Meet Flynn

He's a Trader and He Will Relay Some War Stories From the Pits

DING! DING! DING!

The bell rang. Three times. Sharp. It bounced off the walls of the Exchange. The pits went quiet. Traders spoke low. Clerks gathered cards. Torn paper, gum, and old news sheets lay on the floor. The air hung heavy. Stale. Clerks on the top step signaled slowly to the desks. Desk men held phones to their shoulders. They read the day’s tallies like scores from a box score, to customers far from Chicago.

Flynn sat on the step. He had stood there all day. His red jacket stuck to his body with gluey sweat. His hair stuck to his forehead, wet and matted. The ends of his hair were stiff with dried salt. His Shirt and undershirt clung cold to his trunk. His feet weighed like stones in water. Sweat in his socks dried hard. It ground blisters into the leather. Muscles burned. A knife twisted low in his back. From the standing. From the crush of bodies.

It was not just the body. The mind was empty. White as bone. The heart vacant too. He breathed deep. The stale air filled him. He let it out slow. It burned as it left his lungs like the dry air of a wintry night.

He reached into his red trading smock. His gold badge reflected in the harsh fluorescent light. He reached into his top left pocket and pulled out the dupes. They stuck wet together. His thumb worked them apart. The marks on them. His own hand? Worse than a doctor’s note. The last hour had turned wild. He traded more in that hour than he had the entire day before.

He read the lines. Remembered most. One he did not. Had he marked it into his position? His heart jumped. The gut dropped cold. Yes. He had. He flipped them again. Sure.

That morning, before the open, he stood down fifty thousand.

In the last thirty seconds, two orders hit. Big ones. One month dropped hard. The other climbed straight. He had a spread position. Two minutes before close, he bought hundreds. Then sold. Clear. One hundred fifty thousand in those seconds.

All day, he fought. Up. Down. The balance in his account swung wildly. With the end run, another hundred thousand. Two hundred fifty total. From the hole he started in, three hundred clear.

He rose then. Knees cracked. Ankles too. He walked from the pit. Off the floor. He hoped the outtrades came clean tomorrow. No ghosts.