IJ study archive

Scene 120: gately shot nucks

Scene
120
Pages
601–619
When
night of Wed 11 - Thurs 12 Nov YDAU (2009), 2300h to just past 0005h (the raw's last stamp)
Where
Ennet House and the little nameless streetlet outside, Enfield Marine groundsin: Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital complex › Ennet House Drug & Alcohol Recovery House
POV
3rd person, Gately-centric; brief Erdedy-focalized asides late

Characters present

Characters referenced

Themes

Open questions this scene bears on

Endnotes

Connects to (editorial cuts & payoffs, 8)

Summary

Night-staffer Gately works the grinding mechanics of an Ennet House curfew — head-counts, a spot-urine on hollow-eyed Bruce Green, the mandatory Discharge of the missing Amy J., the dreaded 0000h car-moving ritual — while a mustacheless, plainly wired Lenz oozes in late. The car-move erupts: three Canadians in flowered shirts, one covering the residents with a customized .44 Bulldog, are hunting Lenz to avenge "Pépé or Bébé" (the dog Lenz throat-cut). Lenz uses Gately as a shield; Gately, calm and almost jolly, twice says he doesn't want to fight, then puts both big Nucks down with terrible old expertise — and takes a .44 round in the right shoulder, saved from a second by Green's half-nelson on the shooter. Refusing an ambulance because he's Supervised and a gunshot means jail, Gately lies bleeding in the street while veiled Joelle climbs down a tree, staunches him with her folded robe, and takes command; he places her voice as Madame Psychosis from the FM. Cut as they lift him: "Ready?"

What to notice

The violence is rendered as film — "It's not so much that things slow as break into frames." — and the headline crossing Gately's mind "like a slow train" (SHOT IN SOBRIETY) is the scene reading itself as media even as it happens. Notice what the book does with heroism here: Gately's old ironized fantasy of dying big in bold Globe print arrives instead as plain unwanted duty — he twice says, distinctly, that he does not want to fight, weighs kneeling to pray, and then the terrible grace: "Having no choice now not to fight and things simplify radically, divisions collapse." His code costs are exact and unglamorous — he takes the .44 round shielding the one resident who least deserves it, and refuses the ambulance because a gunshot means jail for a Supervised man: the heroic act and the self-destructive one are the same decision. Then the baton-pass that fuses the book's two spines: "Gately's down, Madame Psychosis is in charge" — the veiled radio voice he's just placed now commanding the street, the Gately-Joelle thread founded in his blood on the pavement. And the closing correction is quietly enormous: the constellation Gately has always read as the Big Question Mark is really the Big Dipper — his whole sky slightly misread, and still navigable.

Beats — page-by-page
  • pp. 601-602: curfew 2300-2330; Clenette & Yolanda in from Footprints (n.246); Foss + Cortelyu Logged; Lenz late and unaccountable; Green knocks at 2336, potato-white — Full House Restriction (n.247) and a spot-urine to the basement fridgelette (n.248); 2350h Amy J. Discharged, Irish Luggage on the porch; Gately's 20 anti-gut situps.
  • pp. 602-604: the residents'-car essay — the 2355-0005 side-switch "a time of total but not very spiritual community"; Denial as "a kind of idolatry of uniqueness," addicts and students exempt in their own minds from laws that "ironly govern everybody else"; Gene M. and Annie Parrot say let them get towed; Gately can't (cf. n.249).
  • p. 605: Lenz found doing jock-strapped handstand-pushups farting over Day's pillow; up close he's wired ("visited by the Sergeant at Arms," the L-Dopa fish-on-a-gaff mouth); Gately wants an immediate urine and, with a conscience-twinge, looks forward to Discharging him.
  • pp. 606-608: Glynn's disembowelled VW must be moved; Gately's humiliating licenselessness; Green volunteers; Glynn upstairs delirious with diverticulitis ("Hoits, Don"); Thrale's high-B# scream; Green: "Come now Gately."
  • pp. 608-609: the tableau decocts — jacked Montego, two Gately-sized bearded Nucks chasing Lenz around the car "like a cartoon," a third covering everyone with an Item (n.255); Gately's mind clicks over, "things... break into frames"; expert appraisal of the vented, bobbed, speed-loader-throated .44 in a pro's Weaver stance.
  • pp. 610-611: it's Nucks avenging "Pépé or Bébé"; "a black surge of Remember-Whenning" the Québecer he killed; "This line of thinking is intolerable"; he crosses into the headlights in "a kind of jolly calm"; the old fantasy of dying a hero in bold Globe print; Lenz makes him a shield; the White Flag thought to kneel and ask for guidance — he stands instead.
  • p. 612: a blade snicks; "Having no choice now not to fight and things simplify radically, divisions collapse"; twice, distinctly: he does not want to fight; the charge.
  • pp. 612-613: the fight in frames — a Nuck breaks his hand on Gately's forehead; arm broken over the knee and out of its socket; calf slashed; the Rockette kick that breaks Gately's toe; the flat crack from the lawn — SHOT IN SOBRIETY "like a slow train"; Green's half-nelson forces the second round skyward; Gunther's paratrooper-boot kick; Green's nose pops, he doesn't let go.
  • pp. 613-615: Gately bangs the big Nuck's head into the windshield to "a sort of liquid crunch"; Clenette and Yolanda kick on the "fu" of "Motha-fucka"; Joelle descends the ailanthus showing "spectacularly undeformed thigh," shouting his first name; Gately stomps the first Nuck's map, wobbles back, sits in the street.
  • pp. 615-617: lying down "just a decision"; Joelle straddles his arm, pressing the folded robe; "You owe me urine, Lenz"; "two of them, like, desisted" / "You mean deceased"; no ambulance — "I'm Supervised. I'll go to jail sure."
  • pp. 617-619: "Gately's down, Madame Psychosis is in charge" — Joelle countermands calls, sends Erdedy to verbalize at the hammered Security drunk; "You're Madame on the FM, is how I knew you"; he vomits a little on Green and Joelle, who ignore it; "'And Lo,' she says softly"; the Big Question Mark is really the Big Dipper; hands lift — "Ready?"

Themes in this scene

  • Addiction and Recovery: the unglamorous machinery of staffed sobriety — Logs, urines, Restrictions, Denial anatomized — and Lenz's relapse paid for in the body of the House's most sincerely recovering man.
  • Irony and Sincerity: the ironized heroic-death fantasy arrives as plain unwanted duty; the corny impulse to kneel and pray is weighed dead-seriously; his twice-stated refusal — "He says twice very distinctly that he does not want to fight them." — is single-entendre true.
  • Nationalism and O.N.A.N.: vengeance speaks Canadian ("Nucks really do pronounce the with a z"); the DuPlessis memory knits this private beef into the U.S.-Canada blood-ledger.
  • Disability and Deformity: veiled Joelle in command — U.H.I.D. gauze inscrutable, the "undeformed thigh" teasing the deformity question.

Connections — backward & forward

Backward

  • DuPlessis Remember-When → scene 016 (pp. 55-60): Gately twice entangled with armed Canadians.
  • Erdedy frozen, hands up with keys (pp. 609, 613, n.256) — scene 004's paralyzed waiter again.
  • Endnotes, briefly: n.246 Footprints, the depressing Davis Sq. sober club; n.247 F.H.R. = Ennet's Hole; n.248 urines ride free with Unit #2's methadone-clinic batch (Calvin T. entered Ennet that route); n.249 Gately never once failed to clean his drunken mother's vomit; n.250 Henderson's suspicious Lincoln; n.251 the feared Insurance-Reasons sheet; n.252 Gately ignores upstairs smoking, having once smoked in his sleep; n.253 little donated clothing fits him; n.254 his iron point never to run again, sober; n.255 "Item" = NNE handgun argot; n.256 Erdedy's hands still up.
  • The Nucks avenge the dog Lenz throat-cut earlier this same night (pp. 585-587, scene 116; Green witnessed from behind a tree); Lenz's nail-creases hold "horseshoes of dried blood" (p. 611) — he's killed again tonight, hence the lateness.

Forward

  • Same evening as n.90's Day-Gately interface log (to ~2329h; see scenes/scene n090) and as scene 122 (E.T.A. supper, 1810h), where Clenette and Didi are watched descending to Ennet; Clenette and Yolanda re-enter here at 2315.
  • The wound is the hinge of Gately's last quarter: St. E.'s trauma wing, refused Demerol, wraith colloquies, Fackelmann flashback (pp. 809, scene 161ff); "desisted/deceased" seeds the Finest's later interest in him.
  • The Joelle-Gately thread begins; "And Lo" is her WYYY incantation (scene 053, pp. 181-193); cross-light scene 121: the A.F.R. is simultaneously hunting Madame Psychosis.

Notable passages (6)
  • p. 604: "It's like a kind of idolatry of uniqueness." — Denial defined; anchor passage.
  • p. 609: "It's not so much that things slow as break into frames." — violence rendered as film.
  • p. 612: "Having no choice now not to fight and things simplify radically, divisions collapse." — Gately's terrible grace.
  • p. 613: "SHOT IN SOBRIETY in bold headline caps goes across his mind's eye like a slow train…" (the sentence runs on into the third Nuck's approach).
  • p. 617: "The scene out here has changed: Gately's down, Madame Psychosis is in charge." — the baton-pass founding the Gately-Joelle thread.
  • p. 619: "What Gately's always thought of as the Big Question Mark is really the Big Dipper." — misread constellations; closing image.

What links here Timeline events here (24) · Connected from (22) · Passages quoted here (45) · Motifs (8)

Timeline events here

Connected from

Passages quoted here

Motifs