I Am Your Mind Pt 2

[Acehilm]

Gale, was his name. His face timid, his rain coat tightly zipped up to his neck; the zipper pocking into his neck. He use to play the blues out on the corner of 31st street and 34th avenue, New York, with a few fellas that had flown in from Oxford, MS. By the green scrubs, and the greens of the country club, they'd jam with Lionel Richie and some of his younger brothers. Not the Lionel Richie that you're thinking of, of course. It was the Richie that ended up working on the desolate train lines south-west, down Mexico way. The fellas got a letter from him in the fall of 1972, claiming that he'd married a beautiful bourgeois women - yet the letter was written in blood. They said he'd inhaled those toxic gases that leaked from the old energy boxes alongside the train lines and went insane. Turned out that was true, and a group of biologists found his torso; vultures had been at him.

 

"So you really want this job, huh - uh, what's your name.. Gale?" a man asked, in a pin strip suit, standing behind a desk; his hands pressed down on the table in front, as his head poked up, looking at him. Gale nodded. The man behind the desk turned quickly, "I suppose you're one of those beatnik?" he asked, looking out beyond the fast train yard that lay below. "No, sir," he replied, before adjusting his tie, then going on to say, "You know the S-bend tracks at 4-01 out near New Mexico, I had a friend die out there." The man kept his back turned, looking out beyond his playground; yearning for something else. "Yeah, Richie. He got was he deserved, lying prick," the man spoke, grinding his teeth. Gale stood there, as a pause of silence engulfed the room - white noise, only being heard. "You start tomorrow."

 

Gale worked those train yards for a majority of his life, with drudgery, pain-staking, back-breaking work. Grease, smut, smoke, dirt, blood, phlegm, tears, salt, coal. There would be days that he'd come home, and cough up barks of dirt, and black - he didn't know what it was. He tried to play with the fellas when he could, occasionally performing down at 'the hill' in the projects not far over in Queensbridge. He worked his way up the chain, before standing in the same position that his naive boss once did. He stared beyond those yards, just as his boss once did.

 

The phone called, and he answered it, poised behind his oakwood desk, "Yeah?" he asked, "This is Tenet, you know, the guy making the shots?" the voice spoke through the phone. sh*t. "What is it? What's the problem down in 4-01?" Gale asked, feeling a sense of urgency. "Close the yards. Fire the workers. You're fired. We've sold the lines. They're government owned now." That was the end of his career, or let alone any career. He lived without power for several months. In that time, he made wax candles, and used them to decorate his house. The fellas would come around to his apartment on Friday evenings, and jam in his second living room; the carpet ripped up, walls scratched, holes even. They'd play blues and jazz by the light of the candles, letting the sound echo out onto the balcony, and into the nights cool air. They'd stay awake for hours, jamming, and watching steam boats enter the river; the lights of the World Trade Centres illuminating the Big Apple. They'd leave at around 2 in the morning, and return that afternoon - always offering Gale food.

 

Gale, unkept, began to develop self-image issues. He'd look in the mirror, and see an obese child; someone who he use to be. One night he used his vinyl record collection boxes, and used them as a latter to try and hang himself over the rafter of his spare room. He fell when trying to toss the rope over the rafter, and was knocked out cold. Funnily enough, that was the same night Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson - February 10th, 1990. He was found the next morning by a stray door that had entered his home. It woke him, pissed on his body, and left. Gale spent the next decades, moving out of Queens, and moving to Harlem, where he'd wander lonesome midnight lanes - watching stick ups, unruly murders and kids slowly encouraged into a world of crime and filth. He tried to teach the kids at the small parks how to play the harmonica, but their parents would usually abuse him.

 

A small homeless shelter was opened in the December of that year, and was run by some biker group from Rhode Island, or something. Gale decided he'd had enough of sleeping on park benches; getting shat on by pigeons above hanging on the wire. The shelter was not one for kids, and in fact, was not really a shelter at all. It was more of a bar, with a few rooms in the back stock-filled with new mattresses. Gale spent another five years, wandering the city, and returning to the shelter now and again. He was lucky enough to make it in a NY Times article, with an interview written by some kid from some odd town. He remembered the night that the kid walked into the shelter. He wore four layers of clothing, a beanie, gloves and had a rather pricy gerry backpack; filled with who knows what. Gale spoke from his heart that night to the kid, speaking of the government and new generations trampling upon the foundations in which they were born upon. The interview was going well, and the kid had ordered another scotch when a biker got in a dispute with a young man who he believed was a cop. The kid, before leaving, told Gale that he was heading to John Kennedy Airport, on-route to Washington State for some article on timber-logging, and an interview with a bunch of hippies living in a forest that was being destroyed.

 

A few days after the kid left, Gale became very ill overnight; coughing up blood all over the mattress in the shelter, and on other onlooking grouls. A bikers wife, aided for him, being a nurse. She fed him soup, but he wouldn't eat it. He just wanted to die. That's all he wanted. A doctor came in, and diagnosed him with lung cancer. "A few days, at best," he whispered, to Jaclyn, the nurse biker. Gale watched his life slip from his hands, as the owners and acquaintances watched over his body. They played some of Gales favourite tracks, of which one was one that he had co-recorded with the jazz player, Roy Ayers. Gale died listening to a song he had helped give life to, 'I Am Your Mind Pt. 2'. The moment of death wasn't distinctive, and he slipped into a sleep that would last for the rest of his afterlife.

 

He loved, and he was loved.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Coat.