Nine Years of Trying to Explain My Position, part III of V

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Charley Brown always tried to kick the football, and Lucy ALWAYS hauled it out of the way.  His childhood wasn't exactly hell...Hell would have been if Lucy had occasionally let him kick the ball.  Going into a job knowing you're going to fail isn't hell, but going in knowing that you can almost hope to succeed IS. 

This, combined with the general level of failure in his life, made Charley Brown hard as fucking nails.  He became known as the most hard-nosed detective Chicago ever had.  Nothing impressed him, nothing got to him, because he KNEW he lived in a world in which failure wasn't only an option, it was the ONLY option.

He went from murder to murder, doggedly chasing each murderer down...Not by the high tech wizardry they try to shove on you on CSI, but just by knowing how humans think.  By knowing which ones ALMOST had enough hope, who thought they could get away with murder and that the murder would solve their problems.  Losers, in other words, and if there's one thing Charley understood, it was losers.

When he cracked a hard case, he'd go to the bar where Schroeder played piano, and get royally fucked up.  Then the department would send someone around to pull him out of the dumpster out back, and assign him a new case.  Rinse, repeat.  Charley knew he wasn't in hell, though, because just like the football thing, there'd always be another murder.  There was no hope at all, so he could resign himself to a lifetime of one sordid, dismal event after another.

There was only one case he never cracked.  A few years after he became a cop, someone killed Lucy by shoving a football all the way down her throat.  Charley would smile when he thought about that, and Schroeder – who had been stalked by her all through his life – would smile, too, while he played Bach for his best friend, while this hero of his drank whiskey neat from 5PM to closing time. 

Bitch of a case, that one.  Not one single lead for Charley to follow up on.  But there's always one, isn't there?

Heh.

[Freeky]

This one will take some time for my brain to digest.  Good one, though, and the end made me a bit.

[Luna]

Damn...  Hell, yes.

[Cainad (dec.)]

He went from murder to murder, doggedly chasing each murderer down...Not by the high tech wizardry they try to shove on you on CSI, but just by knowing how humans think.  By knowing which ones ALMOST had enough hope, who thought they could get away with murder and that the murder would solve their problems.  Losers, in other words, and if there's one thing Charley understood, it was losers.

BAM!

Nice one. My head's all full of buzzing insects at the moment from pills, worrying, and lack of sleep, but I can appreciate this (the whole thing, not just that bit, FWIW).

[LMNO]

This almost made me optimistic, in that Charlie's fucked up childhood might have helped him out in the end.


Then I think about how it helped, and I get all    again.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

That which does not kill us?

Very nice!  I like it a lot! 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This almost made me optimistic, in that Charlie's fucked up childhood might have helped him out in the end.


Then I think about how it helped, and I get all    again.

It's not bad, if you're Schroeder.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

OH HELL FUCKING YES

JUST HELL YES.

[LMNO]

This almost made me optimistic, in that Charlie's fucked up childhood might have helped him out in the end.


Then I think about how it helped, and I get all   again.

It's not bad, if you're Schroeder.

You're saying the musician wins, in the end?

<--LMNO

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

[Phox]

Wow, I am at a loss yet again. Damn good stuff, Roger.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Wow, I am at a loss yet again. Damn good stuff, Roger.

Not sure I'm making my point, though.

[Kai]

This one gave me a huge grin. Then I started laughing. I don't /think/ it sounded like screaming, but there wasn't anyone else around to judge it.

[Richter]

Jim Butcher, eat your heart out    Nice.

[Richter]

Charley knew Schroeder would keep his face out of things.  It's how he was.  Play dumb and go back to playing the piano, front it like some floosy artsy type, or the spaced out virtuoso when the questions came around.  He was on the ball though, and could key out any classical you wanted while still putting two and two together.  Arithmetic.

That's really what it was about at the end wasn't it?  The simple human arithmetic of it all. 

Linus would always add it up the same way.  If a column came out in the moral red, he had to pipe up.  (HIS moral red, mind you.  Which was a sight more exacting than anyone ever liked.)  He was read, and reasoned.  Schoolteacher.  Classics down at the local public high.  Tried to get Socrates through Hobbes into the head of anyone who wasn't immediately bound for Voc. Tech., or stymied out of intellectualism, and put into the parochials by their parents.  For all his head full of ethics and world views, he was more dualist than anyone. It came down to right or wrong for him.  If it was wrong, it was unacceptable, and you had to fix it. 
...Thing was, he argued like an idealistic intellectual too.  Thought that being "Wrong", and being told how you were "Wrong" was why you should stop.  Life doesn't work like that though, and it got him shut up.

He's still around.  He got his job back after.  After a week in the hospital, and three months in mental care for "nerves".  He latched onto this bit of fabric, a curtain, first thing he could get, and held it next to his face.  Never let it go until an hour before his discharge.
He never spoke up much after that.

Pig Pen was almost an opposite to him.  Remember the old street cleaners?  Bucket on wheels and a push broom?  That's what he did.  He must've been paid for it because he got by OK, but we never asked.  Pig PEn, he watched the city, the streets.  He knew it's laws and it's moves, the perverse human jungle.  He watched it all, the harmless trash man sweeping at the Sisyphean accumulation.  Get on his good side, and he'd quote a bit of Darwin or Kipling at you.  Not in a way that made you want to argue, but in a way that made you look at Chicago again, and somehow see it like a sunset, a forest, or a stormy ocean.  Terrible, but compelling. 
He'd just go back to sweeping it all.  At the bottom, in the shit, yet somehow above it, impervious to it.  At home.

Pig Pen would see it all happen and never bat and eyelash.  Broke one or two cases for Charles too.  Dropping him a hint or a lead that Charles would just mutter away before turning over in the dumpster to barf, but would somehow be relevant to the next folder on his desk when he finally rolled into the precinct.