CLOUT IN THE GRID

Yeah. Point of no return.

I’m telling this to you because I believe that after what I’ve done, in about 5 minutes or so, nobody will be able to tell the same story the way I want to say it. What’s funny is that it’s impossible that you will even hear this story unless you read about it tomorrow in the papers.

The metal is still hot. My breath has slowed. I feel my body like never before—like it’s a new thing. I can feel my blood and every inch of concrete beneath my feet. I smell everything. I smell the dirt in the floor. I smell the oil of the parked cars in this garage. I smell the wind coming through the open window.

I feel I’m falling on a Ferris-wheel when they reverse the feed, going backwards. You know, going down fast—your feel like your feet are going to go right over your head and your stomach is in your throat. Like you’re going out of your senses. That’s how I feel—but you know you’re not really going to fall.

Or like a kid on a swing set. He pushes with his feet, pumping back and forth, back and forth, until a certain height, the chain slacks down, jarring his bones.

This is completely different though.

I can hear the sirens. La-tee-da. I think of a kid blowing his little horn through a playground.

This is about me. I regret starting the whole thing. It’s easier than this. Fuck it.

I’m not going to finish the rest. It will happen on its own. I’m not thinking about you or these words or the sirens or the swing set or the Ferris-wheel or the walls with the rat holes or the smell of the oil, or my sweat, or my blood, or my breath.

Inhale.

Take it in.

Hold it.

Smile.

Breathe out.

Smile.

Smile.

*

Hank and me were over at Relay’s drinking whiskey. Hank was pissed.

“Fucking bitch.” His woman was leaving. Again.

I shook my head. “Bitch.”

Hank squirmed up on his bar stool like a lizard, his eyes squinting with rage.

“You’re fucking right! You’re fucking, fucking right!”

He looked around and saw people starting to stare, so he yelled louder. That’s the way he was.

“Goddamn it, I must be cursed,” he said, taking a shot of whiskey. I could relate. Sort of. My wife had been the love of my life.

Hank liked her too, the mother of my boy. My boy had her eyes and they were the finest eyes I have ever seen.

He finally calmed down. The bartender was good and didn’t say a thing. Only poured us another. Did his job proper. We both took it back together in silence.

We both sat for a second. Hank had met Maria too. Hank took me aside when she went to the bathroom.

“A 10! A 10, my friend! Don’t fuck this one up!” Hank’s big head went with his dopey grin. He put so much whiskey into that dumb face, like a dog lapping water. I did too. We both had that in common. Our women and our whiskey. I took a shot with my girl and he took a shot with his. We both came up short. Roll the dice. Pick a card. Scratch a ticket. Get lucky.

But tonight, watching him scream on his barstool, I was lucky and I knew it. Maria lets me see Kaleb on the weekends.

Last time I had him I took him to the park. He was curious. He wanted to know why the grass was green. I told him because all the other colors were already picked. Blue went first, the sky was big, white was second, clouds could be big too. Green came second to last.

I let him play in the dirt. He kept looking back at me to see if I’d yell at him. I’m sure Maria never let him do that, and what are Fathers for?

—Why was the dirt wet?—

—Cause it was sad.—

—Why?—

—Because all the colors were already used. It got stuck with mud.—

His little face turned up.

He brought the mud up to his face and blew it a kiss.

He washed his hands off in the sprinklers and ran off to the swings. I chased him over the green grass.

—Push me Daddy!—

—Higher! Higher!—

—Like a rocket ship!—

—BOOOOM!!!!—

He screamed out. The slack chain went loose at first, then cracked each time he got higher and higher. He had finally swung as high as I could push him. The slack came down with a crack on the chain. He started to cry as the swing slowed down with him in the seat.

Come here, I said to him. I held him in the swing. He nudged hard into my arms.

—Why Daddy!—

—You were going too high.—

—I don’t want to go anymore.—

—You don’t have too.—

—You stay right here.—

—Close to the ground.—

—Close to the dirt.—

*

Hank is drunk. I am drunk. We watched the big TV over the bar. A well-groomed newscaster came on the screen. His face glistened under the studio lights. There was a stolen car chase in LA. Armed robbery. Assault. The helicopter camera follows the car on the freeway. The lanes were wide open. Behind the speeding red sedan, a steady line of black and whites followed fast. Hank shouted out:

“Run ‘em all down! Push it! Push it!” He cheered. Some others caught on and started to clap.

“It’s stupid. He’s just gonna get caught,” I said under my breath.

Hank looked at me with big eyes. “Yeah, but the ride man!” Hank loved every minute. “The ride,” he said. “At least he took the ride. The best ride of his life.”

“The last ride of his life,” I said.

One of the cops slammed into the sedans bumper. The newscaster squeaked:

“…Bob, it looks like the LAPD is trying now to stop the driver…yes…he’s going for the cut off…no…he’s still going…may I remind the viewer that this man is armed and dangerous. Repeat. The suspect is armed and dangerous.”

I shake my head. I watch the little car move fast.

—Where do you think you’re going?—

I see the elbow of the guy out the drivers side window.

—You can’t get out. They get you. They always get you.—

This went on for a bit. Hank kept yelling. One of the cops slammed into the sedan. The trunk blew open. The car spun in circles.

“…it looks as if the police have got him finally…”

Hank put down his draft in silence.

The car spun to the side of the freeway. In seconds, the cops were out of their cars with their guns drawn, circling the automobile. The camera zoomed in.

“…this is it…”

The door opened.

Smoke flareed from the guns. Like ants they descended upon the sedan.

“…oh God…”

The bar went quiet. Seconds later they dragged the body out. He was covered in red. The camera flickered off—back to the studio. The well-kept people sat with dour faces behind their desks, staring at us from the television.

“Well, that’s that.” Hank chugged down the rest of the pint. The murmur of the bar returned. “No chance,” Hank said.

No chance.

I knew he had no shot. It was simple.

You push the edge. You walk up to the line. You cross.

You don’t come back.

*

I waited for the subway going downtown to the courts. I already can hear the judge. He’s got his fat black robes on. He’s got a pink Irish face. He holds his gavel in his thick meaty hands.

CRACK!

Unfit parent. Restraining order granted. No contest. Sole custody. I see Kaleb waving at me from the back of a car window. It pulls away down the grey street and I’m left alone on the sidewalk.

Before the deep cut in the subway where the steel girder tracks lay there is a yellow painted line. The danger zone. A warning. The third rail. Surge. Right through the body. The body made mostly of water likes the current. Right through the center—rattling the bones. Fall down—dead.

Should’ve never gone over there after the bars. Too many whiskeys. I wanted to see Kaleb. I felt like I wouldn’t be seeing him much anymore. I just wanted to hold him and have him nudge right into me. Put his head into my neck. I’d rub his hair around until the static shocked my hands. I can still remember what happened.

Maria’s at the door in her bathrobe. She doesn’t need to ask, this time, if I’ve been drinking. I breathe a hot breath. She slams the door. I don’t like the door. My blood is fire. My leg kicks it in.

I’m going through the house in no light. I push things out of my way. I hear the breaking of glass. There are screams, but they are far away. Neighbors must be are around. I find the back-screen door swinging open. Maria is a smart one. She left with Kaleb.

She’s a 10. She’s built for these things. Sirens.

Funny. They’re at the door. I hear a man say my name.

I am not the man in the car. I’m not stupid. They have guns to settle disagreements. The natural state of Man. Gunpowder and steel.

I am only flesh. I am only flesh.

The train roared down the track. I feel it’s wind on my cheeks. I see the lights coming down the tunnel.

I take a step. I look down. I’m deep in the yellow. The train brakes screech. The yellow line. It is coming fast. I see the attendant.

Fat face. Wide open eyes. Blue collar. 2 kids. Pension. Awards in public service. Ass getting bigger by the years, I think of all the sweat left on the vinyl seat when he leaves to go home.

One step.

Tragic accident from one step. Little blurb in the paper. No courts. No whiskey. No restraining orders. No anger. No loss. No more evil eyes eyeing me. No more sadness. Gone is the loneliness. Gone is the shame. Could do it all again. Give me a shot. I beg the light for one more shot.

I take another step.

The horn of the train goes off. Warning. The wind is as good as sex. The best kind. The kind you lay hours afterwards thinking nothing.

The train sped by. The metal moved past my nose. I smile. All the people in the windows of the train sit still. They are going somewhere else. I want to go where they go.

The doors slid open. I walked in and join them.

*

The paper says the same thing to me. The solution.

This morning a baby was found in a dumpster off Tremont Street. Her name was Sarah. The search for the mother goes on. Some say she fled to Texas. Some say Arizona. Doesn’t matter though. The baby is dead.

Three are killed by gun fire in Roxbury. All under nineteen years old. High school graduates them to the morgue. They were just babies too, steel in their hands— a bullet smoking in their chest.

It is war every day now. A continual war. War without a name—without borders—without Presidents. No ideology. No punishments. No law. No end.

Kidnappings. Beheadings. No rules. No law. No laws save for the sick laws of man.

It is the lavas fault. The bubbling hot, molten lava at the center of the Earth—speaking to our dreams, calling us towards the violence. Our dreams are hot like lava.

Flip the pages. Unemployment surges. The rifts between people are wide. Wide as the smile on the Presidents face.

It’s like Cain and Abel. Two men, brothers, out toiling in the fields. Soft wind blows below the amber sunset. One brother looks up, wiping the rich soil from his hands. He takes a breath in. There is wheat and sunflowers and the scent of juniper trees in the air. He relaxes his shoulders.

God is in the little things. A little grin lines crosses his cheeks.

The shovel cracks his face open. Red spills out and wets the soil. The blood fertilizes the ground.

The other brother has a hot oily face—his chest heaves—his flung eyes wild like a beast—stands over the body. His hands are shaking. His eyes are full of water. He wonders how he got there. He asks God. There is only silence back. Abel bleeds—watering the roots of man.

Getting the gun was easy.

The easiest part of the whole thing.

It is the extension of the arm of man.

Fire. Natural disasters. Page after page. The ink gleefully notes our slow decent. We get closer to the brothers.

My head hurts.

The headaches have been coming. Day after day—waiting for me to wake. My skull wants to crack open. There’s no insurance to get this fixed. Receiving unemployment does not entitle you to insurance. Only the little manila envelope that arrives every second Tuesday, the State of Massachusetts emblem seared onto the left corner. My head is about to bust up. I could spit metal shards.

The gun was easy.

It sits there in the corner of the room. The butt is on the ground, its long steel barrel rests diagonal against the brick wall by my bed. Rents due. I let it slack. The landlord can wait. There are more important things going on.

Car crashes. Bra Ads. Diplomacy is failing. Leaders stalk the Earth, pushing out their masculine chests.

I hold the gun in my lap and touch it like a child. It has no bad dreams. It does not cry. I hear the voices of all those who have lived for nothing. The lava is hot. Rendering flesh to bone.

Robbery. White collar crime. Insurgence in Syria. Stocks rise. Currency moves like cells in the blood, making the muscles flex.

My boss only spoke to me twice, the day I was hired and the day I was fired. His hair was perfect. He smelled of spice.

The ink in the paper might as well be blood.

It trickles on the fingertips of the man who reads it each morning. He puts bacon into his mouth. The day waits for him. His arteries harden. Cancer is hidden and waiting. He does not know this. His family does not know this. He sips his coffee and rubs the newspaper ink on his trousers.

*

“That’s the thing man—you got no money. You got no power. You got no movement. It’s the way it is. You got nothing, brother. You got no clout in the grid.”

Hank is trying his best. The people at the bar pour drinks into their mouths. They sit hunched, waiting, tired and hungry.

Hank is trying to cheer me up. I’m a thousand miles away.

“..you’ll come out of it on top. Above them all…”

His fat face is smeared with whiskey sweat. The summer is thick. The heat is on all of us. The fat gathers around his face. He’s getting bigger by the month.

“…fuck that job, man…”

I am more than the American Dream. I am the World’s Dream. The story of the ages. I am the dream of all those that have come before me.

“…you’ll meet a girl…”

His mouth is moving but I cannot hear. He is butter melting on toast.

2 + 2. The addition is easy. Make the sum of the parts whole. The whisky keeps the headaches away. His words are television. I turn the show off.

“..it could be worse…”

I could be Hank, folding inward upon my own fat. I could have other maladies. I could have no limbs. I could have AIDS. I could have secret tumors. I could have the marrow of my bones rotting. I lose my eyes in a traffic accident. I break my spine slipping on oil spots.

But I don’t. I am clean.

Nothing is wrong with me. I only hear the lava in the dirt of the Earth.

“…money isn’t everything…”

I am the completion. This is the system. The mathematics of humanity.

“..no clout in the grid, man…”

The papers do not lie. I am perfect. It is not I who has failed. It is the world that has failed. It is the molten lava burning away the hearts of man. The truth is in the papers. It is between the lines. You look close, you see the heart of the matter. You see the rifle and you see the window. You see the barrel slip out from the sill seven stories up. You walk below.

—Where are you going?—

—Shopping? Paying rent? Walking with your love? Little arms slipping into little arms. I am watching. I am seeing.—

The barrel is out. The wind hits the metal. There are no cries. There is only the wind. Getting here was easy. Walking up the steps was easy. The concrete staircase is firm. The rifle under my coat touches my chest like a cold fingertip above my heart. I walk up the endless stairs. The car port is empty, just before the end of the work day. I move to the window. Down below, over the sill, they walk like wind-up toys.

I was like these. I am the big version of the small ones down there. I wait, holding a breath, watching them through the scope. They are perfect there too, behind the glass.

Perfect.

*

Any time now. Point of no return. They will be coming.

I have this one in the scope, moving slow, hands in his pockets. He has his hair put down on his head, mucked by product. He is paying rent. He is shopping. He is on his way to his son. He has 10 fingers.10 toes. He fucks. He sweats. He smiles. He weeps. He moves like a triumphant song. He is classical music. He is an overture. He takes his hands out his pockets and pushes his hair back, his palms greasy in the light. He yawns. He stares out, stopping at the corner, waiting for traffic to slow. The cars move by him. They are fish in the great river. He looks up into the sun. He does not see me. His face is perfect. His nose is strong. He has a future. A past. A child, a mother, a brother, two payments a week, his signature is perfect. His wife makes him food. He meets her at 6:30pm. They talk of their day and eat together. In the darkness, they make quiet love. He moves fast above her. He sleeps with her head on his chest. He tells his son about the colors, he tells him of the dirt. He pushes him high in the swing, he holds his boy when he cries.

I pull the trigger. His face explodes.

I reel back from the kick. The body falls limp and cracks down on the concrete. All the people look up the building pointing rapidly. I take a moment in the swing, falling backward, stomach in my throat, in slow motion. I am above them. There is no wind. There is only the screams of the crowds below. They move insect fast. They surround the body. I do not move. I cannot even hear the footsteps.

I am the system. I am the solution. I am to be read about tomorrow in the newspaper. I have etched myself into the ink. I am part of the lava. I lie within the smoke of time.

The sirens are louder. The footsteps are coming. The black and whites are outside. They line the grounds. I don’t run. I hold the hot metal in my hands. I point the rifle to the staircase door.

The door will open. It has too.

I feel nothing as I ever have. I am weightless. My boy and I ride together, dropping slowly back in the Ferris-wheel seat. I touch his head. He looks up at me. I nod knowingly and he, in his eyes, sees what I see. This message is passed down to him, into his mind, where it will sit—where it will wait.

They are behind the door. The mens voices yell. I cannot hear them. I close my eyes. I see the yellow line.

Nobody will tell this story. It is to be read tomorrow. I will see you there. I feel my body becoming ink already.

The subway is coming down the tunnel. I feel the breeze on my face. The lights blind my sight. I close my eyes.

The door opens.

I pull the trigger.

I step across the line.