by John Lawton
Then I saw it—a trail of chocolate chip cookies leading from the cement apron right into the light. What was he up to? Trying to trap a squirrel or a racoon? I flipped one over with the toe of my boot—didn’t look poisoned. Picked one up. Looked fresh to me. Tasted fine. What the hell was going on?
I stepped out of darkness, followed the trail. Wondering what trapped animal I’d find at the end of it. I’d got a few paces into the garage when a voice behind me said, ‘Works every time’, then a blow to the back of my head turned everything black and I fell into oblivion.
I woke. Oblivion had been dreamless. The green light was still on. The door was down. I couldn’t tell whether it was day or night, or how long I’d been out. My watch was gone, so were my boots and belt. My head throbbed and my muscles ached. Why all of this hit me before the more immediate reality I do not know. But . . . I found myself in a cage, a bamboo cage, suspended from the high ceiling. There was a water bottle and tube taped to one bar, a mess of boiled rice in an old ice cream carton next to it and a hunk of stale coarse bread on the floor of the cage.
I rubbed at my chin. No real growth of beard. I’d been out hours or minutes not days.
‘Does it hurt?’
I hadn’t heard him come in—or had he been standing there for hours waiting for me to come round? I looked down at him, half hidden by the glare of the lights aimed at me and the sharpness of the angle. I knew the voice at once. I’d heard it one Mel’s tape. ‘Call me Broken Arrow’ . . . That’s what he’d told Mel in the Port Authority a lifetime ago.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Must be cramped in there. I built it for someone a lot shorter.’
‘Mel?’
‘You know the little guy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I guess he won’t be joining us.’
Question or statement? I wasn’t sure.
‘Mel’s dead.’
Feaver seemed to weigh this up a second, took his eyes off me and then locked them back on me.
‘You kill him?’
‘No. He was my oldest friend. Did you?’
‘Kill him? Of course I didn’t—I needed Mr Kissing alive. You a reporter too?’
‘Private Eye. Mel and I went to school together.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Stabbed to death in my office in New York City.’
‘So you took his place. Looking for me.’
‘I was looking for the man who killed Mel.’
‘Then you have a ways to go yet.’
He flicked out the light and I was in darkness. Overwhelming, total darkness, not a crack of light from anywhere.
I estimated it was another two days before he came back. I say estimate. The bread grew moldy in a matter of hours. The rice began to smell rancid. I ate both. And I eked out the water.
In darkness this absolute, your eyes do not adapt—there is nothing to adapt to. I learnt about my prison with my fingertips. The bamboo struts were about an inch and a half thick. No amount of pressure or kicking would break or dislodge them. They were tied together with leather thongs—bound over and over, tied with multiple knots, and, worse, put on wet, so they’d shrunk tight to the wood.
For a day or so I lived with it. I could not quite sit upright, either my back or my neck had to bend. I could not stretch my legs full length. I think I began to get cramps after about thirty minutes. After a day I sacrificed some of the water, splashed a little on two of the thongs and tried to ease the bars in the floor apart. Took me an age, and I gained less than two inches, but it was enough to let me lower one leg at a time almost full length, dangling below the cage—feeling the circulation return to the leg, the pain almost delicious. That was when it hit me. This wasn’t just a prison. It was a device for torture. Mel might have got off lighter than me—he was five foot seven to my six two—but the principle remained. Confinement was torture, relief was torture.
I tried holding in my piss, but then I thought what was the point? The point was my own inhibition—childhood memories of all the dogs I’d trained to piss outside not in a corner in the house. I broke the taboo. I unzipped and pissed through the bars. A few hours later I felt the need of a crap. I held out again. One more taboo. One more battle lost or won. I couldn’t get a good angle. Pants around my knees. I ended up hugging those knees, drawing them up to the chest and merely hoping for an approximation of aim. Not good. Shit on the bars, and the impossibility of ever wiping my ass. To this end, I ripped up my shirt, tore it into strips just like they did on Wagon Train when the Indians attacked.
I also found I could flip upside down and dangle an arm or lie with my face pressed to the bars, the smell of my own shit and piss wafting up from the cement floor below—worse, far worse, but just as evocative as the bucket of shit Notley had spattered me with in Chicago. When W. H. Auden said that everyone secretly likes the smell of their own farts, I figure he didn’t have this situation in mind.
I was sleeping when Feaver came back. The lights flickered on, and I heard the squeak of a pulley wheel. A battered and scorched tin pot of rice and bean shoots, mold already growing on them, was hauled up within my reach—a pint of brownish-looking water in a plastic bottle propped up in a corner of the can.
I didn’t move. Just stared down at him, almost blinded by the light.
‘Take it,’ he said. I took it.
The heat was up—when that summer had it not been up?—it had to be high nineties in that garage—the food rotted almost as quickly as my shit. I soon ceased to mind either. I ate rancid rice, I picked bugs out of pond water, and hunkered down and shat whenever the urge took me—waiting for the splat below became one of my few entertainments. I began to see why cons would bet on anything, the race between two bedbugs, how long it takes a turd to drop fifteen feet.
It is one of childhood’s games. Put yourself in an imaginary situation. Captured by the Japs (well—I’m that generation), fleeing from the Apache, interrogated by the SS . . . what kid doesn’t imagine their own response in extremis? What kid did not have his own sense of heroism nurtured by Hollywood? Surprisingly some of what you imagine can be pretty accurate, but mostly it’s the mental stuff. Nothing can prepare you for pain you have imagined but not experienced. I mean what are the limits? How can you even guess? The mental stuff . . . well, everything distorts just like the movies and your games tell you it will. I tried to keep track of time and lost it, although it would be better put that I had no way of measuring it to begin with. I heard things—any bump or scratch magnified by singularity—I saw things—in total darkness I imagined I could see shapes and colors, and I dreamt things. In spades I dreamt. I had only to close my eyes to be anywhere but where I was. The old trick with the morning blues and the alarm clock. You imagine you’ve gotten up and are going through the daily routine with numbing ordinariness . . . meanwhile the body sleeps. The body gets what it wants. I got the opposite. My mind needed escape, so my body slept. And while it slept I walked to the corner deli for coffee, opened my mail and read the morning paper.
I was out of everything but water. I figured I had not seen Feaver in about three days. I was in real pain. Real pain produced my one spark of inspiration. I wriggled out of my Levi’s, screamed out loud as my left leg locked up in the calf and I had to force it down with my hands—God knows what damage I was doing to my own muscles—and found the metal tag that you use to zip up the fly. The one piece of metal in all I had been wearing that Feaver had left me. I scraped away at a thong—spent all of an afternoon (or was it a morning or a night? whatever) until it parted. I then found I hadn’t got the strength to kick the bar I’d freed up until it snapped. I took a long breather, then let my weight prise it down and out. I figure I had created a five- or six-inch gap. I could get my legs down the gap almost to the top of the thigh. I could stretch fully—and it hurt like hell. I rested up,
one leg dangling one folded, and worked on a second thong. Another two and I would be able to drop out of the cage altogether.
The light came on. Bounced around in my skull.
Feaver was standing there, holding the biggest Bowie knife I’d ever seen.
‘Pull your leg in.’
‘What?’
‘I won’t ask you again.’
He swung the blade at the rope holding my cage. I yanked in my leg as the rope parted. The cage crashed to the concrete floor. The impact jolted every bone in my body, and a broken spar took a piece out of my left arm. I lay in the wreckage—a pile of broken bamboo and rancid shit with me in the middle of it.
Feaver said, ‘When you’re ready, I’ll be upstairs.’
He walked up the stairs to a door high in the wall. Looked down at me as I picked my way out of the remains of my prison. I got clear, tried to stand and found I couldn’t. My muscles simply wouldn’t do what I told them.
‘I can’t walk!’ I yelled up at him.
‘Then crawl,’ was all he said.
I did just that. I picked my way up the staircase, dragging my legs and feet. Must have taken me ten minutes. In the room above a bare pine table sat in the center of a bare pine room. I hauled myself up into the chair opposite Feaver, my breath tearing in and out of my lungs, needles and pins stabbing every inch of my body.
For the first time I got a good look at him. My size, more or less, more muscle—well, he would, wouldn’t he—and a look of James Coburn about him, that is the way Coburn looked then. I’d put him at about thirty-five.
He’d set out a meal. No more rice specked with mold. Freshly-squeezed orange juice, toast, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon. A breakfast fit for my old man. Breakfast? Good God—was it morning?
I asked the question.
‘No. It’s 1700 hours,’ Feaver replied. ‘At least, it was when I came to get you. You were in there just over six and a half days. Call this a late late brunch if you like.’
I always thought sensory deprivation would extend the sense of time. Hollywood talking again. My guess, that’s all it was, was five days—out by a day and a half.
He walked over to the stove, came back with a pot of coffee, poured me a cup and I let the smell assault my senses. I forked egg onto a slice of toast—Feaver had waited till he heard me at the door before dishing up, they were moist and fresh—and he’d chopped scallions, red pepper and a little jalapeño into the mixture. I gulped a good half-pint of juice and held out my glass for more. That phrase from the newspapers surfaced in my mind—the condemned man ate a hearty breakfast. We both ate. He asked me my name. I told him, then he said nothing for a while. Looked at me from time to time, topped up my coffee, made me more toast.
At last, when I’d finished he said, ‘I hope you haven’t suffered too much, but I thought a taste of ’Nam would be educative for you.’
‘Educative?’
‘So you don’t have to imagine what you can’t possibly imagine anyway.’
‘I see. So that’s what you guys do to the Cong?’
‘No, Mr Raines—it’s what they do to us. I spent twelve weeks in a cage scarcely bigger than yours.’
‘You escaped?’
‘Obviously.’
‘Why aren’t you a cripple? Twelve weeks and your muscles would never work again.’
‘I developed a program of exercises. I kept my muscle tone by working out.’
‘In that space?’
‘It was all I had. It was that or, as you say, end up a cripple. In fact it would do you good.’
‘Right now a shower would do me good.’
‘Afterwards. Follow me.’
I could limp along now. Needed a wall to support me, but at least I was off the floor. I bumbled after him into the next room. Another bad taste nightmare in glossy pine, but this one had carpets—the shaggy kind that you can never get clean. It all reinforced the sense of being in a cheap motel out West.
Feaver lay on the floor. I all but fell down next to him.
‘Now—sit upright—spine straight—grip your right ankle with your left hand . . .’
He noticed the gash in my left arm.
‘OK, let’s make it the other way round. Now—twist—then stretch the leg. No—further. Stretch. Good. You got it.’
It was, and I cannot think of a better word, almost paternal. He put me through a forty-minute workout. On my back, on my front, on one side and then the other. When we’d finished I felt better, and I had an inkling of how he’d survived. I’d worked out on the shagpile—if I stretched an inch or a foot too far what was to stop me?—he’d worked out in the cage, back against the bars, straining every muscle for every inch of space. He led me to a bedroom—I was hobbling now, unaided by walls or floors, still in pain, but confident I would not go through life encumbered by the gait of Charles Laughton in Notre Dame. He flicked on a light in the bathroom, threw me a towel and told me he’d lay out some clean clothes for me. I sat under the shower for ages. Days rolled off me. I could have sat there all day, but that wasn’t the point. He’d gotten me there for a reason. I had, like it or not, an appointment.
When I stepped back into the bedroom I found clothes, pretty much my size—he was my height but a lot broader—laid out on the bed. Not, I was delighted to see, army fatigues, but pretty well what I would have chosen myself. Blue jeans, white shirt—he’d even ironed the shirt. As I was pulling on the jeans Feaver appeared, took my left arm in one hand.
‘You could use a stitch or two, but I figure that’s more than you want, right?’
‘Right.’
He tore the back off a huge Band-Aid and slapped it across the wound.
‘Your choice,’ he said.
When I’d dressed I hobbled back into his sitting room. No sign of him, nor in his kitchen. I found him in what he probably called his den. I braced myself for whatever he might be doing, a mural, a photograph, a vast canvas—God knows everyone else had their vision of America, their American dream writ large upon the wall. But Feaver’s were blank. Plain pine walls. He was seated at his desk—an old newsroom-style rolltop—a rack of guns padlocked to his right, and just a small cork bulletin board to his left. I looked at the sole item he’d pinned up there with a thumbtack—not a laundry list or reminder to buy milk—just that same syndicated piece Notley had shown me. Only this was the original not a photocopy and the by-line wasn’t missing—it read ‘Mel Kissing’. I should have known. Under my nose, socking me right in the puss and still I missed it. Mel wrote the piece while we were in Chicago, Feaver saw it and through it found both Mel and Notley. I should have added up the names—Cochise, Broken Arrow. How could I have missed that? It’s so . . . so . . . so fuckin’ obvious. How dumb could I get? Answer? Dumber.
‘So now you know,’ Feaver said, reading my mind, not looking at me, just intent on what he was doing—going through the contents of my bag. He’d broken into my car—after what I’d just been through it scarcely seemed worth protest.
‘Freud speaking,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘That day in the Port Authority, when Mel asked what he should call you. You said Broken Arrow—you had no expectation of the question and no prepared answer. You said the first thing that came into your head. What was on your mind was Notley—you thought of Notley, you thought of Cochise.’
‘Actually, I was thinking of Mouse. I already knew where to find Notley. It was Mouse I needed to find—but I see you did.’
He fanned out Mouse’s photographs, like a cardsharp showing a flush—I looked away. He folded and stacked.
‘I knew he’d taken a second camera. There were bound to be photographs. I had to see for myself.’
‘So now you have it all.’
‘No—but I have enough.’
‘And?�
��
‘And I’m sorry to hear Marty died. Sorrier too about Gus.’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course.’
‘You sorry about Mel Kissing too? Or was he disposable?’
‘As I said, I needed Mr Kissing. I’m more sorry about his death than anyone’s. There was nothing I could do about Marty or Gus—but I rather think I led Mr Kissing’s killer right to him. They watch me—you know—not all the time. I don’t think they can afford that. And the day I went down to the city I felt certain, as certain as I could be, that I wasn’t followed. I was wrong. Kissing died for my mistake. I’m sorry about that.’
I pointed to the envelope containing Mouse’s photos.
‘They all die for your mistake too?’
He didn’t answer. Got up out of his chair. Unlocked his gun rack.
He hefted out a bolt action rifle. Racked it once and took a bead on me. A wee small voice in my head said, ‘This is not it. He did not get you all this way to kill you now.’ My body heard it just in time, and I managed not to piss myself.
He swung the rifle parallel to his chest in one of those well-honed parade ground maneuvers, yelled ‘catch’ and threw it to me. I caught it and gasped. The damn thing seemed to weigh a ton.
‘Lesson number two,’ he said. ‘The VC is a little guy. Average height under five four, weight around a hundred and five. He totes a gun like this all day . . .’
I took a good look. This wasn’t state of the art Russian made. It looked years old.
‘Took this off a VC I killed in ’63—it’s French made, dates from the 1930s. Most of them have AK47s now, but those that don’t are still using the stuff the French left behind after Dien Bien Phu. It weighs three times what an AK47 weighs. He can march all day on a handful of rice, lug this damn thing and aim it with an accuracy that makes our guys with semi-automatics look like kids at a county fair. You know much about Dien Bien Phu?’
