Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Ron Carlson

  Despite these handicaps our coach, the red-faced Oliver Panghurst, along with the rest of us, still felt confident that we could win the league. The announcement was made that Sniffy Laughton was making a solid brass trophy three-feet tall and weighing nearly ninety pounds for the winning squad. Sniffy ran the machine shop. That was when our team started eating lunch together, quietly talking, breaking our cups apart slowly like bread; that was when things started getting more realistic, or unrealistic, as the case may be, and things had a chance of making the movies, of going beyond this confined mediocrity, well, that is to say, we planned the escape.

  It was mildly unfortunate that we didn’t use phrases like, “Yeah, we’re really going to blow this joint!”, when talking about the escape, and the general conversational tone was disappointing also. No one growled in a hysterical rasp. Perhaps it was because the plan was simple. Simple and easy. Just having the escape was enough for me. I didn’t really care how they talked about it. Deeds, that ran around breaking down doors, were in order, not Words that twisted into nothingness like smoke.

  The plan. The new wing would not be completed until early October, and until that time all of our air vents were open ended in the new unfinished system. From there through one set of corridor bars, through the basement passageway, out the side doors, across the budding fitzer bed, onto centerfield of Dexter, and over the wall. I got all the information about the new wing out of Spike as we’d talk during the day.

  It became obvious from the first that he would never go for escaping until the landscaping was done. I felt bad about prying stuff out: “Where does that door go, Randy?” But it was escape wasn’t it? And he liked leaning on his shovel and talking about the way things were going to be, the master plans for the yard, and his role in it. Besides, our route took us right through the fresh fitzer beds, as I’ve said, and that would have killed old Spike. So I didn’t tell him anything.

  “Going over that wall is going to be one hairy mother.” Wilkes, the pitcher, would say three times every lunch. “You got the beam. You got the guardhouse. The guards have got machine guns.” The guardhouse beam we measured, and it swung around the yard, just like in the movies, every nineteen seconds. “It’s gonna take two-three minutes to get the eleven of us over that mother wall. It’s gonna be hairy.”

  “Okay, you Dangerous Convicts,” Coach Panghurst said over his plastic tray, “Somebody has got to go down there tonight and clear that set of bars out, and check those East Yard doors.” He smiled, tapping his spoon on his cube of green jello. “I’ve escaped four times and been shot five, and if we get hung up between here and centerfield, we are gonna get our Dangerous Convict asses shot off, and I’d personally rather be in prison than,” he stopped tapping and stabbed the spoon into the green quivering mass, “be dead.”

  There was a thoughtful jello silence.

  “I’ll do it.”

  I said that.

  That afternoon I received a letter from Eldon. He had been looking for Lila in my behalf, but she hadn’t turned up.

  Dear Larry,

  They closed the Flying W, and Nicky and the gang have moved over to Roosevelt for other felonies. Don’t worry, I am on the case. … I’ve kept what stakeout I could at Lila’s place for the last week: nothing. If she shows, I’ll get the necessary evidence, confession, or flesh. Will a pound do? Lenore came over about three weeks ago, and your dreams will be happy to hear she cried. Heavily. But Gary is very in the picture: marriage.

  I am now contributing editor to The Guide to Fishing in Eastern Utah. I’ve met some wonderful Indians while fishing, including an incredible guide: name of Nighthorse. Many fish leap from little streams calling your name. Don’t worry, I don’t write about the good places. The tomatoes are thick, but green. How about coming to help with the harvest? Many more events to report, including Indian lore, but later ……

  Your pal, Eldon

  P.S. I have a new roommate and it is hilarious.

  Despite the impending jailbreak, as I chose to refer to it, the news that Lila was not coming forth bothered me enough to make me misplay a bunt that afternoon. I started in way too late, and the Felons spoiled Wilkes’s shutout. We still won seven to one. But all through the game I could not repress stomach-sinking thoughts about the bad faith Lila was wielding against me by doing the worst black deed: nothing. Where was she?

  That night I sat smoking in my cell watching the grid of moonlight slide in a closing parallelogram over the floor. As it was about to slide a little bit onto the wall, I got up and into the garb still barefoot. I tenderly lifted the vent cover which I had loosened in the after dinner free period, and I stared into the opening which was about the size of a book. It was all getting worthwhile. I thought of Nicky missing out on all this due to his untimely acquittal. I climbed into the minute door and started getting stuck immediately. That shot me enough adrenalin to inch like the mad mole, onward, even around a corner, and seventy feet further where I came right out into this earth’s sweet atmosphere and, incidentally, into the new wing.

  The empty unfinished wing of a prison at night, stark and barren, is not unlike its finished counterpart, full of maligned American citizens such as my friends. I walked, strolled casually, swinging my arms, down the corridor to the last cell and the row of bars we had to get through. Now a wall of bars is more than a concept; it is a thing. Putting my hands on the long black bars in the dark, they seemed solid. Steel. I’d seen (you have too) those guys in movies stand bewildered behind bars and shake or, ha ha, try to shake the bars, crying in what is called anguish. I did that without the crying. The bars were firm. I did it a little more, making the facial expressions of an innocent man locked in the clink, which it occurred to me, without a tinge of irony, I was. I shook my head and stretched my face quite well into: frustration, sadness, anger. Then I did some combinations: Angry frustration; Helpless frustration; Raging insane anger. During that one as I bucked against the bars, I let out a little cry and suddenly stood pointedly still. “What was that noise?”

  When I realized it was I, I went back to wild sadness, clinging to the bars making mouths as if I had my fingers in the corners. As I raged, near tears, sinking slowly to the floor, Bette Davis standing right on the other side, one of the long bars came loose and I was sitting on the floor holding it like the first man to invent the spear. All facial contortions stopped and I did a very convincing version of abject surprise.

  The concrete was not firm; the bars had not set up yet.

  I had stopped saying “unbelievable” at the trial, but I thought it again there in the dark, laying the bar down without a clink. I slipped through the space, and bounced merrily down the stairs to the East Yard doors. The latch hadn’t been installed yet, but the two doors were chained together at their handles. I pushed them tenderly outward until the chain was taut. There was a space of about two inches, through which I could see part of the prison wall, beyond that, mountains, beyond them, stars. But only two inches. Not even enough for the human mole. Even Salvatore, that skinny greaser, couldn’t slip through. As I stood there thinking, “Okay, Lila, maybe you’ll change your tune when you see this Dangerous Convict face to face; there are things in need of rectifying,” I saw another thing appear in that two-inch gap: a nose. As it poked in, there was an accompanying growl speckled violently with saliva from one great big dog, a german shepherd, looking in to see who’s messing. Deftly I pulled the vision closed, carefully allowing “Wolf” to extract his nose. A big dog. I replaced the key bar in its sandy socket on my way out and returned, after another tangle with the tunnel, to my cell. There under the thinnest membrane of sleep I dreamed of walking through a desert of broken glass that glistened like teeth.

  30

  The next morning at work while Randy Spike was cleaning the teeth of the red harrow we used to level the grounds, I went back to the newly finished beds. Each little shrub was surrounded by a wet circle where it had been watered. Using my most canine of imaginations, I scra
tched a reasonable amount of damage into that ordered surface. I hated to do it.

  Back at work on the unfinished portion of the beds with my Acme Land Company shovel in hand and constantly underfoot, I stopped Randy when he came by and said, “Darn it, Randy, that german shepherd they keep in the yard nights is a headache.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That damn dog is wrecking the bushes!”

  “Where?” he said, dropping his shovel on the spot. I showed him and he went away, nearly at a run, toward the office. After another short while, I saw him coming across the yard with Mel Trammel, our yard officer and prison guard. I continued turning the sod as they talked. When Randy returned I asked him what happened.

  “They’re keeping that god-damned dog in the kennel tonight. Trammel says the dog’s been shitting out near shortstop too. Probably just a case of not being fully trained.”

  “I’ll go straighten out the mess.” I said.

  “Thanks, Larry, that’s great of you.”

  “No problem, Randy,” I said, choking up on the shovel and carrying it like a bat over to the recent landscape violation. After work, I very carefully, in studied negligence, leaned my shovel against the East Yard doors and ran off, gleefully, to play ball. It was the afternoon of the sixty-sixth day.

  There was a big crowd for the game, all the other teams came to see us duel the Escapees. Even some of the off-duty guards came out, standing just out of play like dark final umpires. Panghurst was really excited. His face was redder than usual and he went around to each of us saying, “Now or never, boys.” We all knew it was our last game, not because the season was ending, but because, we hoped, tonight we were leaving the league. “Now or never, Larry.”

  “Right.”

  “You know,” he said privately to me as we sat on the bench in the second inning, “I hate to leave. I’m not sure there’s anybody here qualified to take over the license shop.” He was foreman of the license plate shop.

  “They’ll find somebody.”

  “Naw,” he said, taking off his cap and running his finger around the inside rim, “I’m not sure. It takes a mastery of phonetics. You wait, if we pull this thing off tonight, license plates from here on will go straight to boredom. It takes phonetics.” Panghurst did have a point. His masterpieces were a rallying point for all citizens who’d ever been in the prison. The state’s plates were three letters then three numbers. He did a famous series consisting of thousands of FCK, PHK, and FUQ. He plated ten thousand OWP which were his initials, not to mention his BFD’s, ETC’s. He was clearly the best plater in the country. My truck plates, I recalled, had been OWP. “I’m just not sure anyone else knows enough phonetics, Larry. I mean as soon as they start making DIP or GOD they’ll get caught and some straight guy will be shipped in who will avoid all meanings. Then what have you got. Yeah,” he said, snugging the cap back on grimly, “the job requires a thorough understanding of phonetics, and a measure of subtlety.”

  Right then, a rapist from Pocatello who played for the Escapees hit a two-run homerun. It broke the guardhouse window and so received more cheers than it should have. Panghurst got up and went down the bench. “Come on you guys; it’s now or never.”

  Lefty got on in the fourth and stole around to third. Then Wilkes popped to shallow right, but Lefty tagged up and made it in anyway. That made it two to one. In the eighth, I got a Texas league single, and made second on a passed ball. Two of our ace hitters struck out. Then Salvatore hit a line drive exactly down the leftfield line and I scored on his double. Tied up. The dispute over the fair-ball call on the play led to an extended fistfight between Lamar, our 300-pound new first-base man and the Escapees’ left-fielder and shortstop, the Nevada kidnappers, Pierce and VanBuren. The rest of us stood in our places while they rolled around and around. Every time Lamar would roll over one of the guys, the entire crowd would groan for him. The two Escapees kept trying to get up and fistfight, but Lamar snared them into his specialty: wrestling. The fight finally was stopped by Spike, when the three combatants tumbled too near the shrubbery. He poked them with his shovel.

  The game remained tied until the eleventh inning, when Lamar got trapped between first and second and the Escapees got so involved in the run down that Leeland Rose scored easily from second. There was wild cheering in the twilight, and I found it a little sad as we shuffled away from the empty Dexter. As the triangular period of my life came to an end, so too the diamond era passed.

  During dinner a rat-a-tat-tat started up and everybody looked up from their trays for a minute fearing the everlasting machine-gun moment, until we realized it was raining. After dinner the Dangerous Convicts sat around two pink tables in sullen fashion, picking their cups apart depositing each piece in the middle like a coin.

  “Rain.”

  “Yeah.”

  At 1:00 A.M. we met in the new wing, each team member emerging from the small mouth of the vent like a word in a secret. I removed the bar, not bothering to play Superman, thinking all the while, this is really it: escape. Wilkes kept whispering scared little things about being shot to death. He wouldn’t just say, “shot,” no, it had to be, “Shot to death.”

  “Wish that goddamned light would go out.”

  “That wall’s going to be one hairy mother.”

  We filed through the opening in the bars in batting order, which is already how we’d agreed to go over the wall. But at the East Yard doors I led out and pushed the doors against the chain. Straight as a loose bar in a prison, for instance, the handle of my shovel fell through those two wide inches. A moment later, after applying one of the seven basic tools, shovel as lever, the doors were open and centerfield lay before us under falling rain. I could hear everybody take an involuntary breath when the doors swung open. On the wall two hundred feet away, the beam’s dripping white circle passed back and forth. The Dangerous Convicts stood in the doorway posing as if for their group photo, breathing, looking out at what occurred to them to be the future. Exactly, precisely, at this moment, I thought, like the movies.

  “Good luck, Salvatore,” I whispered.

  When the light passed again we ran across the muddy yard. Ah, Spike, I am sorry. The beam got there just before we did and passed cleanly away. The wall was wet. We boosted the first three guys over the wall handily, but Sammy Watt, the clean-up hitter, slipped, and four of us landed in a body pile in the mud. We all stood up again, just in time to get thoroughly clipped by the big beam. Sammy climbed upon Lamar’s shoulders this time, slipped again and the light slapped us.

  Wilkes said, “We’re dead.” What a cheerful body.

  The light was coming back again, but we had Watt and the fifth hitter Leeland Rose on the wall; machine-gun fire was imminent. The light waved past twice more as we groaned Lamar up the wall. Each time it would come it was like death. It seemed to slow down when it would focus on us. I got on the wall and reached down for the last four Dangerous Convicts. Salvatore got over easily and then we hoisted Panghurst out of turn. He deserved it. He sat up on the wall by me for a moment inhaling heavily. “Good luck, kid,” he said.

  “Thanks, Coach.” He dropped to the other side and I looked down at the last two Dangerous Convicts. One was a pinch hitter whose hitting ability depended solely on the availability of certain drugs which there had been a drought of recently, and the other was the batting practice pitcher. Getting the pitcher over was hardest. He kept slipping and hitting his chin against the wall. On our third attempt, as I hauled him up I could see his chin bleeding badly as he winced up into the rain. Then he slipped and fell hard against the wall and, snap! I heard his jaw break, and he went out and down like the ten-ton anchor weighing down our disaster. The beam flashed on us again as I looked down at our unconscious pitcher. The other Dangerous Convicts had scattered in the fields. And in a moment I gave up all hope of escaping and clearing my name, and dropped quietly down beside him in the rain. As the light came by forty more times while I brought him to, I learned to stop wor
rying about it, and I stopped flinching when it came. I stood up straight, and we took our time, helping each other over the wall. Sitting on top, straddling that long horse, I looked back at the beam mad as I could be. Can you believe things are like this in our prisons in the United States of America today?

  No one was watching.

  I dropped to the other side of prison walls and ran as one of the Dangerous Convicts away in rain falling like soft bullets.

  31

  There is no activity so stimulating as running away from prison. I leaped, stride by stride, up a grassy slope avoiding every quick snake through the trustee cherry orchard and across the four-lane highway. I stopped on the far side of the road. It was comforting to be standing next to a road again. There was no traffic. The rain was half snow now and thickening in the dark. The first attempt at a storm of the fall. The trusties were weeping in their shanties over the damaged cherry crop. I raised and lowered my arms a few times: this is my body, redelivered. Then I threw myself dramatically down the gravel incline of the highway and sneaked, stepped into the first convenient post-prison culvert to think about the next thing.