Sam Pink - Rontel

Tonight he approached in a strange walk that involved lifting his knees up abnormally high, his face doing odd twitches as he put condiments on a hotdog, everything backlit by police and emergency lights.

It was beautiful to watch Uncle Sam walk through the light.

He was beautiful.

“Luh me a hotdog,” he said, twitching.

I said, “Yeah”—squinting at the light.

Uncle Sam told me it was a hostage situation and then explained to me the way he likes to eat a hotdog, applying condiments to the one in his hand.

He said, “Dude like me, I’m pu’n spirals on a hamburger, and fo a hotdog, I wind em back and forth.”

“Double-helix style,” I said, suddenly wanting to ask him so many questions.

He looked at me.

He pointed at me with the fingers holding the mustard packet, and said, “S’a double hee-liss style, yuh.”

He rubbed his twitching face against the shoulder of his suit coat and made a weird motion with his lips, like he’d just put on a new face over his skull and was aligning the lips with the teeth.

Behind us, someone who’d been evacuated from the train explained what happened, on her cellphone.

A prisoner — in transport to another jail — killed two police officers and escaped the bus and got on the Red Line and got off at the Wilson stop, then killed someone and took someone else hostage to the rooftop of a nearby apartment building.

Police and civilian death.

Uncle Sam continued putting condiments on his hotdog.

He said, “Jesus luh you no matter what you do. Yuh yuh. But you can’t get into heaven with nunna them acka-hol and cigrets, oh no.”

Then he took many small bites of the hotdog without chewing each bite, leaving only 1/3 of the hotdog.

He squeezed mustard from the shriveled packet onto the end of the hotdog, like he was painting.

Full-mouthed, he said, “Yuh. Dude like me want mustard on eyrbite. Bah-zam! Blam a lam. Dude like me want mustard each and eyr bite, yuh. And you caint get inta heaven wit nunna them acka-hol and cigrets doe.”

“Good shit,” I said. “So the train’s not running.”

He swallowed and laughed, stamping his feet.

He said, “Muh fucka keewd a cop, now they keew him, watch.”

Uncle Sam pointed at the rooftop with his mustard packet. “Man, send me in thuh. I fuck s’ass up. Cuh Jesus luh you no matter what.”

“Me and you,” I said. “We both go in, we both come out.”

I held out my hand.

“Yuh,” he said, moving the hotdog towards my extended hand as a sign he’d shake my hand if his hand was free.

I said, “All right, I’m going to the liquor store to get a phone card for my shitty ass phone.”

“Yuh,” he said.

“Or maybe not, should I just throw this phone against the ground,”

I said. “How about that.”

“Yuh,” he said, laughing. “Jesus luh you no matter what.”

He was smiling, face twitching.

I took out my phone and threw it — with authority — against the ground.

The phone broke apart.

Uncle Sam laughed and put his face to the inside of his elbow and repeatedly made a motion with the hand holding the hotdog, as if he were throwing the hotdog like a paper airplane.

There were news channels everywhere.

Helicopters.

“He gon surrender,” said Uncle Sam. “Muh-fuckiss always surrender.”

And he seemed so disappointed, like he’d seen this before.

Like maybe just once it’d be nice to see no surrender.

I said, “Only pussies surrender, man.”

Uncle Sam laughed.

He coughed harshly, bending at the knees a little.

Tophat waving just a little with each cough.

No, don’t die.

He pointed at me with the last bite of hotdog.

He said, “You cold.”

I said, “Fucking right.”

“Co-dest,” he said, laughing.

And for some reason I imagined our severed heads connected by a glowing double helix — floating up to the apartment rooftop where our vibrating power stopped the violence — and everyone cheered us, the two headed double helix, as we went to other planets to help likewise, yuh, travelling the world helping people.

No/who cares.

Behind us, a drunk woman walked up and started making sounds at the hostage situation.

She had on a dirty NFL winter coat.

Uncle Sam’s woman.

She stood there toothless, making noises at the situation.

Like, not words, just noises.

Then she came up behind Uncle Sam and slapped his head hard and said, “That’s not only your cigarette, gammee it.”

Uncle Sam ate the last of the hotdog and held up his empty hands and said, “S’a fucking ha-dawg, bitch.”

*

So I had to run over to my girlfriend’s.

It was five and a half miles.

I liked running over.

It was cheaper and faster than the train too.

In fact, fuck the train and fuck Chicago and fuck each United State.

I went home and put shorts on and lay on the floor, sweating, vowing — to myself if no one else — to figure out a way to kill everyone in Chicago.

“They all have to die,” I said, looking across the floor at Rontel, as he lay there blinking, streetlight across his face through the blinds in sharp lines.

*

I walked the first couple blocks to prepare my legs.

Had to wear boots because my other shoes fell apart.

It was almost dark out, but still over ninety degrees.

One street before Clark St., a raccoon walked around someone’s front yard.

And a dog walked out from the backyard, approaching the raccoon.

When I rounded the corner, I heard the dog whimper and shriek loudly.

And I started running with a smile on my face — thinking something like, “These are the days when the dog loses to the raccoon.”

And that made me smile even more.

To be my own stupid best friend.

Let me show you how a real man accepts the weights of shrieking terror.

*

On the run over, I thought some more about my “Talking to yourself is…” stationary.

I’d been thinking about creating this personalized notepad or like, calendar, or something similar, where on each page at the top it had, “Talking to yourself is…” then at the bottom it had something unique.

But so far, I’d only come up with like, ten ideas.

I had:

Talking to yourself is…“the result of having no one to talk to, even though there are plenty of people to talk to.”

Talking to yourself is…“never avoiding the argument.”

Talking to yourself is…“killing a strong animal such as a gorilla or rhino using only strikes to the mouth with your fist.”

Talking to yourself is…“killing a strong animal such as a gorilla or rhino using only your mind/kindness.”

Talking to yourself is…“being too worried about people knowing your thoughts.”

Talking to yourself is…“feeling comfortable.”

Talking to yourself is…“keeping a small animal frozen (having been frozen alive) in your freezer.”

Talking to yourself is…“not changing your shower curtain in so long that when you were showering the other day and saw a fly emerge from a moldy fold in the curtain, you were convinced fly larvae grew there (and it probably does).”

Talking to yourself is…“one thousand years of numb-handed surgery.”

Talking to yourself is…“too many cookies and not enough milk.”

And the run was nice.

But I felt depressed, thinking how sometimes the hardest person to talk to is yourself.

Just, nothing to say.

Kept thinking there was so much to say.

But there wasn’t.

Didn’t have anything to say.

*

Running over the Damen Bridge, I heard song lyrics in my head, from this dance song they played at the sandwich place earlier.