Roger Wright – Chicago

The bartender’s name was Sam.
And as the golden Indian summer songs of October gave way to the chilly dark winds of November in the seemingly deserted city night around Wrigley Field in Chicago; Sam kept watch with her one customer, an old man named Rick.

The bar was called Bernie’s. From April thru September, and rarely for a few days in October, a carnival of red and blue celebration shouts, spilling over and into the neighborhood like sunlight as 40,000 anticipating people streamed into the old ballpark across the street. A field of dazzling green grass inside a coliseum on the grounds of what once had been a Lutheran Seminary. Bernie’s was always throbbing and full.

But on November nights, there was just Samantha and Rick. At the far end of the long polished bar that separated them like a river of time that passed much too quick. Both of them sitting with their backs against a wall, she pages through a newspaper, he looks out at the hulking empty ball field across the street. There is a comfortable silence. As if they’d sat together that way for years.

He says to her. “So you’ve settled on piano then? At Columbia?”

She looks over. Dancing hazel grey eyes. “Rick, I’m not settling for anything. It just seems like if you can play piano, you can play anything. And the program is good. So. . “

“Ah Sam,” he smiles at her. Seeing her face like a promise of tomorrow’s joy. “You will break a lot of hearts.”

And she laughs in a bubbly joy. “But I will never, ever, break yours!” Somewhere, he thinks, there is an old soul in there. Hidden in the sparking beauty of her youth. He wonders if she’s found it yet. He says, “Hey Sam?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you like baseball?”

She has put down her newspaper and is happily texting. While her thumbs beat out a rhythm to some conversation he’ll never hear, she answers, “Not really. I’m not sure there’s much to like.”

“How so?”

“It seems like baseball is all about memory and money,” she says.

“Well,” he puts an old man’s authority into his voice, “Baseball has always had its share of flim flam men. Smooth operators.”

She shoots back, cutting right through the tone of authority, smiling like a sunrise on a Caribbean Island even here, in a Chicago wind.

“Flim flam men, smooth operators? God I love the way you talk! No I don’t mean that. I don’t even know what that means! I mean money. As in, how many games did you pay to go see last year?”

“Well, ah . . .”

“”Exactly. None! And you know a lot about baseball.”

“I’m just a fan. I’m not some expert,” said the old man.

“You’re not one of those slick announcers with the voice like a greased bullfrog. All serious and saying nothing and being pretty?”

“I thought the girls liked guys like that?”

“Not this girl.”

“Hmm. You’d think I would have figured all this out by now huh? At my age.”

“Rick, said Sam, you are about the most NOT old man I’ve ever met. There are boys in my program at Columbia. They’re 23. But they are older than you.”

“So that’s good?”

“Of course that’s good. Now what else were we talking about?’

“Loosing the memory Sam?” smiled Rick.

“Shut up!” She grinned. “We were talking memory. Everything about baseball is in the past. Statistics, stories, all of it. I hear more about Ron Santo than I do about anybody who plays today.”

“That’s just because the Cubs have been trying to replace him since 1972.”

“I wasn’t even BORN in 1972! Which is another thing. Baseball is all about middle aged white guys remembering things. No kids. No women. Nobody who isn’t white. They put the world series games on past most kid’s bedtimes. I guess kids don’t buy much beer. So no point in kids watching all those beer commercials.”

“You make a good point Sam.”

The two lapsed back into their silence for awhile. Samantha kept texting. Rick kept looking out the window. After awhile, he said to her, “Hey Sam?”

“Mmm?

“Play it. Play that song again?”

She reached out her left hand, never stopping her texting, and the sounds of this song filled the empty bar.

http://youtu.be/kz-uIe_hKQs

And while the song played, the old man heard a bell chime, a bell like a door opening into the dusty corridors of time. The young girl kept texting. But the old man saw the door open, felt the November wind sweep in as the woman, not a young girl, a woman with laughing eyes, from the echoes of his mind, walked into the bar. And said to him. “Go ahead. Say it.”

Rick laughed. Pretending just for a second he didn’t know what she meant. “Say it!”

“OK. I’ll say it. But you finish it.”

“Deal.” She nodded.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world. . .”

“She,” the woman finished, “Had to come into mine.”

“So.” Rick stumbled for a moment. “How’s your life been?”

“Hah! How do you answer that question? And how much time you have?”

“I wish I knew the answers to those questions.” Rick said. “Especially the last one.”

“Well, what do you know then?” asked the woman.

And he looked at her hard and said; “I know that it was always you. And I know that you had to go.”

“Who’s choice was that?” she asked.

“Does it matter now?” he answered.

And there was silence, as they both knew the answer. The song was ending as the woman said, “Remember that lyric you had on your wall. The song was “The Dutchman.” By Michael Smith. Remember the part where it said,

She hums a line or two

They sing together in the dark

The Dutchman falls asleep

And Margaret blows the candle out

“Perfect, “ he said. “Even if your name isn’t Margaret.

“And even if you’re not Dutch.”

They took one last look at each other as she faded into the November darkness of the old man’s memory.

“Rick! Sam punched his arm across the bar. So what about baseball? We were talking about baseball. And I think you went somewhere else while we were talking. So why should I like baseball? Are you saying I’m right? That it is all about money and memory?”

And the old man answered, “Sam, let me see if I can remember this. It’s from Bart Giamatti’s “A Great and Glorious Game”

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then just as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high tides alive and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops. Today, October, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf clogged streets, it stopped and summer was gone. Somehow the summer seemed to slip by faster this time.

“Wow,” said the young woman. “That is beautiful. That’s really about baseball? Maybe there is something there besides the money and the memory. Not sure what. But something.” And as she said this she picked up the newspaper again. “Maybe there’s something about baseball in here. Hey Rick, who’s Theo Epstein?”

“He’s the kid from Boston who’s gonna try to run the Cubs. Young, smart, good looking, rich . . .Hey Sam, you know I bet he’ll come in here . . .”

“Shut up Rick,” she smiled without looking up. Any guy that pretty . . ..

Hey wait. Listen to this!”

“Suddenly you’re interested in baseball?”

“No, listen. It says that Epstein’s Grandfather and Great Uncle were two of the writers who worked on the script for the movie Casablanca! Hey that’s my favorite movie! Hey Rick, that’s pretty cool! Baseball Casablanca! Hey Rick, here’s a question. What if baseball was somehow, someway like a trip to Casablanca?”

“That,” said Rick looking out into the city night and the massive walls of the ballpark soon to be covered in snow, “that is a wonderful question.”

Listen to the drumming in the rain. A heartbeat to Occupy America.

Listen and start walking. The walk below is in Chicago. But the drum beats everywhere.

**************

Before dawn. Walking upstairs from the subway under the lights of the Chicago Theater. Into the cold dark rain of the empty city streets. And I could hear it. The drum. The echoes bouncing off the towers tumbling from blocks west. From the financial district. As if the drum had arrived alone before the people showed up.

The Artist and the Drumbeat

Turning left on Randolph Street past the studios of the Joffrey Ballet.

And the drum beat for the dying embers of all the artists under fire in a coming world where swirling ballerinas hung suspended in mid air because the funding for dancing had gone dry. “There is a budget deficit you know. So we’re sorry. But there is just no place for you to land. We’re out of money.”

While unborn story tellers, painters of pictures, sculptors with hands dipped in clay, poets gone silent looked up and saw the dancers. And then they all went still.

With no way to make a living with their art, the drum beat rose to a lyric for all the artists sitting in soulless cubicles. The fortunate ones cause they had day jobs. For the moment. They had jobs in the cold autumn rain. That lyric for the soul sucked artists went:

How the hell can a person

Go to work in the morning

Come home in the evening

And have nothing to say.

The dancer freezes in mid air. All is quiet except for the drum beat.

The Politically Entitled and the Drum Beat

You walk a few steps east. In front of a hot dog stand. A black Escalade with tinted windows pulls over. Out pops the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. His companion, a 6’5” African American man in a $1,000 suit. The two men talking and laughing together. As if they had known each other all their lives. The Mayor blends, with his companion, into the flow of sidewalk traffic. The Mayor just wanted to walk his last few blocks to work. Smiling. Looks like the happiest guy on earth.

As the Mayor and his “friend” pass, you notice the headline of a newspaper staring out from a box. You slide the coins in and begin to read as you walk. The story is about how the Mayor gave raises to himself and his inner circle.

You think first of all the decisions he’s made that have been solid. The gentle perception you have drawn from seeing him with his kids when no one is watching, the toughness he’s shown in trying to govern a very tough town. Now come raises for the inner circle.

And this phrase takes hold: “The politically entitled.” As it does, you can hear the drum beat. The politically entitled. Why do I give raises to my friends? Why do I keep the circle of power closed? I do it because I can.

You remember all the ways you tried to break into that inner circle of the politically entitled. All the years of trying. Buying the illusion that your little program and policy proposals could even be read in the inner circle. Scratching to where you actually got a phone number of the Mayor’s patronage chief Matt Hynes, clocking in now, the newspaper tells you, with a salary of $180,000.

You did get his phone number. A phone number from the inner circle. Those are rare. But you had one.

Oh, and a new way of thinking about connecting people and jobs. Something that really was unique. And a completed book and training program to make it real. So you called. And of course were shocked but not surprised when the calls were never returned.

You are not part of the politically entitled. The Hynes family had been working on the deal making, the horse trading, and the withdrawal of support for those who really could make a difference, working on it for two generations. The great blogger “Driftglasses’ quote on the two rules of politics comes to mind:

1. Rule #1: There is a club.

2. Rule #2: You’re not in it.

Of course you didn’t get calls returned. The insider didn’t know you. Because you are not in the politically entitled class.

Sour grapes? Taking your ball and going home? Bitter and not being let in to a club where you will never belong?

Could be.

So you keep walking.

The Prophet and the Drum Beat

You cross the street. Under the engraved Marshall Field and Company sign on the Macy’s store. Sitting on the sidewalk. Huddled in the rain. Face hidden. Coughing. Obviously ill. He holds a sign:

I am a veteran. I am hungry.

As you approach, this happens in a nano second, a scraggly bearded long haired guy with the eyes of time squats down. His face is even with the veteran on the sidewalk. You see Mr. Scraggly Beard make eye contact with the vet and say:

“Who needs a doctor? The healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this means: I’m after mercy, not religion. I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

And as the drum beat rises, the scraggly bearded one presses a $50 bill, I am close enough to see this, into the dirty hand of the coughing veteran on the sidewalk.

And the drum beat sings,

“And the years

That I spent lost

In the mystery

Fall away

Leaving only the sound of the drum.”

The Character and the Drum Beat

You keep walking towards Michigan Avenue. Cross and up a slight incline into the lobby of the Prudential Building. A breakfast place in the corner of the lobby. Inside, your pal. The character, Lester Lapczynski. Red plaid jacket. Black cheap hairpiece like a comb over gone very wrong. Lower lip protruding so that you need to always sit out of range of his mouth to avoid getting seriously sprayed. Usually never leaves the bar. But this morning he agreed to breakfast. Approaching the table you see he’s already ordered. 3 plates of bacon. Just bacon. And black coffee.

“Lester. Bacon? You’re only having bacon?”

“What else do you need Roger?”

“Well I. . . “

“So what is it today Roger? Feeling sorry for yourself or worried about the world? Which is it today yuppie scum?”

“Lester, I don’t have the money to be a yuppie scum anymore.”

“Ah. Feeling sorry for yourself huh? The whole nobody reads what you write, nobody listens, you’re not in the, what did you call it, the politically entitled club. Or whatever that line of crap of yours was . . . that it?”

“No I . . .I’m fine. I’m making it. More than most folks! I’m in the 99%. But who isn’t!”

“Pfft,” Lester shoots a bit of bacon from his mouth that goes half way across the room. Lemme ask you a question college boy. It’s the one you been thinking about. A question about all this Occupy Wall Street, occupy my car, occupy my basement stuff. Here’s the question. What does it all mean?

“Lester, I have no idea. Not a clue. I’m just trying to listen. Trying to tell the stories. I’m letting the people in the streets tell me. Not the other way around. I’m just trying to tell the stories.”

Lester was quiet for a moment. Something rare. “You’re just trying to tell the stories, are you?”

I nod my head. “Course nobody wants to hear them . . . I’m not in any kind of publishing club anymore than I’m in a politically entitled club. No one’s gonna pay me. . .no one will read this. . . .”

“Ah ah ah!” Lester held up his hand in a stop motion. “Go back to that part where you actually said something smart.”

“What part?”

“Think dumb ass. Before the ‘poor me’ part. What did you effen SAY!”

“I said I had no idea what this movement was really about. Not really. I am here to listen. And then all I can do is tell the stories. Whether anyone cares or not. Whether anyone reads them or not. I can only tell the stories”

Lester nodded. Took another slice of bacon. And said, “There might be hope for you yet, kid.”

There was a heartbeat of silence.

And again I heard the drum.

Two women leave home.

Back before their last names were Obama and Blagojevich. Michelle and Patti were two little girls on very similar playgrounds in two very different Chicago neighborhoods.

Michelle, the smart girl. From the South Side. South Shore. Patti the tough girl. From the Northwest Side. Both from strong, dinner around the table every night, families. Families of what we used to call “the middle class.” Parents who paid attention. Parents who loved.

In 2008 Michelle getting ready to leave her elegant home in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. In the shadow of desolate poverty, a home bought from the money her husband earned writing a book. Michelle, her two girls and her husband sitting on the steps of their home. An alternate take from the 1950’s show “Leave It To Beaver.” Michelle steeped in the swirling musical hard working culture of Chicago’s African American South Side, is asked, “What will you miss most about your life here in Chicago. And she answers, “I’ll miss shopping at the Target Store on Roosevelt Road.”

So with memories of that time she and her big eared strange gangly boyfriend Barry went to get that ice cream cone at the Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors Shop in Hyde Park, Michelle leaves home on an adventure of a lifetime. Off to live where Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Todd Lincoln lived. That was Michelle leaving home. Knowing some day she’d return.

Three years later. Patti isn’t just leaving home. She’s the real estate agent selling her home in the tree lined quiet streets of Chicago’s Old Ravenswood Neighborhood. Her husband, also in politics, but no more. So there are money issues. Patti does what she has always done. She muscles through.

The TV cameras offering free publicity because this home sale is also a news story. Patti describes the $1.1 million dollar home. Patti remembers a Northwest Side dance. Once beneath this same October moon. Her boyfriend Rod was funny. He was handsome. She was in love. And as the TV shot pitched as a news story is there to be engineered by her to sell the home, she’s asked, “What’s it like for you, having to sell the house?”

And in her answer, the tone of cold blue steel that made her so tough on that playground comes through. It took a fraction of a second. She showed that steel and said, “Rod and I have moved lots of times. But this is the only home our girls have known.” She speaks of her daughters. The toughness shows. And then in a blink she’s back describing the home.

Patti leaving the home and not knowing where she’s going.

At the exact same time Michelle, now sitting deep inside Mary Todd Lincoln’s Old White House, decides she’s going shopping at Target. Fuck it. She’s going to Target.

So the emails are shot off to the press office in a well-practiced drill, a photographer is assigned, and a convoy is rolled out to transport First Lady One. Commentators start to ramp up. A verbal barrage is orchestrated. All for the same lady who once said what she’d miss most when she left home in Kenwood, what she’d miss most was shopping at a Target Store. She said it. And she actually meant it.

Michelle’s convoy moves out, a flurry of black tinted glass SUV’s that stop traffic. On the way to Target.

While the TV cameras go dark on Patti’s pitch to sell her house.

Patti takes a breath. Squares her shoulders. She has a sister, Deb, who will be over later tonight. A Dad who is fierce in his love for his kids. A memory of a Mom who knew what it meant to make a home and taught her daughters well. Patti is tough. She always has been.

She’s leaving her home.

Michelle will, many years from now, leave Roslyn Carter’s White House and go home back to Kenwood. Back to Chicago.

One women leaving home and then going back home.

One woman just leaving home. Destination unknown.

So both listen. Listen hard. And oh so faintly under the same October moon, shining over all of Chicago, comes the strains of an old British rocker named Nick Lowe. A singer neither of them even knew.

Word has it that he once wrote and sang a song called “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll.” And now, after all these years he is singing a song called “House for Sale.”

And even before they listen they are amused by that. If only for a moment. But that moment means a lot.

Two women leaving home. Tough women.

Who will find home.

Again.

http://youtu.be/uGQm38ujdaM

Lester “The Lip” Lapczynski nursing a ginger ale in the air conditioned blast at the dark end of a Chicago Loop bar. Ninety five degrees on the second of September. Late afternoon. Downtown emptying out for the Labor Day Weekend. Lester in the red plaid jacket. Bad combover. Cheap black framed glasses.

Lester was always home at the bar. And I had a Labor Day question. So I stopped by because they had closed the cubicles up early.

Lester?

Shut up Roger.

But I haven’t . . .

Yea I know. You haven’t. So I will. I’ll put the question out there. Besides. Shut up is a good way to start with a guy like you. Kinda guy who thinks he knows stuff.

Lester, if I knew stuff. . .would I have been. . . .

Yeah, well. I know why you’re here. You’re here to ask about unions. Ain’t you? You’re here to ask me if they’re dying, right?

Well yeah.

You’re here to ask me if their time has come.

Well as a matter of fact. . .

Don’t tell me facts Roger. Because that question ain’t got squat to do with facts.

Lester how can you say that? It’s a fact that union membership is going down big time. It’s a fact that unions have been known to be run by crooks. Crooks, Lester. Crooks!

Roger. Have a not taught you nothing? You pissant. You call yourself “Chicago Guy” and put the picture of Algren up there on the top of this page. You are a child. You don’t see it do you?

Lester, what I see is that up in Wisconsin, all over the country, there are people trying to bust unions!

Wisconsin government? You mean ‘The Student Council?’ Roger, that’s an easy one. Even for you. Think Roger. Think about bullies. Plain old garden variety cheap, flat and empty bullies. Of course the bullies in Wisconsin are trying to bust the union. Any moron could see that. That’s easy. But I’d expect you to dig a bit deeper Roger. Now think. Ain’t there more to figuring out unions in 2011 than calling out bullies?

Well, I know that a lot of the people who run unions are crooks. They don’t care about the workers. They just care about the cream they can skim off the top. Is that what you mean?

Nice news flash ace. People who run unions can be scum. Keep that kind of deep thinking up and maybe somebody will actually hire you for real money to write something. No, that ain’t it.

Ok, then look at the fight going on with the teachers union here in Chicago. They’re saying the Mayor is trying to bust the union. And the mayor is saying “I’m embarrassed that Chicago has the shortest school day of any big city in America.” Both sides are saying ‘This is about the kids’ and. . .

Whoa. Easy, Urban Cowboy. This is about the KIDS? Did I just hear you say, ‘This is about the KIDS?’ You are fucking kidding me. This is NEVER about the kids. Ever. That kind of line is ALWAYS code,

Well what’s it about then?

It’s simple Roger. It’s about power. Just power. Of course there are scumbags running unions. There are scumbags running churches and countries and companies and even charities. Now, let me pause there for a minute to let you take that in. I know you can be a little slow sometimes.

OK Lester. I got it. Scumbags everywhere.

So here’s the point. Oh wait. Before I tell you again. What was it you used to do where you made all that money?

Male model?

Don’t be cute Roger. I’m trying to teach you something. Oh yeah. Teach. You used to teach bosses how to be better bosses. Now, how’s that working out? Anybody paying for that these days?

Lester, you already know no one pays for that anymore.

Of course I know. That train left the station about three years ago. A person can do that kind of teaching indirectly. Maybe you can do it well. I heard you were usually pretty good at it. Accept for that time at the church when it didn’t work out.

Lester, lets not talk about where it didn’t work. That will get us off track. That’s a whole other story in itself. The point is that no one really helps or teaches bosses to be better bosses. No one really teaches leaders to lead. The world is full of people called bosses. And lots of them just aren’t very good at being bosses. And the people above those front line bosses–they just don’t care.

Hah! Now you’re getting it. Now you’re close. So I’ll push you on to the finish line and tell you the answer.

The answer is this Roger. People will always need unions. Always. Even when the unions are a big fat collection of pigs at a trough just like the management they go head to head with. You know why Roger?

Why?

Because there will always be a need to protect the vulnerable. Protect them from bosses who don’t know HOW to be bosses. OR—and this is even tougher–protect them from larger forces, or bigger bosses, that just don’t CARE. Folks who LIVE to step on the little guy.

So unions will never die. Because we will always need someone to protect the vulnerable? That’s what you’re telling me Lester?

Always. Always. Always. And if the union doesn’t do that then fix the fucking union. Or find some other way to fill the need of protecting the vulnerable. Fix it Roger. Don’t kill it. Fix it.

But what if. . . .

There are million what if’s Roger. A billion. And it all comes down to this. Somebody has got to look out for the little guy. Because if no one does that? We’re all done. It’s over. So you hear me Roger?

I hear you Lester.

OK, if you hear me.. . .then what am I saying?

You’re saying Happy Labor Day.

Damn straight.

Keith Jarrett draws one shimmering copper colored note from his piano. Then another. Now, laying down a chord the way Monet laid down a painting. From that one chord comes the melody. Maybe recognizable—“There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us.” But the recognition of the piece doesn’t really matter.

Open your eyes and watch this guy carefully. You’ve looked him up on You Tube. Or, you’re in the 9th row of Orchestra Hall in Chicago on a rainy September Saturday night. Basking in the echoes of all the music that’s poured over you inside those acoustically perfect walls.

Keith Jarrett is celebrating 25 years of a trio, with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock. Two elder statesmen of musical depth who don’t just provide rhythm; with bass and drums they are the rhythm, the rhythm that anchors the soaring golden tones of Jarrett somewhere near solid ground. Or they take him along to give purity to be-bop. Many would say that’s a contradiction, and that’s okay.

Because there simply is no one else like Keith Jarrett. You watch him create and you realize just what it means to create. Every whimper, every groan, and every shout of joy from wherever it is he goes when he creates. The way he moves on the piano bench. No other human being has a spine like his. If you were to see him in mid-song, literally slide up over the keyboard and into the piano, bouncing and vibrating on the strings with only his feet sticking out to accentuate a line: you wouldn’t be surprised.

Listen hard, and something else starts to happen. Something that happens nowhere else, dancing in the interplay of the handoffs from piano, bass to drums, with a pristine clarity of tone, you realize that there is a bridge these artists are painting, a bridge that starts on the walls of your very soul. A bridge that reaches the part of you that is only you and no one else.

You stand on that bridge and your mind is so sharp, so clear: that where you are right that second doesn’t even matter. The music has prompted you to think. Why think? Why not feel, just hover, or float away on the music?

Because as the shimmering blues and cool green crystal of this music propels you forward, walking on the bridge Keith Jarrett has built to somewhere: you can clearly see whatever it is you are up against right this second. Your own very most private challenge. The thing that’s holding you back. That stopped you cold. You can see it, and as you see it—you can name it:

Today I am alive. I will get through this thing I’m going through now. There will be a job for me where I can add all I want to add to the world. That person now gone from my life: I can handle that. Maybe not now but I will. That sorrow as our beloved country bends to its knees weighted down by the loss of our very moral center. That collective groan of horror that goes out across the world as we look at what we’ve collectively become.

Today I am alive.

Your step feels so light on Keith Jarrett’s bridge to somewhere, that it brings you back into this world. The lights go up. The performers bow and take their leave…but the music stays.

As if the musician’s hand tossed you a golden, braided rope and yanked you through your own private fire.

———-

Edited by L.C. Neal
This piece was originally published on www.fictionique.com