“Look, I’m not saying we should kill him. That’d be inhumane. But a sumbitch like him could stand trial without all of his toenails attached, and I’d reckon we’d feel a lot better about the whole thing if it were to happen.” The bulgy guy spoke with the candor of a man who was sure of being on the right side of things, his eyes darting from the wrench on the table to the grim face of his companion, and his hands wobbling with a surprising energy as they punctuated his words in the air.
Samuel could listen to him drone on and on about his arguments without giving an inch. In these cases, silence was his best tool, as Fat Al required a constant supply of opposition to keep his speeches going, and just saying nothing deprived him of the oxygen to keep burning in righteous fury. On his side, he preferred to speak through actions, never having cared to convey intention through words. Sam got up and picked the wrench in his hands, looking at it and thinking, zoning out the white noise of Albert’s latest attempt at a discussion, about how this tool had gotten to symbolize the up until recently mute discontempt that the borough’s citizens had been feeling all along. He looked up through the window as another group of kids was tagging the wall of a condemned residential building, “FIX IT, OR WE’LL FIX YOU”. They didn’t bother to cover their cans, it’s not like 5-0 would be on the prowl, and no neighbor would disagree with the sentiment expressed. Al realized he hadn’t heard a counterpoint in some time, and got quiet. The buzzing of the ceiling fan got more and more noticeable in the silence, washing over the hardware store.
Months before, when the water pumps stopped working and the supply got redirected to the newly finished penthouses up Harbor street, Samuel had gone to the intersection of Fifth and Elminster, where majority of the kids old enough to be out but too young to work would gather. The corner had a good spread of services between cheap meals offered at the Indian deli, the small park where bands would sometimes do an improv rap battle, and the old arcade that subsisted on questionable practices and an unwillingness to check anyone’s age after curfew.
Under the scorching sun, he knelt down next to a fire hydrant and gave it a good wallop to loosen the top a bit, before going over the more delicate process of taking off the safety valve. The hydrant groaned before spewing a burst of stale water, and then, clear and fresh, it poured out. The kids began cheering at that point, alerting neighbors so they could get their refills.
Samuel sat on the curb, the wetness seeping into his clothes, a short respite from the heat. An old man shuffled over, his arms laden with bottles. “You’ll get arrested, you know. Why risk it?”. Samuel squinted against the sun, trying to distinguish the tired features of his interlocutor. “When something’s broken, you either ask’n get it fixed, or you fix it yourself. I got tired of askin.” And so came the wrenches, the ominous messages, the declaration that the city council not responding to their pleas was a problem, and that they, the people, had the right tool to fix it. How fast did his words gain an edge, a hint of violence. He didn’t think of it at first, but by the time the protests started, he had been proselytized.
He shifted his eyes back at the store, studying the poorly maintained shelves that barely had any products left, and put the wrench on his tool belt. Violence, when given a direction, was indeed a tool. At the back of the shop, the TV on perpetual mute kept showing images of the upcoming visit of councilman Ernesto ‘Ernie’ Caminos to address the rising tensions between citizens of the old steelworking district and the richher inhabitants of the up-and-coming luxury towers up on Harbor st. During last night’s announcement, someone in the crowd yelled “I’ll gentrify your face, you greedy mother fucker”, and police quickly disperssed that gathering. He nodded in that direction and spoke up “Can’t torture him without having him. We first need to catch him.”
Fat Al smiled, took a big breath (he’d always do a long inhale before sharing a plan, it was a big tell) and went on. “That’s why I came. You know my cuz Flavio has that transport business uptown, right? But he grew up here, he bleeds iron like the rest of us. He’s the one picking up the camera crew, gear and all. He’s in if you say you’re in. You’re the face of this. He can pick them up and get them delivered wherever we want, like the old foundry by Ginas, and we can get past security. They won’t suspect a thing, expecting all of those boxes and equipment.” He only stopped for a moment, to measure the reaction on Sam’s face, before jumping back in. “If you still think the best thing is to kidnap him instead of KZZZZ -he gestured with his finger along his non-existent neck- then we can nab him then and there. We coordinate with some of the others on the outside to spice things up, throw some insults, or a brick or two, and while the cops focus on them, we can pick him up, get him in the van and get out of Dodge.” He snapped his fingers once, twice, thrice, clapped. “Pim pam pum, kablam. He’s ours and he gets to taste justice.”
It always felt like shit, coming down. The roof of his mouth would be itchy on the inside, and he’d dream of pulling his own jaw out of the way to shove a fork and get that itch sated. And the muscles around his eyes, overworked by having captured every single change in the scenario, like they worked at 240fps while his failing hardware was used to processing 60, it all gave him a terrible disposition. Nobody got addicted to feelers for the way they left you when the high was over, but there was a remarkable irony in calling them feelers. Still, some sounds helped when it felt like too much, like the running water of the faucet. He’d taken the habit of leaving one open every night, and the sound made him dream of lazy amazonian rivers.
Ernie touched the two pills in his pocket, absentmindedly. Was it placebo to feel a tiny bit better by knowing he could take another hit whenever he wanted, or was it a real thing? It didn’t matter. What mattered, he thought to himself as he got dressed in front of the mounted mirror, was getting those animals to stop hurting his baby. He’d been nurturing this deal for years, cautiously acquiring abandoned factories, or marking buildings as condemned and unfit for residential purpose to evict the lifers faster. He couldn’t wait for them to die on their own, they’d proven to be resilient as mala hierba. Getting the suit ready felt like donning his armor. It was a demure brown 2 parter, understated. Real power didn’t come from calling attention to himself, but from blending in. In the past there would have been someone on the bed, still on the clock, pretending to love him. It had taken him lots of counseling and a judicious amount of drugs to embrace the fact that no external love, real or imaginary, would make him feel better if he didn’t love himself some more. That realization had been life-changing.
He put himself first, and didn’t look back. Didn’t take him long to go from an office clerk at a community board to have a seat on the city council. By the time he turned 40 he’d been living for 8 beautiful, rich years in the nicer parts of Delgado, where you could take a big breath without worrying about air quality or lead in water.
No tie today, he had to appeal to the ‘salt of the earth’. Maybe even risk a button open at the top, show some neck. There was loose skin there which he desperately felt like scratching at the moment, as over the years he had shrunk to his irreductible essence. The drugs, the meditation, and a hunger for more that didn’t get sidetracked with banal things like three course meals. You were rich when you ordered the lobster, took a bite or two, and left most of it on the plate. He ran his tongue against his palate once more, feeling the dryness of skin on skin.
He took the stairs down, which gave him some time to think while moving, and would give the clothes a less pristine appearance. By floor 35, he knew he’d start by calming down the most impressionable of them, and work his way to separate “the good citizens” from those who wanted to burn the city, and had no respect for authority. By floor 25, he had changed respect for love, and his next point was going to be about planting seeds for a better tomorrow. These buildings weren’t for all of us,for sure. But for our grand-children. By floor 13, he’d worked a nice sweat, and while the middle was still a blur, he knew the finishing comment was going to be where he tried the slogan the FR consultants had given him. “Thank you for your time, I’m Eduardo Caminos, and I hope we can walk a better path together.” He was feeling way better by floor 7, sharp and accutely aware of the nuances of his own modulation. He repeated the words “violent dissidents”, separating the syllables, savoring how they would clash against “good citizen”. He could imagine the talking points that late night shows would argue about from his speech, as each night got them closer to the election. The latest sentiment report was placing him at 9% with the capuchinos, and getting no bite from the vanilla whites was seen as the new trendy counter-culture to become an upstart in the elections.
By ground level, he was a lean, mean machine, ready to catch the bull by the horns. He’d get these poor voters to see things his way, and secure the appreciation of thousands of richer folks moving into the district. Then, it would be a matter of casually dropping that he was setting his sights on a “larger project”, and let the pundits go crazy. He touched his pant pocket once more, still feeling one pill there. Getting into the car, he wondered for a moment. When did he actually take the pill?