THE DEMON OF WALL STREET

He tended it, kept it in excellent repair, trimmed off the fray. He watered the flowers around it, but the flowers died. The memorial flowers always died.

His father had died. The father who had willed the farm over to his son, the son who knew nothing of business. The bank was foreclosing on the property.

His father had died, but had not left him. His essence stayed behind, gave him advise. His father’s essence wore rags, stuffed with hay and hung in the field where he tended it, kept it in excellent repair.

He climbed the little step ladder and leaned up close. His father’s limbs were bundled sticks. His face was papier mache with a bright red painted on smile, hopeful black dots for eyes and rosy pink cheeks, head tilted ever-so proudly back, optimistic, happy, content. He leaned in close to the bright red smile and listened.

***

He got off the Lake Shore Limited at Penn Station at nine in the morning and hit the gun shop by one.

Just one week’s wait.

At the hotel he unpacked, laid the contents of his bag on the floor: sticks, hay, clothing. Before he reassembled his father, he needed a method of carriage.

So he walked the streets of New York with a shopping cart full of his scarecrow father, propped up like a drunk friend, waiting for time to pass. Nothing unusual, just one more thing to tick off the list of ‘now I‘ve seen everything.’ Once in a while he would lean his ear in close to the bright red lips.

A couple days in, the cart fell over on its side trying to make its way up a non-wheelchair accessible curb, spilling his father all over the filthy street. This would not do.

***

He remembered there was a thunderstorm. It didn’t matter whether or not there really was one, because that’s just how he remembered it. His father had just died.

He was taking down all the little trinkets that ornamented his father’s life and placing them in boxes. Pictures of his father’s old friends and times and places that he had never known. Old clocks shaped like things that his father enjoyed, that he had always felt lukewarm about. There were a couple of clocks set in glazed pieces of chopped wood with eagles painted on them. Other things came down that day: old Christmas cards, some velvet paintings, the scarecrow in the field.

***

He didn’t know too much about finance. It wasn’t really his fault, nobody had ever tried to teach him. It’s not that he was simple minded, but he was kind of caught up. They didn’t teach him how to run a farm at school, that was for sure. His father had taught him practical things: how to raise chickens, how to build a fence, and how to shoot guns.

He tried to imagine how many people in the city had never seen a farm. Millions? He tried over and over to imagine them all. He tried to see how many he could visualize in his mind at one time and still be able to count them all. He tried to trap as many of them as he could in a well-lit room of his own design, shoulder to shoulder. Before long they would step out of line, move around, waver and mingle. He could never count higher than the mid teens. When he would open his eyes, there would be more people on the street than he could fit in his mind.

He wondered how many of these people could teach him finance, how long it would take. Too long, probably. He had a little money, enough to last on this trip that’s all he knew. Enough to last on this one way trip.

***

He remembered the power went out during the thunderstorm.

He was in the attic or the basement, moving boxes, making space. He was moving stuff around and a lot of it was really heavy and difficult. He imagined every box or couch as having little arms, legs and a head, all slacked and slouched, feet dragging across the floor. Dead weight.

He didn’t cry when his father died, didn’t punch things or get angry. Just felt numb inside. “Oh,” he said, when they told him the news. “Oh.”

He slumped up against the wall, wiped his forehead, catching his breath. He looked over to the scarecrow that he had set across the narrow room from him. The way he remembered it, lightning struck just then, and it was at that very moment, everything lit up, he saw clearly the scarecrow turn its head and look at him.

He was frightened half to death until it started to talk.

***

He had gathered up the sticks and some good stiff yellow hay and set them down in piles for his father. His father had picked out some old work clothes that weren’t too worn out and together father and son conspired to make a man. But a man without a head. He blew a balloon, and they covered it in gluey strips of newspaper together. When it dried he popped the balloon and painted on a face.

His father didn’t really say too much ever, but a certain tension was lifted when they made that scarecrow.

***

There was only one solution to the unwieldy shopping cart problem. The efforts of father and son to fashion a man from sticks and clothes had seemed an immobile failure on the streets of New York.

The scarecrow had been a refuge of sorts for both of them. The memory of its genesis was a refuge for him and the thing itself was a refuge for his father’s soul. Sticks and clothes did not move on their own … well, only once when no one was looking. They would not move unless he donned the clothing, father and son conjoined in spirit.

He knew intuitively he would no longer need to listen to the bright red lips with his ear, donning the clothes he would listen with his heart and his mind.

***

He stalked purposefully down Broadway in his father’s soul’s clothing with his brand new gun. Turned a left on Wall street and hit the New York Stock Exchange.

There was a giant American flag draped across the face of the building like a mask, and a guarded fence keeping out the public. It was a fortress.

Dark jackets milled about on the other side of the fence, chatting feverishly, getting in and out of dark cars. He felt the heaviness of the gun in his waistband.

A blue jacket walked slowly out of the building and up to the fence, rubbing his forehead, pacing, pacing then resting his elbows.

He listened to his heart, now was his chance.

***

His heart said it was the bank that killed his father. Inflation and mortgages and other things he did not quite understand had tired his father out, slowed him down, squeezed his heart into a tight little fist that one day collapsed from exhaustion.

It said it was the banks and the New York money men, manipulating the stock market, driving out the small business man. That’s all he needed to know.

***

He walked bumpily up to the man resting on the fence, already he saw dark jackets jogging a bee line in his direction. He opened his mouth and words that weren’t his own came out, words from the heart, words like two red eyes glowing from the depths of his black mind.

His voice accused the blue jacket of killing his father, of ruining his father’s business, of ruining the country.

He recognized something in the face of the blue jacket. Something familiar. Something that told him the blue jacket was no different from him, possessed of the same drive.

His voice continued to accuse.

The blue jacket jumped over the fence despite the dark jackets’ clawing, resisting hands. Before he knew what hit him, the blue jacket had pummeled him into the brownstone pavement. The blue jacket breathed heavily through his teeth, shaking out the pain from his bludgeoning fists, towering over him.

Some tourists were taking pictures off to the side.