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People in the business of history want to link today’s society to significant events in the past - experiences with racism and terrorism and religious strife and all that. They think it’s an accurate picture of the world as it was and has relevance now but they’re quite wrong. They’re wrong because what actually happened had nothing to do with any of that. Nothing to do with what colour one’s skin was or who had the oil or the money and weapons to fight for it. In the end, there were only two kinds of people in the world; those who saw It coming, and those who did not.
The holy rollers who got a glimpse of It were convinced It was the divine croupier, come to take the souls of those who’d bet against the House. Good bye, atheists, so long, Buddhist monks, farewell Jehovah’s bloody Witnesses. They were all wrong.
Some politicians did not believe It existed and blamed the Opposition for stirring up controversy in an election year, raising the kind of hell and allegations the Opposition always raises, no matter what party the Opposition happens to be. All the politicians that did believe It were voted against in the polls by an ignorant public fed up with suspicion and lies. They were ultimately cast out of their constituencies faster than a rotten egg can stink up a hot room but it turned out that the general voting public was wrong, too. The public that did believe It never bothered to vote. The election turned out to be insignificant anyway.
Few saw It clearly; that was the problem. It’s first wave of contact was weak and unsophisticated, a misunderstood message couched in a nightmare no book of 10,000 dreams could interpret. Most people forgot the dream when they awoke and never connected their unease to a night of fitful sleep.
The only people who did understand the twisted message It sent were drug addicts and mental patients and, really, who was going to give credence to their midnight ramblings? Besides me, I mean.
I’m a schizophrenic. Before It happened, I took drugs to control the voices and visions and they worked pretty well when I felt like taking them. I knew the visions were devious constructs my mind created that helped tilt the unbalance of my brain somehow, like Tweety Bird landing in just the right spot to tip Sylvester into a yard of vicious dogs. He knows he’s falling and he knows the reason but he’s still going to go running after that damn bird the next time, too. There’s no getting away from it. The drugs just clip Tweety’s wings and cage him for a while but he’s in there, planning the next fuck-around without any interruptions.
He got out of his cage a few times, my Tweety did. On account of him, I killed a couple vicious dogs and Dr. Berger wasn’t happy with me. When she came to jail to visit me she asked, “Why did Tweety tell you to do that, Sylvester?” I’m not kidding. My parents named me Sylvester. Don’t think it wasn’t adding to my mental instability as a kid, having that moniker. (Stupid absentee parents; I would have asked what they were thinking if I’d known who and where they were.)
“Tweety doesn’t like dogs, Dr. Berger,” was my soft reply. I hated getting questioned by her when I knew we’d fucked up. She had the kindest face. It was pudgy and sagging some on the jaw line, like a good natured hound dog. She had a few wrinkles, too, some laugh lines and others around her lips from years of smoking, but she’d quit long before she needed the chemotherapy. Her silver grey hair was growing back wavier for some reason but it looked good. She had pierced ears but seldom wore jewelery or much make-up. She preferred sense over style, like me.
I focused my attention on the fine hairs on her chin and the long, thin scar she’d gotten another time Tweety’d been bad, and tried not to let my sorry green eyes flick to the sad look I knew would be in her dark blue ones.
“Those weren’t dogs, Sylvester. They were people.” I could tell she was disgusted by what we’d done even as she tried to be clinically detached and focused. We made it hard for her sometimes.
“Near enough,” I think I muttered. I also think that if those bars hadn’t been between us, she would have slapped me. Her stubby fingers curled into fists for a moment when she gestured towards the cell but she stopped herself and spun away. She walked slowly to the exit door and rested her forehead on the cool metal instead. Mindful of my stitches, I gingerly walked back to the small cot and carefully sat on its thin mattress. I could feel every lump as it made an impression on my ass. Neither of us spoke for a while.
I studied my right hand in the poor light. The bruises seemed darker every moment, a blood flood happening under my pale skin. The blotches had spread across the back of my hand where it had blocked the metal bar that was swinging in a whistling arc toward my skull at the time. I delicately traced the gouges and scrapes I’d sustained when I fell on the glass from a broken beer bottle, a detailed story written in blood and Braille in a language I didn’t know anymore, all meaning in the symbols lost and forgotten.
Dr. Berger rapped her knuckles against the door eventually. She was done with me, I feared. The door buzzed open and I heard a guard cough as he shoved it open for her. The only person left in the whole world who saw me as a human being was about to leave me for good. I stared at my feet as I waited for her footsteps to echo down the corridor but the slow and deliberate tap came my way instead and ended at the bars of my cell. Out of the corner of my eye I could her low heeled pumps, the scruffy, brown leather in dire need of polish it would never receive. I looked again at my own battered Keds, the old runners grimy and stained with my blood, or someone else’s, with cleaner lines criss-crossing the bluish gray tongue where the broken laces once rested. They had been removed by a burly, surly officer who likely wished to see me hang from them. The guy looked quite disappointed when he discovered I wasn’t wearing a belt, too, probably wanting to whip me with it and was pouting, dreams denied.
Dr. Berger stood before me, making the tall and gaunt guard wait for her and making me, by silent insistence, give her all of my attention. I rose again and limped toward the bars to face her. Her clothes were just as rumpled as mine were from the fight and those endless hours waiting for her. She had taken her beige linen suit jacket off and draped it over her arm. The light blue cotton blouse was no match for the humidity and sweat stains darkened the material under her arms. I knew my torn Roughriders’ 2003 Grey Cup T-shirt would show similar stains if it weren’t black. Her matching beige trousers showed wrinkled signs of the long car ride. My Levi’s had oily streaks and dirt stains from rolling on the pavement in that parking lot and had a jagged tear from when the one guy sliced me with my knife. The wide white bandage was lightly speckled with red and visible through the rent in the fabric. I could feel the pull of the stitches as I stood by the bars so I shifted my weight to my good side and hoped I wouldn’t have to stand for long.
“They’ll send you to Greenhaven again,” Dr. Berger finally stated, “or somewhere worse. Prison maybe.” She looked up at me, imploring me to understand the implications without having to spell them out. We’d gone too far that time, Tweety and Sylvester. No rescue, no lucky break, no last minute script re-writes, no deus ex machina for us. We were done.
Seemed that way at the time, anyway.
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