PART FOUR: TAKING

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”
Matthew 6:34

 



The Birth of Good and Evil and Their Sister

E
vening Star could not stop thinking about the naked Gardener.  “Did you see the look in her eyes?” she asked A Damn Fool.
      “No,” was all he would say.  He was still in a state of terror despite the distance they had traversed since fleeing the Garden.  He kept looking back in the direction they’d come, expecting to see the spiteful god and his hissing snake.
      When Eve noticed his fear, she dismissed it.  Why be afraid of a clown?
      If she had asked aloud, A Damn might have told her.  But she was too engrossed in finding the right words to name what she’d seen in the old woman’s eyes.
      “I saw Loneliness and Solace and Fierce Love for Everything-that-is.”  Eve thrilled to her new words.  “There was something more, but I don’t know what to call it.  Do you?”
      “No,” A Damn repeated.
      Though she suspected A Damn hadn’t understood a word she’d said, she didn’t stop talking.  She was starting to fall in love with the sound of her own voice.  “And did you notice the round belly on the clay figure between her breasts?  I think it was supposed to have pups inside.”
      They were resting by a river.  Actually, it was two rivers that tumbled out of a steamy green land high above them before dropping together to a deep pool far below.  From this pool emerged a single, shallow, and slow moving river.
      Eve and A Damn sat on the river’s conjugal banks and nibbled at the fruit A Damn unknowingly had taken from the Garden.  No matter how much they ate, they never got close to the stone in its middle.  Even as they bit into it, the juicy pulp replenished itself.
      “It must be a trick,” Eve said, very frustrated.  “Do you think Coyote’s behind it?”  She threw the useless fruit into the river and watched as it disappeared downstream.
      A Damn replied in the negative as he did to everything, but it didn’t stop her.
      “Why do you think we’re in this wet land instead of the dry land where the First People lived?  Do you think we left by the wrong gate?”
      And of course the answer was No.
      She shrugged her shoulders and followed him as he waded across the river.  There was every kind of animal drinking and lazing about in the water.  The animals didn’t seem to notice the People as they crossed over.
      Eve didn’t know where they were going or why, only that A Damn seemed to know something she didn’t.  So she followed him blindly.  This would cost her more than all of the angry Gardener’s vilest predictions come true.

As they walked through the endless green land, they saw the Moon grow fat and full many times before Eve noticed that she was growing fat and full, too.  Several Moons more and even A Damn could see that Eve looked like Dog before she dropped her pups.
      One day Eve refused to walk anymore.  “I can’t,” she shouted at A Damn, which so startled him that he actually said something more than no.
      “Why not?”
      “I think I have pups who want to come out of me.”
      “How?”
      Eve didn’t know how the pups had gotten inside her, but she knew exactly how they wanted to come out.  She started to point between her legs but couldn’t, it all happened so quickly.
      “Help me!” she pleaded.
      A Damn thought she was asking him, but actually she was calling out to the naked Gardener.
      She squatted against a tree and moaned.  A gushing stream poured out of her, then A Damn saw something dark and knobby appear in the widening slit between her legs.
      Eve panted, she pushed, she panted, she pushed, and then a purplish sac whooshed out of her and lay inert between her legs.
      A Damn knelt down to see what was what.
      When he tore at the filmy sac he found two tiny pups inside.
      Eve started to moan again, and then push and pant until another sac dropped out of her.  When A Damn opened this one, there was another pup.  It had a small slit between her legs just like Eve’s, whereas the first two came with tiny cocks like A Damn’s.
      A Damn bit through the pulpy ropes that attached the pups to Eve.  Finally one last large sac came out, a large empty one crisscrossed with a maze of red and blue and black webs.
      Then it was all over except for the mewling of the pups.
      Evening Star felt her breasts tingle when the pups mewled, so she put their sucking mouths to each breast, though of course one of the three had to wait.  That one grew angry and red faced, screaming curses at A Damn just like the angry Gardener.  It scared him so much that he dropped the pup, who lay on the ground twisted and bent but still cursing.
      At that moment the angry Gardener and his snake showed up.  It had taken them a long time to catch up with Eve and A Damn, but at last they had.
      When A Damn saw them, he tried to pull Eve from the ground where she was crouched over the dropped pup.  She was offering him first one empty breast then the other.
      The Gardener called out, “I’m here to offer refuge and asylum,” but Eve and A Damn paid him no heed.
      The Serpent hissed at A Damn, “I saw you throw that pup on the ground!”
      A Damn shook his head emphatically, trying to speak in his own defense but unable to utter a word.  The snake came closer, and A Damn picked up a stick from the ground and waved it wildly at the snake, which dodged the blows with ease.  “I saw,” it hissed.  “I saw what you did to that pup!”
      Eve touched the twisted body of her new pup and wailed, “He’s broken, this pup is broken!”
      This was the moment that father Coyote had instructed me to seize.  I snuck from behind a low bush and snatched a sleepy pup by the nape of her neck.  Unseen, I carried her dangling in my jaws.
      The last thing I heard was the dull thud of a stick against snake flesh and the Gardener’s angry shout, “For shame!”
      Then I snapped my white-tipped tail and flew between worlds.

Later, much later, Eve and A Damn were watching their two pups play.  They were in a cold and heartless land, hungry and lost and longing for the Garden and its magical fruit.  The strong pup kept picking on the other, calling it cruel names and tormenting its crooked body.
      Eve said, “Now I know what to call that last look in the naked Gardener’s eyes.”
      A Damn whacked the strong pup with a stick.  He shouted at it, “For shame!”  It was the same stick that had killed the snake a long time ago.  Then he turned to Eve and asked, “What did you say?”
      She could tell he didn’t really care.  She looked away from him and, her voice a hateful sound to her own ears, whispered into the wind, “Sorrow.”

Contents Top Home

 

11.  Chains

I
t was still early morning when I pulled into the metered parking lot behind Anthony’s Diner in St. Johnsbury.  The town hadn’t plowed it yet, but it didn’t matter since it had snowed only a few inches here.  I parked the Audi in the empty space next to my pickup and left the keys over the visor.  Diane used this same lot, so she’d find it soon, maybe that morning.
      When I got into the Toyota, it fired up right away, but as soon as I put it into gear and backed out of the space, it resisted and died.  I tried to turn it over again, but nothing happened.
      Then I remembered the coolant leak from last summer.  Since July I’d been pouring water into the radiator whenever it was low.  I’d kept reminding myself to replace the leaky hose and buy some coolant, but it was summertime in Vermont — that brief interlude when life is too glorious for such mundane acts — and I never got around to it.
      “Shit!” I said out loud about sixteen times when I opened the radiator cap.  Inside was a solid chunk of ice.  At best it would take hours to thaw, and I didn’t have hours; at worst I had just cracked the block.  Either way the truck was worthless to me.
      I got back into the Audi and was reaching for the keys in the visor when I saw a 1965 powder blue Mercedes drive into the lot.  It was Bob’s car, and he pulled up behind me, blocking me in.  As I watched in the rearview mirror, Diane climbed out of the passenger side.
      I could see Bob looking at me.  When he knew he had my eye in the mirror, he actually smiled as if I were an old friend.  Then he made a pistol out of his fingers and pulled the mock trigger.  He winked at me and drove off.
      Diane strode up to the Audi and climbed into the passenger side, settling herself as if we were about to have a long chat.
      This was definitely not on my agenda for a quick getaway.
      Before I could say anything, she began.  “I don’t know what you think happened last night, but obviously we need to talk.”
      “I don’t have time.”
      “We’re both an hour early for work, and this is something we need to get straight before walking in the door.”
      “I’m not going to work.”
      She hesitated a moment, considering, then said, “I’m sure Linda and I can manage for one day without you.”  Diane wasn’t being sarcastic, just businesslike.  Linda Penniman was the office manager.  She was easy going and competent, a rare mix in the law.  Having lived in St. Johnsbury her whole life, Linda knew the area and its people, which was good because her job description was about to expand dramatically.
      “It’s going to be a lot longer than one day.”
      “How much longer?”
      I’d been staring out the windshield at Anthony’s back door, but now I turned to face her.  She was dressed completely in black and looked beautiful to me, stunning and very sexy.  For some reason, that infuriated me.  So when I answered her, it was with more than a little bitterness.
      “How about forever?”
      “Why?” she asked in a pained voice.  The glow went out of her green eyes.
      I ignored her and put the keys in the ignition.  When I turned on the car, she put her hand on my arm.
      “Jimmy, don’t do this to us.”
      “There’s no ‘us’ to do anything to.  Now would you please get out of the car.”
      “What are you talking about?  This is my car!”
      “Yeah, well, let’s just say you’re loaning it to me for a while.”
      “Where are you going?”
      “I’ll let you know when I get there.”
      “That’s not good enough, Jimmy.”
      “It’ll have to be.  Now get out, Diane, I’m taking your car.”
      I must have given her a hard look, because she opened the door and got out.  Before she shut the door she leaned in and said, “I don’t care about this car and I don’t care whether you ever work with me again.  But I do care about you and about us and I’m not giving up on either.”  Then she closed the door and walked away without looking back.

Two hours later Lucky and I were parked by the bakery in Richmond.  It was where Odysea and I met whenever she was staying at Womyn’s Land, a place where men weren’t welcome.
      Now she was inside the bakery, calling the main house to ask her friend to bring the box of handcuff keys.
      We had taken back roads from Barnet to Barre, then gotten on Interstate 89.  The whole trip we’d been listening to the news on different stations — WSTJ in St. Johnsbury, the Point in Montpelier, WDEV in Waterbury — but there had been no mention of Lucky’s escape.
      “I don’t understand why it’s not on the radio.  The Department of Corrections always puts out an immediate alert.”
      “Is there anyone you could call to find out what’s going on?” Odysea had asked.  She was riding shotgun, while Lucky was hunched down in the back seat wearing a ski mask.  He looked like a bank robber, but it seemed preferable to his harlequin’s mask, at least in ski country where we might get away with it.  I had wanted to wait until dark before leaving Barnet Mountain, but Odysea had insisted that we weren’t safe there, and ultimately I’d agreed.
      “Yeah, there is someone I could call.”
      When Odysea came out of the bakery, I went inside to call Rod.  I figured he’d be at home sleeping before his swing shift.  I got his number from information and dialed it.  After six rings I heard a sleepy growl that must have been “Hello.”
      “Big Man Rod, this is your ol’ buddy Jimmy.”
      “This better be important, Jimmy,” he mumbled into the phone.
      “It is.”
      “Okay, then I guess I’ll wake up a little.”
      “What’s happening with my friend from last night?”
      “Who we talkin’ ‘bout here?”
      “The one who reminded you of your old coon dog.”
      “Henh, henh,” he said, which I knew was his notion of a chuckle.  “That’s who I thought was under consideration.”  There was a long silence, and I was about to ask again when finally Rod spoke.  “Jimmy, if I was you I wouldn’t get too close to that one.”
      “Why’s that, Rod?”
      “Let’s just put it this way: You ever walk by a wasp nest?  As long as you’re not in one of them sucker’s flying pattern, they leave you alone.  But if you just happen to be where they’re headin’, it’s all over.  You can’t shake them, you just get stung till they’re satisfied you ain’t comin’ back again soon.”
      “Rod, you’ve got to do better than that.  I’m in trouble here.”
      “That’s what I’m tellin’ you, Jimmy.”
      “Do you know where my client is?”
      “No, but I know where he isn’t.”
      “Where’s that?”
      “The state hospital.”
      “How come it’s not on the news?”
      “Been a blackout.  Don’t know why.  Never seen it before.  Well, there was one time a guy took a short sabbatical from Windsor Prison and we kept the lid on it for sixteen hours till we caught him near Putney.”
      “Why was that?”
      “He was the son of a police chief in Rutland County, and we didn’t wanna embarrass the father more than he’d already been.”
      “So you’re telling me there’s some kind of police connection here?”
      “I don’t really know, Jimmy.  I’m just talkin’ in my sleep, if you get my drift.”
      I figured that was the end of the conversation.  “Sweet dreams, Big Man.”
      “I always dream sweet, Jimmy.  You know why?”
      “Haven’t a clue.”
      “‘Cause when I’m awake I follow the advice of Satchel Paige, the finest pitcher baseball ever saw and a pretty damn good philosopher, too:  ‘Don’t look back,’ he said, ‘something might be gaining on you.’  You hear me, Jimmy?”
      “The words are coming through the wire, but I’m standing in a dark place and can’t see the forest for the trees, Rod.  Can you shed more light?”
      “Not right now, buddy, but I guess I can keep my ears open as long as you can keep your mouth shut.”
      “Deal,” I answered, “but at the risk of ruining a good thing, why are you doing this for me?”
      “I ain’t doing it for you, Jimmy, I’m doing it for me.”
      “What’s that mean?”
      “Simple:  I don’t like bullies.  Never have.”  Then he yawned loudly into the receiver and hung up.
Ten minutes later a young woman who was dressed in overalls and work boots handed over an old White Owl cigar box full of keys to Odysea.  Her hair, like Odysea’s, was cropped short except for a tail in back.  She never looked at Lucky or me, never spoke a word, merely handed over the box and waited nearby in an old Chevy pickup hand-painted a bright pink.
      It took us ten minutes and dozens of keys before we found one that worked.  The tension had been growing the whole time, and I for one had given up when I heard the first click.  A collective sigh filled the car.
      I stuffed Lucky’s handcuffs, chains, and belt into a Grand Union supermarket bag that read JUST SAY NO, then buried it beneath a mound of black plastic garbage bags in a green dumpster at the edge of the parking lot.
      “Okay, now we’re free,” Odysea said when she’d gotten back into the car after returning the cigar box.  I got the feeling she meant all three of us, not just Lucky.
      We pulled out of the bakery’s lot just behind the pink pickup.  It went towards Womyn’s Land, and we turned back towards the interstate.
      “Why did she help us?”
      “She doesn’t like bullies,” Odysea answered.
      “That’s the theme of the day,” I said, then told her about my conversation with Rod.  She wasn’t surprised at the coincidence.
      “There’s no such thing as coincidence, Jimmy.”
      “I’ve heard that said before, but it feels just a little too neat for how I see the universe.”
      “The universe appears chaotic but actually is very purposeful,” Odysea insisted.  “Besides, there are more freedom fighters in this world than the forces of evil admit.”
      “You think that’s what this is about, Good and Evil?”
      “It’s always about good and evil.  Every breath we take, every thought, every moment of our existence is a yea or nay, a choice between those two irreconcilable forces.”
      “I’m surprised that a Buddhist like you sees the world in black and white.  I thought you tried for a gray dispassionate approach.”
      “I do.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how seductive evil can be.  Evil plays endlessly on our desires, the cause of all suffering.  Which is why we must strive for awareness.”
      “I’m not so sure about the ‘striving’ part.”
      “I am,” a tiny voice said from the back seat.
      I laughed out loud.  “I keep forgetting that you talk, Lucky.”
      “Mostly I listen,” he answered in a very somber tone.
      “Why don’t you say more?” Odysea asked.
      “I’m afraid.”  His tiny voice quaked as he said it.
      “Can you tell us why?”
      “Some time.”
      “We’ve got all the time in the world,” I said as I drove up the ramp that led onto I-89 heading to Burlington.  My plan was get into New York state as fast as possible, then go south to Albany where we’d head west.  “How long do you figure it will take us to reach Austin?”  I asked Odysea.
      “If we sleep at night, about three days.”
      “Three days,” I mused.  “That’s a lot of hours to fill.”
      “I know one way to fill them,” Odysea said, looking right at me.
      I must have smirked, because she laughed and said “Don’t look like that.  I’m not prying.  I just think we’re past the point of having any secrets, Jimmy.  You, Lucky, me — we’ve thrown our futures into the same stream, and so our pasts are flowing together, too, in ways that may not be visible but are real and powerful.”
      “Sounds like we’re about to make a pact,” I said sardonically.  Then I remembered the September morning in the Horn of the Moon Cafe and realized I’d already made this pact.  Only I hadn’t lived up to it, had held back more than I’d promised to give.  Odysea must have read my mind.
      “I’ve never pressed you to tell me about your past until today.  I knew you needed to hold onto it.  But now I think the opposite is true.”  She was silent awhile, letting what she’d said settle.
      As I pulled into the passing lane to get by a semi with Quebec plates, she resumed speaking.  “We’re at the start of a new journey with a new partner, and maybe we should begin by agreeing to share everything, including our stories.  Especially our stories.”
      “Just for the record, what are you asking for here?
      “How about the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me Goddess.  Are you ready for that, Jimmy?”
      “Do I have a choice?”
      “You always have a choice.”
      “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
      I glanced over at her and saw the determined look on her face.  In the rearview mirror I spotted Lucky with the same look in his golden eyes.  I didn’t have to ask whether he agreed.  It was obvious.
      I was the lone holdout.  It was getting tiresome always being in that role.
      I must have sighed, because Odysea put a hand on my shoulder and left it there.  From the back seat Lucky put his hand on top of hers.  I smiled at them both, I couldn’t help myself.  They looked beautiful to me, radiant with a glow that made me feel loved and honored, maybe for the first time in my life.  A calm, intense energy passed among us at that moment.  It buoyed me up, and I felt connected to them in a way that astounded me because it was real and natural.
      “So where do we begin,” I asked.
      They both smiled and settled back as Odysea said, “Actually, I was wondering why you ended up working in the law.”
      “I thought I told you during our Woodbury College days.”
      “Not really.  You just said that you wanted to help people who had no one else on their side.  You never told me why.”
      I, too, settled into the Audi’s plush seat.  I put on the blinker and returned to the right lane, set the cruise control for 64 mph, and put it all on automatic.  Almost at once I started seeing the faces of men who will haunt me for as long as I live.

Contents Top Home

 

12.  Maddogs

T
he double doors clanged shut behind me, and I stared in wonder at the sunlight streaming through a wall of windows.  Such a simple thing —  sunlight through a window — yet I was mesmerized, for it had been too long since I’d seen the light of day.
      A short and muscular young man approached me.  He had dark, shaggy hair that made his face look round despite his rodent-like features.  With his barrel chest he reminded me of someone I couldn’t place.  He leaned close to me and spoke in a whisper.  “Want a blow job, man?”
      “What did you say?”
      “You want a blow job?”
      I told him no, but he persisted until I got angry, then he laughed at me and sauntered away.
      I discovered that he was called Mighty Mouse, for he remarkably resembled that TV cartoon character, which explained why he had looked so familiar.  I often saw him pacing the corridors with a middle-aged man who had befriended him, not for sexual favors but because Mighty Mouse needed friends desperately.  Even the most troubled of us could see that much.
      It was 1974 and we were the maddogs of Miami, psychiatric prisoners housed in a maximum security ward for the criminally insane.
      Not long after my arrival, a dozen or more of the men who lived on Flagler Ward were hanging around the dayroom.  Some stared off into space, others talked amiably, most simply listened to the rock music that resounded loudly in the large room.  John Lennon and Elton John were singing with wild energy:

   Whatever gets you through your life
      It’s alright, it’s alright
        Do it wrong or do it right
It’s alright, it’s alright. . . .

Some of us started dancing to the irresistible beat of the song, its message reminding us that there was still hope for us maddogs.  Those who weren’t dancing watched in amusement, caught by the elation of our wild prancing.
      Suddenly Mighty Mouse seized a heavy chair and rushed at his best friend, clearly intending to bash his brains out.
      “Mighty Mouse!” someone shouted.
      Out of the corner of an eye the friend saw him coming and ducked as the chair flew by, barely missing his head.
      Immediately the staff cornered Mighty Mouse, though the inmates tried to divert them — “Mighty Mouse just kidding, man” — but they weren’t fooled.  They dragged him off to a “Quiet Room.”

 Mighty Mouse went kicking and screaming all the way.  He knew what was in store for him.

“Tell me why you are here, Mr. St. John,” the psychiatrist said as I sat facing him at his desk in his office on the ward.  The blinds were drawn, and it was cool and shady.  He spoke with a strong Spanish accent, for he was Cuban.  A short, middle-aged man with a neatly clipped mustache and curly hair graying at the temples, he was handsome and genteel, unusually un-aggressive for a psychiatrist.
      Why was I there?  All the reasons, including those I knew too well and those that I only sensed, spun through my mind in a split second filled with doubt and hesitation.
      I saw the flash of fire, felt the concussion, and for a moment I thought I would start screaming.  But I didn’t.  I just looked him in the eyes and gave him the simple truth, that during the summer a friend had given me a shopping bag full of peyote buttons he had picked in the desert in the southwest.
      “Every morning I woke up and ate a few.  By the fall there was little difference between fantasy and reality to me.”
      “I think I am going to give you some medicine to help you calm down.”
      “Please don’t,” I begged.  “I’m very sensitive to any kind of drugs, and the whole reason I’m here is because of them.”
      He hesitated, thought for a moment, then finally said,  “Okay, we’ll see.”
      That evening I heard the night nurse slide open the glass window of the staff room and call out, “Medication!”
      I watched as the men shuffled up to the window and accepted their drugs.  When the long line finished, she started calling out the names of those who hadn’t appeared.  I was surprised to hear my name.
      “There must be some mistake.”
      “There’s no mistake.  Your doctor signed an order for you to take this medicine.”  She was an attractive white woman, perhaps forty, her crisp nurse’s uniform heavily starched, her long peach fingernails perfectly polished.
      “But he told me this afternoon that he wasn’t going to,” I insisted.
      She bristled and said, “Either you take this medicine now or I call Central.”
      I didn’t know what Central was, so I said, “Can’t you call him and ask?”
      “No, I’m not going to bother the doctor at home.  Now stop wasting my time and take this medicine.”  Her face was rigid and unyielding.  I knew the conversation was over, and I felt like I were living One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
      “No way in hell,” I said, then turned away.
      Three minutes later I could hear the loud locks turning in the double doors to the outside, and six huge men stormed into the room.
      “Goddamn you, St. John!” the shift supervisor yelled as the five other gorillas grabbed me.  I resisted, but one of them got hold of my thumb and wrenched it back until I thought he would break it off.  The others each seized a limb and stretched me in more directions than I knew existed, pummeling me in ways that hurt but didn’t leave bruises.
      They carried me struggling to a Quiet Room where they pinned me on my stomach to a bare mattress.  The supervisor yanked my pants below my knees.  Then he rammed a long needle into my ass and pumped the syringe, which suddenly shot the offensive fluid into my body.
      That’s right, I’m talking about rape.  Gang rape at that.
      Almost immediately a heavy veil of fog filled the room and I felt my joints stiffen as if concrete had been poured into my veins.
      The fog continued to fill the room for two more days.
      I couldn’t see and I couldn’t feel and I couldn’t think.
      I was the living dead.

The L-shaped ward was split into two wings.  At night the new inmates and those less tractable were locked into a dormitory room.  To sleep in the rooms on the other side of that locked door was an earned privilege.  After I finally had worked my way into one of the smaller bedrooms, I went to bed one night to discover Mighty Mouse getting into the bed next to mine.  I knew he hadn’t earned the privilege, and I was not about to sleep next to this volatile person, so I complained to the staff.  Mighty Mouse was forced back to the dorm, and I slept soundly.
      The next morning a man named Michael said to me, “Hey, St. John, come in my room.  I want to talk to you.”  Michael was a long-term inmate.  He was the leader of a gang of young white men on the ward who obviously controlled their end of it.
      It seemed as if nearly every member of Michael’s gang had been charged with or convicted of brutal sex crimes.  One powerfully built young man, whose pale face was deeply pitted from acne, leered at me every time I passed him in the hallways.  “That’s my new girlfriend,” he’d tell his sniggering friends.  Now he stood guard outside the door as Michael shut it behind him.
      “Sit down, St. John,” he said.
      I sat on one of the beds, uncertain and wary.  Michael stood over me, one foot up on the bed next to my leg, leaning with his face very close to mine.  His breath was sour, made so by the psychiatric drugs we were forced to take.  Michael started speaking slowly, quietly, but soon worked himself into a rage.
      “What the hell do you think you’re doing, St. John?  We brought Mighty Mouse over from the dorm last night and you got him sent back!  We’ve been working on this for weeks!  We’re tryin’ to get him better, you asshole!  You got a big mouth, and the next time you open it . . . ,” here he paused for breath and shook his clenched fist right next to my face, “we’re comin’ in the shower room when you’re in there.”  The menace in his voice was so real it filled the room around us.  I stared at him, transfixed by his anger.
      “You know people slip on soap all the time in showers,” Michael said.  “It’s tragic, it really is.  Some of them even get fucked first, then they fall on their heads and they die.  It’s tragic, you know what I mean?”
      Then he swung his arm back as if he were going to punch me in the face, but for some reason he controlled himself at the last second and lightly tapped my nose with his fist.  Even so, I could feel the incredible force of his rage.
      He glowered at me, then growled, “Get out of my room.”
      I left, and from then on I rarely spoke to anyone without thinking first.

Pacing the halls, pacing the halls, pacing the halls.  It was the only real activity that was available.  Up and down one corridor of the L, up and down the other.  Every day I paced, along with many of the other inmates.
      One of these was a man from Germany who kept raving in bouts.  No one understood what he was saying, for most of it was in German.  Day after day we passed each other in the halls, though he never noticed me.  He was just under six feet and very gaunt.  His greasy hair hung limply to his shoulders, and he rarely shaved the stubble from his chin.
      One morning I began to walk alongside of him.  Carefully, deliberately, I started matching his pace, which often was furious.  At first he didn’t notice, so consumed was he with his ravings.  Then I saw him glance out of the corner of one eye to look at me.  I smiled at him and just kept walking.
      The next day I did the same thing.  And then the day after that.  Soon we were partners in our pacing, and the German began to pause in his ranting to talk with me in halting English.
      He never called me by name, but referred to me as “my friend.”  It was always, “Good morning, my friend,” or “It’s good to see you, my friend.”  Some days he was consumed by his rage, and if I came near he would wave me away.  When he saw the concern on my face, he’d gesture me to him.  I remember his hands, very pale and soft, with long, slender fingers.  He would gently pat me on the arm, and whisper, “I’m okay, my friend, this is just something I have to do.”  Then he’d bolt down the hall, gesticulating wildly, shouting and swearing in German.  Other days he was calm and, as we paced the halls, able to tell me his story.
      He had come to Miami on vacation.  One night, walking the streets alone, he had been mugged and robbed of all his money.  Was that when his ranting began?  I don’t know for certain, I only know that the heavy psychiatric drugs he was forced to take were no help to him.  Because he continued to vent his anger and frustration, the staff was threatening to use electric shock to end his raving.  They didn’t even know why he was so upset, nor did they see the gentle man beneath the threats and shouts.  They saw the obvious and cared about one thing only — controlling his behavior.
      I feared for him, for I had seen other inmates returning onto the ward after having been shocked.  It was very disturbing.  They had to be assisted by the staff, for they stumbled as if in a drunken stupor.  Some stared blankly, most grinned stupidly.
      Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is the industry’s name for shock, which is an electric kick in the head that leaves your brain traumatized.  Often your memory is affected, sometimes permanently, and you feel light-headed and care-free, which is common when people suffer head injuries.  The “high” from shock, however, lasts only about four months, then the overwhelming sorrow or despair returns, and the shock docs are there waiting.  It is the most lucrative treatment there is, spawning an industry that provides ample documentation for its “success-rate,” especially among the most powerless people in our culture, including old women.

As the German and I paced the halls, my attention was often caught by a young black man with a cleanly shaved head who was pacing, as well.  His name was Mufti, and when he smiled his entire face lit up with a rosy glow and he gave off a gentle light I can only describe as holy. At times I actually could see an aura — waves of color and light — emanating around him in a brilliant scheme.
      One day, and I’m not sure why, he and I were summoned together for an interview by the treatment team.  On the team of about ten was an elderly black woman who alternately reprimanded and praised us as if she had a personal stake in our lives.  She was the only staff member who spoke this way.  The others hid behind a wall of professional jargon.
      As Mufti and I walked out of the room together, I asked him, “Did you see the green aura around her?”
      “You can see auras, too?” he asked, clearly surprised.  Then he smiled at me, a brilliant smile that lit up his beautiful face.  From that moment on we often walked the halls together.
      Once, as we passed under the fluorescent lights, the transformers crackled and hissed.  Mufti laughed, pointed at the ceiling, and said ingenuously, “That’s because of me!”  I believed, him, too, for his energy was, while very calm, also quite intense.
      In time Mufti trusted me enough to tell me his story:  “Last year I was walking the streets of Miami when Allah spoke to me.”  As Mufti related in detail what his god had told him, I could feel the depth of his faith, could sense his unerring acceptance of the holy command he was receiving.  I listened intently as the drama then unfolded precisely as the voice Mufti heard had predicted.
      “So I came to the hotel,” he continued, “and walked inside as I had been told.  There stood the police officer in my vision.  I reached in my coat and slowly took out my gun.”  Mufti, like many of the young men of Miami, was always armed.  “I aimed it carefully and then fired, killing him.  Everyone screamed.”
      Mufti told this story calmly, without visible sign of emotion or doubt as to whether he had done anything wrong.  His god had spoken to him, and he had obeyed.
      “They sent me here where the doctors want me to say I was crazy.  But I wasn’t.”
      The psychiatrists at South Florida State Hospital were Cubans who had left their homeland after the revolution.  They were compassionate men who did not want to see their patients’ tragic lives destroyed by the harsh criminal justice system.  In Mufti’s case, they believed he was insane at the time of the crime.  Moreover, because he refused to accept their label of mental illness, they held that he was incompetent to stand trial since he would not be able to assist his lawyer in his own defense.  When they looked at him, they saw a sweet, confused, sick young man who would surely be sent to death row if they returned him to court.
      Mufti, however, felt that he had been acting from a holy directive.
      I never doubted Mufti’s religious sincerity, and I was not alone in this.  He was much beloved by the other inmates, including those who had worked their way off our ward to a less restrictive one.
      We sometimes would see these men as we walked to meals in the dining hall, a separate building connected to our ward by open-air corridors completely enclosed with chain-link fence.  From their walkway across a square of lawn, someone would spot Mufti and call out his name.  Soon many would be chanting: “MUFTI! MUFTI! MUFTI!”
      The warm Florida air would fill with the rhythmic chanting as a serene smile slowly spread across Mufti’s beautiful face, a holy glow emanating from his slender body.

Eventually I worked my way off the maximum security ward, though it was more by accident than design.  No one had ever explained to me the rules or procedure.  The day I walked onto my new ward the Cubans there adopted me, making sure I got a semi-private room near their end of the corridor.
      Every evening around seven o’clock they would take over the kitchen on the ward and make their strong, sweet coffee.  They always offered me some, which one drank very quickly in small amounts.  It was like a shot of speed coursing through the veins.
      As soon as we drank the coffee, everyone would start talking very fast all at once, laughing and being very gay.  They would speak to me in their mix of English and Spanish, which I didn’t really comprehend, but it didn’t matter because we were comrades in the kitchen they had made our own.
      In time I began to feel better, more clear and in control.  It wasn’t because of any treatment I received, nor was it due to the psychiatric drugs that I dutifully took and spat out twice a day.  It was just because people naturally heal when allowed to rest and restore themselves.
      I continued to learn the stories of the men around me, so many of whom were violent offenders.  To me, the murderers seemed to be the gentler souls on the ward — men who had killed in fits of unrestrained passion and afterwards had to confront this most irretrievable act.  On the other hand, the sex offenders seemed to be the more volatile of the group.  Boundless rage seethed within them.
      As I started feeling better I also felt more despair and sorrow because of what had brought me there in the first place.  It was as if I bore an open wound that went untreated, a stigmata of the heart.  The weeks dragged on with little to do on the ward but rehash my life’s tragedy, and as the winter holiday season approached, I become emotionally charged.
      On Thanksgiving evening I watched the other inmates visit with their friends and family.  I sat alone in a corner until the last visitor had left and the room was empty.  Then I stood up and dialed on the pay phone a collect call to my sister.  As soon as I heard her voice, I began to weep.
      “Where are you?” she said.  I had vanished four years before, and she knew nothing about where I’d gone or why.
      I tried to talk but couldn’t.  She sensed my sorrow, my loneliness, and she began to cry, too.  Her tears for me were more than I could bear, and I started to sob silently, my chest heaving, my shoulders shaking.  Somehow I managed to mutter “I love you” before hanging up the phone.
      I turned and walked out of the room, hoping no one would notice me.  All the hard weeks I had spent there among the maddogs of Miami, I had been protected to some degree by a false veneer of hardness.  I could not afford to have the other inmates see me in this vulnerable state.
      The corridor to my room was empty, so I hastily headed down it.  Then out of his room burst Big Willie, the official ward leader.  Willie was massive and very powerful.  He didn’t take crap from anyone.  He was there on a murder charge, and it was obvious from the look of him and the way he carried himself that he would kill again if pushed.  I did not want Willie of all people to see me, so I averted my face as I rushed by him.
      But Willie did see me and called after me, deep concern in his voice, “St. John!  St. John!  You alright, man?”
      I nodded my head and mumbled something, but Willy wouldn’t let it go.  “Come back, St. John.  We’ll talk, man, . . . .”
      I couldn’t go back, couldn’t face the tender gift he was offering, but the warmth of his gesture carried me to some safer place than I had been in a long time.
      Big Willy, thank you.
      Cuban comrades, I salute you.
      Mufti, bless you.
      The German, I think of you.
      Michael, be gentle.
      Mighty Mouse, be well.
      You are all maddogs, it’s true.
      But you are maddogs I have loved.

Contents Top Home

 

13.  Silence

T
here was a long silence when I’d finished my story, not an empty, uncomfortable silence, but one that felt full and reflective.  To me it was the best response because it meant that I had been heard and perhaps understood.
      We were standing on the deck of the ferry that crossed Lake Champlain.  We’d boarded at Burlington and were headed towards Port Arthur on one of the final runs of the season.  Gulls swooped overhead, their cries raucous and familiar.  There was a chill wind blowing — the perfect excuse for Lucky to be wearing a ski mask — and it had forced most of the other passengers into the cabin during the hour-long crossing to New York.
      Forty miles away the Adirondack Mountains rose in black relief as the sun sank behind their jagged peaks.  It was a magnificent sunset, as is often the case looking west across the lake from Burlington.  Glorious long streamers of white clouds turned red and orange, then golden, and finally gray.
      Just before the ferry docked, Odysea turned to me and said simply, “Thank you, Jimmy.”  Lucky’s head bobbed in agreement.
      “You’re welcome,” I muttered, suddenly a bit shy.
      “Did you keep in touch with any of them?”
      “No.  I never even said goodbye.  On the day I got sent back to Dade County Jail, it was early in the morning and no one was awake.  I just disappeared from the ward as if I’d never been there.”
      “Do you ever wonder about them?”
      “All the time.  I’ll hear a line from a popular song from 1974 and their faces flash before my eyes.  I find myself wanting to reach out to them, to find out what happened to Mufti or The German.  I could do it, too, though it wouldn’t be easy.  I rarely knew people’s last names, sometimes not even their first, but I’m an investigator and sooner or later I’d figure it out.”
      I fell silent, thinking about how to begin the search.  I could probably tap into Florida’s public defender system, maybe talk a colleague into checking with their department of corrections . . . .
      Odysea shifted in her seat, bringing me back to the present.
      “But I never follow through.  It’s odd, too, because I was as close to them as anyone I’ve ever known.”  When I heard myself say that, I remembered that there were many others I loved whom I had buried in the closed chapters of my life.  It was a sobering thought.
      An hour later we were cruising south on I-87, heading towards the New York Thruway.  Lucky had fallen asleep in the back seat.  It was dark and he was free at last from the ski mask.  Odysea and I were discussing her work as a mediator.  She’d spent the previous summer traveling from one women’s festival to another, acting as “keeper of the vibes” and mediating whatever conflicts arose.  She also had been asked by a lesbian community in Florida to teach mediation skills in late winter.  “It’s work I love doing, though I barely make enough money to stay alive,” she was saying when the unmistakable sound of a ringing phone filled the car.  I groped beneath the driver’s seat and discovered a cell phone I hadn’t known was there.
      “Do I answer?”
      “Do you want to?”
      “I always want to answer ringing phones.”
      Odysea laughed.  “Then do it.”
      “I don’t know.  I’m just wary, I guess.”
      It kept ringing, and finally I flipped it open but didn’t say anything.
      “Jimmy?”
      It was Diane.
      “I know you’re there.  Please talk to me.  It’s about Lucky.”
      “What about him?” I said immediately.
      “He’s missing.  There was some kind of horrible accident when he was being transported.  Both sheriffs are dead, but Lucky walked away from the wreck.”
      “How do you know this?”
      “The state police called and wanted to know if I’d heard from him.”
      “What did you say?”
      “The usual:  ‘I haven’t heard from my client and if I do you’ll be the last to know.’  They weren’t too happy with my response, but who cares.  I really don’t like that Smalley.  There’s something creepy about him.”
      “You have no idea, Diane.”
      “What do you mean?”
      “I mean if you want to help Lucky, find out everything you can about Smalley.  There’s some kind of connection between them.”
      “How do you know?” she asked, a bit perplexed and maybe even a little suspicious.  As far as she knew, I’d had nothing more to do with the case and wouldn’t have been privy to new information.
      Just then Lucky started whimpering in the back seat.  He must have been having a bad dream, for the whimpers got louder and more dog-like.  The kid’s timing is astounding, absolutely impeccably totally fucking astounding.
      “Jimmy, tell me that’s not who I think it is!”  Diane’s voice was incredulous, but I knew she knew.
      When I didn’t say anything, she sighed.
      “I cannot believe this.  I refuse to believe that you are driving a fugitive in my car.  What are you thinking, Jimmy?  There are limits to the attorney-client privilege, and aiding and abetting is not now, never has been, and never will be a protected area.”
      “It’s a long story, Diane.”
      “I don’t want to know it.  I just want you to take him immediately to the nearest state police barracks.”
      “I can’t do that.”
      “You have to, Jimmy.  I’m not asking, I’m ordering.”
      “I don’t work for you anymore.”
      “You are driving my car!”
      “With your permission, counselor.”
      “Whoa, wait just a minute.  I never consented to your using my vehicle for illegal purposes.”
      “That’s not what I’m going to tell the Professional Conduct Board.”
      That shut her up.
      The Professional Conduct Board considers ethical complaints against attorneys and can recommend license suspensions to the Vermont Supreme Court.  Most lawyers care about two things in life:  winning comes first, then comes their license to practice, without which they can’t even play the game.  Despite my threat, I would never lie about Diane’s role in this, but she’d have to call my bluff to know that for sure.  I didn’t think she’d risk that much.
      “Okay,” she succumbed.  A part of me was disappointed to be so right about her.  “You win.  It’s just that I’m not sure what the spoils are.”
      “It’s simple, Diane.  You hang up the phone and leave us alone.  Just forget about this conversation and your former client.”
      “He’s not my ‘former’ client.”  Her voice was as cutting as I’d ever heard it.  “He’s my client — Period — until such time as the court tells me otherwise, and don’t you forget it, St. John.”  She exuded hostility, and I didn’t blame her.  But this was hard ball we were playing, and Lucky couldn’t afford to lose an inning let alone the whole game.
      “I’ll make a deal with you, Diane.”
      “I’m listening.”
      “You sit on this for 72 hours and I’ll deliver Lucky to the nearest cop if you still insist on it then.”
      “I don’t know if I can do that.  I’ll have to talk to Robert first.”
      Robert Appel was the Defender General, Vermont’s head public defender and someone I trusted and liked.  He was our mutual boss and the final word on ethical issues.  Robert had been an auto mechanic who had attended Woodbury College and worked his way up the legal ladder.  Starting as an investigator, he had completed a four-year law clerkship that entitled him to take the Bar exam.  When he passed it he was admitted to the Bar and worked as a public defender before heading the Civil Rights Division in the state Attorney General’s Office.  Robert was one of several Vermont lawyers, including Justice Marilyn Skoglund of the Vermont Supreme Court, who had “read law” instead of attending law school, then gone on to play a key role in the legal community.
      “Okay, you talk to Robert.  And see what you can find out about Smalley and Lucky.”  I was about to flip shut the cell phone when I heard her say something else.
      “What did you say?”
      “I said despite the fact that you’re being a total asshole, I’m in love with you.”
      Now it was my turn to sigh.  “You have a weird way of showing it.”
      “You mean last night?”  Had it really been just 24 hours since I was at her house?  It was hard to believe.  “Look, Jimmy, you completely misinterpreted what was happening.”
      “Which part did I misinterpret — the passion or the pistol?”
      “I’m talking about my husband, you jerk!  First of all, I didn’t expect him back from Chicago until today.  Second, Bob would never point a real gun at anyone.  He’s a total cream puff.  I thought you knew that, and even if you didn’t, you must have heard the melodrama in our voices.  It was all a silly act.  Why didn’t you know that?”
      I didn’t know what to say.  Suddenly I started to doubt my doubts.  “Just explain one thing to me: What’s going on with you and Bob?”
      “Nothing,” she insisted, then must have sensed my confusion.  “I mean nothing in the sense that we’re not lovers, never have been.”
      “What are you then?”
      “Friends, old friends.”
      “Then why are you married?”
      “It’s a marriage of convenience.”
      “I don’t understand,” I said, then heard massive crackling on the line.  She faded in and out, and I just caught snatches.  There was something about “political ambitions” and what sounded like “the closet,” but I couldn’t be sure.
      “I’m losing you,” I shouted, though I had no idea if she heard.  More static, then she came through again.
      “Call me at home when — ”
      The line went dead.

      “Sounded like an intense conversation,” Odysea offered.  It was an invitation to talk.
      I stared at the unending ribbon of highway in front of me.  I felt drained, both from my conversation with Diane and from talking about South Florida State Hospital.  It was as if I’d given away too much of myself in too short a time.
      “I don’t know if I’m up to more ‘deep disclosure,’” I said in a weary tone.  “I’m starting to feel like I’m on The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
      “How do you know what that show is like?  You don’t have a TV.”
      “You’re right, I have no idea.  I’ve never seen it.  I just know it’s what people say these days when they feel as if they’re revealing too much.”
      “You’re not revealing too much, you’re just letting out what you normally keep stuffed inside.  You’ve stuffed so much for so long that it’s choking you, Jimmy.”
      I didn’t know what to say.  Was she right?  Was I choking?
      “It must feel strange for you to open up, but it’s a healthy way of being.  It sets us free, gets us ready for the next, newest moment so that we can truly experience the present.  Besides, to share what’s going on inside us is the only true gift we can offer.  To hold back, to hide and feint, is to feed the grandest illusion of all — social convention.”
      As the mile markers flashed by us, I considered what she’d said.  If she were right, I had a lifetime of habit to unlearn.
      I still hadn’t responded when Odysea spoke again.  “I guess I do need to know if you’re serious about turning Lucky over to the cops.”
      “I doubt it.  It was an offer that seemed to make sense at the moment.  I don’t want her reporting this car to the police, and I didn’t know what else to offer to forestall her.  I’m just hoping for enough time to get us to Texas.”
      “Then what?”
      “I don’t know.  Maybe by then the pieces of this puzzle will start to fit together so that I can make some sense out of it.”
      “Do you think she would turn us in?”
      “She might.  She’s a lawyer, and I suspect she’ll do whatever she must to protect herself.”
      “You don’t like lawyers, do you?”
      “I have a love-hate relationship with the law and lawyers.”
      “And Diane is no exception to that?”
      “Up until yesterday I thought I respected her as a lawyer and lusted for her as a woman.”
      “And today?”
      “Today I no longer trust her as a lawyer.  What has always bothered me about lawyers is that every single one of them is an officer of the court.  Their first allegiance is to the judicial system, not to their clients.  That’s a fundamental conflict in my mind, one the profession denies.”
      “And what about Diane as a womon?”
      “As a woman, she’s got me on the ropes.  I don’t know what to believe or how I feel about her.”
      “How does she feel about you?”
      “She says she’s in love with me, but I don’t understand why.”
      “You can’t conceive of a womon loving you, can you?”
      “I’m not going to fool myself.  I’m short, squat, ugly, lined, and gray.  Why would a beautiful young woman like Diane fall in love with me?”
      “Maybe she doesn’t care about your physical appearance.  Or maybe she likes the way you look.  I do.  You have this intense look that makes you very interesting.  Plus there’s a mystery about you because of the way you hold everything so close.”
      I scoffed.  “First you tell me to let loose, then you tell me holding tight is what makes me appealing.  That’s why I love you, Odysea.  You know just how to milk both sides of an issue.  It’s the mediator in you.  Or maybe you should have been a lawyer!”
      “Now I’m going to pout because I think you’re insulting me.”  She put on a perfect pout, which made us both laugh.

      This whole time Lucky had been sleeping in the back seat.  Even when I’d shouted over the phone, it hadn’t disturbed him.  Now he was starting to whimper as he had earlier, to whine and yap in that dog-like way.  I thought he was waking up, but he just got wilder and more dog-like.
      “Should we wake him?”
      “I don’t know,” Odysea said.
      Then he howled, which actually hurt in the close confines of the car.
      “Lucky!” I shouted.
      He groaned, then yipped and yapped a few seconds more.
      “Lucky, come on, wake up!”
      I looked in the rearview mirror and could see his golden eyes opening out of sleep.  He looked dazed, as if he’d been dreaming something disturbing.
      Odysea loosened her seatbelt and leaned over the seat to stroke Lucky.  “Are you okay, Lucky?”
      He stared at her in confusion until a look of recognition took form in his eyes.
      “I’m okay now,” he whispered.  He sat up straighter, stretched his long limbs as best he could, and yawned without restraint.
      “Were you dreaming?” Odysea asked.
      He nodded his head, Yes.
      “Can you tell us about the dream?”
      Again he nodded Yes, then yawned massively.  It was catching.  Odysea yawned into her hand, and I found myself yawning, as well.
      He began to speak, haltingly at first, then with less uncertainty and more confidence, yet always with a pained look on his face.  He told us it was a dream he often had, one that had repeated itself for as long as he had known what dreams were.
      The telling took a long time.  Sometimes he’d fall silent, apparently lost in the dream.  Then we would prod him with a question or encourage him with praise until slowly, piece by piece, the dream took shape for us.  When it had, we knew without question why he felt tormented by it.

Contents Top Home Next