I saw the hopefuls on the streets and wondered when their faith would wane, when they would have had enough, what it would take for them to fail to be filled again. Most were leaden after Anton Cermak’s assassination. I thought it would be their final descent, but still they ascended, unable to be stopped by the violent death of a mayor they’d fought to elect, a man who they’d tied so many of their wishes to.

Cermak had died a hero in early March after the shooting, which occurred a month prior. During a photo-op with President-Elect Roosevelt in Florida, Cermak was shot in the lung. Newspapers reported that Chicago’s mayor hadn’t been the target, that a woman had bumped the assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, with her purse and caused him to hit Cermak rather than his intended victim, FDR. According to the Tribune, Cermak had said to Roosevelt, ‘I'm glad it was me instead of you,’ noble words no one could prove he’d said, but the valiant statement gave mourners hope, made them feel like they’d backed the right horse.

While the idealists drifted toward the horizon once again, high on an act of valor, hardened Chicagoans doubted the bullet was ever meant for FDR. Cermak had made enemies with his talk of cleaning up the sordid streets and putting a stop to prohibition. Whispers that Capone was behind the finger, behind the goon who fired the gun, were growing louder by the day. Yet, those who theorized remained in lines outside the monster’s soup kitchens.

I wish I’d had the capacity to be something I wasn’t, to harness even an iota of their insincerity so my life was easier to live. If you only believed what was convenient in the moment, you never had to cope with the longevity of time. The ability to shift and change based on the words of fickle men was more of a blessing than ignorance itself. How I desired to transform based on their lies, to forget myself and remain only in relation to them, a thoughtless mold who could not be let down because I did not exist. To be nobody beneath them was to be the epitome of self-preservation, a subservient voice, a blank mind, a faceless soldier in the fight for … nothing. Who knew what we were bucking against anyway? The ground had fallen out and nobody knew how to fix it.