No Beast So Fierce (14 page)

I stood spread-legged in the cell's center, a dumb beast utterly helpless. An exquisite agony inundated me—yet a part of my mind was detached, calm, viewing the scene as if it was on a motion picture screen.

“Got any smokes?” the Mexican asked.

I shook my head, afraid to speak. Nor could I think. I was encapsulated in a form of mental shock. Things had gone beyond where thinking mattered, or so it seemed.

I sat down and waited without consciousness of time. Some time later the Negro entered, accompanied by another parole officer, who carried a set of chains, crashing and rattling as they dropped to the floor. The Negro slipped handcuffs on the Mexican. The chains were for me.

I was seated on the toilet and hadn't moved at their appearance. The other parole officer motioned me to stand up for chaining. I considered punching him in the mouth—but that would be a momentary satisfaction with prolonged regrets. As it stood, I was sure to be released when the test came back negative.

Silently, trying to show contempt in my posture, I submitted. Steel bracelets clicked around my wrists. A chain was run through them and circled around my waist—to hold my hands close to my body. Shackles were placed around my ankles. A length of chain dangled from my waist at the rear—to lead me.

“Like a Christmas package,” the parole officer said.

“Not so tough after all,” the Negro said.

I stared at the wall, ignoring them, until the Negro tugged the leash and led me, hobbling, to a station wagon outside. The Mexican was already in the back seat.

The Negro drove the vehicle, which made a mesh screen dividing front and rear seats. It was dark in the city and lights played across the station wagon. Soon we were in the neighborhood of the bail bond offices.

It was 2:30
A.M.
before the booking process was finished. I'd been fingerprinted, photographed, given a lukewarm shower, sprayed with DDT, given denims, a blood test, chest X-ray. I was one of thousands booked into the jail every night. Finally, escorted by a deputy, I was taken in a group of forty prisoners to the tanks.

Cell lights were out, but the walkway outside them was brightly illuminated, casting slices of light through the bars. I was surprised that they were one-man cells. The particular tank, I later learned, had been designed for prisoners facing capital offenses, hence entitled to a semblance of privacy. After the jail was constructed the high-power prisoners were kept elsewhere, so this tank served for mainline jailbirds. Several were still reading when I passed. Their heads were toward the bars to catch the light outside. In the shadows their faces were blurs.

A gate on remote control clanked open. The sound was awesome, steel grinding steel. Yet down the tier someone continued to snore without pause.

I stepped into the cell. Steel crashed against steel. I was locked in. The familiar sight of bunk, lidless toilet, push-button washbowl and graffiti carved into the paint (“If you can't do time, don't fuck with crime”) combined into a blow that shattered my shell of detachment. Imagine the hurricane emotions of a man who has served eight years in prison, has been free less than a week, and who finds himself again imprisoned without having committed a crime. A swirl of loneliness, rage and despair washed me into a tearful, blinded madness. I pleaded silently, “Oh, please help me.” The plea was to Fortune, Fate, God or a nameless power, a plea that is torn from every man sometime during a lifetime.

Glutted of torment, stupefied, I fell on the bunk and buried my face in the pillow so nobody would hear my enraged yielding to despondency, a pillow greasy from hundreds of other heads. For hours I tried to find reason to justify what was happening, and there was none—unless eight years was inadequate penance. Yet there had to be justification somewhere for such suffering. If there was none—no justice—my very sanity was threatened.

Rage in cycles, directed at Rosenthal, made me dizzy. Moments later I became a dishrag, and then experienced waves of despair so massive that I confronted suicide as an escape. Nor was it just the present misery, which was merely an example of my whole life. This was how it had always been, and how it would continue. Why should I suffer pointlessly? Logic decreed suicide—but logic is easier to articulate to the end than to act to the end, especially when death is concerned. The body rebels against oblivion. I withdrew from the brink of suicide.

The worst of my dilemma was inability to find a bulwark of faith to lessen the blows of existence, to make my condition bearable. I had no god upon whom to place my burdens. Pain without purpose is the most unendurable kind. Even my anguished thoughts were of no more significance than the whirrings of a brown moth against a windowpane.

In this fertile abyss, this void, an encompassing indignation bloomed. It was a fury beyond hatred. It embraced God and man. It grew from the corpse of my last hope to belong to mankind and what mankind professed as good. Not only had hope died, but desire too. Soon the laboratory report on the urine specimen would come back. I'd be on the streets again. And even if I was returned to prison for more years, my choice would be reinforced—if something absolute can be increased.

I was going to war with society, or perhaps I would only be renewing it. Now there were no misgivings. I declared myself free from all rules except those I wanted to accept—and I'd change those as I felt the whim. I would take whatever I wanted. I'd be what I was with a vengeance: a criminal. My choice of crime and complete abandonment of society's strictures (unless society could enforce them against me) was also my truth. Someone else might have chosen to gain as much power as possible. Crime was where I belonged, where I was comfortable and not torn apart inside. And though it was free choice, it was also destiny. Society had made me what I was (and ostracized me through fear of what it had created) and I gloried in what I was. If they refused to let me live in peace I didn't want to. I'd been miserable that week of struggling—miserable in my mind. Fuck society! Fuck their game! If the odds were vast, fuck that, too. At least I'd had the integrity of my own soul, being the boss of my own little patch of hell, no matter how small, even if confined to my own mind.

When morning came I was strong; I'd transcended indecision.

10

I
T
was three weeks before Rosenthal came to the jail. Nobody else visited me. Stan Bergman, on a different floor, sent a note. The deputy district attorney was willing to bargain for a plea to a lesser charge, and Stan had talked to his youthful brother-in-law and settled Abe's problems. Until I received the note, I half expected Abe to visit me—but as soon as I got the note I forgot it; Abe would never even think of visiting me unless he had something to gain. I felt no anger at this; he was no friend who owed loyalty. I started to write Willy Darin at Sal Pavan's address, but delayed because I expected to be in jail no more than a few days. I'd be free when the reply arrived.

By the first Wednesday I expected each morning that I would be released by nightfall; this phase lasted for the first ten days. After that I refused to anticipate. Anguish cannot rise from shattered expectations when there are no expectations.

Twenty-one days after the nalline test I was summoned to the attorney room. Rosenthal sat across the divider, an affable smile on his moon face. His cheeks and forehead were pink with sunburn. Dead flesh peeled from a scarlet nose. He explained that he'd have come sooner except that he'd been on vacation. He wanted to know if I'd used the time in jail for serious thinking. I proclaimed the error of my ways, that I'd recognized my attitude was wrong. He smiled in the way of a man who believes he's conquered another and can afford munificence. I grinned sheepishly in return. He said the urinalysis had cleared me, but he offered no apology for putting me in jail. Rather, he was giving me “one more chance”, and had worked out a program. He'd gotten me a job in a hot dog stand and was taking me to a halfway house. I was on nalline twice a week and had to attend group counseling.

I nodded agreement with everything he said. He commented on my improved attitude and promised to come for me at 6:00
P.M.
He'd drive me to the halfway house and introduce me.

In the automobile that evening (nearer 8:00 than 6:00), Rosenthal said, “Your basic problem is emotional immaturity. You want life to be like the movies, full of excitement. That's how a child's mind works, but the adult accepts regularity, tedium, frustration.”

We were shooting up a ramp onto the freeway. Traffic was seventy miles an hour. He prattled on, explaining the fullness of his own life in suburbia—golf and bridge and attending football games were enough excitement for any normal person.

“That's good, Mr Rosenthal. I'm glad you're happy. You know what I really like?”

“I can imagine.”

“Speed. Going fast. I've always wanted to be a
grand prix
driver—vroom, vroom. Ever thought about doing that?”

“Taking unnecessary risks with your life is immature.”

“Didn't you like hot rods when you were young?”

“Not really.”

“Man, you should see what it's like.” I'd been sliding closer to him. Suddenly I stamped my left foot against his right toe, pressing the gas pedal to the floor. The automobile jerked and leaped forward. “Hey! What!”

I locked my leg straight out as he struggled to pull his foot away. The car was weaving—but gathering momentum. We were going eighty.

“You're through,” he threatened.

“Maybe both of us are.”

The speedometer rolled across ninety.

“Please,” he said, face ashen.

“Fuck your mother.”

He reached for the ignition key. I grabbed his thumb and viciously wrenched it back; then backhanded him across the nose. We swerved over a divider line. A horn bleated in protest, and there was a screech of brakes.

My heart pounded. I was afraid—but it was insignificant compared to his terror. We bore down on the rear of a bus. He swerved away just in time. He was whimpering. The sound delighted me.

Vehicles ahead covered every lane, left no room to squeeze through. The wild ride had lasted two minutes—though time is frozen in such situations. I took my foot away. He hit the brake so hard we almost skidded. He was white beneath the sunburn, pouring sweat, and both hands clutched the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were bloodless.

“You'll never get out again,” he said, but his voice was hysterical.

“Shut your mouth.” I backhanded him again. Blood trickled from his nose. “Get in the right lane and get off at the next ramp. You don't run a motherfuckin' thing now.”

“What're you going to do?” The question pleaded. And the crotch of his pants, pressed tight against fat thighs, was dark. He'd pissed his britches.

“You almost killed us.”

“It would do the world a favor. You're as useless as me—you live on misery.”

Florence Avenue was ahead. Our speed had slackened to fifty. Rosenthal swung over to the right lane, sniffling to stop the flow of blood dripping on his shirt. While we went up the exit ramp, I considered having him park on a side street and kicking the shit out of him. It would be the most satisfying act of violence in my life—leaving me three weeks in jail while he was on vacation. What dissuaded me from whipping him was lack of privacy. There was nowhere in the area that assured lack of interference.

When we slowed for a stop sign at the top of the ramp, I grabbed his necktie to make sure he didn't jump out and run. I understood the transience of my power. I'd reduced him to the frailty of a single man, but in a few minutes he would sound the alarm and become the focus of the state's authority. The chase would begin.

I had to disappear. I decided against throwing him from the car and taking it with me. The crime would be robbery—kidnapping for robbery, seeing as how I'd moved him through fear. The risk and penalty were unworthy of the gain. I'd be safer in the night's protective darkness. With a few minutes' head start I'd surely get away—at least for tonight.

We were on a boulevard. My power was imperiled. If a police car came by he would scream for help because he knew I was unarmed.

“Turn right,” I said as we approached a residential street. He followed orders, trembling with fear, blood still dripping from his nose. I had him park beside the mouth of an alley and took the car keys. He would have to look for a telephone. I'd have a minimum of ten minutes before help arrived. I might have twice that much.

“You should be locked up for the rest of your life,” he said bitterly. “You're a menace.”

I feinted a blow, and laughed as he threw up his arms and cowered down. “That's right. The mistake was making a menace and letting me out.”

Still hiding behind his arms, he said, “I feel sorry for you, Max. I really do. You need help.” The sincere pity in his voice was more infuriating than his usual superciliousness. Yet hitting him would change nothing. His form of blindness, founded on an unshakable sense of his righteousness, was impregnable. Nothing would make him see that if persons like me were the disease, persons like him were the carriers.

“I don't feel sorry for myself,” I said, quite truthfully, wishing for something more perspicacious to say. I was not sorry for my choice, though I was for the conditions that necessitated it.

I ducked from the car and sprinted down the alley, looking for a gate. I decided to circle back to Florence and catch a taxi.

Part Two

In the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs; the spirit here becomes a lion; it wants to capture freedom and be lord in its own desert … The great dragon is called “Thou shalt,” but the spirit of the lion says “I will.”

Nietzsche

1

C
ARRYING
a half-gallon jug of cheap wine, I trudged up the hill to L&L Red's cabin. I'd left a taxicab driver waiting outside a neighborhood bar a mile away, telling him I'd be a few minutes. I'd ducked out the back, saving eight dollars. The Yellow Cab Company had paid for Red's wine. Red was malleable as long as someone kept him drunk, which I intended to do. It wasn't gaming on him. It was the coin of his realm and he appreciated it.