The Endless Concord, Chapter 9

IX. Community Integration Part. 2


Thom had been to the Plaza only once. I had visited him at his work one day and it was loosely decided that he would drop by. His office was in a high-rise in downtown Seattle; a place specializing in eco business. Business, he said, that maintains competition throughout the West coast some businesses apparently being more eco than others.
Thom wavered by the gate unsure if he were in the right place or not, not quite willing to make the step that meant you needed some explanation for being there. I imagined he half expected to see chains and harnesses, white jackets, large balding men with tiny legs and wrinkled faces. I had never fully explained to him the Estate’s policy on community integration.
I began to walk outside until I noticed Robert hastily legging over to him with a hand outstretched. I decided to wait by the kitchen window and see how it panned out. Robert introduced himself as Dr. Wellspring and said he’s here at the facility examining explanations and where they come from. It was laundry day and Robert was well dressed and clean shaven. From outward appearance he was a plausible Doctor.
“Nice to meet you,” Thom said cordially, and shook Roberts hand.
“We operate on a number of levels,” Robert began wistfully, rolling his hands out in the air and gesturing towards Debra, who cupped the Pepsi bottle in her hands and drank it straight out of the bottle getting soda all over the place.
“So you work with Clement? I’m his brother,” Thom began.
“Yeah I could see that,” Robert said, leaning in close to Thom, “hair follicles offer a whole range of interpretations…” he mumbled the rest in a tobacco and whiskey gargle.
“You’re very attentive!” Thom said excitedly.
“You don’t know a thing about me!” Robert hollered and ambled off, doubling back to scrutinize Thom more thoroughly before finally making his way inside.
Thom told me that most Doctor’s he meets are as equally expressive and eccentric. It took some time explaining to him that Robert was a client and not a Doctor. The thought left him relatively shaken.
A thought struck me sometime later that if I had never told Thom that the place was a facility, if I had somehow dressed everyone up as plausible members of society, he would have really had no idea. He wanted to imagine there was a clear line between the mentally ill and the relatively sane. He wanted to know which side he was standing on. And that my job was essentially to blur that line even more, to integrate, was something unmanageable. No, it could not be managed. He looked at me the rest of that day as if I had somehow tricked him. As if at any moment the coin of both worlds, the mentally ill and the relatively sane, could be tossed and flipped, leaving him face down on the other side of the line. The idea that, in this case, a breach of paradigm could be as simple as a reversal of roles, meant that our collective shift from who we were a hundred years ago and who we are now occurred on a thin bridge, something made of time and circumstance, of chance. But there was always, everywhere and always, some rope between one age and another, one man and another, whether it be love, jealousy, hatred, or something so simple as the appreciation of a home cooked meal after a days work. There is always a rope we cling to, a line, as if we were climbers making our way up the cold ridge of a mountain in a snowstorm, the only thing keeping us all together and in one direction is this rope, this history of commonality. It reminded me of the drives I had taken a few years prior when Thom moved away; the lines between Canada and America, the slow fade in landscapes, the endless roads, the thing that bridges two lands. Borders are arbitrary, later on they can be taken away, moved. And there is always something that carries over, a stitch in a fabric of land, and just so there was a stitch between Thom and Robert. There was a harmony here, a concord. Thom wanted to know he stood in societies light, and held it up as societies little lamplighter. But the light changes as if on the grand stage of some very large theatre, and one age’s lunatic is another’s genius, and one man’s enemy is another’s God. Thom was no longer safe in his politically correct, ethical affirmation of himself; the ground below him shifts, and he has no choice but to move with it or hold back, hold back like Robert, and move off on some totally different rope, off out in the white and cold of this mountain we’re all on. And the guess of which rope carry’s sanity to the next generation is as much Thom’s as Robert’s; time could show the color of rope he’s fastened to altogether different, showing it in a different light, branding him to an ilk of an altogether different kind, remembering him as someone very different from the way he sees himself. Letting Robert speak to Thom was probably the best thing I could have done for my brother.

Tonya, Randall, Marvin, Chelsea and myself, trudged ahead in the bustling compaction of thousands of people dead set on having a good time. There was some commotion up ahead now and I could see that the Masterson in 08’ people were abandoning their posts and plunging forward into the street traffic and the mustache men were pointing in front of them and jabbering excitedly. I wondered if what Willis feared would happen, happened. But when we arrived on the scene, instead of seeing Mason in a circle of outraged husbands getting slugged over and over again desperately clutching onto an undergarment he might have procured by his own devices, we saw Jason, our youngest client, playing a recorder and spinning around in circles while a lot of happy onlookers danced and sang around him. Willis stood on the outskirts with his arms crossed studying Jason’s every move.
Jason is one of those clients we hardly ever saw. We know he’s collecting SSI and we know he probably scores downtown near the Golden Sun, and there are vague rumors circulating around that he sleeps about three hours a day, all of those being in the afternoon and on a park bench at an undisclosed location, which seems plausible, considering we rarely saw him at night. He’s developed, over the two years he’s been at the Plaza, a remarkable way of annoying the hell out of Willis without anyone being the wiser. This would make it seem when Willis attacks Jason, that he has somehow lost it, and that it’s Jason that is innocent and should be shielded from Willis at all costs, this task being taken up by Mary, who considers Willis a marauding psychopath anyway.
On certain occasions, although I could never be certain, I suspected Willis of sabotaging his med count in order to make it seem to us as if he missed, thus forcing us to re-pass meds. Jason was so far gone it didn’t seem to make a difference anyway, but still it was totally off-base.
The first time I had ever caught him and Willis having it out I couldn’t find a place in the Plaza where I could sit and pretend I couldn’t hear anything. So instead I decided on playing the peace keeper. Jason hadn’t signed in or out in over two weeks. And Willis, catching him trying to sneak through the side door, barricaded himself in the hallway and readied for one of those episodes that would probably result in a crisis control intervention and investigation. I hung around the stairwell hoping to limit the amount of witnesses to whatever was about to take place here. Jason tumbled through the hallway and stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing the “I’ve-had-it” scowl on Willis’s face.
“Hey Jason, how’s it going?” Willis said in between gritting teeth.
“Well, it would seem not too well now that you’ve spider webbed my whole operation there…uh…spidey,” Jason said, looking down at the floor.
He was wearing black jeans that used to be blue jeans and a black sweatshirt and hoody. His face was pockmarked with meth scars from picking metals out of his skin. Still, he was never particularly bad looking.
“Uh huh, well I’ve asked you…oh…about four hundred times to sign in and out so we know when you’re coming and going.”
“OK, well if you’ll just let me get down the hallway I can get right on that Willis…just uh…some space…” he mumbled something and laughed to himself and began to slowly make his way past Willis.
“Sorry Jason, I’m afraid I’m going to need you to sign an I.R. I’ve asked you too many times…your exit privileges will be…you know…revoked,” Willis said slowly and with a triumphant smile.
“OK, well go and get that IR and some paint-brushes and I’ll just…you know…sign it…cockroach.”
“What was that?”
“Top notch.”
“I see.”
Willis began to make his way towards the office when Jason turned around and slowly made his way towards the side door he came in through when Willis grabbed him and blocked his entrance.
“I’ve had it with this bullshit! You are so out of here!” Willis yelled.
I caught Robert on the stairway trying to make his way onto the scene. The clients have a remarkable way of knowing whenever an event is taking place. Marvin and Randall opened and closed their doors over and over again and Annie screamed and held her head in her hands. Jerry, who had just made a fresh appearance, danced around singing, “Jack and Jill ran up the hill…”
“Just take it easy Robert!” I hollered, trying to keep him from entering the hallway.
“I’ve got to get down there man! I’ve got to get down there!” He yelled, moving rapidly up and down two or three stairs and jumping from side to side.
Marvin yelled at the top of his lungs.
“...Jack and Jill ran up the hill…”
“Everybody just cool it, cool it!” Willis shouted.
Jason stood there in Willis’s grasp laughing triumphantly.
“You are so gone!” Willis assured him again.
Jason, our worst client according to Willis, had an insurance policy that practically supported the entire facility. He could never be kicked out, no matter what he did or didn’t do as far as higher administration was concerned. And supposing he suddenly showed dramatic improvement, new evaluations would be made, evaluations supporting a claim he had made none. Jason would remain in Estate hands, as long as the insurance held up, forever.
Jason smiled and did a little jig while Willis grappled with his arms.
“Goddamn it you little faggot!” Willis screamed.
Jason grabbed his ass. Marvin fainted. No I.R.’s were ever filled out.

Jason had a little crowd around him now as he danced. People looked on in amusement while several large women with dreadlocks went around offering instruments to any takers. Often during the street parade there are “do-it-yourself” marching bands made up of anyone who decides they want in. Randall and Marvin were among the first to reach inside the box and grab some of the more obscure ones. Randall had a kazoo and Marvin managed to get his hands on a trumpet. A few other passersby jumped on some of the horns, as well as Annie who now toted a violin with a half strung bow. Libby clapped as the makeshift band ambled around Jason awkwardly blowing out-of-tune notes out of trumpets and kazoos. A man in a purple parka had his kids playing plastic drums. Mason was playing a harmonica. Willis and I tried keeping him as removed from women and children as possible. This required us just kind of pushing him to an area of the crowd where he was least likely to offend anyone.
Even Robert showed up for the occasion. He seemed to appear out of thin air -like he often does wherever some form of insanity erupts. He picked out for himself some clash cymbals he slapped together wildly in out-of-rhythm jerks and seizures. Everyone seemed to be smiling and in the most excellent of moods. People clapped their hands together and patted Jason on the back while he performed his ceaseless spinning.
After a while I lost my apprehension something horrible were about to happen and got in a bit closer and showed them my support. Half of the Plaza clients were involved now and all of them were bursting with joy. Even Debra was working the crowd, moving along the edges pandering for money, trying to explain to people over the clatter that she had just ran out of gas and she just needed enough to get home to her children. She even had the gas can we thought we had removed from her room. She also had a Pepsi bottle she toted on a rope she had tied around her waste. Conrad and Jake, filing behind her in sheepish embarrassment, made a move to ask her to stop pandering, as it violates Plaza contract, but were signaled by Willis who was standing towards the edge of the crowd with his arms folded and a big smile.
“Let her do it,” I heard Willis say to my surprise.
Conrad and Jake shrugged and made their way to the opposite edge of the circle.
Close to the height of amusement the crowd made way for another ceremony of musicians and screamers with loud speakers.
“Make love not war!” the people shouted.
The audience clapped and showed their support with meaningless yelps and hollers. The stage was set to make room for new actors. They joined and mingled together marvelously. There were over twenty musicians now; children, lunatics, Republicans and Democrats. They merged into a common flow, a single colorful form. The music itself was completely nonsensical, but somehow the more awkward and bizarre the mix of out-of-tune notes and clashes, the more the audience would get worked up into a frenzy.
And Plaza staff had the whole thing surrounded. Willis was giving me a look that suggested, “We did it this year,” and I couldn’t help but feel this whole day worked out to a fine finish.
“Make love not war!” the new band members shouted, trying to keep rhythm with the music, beginning to sound more and more adamant about the message.
And right when the situation couldn’t have gotten any better it turned decidedly worse. I wasn’t the first to notice the movements of the love-drunk Jason spinning around in the middle of the band circle. It was the children who pointed it out to the rest of the audience; pointing and laughing, mimicking the movements themselves, bewildering the parents. One saw the hands of certain children being pulled away, pants down, arms flailing wildly, wearing large, almost delirious smiles. And as the children were pulled out of the circle, instruments dropping to the ground, the parents had their eyes not on the kids but on Jason. Large, offended, disgusted eyes. Jason was masturbating.
“Make love not war” slowly began to die out as the band leader, a dreadlocked girl no older than 25, lowered her bullhorn and looked on completely taken aback.
Hysterics reverberated through the audience. While Willis rushed towards Jason with a jacket, and as Randall, Robert, and Marvin followed Jason’s example and dropped their pants, while Libby laughed and held her breath, and while Tonya looked on in wide-eyed astonishment at the size of Marvin’s jumping penis, an audience of 20’something, well-educated and mature liberal family men conspired to tackle the Plaza patrons and beat the living shit out of them.
I instinctively held my Plaza badge high in the air and screamed, nonsensically, “Protocol, we need to follow protocol here!”
It was certain members of the locally acclaimed anti-war band that reached Jason first. They rushed towards him in such a fit of rage even Willis stepped back, holding the jacket and fearing his own safety. The first man to march forward -a tall and skinny family man with a violin and a “Masterson in 08” t-shirt, was the first to throw a blow. He attacked Jason in such a fit of rage it was over before it began. I was surprised, knowing Jason to be quick on his feet when he needs to be. After leveling Jason the enraged family man went after Marvin, swinging wild blows and yelling at the top of his lungs. He was crying and insane with rage. In a way, he was both enacting and protesting violence at the same time.
I saw Mason out of the corner of my eye poking a woman in the breasts with one of the mini-American flags and laughing like a child. It was the happiest I’ve seen him in two years. She was cornered and yelling for her husband, who was already wrapped up in kicking at the downed Marvin with a group of other enraged family men and couldn’t hear her. I ran over and tried pulling Mason away but was pulled back and pushed down by one of the family men who apparently took me to be one of the sex offenders. I showed him my badge from the ground where I sat with my head turned down and my eyes closed fearing a bash from the street sign he was holding.
“We’ve got to follow protocol here, protocol!” I yelled at him. When I opened my eyes and looked around he was gone.
The departed parade-goers and the new, excited sightseeing crowd exchanged places in a seemingly pre-rehearsed rhythm. This new audience was both astonished, frightfully humane, and bloodthirsty. Dog-walking joggers paused in place and simply couldn’t look away. Frightened teenagers wearing anarchy patches on denim jackets called the police. A crippled veteran shook his head and remarked something inaudible to his wife, and to Justin, who stood next to him and another veteran shaking his head. They appeared to be speaking about the Ho Chi Minh Trail -I gathered through Justin's hand movements, which I was familiar with after having spent long hours with him. I watched Justin until out of the corner of my eye I spotted a woman with a mohawk and a dog collar calling Marvin a creep. She threw an orange juice bottle that nearly hit him on the head.
Willis picked up his courage and stepped in hard, pulling the family men off of the four clients. He yelled for my help as well as Jake’s and Conrad’s, who stood on the outskirts whispering to one another. I got up off of the ground and stumbled towards Marvin in an attempt to shield him from the blows carried out by two men with “Masterson in 08’” signs. They hit me on the back while I yelped nonsensically about the necessity of order and regulations. But before I could do anything of real value, Jake ran in. He threw his bodyweight on the man who slugged Marvin and was somehow able to throw him, screaming and twisting, through the shop window of Fubbie Wubbie’s pet accessories. And for a brief moment, all the flailing arms and limbs, all the hollers and shouts, and all the cellphone conversations were put to a halt. The civilians gazed blankly at Jake, who was moving along the warpath like a skilled Achilles pulling people off of the clients with ease. The precision of his attack was like nothing I had ever seen. I had to roll over to the curb just to avoid being stepped on during his rampage.
And just like that the violence had ended. Jake had successfully crippled the outraged parents and the delirious marching band. Jake had taken them all out. Even Willis had been thrown down. He was laying on his back, one arm twisted, the other supporting his weight on an elbow, one knee raised, with bewilderment as he watched Jake pat himself down.
Annie was clapping with a wide smile.

The police arrived and interviewed the activists who pointed out who needed to be thrown in jail and who should be congratulated. I picked Willis up off of the curb. He was shaking and muttering to himself. Jake and the four clients were arrested. The band members were lauded as heroes. Tonya and I approached the officers with Plaza badges, explaining these men were mentally ill and need to be handled considerately and so on. It was agreed they would go to the hospital instead of jail in accordance with the new boundaries in a situation where a Plaza client loses it. Jake was to be taken to lockup, apparently going too far according to police reports later on.
The scene resembled a boxing stadium when the bright lights are turned on and the indifferent janitors are brought in to clean up after the people had all gone home. Paper cups and broken band instruments were scattered around. People moved through the street in a new light making self-assuring acknowledgements as to the importance of holding it together and so on. People who were actually interested now looked as if they had never been interested. Dogs were taken home and fed. The formerly masturbating children were removed from the street by confused parents. The street parade rolled on as if nothing had happened and people, following suit, feigned interest in the entire affair. The show was over.