The Shrine at Altamira

by John L'Heureux

  When he was alone in the house and he was sure he would not get caught, he went into the bathroom and turned on all the lights and took off his clothes. He examined his face and body in the mirror, looking into his mouth, lifting up his new eyelids, and, with a hand mirror, examining his ears. He was not this person, he knew that. This person was Freddy Krueger. But then, who was he?

  When he grew up, he was going to be a doctor like Dr. Clark. He loved Dr. Clark. Dr. Clark always asked about the books he was reading.

  He was reading Wuthering Heights now. If they ever made a movie of it, he would like to play Heathcliff. Heathcliff was exciting and mysterious, just like his father, that bastard.

  Peggy was on night duty this week, and though it gave her a chance to catch some extra sleep, she missed talking with her patients. They never depressed her; their suffering was just part of the deal. It was like having a family, a big extended permanently wounded family, except they never turned on you, the way family did. It was easy to love them.

  Especially John. He was back again for yet another operation to make that blob on his face look like a nose.

  Tonight, when she’d finished her tour of the ward, she sat down by his bed and let her hand rest on his. In the darkened room, in his sleep, he turned his hand palm up and closed his fingers around hers and held on, tight, as if he were holding on for his life.

  He was smart. He was tough. And inside him was this deep well of feeling that he never let out. When he did let it out, someday when he could let it out, it was going to be pure love, and it was going to be wonderful to see. She knew that. If he ever got the chance to love.

  . . . . .

  “I want to,” Boyle said. “I want to do it for you.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Russell said.

  “I hated doing it for them,” Boyle said. A long time later he said, “But I want to do it for you.”

  “Shut up and go to sleep,” Russell said.

  Boyle got out of bed and stood in the dark, looking into Russell’s face. After a while Russell opened his eyes and sat up.

  “I love you,” Boyle said.

  Russell punched him and there was a sick, cracking sound as his fist struck Boyle’s jaw. Boyle let out a cry like a hurt rabbit.

  “Don’t ever say that to me,” Russell said.

  Waiting in chow line, Sharkey stabbed Russell in the eye with a fork. Russell wouldn’t say who did it, so after his eye was looked at in the prison hospital, he was given two weeks in the hole to think about it. When they let him out, they discovered his eye was a festering mess, so he was sent to a real hospital to have it removed. He was there over a month with a series of infections, and afterward, because the prison would not pay for a glass eye, the hospital gave him a black patch to wear. They put him back in the same block, the same tier, the same cell.

  When John was eleven he suddenly became interested in clothes. He had to have a 49ers sweatshirt, and Reeboks with foam in the heels, and jeans that were torn a little at each knee. He wanted the jeans that you bought already torn; when you tore them yourself, they didn’t look as good.

  One morning while he was getting ready for school, Maria looked in on him and told him to hurry up because Ana Luisa would be here any minute, and then she went back to her room to finish dressing. She was in the kitchen having coffee when she realized that John was still in his little alcove with the curtain pulled. She was about to shout for him to hurry up, but instead she got up and went quietly to the door and moved the curtain aside very slightly.

  John was standing in front of the mirror, combing his hair. He combed it back straight and examined himself full face, in profile, and full face again. He combed it to the side and looked at himself critically, and then combed it to the other side. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. He smiled at his reflection in the mirror.

  That was when he saw his mother standing at the gap in the curtain, watching him, spying on him as he looked at himself. She had seen him. She knew him now. He felt scalded. The blood rushed to his neck and face, tears pricked his eyes, and he shouted, “Get out. Get out of here.”

  John would not go to school that day and he would not say why. And he would not talk to his mother for nearly a month.

  Nobody bothered Russell much anymore, but one day in the showers, just for the hell of it, a couple of the jockers decided to jump him. They got him from his blind side while he was covered with soap. One of them grabbed him by the hair while the other gave him a sucker punch that knocked him unconscious. Before they had a chance to rape him, though, a guard showed up and said, “Oh, shit mother, is he dead?” He wasn’t dead, but they couldn’t bring him around either, so the guard had a couple trustees carry him to the prison infirmary.

  Russell was hospitalized for two weeks, and when he got back to the prison, they gave him two weeks in solitary for unprovoked attack.

  John was twelve now and understood what was going on: his father was in jail for setting him on fire and his mother couldn’t bear to look at him.

  His grandmother drove him to school and picked him up every afternoon. She gave him his meals, bought him his clothes, took care of him after each new time in the hospital. She made him say a prayer every night. She was a pain in the ass, but she loved him.

  His mother didn’t care whether he lived or died, except when she was drunk. Then she always cried and hugged him and said she couldn’t stand it. But when she was sober, she was out every night with Arthur.

  He wanted to hate his mother, but he couldn’t.

  He hated his father though.

  . . . . .

  Dr. Clark was sitting opposite the shrink, just looking at him. They’d been like this for almost five minutes now.

  “Why don’t you ever say anything?” Dr. Clark said. “You never say anything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Something.”

  Dr. Clark had been seeing this man, off and on, for a period of years, and he had nothing to show for it—except, of course, that he was still alive. But he’d come to an impasse today, finally. He was going to shut up. He was not going to say another word. He’d sit there till hell froze over or until the shrink said something, whichever came first.

  Almost immediately, the shrink began to speak.

  “All right, I’ll say something about you.” He spoke very slowly. “You are an intelligent, talented, sensitive man, but you want an unconditioned, unconditional love, invulnerable to loss or to change. You want it desperately. You want to give it and you want to get it.”

  The shrink stopped, waiting for the reaction.

  “Yes?”

  In spite of himself, the shrink laughed. “Well! You can’t get that in this life. It doesn’t exist. That’s why man invented God.”

  Silence.

  “You wanted me to say something,” the shrink said.

  . . . . .

  “He’s your son,” Ana Luisa said, standing in the bathroom doorway.

  Maria was putting on her lipstick, getting ready to go out. In the mirror, she looked hard at her mother, then finished with her lipstick and reached for a tissue.

  “Couldn’t you stay home with him, just this one night?”

  Maria crumpled the tissue and slammed her fist against the sink. “I have to live too,” she said. “I have a life, you know.” She held her breath, trying to get calm, but when she turned to face her mother, she lost control completely. “Leave me alone!” she screamed. “Goddammit, leave me alone!” She snatched the water glass from the sink and flung it against the wall. It shattered with a sound like a gunshot, and bits of glass flew everywhere. “I can’t stand it,” she screamed. She flung open the medicine chest and began to pluck out everything inside. The bottles of pills, Band-Aids, mouthwash, scissors—everything went tumbling into the sink, the bathtub, onto the floor. “I can’t stand it,” she screamed, crying now, beginning to shake, beginning to come to the end of this little moment of despair. Soon she would bend ov
er the sink, and sob, and shake some more, and then eventually it would be over.

  Ana Luisa waited in the doorway, knowing all this.

  John did not wait. He left the house and went next door to Ana Luisa’s house and put on the television, loud. Then he got comfy in the big chair and began to read The Wind in the Willows. He had loved this book as a child.

  The parole board was faced with a dilemma. If they let Whitaker out, the media would be all over the story and there’d be flak from every direction. On the other hand, there was no solid reason to keep him incarcerated any longer. His record was good. He’d been a model prisoner, more or less. And besides, the prison was hopelessly overcrowded.

  “What have you learned from your time in prison?” they asked him.

  “To stay alive,” he said.

  They nodded. They were sophisticated men and women. They granted him parole.

  FOUR

  In his dream, John was six years old again, and his father had come to see him. He leaned over John’s bed and scooped him up and held him high in the air, at arms’ length, pretending he could fly. “Who is my favorite little boy in the whole world?” his father said. “Who is that boy?” Pretending that they flew, he carried John from the sleeping alcove to the kitchen, ducking down to get through the doorway, zooming above the sink and the stove and the table, flying, then ducking through the doorway to the living room, flying everywhere, flying over the tables and lamps and chairs, flying until they collapsed together, laughing, on the living room couch. “It’s Superboy,” his father said, hugging him close, giving him kisses, being the way they used to be, before the fire.

  Then his mother was crying. He tried to tell her it was all right, and he put his arms around her so she wouldn’t feel so bad, but she pushed him away. He was in the hospital after that, with Dr. Clark and Peggy, and he was happy, but then he was home again and his mother was crying. He had to make her stop, because it was his fault she was crying. “Mother,” he said. “Mama.” And she stopped crying then. He tried to give her a kiss, and she let him, but when he pulled away from her, he saw her face, as if she couldn’t stand to touch him. She felt bad about it, but she couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t change the way he looked. He tried to curl up and cover his face and cry, but his arm was in a splint and his hand was tied to the bed and he couldn’t move his legs. Up in the corner of the ceiling was a small brown square, very heavy, and he had to concentrate on it so that it would not fall. And he would have to concentrate forever.

  But it was summer, and he was twelve now, and all that was over. They were walking in a field of flowers, he and his father. The sun was warm. With each step they took, the long grass bent beneath their feet, and the daisies, pink and white, bobbed against their legs. In the distance they could see a hill of mustard flowers, and just over that hill lay the ocean. They were going to swim. They were going to play on the beach. But for now, they were walking in the field, together, and the sun was high, and there were flowers everywhere. They could, if they wanted, lean slightly forward, lift their feet from the ground, and fly. Skim across the field, above the flowers, soaring a little, dipping, lighter than air. Flying. But they walked instead, and the sound of the ocean grew loud and louder, and John took his father’s hand.

  They were together at least.

  At least they were together.

  Russell walked out of jail a free man, or so they told him, but he knew that after what he’d done, he could never be free again.

  He had agreed to all the terms of his parole. He was forbidden to have contact with his former wife or child; he could not visit San Jose without the knowledge and permission of Forte, his parole officer; he must check in with Forte each morning and each evening; and he must wear—day and night—the transistorized ankle bracelet that allowed them to monitor every movement he would make for the next three years.

  He could live with his father, the parole board said. At the time of Whitaker’s release, the father was still living within the San Jose city limits, but he had agreed to relocate and provide a home for his son. He’d be a good influence, they felt, since he was active in AA and was himself a reformed alcoholic. He could provide the stability and family support that ex-convicts so badly need.

  Forte, through connections, even got him a job with a painting contractor.

  Russell pretended to be properly grateful.

  “Now listen up,” Forte said. “I’ve got troubles of my own, and I’ve got seven parolees to watch out for, so I don’t want any shit off you. You slip even once and you’re back in the joint. Got that? So no going near your kid or your ex, that’s first of all. And, second of all, keep your ass out of San Jose. And, third of all, don’t hang out with known criminals, and you’ll be okay. Okay? But you miss one check-in with me, or go one inch off the straight and narrow, or we catch you playing with even one match, and I myself personally will get a blowtorch and apply it to your dick. Capisce?”

  Russell understood. He would be the model parolee, he said. Straight and narrow. No blowtorch.

  He had fifty dollars and a terrible new suit. He took the bus as close to his father’s house as he could get and then walked the rest of the way. His father was home, and after they had said hello, Russell took the keys to his father’s car and drove slowly past Maria’s house and then past the special school and then past the hospital where John had been cared for by that doctor. He circled back to Maria’s house again. And then he went home.

  He would never be free, he knew.

  The media were in an uproar when they learned that Russell Whitaker, the child-burner, had been paroled sometime during the past week.

  Why had it all been done in secret? they wanted to know. What community was he in now? What name was he living under? Who would he burn next? TV reporters and newspaper reporters and local stringers from the Star and the National Enquirer swept down on San Jose, on Maria’s house and Ana Luisa’s house, on the Burn Unit, on John’s special school. They were everywhere. They wanted names and dates and facts. They wanted pictures. They wanted them now.

  As it happened, they got nothing about the Whitakers.

  What they got instead were pictures of the earthquake.

  A plate of rock beneath the ocean shifted a few inches, moving north, and another plate shifted to accommodate it, moving south, and then they settled down and everything was much the same again. Except above, in San Jose, where buildings rocked on their foundations and trees shook and for twenty seconds everything stopped, completely silent, completely in balance. Walls gave way, fires broke out, cracks opened in the street. People tried to run. They screamed. They panicked. And then, with a hard sigh, the Central Overpass collapsed, pinning cars and their drivers beneath tons of steel and concrete.

  It was not the Big One. It was only a seven pointer, but it made great pictures and it made a great story.

  And it pushed the Whitakers out of the news, completely.

  Forte put a green X next to Russell’s name each morning and evening, and once or twice he checked the monitor to make sure Russell was at work, but beyond that he almost never gave Russell a thought. He had got him a job as a painter or a carpenter—he didn’t always remember which—with no complaints so far, and God knows he had plenty other things to think about.

  Money, for one. During the earthquake his house had shifted on its foundation, not so badly that it fell apart but badly enough so that he could never get insurance on it and he sure as hell couldn’t sell it. So he was stuck with this piece of shit. He’d bought it in 1970 for $30,000 and he’d been about to sell up for $650,000 and retire at sixty to the Bahamas, but now it wasn’t worth diddly-squat and he’d have to keep on working forever. For shit wages. Besides, that blond bitch was running around on him again; she was only forty-five, and she was all legs and tits, too young to be tied down, she said. And to be honest, he himself was back on the bottle, a little bit. So who had time to worry about Russell Whitaker?

  Forte poured hi
mself one last drink.

  He had enough to worry about, thank you very much. That dizzy girlfriend. His house. Early retirement. And a bunch of ex-cons who were real problems. Druggies mostly. One rapist. One killer. Russell Whitaker was the least of his worries.

  At Ana Luisa’s house all the glasses tipped over on the shelf, dishes fell out of the cupboard, and everything in the medicine chest tumbled into the sink. Nothing broke. And the shrine of the Virgin Mary survived intact. Maybe it wasn’t a miracle, but Ana Luisa thanked the Virgin anyway. These things were beyond our understanding.

  For Emory, the earthquake was only another event that failed to interest him. What drove him back to the bottle, and nearly killed him, was his son, Russell.

  Russell had moved in and taken over. According to the terms of Russell’s parole, they were supposed to move out of San Jose, but when Emory reminded him of that, Russell had said, “Forget it.” In the same way he’d said, “I need the car at one-thirty this afternoon. Make sure it’s here.” In the same way he’d said, “I’m living here now. You can stay or leave, but I’ll need the car.” It was the way he said everything, and it left no room for argument. He had become a very scary man. It wasn’t just the way he talked. It was the way he held himself, the way he moved, the way he looked, especially with that eye patch. He lived out on the edge of some precipice. He was a man who had nothing to lose.

  “You’re violating parole,” Emory said to Russell.

  Russell was reading the paper.

  Emory said, “You’re not supposed to even be in San Jose.”