SAMPLE A CHAPTER:Synopsis - Prologue - #15 - #18 - #28

A Sneak Preview of a Chapter from Geometry

Chapter 17 - Huddled Masses

Joe didn’t have a clue what to expect and he didn’t care. He'd learned in seven and a half years not to care, or at least not to worry. Because worrying didn’t solve a thing. He remembered Grandma trying to tell him that, but she probably knew as she was telling him that he would have to figure it out on his own. Grandma said that worry was for fearful people, and that fear wasn’t from him, and so he knew now to let it go. He could worry if he wanted to. It wasn’t that hard to do. It was actually easier, but the results were never as good.

All he knew was that his new assignment, his first assignment, would be on a tiny base in the middle of nowhere, West Germany. An artillery battalion under the command of a Lieutenant Colonel. He knew there was a little chapel on the base and a few other chaplains in the community. A rabbi, a priest, himself, and another Protestant. Four men of very different faiths, trained at the Chaplain's School in New York by the United States Army, in Europe to minister to the traveling carnival.

The flight from Seattle to New York had been good. He liked the prestige of the uniform. They treated him differently, and it wasn’t because of his color. Every race was represented on the flight, but his new green was giving him special status. When he boarded, the pilot and crew addressed him as “Captain” when they did their “welcome, thank you for flying American” routine. The flight attendants made sure little Joe had everything he needed and wouldn’t stop cooing and flirting with him the way grown women do with toddler boys. “Oh, you’re so handsome. Come back in about twenty-five years, cutie!” Jess was noticing it too.

“What’s up with all the attention? This is getting embarrassing,” she whispered in a laugh to Joe.

“I dunno, baby. Guess these people don’t get that many Army families, We're celebrities," Joe was playing with the earphone control, the earphones given to them without charge.

“Or maybe they’re just proud of you, Joe. I know I am,” she gave him one of her patented “you are the man I would walk a thousand miles barefoot across broken glass for” looks. He loved that look. And when she threw one of her smiles on top of it, it was all over for him. He’d been working on a look of his own he thought of as his “you are the woman I would swim through shark infested waters carrying a satchel of fresh fish for” look. He laughed to himself. What would the boys back in Seattle say?

“Joe! You about as whipped a man as I ever saw!”

“Whipped? The boy’s stone cold beaten to a pulp! Don’t even recognize him he’s been whipped so bad.”

“Better check his dental records. Joe’s whipped beyond recognition!”

But Joe knew that if any one of his friends could see the way Jess smiled at him, or hear the things she said, or could look into those eyes and know her like he knew her, or if they could have any woman anywhere know them inside-out the way Jess knew him, well, they’d need to check their dental records too. He was glad to be in love. Sometimes, you have no choice. You fall in it. And when it’s right, you don’t ever want to get up out of it. Like mud, Joe thought. It can get messy, but it’s warm and soft and comfortable and deep and fun to play in. You can build things with it, or carve rivers through it, or squish it between your toes for a feeling unmatched by just plain dirt or sand. And that’s all his buddies had ever known. Just dirt and sand as far as love went. They’d never played in the mud. Dirt moistened by rain. Dirt changed into something else. He’d played in the dirt and the sand too, that’s how he knew the mud was so much better. Call me whipped. I’ll just smile at you in my unrecognizable whipped way.

They landed in New York to spend the night in a hotel near the airport. Joe wanted to look up Steven, his buddy from college who was working with junkies and whores, and had delayed the crossing a day.

Little Joe was cranky the next morning. Jess decided a hotel indoor-pool dip would be better for him than a visit to see junkies and whores by subway. Joe agreed and took the subway to Times Square alone. Steven gave him directions and told him what to avoid.

He’d grown up in the city. Seattle was a decent-sized city. It was thriving and getting its share of dangerous parts, but New York was another place altogether. Like Seattle magnified by fifty and then dipped in a pot of boiling grime. It was gritty. It was real. Riding the subway, Joe could already get a sense of why New Yorkers were proud. He could understand why Steven wanted to work here. It didn’t get anymore real than this. Humanity and filth and dreams and nightmares and hope and desperation and corruption and crime and love and passion and hate and sex and everyone just trying to get by. He could see it in their eyes on the subway. This place was alive in every beautiful and hideous way.

“‘ey, mon, you smoke?” a brother in a red, green, and yellow knit-cap asked Joe as he stepped off the subway at the Times Square station.

“No, sorry,” Joe tried to hurry past him. He didn’t have that much cash on him, but he wasn’t chancing a mugging. In the mass of humanity that he’d been in for the last hour, not a soul had spoken to him. Already Joe knew the code of New York. Shut up and ride or shut up and walk. Anyone talking to him was suspect instantly.

“What’s yo hurry, mon?” the brother was walking alongside Joe.

“Goin’ to see a friend, that’s all,” Joe walked a little faster than normal. Like the rest of the New Yorkers around him. Shut up and walk fast.

“Who’s yo friend, mon?” the knit-capped man was keeping up with Joe.

“You probably don’t know him. Name’s Steven,” Joe was getting uncomfortable. Starting to worry. Starting to let fear get a foothold. He picked up the pace.

“Steven from da rivah?” the knit-capped man was smiling.

Joe slowed his pace but kept walking as he looked at the man, “Yeah. Steven from The River, You know Steven?”

“Ah, Steven’s da best, mon. So, you don' smoke?” the brother was looking at Joe as they walked up the stairs into the cold of New York midday.

“No. I don’t have any cigarettes,” Joe apologized as he patted his coat pockets. He didn’t have any cigarettes in his pockets and never had, so he wondered why he'd patted himself that way. “Can you show me where The River is?”

“No, mon, not de cigarettes. You don’ smoke da weed?” the capped man asked.

“Oh, no. I don’t smoke the weed. Not anymore. Gave that up in high school.” Joe was smiling, “My name’s Joe,” he extended his hand.

“Please to meet you, Joe. Call me Jim. An you should smoke da weed, Joe. You all wound up. Da Rivah right ovah dare. You tell Steven Jim say ‘walk de wave, brah,’ OK, mon?” Jim was headed in the opposite direction of the way he’d pointed Joe in.

“Alright. I’ll do it. Thanks,” Joe liked the guy and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because his was the first truly friendly face he’d seen in New York.

He found River of Life Ministries right where Jim had pointed and found Steven with no trouble. Seemed everyone knew Steven. All the nasty people in here knew Steven. The hollow-eyed vagrants and the sad-eyed whores and the bleary-eyed junkies all knew where to point Joe to. And their nasty hollow sad bleary eyes all got a little brighter when they said, “Steven’s down there,” or “over there.”

He looked like a vagrant himself. Joe tried to hide his shock, but he knew he would have to address it. Steven looked like a bum. His clothes were shoddy, his shoes had holes, his beard was long and untrimmed, and his hair was long and greasy.

“Man! Check you out. You’ve gone all the way,” Joe embraced his old buddy, the guy who had taught him to blend in. To become one of the group and thus be better trusted by them. To be a friend before anything, and then do the work as it comes, “I gotta tell you, man, it’s weird to see you like this.”

“Yeah, well, you know. When in Rome. C’mon, I’ll show you around,” Steven was bounding up the stairs as he slapped hands with people in the hallway or said “Hey Rita” or Hey Chuck or Hey Frankie and Hey LaTonya or Hey Calvin or Hey Deseree or Hey Kanitra and Hey Jimmy or Hey Pinky and Hey Weasel and Hey Manuel and Hey every person he saw in the damned building. He didn’t just dress like them, like a good missionary should. He was one of them. He belonged. These were his friends. Joe was proud of his brother. His bro. The stupid white kid who had acted so white that it was just plain embarrassing in its blinding whiteness. That kid was now everyman.

And Steven showed him the beds and the kitchen and the dining hall and the little chapel and the infirmary and the plans they had for a playground on the roof for the kids. It was good to catch up, to renew and to make sure they were still in the business for the right reasons.

“I saw your friend Jim. Told me to tell you, ‘Walk de wave, mon,’ or bro or brah. Nice guy,” Joe looked out over the people rushing through the streets from the dirty window of the small third-floor closet everyone kept referring to as “Steven’s Office”.

“Jim?” Steven looked up from his plans for the playground.

“Yeah, wearin’ the Jamaican knit-cap thing, doin’ the rasta talk and promotin’ the ganja. Friend of yours?” Joe asked as he watched the bundled, shut-up, fast-walking New Yorkers move along, just trying to get by.

“He said ‘walk the wave’?” Steven got up from a stool near the crates he called his “desk”.

“Yeah, mon - das what he say,” Joe liked the rhythm of the rasta talk. It sang.

“Wild, man,” Steven looked out the window with Joe upon the masses of cold and silenced people.

They didn’t say much of anything after that. The right reasons had been confirmed again.

As the plane lifted off for Germany and began its ascent, the pilot pointed out Ellis Island and the Statue. Joe remembered the words on the plaque at the base,

"Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... "

He thought they should be amended,

"...and I’ll keep them tired and poor and huddled in ghettos."

As the clouds began to obscure the view and the Statue was barely visible standing in the water, Joe remembered the words of another proud lady,

"I sit as a queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn."

It shook him. It scared him. Only for a second or two. Until he let it go. Fear wasn’t from him.

“Walk the wave, Joe,” he thought he heard him say.

©2007 Radio Free Babylon™, LLC All Rights Reserved.