NOT AN AMERICAN

by Stanley W Rogouski

  "Do you know why they really call me squirrel?" she said, pressing down on his shoulders.

  "So why do they call you squirrel?"

  Before he could answer, she jumped up on his back and pulled herself up to a metal staircase that had been chopped off 8 feet above the first floor.

  "Because it's my real native American name," she said, "girl who climbs like squirrel."

  "There's a better staircase," he said. "You can just walk up. Martin and I used to walk up all the time.

  "I'm already up here now."

  Avellanos jumped up and chinned himself up onto the staircase. She laughed at how he flopped up onto the first step, and then, only with difficulty, joined her on the second. He seemed nervous now that his 180 pounds had been added to her 115.

  "Isn't this dangerous?" he said.

  "That's what your cousin thought," she said, as they started climbing up to the second, then third floors. "He was trying to get you both killed. He was trying to commit suicide, and you were stupid enough to follow him. But he was wrong. This whole building is bullet proof. They only chopped off the bottom of that staircase because too many kids were going upstairs."

  “That's needlessly provocative."

  "SAT words don't change the truth."

  They continued to climb until they came to what had once been the plant manager's office on the 12th floor of the West Hill Coal Breaker that had not been used since the 1970s, but which he and his cousin had visited the year before. As dirty as it was, it was still cleaner and better preserved than anything on the lower floors. There were three desks, a line of filing cabinets and an old rotary phone that Avellanos reflexively checked for a dial tone. There was also a gigantic old typewriter covered with soot, but he soon became fascinated with a small, relatively clean writing table, not remembering it from the year before. Had someone dragged it into the main office from another room? She followed him over, seeing that his attention had suddenly been arrested by a stack of loose leaf notebook pages that appeared to be of recent origin.

  "What are you looking at?" she said.

  "I found him."

  She picked up the sheet of paper.

  "It looks like a poem," she said. "Emily, come with me, so when grown up you will know the way and not be lost. How many kids did he have?"

  "He didn't have any kids."

  "This isn't about his girlfriend," she said, continuing to read. "O my child, with your round eyes, O my child with your golden hair, ask me no more questions, darling! Come, I will carry you. This is about his daughter."

  "I'm 100 percent certain he didn't have a daughter," Avellanos said. "It's a political poem," he added, reading over her shoulder. "McNamara! Where are you hiding? In the graveyard of your vast five-cornered house, each corner a continent. McNamara, the Pentagon, it's about Vietnam."

  "Your cousin was a great poet. This is really beautiful," she said. "Emily, my darling! The night is falling. Tonight I cannot take you home! Washington. Twilight. O souls still living or having gone before! Now my heart is at its brightest! I burn my body. So the flames may blaze the truth. This is just awesome."

  "I don't know if he really committed that war crime I told you about or not," Avellanos said, examining another piece of notebook paper. "Maybe he didn't. Maybe he just made up that little girl as a way of expressing his guilt. Now he's imagining her as the daughter he never had."

  "It would make sense," she said. "The little girl in the poem has golden hair. He's talking about a white girl, not an Iraqi."

  "Here's another one," Avellanos said, after he had leafed through 20 or 30 blank pages to find one that had been written on. "Norman Morrison was a hero but he was a showoff," the page said. "He did it right at the Pentagon where everybody could see him. There's only one way to save your soul, sacrifice yourself while making everybody think you're the worst person in the world."

  "Norman Morrison. That sounds familiar," she said.

  "Pentagon, Norman Morrison," Avellanos said. "Showy? Maybe he means Jim. Did the Doors ever give an anti-war concert at the Pentagon?"

  Cathy Chegoffgan took her smart phone out of her pocket and opened Wikipedia.

  "You get cell reception up here?"

  "I've got all 5 bars," she said, punching in the name Norman Morrison. "We're 3 miles from the highway. They have a tower every ten feet."

  "The only way to really save your soul is to sacrifice yourself while making everybody think you're the worst person in the world," Avellanos said, laughing bitterly. "Well there's my cousin in one line. He should have been a noble creature. He had all the energy which would have made a goodly frame of glorious elements, had they been wisely mingled."

  "Take this as constructive criticism. Your cousin's a better poet than you are," she said, waiting for the Wikipedia entry to load. "You should speak in your own words instead of trying to imitate Shakespeare."

  "He had something to write about. He had something to torture himself over. And that's not Shakespeare."

  She clapped her hands together.

  "Here it is. Norman Morrison," she read out loud, "born in Erie, Pennsylvania, was a Baltimore Quaker best known for committing suicide at age 31 in an act of self-immolation to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War."

  Avellanos walked over to the window.

  "What a beautiful place this is in the evening," he said, examining the way the declining sun had fallen onto the floor. "You're wrong about Martin coming up here to kill himself. It's the one place he never did want to kill himself. He used to come up here to wait for this light. It was like a call to an evening prayer. He loved this place. This is where he asked for forgiveness from the soul of that little girl. That's why he wrote that poem."

  "I think he copied that poem," she said, continuing to look at her smart phone. "I think some Vietnamese guy wrote it."

  "Then that's why he copied it. It's still pretty miraculous. A high school graduate copying out translations of Vietnamese communist poetry."

  “I'm only a high school graduate."

  "And I'm a fucking idiot snob I guess."

  "Yep."

  "Sorry."

  "We should go," she said, looking at the window, and putting the phone back in her pocket. "I don't want to climb down in the dark."

  Chapter 26 - Goodbye my brother

  As they climbed back down to the first floor, John Avellanos and Cathy Chegoffgan fell back into the same debate they had been having in the morning, only now she, if anything, seemed to be more invested in the enigma of Martin Ruiz's disappearance than he was. She seemed determined to convince Avellanos that Ruiz was still alive. He was determine to convince her that he was dead. By the time they walked outside, however, their roles were reversed yet again, with him subconsciously looking around, once again, for the green and yellow hat. She tapped him on the shoulder.

  "How many windows do you think there are?" she said, pointing back up at the West Hill Coal Breaker. "How many rooms?"

  The sun was now low on the western horizon, and the West Hill Coal Breaker, which had hundreds of windows, some of which had survived 40 years of high school kids throwing stones, looked like it was on fire with sunlight.

  "Hundreds," he said.

  "Do you mind if a stupid high school graduate speaks her mind?"

  Avellanos laughed bitterly, knowing he was never going to hear the end of it.

  “Yes," he said.

  "Do you remember what you told me?"

  "About what?"

  "About how your cousin wanted to shoot Catalinelli, or shoot a cop, to go out with some grand dramatic flourish?"

  "Yes."

  "I think that point of that note was that killing himself by cop, assassinating Catalinelli and letting the police gun him down would be too showy, that the only way do to it is to shoot yourself alone, maybe in one of those rooms," she said, pointing back up at the building. "If he shot himself in one of those rooms, he's probably still up there. But if he's not in one
of those rooms, that means he still alive. I bet he's still alive. I bet he listened to your story just like I did and decided to get rid of his ID just the way you did when you snuck across the border. He wanted to be another person. He wanted a new identity. So he gave you his. Now I bet he's working at some menial job somewhere, underground, happy, living in the moment. I bet that's what he's doing."

  "Maybe."

  "It was his way of getting rid of the past."

  "Maybe."

  "There was an implicit message for you."

  "Which was what?"

  "The only way to be happy is to give up the past and live in the moment. He's part of your past, so he was telling you to give him up to, same with your mother. Just give it all up. It has nothing to do with you."

  "I don't know if that's the way he thought."

  "It's the way I think."

  All at once Cathy Chegoffgan seemed to come to a decision. Something seemed to click inside her brain, some flash of self-awareness that she saw mirrored in John Avellanos. She slapped the back of the knapsack, the signal that she wanted him to take it off. After he swung the knapsack down off his back, and onto the ground, she unzipped the document compartment, took out the waterproof, plastic envelope and put it under her arm. Then she threw the knapsack over her shoulder and started to walk quickly in the direction of the tipple and the mine shaft 100 yards away.

  "Let's go."

  "Where?"

  "With me."

  "With you where?"

  She didn't answer, hopping over the second cement barrier, plowing along towards the old tipple and the mineshaft in such a purposeful and determined way that, even with his tall stature and long stride, Avellanos had trouble keeping up, cursing in pain as he bumped his shoulder on one of the line of iron hopper carts. They both walked inside the entrance to the mine shaft. He briefly hesitated, but she, as if in the grip of an overpowering idea, only walked faster, threading her way past the last of the iron hopper carts until she reached the very edge of the old mine shaft. Avellanos looked on in horror as she waved her hand in front of her face as if to call attention to the rancid air. The cart in front, the same cart his cousin had rocked loose the year before, had been pushed into the mine fire. It all looked, and smelled, even worse than he remembered, the fire closer, the ground more unstable. He grabbed her and pulled her back to keep her from accidentally falling down inside, but she pushed him away and handed him back the waterproof, plastic envelope. She pointed to the mine shaft.

  "Throw it in.”

  He unzipped the envelope.

  "Throw it all in."

  He took a deep breath.

  "Throw it in," she said.

  He seemed paralyzed.

  "You haven't met my mother. My father's been dead for 11 years but she can't let him go. She won't let me let it go. Now I've got you. You can't bring your mother back. You can't bring your cousin back. You can't bring your old life back any more than I can bring my father back. Give it up. I mean it. Throw it in, or we climb down this hill and you never see me again."

  He still hesitated.

  "Throw it in. It's me or that envelope."

  Avellanos threw the envelope down into the mine shaft, tossing it like a Frisbee so it would end in the darkness, far enough away to preclude the temptation of going back in after it. Cathy Chegoffgan threaded her arm through his, resting the side of her head up against his chest, pleased that he had done what she said. They turned to leave. Suddenly, she shrieked, bent over, and picked up an object lodged under one of the rusty old railroad tracks. It was a knit hat. It had green ducks threaded through the yellow stitching. Avellanos took the hat and turned it inside out, revealing three letters, MJR.

  Chapter 27 - The Cabal

  Inside of the "Municipal Executive Suite" at City Hall, there were two men sitting across from each other over the corner of a big, mahogany conference table. The elder, a man in his 50s, stood up, and went over to the window when the bells rang out that it was 10 o'clock. As he looked across the forested section of Reagan Plaza at Scahentoarrhonon Station and East Poison Springs in the distance, he put his hands to his ears.

  "Bells, bells, bells," he said to the younger, a man in his early 30s. "Goddamn your rotten bells."

  "They're not my bells," the younger man, Dan Grossinger, said to the older man, who was indeed Michael Catalinelli.

  "They're your fucking bells."

  Grossinger looked up from his long notebook, and shrugged.

  "I have no control over what the editorial board writes," he said.

  People who knew Michael Catalinelli also knew that, in spite of his almost legendary poker face, there were obvious clues to his moods. That summer it was the bells. Even though the clock tower was 4 stories above the second floor of the Reagan Center, something about the way the building was constructed seemed to focus their vibration on the Municipal Executive Suite. What for everybody else in downtown Poison Springs sounded like a mild reminder of the time, for Michael Catalinelli that summer almost felt like the hand of doom shaking the floor boards. In July, under increasing stress over the rapidly developing Northeast Winterborn Youth Protection Services scandal, he had them turned off. The Poison Springs Chamber Of Commerce, however, had just featured the clock tower and the bells in a campaign to get a national magazine to declare Poison Springs one of “The Ten Most Livable Small Cities in America." The Winterborn Daily Post led the public outcry to have them restored, even publishing a rare negative editorial about Catalinelli himself.

  "No Bells?" the headline said. "Does The Mayor Have Bats In His Belfry?"

  Michael Catalinelli sat down when the bells stopped. He leaned back, and looked at the flood of sunlight that had poured in through the three big windows onto the richly varnished wooden table. He now seemed calm, his brief, self-indulgent outburst apparently having released all of the tension from his body. Dan Grossinger, on the other hand, now seemed fidgety and hyperactive. He got up and looked out of the window at War Memorial and the pump house on the western lawn of Reagan Plaza. He looked at the banner.

  "Michael Catalinelli," it said. "Your Sun Is Still Setting."

  "You don't know what it's like having to talk with Mr. David Sherrod and pretend I care what he says," Grossinger said. "Why you ever hired that arrogant little prick is beyond me."

  Catalinelli pushed a PowerPoint presentation across the table.

  "Sit down Dan," he said.

  "What is this?" Grossinger said.

  "Those are arrangements for the repeal of the CCIA. Say what you want about my ex press secretary, he gaged the popular mood better than I did. People are sick of the CCIA. They're hurting financially. Repealing the CCIA will allow me to further reduce the size of the police force. That, in turn, will let me reduce property taxes. In other words, it's the economy stupid."

  Catalinelli stood back up, and, while Grossinger was perusing the PowerPoint presentation, examined a wall of framed photographs on the other end of the room, his "trophy wall," as he often referred to it. There were autographed portraits of national politicians. There were photographs of the mayor with local business owners, clergy, police officers, and military veterans. Taking center stage was a photograph of Ronald Reagan, a copy of the famous print where he spoke in front of the Statue of Liberty, his hand raised, an American flag flapping alongside in the wind, but there was no autograph. Catalinelli nodded, smiled, then walked over to a large, wooden desk, opened one of the drawers, and took out yet another photograph, this one of himself as a much younger man with Bill and Hillary Clinton. He moved the photo of Ronald Reagan down a space, demoting it, then put up the photo of himself with the Clintons in the place of honor.

  "So you want me to leak this report," Grossinger said, putting the PowerPoint presentation in his leather briefcase."

  "Leak it and write up an article. I want to test the waters before I jump into the pool."

  "I'll say it's under consideration, and that a concerned member of your st
aff sent it to me anonymously."

  "Phrase it in your usual felicitous manner," Catalinelli said. "I don't think you ever knew me as a liberal," he added, continuing to look at the photo of himself as a young man. "I was a Clinton delegate at the convention in 92."

  Grossinger got up to look at the photo of the mayor with both Clintons. He shook his head in disgust. Then he looked at the photo of Reagan.

  "You know what they say about being a liberal over thirty," he said. "If you're not a liberal under the age of 30, you have no heart. If you are a liberal over the age of 30 you have no brains. This man was originally a liberal just like you," he added, pointing at the photo of Reagan, "and, just like you, he grew out of it. You saved Poison Springs. He saved America. What a great man he was. He brought this country back from the abyss. Did you ever get a chance to meet him?"

  "He was a vegetable by the time I got into politics."

  Grossinger looked shocked.

  "Sometimes I don't know when you're joking," he said. "Do you want me to leak a copy of the Clinton photo too?"

  "Sure why not? Hillary was kind of hot back then don't you think?"

  Grossinger screwed his face up into a dismissive look. He fished his point and shoot camera out of his pocket, and took a photo of the portrait of the young Michael Catalinelli with Bill and Hillary Clinton. He went over to the table and sat back down.

  "No I do not," he said.

  "You do know I slept with her, right?" Catalinelli said. "She was going through some rough times and I took advantage of it."

  "Do you want me to print that too?"

  "She'll only deny it."

  The phone on the table rang.

  "Mayor Catalinelli," the receptionist said.

  "That's my 11 o'clock meeting. You're welcome to stay if you want."

  Grossinger remained standing, putting his hands behind his back and standing "at ease." Catalinelli walked over and opened the door to reveal three men. The first was in his 50s. He had white hair, florid cheeks, a big bulbous nose, and a flaccid, turkey gobbler neck. He wore a Poison Springs Metro Police uniform, but he was no mere police officer, having four stars on the collar of his shirt.