Whirlaway

by Poe Ballantine

  I spent a third day in Tijuana holding on to the good feeling, a pretty nice hotel room (sixteen bucks a night!), and my newfound appreciation for the working class. I fiddled around in the patio shade of a Foreign Book with a couple of peach margaritas and played a card from Churchill Downs without any luck, the way it always was when I played on TV. There was none of the usual excitement and I quit after the fifth race, bought two bottles of Presidente brandy, and headed back to the border.

  The sun was going down as I drove up the road to the Island. Halfway up the hill I could see several police cars, two green Border Patrol units, and a horde of uniformed officers swarming the grounds. Beatriz, in her bathrobe, was speaking to them animatedly. Sweets was barking and snarling furiously. Beatriz had him by the collar. I hoped they would not shoot him. I turned my truck around reluctantly and drove as calmly as possible out of there and back down the interstate to Shelly’s house.

  Shelly was out, no truck in the driveway. I looked for a note and called out his name. Figment and fancy, I told myself as I toured the rooms enduring the usual oppression of anxiety and gloom.

  Finally, I called Beatriz. She said my father had been heavily fined for hiring illegal help. The police and migración were there “cleaning it up.” One tenant had been arrested, another evicted. My father was a terror and was talking about selling the land. No matter what happened it was clear that my days were done there, and Beatriz was worried that she would have to move, too. I asked her where she would go and she said likely with her daughter in Temple City. I asked her how Carlito was. She said he seemed depressed and that I should take him if I wanted. I asked her if the police were still there. She said they weren’t but thought they would return. I told her I would come pick him up in half an hour, damn the torpedoes. I will take good care of him, I said. I know you will, she said.

  35.The Giant Clam Eats Children

  SOMEONE IS KNOCKING ON MY WINDOW, THREE A.M. THE CORRIDORS are long with darkly stained wooden floors and silver lines on both sides of the name Decca. The woman in the beehive hairdo is standing a few feet back from the door, the orange tree behind her twinkling, the exhaust spilling like yellow pollen over the sides of the freeway. Like a banshee, she moans his name, “Donny, Donny,” and I know she will take him whether or not I open that door.

  Before it’s too late I must tell Renee that Donny is alive. Obviously, they can’t date, or make weak disfigured love, or have children, or plan a stock portfolio, but certain closing words can be pronounced, haunts can be dispelled, horrors and blames laid to rest. I want to tell her also that it was not Shelly’s fault. No one pushed Donny or goaded him in. The giant Clam eats children and Donny willingly dove that day into its hungry mouth.

  I go into Coco’s but Renee is gone. “Quit,” Ruby says, “without notice.” I drive by her apartment but it looks like she has moved. All the plants on her patio are gone. The car is not there. A rare storm approaches from the east. The sky is green. Renee is walking down the street in tears. I pull up alongside her, roll down the window.

  The freeways are empty. The storm behind us grows darker. I cannot remember the city ever being this quiet.

  Sweets and I drive west under chowdering clouds. Leaves clack all around us like ghosts on bicycles.

  Renee is thinner and younger than I recall in her nightgown, so petulant, so classically spectral.

  As you get older chances come along less frequently. The arrow that fate shot long ago has found its mark. You sprawl in regret, feathers in your back, the taste of earth in your mouth. Off to the left is the glitter of a hotel that looks like a chandelier.

  I glance over at her legs. She shivers in her evening gown. She is barefoot. There is a Belmonts song on the radio, “Tell Me Why,” Surprise Records, 1961. She turns her face to me and says, “I know that Donny is alive.”

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to tell you. He sends his love.”

  She hugs herself in ecstasy, and I wonder if anyone will ever love me like this.

  A gaunt figure in a tattered baggy suit with a suitcase waves at me from the side of the road.

  “We’re going to fix him up,” she says.

  “He can’t be fixed,” I say. “His skull was broken into fifteen pieces.”

  “Oh no,” she says, in the most unconcerned way.

  If I did not know I was dreaming, I would tell her about the goddamn sparrows.

  Shelly chuckles from the back seat.

  My car begins to fill with flowers and the drench of their fragrance.

  The three of us wrap Donny in a blanket and throw him over the fence.

  There’s that shatter of glass and then the melodramatic “Ballad of the Dead Lover,” Tragedy Records, 1976.

  We watch the bundle engulfed in warm green sea.

  36.Love Does Not Experience Time

  DAYS PASSED, AND WHILE I WAITED FOR SHELLY TO RETURN, I cleaned his house, resurrected his record business, and wondered where he had gone. The most recent Alabama number he’d given me was out of service. To raise cash I sold the Beatles on Parlophone and continued to comb garage sales and swap meets for valuable records to sell to collectors and dealers on my own.

  On my way to a secondhand record store in Kensington on Adams Avenue one day with a copy of T-Bone Walker’s “Vida Lee” on Imperial, 1953, I passed a gallery window, slowed, and returned to study a few familiar black-and-white seascape photographs. I went in and asked the gallerist about them. “Can you tell me about the photographer?” I asked.

  “Sofia Fouquet?”

  “She’s still alive?” I said.

  “Why wouldn’t she be? She’s thirty-seven.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  “I can’t give you that. She once lived in Ferndale, north of San Francisco, now she lives in Ocean Beach.”

  “Can you call her for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “My name’s Eddie Plum.”

  He dialed the number. I waited. “An Eddie Plum is inquiring about you, Sofia,” he said. He put his hand over the phone. “She squealed.”

  “Can I have it?”

  He handed the receiver across and I pressed it to my ear. “Hello.”

  “Eddie! Is it really you?”

  My entire body began to blossom and pop. “My god, Fasstink told me . . .”

  “Faßtink der schweinpriester!” she cried. “Der scheißkauf püpenpantzen!”

  “Why did you stop writing me?”

  “I didn’t, the letters just came back. I thought you . . .”

  “Fasstink!”

  “Nüdledich!”

  “Ocean Beach?” I said. “How’d you end up there?”

  “I needed a change. Then I heard you broke out. I was hoping to run into you. I’m a longshot player, too.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “Where?”

  “Sunset Cliffs?

  “No, OB is a dump, a junkie every three feet. Where are you?”

  “Inland. San Carlos.”

  “Apartment?”

  “House. Kind of creepy old place.”

  “Give me directions. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  37.Give Me Stilton, Blue and Gold

  I WENT TO THE GROCERY STORE AND BOUGHT A BOTTLE OF GOOD wine and a wedge of the only English cheese they had, a Blue Stilton that you could smell through the wrapper. I straightened the house and had a talk with Sweets.

  I’ve got someone coming over, so I want you to be on your best behavior.

  Who?

  An old friend. I haven’t seen her in years.

  A she?

  That’s right.

  Oh, this is bad, he said, staring at me dolefully. A woman? With your history?

  This one is different.

  How?

  She was with me at Napa State.

  She’s a mental patient?

  You’ll like her. Just give her a chance.

  He lunged to chew on his knee and then vigorously kicked his ear with a
back paw seven or eight times. Jesus Christ, I am seriously starting to itch, he said. This always happens when I get nervous.

  Listen, I said, no matter what happens we’ll always be together. I promise. I rubbed him behind the ears, fetched him a pair of tortillas, and went out to wait for Sofia in the driveway.

  In no time she rumbled up in a jade green convertible Trans Am, top down, and climbed out. I had forgotten how gracefully she moved. She had changed, of course, it had been many years. She was dressed in slacks and light jacket and gilded sandals, all saffrons and tans and oranges, like a gypsy wrapped in a sunset. A gold scarf was tied around her head. She flashed me one of her quick, secret smiles, removed her sunglasses and walked slowly toward me.

  “You look taller,” I said, at a loss for words.

  “My God, what happened to your face?”

  “T-12 troglodyte named Kenny Monique.”

  I thought she might cry as she embraced me. “He chewed you up pretty good.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, holding her awkwardly. “It’s given me the chance to work on my inner beauty.”

  She pushed me away. “What are you doing in the suburbs?”

  “This is Shelly’s house. An old racetrack friend.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Disappeared. He does that a lot. Come inside,” I said. “I’ll show you his museum of suffering.”

  I pushed open the door. Sweets was sulking in one of the chairs.

  “This is Sweets,” I introduced. “Formerly Carlito of Isla Escondida. He is not a Mexican dog, however.”

  She patted his head. “Is he yours?”

  “He is now.”

  “He’s a handsome boy.”

  Sweets bumped his tail around and surrendered a flattered, nervous yawn.

  I took her through the rooms of Shelly’s house, showed her the framed conquistadors in the master bedroom, Donny Ray’s shrine, the photographs of Renee, the record room with “Rocket 88,” a bottle of Librium thirty-five years expired.

  “I know this place,” she said. “I grew up in one. Don’t tell me, dad fought the commies and never once missed Lawrence Welk.”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  Back in the living room she paused to run her finger through the dust on my Olympia, then leafed through a few pages of the book I had abandoned. “Shelly’s?”

  “Mine.”

  She set her hands on her hips. “So you finally tackled the great American loony bin novel.”

  “Yeah, I just got to the part where you drove up in your Trans Am.”

  “I hope it has a happy ending. It is fiction, after all.”

  “It is.” I moved to the kitchen, opened the wine, and poured two glasses.

  She took a corner on the crumbling old couch, sipped at the wine. “Is that a television or did someone forget to clean the aquarium?”

  “It’s a real TV,” I said, “the centerpiece of Shelly’s museum.”

  The phone rang. Shelly, I thought, angry about us making fun of his house. We both stared at it until it stopped.

  “Every day I think about Napa,” she said, removing her scarf and shaking her hair free. “You’ll laugh, but it was the most fun I ever had in my life. The singing, the smuggling, das verböten bedzpringens und humpinderscheetz. Remember the time you taped the fan of peacock tail feathers to your ass and paraded the grounds?”

  “With my dumb haircut and big nose, I even looked like a peacock.” I imitated the hey-yelp call of the bird.

  “What memories!” she cried.

  “I’ve got some English cheese!” I cried.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  I cut a few pieces and set the plate and the knife on the coffee table.

  She nibbled, wrinkling her nose. “Scrummy.”

  “Tastes like socks,” I said.

  “You never liked food.”

  “I just forget to eat.”

  “You look thin.”

  “I’ve never seen you in actual clothes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wonder if I am dreaming.”

  “San Diego is too sunny,” she announced, popping another cube into her mouth and dusting off her hands. “Don’t you think?”

  I set my Stilton aside. It was more the stuff you’d put on someone’s engine manifold for a prank. “It’s a beautiful city, everyone tells me.” My head fell over and I feigned sleep.

  “So, what do you think happened to your buddy, Shelly?”

  “The world keeps changing. He’s not equipped for it.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “Always.”

  “People aren’t meant to be alone.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “For the last two years. After I left Murph I moved here. I knew you were from San Diego. I don’t want to talk about Murph.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Murph either.” I finished my wine.

  Sweets had fallen asleep, head under paw, and was snoring.

  “What is this Isla Escondida you mentioned?”

  I told her about the island and why I would not be able to return.

  “We could have our own island,” she said.

  “Where would that be?”

  “Ferndale is nice. It has ocean and redwoods and rain, and there is not too much sun.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “I’m not going to lose you again.”

  I went into the kitchen and poured two more glasses of wine.

  38.Run Through the Jungler

  SIX MONTHS AFTER I LEARNED THAT A CABDRIVER NAMED ROBERTO Adolfo Malandrin had been stalking and killing prostitutes and throwing their bodies into the great incinerator at La Zona Basura, I was pulled over by a Humboldt County Sheriff who claimed I fit the description of a psychiatric hospital escapee named Edward Ellington Plum. Driving with an expired license that was not mine and unable to prove my identity, I was arrested and taken to jail. Three weeks later came the hearing and I was remanded to the custody of the state mental health system, this time Atascadero, a maximum-security, all-male forensic hospital in San Luis Obispo with vomit-yellow halls and pea-soup-colored cells (who chooses the color schemes for these places?), about two hundred miles south of Napa State, that specialized in sexual offenders.

  Atascadero made Napa look like a Fred Astaire movie. It was half again as big with many more patient and staff assaults on record and numerous illustrious deviants such as “The Co-Ed Killer” Edward Kemper, Manson Family member Tex Watson, and Arthur Leigh Allen (likely Shelly’s beloved Zodiac Killer) having signed the registry. ASH was much more like a prison with tighter security, stricter dress codes, no women inmates, and no issued ground passes. This was the place you were sent when you’d been a bad boy at one of the other psychiatric hospitals, where the recalcitrant, recidivist, and irremediable cases landed, half of them habitual violent MDSOs (Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders). Once again I was immediately assigned with MDSOs on Unit 28. I’m certain I was sent there to be taught a lesson, though this time with stronger resolve I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told.

  Atascadero was an easier place by far to get your head stomped in, but it had its good points too: a big sunny yard and baseball field, large canteen, full-sized movie theater, double the magazine subscriptions in the library, good computer access, and better weather and food than Mudville. Unlike the convoluted corridor networks of ancient madhouses like Napa, there were fewer nooks and crannies, spaces under stairwells, back wards, and recessed doorways where inmates might hide to jump out at you, and so by using the mirrors on each corner you could significantly reduce your odds of getting shanked or crowned by a chair.

  I made several key allies here, including a social worker genuinely interested in my welfare who said that if I kept my nose clean the word was I’d be sent back to NSH and maybe even released a year or two down the way. Rumors of Atascadero’s infamous sex lab, clan
destine psychosurgical unit, and clinical drug-testing programs (in which patients were basically guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical companies) gave me extra incentive to stay on my best behavior. I participated in ward government, manned the diabetic snack wagon, joined the yoga club, and took a pottery class since they did not offer basket weaving. That is just a joke for you, Shelly, wherever you are.

  The Atascadero State Hospital Thanksgiving Feast was the first time since I’d been recommitted that I got to see Sofia and my young son, Clive, who had been born with gray eyes that were now green. Sofia was despondent and barely spoke. (“It smells like pine-masked-shit in here,” she said at one point, “which I guess is better than that pine-masked-death smell at Napa.”) My son, who looked like his mother, shyly and cheerfully had no inkling that he was surrounded by notorious child molesters, several of whom glanced down at him with sly approval.

  Jingler, now Jungler, a fundraiser for the Don Quixote Society, came as well, our first reunion since he was a weatherman and we met at Moby Dick’s. He was bald with a coarse white mustache, his stomach was more pronounced than his chest, and the wrinkles were deep around his eyes. Since I had been placed in the California Department of Mental Health System on a conservatorship, adjudged on a string of misdemeanors as somehow being “gravely disabled,” and I was in no way and had proven extensively to the contrary that I was not “gravely disabled,” nor a threat to myself or society, Jungler, familiar with the convoluted parlance of both law and psychiatric institutions, and having dusted off his old counterfeit law degree from the University of Cincinnati (he was Horace Jengler, Attorney at Law, in this incarnation), planned to represent me at my next release hearing in six months and was confident he would get me out.

  I was hopeful of this since the Haldol was killing me. The staff was convinced I was an escape risk and did their best to overmedicate me. I had also been assigned a “sitter,” someone who watched over me every hour, even staring in at me from a chair outside my room as I slept. Along with the Haldol I was being given Ativan, which like all of the pestilent, nerve-shattering benzodiazepine family, is demonically addictive, opening doors to indescribable horrors and anxieties, another way to get lost forever in the labyrinths of the mental health system.