(Wisdom Stinks)

Young Marcus, back then, actually had no idea what a hospital orderly was. But hospital was a good word and orderly sounded - well - orderly. This hospital job was with the hospital food services. Now that's twice as good, getting to work in the hospital and around food at the same time. And these were professionals, health professionals. He envisioned deep discussions of nutrition, combating disease by careful selection of diet, manipulating carbohydrates to allow feats of prowess in sports. Then there were the problems of food preservation in the setting of mass distribution, maybe even consultations in cases of food toxicity. So much more.

Somewhere between expectation, fantasy, and reality is a space, a universe that each of us carries within. Insight is the collapse of that space, wisdom the big bang. On his way here, he contemplated the possibilities of his universe. The Hindu concept of the universe as an infinite net, with a jewel at each node appealed to him. Each multifaceted jewel reflected the images of all the surrounding jewels complete with their own reflections intact, thus infinities of infinities. Just think of the possibilities that lie within one jewel, and perhaps within this jewel of an opportunity. There is energy in possibility and that energy is expectation orbiting hope.

Marcus met his new work mates after a very odd exchange with the head cook, a wide man of pale complexion and no hair, except beard stubble, hanging fat and jowls, dressed in white sweat soaked pants and T-shirt.

"You sure you want this job?" the cook asked skeptically, his dental disrepair all too visible, "You don't look stupid."

"Stupid? Excuse me? Well, maybe. I need money for college," Marcus blurted after struggling with this less than vital reception. "I am no stranger around food." Marcus offered his appreciation of the various nuances in Italian cooking in the historically different sections of Italy, continental traditions, and even Scandinavian traditions. As the cook listened in disbelief, intermittently looking away with a lopsided open mouth lip smack, Marcus continued on by pitching his abilities in biology, chemistry, physics, and threw in his other past credits including merits in the humanities.

"Man, quit now! This place is not for you. Really. It is boring beyond human tolerance," the cook counseled. "It's worse than jury duty. Your brains will fall out."

"My last job was hell. The guy before me died doing it! I don't care if it is dull, I can reflect. I'm used to that."

"Reflect?" Rubbing his lips looking left and right, "Reflect. OK, Reflect. Jake, that's him with the book, sitting on the window sill over there. Jake will fill you in. You'll be his reflectee."

Jake, a black man of about thirty years, was well spoken, dignified, yet kind of street wise in his manner. He had two books beside him. One was a James Joyce and the other a James Baldwin. "I'm in my James period," he explained as he quickly deduced the lightening speed reading glance of his new trainee. "Anger and gloom, thing, I guess," as he sized up the new recruit.

"Hi. I'm Marcus, Jake. The cook said that you would tell me what to do."

"Do? Sure thing," prodding Marcus by the shoulder to turn about, "Leave. Leave now," as Marcus resisted smiling an I-don't-get-it look. " Man, you talk in complete sentences. How the hell did you get this job?" Jake was genuinely surprised.

"My uncle Charley is a barber who comes here to give patients hair cuts. He knows somebody. Kind of called on his relationship with a neurosurgeon, cuts his hair, to get me this job." Marcus explained.

"Must have messed up that man's head but good, to do this to you!" Jake laughed sardonically, then over Marcus's head to an invisible audience, "Keep your eyes out for a neurosurgeon with bleeding head wounds."

"Oh, common. What do I do?"

"See this ledge? Just sit on it. There is nothing to do here. Nothing at all, until tonight. Then they need all of us. There are three others. No sense telling you about it now, it's easy enough. You'll see."

"Whoa. Wait a minute. Why keep four - do I make five? - five people around all day long for a job done only at night?" Marcus was truly curious.

Because they can't get anybody to do that job for any amount of money per hour. It takes a full time job with all the benefits to get that two hours work done. It requires one guy to point and inspect and three, well, you make four, retards to crawl through shit." Marcus now knew that Jake was kidding. Scare the new guy. But then he met the others and wasn't so sure, anymore.

The retard part was accurate though. Benny was, for all intents, catatonic. You might not even notice him standing in an empty room. Motionless. Breathing? Must be. Both hands, held in fists poised in front of his hips, seemed to need ski poles. It wasn't clear what was in his eyes, Marcus couldn't make himself look. It sure as hell wasn't infinite infinities, maybe a nowhere or two. "Does he have a switch?" Marcus asked Jake.

"He's my best worker," was the horrifying response.

Marcus', "You gotta be,.." was cut off by Jake's continuation, "He doesn't push buttons. At least he won't drive you nuts like this guy," fingering Ringer.

Ringer was a mumbling moron who could not stop pressing the emergency bell on the freight elevator. The cooks provided for their own sanity by keeping Ringer away, occupied, constantly sending him on errands to the furthest recesses of the kitchen stock room for a single can of one thing or another, anything, and then sending the last can back. It was so obvious, transparent and stupid. He never caught on.

Ringer rang the freight elevator bell at every possible opportunity. Every single trip on that elevator, rinnnnnnnnng. Rinnnnnnnnng, all the way down, rinnnnnnnnng, all the way up. No, the bell could not be disarmed due to hospital regs and frequent inspections.

"Ringer! I'm going to rip your stupid throat out if you don't get your fingers off that buzzer!" the head cook screamed, "I need a can of asparagus. Now!" Asparagus was the furthest away and hardest to get at item in the stock room. He went.

Just as soon as the requested can was in the cook's left hand his right hand thrust forward an identical can, the last can, "Ringer! I have an extra can of asparagus. Put this back in the stock room. Now!"

He went. This went on all day. Hour after hour. Trip after stupid needless trip. All were grateful that the trip to the stockroom was a good fifteen minutes and added to that, asparagus was carefully placed to be impossible to get to, under and behind several rows and layers of stacked canned stuff that had to be removed and replaced every single time. The cooks saw to that.

The third guy, Layon, "Layon? As in Lay on the floor?"

"No. Layon as in listen to the Layon roaring."

"Lion?"

"Man, don't try making sense. He's Layon and he was named after the lion in some paraphonetic contortion. Brains didn't go all the way round in that family. Hmm? Won't see him 'til evening. He's down behind the power generator in the sub sub basement."

"Doing what?"

"Playing with himself. The man's got horn on his pecker from all that... ahhh, you get the idea."

As his medical training was only in the preliminary phase, Marcus could only offer a slap to his own forehead, "Madonna."

"Here." Jake lent Marcus his Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, which Marcus read cover to cover in just under an hour. There was little other distraction than music played on the cooks radio, quite loudly. Bolted over the kitchen's large central cauldron exhaust hood, was a huge stadium speaker to which they had rigged their radio. Wooden Ships was now blaring from the kitchen. Woodstock had exploded into a national event. It now seemed as if the food caldrons in the kitchen were also exploding, this music came screaming through the steam, and assaulted skin sensation by its volume.

"Damn! You didn't read that!" Jake insisted.

"I did," Marcus defended, "Why?"

"Nobody reads that fast. You some kind of robot? I'll bet you got nothin' from it," Jake scolded as if offended that his Baldwin was somehow damaged by the brevity of the reading.

"He's an easy read. I'm not familiar with some of his references, but he's clear enough to keep the pace."

"Well...what was he saying?"

"It's just a running of observations, no real preaching in there."

"You dumb ass guinea wop. You don't know anything!"

"What?" nearly screaming over the now blasting Jimmy Hendricks pumped up by the cooks, who were probably not only into the Woodstock happening but into shock therapy.

"He was reflecting... I said.. he was reflecting on a very important realization... not an easy one for a black man.."

"The end of his youth thing?" Marcus broke in, "that black was not just a barrier but also a crutch? He.. uh.. damn that's loud.. those guys deaf? He felt that his growth - in Europe and Corsica - wherever else - I forget - wasn't tested... had to STINKING RETURN.. HEY GIVE US A BREAK HERE.. How loud does that shit have to be?"

Jake and Mac got only the finger, with a big toothy cook grin.

Jake brightened. "OK little brother." a curious address, "Good. he says, plain outright, that he lost his youth when he realized WHO he was and WHAT he was. It was a journey. You cool on this? It was a journey that, once begun, HAD to continue forward. He had to be - no - he WAS a writer, not a NEGRO, or a NEGRO writer, a writer, 'God, Satan and Mississippi notwithstanding', dig?"

Marcus in a voice of queried offering, "What you are on the outside may belie or confound the knowing of what you really are, inside - innately? ...SHUT THAT GOD DAMNED NOISE DOWN. JESUS! Between that elevator bell ringing and stone deaf cooks, I'm going to go crazy here!" Marcus oathed.

"No, my good little man. After tonight, you'll be gone."

"No! Damn it! I took this job and I am going to see it through! Hey, Jake, OK, what if, uh, what if you think you're one thing and set out on that journey, but it turns out you're not... you know some deep fatal or sinister flaw?"

"Still a voyage of discovery," Jake asserted, with eyes elevated and a slight sideways shaking of the head, "Is it Oedipus Rex, the king, or Oedipus WRECKS everything?" still a journey."

A long and deep discussion of the book, the philosophical implications, and the literary comparisons of style and content followed. Jake noticed, aloud, that Marcus knew black folks, and their thinking too well. "You blow academics out of one hole and soul out the other," preceded his exploration.

"My dad is called Jazz Man, he hangs in black circles. I'm sure I know as many black stories as white." Marcus barely began to explain.

"The furniture dude?" Jake gawked, dumbfounded, looking just as surprised as when he was first introduced to his new charge, and springing to his feet to look dead at the face of the youth sitting on his window sill, inspecting.

"Yeah. You know him?"    

"Everybody knows him! Damn. He.. you.. he.. he's a prince among men. Ha. Here I am talking trash with one of Jazz Man's kids. Hot damn. Which one are you?"

"The youngest. I'm the baby."

Jake Green, acting like he was being put on, grabbed his reflectee by the shoulders and just stared and stared and stared at his young charge's features, his cheeks, his nose, his eyes. His eyes. Yes. "Except for you eyes.."

"What except for my eyes?"

"You look like your mother."

"You know my mother? How do you know her?"

"EVERYBODY in the Jazz circuit knows your mother! What's wrong with you?"

"But I don't think I look like... Whoa. You a jazz musician?"

"Words, man. Words. I'm a writer! I'm a poet. Poets, writers, lyrics, jaaaazzzzzzz, smokes, bongoes, and turtlenecks - black ones - no matter how da heat is hottin ya. Dig?"

Macaluso laughed his affirmation of that simple and compelling logic, as Jake embraced his new recruit like a mother would her newly found lost child. Marcus thought he was just getting an overly gracious friendly theatrical welcome. That was, until that shaking hug ended and he saw the makings of a tear welling in Jake's eye.

"Clearly there's a lot going on that I don't know about," he shared, rather disarmed.

"Jazz Man is all heart and soul. He keeps the beat," Jake nodded as he thumped the books like drums. "There is a rhythm to the world and the universe. He keeps the beat. Negative energy has no beat, it rumbles and destroys, it seeps, it drains, it slithers and hisses, it chokes and burns but has no soul, no harmony, no intrinsic rhythm other than what it steals then devours into nothingness. Pulse. Thump thump, thump thump. It's the rhythm of fury and justice, of men on the rise to their destinies as men, it's life itself. He keeps the beat."

"Well he has this ability to disconnect what his hands and feet are doing."

"Noooooo! Man. That ain't it. There is no disconnection. What you hear is connection! Each part of that man is connected to another rhythm, another life, bringing them together. It is synthesis! Synthesis! Spit in the face of entropy, chaos, destruction. Synthesis. He is the common denominator of the infinity of irrationals. He is soul. He is jazz!" his brow as furrowed as anatomy would allow, Jake was trembling excitement.

A long pause followed, the music unheard, Ringer lost in the asparagus in the far reaches of the stockroom, Layon somewhere in the bowels of the subterranean world rubbing himself until his big moment comes, and only Benny seemingly appropriate to the moment in his frozen pose. "One can never see into the 'heart, the mind, the soul of another'", Mac quoted Baldwin with an air of -see? I read it!

Jake warned, "Some have no hearts, no souls... they consume those who do."

Evening came quickly. With it came the reason that five full time men were hired to do nothing. It was the swill, vats and vats of swill. The metal vats were about four foot in diameter and about five feet tall, filled to the brim with all the warm wet food debris of the day from the kitchen and from returned uneaten food - fermented in the kitchen's heat - kind of like large vats of gelatinous puke, but smelling worse. A vomit compost.

The first part was easy enough, just hold your breath and push the sleds, on which the vats stood, to the dock edge where a hook and chain rig tipped the vats over to a plopping gush. It reminded Marcus of a medieval castle defense, the pouring of boiling oil from a cauldron onto the attackers below. Somehow, this stuff seemed, at least at this proximity, worse. Not until the first swill vat was dumped into the swill vehicle sitting in the port, did he get the full aroma, the full air stopping, lung plugging, vile stench.

"Ooooooooh oooooooh God! Can food make this smell? OH, this is awful! Let's get these things emptied and get the hell out of here," he bellowed over the loud rattle of the swill truck engine.

Benny suddenly became animated and guffawed, "He ain't done yet. He ain't done the good part," followed by Goofyesque haw haws.

"The good part?" awe, in actual speech coming from Benny, was displaced by dread of what Benny meant. It turns out that Benny wasn't one of those fellows who don't say much, but when they do, it don't mean much. It meant plenty.

The good part was bringing the horizontal vats to the all tile steam room just off the deck where steam hoses awaited. With Jake pointing, and each of the other four crawling with a steam hose in one hand and a flat curved metal object in the other, the vats got systematically scraped, steamed, and scoured, from the inside. "First you crawl in. ... Use the scraper in big sweeping motions. ...Get all the swill that clings to the sides .. use the steam...use plenty of steam!" he yelled his instructions to Marcus, from a distance.

Scrape, steam, scrape, steam until your lungs burst and nasal passages screamed for mercy from the super heated vile feted-steam inhalations. Like cleaning an unflushed dirty toilet from inside it. Rising on hot putrid vapors purging an overturned vat was heard, "Oh God. Oh God... No children here! .. This isn't the covenant! .. Forty years in the desert, ... not a summer of steamed vomit!" He was rambling, "Hi. My name is Vomitus. Vomitus Macaluso! I am your ass hole." Whirling through his nauseated head, "Uncle Charley must be the anti-Christ."

With the vats cleaned and erected, a job that somehow stretched to an apparent eight years, Marcus peeled off his clothing to his briefs and tossed them with disgust into the garbage. He clawed at water from a nearby utility sink trying to pull it to his body to get that ooze from his hair, his ears, his face, his belly button, his buttocks, from him. It clung better than a scab. He just kept at it until Jake pulled him away. He wrung his underpants under the tap and even tried steaming them. He learned that smell can be permanent.

Over ranting, "It doesn't fade! It doesn't fade!" Jake tried to counsel, "Man. This is not your gig. No kid of the Jazz Man should waste his time here. You needed to experience this. This is my contribution to your education. You help those children," Jake offered as an assumed good-by.

"How do you know about the children?" a stunned response.

"I'm not deaf and you are the Jazz Man's kid. It's in you. You're the next level."

"Next level. Next level. Next level," Marcus repeated over and over as he walked, dripping wet, in his gray green stained BVDs past the head cook - who clutched his Buddha belly laughing , past Benny - now animated, babbling about the 'good part', up the elevator as riders dove to get off, down the hospital corridor as visitors pasted themselves to the walls as he reeked by, past the security guard in the main lobby - who just gawked in odor dodging bewilderment, to the general parking lot and to the borrowed family car whose bumper seemed to smile as staring visitor onlookers were invisible to him.

His only problem, "It doesn't fade!", was how to keep this smell off the car seat. An old baby blanket in the trunk of the car was a desperate surprise. "Thanks, Gabriel," he thought of his new guardian angel, "Freaking thanks."