Everything Matters!

by Ron Currie Jr.

  “Maybe then they pay more attention to what’s goin’ on with cripple people. We ain’t like these deadbeat motherfuckers out there.” Reggie gestures toward the window, on the other side of which the men can still be heard arguing with one another. “Sittin’ around all month waitin’ for a check, get all the money they need, so they can cash it in for sixty cents on the dollar, spend half at the liquor store an’ lose the other half in a dice game. Got two good arms and legs, every one of ’em, but ain’t never thought about gettin’ a job. While people like me want nothin’ more than to work, ’cept we only got half a fuckin’ hand.”

  Here is something you do not know about Reggie, because he never speaks of it: the reason he’s hypersensitive to the plight of disabled people is because he knows firsthand how little the able-bodied care. Not so long ago Reggie was a 210-pound cement mason, his legs, arms, and ear all present and accounted for, and he’d never given a thought to the disabled beyond studiously ignoring the legless panhandler who worked the corner at his El stop. He was so perfectly functional, in fact, that he was able to carry on a short-lived affair with a bored, moneyed white woman who had an appetite for black men, Grey Goose marti nis, and Prada leather, a woman who not coincidentally was married to the owner of Fullerton Cement Company, where Reggie worked.

  Their affair might have been longer-lived, if not for a coat closet quickie they indulged in at the Fullerton Christmas party in 1992. Reggie wound up with baseball-sized rug burns on both knees and a quarter-sized burn on his arm. Which is no big deal, right, rug burns hurt but so what. Except that instead of getting better, Reggie’s rug burns started to hurt worse on the second day, the pain spreading up from the knees and down from the right elbow. At work they were setting the form for a foundation, which required Reggie to get on his knees repeatedly to check pitch and depth, and by the third day the pain was too much and he called out sick, which he’d never done once since he started working at age eleven.

  By this point the pain had marched inexorably up into the bones in his hips. He poured sweat and puked until there was nothing left, then dry-heaved. His knees started to ooze a reddish-brown fluid that smelled exactly like the landfill at 122nd and Torrence, and that was when he finally decided to take the El to CCH, except that when he rose like an old man from his Canadian rocker he promptly passed out, and didn’t wake again for eleven days.

  When he did finally come to, six physicians stood in pairs around the bed he found himself in. He would have woken to just a nurse, or else no one at all, except that the incidence of necrotizing fasciitis (known commonly as flesh-eating bacteria) is about 1 in 100,000, and thus rare enough to be of great, career-making, Journal-of-the-American-Medical-Association interest to any physician lucky enough to witness a case. Because they hadn’t noticed that Reggie was awake they continued with their examination, pulling the covers back from where he quite reasonably expected his legs to be, and in this especially horrifying manner he discovered a good portion of his body had been removed without his knowledge, input, or consent.

  Missing limbs aside, Reggie was now staring at the business end of a three- or four-month hospital stay, and though he had health insurance through Fullerton Cement, the maximum benefit for his policy had expired with a whimper the day before he came to, leaving him with coverage as comprehensive as the average junkie’s. Enter Jasper Fullerton, Harvard grad, multimillionaire, white guilt aficionado, and owner of Fullerton Cement.

  Jasper came into Reggie’s semiprivate room nearly at a run and held his right hand out for a full ten seconds before finally realizing that Reggie had nothing to shake it with. Loose neck-flesh bulged from the sphincter of his collar, and his eyes shone wet and anxious as he took in the sight of Reggie’s wasted body. “Mr. Fox,” he said, “I’m so sorry this has happened to you. I want you to know that, with as much as you have to worry about, one thing you won’t need to worry about is money. I plan to continue to pay your weekly wage indefinitely, as well as any medical expenses not covered by your insurance policy.”

  These are things, incidentally, that Jasper would not have done for a white employee.

  “That’s very kind,” Reggie said without much conviction. Only a few days into his career as a triple-amputee, he literally couldn’t have cared less about how he would pay for his hospital bills, so Jasper’s grand announcement had a less-than-electrifying effect on him.

  Jasper, disappointed that his generosity hadn’t aroused the sort of sputtering gratitude he’d anticipated, nevertheless pressed forward with the script in his mind, which at this point called for him to dismiss the sputtering gratitude with an aw-shucks display of humility. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Jasper said. “You contracted the illness at work, so it’s my obligation to take care of you. It’s the least I can do, really.”

  “I didn’t get it at work,” Reggie said.

  “No matter,” Jasper said. He placed a hand on Reggie’s shoulder. “Don’t speak. Just rest. I’ll take care of everything.” He then withdrew from the room before any more of his script could be rewritten.

  From that moment forward, Reggie had nothing to worry about. He’d lost three limbs but gained a sugar daddy. He wanted for nothing and never saw a single medical bill. Jasper visited weekly during his rehab, smiling down on the results of the first-rate care his money provided. Reggie progressed briskly, and in less than three months he was released from the hospital. He rode in a top-of-the-line electric wheelchair paid for by Jasper, had a home nurse paid for by Jasper, lived in an apartment paid for by Jasper, ate food paid for by Jasper with sil verware paid for by Jasper. And he hated every minute of it. Not because he felt guilt over having slept with Jasper’s wife, but because having to accept charity from another man made him burn in places he didn’t have anymore. Reggie worked hard and paid his own way and that’s how it always had been. Obviously he would need to adjust his thinking a bit on these and other issues, but having to suffer under Jasper’s paternal gaze every week for the rest of his life—no, that was something he could not adjust to.

  He tried telling Jasper that, while he appreciated everything he’d done, it was probably time for him, Reggie, to figure out how to live this new life on his own, without anyone else’s help. And Jasper listened and beamed sympathetically and said of course, Reggie, but how? How, with no legs and only part of one hand, would he possibly get by without anyone’s help? He didn’t see how Reggie had any other options at this point. Besides which, Jasper was sure there were thousands of disabled people in Chicago who prayed every day for exactly the sort of financial intervention Jasper provided, the intervention Reggie wanted to throw away, and perhaps Reggie should ruminate on that fact for a while.

  For months Reggie’s subsidized existence continued, until finally he realized the only way to get Jasper to stop was to tell him how he’d lost so much of his body. Jasper had stopped by to make sure the new maid service he’d hired was doing its job, and Reggie, never one to waste time or syllables, just came out with it.

  “I got sick from rug burns,” he told Jasper. “And I got rug burns from fucking your wife.”

  Jasper stared. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Sorry,” Reggie said. “But there it is, man.”

  Jasper was quiet for a few moments, then recovered himself and gave a barking half-laugh. “That’s very funny, Mr. Fox. Very funny.”

  “Ain’t no joke,” Reggie said. “We did it at the Christmas party. In the room where they put the jackets. We done it once before that, too.”

  Jasper’s face bore the shattered expression of a man for whom long-standing suspicions are suddenly being confirmed. But he was still resistant. “Why should I believe you?” he said. “What sort of proof can you offer to support this claim?”

  “Not much,” Reggie said. He thought for a moment. “She got a scar on her ass. She didn’t say nothin’ about it. But it look to me like somebody bit her. Long time ago.”

  At this Jasper looked away,
anger and shame sparring in his eyes. “You’re telling the truth,” he said, his face darkening.

  “Always do.”

  “Well then,” Jasper took up his coat and moved toward the door. “You got what you deserved, you black bastard.” And he went out.

  “Least you finally bein’ honest,” Reggie said to no one.

  After that, it all disappeared fast. Jasper’s assistant stopped showing up every Monday with armfuls of groceries, and Reggie found himself eating pasta and canned sauce every day, and powdered milk with his cereal. Without the maids his apartment grew filthy with shocking quickness; in just a week’s time the superintendent had complaints from three of Reggie’s neighbors about the smell of rotting garbage. At the end of the month he was evicted and took what little he owned back where he belonged, south of Twelfth Street, to a subdivision in Washington Park, where the reek of steel mills choked the air and he recognized the faces as his own, a subdivision where he now sits with his best white friend in the world, fucked up and sick to his soul of being legless and armless and useless.

  The reason we’ve told you this, other than to enlighten you as to how Reggie has come to be the person you know, is to drive home a very important point: his illness and subsequent convalescence have left Reggie quite unstable, and what he’s proposing is no joke.

  “So okay,” you say to Reggie, “let’s pretend for a moment that I believe you’re serious. How exactly are you going to get the explosives?”

  “I know a guy,” Reggie says.

  “You know a guy.”

  “Pack this shit,” Reggie says, handing you the bong. “Yeah, a guy. Used to work for Fullerton, now he’s with a demolitions outfit up in Oak Park.”

  “And you can just get him to order a few hundred pounds of C-4 for you. Have it overnighted, or whatever.”

  “No,” Reggie says. “But I can have him order an extra five pounds here and there without anyone noticin’.”

  You give the loaded bong back to him. “So it’ll only take, what. Four years to get together the amount you need?”

  Reggie takes another of his huge rips off the bong. He holds it so long that almost no smoke comes out when he finally exhales. “That’s almost exactly how long it took.”

  “Took,” you say. “Past tense. As in.”

  “As in go into my bedroom closet and check out the contents of the big box that say Lysol Basin Tub and Tile Cleaner.”

  Which you do.

  “That shit ain’t scrubbin’ bubbles,” Reggie cackles from the living room as you stand bent at the waist in his closet, trying hard to convince yourself of the reality of what you’re seeing. Trust us when we tell you: this is indeed real. What you’re looking at is not four hundred pounds of slate-gray Play-Doh, and Reggie is very, very serious about blowing up the Harold Washington SSA building.

  And while we are glad when, after standing in the closet and thinking for a few minutes, you decide there is no way you’re going to help Reggie with his plan, we have to tell you that any attempt to dissuade him is doomed to failure, and could even be dangerous. The man is too furious and sick at heart to be reasoned with.

  So when you return to the living room, instead of trying to talk Reggie down, you play along. It turns out he has a very specific plan, and you have a very specific role to play. You listen and nod your head and excuse yourself at the earliest opportunity, wanting so badly to get away that you’re willing to brave the streets alone. Frightened as you are, though, it still hasn’t quite sunk in, so we will reiterate: Reggie is talking about blowing up a real building, and real people, with real explosives. What you do about this is, of course, up to you, but the seriousness of the situation cannot be overstated.

  It’s around four in the morning when you arrive home, too late really, but you call Amy anyway. She comes on the line after seven rings, sounding exactly as far away as she is.

  “Junior,” she says, and it is like Chopin, it is the most delicate and lovely of sounds, her voice saying your name.

  You tell her everything—Reggie, the ghosts of his legs and arm, the explosives, his plan, how frightening it was to realize you even joked about helping him carry it off. You’re about to tell her how grateful you are that she still serves as a sort of beacon to you, and who knows, if she hadn’t come back into your life in even this small way you might be so sick and hopeless that Reggie’s plot would have seemed like a good idea. You are about to say this, but before you have a chance she interrupts you.

  “That’s it,” she says. “That is fucking it.”

  “Amy?”

  “This bullshit,” she says, “is going to stop. Now.”

  “Amy. Hey, list—”

  “You call me up,” she says, “at two o’clock in the morning. Hammered. On God only knows what kind of drugs. You call me up and tell me that you and your legless, armless buddy are thinking about blowing up a building by strapping four hundred pounds of explosives to his wheelchair. Am I getting this right, so far?”

  “Yes,” you say, “but listen, I told you I wasn’t going to go through with—”

  “Blowing up a building,” she says again, “which would not be funny even if the very same thing hadn’t happened in Oklahoma City just a few months ago. Would not.”

  “Honey, listen, you’re not listening—”

  “Don’t call me that,” she says. “Don’t call me honey. In fact, don’t call me at all, Junior. I’ve finally had it. You do whatever you want. Drink yourself to death, like your mother. Blow yourself up. Whatever. Just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  “Amy—”

  “Do you hear me. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Are you understanding me. Is it sinking into that big brain of yours.” These are statements, not questions, but you answer anyway, after a long pause.

  “Yes.”

  The line goes dead.

  You heave the telephone across the room. It hits the dresser on the far wall, leaving a jagged white scar in the finish.

  Next morning Amy’s words still cling to you like the stink of old beer. You lie there with a hand over your eyes and think about that chunk of rock and ice, the size of Rhode Island, pinwheeling through space with murderous intent, and you retrieve the phone and call Reggie and when he finally picks up you don’t even bother with a greeting. “When do you want to do this?”

  Now we have no choice but to suspend our usual stance of supportive neutrality and tell you that, from this point forward, there will be absolutely no assistance from us. You are doing something we cannot condone, though it is neither our place nor within our power to stop you.

  It turns out that Reggie wants to do this soon. As in tomorrow, if possible. Which means you have a lot to take care of, from setting up the explosives on Reggie’s wheelchair to renting a handicapped-accessible van. You do the latter first, and it takes most of the day before you find a suitable vehicle at a place in Skokie called WheelchairEscapes. Challenging as securing the van is, though, putting together Reggie’s wheelchair bomb proves much worse. It doesn’t require any technical expertise. Reggie has detailed printouts of how to rig up the bricks of C-4, a simple process involving fuses and detonation cable. Even so, this is the first time you’ve handled high explosives, and the fact that you plan to let yourself be blown up tomorrow somehow doesn’t make you any more comfortable with the prospect of being blown up today.

  It’s our contention that this discomfort should maybe give you cause to reconsider what you’re doing, and why.

  “What are you sweatin’ for?” Reggie asks, watching from the Canadian rocker as you work, placing the C-4 in a series of mesh pockets that have been draped over his wheelchair.

  “It’s August,” you say. “And you live in a fifth-floor apartment with no air conditioning.”

  “You tellin’ me,” Reggie says. “That ain’t why you sweatin’, though.”

  “Actually,” you say, wincing as you slide a brick into a pocket, “that is why. It�
��s a hundred and twenty in here.”

  “Nah,” Reggie says, “you sweatin’ ’cause you afraid that C-4 is gonna explode if you so much as call it a bad name.”

  He’s right, of course. You’re convinced that the slightest jostling will set the stuff off. We could offer you some comforting facts about the relative stability of C-4, but as we said, there will be no help forthcoming from this quarter.

  “I don’t see why you gettin’ so worked up.” Reggie hits the bong, holds it until you’re sure he’ll pass out, then exhales and continues. “You should follow my example. Look at me: completely relaxed. Die today, die tomorrow. Makes no difference to The Fox.”

  “That’s because you’re power baked,” you say. “Not to mention you’ve had longer to get used to the idea. I’ve only been on board for the last sixteen hours or so.”

  “Well, that’s the seven-million-dollar question, though, ain’t it? Is Junior really on board? And if he is, why is he sweatin’ that C-4 so much?”

  You pretend to ignore this, but the truth is, of course, in the clear light of day you’ve had a few moments when you wondered what you were doing. And riding to the rescue on the heels of this doubt came the rationalization of helping Reggie end what surely is the most miserable experience you’ve ever witnessed firsthand, along with your favorite refrain: the world’s going to end soon so what does it matter?

  We are here to tell you that this is bullshit of the first order. The real reason you’ve signed on to help Reggie is neither complex nor selfless: you are hurting, and you want others to feel that hurt. Simple. Common. Looked at from a certain angle in a certain light, it could even be seen as an effort to actually connect with the people you and Reggie plan to explode, to share your hurt with them, and in so sharing to create a genuine fraternity of grief: people united, however briefly, in the loss of limbs, lives, and love.