WHAT THE WATER GAVE ME
In Chicago they went looking for magic. The drive from Geschichte Falls was about an hour to Indiana and then and hour and a half on the toll road into Chicago, and they could have gone immediately south, but half of Jimmy’s family was there, and how could you just pass through Chicago? Ross insisted on finding a botanica or a brujeria and when Flipper said, “What about a crystal shop or one of those wicca places,” Ross just looked at him.
“We need a real botanica, And I need beads. I need beads and candles and I just need to be in the space. The bullshit you’re talking about,” Ross shook his head. “I don’t need that.”
Flipper wasn’t quite sure what Ross meant, but he trusted him, and Jimmy, narrow in his tank top with his cigarette hanging from his lip, never questioned Ross. They were alike. The same way Jimmy’s dick led him to strange places, dark places sometimes, he understood Ross’s turning away from shiny shops with smiling white girls and crystals, and leading them deeper and deeper into crowded old neighborhoods where Mexicans sold food from stalls and murals covered the walls. Though he wouldn’t have been able to explain why, he felt like this pursuit was leading to something more real than what he had known, and maybe this was not the search for magic, but the search for power and something more. He felt stupider the more he tried to understand, and he did not ask Ross, who had them stop the car at an old unimpressive orange building, under a great mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“When we go in,” Ross said, “say nothing.”
To Jimmy, on first glance, it had the look and feel of an old Catholic supply store, full of statues and knick knacks, colorful beads, cards and saint candles. But he nearly froze when he saw what he thought was a Virgin Mary, but was a veiled skeleton with a scythe. Ross did not appear interested in it, but he also did not look overly shocked. He nodded to an old black woman who nodded back, and at the counter a shriveled dark Hispanic woman was sitting.
They had to tread carefully, because there were trails of flour or some other powder, and little tea lights burning on the floor.
“Excuse me,” Flipper went up his amiable way to the woman, “but can you tell me anything about this place?”
“Didn’t you say not to say anything?” Jimmy muttered as Ross rooted through dried herbs and filled a bag.
The woman said something half in English and half in disinterest and Flipper went back to looking.
“Are you going to say something?” Jimmy asked.
“Nope,” Ross said as he pulled down a statue of a haloed lame man on crutches.
“Can I ask you who that is?” Jimmy said.
“San Lazaro, who is Saint Lazarus, but who is also Babalu Aye.”
“Babalu!” sang Flipper to the annoyance not only of Ross, but the man at the corner, and then Flipper was off with what looked like a cheap refrigerator magnet.
“Scuse me ma’am, what’s this chicken do?”
But even as he asked, the woman cried out, “You are in danger! I am worried for you. The spirits don’t want you here. I see them all swirling around you. You must go! You are in danger!”
Flipper blinked at her and then blinked at his friends.
“Well, you did hear her,” Ross said.
“You all are in danger too,” the woman started.
“Bitch, please. I’m making you money. You better call off these fucking sprits till I get in the car.”
The woman blinked at him in amazement.
“For real,” Ross said. “Sit the fuck down. I’m almost finished. And you,” he said to Flipper, “Get in the damn car.”
Ross left with a bag of herbs and two saints candles, one black one red and the last green.
“I refuse to buy beads from her, though. Silly bitch. And her fucking spirits.”
“What if they were real?” Flipper said from the back of the car.
“She was just trying to get rid of you cause you were acting like a fucking boob,” Jimmy said as he pulled away and headed back toward 81st Street.
“Well, we’ll just have to get beads somewhere else. But the world has a way of supplying what you need.”
“Still, that place was crazy,” Jimmy said. “I mean crazy like, I could have stayed there all day. I’d never felt anything like that.”
“The energy was fucked, and I wasn’t feeling her, but I know what you mean.”
“It’s like what I almost get in church. Something... Real isn’t the right word. I dunno. Are we getting back on the skyway? You guys still want to go to the northside?”
“Yeah,” Flipper said, and Ross reached into his paper bag and pulled out a little red candle. Because this was Jimmy’s car and he knew him well, he took out his light, hit the base of the candle then, sticking it to the dashboard, he lit it and said, “Let’s something real happen with the three of us tonight. It’s so much fake stuff, let’s all three have something real.”
Jimmy squeezed Ross’s knee, and as he drove kept his hand there.
“Amen,” Jimmy said, rubbing his friend’s thigh. “Amen.”
Catty corner to Saint Celestine’s was Simri’s, the old Hungarian bar and restaurant that served—so Ross took their word on it—the best goulash in town. and across from him, on a shelf above them sat a black metal rooster.
“What haven’t I seen him before?” Ross wondered, and Jimmy said, “Why are you seeing him at all? I hardly noticed him.
“I don’t need that in my house,” Ross murmured.
“Why would it be in your…”
“He speaks to me.”
Ross kept eating. The beef was delicious, the sauce hearty.
“I don’t need a rooster.” he said.
“If you think you need a rooster,” Flipper said, “I bet you need a rooster.”
“I bet if you asked them they’d give you that rooster.”
“I can’t,” Ross decided. It’s absurd.”
Which is why, while they were at the bar paying for their meal, Ross said to Mary, “What’s the story of that rooster? The one back there?”
“Oh, it just came from a thrift store.”
“Um,” Ross reflected. “I’m a big fan of him.”
Mary said, “Would you like the rooster?”
“I would absolutely love the rooster,” Ross admitted, and Mary sent one of the girls to get on a ladder and bring him.
“You might need to dust him a little, maybe give him a good cleaning,” she said, and Ross actually embraced the bird with its metal feet, stuck in a platform, and its metal head and wooden body.
“You have no idea how grateful I am for this bird,” he said.
Even as they were driving the skyway and headed toward Lake Shore drive, Ross was still remembering the strange and wonderful gift of the rooster who was not in the backseat.
“Osun,” he said to Flipper.
“Huh?”
“The Rooster is Osun. Osun warns, Osun prompts, Osum works with the other gods and spirits. That’s rooster you asked the woman about in the shop? It was Osun.”
“Then is your rooster Osun?”
“Yes. I believe he is.”
“We should stop at the Church of the Atonement,” Ross said.
It was not strange to hear Ross say they should stop at a church, but that the church was so very specific made Jimmy curious.
“I’ve looked it up and everything. It’s Episcopal. Flipper’s mom said something about it. It’s in Edgewater and there is a Mass at seven tonight.”
Ross was rarely so precise and so Jimmy simply shrugged and they headed toward Edgewater.
“It would have been better,” Ross noted, “if we took the El. Sometimes Chicago doesn’t seem much like a car city, but then sometimes it doesn’t really seem like anything else.”
“It’s nowhere near seven o’ clock,” Flipper announced as they came down Sheridan Road, and Ross said, “No, it’s nowhere near seven, but we are somewhere near a beach. If I’m right, if we go up these few blocks, Atonement should be down an inside street, and on the other side we can find the beach.”
They parked in the vacant lot of a synagogue. All around, high rises overlooked the water, and they crossed the grayish brown sand to stand before the blue expanse of Lake Michigan.
“Give me a plastic bottle,” Ross said.
“You’re going to collect Lake water, aren’t you?” Flipper said.
“I’m going to collect lake water,” Ross confirmed.
“You think it’s too cold to take off your shoes?”
“Feel this weather,” Ross said. “Can you believe it’s March? God gave us one day of summer. I’m going to act like it’s summer.”
Ross had rolled up his cuffs and was coming to the water. He planted his toes in it and shivered.
“What’s it like?’ Jimmy asked.
“It’s like cold as fuck,” Ross said. Undaunted, he stood toes deep in the water, and now Flipper was taking his shoes and socks off, collecting Ross’s and placing them all on one of the rocks . He walked half calf deep into the water and shrieked.
“You all are nuts,” Jimmy said, taking out his cigarettes, but Ross ignored them both, walking along the beach and stretching out his hands to the sun.
“It’s Pulaski Day!” Jimmy shouted coming toward them.
“Who the fuck is Pulaski?” Flipper asked, but Ross knew, broadly. It didn’t do to remember too much, and Jimmy shook his head saying, “I don’t know. But it’s Chicago’s birthday.”
“How do they figure that out, I wonder,” Flipper said.
“I wonder too,” Ross agreed, suddenly delving into the water with his bottle and holding it under the still water before it stopped gurgling.
“I wish there were some waves here,” Jimmy said.
Ross frowned, rising from the water and capping the bottle.
“I don’t.”
“I wonder if we can smoke on this beach?” Flipper said, and because Flipper was quite obviously smoking a cigarette, Ross understood what Flipper meant.
“There’s no one to stop us.”
“But someone might come.”
“Out of the blue?” Ross said. “The weed police?”
Jimmy had already taken out his hitter and was headed to the rocks where their shoes and socks and sweaters were, and there he mixed a bowl, and there they smoked it and smoked more cigarettes. They drank the last of their Fantas and were surprised and high when the sky began to darken.
“Are we ready to find that church?” Flipper asked.
Incongruously, Jimmy said, “You want to take this?”
It was a sugary orange gummy and Ross said, “Should we wait until after church to take or now?”
Jimmy popped it in his mouth and frowned.
“Holy God,” he swore. “There’s so much weed in this it tastes like weed.”
“I’ll take it now,” Ross held out his hand.
“You may regret it,” Jimmy warned.
“Only one way to know.”
While Ross chewed on the bitter gummy, amazed at its tongue numbing ability, Flipper chewed his too, and they both took a swig of Fanta. Having done this, they rose to leave the beach, cross Sheridan, and head toward the Church of the Atonement. It was on Kenmore Street, and neither of them was sure how long they’d been walking, and Ross even suspected they may have been walking in the wrong direction. Streetlights, porch lights and the lights in apartments were coming on as the night deepened, and the street was busy with folks returning home or on the their way out. Flipper and Ross and Jimmy walked three by three, arms locked around each other, and when Jimmy asked Ross, “What’s up with you?”
Ross said, “I’m grinning and happy and in love with everything. I’m in love with the both of you,”
And he wrapped his arm around Flipper’s waist and chucked Jimmy under the chin.
“I think that’s it,” Jimmy said when they arrived at a beautiful old red stone building with a great wide lancet window over its heavy doors. There was a white sign that read Church of the Atonement and Flipper shrieked.
“It’s Episcopal.”
“Yeah,” Ross said. “I said that.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“Well, are you listening now?”
“Flipper grinned and blinked through his thick eyelashes.
“Yeah, Ross.”
“I always wanted to go to one, “Ross said. “I always wondered how you grew up.”
“No one ever cared about that,” Flipper said. “That fucking means so much.”
Kenmore was an inside street, but busy enough, and if anyone cared when Flipper took Ross by the face and kissed him, they didn’t say anything.
“It looks cool as fuck,” Jimmy murmured. “Can we go in?”
For answer, Ross went up the stairs and pulled open the door.
“Oh,” Flipper began, “it smells so old and churchy in here.”
It did. This reminded Ross of one of the old churches on the south side of Geschichte Falls or East Sequoya, and it had beautiful stone pillars and stain glasses that were only black lancets in the night. The flagstone altar was low on the floor, and there was something very old and very Catholic about it. There were the stations of the Cross, and there was the tabernacle, and there was even the Virgin Mary at the grotto, but there was something different Ross could not put his finger on.
“Are you all here for Mass?” someone, maybe a priest, asked.
“Yes,” Flipper said, looking suddenly sober.
“Well, it’s over in the chapel.”
He pointed to a corner off of the main altar.
“You mean there’s a church inside the church?” Jimmy marveled, causing Ross to wonder just how high he was.
“It’s English!” Ross shouted, now wondering how high he was as he clapped a hand over his mouth.
That was, after all, it. Saint Celestine’s was an Irish church that had become largely Hispanic and Polish. Evervirgin was simply modern and American, and Saint Adjeanet’s originally French, was a modest something called Prairie Gothic. But he had never seen an English Catholic church, and that was what this place looked like, something the Tudors—or rather people pissed with the Tudors—would have built. It was all very Catholic, and all very English.
“And that’s about the truth of it,” Flipper agreed.
Counting the three of them, there were five people at evening mass and Jimmy almost shouted and pointed when he saw a female priest. Except for a few changes, it was pretty much the mass Jimmy and Ross knew, but Ross liked this one better, and he wondered if Communion from a woman might taste different, better maybe.
Ross does not remember the sermon, but he remembers as the lady priest, which is what he decided to call her, told a joke or two, he laughed uproariously, and when he laughed, Jimmy and Flipper laughed and, having gotten a laugh, the lady priest snuck in another joke, which made Ross laugh louder, which made them all laugh louder, which made the lady priest and her acolyte laugh. They never knew that by now Ross saw this woman’s neck stretching like a giraffe, and her eyes coming unfixed from her face, and then all of her features dancing separately as if she was a talking collage. All and all, it was a wonderful service.
