We the Other People: The Beggars of the Mercury Lights

By William Castaño-Bedoya

We the Other People -The Beggars of the Mercury Lights- introduces a new voice in American social literature, narrating the relationship between political power and invisible poverty amidst a crisis of conservative values, social injustice, the excesses of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book & Bilias LLC
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988867111

William Castaño-Bedoya

William es considerado un escritor profundo, humano y vivencial. Mientras, en Los mendigos de la luz de mercurio, desnuda la injusticia social provocada por los excesos de los extremismos, la politización del sufrimiento como herramientas de control político en medio de una de las etapas de más exclusión social en los Estados Unidos; en El Galpón, el autor recrea cómo el conformismo aletargado atenta contra la relatividad del éxito mientras la desconfianza y la excesiva ideologización política se convierte en el trasfondo de una solapada doble moral que torpemente empuja a los protagonistas al manoseo ético. En Flores para María Sucel, el autor reflexiona sobre el viaje por la vida de una familia que trata desesperadamente de mantener el cuerpo y el alma juntos, mientras son destrozados por sus exilios internos. Por su parte, en Los Monólogos de Ludovico, recrea el impacto de la frustración y la impotencia como factores que conforman el absurdo.

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Copyrights

Copyright © 2023 William Castaño-Bedoya

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means. Including photocopies, recordings, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of short quotations incorporated in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the editor, go to Attention: permission coordinator at the address below, or email [e-mail].

ISBN 9798987734933 (Hardcover)

ISBN 9798987734926 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798988867111 (e-Book)

ISBN 9798987734940 (Paperback Spanish)

ISBN 9798987734957 ( Hard cover Spanishl)

ISBN 9798988867104 (e-Book Spanish)

Library of Congress Control Number: 00000000000

Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places is used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are figments of the author's imagination.

Cover art and book design: Book&Bilias/WCB

Printed by Ingram, in the United States of America.

Book&Bilias

Coral Gables, FL, 33146

www.bookandbilias.us

[e-mail]

Dedication

To the Other People.

Epigraph

Those who inflict pain on the very people who pick their crops and bring food to their tables to make their existence possible, do not deserve to live in peace.

Pollen

Steve Newman gets to know all the places where most of the city’s beggars can be found. He follows them with his gaze and with his thoughts. He senses when they are coming, and when he cannot see them, he searches for them diligently. When one of them does not appear for several days, he figures they must have died or been moved on by the police. If there’s one thing he’s sure of it’s that none of them have disappeared because they have overcome their destitution. He pities himself when confronted with their suffering, the noises that they make, lying prostrate without uttering a coherent word. He crosses himself and looks to heaven the way some footballers do after scoring.

Even in bad times, Steve never fails to recognize his own good fortune. He considers himself grateful to life itself for having granted him the company of his wife and children. Depression has made him an understanding and spiritual man. Simple, mundane things touch him deeply. He reflects on having been a good person in the past, but recognizes that he came to be utterly disconnected from goodness, thankfulness, and empathy. He feels committed to family and the like - to life itself. He appreciates the city’s people with the same intensity he appreciates all living beings, even seasonal insects that bring new shapes and colors to the landscape. Steve admires the birds for their superpower of flying free; the dogs and cats that he observes walking close to their owners, heaped in outlandish adornments, allow him to witness the integration of animals and men, while also inviting him to reflect on how many people use pets as a placebo for their own immense loneliness. He is convinced that the love people have for cats and dogs in the city is as intense as the suffering that every family goes through trying to pay their monthly bills. It contrasts with the indifference shown to the dispossessed in the streets, with the sadness of those miserable souls who Steve sees as dogs without owners, nomads of life in the city of the sun.

Three months after overcoming the depression which held him prisoner for two years, Steve becomes a driver for UrbanRides. The position does him good, since, while he also enjoys driving, the new job consists of mechanical repetition and little intellectual negotiation. Convinced by his wife Chloe as well as by their children, Noah and Emmie, he allows himself to become a driver. He finds it hard to begin with; he sinks into the contradictions between his new reality and a past which threatens to suck him back into the siphon of his own thoughts. Steve’s days bring with them a new routine: the one car they have left after Chloe’s was sold to alleviate expenses must be washed daily, and its tires and oil checked without fail. He gets up at four in the morning to attend to these necessities, before switching on the app at five. Minutes later, he heads to the streets for his first job of the day, which usually involves driving to the airport or one of the hospitals in the area.

He drives in silence, lost in thought. He tends not to strike up a conversation with passengers, although he does offer a friendly, trust-winning attitude. He interacts with them cordially whenever they ask him questions or offer topics of discussion. Having used UrbanRides as a passenger in other countries, in a past life, he had never imagined one day becoming a driver; but now, in this new reality, the very same app he once used as a passenger registers the many miles he accumulates driving during the day.

You’ve been driving for twelve hours, he reads in a text message from Emmie. He smiles, looks for a red heart emoji, and sends it as a reply. He returns home, contented and grateful. This sensation has turned into a feeling that endures. One day, lulling in reflection, he confesses to Chloe that he hasn’t killed himself because they watch him day and night, that it breaks his heart to know that while he suffers helplessly, trapped in his own lack of will, his mind held captive by fear and desperation, they are fighting against his intention of ending his existence, of ending everything. To cut his veins and empty himself out with eyes shut tight, as if to sleep forever, is what he wills his mind to do to end everything. This idea moves over the broken mountains of his thoughts, and he sees himself as a bleeding horseman galloping along before faltering amidst the cold and fog. In his most extreme moments of dread, he curls up his body and pulls the blanket up to his neck, taking refuge in himself and trying to expel the demons from his mind. The idea of suicide reigns over him for months, but something stronger than madness will not permit it to prevail. His struggle, the battle between fear and failure, keeps him in an ambushed state, preventing him from consummating his goals. It is then that he feels the need to return to his bedroom and hide. Chloe must leave work to help him when his crisis begins, and through his shivers he asks her for things: a pair of socks or another blanket for his feet, claiming to suffer from an uncontrollable chill.

During those long months, sometimes, although rarely, he steps out onto the patio to get some sun, as his son Noah has begged him. However, he is overcome by trembling, like a proclamation of the cold that his soul is suffering. The dilemma of life and death takes him over when he sees the faces of the three beings most dear to him who, caring and sincere, surround him in his mind. They help even the most stoic to keep moving forward. He remembers the moment when Chloe takes him to see a psychiatrist who prescribes him medications. He takes them for a couple of days, but then rejects them, resolving to find his own way out of this abyss, taking advantage of the fact that his self-esteem has grown a little.

Steve gets to know the designs of Miami-Dade County inside-out, day and night. The city mimics itself over again with new events and circumstances which he does not overlook. He ponders sad and joyful situations, which produce admiration or melancholy, respect, or commiseration. He stops to consider possible causes of the effects that he notices, however vague. Observing injustices in life has turned him into something that helps him to be deeply humble. He is moved upon seeing an old woman, fishing gear in hand, awaiting public transport in the rain, or a homeless person followed by a faithful stray, pushing along the shopping cart that they have made their own for moving around their odds and ends. He imagines the old woman in her twenties, full of life and irreverence, full of dreams easy to attain, full of free love to dish out, giving out cuddles to anyone or anything she finds curious or catches her eye. He sees her in the middle of the symbiosis of early youth: dazzled by frivolities but deprived of charity and sympathy. He tries to comprehend the circumstances of life which have led her to be this old, solitary woman in the rain, carrying her fishing gear to who knows what home or small bedroom in some house in some working-class neighborhood, spending over half of her retirement check on rent.

Now that he has recovered from his illness, the reality of life reminds him that his mortgage creditors have stopped allowing him to make direct payments. It falls to Chloe to deal with them, begging for additional time. The bank which finances their mortgage will only accept payment by telephone or certified checks, or Western Union cash deposits. As the days and months go by, Steve masters his role as an UrbanRides driver and begins to resolve their financial issues. The horrors of the past become, for the moment, mere anecdotes. After consuming enormous amounts of mileage throughout all the ghettos of South Florida, and with the unconditional support of a small family, they manage to balance out their mortgage payments.

The year 2019 begins to fade. December is a good month for Steve. This is thanks to the planning he did in November, which consisted of analyzing the December events of the Miami-Dade County entertainment schedule one by one, marking them all on the alarm app of his phone. His strategy is to stay informed of everything that is happening in the county. This way, even if he's busy transporting a passenger far from where an event is happening, he can always keep in mind the options the city has to offer. The key to this business is to wait in the right place at the right time, he declares to Chloe.

That December there is a Christmas tree; they adorn it with four hanging envelopes that they agree to open in a circle, in some kind of symbolic gesture. The first contains a gift card worth fifty dollars and the rest remain empty, but with inscriptions written on the outside. The first is from Steve to Chloe. He gives it to her, exclaiming: To Chloe, from Santa! She opens it and then hugs him with delight, giving him an affectionate, audible kiss. She then puts the gift card into Noah’s envelope and shouts: To Noah, from Santa! Noah gets up and hugs her in the same way, and finally puts the card in Emmie’s envelope, completing the ritual. The laughter and festivities are incongruous but sincere. Emmie takes care of buying everyone hamburgers from Wendy’s the day after Christmas. Steve hasn’t had a single day off in recent months. He is obliged to reassemble his life from zero. The two businesses he once had have not been renewed since 2018; they have remained inactive for the last two years, languishing in debt and compromises far from any solution.

On New Year’s Day, he picks up an adult couple from Miami International Airport. He deduces from the Alitalia tags stuck to their baggage that they are married and returning from a trip to Europe. From the accent in which they converse with one another, he supposes they are British. They seem relaxed and used to traveling. One of his mental games is to differentiate occasional travelers from those with higher numbers of air miles. As he tells Chloe, the occasional travelers often seem confused, lost in the universe; when presented with something new they make hyper-expressive exclamations, marveling at every new discovery and even becoming frightened in the face of novelty. The UrbanRides app directs him to a residential area of expensive mansions by the sea called Gables Estates. Steve likes to makes up details about his passengers’ days, creating fictions which complement the realities that he hears during their trajectories. He has become a creator who augments the realism he sees before him. Since the first day he left his illness behind, he has decided to play this mental game so as not to let his pessimistic thoughts govern him. He tends to draw conclusions from the conversations he hears. The couple punctuate the general silence with utterances that suggest matters related to Italy. At one point she says: Teatro alla Scala, in Milan, front row tickets in the main gallery. An imaginary bell goes off in Steve’s head, reminding him of having attended that beautiful theater with Chloe, to see The Marriage of Figaro in October 2014. Mozart is a wonderful, prodigious genius, he mutters in an imperceptible voice. The opera is obviously fantastic, he thinks, and the cast really did it justice, replicating in his memory. La Scala is a truly gorgeous theater, he imagines it to himself as he observes the other vehicles, which, apparently motionless, roll along at the same speed as his along the expressway. The female passenger uneasily touches on a topic which must be the continuation of an incomplete conversation that started before boarding the vehicle: There are people in hospital with fever, unable to breathe. Steve raises his eyebrows in surprise. China is a long way away, thank God, replies the British man. They do not say another word until they reach the allotted destination. Steve takes out the suitcases, leaves them in the main entrance of the mansion, and heads off, trying to reach Old Cutler Road, a serpentine and forested area separated from Biscayne Bay by mansions bordering a highway which in fifteen minutes takes him to US 1, which, in turn, bears him eastward towards downtown Miami. He drives slowly, making the most of the beauty of the place, delighting in the endless collection of lush banyans at the edge of the road which look like giant trees of broccoli served in a cosmic salad.

The silence of the highway gradually becomes rarified with the distant vibration of a small motorcycle; without a doubt its driver is carrying food to the address of some hungry soul within any one of those splendid, dazzling, stupendous mansions. He has been inside a great many, has been there countless times with Chloe, supporting her as she does her fundraising rounds for Republican Party candidates. Steve was once an active member of that party before he considered it radicalized by the arrival of the Tycoon, who Steve has never seen as anything other than a decadent fat cat, an obnoxious xenophobe, a spoiled brat who feels entitled to the power of a nation to compensate for his questionable greatness. He decides to abandon the party’s designs from the first day the Tycoon becomes a candidate. He sees him from the very beginning as a pseudo-leader, devoid of values and distant from any ethical or moral tradition. He is convinced that this character was an accident of the party: the inflated result of early overexposure in the liberal press who initially presented him as a meme, an image which was then manipulated by the ultraconservative press who opportunistically catapulted him to the role of messiah towards the end of the campaign.

The Republican bid for power means nothing when they sell the party out to populism and allow such an idiot to win, he argues to himself in silence. They venerate insolence as the party’s only strength, he asserts from the invisibility of his thoughts.

Angry, he decides to direct his thoughts to another dimension, declaring himself a frustrated political rebel. He parks his thoughts on what he imagines of China, evoking fragments of photos and videos since, in spite of his extensive traveling, he has never actually been there. … A tree releases new pollen, causing allergic reactions and even suffocation… A chemical plant poisons the atmosphere, he ruminates, raising his eyebrows again in a gesture of I don’t know.

He imagines that country with its cities overpopulated by people of equal height and features. Confronted with the overwhelming physical sameness of these beings of the Earth, with no reference of accents or expressions, he cannot distinguish among their crowds heterosexuals, lesbians or gays, and much less bisexuals, queers, transgender and intersex people, or asexuals. He imagines only people of traditional sexes, giving no room for those who can unassign themselves from their original male- or femaleness like he sees happening in the West. He concludes that any human being, regardless of whether their sexuality has been altered by either innate or acquired causes, remains essentially either a man or a woman.

At this thought, he smiles sarcastically and chastises himself for thinking nonsense. But then he thinks that there’s no need to chide himself if he’s just having fun, pondering whatever he wants in his solitude, seeing all his thoughts as a healthy form of therapy by which to avoid depressive states and nothing more, as he has confided to Noah.

He sympathizes with the suffocations of some Chinese, and his thoughts jump to other suffocations, to those that are psychological, those which must be felt by hermaphrodites and transsexuals whose origins are subjected to hormonal and chromosomal uncertainty. To him, a homosexual man remains a man in his physiology, as a lesbian remains a woman until her death; they remain separate breeds. In the same way, he thinks that if a transsexual identifies as a woman from birth, even if she arrives in the world with a penis as an appendage, she remains a true woman and not a ‘new’ woman as the result of surgical reassignment. Likewise, he also thinks that a human being who wants to become a man, although they were born with a vagina, remains a man from birth and not a ‘new’ man. His mind reprograms his reflections. The suffocation a pre-transition transgender person must suffer!

His thoughts return to that hospital brimming with beings asphyxiating and burning with fever. He imagines himself walking through China, amidst that industrial pollution which turns the sky gray, filling it with floating toxicity. He recalls some lines from the novel East Wind: West Wind by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, and secretly remembers that the east wind refers to China and its marked tendency towards Westernization. Steve thinks about that book because it made him aware of the deep abyss of cultural difference, and the secrets every Chinese woman keeps in her way of living. He imagines these women liberated by themselves, as women who hide passions which then open suddenly like flowers in bloom. But then his vision moves away from the coming and going of Americanized Chinese women and heads for the mountains, those he knows from movies filmed in the forests and mountain ranges of that country. He sees the fields invaded by bamboo trees, and the small white dots on the immense horizon which tell of the presence of silent pandas. In this imaginary chain of images, that of the pandas morphs into the WWF logo and the stickers which promote the safeguarding of wild fauna. He imagines a panda suffocating in a cage in a zoo, alone, for many years or even for life, wrapped in the most eloquent of mysteries, enduring, without knowing why, the flow of human stares, of their eyes, their camera lenses and smartphones. He evokes the pandas that are alien to the happiness of those who purchase panda teddy bears from the animals' captors by which to remember them secretly. He imagines the news announcing the death of the oldest panda in captivity in the world. Why live like this! he says to himself. He sees the panda teddy bears tossed into the trash of any home in the world, along with food scraps and plastic packaging. He relates suffocation to the feeling of a fish out of water, to birds kicking out while imprisoned in the jaws of some brutish cat, to young, kidnapped women at the mercy of pimps, to prisoners subject to the gas chamber, suffocating both before and after the gas has been turned on. Finally, he evokes the economic suffocation that he himself is suffering along with his family, but then he stops, calling himself selfish. His suffocation isn’t really a problem compared to many of the beings that are suffocated alive by all manner of circumstances, including lack of oxygen, as announced in China.

He breathes deeply, accelerating to overtake in the right-hand lane a stampede of vehicles who are butting in, sliding along the asphalt of the Interstate I-75. He accelerates more, looking over his left shoulder to manage his way in, and then begins to overtake lanes on his left. A few moments later, his vision monitors all the possible points of entry and options of fitting in with the vehicles he sees on either side, until at last he reigns over all six lanes