Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  Spool Eleven

  Cab rides

  Milwaukee, 1934

  [Recording resumes after a break,

  sound of a radio in the distance]

  —Where was I? I’d go tumbling out the cemetery on those anniversary trips and more often than not I wouldn’t go straight home. No, I’d stay on the trolley and go jerking North over the Bridges over the Menomonee. Past the breweries, the stock yards and rail yards. As we crossed West Wisconsin, I’d generally have a look towards those red-roofed houses of the rich where those evil Kovacs lived. It would be at the dead end of the day usually by then. How many times did I go on those awful trips? Eleven, I guess. Some Octobers stand out more. I’d get off eventually on Sarnow or Walnut and just walk and wander around downtown. I seemed to want to hang around in the rough areas of town. Doing a sort of penalty to myself, I don’t really understand it. The light would be about going. I’d just keep on walking.

  I got well and truly lost that first time, I didn’t realize the kind of neighborhood it was. Didn’t really notice the men loafing about and the boarded-up shop fronts. On I went, block after block, all alone, like a terrier in a wet hayfield. Where am I? Forget now. I’m not so good today, doc. All that I’m leading to is that I heard a song calling to me on Walnut Street. ‘Goin’ down to the river to pray.’ I could hear it playing from inside the building. That hymn sound seemed to promise healing, a sign for me to follow. Stupid it might seem to you I know but that’s what I thought. It took me to the steps of an old clap-board new fellowship church. A black feller was out there calling out on the front steps about how he was happy, always happy and to come and confess your sins. Well, I had a lot to confess, that’s true. So I went in like a sleepwalker and a lighted door swung open for me and I’m not ashamed to say I joined them in that singing.

  Doctor Kaiser: Let me understand: you wandered into the poor neighborhoods and went into the colored folk’s churches? And what did you confess to?

  —There was no end to the bad things I’d done and sometimes it’s the not doing of something that was so bad but the things you didn’t do. It used to feel as if I’d been dragged through brimbles backward. Brimbles, you know, what you calls brambles. I was alive in my own prickly bush but I was burning and stinging. I’d pour out all kinds of nonsense then skedaddle for home. I was glad to catch those cabs appearing out of the night. Them cabbies liked to talk about how it was going to be a hard winter. They drove big old Packards mainly. They’d wonder what I was doing in Bronzeville, asked if I was lost. Ess, I was lost for sure. A sinner all wormed out with secrets trying to confess to anyone who’d have me, even them poor auld church niggers. I’d sit in those cabs and secretly thank those black fellers. The men in the work sheds at Nash’s used to show me postcards of dead ones hanging from trees down South. Heads swelled to pumpkins. In this country bad things can come quick if you don’t fit. You can see it in the eyes of those black folks. You could dance real easy on the rope like that sheeny fellow lynched in the Mary Phagan business. It was in the news when we first came here. Lord, that rope and noose has chased me across the years. It’s good to just try and forget. [sighing and coughing on the recording] The cabs would cruise along the downtown city, their glary lights moving over saloons, eateries, the white windows of the closed-down furniture stores. The meters clicked every four blocks and the big old Packards used to hum so smooth. So solid. I loved these machines and that smell at work of Rislone, grease, and rubber. I’d tell the cabbies they had good cars, real honeys. The best feeling I ever had in this country was getting my new cars each year. I’d be all lathered up after all that walking. It was good to sit and glide along. I’m glad those days are finished. Trying to connect with Evie each October was like putting my hand into a flame. It was a lot better to be all muffled up in everyday life.

  Doctor Kaiser: Isn’t it better to face up to the truth?

  —The truth? Hah! I could tell you the truth if I could find it. [long pause] They had a shell game going at work. The mechanics used to lay bets. Find the pea. Find the lady. Find the lady. Once twice and again. Find her. Put one dollar down to find the lady. One of the greasers who worked as a cleaner he called it “dama ink—something …inkeeta”, that’s it. It means ‘restless lady’. Ess, that was a good name for it. Restless was what I was also. ‘Unket’ is what we called being lonesome in Deb’m speak. All on my unket. Damn! My mind was not right then and it’s no better now! I really got bad in’29 though, jobs were going to hell and Addie got sick with pains in her belly. That and Evie being away at summer camp. I broke the habit of a lifetime and drank a half bottle of brandy. Then it all had burst out of me: a forty year secret.

  [a long silence]

  Things had become a mite strained. Evie had somehow taken all our love and there seemed like there was less of it left to go between us. Even when things were good I was frit that it would all just vanish from under me. There had been such bootiful times at first in Islington and in the early years here. I loved being in America. That dirty smell soaking through the city that spoke of money to be made. The carelessness of everyone to where I’d come from. I’d also never seen so much food. Even the American robins were fat, big fat throstles, so unlike the narrow Deb’m kind of bird. The best of days were when I was working at the garage on North Downer. Then Evie was born just as Europe tipped into war. The relief that there was nort wrong with her; I was so much greyer and older than the other fathers waiting outside the maternity ward.

  War was a blessing. It really boosted the auto sales and the jobs came along with it at Nash’s and the Oshkosh trucks. I had kept ahead of my ghosts by moving so fast, like those cabs skimming along in the night streets. Driving in America in the dark you were never sure what was out there. I had the feeling that you could just drive off the edge somewhere beyond the headlamps. How I had tried to set my anchor but everything kept gliding on without stopping.

  We weren’t married but Addie was my woman and I grew to need her. The main feeling that came along was being frit, frit of losing her, yet at the same time I seemed to make a hole for our love which grew in the space around us. We couldn’t marry—too many lies would be needed and birth papers, blood tests and explaining who we were. We lived under different names—to the authorities we were James and Adeline Lee. There, that’s another secret out, doc. We shaped ourselves to this life and Addie did not question me about it. Evie took much of our life together and Addie spent the rest of her time keeping house and making an English garden despite the winters here and the sumac that came rooting into all her fancy plants. But the things I said in’29 nearly tore down our world.

  Doctor Kaiser: What happened?

  —Addie had been sick. She was taken to County General. I can’t recall the doctor’s name for it, gut trouble anyway. Evie was away at camp at Waukesha. It was the second night on my own and the nights were hell. I’d got used to having them around you see. Once they’d gone there was just me. We used to give Evie poppy seed syrup for night terrors and I needed something like that myself. In the end I drank the medicine brandy in the early hours and was still up and reeling around the kitchen when Mrs Hoelich came the next morning. Addie being away, the good soul had been worriting about me looking after myself.

  She had bought me some pie. Everything had “and so” after it when she spoke. She spoke so local I could hardly make her out sometimes. I told her that she was a blessing and I tried to stand up, still crazy from the brandy, eyes all wonk and with a leaky head. She put the dish down and tried to get out the house, but I got hold of her like a mump ’aid and shouted at her to stay. Heaven knows what I jabbered out. It must have been bad for she has avoided me ever since. And she surely spoke to Addie about it later. I thought I told her something about how I had a horrible dream. I dreamed I saw Mary Ann Fey on that night at Babbicam, Mary Ann like the White Witch of the Moor, all dripping from the gale and holding my knob-ended cane. She was waving it and it was not rainwater but dark drops f
alling from it and spattering on the floor and walls. I screamed at Mrs Hoelich that I was all covered in blood and she tried to calm me. The brave soul told me it was crazy talk but I couldn’t seem to stop spouting on. I went on about Lizzie and Harrington and Mary Ann coming back from the sea, and of the wash of blood that I could not stop and of teeth falling to rattle like dice on the floor. She managed to get free of me in the end, told me everything would be okay once Addie got home. I tried to explain to her that I had traded on my innocence all my life. I needed to believe in it. I could not help what one does in a dream. She must have decided that I was not dangerous then and she came round the table and held me around the shoulders until I was quiet.

  Doctor Kaiser: The truth might set you free, Mr Lee. You need to let it out.

  —You don’t understand. It’s not just me you have to contend with. I’m carrying stuff inside me.

  Doctor Kaiser: You mean guilty feelings? You’ve mentioned feeling you’re haunted in some way.

  —Ghosts, doctor is it? There ain’t no such things according to Harry Houdini. Just human lies and tricks. But I know better. Everything in my life has had a terrible twist to it. Every blessing has its shadow side. What was it for me? The price of living through that night in Babbicam for me was a lifetime possessed by a ghost. The price of saving my neck in Exeter was twenty-two years of hell. The price of a new life in America was the life of my dear child.

  What is left for me to find? Find the lady, where is she, sir? Watch! Watch carefully! Once, twice and again. Something is moving. I feel the bed shifting under a new weight. Someone is sitting there. You might think me a mazy ’aided old man but I have felt a breath on my face, a tainted breath. I fancy I hear the clink of a watch chain catching on a brooch. A smell of a lost perfume keeps coming to me. Attar o’ Roses. She whose life I have carried all this time. She who holds me still and grinds me bone on bone.

  I want to tell both you and Addie about everything. To unburden and let it all come out. I had tried before but it had not come out so well and Addie did not want to hear me then. My Ma used to say that all life was cring-crankum—all zig-zag and twisted up but maybe time unravels everything you knitted in the end and returns all to its first state?

  Can you hear, doc? Soon Addie’s feet will come on the stair. You’d better pack up. She’ll likely bring a tray of arrowroot biscuits and milk. I’m burning like a candle and need her to quench me. For once I really want to get through and find the love we have put aside somewhere. I don’t know why I’m so weak all of a sudden. I’m a poor spider in a shoe box. Have I left it too late?

  [music and clattering in the background then shutoff]

  Pinch, Pinch

  I move around this little town looking for the best wi-fi spot so I can watch those vids again and again. It might be the Beauty and the Bean coffee shack or it could be Lenigan’s on Janesville Avenue or my favorite, Scottie’s Eat-Mor on Main. Once I’ve settled into my viewing place, I order coffee and search out the execution vids. I often have to turn the sound down so as not to disturb the other customers, the old-timers lingering over coffee and pie and chit-chatting with the staff, the groups of young moms taking a break from shopping, looking at each other’s vacation photos or poring over Kinderbreak adverts. I can’t stop staring at those images on the little screen. It’s not the human terror I’m interested in, it’s the sense of otherness. Lee’s execution drama took place in times before videos. In the States there were some newsreel of electric chair executions in the ’30’s and Lee mentioned the famous Ruth Snyder photos. There are those grainy French films of guillotining but for the real stuff you need to see the filmed executions from the 1940s if you have the stomach for it.

  One of the most fugly and sick films is the shooting of the Romanian prime minister Antonescu and his ministers by a bungling firing squad. Apparently old Antonescu had danced too closely with the Nazis and so had to be offed in the old European style of government scene changing. You can get it on the Web. Just before being shot numerous times you can see Antonescu carefully setting his fedora down on a bank of grass behind the execution post (they did the same to the guy that followed him, Ceau whatever his name was, the vid of him and his wife getting shot is pretty grooly also). Then you can also see the real-life botched hanging of Amon Goeth, the German commandant from ‘Schindler’s List’. Unlike in the movie version, Goeth’s actual Polish executioners were freakin’ useless. They were fat dudes wearing Halloween masks moving clumsily around Goeth, who stands straight and still, just his raincoat flapping in a breeze. He drops down when the trapdoor goes but the rope snaps. Without a flicker he gets up out of the pit and lets them do it again. The rope snaps a second time and he continues living. As he gets out of the pit that second time you can see him give the executioners a quick look of total hate. I’m sure Lee gave out just the same look when Berry unhooked him. The third time the rope held for Goeth and he hung like a dummy, slightly quivering. Then, sated for the moment, I look up and register the everyday voices of the staff asking, “another coffee you might want, eh?” The red and white gingham curtains flicker slightly in the air from the extractor fan. Outside, a Cooper’s hawk sits on a utility pole, Main Street conducts its business without concern. There is high cirrus in a crisp and tranquil sky and sunlight bounces off windshields.

  I have a secret reason for keeping on playing those vids. One I sort of hide from myself. I’m looking to see if there is any sign or flicker to show the spirit flying out of those executed guys. I never seem to see it. Nor did I see Grandpa’s spirit fly out when he passed two years ago. Eight decades had not thinned his rusty hair though Camel studs had warped and stained his teeth ’til they looked like old fence posts. All he said to me on his death bed was that he was surprised how quickly it had all come in the end and for me to look after myself. That was it. Then he turned on his side and died. The room was very quiet. I remained crouching by his bed for an hour or so watching the light move but there was nothing else. Only a profound stillness. I still grieve for him and with Kimmie going that has just made it worse. I’ve read somewhere that the sleep positions that you use are reflected in your personality traits. Some phony psychologist has analyzed the starfish position, the faller, the soldier, you get the general drift. What I am apparently is ‘the yearner’: I lie on my side, hands outstretched and clasped as if in prayer. That’s also how Grandpa laid when he died. Now, I try and fit myself into his shape to give myself courage in the night.

  Those fruit flies cluster at my apartment windows. Probably looking for an out. I keep the .45 under my pillow, it’s comforting to run my fingers over its contours when I get scared in the dark. I sit sometimes with my face against Grandpa’s desk. I swear I can still detect the smell of his Camels still caught in the wood. I used to get bad dreams as a kid and Ma would say that I should test out whether they were real or not by saying to myself “Pinch, pinch, it’s only a dream.” If the pinch seemed realer than the scary imaginings then it was only a dream. That doesn’t seem to work anymore. Who are you, Georgia? Are you some bust-off piece of my unconsciousness or that little girl who was cruelly lost back in ’47? I need answers, I’m sick of John Lee.

  Drove out yesterday near to Rose Lake, and found a quiet spot near to the water. I started blasting at the trees with the .45. Blam! Blam! The black terns flew up in crowds. I got scared the wardens might show up and quit shooting after a while. I enjoyed seeing that birch bole split apart and start bleeding sap. It felt good and I stopped shaking for a moment. Think I’m going to make a final push to nail this sucker.

  Lee seems to keep on remorselessly. It’s as if after he escaped the finality of the death sentence he resisted further attempts to curtail or delimit him. Maybe I’m trying to believe that if I play his stuff just one more time I will finally get Lee. I need to catch him out, bum rush him in some way. He keeps giving me chances to understand the truth in his sound clips but never quite enough to fully grasp it. It’s as if he has so
many words but not the ones to name the unnamable.

  Spool Twelve

  Last steps

  Milwaukee, 1945

  Doctor Kaiser: Good morning, Mr Lee. Shall we begin?

  —Begin? It’s more like endings now. That’s right, eh? Old Nurse Mulholland checks on me in the mornings to see if I’m still breathing. Often, I tell her not to worry and say I’m alright. If she says in answer, “I see,” like she usually does, I try to get one over on her by asking her what is it that she sees? Does she see an old todger on his last legs? She never answers but her eyes tell me. All nurses try to hide the truth from sickly folk, don’t you think? But I can tell in her eyes she doesn’t expect me to last. That true, ain’t it? Each morning she tucks me in real firm as if to stop me jumping out of bed. Fat chance of that. If I really get on at her she says that only God tells us when we are to go. She told me today my feet were looking better. She should not lie to a liar. My feet have grown as fat and purple as brimbleberries. You told me my kidleys are not filtering out right and so the filth drops to my feet like a sump. I’ve got that bit right?