Toby Olson
Lockup
Lockup
There's plenty of time now to account for the losses, like watching
ice cubes search out their liquidity in the shade. But that gets you only a
drink of warm water, and there's a good deal of the cool stuff on hand here. I
had a new car, a nice little house, and a wife, but I had a neighbor too, a
traveling salesman who came over often while I was at the track. This was after
the hat fiasco, and I should have expected something like that, but I was
bewildered at the time. My wife left a note. The house was in her name now and
she was claiming it. I should pack up and get out. They were taking the car. I
thought about this on the bus, traveling to where I new they'd be, and that
made it premeditation, although still a crime of passion, and twenty-five to
life. I shot him first, in the chest, then got her between the eyes. She was
sitting on the king size bed. It was not at all like the bed on which the
willing young man knelt in his dream, my dick in his ass. And thinking about
this accounting, I lost heart for the act and withdrew.
Most of the men
here speak of the warden behind his back as sissy-girl Rod, but Andrew says
he's a decent enough chap, and I tend to agree. Andrew is English, and the men
call him Sir Andrew, though he was a gardener in Leeds before coming
state-side. He's thick through the chest and his arms are tattooed, but his
speech is formal and elegant to our ears, here in this foreign country. His
downfall came at the races too, a disagreement about the quality of Manchester
United. Imagine. Two Englishmen at odds over soccer at a race track in
America. There would have been a joke in that, had not his interlocutor fallen
on his head from the second tier. The poor chap returned home horizontal to a
final resting in the soil of England's groin and pleasant gland. Another joke,
were it not for manslaughter and fifteen to twenty. Andrew says the warden,
Rod Wizard, while he might have his own agenda, does look out for the men in
his paternalistic way. He cites what he calls the Greensward as an example,
and I agree with him about that too.
I never cared much
for nature on the outside, but the Greensward teaches me what it could have
been like had I stayed there. Six years ago, Wizard brought in the trees -pine,
juniper and oak- and had the new arrivals plant them. We thought it was part of
our orientation in the hard life, but he set us to work in the afternoons only,
after the heat had died away, and for just a few hours at a time. He brought in
machines to dig out the clay and dump the top soil in, and only the sod was
laid by hand. The site is at the corner of the yard, a good size glen, meandering
paths lined with narrow beds of flowers, a half dozen sturdy benches, each out
of sight of the others, and a few wrought iron tables. Being there is like
being in a place in a park. Birds have come to nest over the years, and in the
fall the ground is covered with yellow oak leaves. During inspection tours,
when the higher-ups come in for evaluation and Rod has us in our costumes of
stripes and chains and breaking rocks, he uses the place himself, even serves
drinks and little sandwiches. At all other times, the place is reserved for us.
We rotate. There are only fifty souls on our side. On the other is where the
Stone Killers reside. We never see them.
From time to time,
the warden invites one of the men out for a night on the town, and of course
all accept. He prefers the ones with the massive chests and arms who pump iron
in the gym and yard, but he isn't overly selective. Andrew says there's no
coercion. He himself was invited once, and though after dinner they wound up at
a gay bar and even danced a couple of slow tunes together, nothing happened.
I'd be awaiting my turn, I guess, but the food is quite good in this place, and
I don't feel I'm missing out on much. There's dancing here too.
I admit my wife
stays on my mind and I regret having killed her, though not so much my
neighbor, and one evening, when it was our turn in the Greensward, I told
Andrew the story of the hat fiasco, knowing full well it had played a part in
those events that got me to this place. It was one of those peaceful evenings
that can come at the end of spring, a faint breeze in the oaks and junipers,
pine candles dipping in the fairy lights the warden had us install for our
comfort and enchantment, and we were both mellow after a day of light work in
the laundry. We smoked cigarettes, sipped from a Thermos of coffee, and I
reminisced.
I'd been working as
a carpenter. That's what I was. And on weekends I'd work at repairs and
renovations around the house, which was small, but a nice little place. In the
evenings, I'd talk to my wife, who was a beautiful woman, and would read books,
which was my hobby. Things were going along well, and if we'd had goals for the
future, they would have been reasonable ones and easy to reach.
Then one Friday on
the job, an acquaintance in the electrical trade invited me to Saratoga for
the races the next day. I'd never been to the races, so I agreed. My wife
didn't mind. Losing that one Saturday together, I mean. And so I went there
with him. We gambled a bit, something else I'd never done before, and by the
end of the day, after a loss of about twenty dollars, I found myself thrilled
and hooked up on the experience of gambling, something that could bring me
considerable sums of money, which I didn't really need.
So for the next
year or so I went to Saratoga almost every Saturday, sometimes with this
acquaintance, sometimes alone. In the first few months, my wife voiced some
objection, and then she seemed to get used to the idea. We still had our
Sundays together, and after a while that seemed enough for her. I gambled in
increasing amounts, winning a bit, but mostly losing, and by the end of the
year I'd gone through our savings and had borrowed against the house to the
tune of two hundred thousand and had lost that too. I was down to the car,
thinking I could sell it and buy a junker, get a few more dollars, bet and
recoup some of my losses. My wife had grown unhappy with these shenanigans, but
still she urged me away each Saturday, which seemed contradictory. Then one
Friday night, after an unpleasant discussion over dinner, I went to bed both
depressed and nervous, and I had a dream. The bell sounded softly, disturbing
the birds nesting in the high oak branches, and Andrew touched me lightly on
the shoulder. It was time for the band and the dancing. The theme was the Civil
War that evening, and the warden had arranged for elaborate costumes, being a
military uniform buff. We left the Greensward and headed together to our cells,
where clothing was laid on our cots.
It was a great
evening. The band was a good one, and it played some Yankee tunes from the
period, Dixieland for the South, and even a few klezmer numbers for the
orthodox Jewish contingent the warden had ferreted out in his research. I was
one of those, in my buttoned up gabardine and the skull cap I now know the name
of, curls attached at the rim and hanging and flying around my face during the
fast numbers I reserved for Andrew. The southerners among us were outfitted as
the Confederacy, and on both sides the uniforms ran from those of the lowly
foot soldier all the way up to the top command. The warden himself was a fife
player, the better to control his instrument during waltzes, which he took with
the hard Iron Pumpers, one of which I danced with too. I didn't like the feel
of his cut chest against my own, but he was one hell of a dancer, light on his
feet even in that bulky body. The willing young man, now a stretcher bearer,
approached me at the start of a slow, romantic number. I turned him away with
what grace I was able to muster. There had really been nothing between us, and
I wasn't interested. After that night, sissy-girl Rod became known simply as
The Wizard. Not a bad chap at all, said Andrew.
In the next few
months we set to work on the croquet pitch. I'm not sure if that's what you
call it, but we did. And in the lazy mornings and evenings I read the paper.
Our work in the laundry had lessened considerably. We now had a mangle for the
sheets and pillow cases The Wizard insisted be ironed. There was plenty of time
for leisure there, but Andrew and I agreed there seemed no time at all for that
kind of thing on the outside, where there was war now and natural disaster.
One of the
disasters, an unnatural one, was the current administration. They seemed to us
like a bunch of half-assed idealists, though their leader, the President,
seemed no more than a transparent dick-head. In crisis, they ran around like a
bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, calling out from their bloody maws.
This one and that one was a hero. They were proud of them. There were enough
heroes to go around among those who still had life in their bodies, since this
baggy-assed crew had put a good number into circumstances in which heroic acts
were possible. It seemed to us a mad house out there.
The Wizard insisted
the pitch be perfectly level, and this took considerable calculation and work,
but since there were many of us and we put in only a few hours a day, the work
was easy and enjoyable. Working together in harmony, Andrew said. We had raked
to the edge of the rectangle where the lines were carefully strung up, then had
laid in the sod and waited for it to settle. Then it was our time again in the
Greensward, another perfect summer evening, and I told Andrew about the dream.
In the dream I was
sleeping, then awakened to the sounds of laughter and talking that had
disturbed my slumber. I was in my bed, my wife absent from it, and I recognized
that people were in the house. I was unconcerned, and dressed only in my robe
and slippers, I went out into our small living room to find there was a party
in progress. My neighbor was there, as well as my electrician acquaintance and
many others. There was a bar set up in the room's corner, a fine looking glass
and metal thing with a uniformed tender behind it. I made my way through the
crowd and ordered a gin and tonic. The bartender wore a party hat, one of those
silly little paper things, and when I had drink in hand I turned to discover
that everyone in the room was wearing a hat, hats of various kinds and shapes.
I went to a chair to sit down, but couldn't, for there on the seat was a cowboy
hat. Then I noticed there were hats everywhere, on tables and couches, even on
the counter in the kitchen when I went in there. Just before I awakened, I
opened the refrigerator, only to find not food or drink, but a couple of hats
sitting on the shelves.
The next morning I
showered and shaved as usual, taking my time with these ablutions because it
was Saturday. Then I went in for coffee and our routine morning talk, which had
devolved into clipped sentences of mundane information since my obsession with
gambling, and I told my wife about the dream. She wasn't interested, not until
I told her I thought it might be a sign of some sort, an omen, and that I was
once again going to the races at Saratoga. We had a brief argument about money
and the car, which she said she needed.
I told her I'd take only twenty dollars and enough for cab fair home
should I lose it. Finally, somewhat unhappily, she agreed. There was only a
little time left before lights out, so I postponed the rest of the story.
In the next few
weeks the papers were full of storms and floods in the south, raging fires on
the west coast, and a number of coordinated terror attacks in the larger cities
throughout the country. The floods and fires were God's work, proclaimed the
lame-assed ministers, retribution for only God knew what. There was a good deal
of confusion about that. The attacks had nothing at all to do with the distant
war, said the administration lackeys, carefully keeping the dull witted
president outside the discussion. Fuel prices were rising, and the market was
getting a little shaky. There were going to be severe budgetary cuts, but
Andrew had heard through the grape vine, one that could be counted on for accuracy
in lockup, that Rod Wizard was unconcerned. He was an independently wealthy
man and his money was not in questionable investments. He'd been spending a
good deal in his time as warden, supplementing the government allotment. The
prison was for him a labor of love.
A few days later,
The Wizard called us all together at the croquet pitch, which was now finished.
Even a little shed had been constructed at the edge of it for holding the
balls, wickets, and mallets. We gathered around him where he stood on the low
wooden box he used for such occasions, to get himself high enough. He was a
small man, thin and wiry. We didn't tread on the new sod, but gathered off to
the side. He told us there would be refugees coming in a few days up from the
storms and floods in the south. He didn't like the word refugees, he said. That
made them coming from another country, and though most were poor in this one
and might feel that way, they were full fledged citizens and had all the
rights available to them that we had. Well, not we exactly, he said, since we
were prisoners and had lost some.Which wasn't really the point. The point being
that the authorities knew we had room. We were only half full, and they were
sending up around fifty of them, these displaced persons, and now we had to
divide the yard down the middle and construct a chain link fence to keep us
separated. The government specified a high wooden fence, so neither side could
be seen from the other, but The Wizard wasn't having any of that. There's nothing
wrong with seeing, he said. He'd arranged for the delivery of the fencing and
metal posts. They were here now, and we'd have to get to work right away. Not a
big job, but a necessary one. The posts had to be sunk in concrete.
I was in my cell
pulling on the work boots, when Andrew arrived to inform me we'd been
transferred from the laundry temporarily. Being a carpenter and a gardener, the
warden had other work for us. He'd arranged for the delivery of twenty large
wooden planters and we were to elevated the bottoms so that there'd be an
eight inch space between them and the rim that would rest on the ground. Once
this was done, I was to help Andrew with the planting. Stone, soil, and twenty
saplings were ready and waiting. The fence was in place and the planters
altered, the young trees mulched and planted in them, by the time the refugees
arrived. We watched them as they made their slow way from the busses to the
building now separated from us by the new fence, and we were discrete in our
watching, avoiding any gawking.
There were men,
women and children, all lugging battered suitcases and backpacks and plastic
bags. They were a sorry and mixed crew, black, white, and Asian, and from their
clothing we surmised they ran down the scale from the well off to the very
poor. A few young men were in wheelchairs and on crutches, and one had lost an
arm. They must have returned from this recent war of liberation. All seemed
completely exhausted as well as bewildered as they stumbled along. Andrew
touched me on the shoulder, and when I turned to him he shook his head. I'll
bet the president is proud of every one, he said.
Back at work in the
laundry, Andrew and I unpacked the new linens, then washed and dried them and
ran them through the mangle. The warden had seen to the purchase of various
looks, cartoon figures for the smaller children, lush designer patterns for the
adults. Everyone worked hard on the day of their arrival, so the warden gave us
the next day off, one of those free days as he called them. We could rise when
we felt like it. There was cold food set up in the cafeteria, and we could eat
at will. For the rest, we could linger in the yard or stay in our cells, which
remained open as usual, read books or the news papers that were delivered to
the prison daily, or visit each other. At first the guards didn't like these
days. They said it was too hard to keep track of everyone, but since nothing
untoward had ever happened, only a little lazy afternoon sex, they got used to
the idea and in a while didn't seem to mind at all.
Two days after the
arrival of the Southern Folk, a few came tentatively into their side of the
divided yard. It was women and children at first, come to avail themselves of
the swing set, teeter-totter, and sand box The Wizard had provided. He'd also
had a few tables set up, circular metal ones with broad umbrellas at their
centers, and a few smaller tables for card playing, checkers and chess. The
children went about their business, but soon tired of it and came to hook their
fingers in the separating fence, in order to watch us on our morning and
afternoon breaks. They seemed to especially like watching the Iron Pumpers
lifting their weights, and they watched the croquet pitch, on which a little
initial practice was going on now that the sod was settled and ready for use,
in anticipation of games that might be played there. Then the rest of the folk
were coming out, their soiled clothing freshly laundered and in order now, and
before long the fence was lined with people on both sides, all in lazy and
animated conversation. Andrew touched my arm and lifted his chin, and I saw
the warden looking down on the gathering from the walkway high up on the stone
wall. I could tell by his posture, wrists hanging loose over the pipe railing,
that he was pleased and had things in mind, and I was right.
It was mid-morning,
and we were sitting in Andrew's cell, those vivid posters depicting flowers,
vegetables and crops on the walls. I was in the chair and he was perched at the
bunk's edge. I asked him where I had left off, and he reminded me of the hat
dream and that I was now on my way to Saratoga race track. I could start again
there.
It was a beautiful
sunny day in mid-August and the track was crowded, many having come out for the
races on a day like that, and after buying my ticket I went in and worked my
way through the crowd and picked up a scratch sheet listing all of the nine
races, then found a seat, lucky to find a good single available half way up in
the stands above the finish line. Then I checked the first race, and sure
enough there was a hat horse there. It was called Fedora and was the favorite.
The sheet promised a tightly contested running, so the odds were good, two to
one, and I went to the window a put down the twenty dollars, all that I had
with me. Fedora closed late, but finished a length ahead. In the next race I
put the forty dollars on the nose of Derby, a mid-level chance at seven to one.
It edged out by a nose only. Then in the third I was faced with Topper, a long
shot. I knew topper could mean other things, but I'd come there with just the
twenty, and I felt I might be on a roll, so I put the whole two hundred and
eighty down on the horse to win. It went ahead at the gate and it stayed there
and cruised in with little apparent effort. At fifteen to one, I had forty two
hundred dollars. Then I checked the next four races, noticing as I marked the
scratch sheet that shadows were now falling across the pages. The sun had gone
behind a cloud, and when I looked up I could see more coming in from the south.
There were
appropriate horses in all of the upcoming races, and though the odds were
mixed, I was growing certain that the dream was a real omen. I put all my
winnings down on the nose of Stove Pipe, then again on Coon Skin, Easter
Bonnet, and Stetson. All came in, and I found myself in possession of three
hundred thousand dollars and a horse in the eighth race, running as the
favorite at two to one, named Gloria's Snood.
I had no clear idea
of what a snood might be, something to keep a woman's hair in place I thought.
I knew my wife had never worn one, at least as far as I could determine. She
had beautiful hair, but I hadn't kept a close lookout for such things, which
was one of my problems as I now see it. Still the horse was the favorite, and
there was nothing else in the race that might be an alternative. And on top of
that, I was now thoroughly hooked up on the dream and the racing, so before I
went any further with considerations that might interrupt the jazz, I went to
the window and put the whole three hundred down on Gloria's Snood to win. The
horse came in first. I now had six hundred thousand. Then the clouds covered
the sky completely, and it began to rain. The Wizard's voice came over the
speaker system, gently, so as not to shock anyone. We were instructed to go out
to the yard, where he would be waiting for us. His voice had that curious
anticipatory tone we were familiar with. Something surprising was in the air.
By the time Andrew
and I reached the yard, the fence was half down and we saw a few men lugging
the planters we'd adjusted. The saplings looked healthy as they waved in the
air above the carriers. At the back of the yard, up against the building,
others were setting up a row of long picnic tables, and we saw a few civilians
carrying instruments coming in at the gate. It seemed the warden had arranged
for the fence poles to be cut off close to the ground, then bolted together
again, leaving a few inches of pipe sticking up from the concrete when they
were unattached, as they were now. The planters were being used to sit above
these protrusions, thereby preventing injury to anyone moving by. A few men
continued work on the removal of the fence and the placement of the planters,
and the rest of us gathered around The Wizard, where he stood once again on his
box beside the croquet pitch.
He spoke briefly of
his trust in us and of the recently learned fact that the Southern Folk would
be here for quite a while. There'd been more storms and flooding and there'd
been more bombings too, ones engendered by the administration and its far away
war. They couldn't resettle, since there was no safe place for that. Because of
all this, he said, we'd be living together now, and as far as he was concerned
it was time for a mixer, a term I remembered from high school long ago, some
kind of dance or other. And if we were going to mix, everybody was going to
mix. It seemed only right. He said he'd have guards with weapons posted along
the high walls, but he was absolutely certain there would be no need for them.
Then he handed out handcuffs to the Iron Pumpers and they headed off toward the
metal door at the yard's far corner, where a couple of guards were waiting. He
pointed that way, saying that was the first thing, then climbed down from his
box and walked around a planter on his way to the gate. We stood there
watching, still in a tight group, as the metal door opened and the Stone
Killers began to come out. Each was cuffed to an Iron Pumper as they emerged, white
skinned and squinting in the sun. Their quarters and the small exercise yard on
the other side of the prison were perpetually in shadow, and they must have
been stunned to find themselves in the healthy light of this new day.
Well, then of
course came forth the Southern Folk, the food carried in by caterers, and the
romantic, classical strains played by the string quartet, and though everyone
was at first tentative, that didn't last long, and in only a few minutes those
at the mixer began to mix.
The Iron Pumpers
were generally gently with the Stone Killers, raising their arms from their
sides and into the air at times to give them a modicum of free range, and the
children, then the adults moved in to talk with them first, which was not
surprising after all, since in their white skin and seeming exhaustion they
were familiar and seemed very much like them. That whiteness didn't last long.
Their faces flushed up early on, both because of the sun and the thrill of
being in it, as well as the pleasure of conversations with those who had come
here from an outside they'd lost all hope for. Early on, we saw a group
gathering around a thin man in a rumpled suit and felt a moment of concern, but
it was no matter. He was a lawyer and was giving out free advice. Just before
the food was ready, The Wizard called down from his perch, and the guards moved
through the gathering and freed the Stone Killers from their tethers. A few
moved off to the Greensward, together with a few inmates from our side. A guard
set off to follow them, but the warden called out softly and waved him away. It
was inconceivable that anything untoward might happen. It was a perfect summer
day, the food was excellent, as was the music, and we were a gathering of the
privileged, there in our safe dwelling, beyond war, politics and its attendant
self interest and what the deluded might call the wrath of God.
Andrew and I
strolled among the gathering, spoke to a few women and took in their sweet
smell, touched the children's arms and shoulders, discussed the recent past
with a few of the older men. The young men in wheel chairs and on crutches, and
the ones variously maimed in the upper body, stayed close together, just old
enough to be a Boy Scout troupe it seemed, though when we approached them we
could see the quick aging war had imprinted in their faces and eyes.
Occasionally we glanced up at The Wizard, who was smiling, his writs limp where
they hung over the railing. Once again, he's pulled it off, Andrew said. A fine
chap indeed. It's clear he's got some answers. I reminded him that it couldn't
last. Nothing can, he answered. But it's here now. And as we watched him and
the gentle, though watchful, guards, and the newly bright eyed children and the
Stone Killers and all the others, we stopped talking and held our own thoughts
about our presence here in the slow race of time. Outside the race seemed
circular, that greed for power constantly repeated, like some crazed meteor
spinning through the galaxy. Here, though, it was measured more reasonably, in
flesh falling into wrinkles, in joint creaks and the slow loss of breath. Only
oases, like this one, seemed truly healthy, respite on the journey that gave
the journey quality. I slept like a log that night.
Once again in the
Greensward, a few weeks later, a little surprised that things had remained on
an even keel, The Wizard back to his evening invitations for dinner and
dancing, the Stone Killers now members of the larger population, the Southern
Folk settled into routines that, while necessarily temporary, were plugged into
life here and not part of some waiting game. It was the end of summer, and the
oak leaves had begun to fall into a yellow wash that covered the walkways and
the green grass beyond. The papers that day had been full of disaster, rain,
mud slides and forest fires in the west, an increase in bombings in the major
cities, another hurricane in the south. The politicians were going insane with
their befuddled accusations. The President had retreated to his home, where he
was barbecuing and clearing brush. The ministers were blaming the homosexuals,
pregnant women going in for abortions, and the Godless media. We were drinking
coffee again, Andrew and I, a fine Columbian Supremo, cream and a little sugar.
He'd gotten hold of a couple of good cigars, and we were puffing away at them.
Night birds were softly singing. So, he said, the last race? It had begun to
rain?
It had been a
beautiful day, so I'd not worn a coat or a hat, and the rain was falling hard,
a chill in it, and I was cold and getting soaked. Just as I got up to move back
under the overhang behind me, the announcer's voice came over the PA system.
There would be a delay before the last race. I found a dry chair and counted my
money carefully, six hundred thousand.
I could go home
now. The money would solve everything. I could redeem the house and have plenty
left over for a better car, needed repairs, maybe even a trip to the islands
come winter. And I might not have to make any decision anyway. The track was
getting muddy and the rain had not let up. They might cancel the last race,
though I'd selected my horse for that one and it had good bones and was running
at three to one, which would give me a million, eight hundred thousand should
it come in first. But it was not the money or even the gambling that seemed at
issue. Really, there was no issue, because of the omen of the dream. Clearly it
had been real as an omen, eight straight races, each one a hat, and I had won
them all. Then, as suddenly as it began, the rain stopped and the sun came back
strongly to shine down on the muddy race track and the announcer said that the
last race would be run in fifteen minutes. I didn't give it another thought,
but went to the window, checked the odds on the tote board, and put down the
whole six hundred thousand on the nose of Chateau. The horse lost of course,
came in fourth, the whole field beaten by a long shot.
I was numb and
still soaked through by the recent rain, and I found a taxi to take me home,
using the few dollars I had held back for that purpose. My wife was there when
I arrived, standing at the kitchen counter working at dinner, and without
hesitation I told her what had happened. When I got to the end of my story, she
turned round in her apron, put he hands on her hips and scowled at me. It's
Chapeau, Chapeau, you fool, not Chateau!
Of course I knew
that. Any fool would. It must have been the thrill of the successful omen, it's
down side, that had caused me to misread the scratch sheet, to see Chapeau
there and to make the crucial and deflating error. Then my wife, still with a
chill in her voice, asked me who had won the God damned race anyway, and I told
her it was an old horse that turned out to be a very good mudder. It went off
at eighteen to one. Some Japanese nag called Yarmulke.
Andrew coughed and
laughed lightly through the cigar smoke, there in the Greensward, and perhaps
it was still a good joke, hearing it for the first time anyway, but for me
there was no longer anything funny in it. My wife had been Jewish, and even
among the secular, yarmulke was a common enough Yiddish term. How could I not
know this? How could I have confused it
with Japanese? It came to me then, only to come to me more fleshed out as the
days went by, that I really didn't know my wife well at all and had never given
much time in coming to understand her. It was not so much the Yiddish business,
though that counted strongly as a marker. It was that, in my egocentricity, I'd
been satisfied by the look of her, that beautiful hair and those features, and
had not come to see her as a separate individual, one with her own history and
thoughts and dreams. And yet I loved what I had come to know, which was almost
nothing. And so when she took up with my neighbor, the traveling salesman, who
was not Jewish either, I found the loss of her unbearable and so, to remove the
lost object from the rage of my longing, I killed her. The killing of my
neighbor was no more than a perfunctory gesture, though it cleared away the
imagined drama of their life together apart from me.
It's ironic, I
guess, that the killing of my dear wife Rebeka had the opposite effect. I
think now that I could have come to live with the loss of her. She'd be in a
new life, finally an individual apart from me, and that would have been healthy
for both of us. And then, too, she might have come back, but I put an end to
that possibility before there was any time at all for it to transpire. And so I
miss her all the time, on and on, a dull ache that rises into a certain burning
sensation whenever I rehearse the story of the Saratoga races. And when that
happens, as it did there in the Greensward with Andrew, who has become my dear
and loving friend, I work away from it by thinking of another, finally
adolescent, fantasy, one that seems to have an ongoing relevance as the world
beyond this place drips with the blood of the innocent, killed as my wife was
out of the tortured and uncaring egocentricity of politicians.
In this fantasy,
the President, the Vice President, members of the cabinet and the close
advisors have all been found out and consigned to this place for crimes against
humanity. It's evening, at the end of a beautiful summer day, and The Wizard,
whose head has always been in the right place, arranges for a get together to
welcome them all, a meeting in the cafeteria, which is large enough to
accommodate the entire population. We're all there, even the Iron Pumpers and
the Stone Killers, as well as the Southern Folk. The administration members,
against their expressed wishes, are invited to bend over and drop their pants.
Then we all form
into lines. The maimed and disabled vets and the women, who have been provided
with proper instruments, are given pride of place. Next come the Iron Pumpers
and the Stone Killer and the rest of the population. Then we partake of the
kind of fucking that these new arrivals have been so good at with the
vulnerable on the outside.
When I arrived at
this point in the story, which was for me the end of it, Andrew added a coda.
I'll bet the President, he said, in his new found pain and humiliation, would
call us all heroes then and tell us how proud he was of us.
Return to Top
Copyright ©2006 by Toby Olson
Toby Olson’s newest work of fiction, The Bitter Half, has just been published
by the University of Alabama Press/Fiction Collective 2. Olson’s The Life of Jesus will be reprinted by
Green Integer in early 2007.
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