The Essential Ellison Part 112

She smiled. " I understand, Rudy."

Oh, do you? Do you really? That' s just fine. And I heard me say, " You made it with him yet?"

I could have torn off her arm; it would' ve hurt less.

" That' s the second time today you' ve asked me that kind of question. I didn' t like it much the first time, and I like it less this time."

" You' re the one wanted me to go into your head. I didn' t buy no ticket for the trip."

" Well, you were in there. Didn' t you look around enough to find out?"

" I didn' t look for that."

" What a chickens.h.i.t, wheedling, lousy and cowardly..."

" I haven' t heard an answer, Counselor. Kindly restrict your answers to a simple yes or no."

" Don' t be ridiculous! He' s on Death Row!"

" There are ways."

" How would you know?"

" I had a friend. Up at San Rafael. What they call Tamal. Across the bridge from Richmond, a little north of San Francisco."

" That' s San Quentin."

" That' s what it is, all right."

" I thought that friend of yours was at Pelican Bay?"

" Different friend."

" You seem to have a lot of old chums in the joint in California."

" It' s a racist nation."

" I' ve heard that."

" But Q ain' t Pelican Bay. Two different states of being. As hard time as they pull at Tamal, it' s worse up to Crescent City. In the Shoe."

" You never mentioned 'a friend' at San Quentin."

" I never mentioned a lotta s.h.i.t. That don' t mean I don' t know it. I am large, I contain mult.i.tudes."

We sat silently, the three of us: me, her, and Walt Whitman. We' re fighting, I thought. Not make-believe, dissin' some movie we' d seen and disagreed about; this was nasty. Bone nasty and memorable. No one ever forgets this kind of fight. Can turn dirty in a second, say some trash you can never take back, never forgive, put a canker on the rose of friendship for all time, never be the same look again.

I waited. She didn' t say anything more; and I got no straight answer; but I was pretty sure Henry Lake Spanning had gone all the way with her. I felt a twinge of emotion I didn' t even want to look at, much less a.n.a.lyze, dissect, and name. Let it be, I thought. Eleven years. Once, just once. Let it just lie there and get old and withered and die a proper death like all ugly thoughts.

" Okay. So I go on down to Atmore," I said. " I suppose you mean in the very near future, since he' s supposed to bake in four days. Sometime very soon: like today."

She nodded.

I said, " And how do I get in? Law student? Reporter? Tag along as Larry Borlan' s new law clerk? Or do I go in with you? What am I, friend of the family, representative of the Alabama State Department of Corrections; maybe you could set me up as an inmate' s rep from 'Project Hope' ."

" I can do better than that," she said. The smile. " Much."

" Yeah, I' ll just bet you can. Why does that worry me?"

Still with the smile, she hoisted the Atlas onto her lap. She unlocked it, took out a small manila envelope, unsealed but clasped, and slid it across the table to me. I pried open the clasp and shook out the contents.

Clever. Very clever. And already made up, with my photo where necessary, admission dates stamped for tomorrow morning, Thursday, absolutely authentic and foolproof.

" Let me guess," I said, " Thursday mornings, the inmates of Death Row have access to their attorneys?"

" On Death Row, family visitation Monday and Friday. Henry has no family. Attorney visitations Wednesdays and Thursdays, but I couldn' t count on today. It took me a couple of days to get through to you..."

" I' ve been busy."

" ...but inmates consult with their counsel on Wednesday and Thursday mornings."

I tapped the papers and plastic cards. " This is very sharp. I notice my name and my handsome visage already here, already sealed in plastic. How long have you had these ready?"

" Couple of days."

" What if I' d continued to say no?"

She didn' t answer. She just got that look again.

" One last thing," I said. And I leaned in very close, so she would make no mistake that I was dead serious. " Time grows short. Today' s Wednesday. Tomorrow' s Thursday. They throw those computer-controlled twin switches Sat.u.r.day night midnight. What if I jaunt into him and find out you' re right, that he' s absolutely innocent? What then? They going to listen to me? Fiercely high-verbal black boy with the magic mind-read power?

" I don' t think so. Then what happens, Ally?"

" Leave that to me." Her face was hard. " As you said: there are ways. There are roads and routes and even lightning bolts, if you know where to shop. The power of the judiciary. An election year coming up. Favors to be called in."

I said, " And secrets to be wafted under sensitive noses?"

" You just come back and tell me Spanky' s telling the truth," and she smiled as I started to laugh, " and I' ll worry about the world one minute after midnight Sunday morning."

I got up and slid the papers back into the envelope, and put the envelope under my arm. I looked down at her and I smiled as gently as I could, and I said, " a.s.sure me that you haven' t stacked the deck by telling Spanning I can read minds."

" I wouldn' t do that."

" Tell me."

" I haven' t told him you can read minds."

" You' re lying."

" Did you...?"

" Didn' t have to. I can see it in your face, Ally."

" Would it matter if he knew?"

" Not a bit. I can read the sonofab.i.t.c.h cold or hot, with or without. Three seconds inside and I' ll know if he did it all, if he did part of it, if he did none of it."

" I think I love him, Rudy."

" You told me that."

" But I wouldn' t set you up. I need to know...that' s why I' m asking you to do it."

I didn' t answer. I just smiled at her. She' d told him. He' d know I was coming. But that was terrific. If she hadn' t alerted him, I' d have asked her to call and let him know. The more aware he' d be, the easier to scorch his landscape.

I' m a fast study, king of the quick learners: vulgate Latin in a week; standard apothecary' s pharmacopoeia three days; Fender ba.s.s on a weekend; Atlanta Falcons' play book in an hour; and, in a moment of human weakness, what it feels like to have a very crampy, heavy-flow menstrual period, two minutes flat.

So fast, in fact, that the more somebody tries to hide the boiling pits of guilt and the crucified bodies of shame, the faster I adapt to their landscape. Like a man taking a polygraph test gets nervous, starts to sweat, ups the galvanic skin response, tries to duck and dodge, gets himself hinky and more hinky and hinkyer till his upper lip could water a truck garden, the more he tries to hide from me...the more he reveals...the deeper inside I can go.

There is an African saying: Death comes without the thumping of drums.

I have no idea why that one came back to me just then.

Last thing you expect from a prison administration is a fine sense of humor. But they got one at the Holman facility.

They had the b.l.o.o.d.y monster dressed like a virgin.

White duck pants, white short sleeve shirt b.u.t.toned up to the neck, white socks. Pair of brown ankle-high brogans with crepe soles, probably neoprene, but they didn' t clash with the pale, virginal apparition that came through the security door with a large, black brother in Alabama Prison Authority uniform holding onto his right elbow.

Didn' t clash, those work shoes, and didn' t make much of a tap on the white tile floor. It was as if he floated. Oh yes, I said to myself, oh yes indeed: I could see how this messianic figure could wow even as tough a cookie as Ally. Oh my, yes.

Fortunately, it was raining outside.

Otherwise, sunlight streaming through the gla.s.s, he' d no doubt have a halo. I' d have lost it. Right there, a laughing jag would not have ceased. Fortunately, it was raining like a sonofab.i.t.c.h.

Which hadn' t made the drive down from Clanton a possible entry on any deathbed list of Greatest Terrific Moments in My Life. Sheets of aluminum water, thick as misery, like a neverending shower curtain that I could drive through for an eternity and never really penetrate. I went into the ditch off the I-65 half a dozen times. Why I never plowed down and buried myself up to the axles in the sucking goo running those furrows, never be something I' ll understand.

But each time I skidded off the Interstate, even the twice I did a complete three-sixty and nearly rolled the old Fairlane I' d borrowed from John the C Hepworth, even then I just kept digging, slewed like an epileptic seizure, went sideways and climbed right up the slippery gra.s.s and weeds and running, sucking red Alabama goo, right back onto that long black anvil pounded by rain as hard as roofing nails. I took it then, as I take it now, to be a sign that Destiny was determined the mere heavens and earth would not be permitted to f.u.c.k me around. I had a date to keep, and Destiny was on top of things.

Even so, even living charmed, which was clear to me, even so: when I got about five miles north of Atmore, I took the 57 exit off the I-65 and a left onto 21, and pulled in at the Best Western. It wasn' t my intention to stay overnight that far south- though I knew a young woman with excellent teeth down in Mobile- but the rain was just hammering and all I wanted was to get this thing done and go fall asleep. A drive that long, humping something as lame as that Fairlane, hunched forward to scope the rain...with Spanning in front of me...all I desired was surcease. A touch of the old oblivion.

I checked in, stood under the shower for half an hour, changed into the three-piece suit I' d brought along, and phoned the front desk for directions to the Holman facility.

Driving there, a sweet moment happened for me. It was the last sweet moment for a long time thereafter, and I remember it now as if it were still happening. I cling to it.

In May, and on into early June, the Yellow Lady' s Slipper blossoms. In the forests and the woodland bogs, and often on some otherwise undistinguished slope or hillside, the yellow and purple orchids suddenly appear.

I was driving. There was a brief stop in the rain. Like the eye of the hurricane. One moment sheets of water, and the next, absolute silence before the crickets and frogs and birds started complaining; and darkness on all sides, just the idiot staring beams of my headlights poking into nothingness; and cool as a well between the drops of rain; and I was driving. And suddenly, the window rolled down so I wouldn' t fall asleep, so I could stick my head out when my eyes started to close, suddenly I smelled the delicate perfume of the sweet May-blossoming Lady' s Slipper. Off to my left, off in the dark somewhere on a patch of hilly ground, or deep in a stand of invisible trees, Cypripedium calceolus was making the night world beautiful with its fragrance.

I neither slowed, nor tried to hold back the tears.

I just drove, feeling sorry for myself; for no good reason I could name.

Way, way down- almost to the corner of the Florida Panhandle, about three hours south of the last truly imperial barbeque in that part of the world, in Birmingham- I made my way to Holman. If you' ve never been inside the joint, what I' m about to say will resonate about as clearly as Chaucer to one of the gentle Tasaday.

The stones call out.

That inst.i.tution for the betterment of the human race, the Organized Church, has a name for it. From the fine folks at Catholicism, Lutheranism, Baptism, Judaism, Islamism, Druidism...Ismism...the ones who brought you Torquemada, several spicy varieties of Inquisition, original sin, holy war, sectarian violence, and something called " pro-lifers" who bomb and maim and kill...comes the catchy phrase d.a.m.ned Places.

Rolls off the tongue like G.o.d' s On Our Side, don' t it?

d.a.m.ned Places.

As we say in Latin, the situs of malevolent s.h.i.t. The venue of evil happenings. Locations forever existing under a black cloud, like residing in a rooming house run by Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond. The big slams are like that. Joliet, Dannemora, Attica, Rahway State in Jersey, that h.e.l.lhole down in Louisiana called Angola, old Folsom- not the new one, the old Folsom- Q, and Ossining. Only people who read about it call it " Sing Sing." Inside, the cons call it Ossining. The Ohio State pen in Columbus. Leavenworth, Kansas. The ones they talk about among themselves when they talk about doing hard time. The Shoe at Pelican Bay State Prison. In there, in those ancient structures mortared with guilt and depravity and no respect for human life and just plain meanness on both sides, cons and screws, in there where the walls and floors have absorbed all the pain and loneliness of a million men and women for decades...in there, the stones call out.

d.a.m.ned places. You can feel it when you walk through the gates and go through the metal detectors and empty your pockets on counters and open your briefcase so that thick fingers can rumple the papers. You feel it. The moaning and thrashing, and men biting holes in their own wrists so they' ll bleed to death.

And I felt it worse than anyone else.

I blocked out as much as I could. I tried to hold on to the memory of the scent of orchids in the night. The last thing I wanted was to jaunt into somebody' s landscape at random. Go inside and find out what he had done, what had really put him here, not just what they' d got him for. And I' m not talking about Spanning; I' m talking about every one of them. Every guy who had kicked to death his girl friend because she brought him Bratwurst instead of spicy Cajun sausage. Every pale, wormy Bible-reciting psycho who had stolen, b.u.t.tf.u.c.ked, and sliced up an altar boy in the name of secret voices that " tole him to g' wan do it!" Every amoral druggie who' d shot a pensioner for her food stamps. If I let down for a second, if I didn' t keep that shield up, I' d be tempted to send out a scintilla and touch one of them. In a moment of human weakness.

So I followed the trusty to the Warden' s office, where his secretary checked my papers, and the little plastic cards with my face encased in them, and she kept looking down at the face, and up at my face, and down at my face, and up at the face in front of her, and when she couldn' t restrain herself a second longer she said, " We' ve been expecting you, Mr. Pairis. Uh. Do you really work for the President of the United States?"

I smiled at her. " We go bowling together."

She took that highly, and offered to walk me to the conference room where I' d meet Henry Lake Spanning. I thanked her the way a well-mannered gentleman of color thanks a Civil Servant who can make life easier or more difficult, and I followed her along corridors and in and out of guarded steel-riveted doorways, through Administration and the segregation room and the main hall to the brown-paneled, stained walnut, white tile over cement floored, roll-out security windowed, white draperied, drop ceiling with 2" acoustical Celotex squared conference room, where a Security Officer met us. She bid me fond adieu, not yet fully satisfied that such a one as I had come, that morning, on Air Force One, straight from a 7-10 split with the President of the United States.

It was a big room.

I sat down at the conference table; about twelve feet long and four feet wide; highly polished walnut, maybe oak. Straight back chairs: metal tubing with a light yellow upholstered cushion. Everything quiet, except for the sound of matrimonial rice being dumped on a connubial tin roof. The rain had not slacked off. Out there on the I-65 some luck-lost b.a.s.t.a.r.d was being sucked down into red death.

" He' ll be here," the Security Officer said. " That' s good," I replied. I had no idea why he' d tell me that, seeing as how it was the reason I was there in the first place. I imagined him to be the kind of guy you dread sitting in front of, at the movies, because he always explains everything to his date. Like a bracero laborer with a valid green card interpreting a Woody Allen movie line-by-line to his illegal-alien cousin Humberto, three weeks under the wire from Matamoros. Like one of a pair of Beltone-wearing octogenarians on the loose from a rest home for a wild Sat.u.r.day afternoon at the mall, plonked down in the third level multiplex, one of them describing whose a.s.s Clint Eastwood is about to kick, and why. All at the top of her voice.

" Seen any good movies lately?" I asked him. He didn' t get a chance to answer, and I didn' t jaunt inside to find out, because at that moment the steel door at the far end of the conference room opened, and another Security Officer poked his head in, and called across to Officer Let-Me-State-the-Obvious, " Dead man walking!"

Officer Self-Evident nodded to him, the other head poked back out, the door slammed, and my companion said, " When we bring one down from Death Row, he' s gotta walk through the Ad Building and Segregation and the Main Hall. So everything' s locked down. Every man' s inside. It takes some time, y'know."

I thanked him.

" Is it true you work for the President, yeah?" He asked it so politely, I decided to give him a straight answer; and to h.e.l.l with all the phony credentials Ally had worked up. " Yeah," I said, " we' re on the same bocce ball team."

" Izzat so?" he said, fascinated by sports stats.

I was on the verge of explaining that the President was, in actuality, of Italian descent, when I heard the sound of the key turning in the security door, and it opened outward, and in came this messianic apparition in white, being led by a guard who was seven feet in any direction.

Henry Lake Spanning, sans halo, hands and feet shackled, with the chains cold-welded into a wide anodized steel belt, shuffled toward me; and his neoprene soles made no disturbing cacophony on the white tiles.

I watched him come the long way across the room, and he watched me right back. I thought to myself, Yeah, she told him I can read minds. Well, let' s see which method you use to try and keep me out of the landscape. But I couldn' t tell from the outside of him, not just by the way he shuffled and looked, if he had f.u.c.ked Ally. But I knew it had to' ve been. Somehow. Even in the big lockup. Even here.