anymore. They were people too.
My back always aches when I sleep upright on a bench, but I don’t mind the pain this morning. I didn’t even feel it. I look around and I see bright sunlight and green grass. I see shining mirrors and windows that spread the morning across the park.
I see smiling. I can’t put it into words.
I just know, as they walk past, talking to each other and sipping on plastic-lid coffee that there was more to it all, and less too. If I wanted, I could walk into any store in the city, speak to them, really speak, and they’d smile at me. I know then that I had been wrong for so long; that I’ve been pushing people away when I thought I was inviting them in.
I see a jogger, pumping endorphins through their legs and arms, panting as they move just for the joy of it. I see a dog, walking alongside a shiny-skinned commuter who is reading the news, learning about the world. I see someone with hands in their pockets, looking up, like something had just flown by. I see someone stick their head out of their apartment, into the sunlight, into the bright daylight, and call out to someone below.
They are all there. They are all together. I am there too. I could be with them. Like capillary action, like magnetism, like gravity, I become a part of them all. Just by sitting. Just by watching. I am one of them, and they are all of me. They walk towards me, away from me, around me, and through me. I can’t put it into words.
One of them is looking at me now. I reach out with my eyes, my soul, to connect, to embrace.
It’s the New Kid.
They’re looking at me with, I don’t know, with something in their eyes. I don’t know what it is.
They walk over to me, and I don’t move away, because I’m not afraid. I stand and wait for the kid to come over. I don’t look in their eyes.
“Hey.”
I don’t say much. I look at the ground, because the ground doesn’t look at me like that. I pat for smokes, pull them out. Offer one, and the kid nods. Just nods. Doesn’t say a thing.
I pull a smoke out of the pack and hand it over. The kid takes it, holds it, doesn’t put it in their mouth. Just holds it like a pencil. Looks at it a bit, then drops their hand. Looks at me now, not the smoke. What’s their problem?
“Haven’t seen you around,” the new kid says. What, am I supposed to be visible? Show off myself with glit and glitter? Shine like? Kid wasn’t dressed to the nines, I tell you that.
“Been around,” I say, lighting my smoke. “Haven’t seen you either.”
“No,” kid shakes their head. “No you haven’t.”
What am I supposed to say to that? Why don’t they just say what they mean, instead of speaking like I should know? Why should I know? I don’t, and they’re trying to make me feel stupid, like I’m missing something.
“I been around,” New Kid says, like it means something. “Chanted with Digs on seventh, Poppy and Sals, Little Fred…”
I knew the names. I knew Sals before she was Sals. Old Oz knows everyone. What was the new kid trying to say? “So?” I asked.
“Hard deal,” New Kid says. Like it means something. “Cold night last night.”
“Yeah?” Me, I was warm. Burning. Truth in my soul. Nothing stop me burning through the darkness, a beacon, calling everyone to me. I thought.
“Hard week,” Kid says. Still isn’t smoking, just holding it like a baby bird. “Hungry like.”
“Gutter’s hard,” I say. What do they want me to say? I say the truth. They want caviar?
“Hard fists,” Kid nods. “Hard sticks. Boots like. Flop on tenth no good.”
It happens. Boots don’t like the gutter. “You hit?”
“Yeah,” Kid reaches around an presses their side, like holding something in. “Good kick here and there.” What were they telling me for? I’m no doctor. Ozzie not a fighter, so I just shrugged. What did they want me to say? “Having trouble, truth,” Kid says. “Looking for warm places. You know? You talk to people?”
Yeah, I knew. “I talk to people,” I shrug again. I’m Old Oz, what, I’m not going to talk to people? And sometimes people ask and I tell. What, I’m not going to talk about who’s up and who’s down?
“I’m a chanter, right?” Kid says, and that just ruins my day. “I’m a chanter, right?”
What am I supposed to say? I take a puff and blow it out. Time to think, right? I think and I say “Why do you want to be?”
Kid looks at me then, with those eyes. That look. I look away, because I don’t want to see, and the kid shakes their head. Says: “It’s what I am.”
Then why ask me? Only I know the answer. Because Old Oz knows what it takes to be a chanter. Oz seen all the great chanters in the gutter. Learned from Binny, from Dan, from Bianca, even from Kyle. All the names Old Oz knows, and all the names who know Old Oz.
“You spread the word?” Kid asks. “You talk to people?”
That just ruins my day. What can I say? Say no? No, Old Oz not going to say no to a Skip like this. Gotta be nice, yeah? Only I won’t, because I seen chanters, and I know chanters, and I know what they’re like. So I look a the kid, I give them the up-and-down, and I know they never going to be a chanter.
New Kid up and asks me to spread the word. Gotta say yes. Kid makes me into a liar.
What were they doing, putting that on me? Making me arbiter? Like I knew everything? Like I want that responsibility. But they did. Can’t be mad at me for that. I did it right.
So I say yes. Gotta be nice. Lie to their rotten face, the kid looked at me with that look. Kid smiles at me and then walked away. Still holding my smoke. Didn’t smoke it. Didn’t really want it, just wanted to have it.
Old Oz, he makes mistakes. He forgot that everyone wants to be a chanter. See behind the curtain. Pull the levers. Get what you deserve. Fix what’s broken. Quite a trap. Catch you in the gears. Play their game, why don’t you. That’s not the chant.
They’ll never let you see behind the real curtain. You got to look yourself. You find the chant, you find the gutter, you pushed or jump, you see the truth.
Cogs, they need the ladder. They need hierarchy. Status. Feel better than other people. You gotta be honest. People, they want power. Power is everything. Money and sex and food, it’s all power. Hundred truth, when we first made fire, right behind the bastard was someone trying to steal a burning plank. Want it easy, right? What’s easier? Working hard at learning, making, bettering? Or just take it?
Gotta keep fresh, because they always sniffing around. Like Kyle. Bastard. They never count on old Ozzie. But there I am, making sure you get it before you get it. Watch dog at the gates, call me Cerberus. Three goddamn heads I got, keeping a watch for them that think they can just sidle on in, that the Chant ain’t important, that, truth, hundred truth, think the Chant ain’t important.
New kid would chant, sure. The gutter’s open, and it’s hard to step out. They never be a real chanter. Just wandering, maybe. Drifting, until they go back home or find someone to fool.
Damn Kid made me a liar. Not going to spread the word, let a poser into the circles. Never let it happen.
Me? I walked back to Binny’s. Where I was going to anyway, right? Only I thought there was something important, but I couldn’t remember what it was.