Spy of the First Person
Page 3
The thing that always fascinated me about Alcatraz was how you could see the whole city from the shore. You could see straight out to the whole cityscape. The Golden Gate, the Oakland Bay. You could see everything. The peaceful city with lights twinkling. The city going on in spite of Alcatraz. So it would seem as though if you were standing on the shoreline of Alcatraz you could easily swim across the bay to the big city. However, the bay itself was very treacherous. There are shifting currents out there. Sometimes they go east to west. Sometimes west to east. Sometimes north to south. Multiple currents. Any which way. In any case, you could get chopped up by a motorboat and there were all kinds of boats out there. Big barges. Ocean liners. Rowboats. Fishing boats. Tugboats. Tourist boats. Chopped up by one of these. Very treacherous. Anyway, I was so exhausted by the chaos of this era that I couldn’t even get in the water to dog paddle.
I remember Lee Marvin distinctly getting in the water of Alcatraz and lying on his back as though he were going to backstroke across the bay. Like it was luxurious to him. The water and all its currents was a luxurious thing. It was easy, almost lazy. It was like nobody had ever thought of it. And there he was backstroking across the bay. He lay down backwards in the water. He didn’t actually do the backstroke but you had the impression he was going to at any moment. Point Blank. 1967 or something like that. And Angie Dickinson tried to beat him up. She tried to beat Lee Marvin up. She pounded furiously on his chest. She slapped him and hacked him and I thought she was doing a pretty good job of it. But he just stood there. It wasn’t a test of manhood or strength or anything. He just stood there and she exhausted herself. It was a kind of rope-a-dope contest. He stood there and Angie Dickinson beat on him and then fell to her knees crumpled. A crumpled woman. There she was. And then later in retaliation she turned on all the appliances in the kitchen. The mixer, the toaster, the washing machine, all this stuff, and he had to go around and turn it all off. She taunted him. He taunted her. It was a taunting movie.
—
What can I say about the escape. Like I said before, there are many plans. There’s the lying awake in bed staring at the ceiling, the cement ceiling. Preparing to scrape the plaster with the cafeteria spoon, the metal grate, the tunnel itself, the passage.
The work itself went fairly fast once I got inside the tunnel, other than the usual cobwebs and spiders and things crawling around. At least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But when I got down there I saw that now the path was vertical rather than horizontal. It was going upwards, so I had to get some rope. I had to find some rope and I actually made it, I made the rope, out of sheets, and found my way upstairs. And when I got upstairs, then, of course, I had to jump. I had to jump quite a distance. I never knew I had it in me. But I jumped up and managed to wedge myself between the rafters and got upstairs and it was a whole different world up there.
I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this should I. My escape. Backpedaling across the bay. Now you know. Now you know that I am an escaped prisoner. Now you know. Then you didn’t. Now you do. You know too much. Somebody’s going to have to do away with you. Maybe this character who’s been dogging me all this time.
—
Let me start over. I can start over. You’ll allow me to start over please. Like I said I got nothing to prove to you. I’m not trying to be a hero in anybody’s eyes. I’m not sure if it was the mid-seventies in fact I think it wasn’t the mid-seventies I’m not sure. It wasn’t the mid-eighties either. I think it was the mid-nineties. That’s a twenty-year difference. Now how is it possible to not remember something for a twenty-year span? Something like that. A whole life. Twenty years is a long time. Some people don’t even live twenty years. Some people live a lot less. Some people die the moment they’re born. Okay let me start over. There was a time when the whole thing seemed like a fairy tale. Once upon a time—once upon a period in the past. It might have been the nineties, the mid-nineties there was so much going on. It might have been much earlier than that, I don’t know. All I know is it was an interim of my life. This fragile time. Many different things going on and so many of those different things seemed to matter. Now they don’t. Then they did, but now they don’t. Napalm. Cambodia. Nixon. Tet Offensive. Watergate. Secretariat. Muhammad Ali.
22
There are times when I can’t help thinking about the past. I know the present is the place to be. It’s always been the place to be. I know I’ve been recommended by very wise people to stay in the present as much as possible, but the past sometimes presents itself. The past doesn’t come as a whole. It always comes in parts.
In fact it comes apart. It presents itself as though it was experienced in fragments.
Why? Why, for instance, is the past…..Excuse me…..why, for instance, is the present preferred to the past? Because assumedly the present is what’s making memories. It’s what’s making the past. Sometimes it seems very fleeting.
What exactly is the experience of the present? The experience of the present is one of anonymity. Complete anonymity. The way the sun hits the pavement. The way it hits your bare feet. The way dog shit squeezes between your toes. The way a quarter goes a long way. The way a quarter used to go a long way. The way a quarter could buy you an Abba-Zaba. The way chlorine smells. The way chlorine attacks your nostrils. The way your trunks fit. The way water comes over your head. The way your eyes open underwater and see things. What do you see? You see other people, other human beings struggling to keep their eyes open underwater. The present is a many-faceted thing. Much like the past.
But the present comes with a tangible experience, he says, rocking back and forth. Rocking. Rocking. He says, pausing. No but wait a second just a second what about miracles. What about the cure? There has to be a cure. At one point in the past—at some point in the past—everything was alright. There was no desperation. Everything worked. So what is the cure. Is there some way to cure the present? Can we do something as simple as taking a hot bath of mineral water. Or do we have to start all over. There must be a cure. We are children of the miraculous. Long pause. Pausing. A long pause. Pausing. Nobody hangs on his words. Nobody hangs in the moment. Nobody really hangs for nobody.
23
I have binoculars now so I can just make out through the screen porch that he is sitting and it’s not a rocker like I originally thought but it’s more of a sliding office chair affair. Some kind with big wheels and adjustable armrests and he slides from one position to another. I don’t know what he did with the rocker. Sometimes he slides in circles on his chair like he’s floating on air. I don’t know, I can’t tell, and he’s got a small oval table with iced tea and a stack of stuff on it. It looks to be a lot of papers and a fat book. Yes, there is a book. It’s open to page 399, that’s how good my binoculars are. He stands up vertically to turn every single page. He doesn’t just lick his thumb and turn the page, he stands each time. It’s an old-fashioned book. Jane’s Fighting Ships 1942. A big fat thick book probably about 900 pages but he’s on page 399. This seems to be his only form of exercise. Standing up and turning the pages.
24
Aubra, your grandmother, whose real name was Aubra Steagle, that’s the name she came with, the name she got off the boat with, the name of her first husband, Steagle. That’s it. She actually came from a foreign country, she was from England, I think, and she never got green papers or any of the stuff you were supposed to have to make you legal, so she was an illegal immigrant, actually. They were trying to get her name straight, so that she would qualify for some kind of health insurance. What was her maiden name? Her mother’s maiden name. There were lots of questions. There were a lot of things wrong with her. She was coming apart. So they had to go down to the city hall in the little western town of Deming. And the city hall had these huge photographs that were now reprinted in a kind of sepia tone. I don’t know why, maybe to make them appear older than they actually were. But there were pictures of the pioneer days of Deming back in the 1880s—you know, rows o
f mules, horses in the muck, carriages, lamplights, the hustle and bustle of a border pioneer town. Anyway, Jay was very persistent about this. He wanted insurance for Aubra and every day they would go down to the little city hall and they would wait in line for this, for her green papers. They went through all this red tape, phone calls and phone calls and phone calls. It was a phone tree in which you stayed on the line and it said if you want such and such person you press 4, if you want such and such another person you press 2, if you want such and such another person you press 12, something like that. And you never found a person at all. Just a disembodied voice. They had to be very careful because this was after 9/11 and the government was suspicious, little towns were suspicious, everybody was suspicious that something was going on. Everybody was paranoid. Particularly of immigrants. So if it was found out that she had no papers, that she had no right to be here in America, land of Lady Liberty, that she would get deported immediately, put on a boat and sent back to jolly old England, where when she was a child the place was getting bombed by the Germans.
25
I’m probably not a paranoid person. I mean paranoid is not the first thing you’d come up with in describing me. But yesterday my sisters left me alone for about five minutes on the porch and I saw a glimpse of something across the street. A glimpse of something silver. I was amazed at how it gleamed in the morning light. I looked and I saw this pair of binoculars that looked like owls’ eyes. There was someone in a chair much like me who was putting the binoculars away. He was putting them away in a leather case. But I thought, goodness gracious why would he be looking at me? I don’t know anybody in this town. No one has even heard of me. Then here I am being watched by a stranger. It gave me the oddest feeling. As though I’m a wild animal or something. But maybe he’s a bird watcher. I’ve watched birds myself very close up through binoculars. Maybe he’s totally innocent and I’m just being paranoid. There are birds around here of all different varieties. Blue jays. Blackbirds. Sparrows. Towhees. But I’ve never considered them to be very exotic. Maybe that’s all he was doing. Watching birds from a distance. From across the street.
26
Now there are swallows dive-bombing all around the house. I think they are on an insect hunt. There are at least three or four of them. Maybe as many as six. They have a rust and blue color about them. They are very fast. They are like little jets. They just fly around and dive-bomb. You can’t even see the insects they are after. They could be imaginary insects, but they’re not.
There are so many of them, in fact, the air is full of insects, we just can’t see them. It’s a hot, clear day, a slight breeze. There’s the occasional mockingbird that comes down and lands and sings his song. A song that he’s imitated. A song he’s picked up. They are uncanny little birds. I used to awaken to mockingbirds. I used to go to sleep with mockingbirds. They were all singing songs they made up. From the light posts at night. A whimsical little bird. Any time of day. They have a kind of melancholy. For me they have a kind of melancholy, but it’s not sad, it’s just typical. A bird that is typical of a place, that’s all. A place in time.
27
It was twilight. In that twilight sky, it looked as though it might very well burst into storm. The kind of storm that would rain for days and days and days, the kind of storm we had already been seeing. Something to spill over the spillways, much like the Oroville Dam incident. People hysterically running all over the place wondering if their little house is going to float down the river. Wondering if their little dog is going to float down the river. Wondering if they themselves will float down the river. This was the kind of sky it was.
Anyway, I got from one side of the street to the other and there, hiding behind a camellia bush, all dressed up in an electric blanket, his feet bound in ski socks, wrapped up in this blanket, electric cords dangling down, was our man in a wheelchair, mumbling to himself about the weather. I saw him through the bushes. Someone had left him there to go elsewhere. He was behind a bush, that’s for sure. And it was still bright enough to make out the color. Deep red. The bougainvillea bush was mostly stripped of flowers at this point. Winter had set in, although it felt like spring. A pair of red tennis shoes was wrapped around the telephone wires. Still dangling.
—
I hope I’m not causing an interruption. An interruption into your way of thinking. But I must report a mysterious rustling in the bushes behind me. Like I said I’m not a paranoid person but there were distinct footsteps, shuffling in the leaves. I was just waiting. All I was doing was waiting. I was left alone. I don’t mind if he wants to ask me something. I wouldn’t mind answering if I could. It’s kind of interesting to have someone genuinely interested in me. I wonder what he’s after.
—
In any case, he was sitting very stoically in his chair. It was as though he was awaiting somebody or something. Searching his memories. He doesn’t know where he is in space or time. When he first left home he remembers he stayed in a garage in a town called Alta Vista. Not far from Santa Anita. In the foothills of California. There was a bed in there and he would look out the window and see the mountains in the distance.
Before too long, behind the red camellia plant in the half-light, what seemed to be his daughter emerged from the darkness of the house. He asked her to sit down beside him. She pulled up a wrought iron garden chair and wiped the raindrops off the seat. She sat down as though she were in school listening attentively, leaning toward him.
He said the room in his mind was an extension of a garage. It was a garage unlike any he’d seen since then. In his mind it had windows all around about five feet off the ground. Narrow windows.
—Wait a minute, Dad, what room? What are you talking about?
—The room with the narrow windows. They looked out at an old racetrack.
—Which racetrack? Where was it?
There were cars parked on the backstretch. There was a chain link fence running along the turf course, which was downhill intersecting the main track. From the hill at the top of the chain link fence everything was very still, very quiet. It wasn’t until the horses had gone almost six furlongs before you heard the crowd and then you heard them stamping and screaming, caterwauling, making all kinds of sounds. From that point the horses were about the size of pencil sharpeners. They started out regular size and then they became very small. A shot rang out. A single shot. From some kind of carbine or rifle with a scope. Immediately the crowd went silent. Immediately you saw the line of horses swerve around the leader who was down on the ground with the jockey squirming. Legs flailing in the air, jockey silks ripped asunder. The saddle stripped of all its color. The bridle broken in half in the horse’s mouth. Pundits were jumping the fence. All kinds of backstretch help. Grooms. Handlers. Exercise boys, exercise girls, running in all directions, screaming and pointing. The rest of the field crossed the line. Now the crowd started to yell. A siren was heard in the distance. Bells were ringing but not in jubilation. Emergency bells. Everything was in a state of emergency.
She leaned closer. When was this, Dad? I don’t remember anything like this.
The man who fired the carbine, who fired the gun with the scope, who brought the lead horse down, was discovered sitting cross-legged in a cargo van. He said that he was assigned to be an assassin. He got his orders from Mount Rushmore.
He was fleeing the scene of the crime. He jumped down, threw the gun in a sage bush and ran for his life. He ran til he came to a Gulf station, where he asked for ice. The owner was glad to give it to him. He sat down with two fresh bags of ice and began crunching them while the owner called the police. He asked the owner if there was a room. There’s got to be a room in this town. The owner shrugged. He said there might be one. There’s a slim chance. The man asked how much the room was. “Ten dollars,” the owner said.
“I’ll take it,” replied the man. “I’ll take it.”
—
After that I left the state. I left and I never came back until now.
And now I want to find out where that room was. Now it seems important. Then it didn’t, now it does. The color of the jockey’s silks. The color of the horses. The bookies all in a line. The morning odds. The coffee and black beans. The priests running for cover. The greyhounds barking at rag dolls. This ten-dollar-a-day room.
The wind is whipping the walnuts now. Little green balls. They’re all swirling, everything is swirling. The peach trees are swirling, the crepe myrtles are swirling, the magnolias are swirling. The sky has turned a steely gray. The whole sky has turned. We are going to get a storm.
—I probably shouldn’t have told you all that. But then again you weren’t born yet.
—It’s okay, Dad. You can tell me anything. But I think we should go inside now. It’s going to rain.
—Can you take me to the grocery store? he says to her suddenly. Could you take me down there in this wheelchair now? Could you buy me some stuff? I’ll need a few things. I’ll need some mayonnaise and a silver tin of sardines, a banana. I’ll need some buckwheat flapjack mix. I might need some instant coffee. Could you take me there and see what they’ve got?
I’m following right behind them in the half-light, it begins to drizzle. The wind is kicking the dust up. She hesitates. He says to her, Keep going.
Where is he going now? Where does he think he’s going? Is he leaving this town forever? Will I ever see him again?