by Lee Taylor
I arrive at the Captain’s house without memory of the drive, pull up to the curb across the street from his house, slide the gears into park and get out slamming the door behind me. Bob must have heard me pull up or been waiting for me, because my feet barely hit pavement when he pulls me back against my car and swings around in front of me. His body forces me in tight against my car. I see rage in his eyes. He says, “Go home, Carly. It’s over.”
The sour stench of whiskey overpowers me.
He’s drunk.
“I’ll go home when I have the video,” I tell him, matching his rage.
“There is no video. I destroyed it.”
I lash out at him, hitting his face, scratching at his eyes. “You’re lying,” I scream. He grabs my wrist and somehow manages to open the car door. I’m forced inside then he slides in behind the steering wheel almost crushing me. I move over to the passenger seat. I’m still grabbing at him. Yelling.
He pulls my hair. My head jerks back. “Stop,” he orders, then slaps me.
I can’t stop even though the left side of my face is on fire. I pull at his hair with everything that’s in me. He hits me again, hard, twisting my head to the side with the impact. This time I see my blood splash across the back of the seat. Can taste the blood oozing from my nose. I let go of his hair. Everything slows down. Can’t move my hand up to my face. Can’t turn my head around. He pushes me away from him. My head hits the window. I can hear the impact but can’t feel the blow.
He starts up my car. I want to stop him, but can’t move. We drive out of his neighborhood, down an expressway and into an empty parking lot. Blood continues to stream out of my nose. My lip begins to swell and my head aches every time I try to move it. Neither one of us says anything until he stops. Haven’t a clue as to where we are. For some reason, I’m not really scared. Too busy dealing with total contempt for this man to fear him.
“Listen to me,” he says, grabbing my chin and turning my face towards him. I pull back a little. He lets me. “That tape can cause a lot of trouble. I had to destroy it. Do you understand me?”
I give him a blank stare. He yells, “Do you understand me or do I have to smack you again?”
“Yes,” I answer, emotion beginning to taking over. Wanting to cry, but forcing myself not to. “But why? You were safe. No one would know you were involved. You could have given it to me. I could have gotten it out.”
He shakes his head. “Not gonna happen. Not ever. You have to forget about it.”
I can’t believe he’s telling me this. Don’t want to accept it. “I thought you were different. That you wanted to change Stateville. All that crap about your father and his father. I saw sincerity in your eyes. Honesty.”
“You saw nothing. I’m not different. Push me against the wall and I’m gonna save my own hide, not yours. Push me further and I’ll destroy what’s pushing me. You hear me, Carly?”
He stares at me. Sweat on his face. His eyes ablaze with an anger that burns from deep within. I want to spit on him. Spit on the man I thought was like my father. How could I have been so stupid? He’s just another monster like Speck.
“You’re no different than the rest of them. No feeling. No remorse. You’d kill me if you thought you could get away with it, but too many people saw us together. A neighbor might have seen us drive away. A kid maybe saw you push me into the car. Too bad. So tell me? Did you use that tape to get your promotion? To blackmail the warden? Is that what this was all about? Your fucking promotion?”
He slams my head against the window again. This time I can feel the glass crack, feel my skin split. I start laughing. He yells, the veins in his neck bulging. “Shut up! You shut up or I’ll kill you. You hear me, bitch? I’ll kill you, and I don’t give a damn about who saw us.”
I turn to look at him. “You think I’m afraid of you? Afraid to die? You must have me confused with someone else…or did you forget what you read about me?”
His breathing slows down. He looks out the front window while he talks to me, cool-like. No emotion. “You’re right, you crazy bitch. You’ll take care of that yourself, sooner or later. Just keep your mouth shut and everything will be all right. Your sappy partner’s already agreed to be a good boy. I knew he’d be a sure bet no matter what went down. You were always the problem. But not no more. Not since we’ve been able to talk it all out like this.” He smiles over at me. “We have an understanding, don’t we, little Miss Hollywood?”
I grin back at him as blood drips down the side of my face and onto my clothes. I’m hardly able to keep myself steady, my eyes open. My head aches like a hot stick is running through the side of it. I continue to grin at the prick.
He gets out of the car, slams the door and walks away. I slide the seat back as far as it will go, turn on my side and curl up in a ball, encircling my head with my hands and arms. I concentrate on The Beatles—getting off the plane at Midway Airport at three in the morning, waving to us, some three hundred teenage girls as we scream out their names.
“Ringo, I love you Ringo.”
Twenty-eight
July 13, 1966
I ran all the way to Sharon’s house screaming at anyone who would listen. Of course nobody understood what I was saying, but that was because they just didn’t understand the significance of my letter. I mean, who else on this planet had a letter from Ringo? A real honest-to-goodness letter from a Beatle. Just goes to show you, it does pay to be a Catholic! What would Elaine Benaki say now? I couldn’t wait to rub it in once school started.
Sharon lived almost a full mile away and I think I must have flown there because she was just getting back from church when I met her on her front stairs. Of course, she couldn’t understand me. My voice wouldn’t work right. The run had stolen my breath away without me even knowing.
“What’s wrong?” she said about a couple thousand times. “What happened?”
“It’s…it’s,” I still couldn’t get it out. Her mother came out on the porch and made me sit down on a stair and breathe into a paper bag. Once I did that a few times, I finally relaxed enough to spit out, “I got a letter from Ringo.”
To which Sharon screamed, “Oh-my-God!”
I stood up and held out the letter. Sharon gingerly touched the edges. Her mother told us both to calm down and sit down. We did for about a second, then we were off to Lisa’s house. I held the letter next to my chest as I ran, not wanting it to slip away or anything.
When we got to Lisa’s front porch the same thing happened, except for the paper bag part. By then, I was able to get out the right words with Sharon’s help.
“Are you sure?” Lisa the Skeptic asked.
I handed her the envelope, she looked at the postmark and said, “It can’t be. They aren’t even in Chicago until August. It’s not from Ringo.”
“Yes it is,” Sharon confirmed. “I read in Teen magazine that the Beatles send all their letters to the local fan clubs and the fan clubs mail them out. It’s cheaper that way and easier for the Beatles. That way they just address the envelopes and stick them in big boxes and ship them off. Do you really think the Beatles have time to send out one letter at a time? Don’t be silly.”
It sounded reasonable to me. We waited for Lisa to say something. She looked at the envelope again, then opened it and looked at the signature.
Sharon continued, “Besides, I’ve seen Ringo’s signature a million times and that looks just like it. Look at the way he makes his R. That’s definitely his signature.”
“It does look like it, doesn’t it?” she said, with a smile widening across her face. Then, all of a sudden, as if she were about to explode like a boiling teapot, she started screaming. We joined in on the hysteria. Lisa’s mother burst through the screen door and told us to shut up.
“But Mom,” Lisa whined, “It’s Ringo! It’s a letter from Ringo!”
“I don’t care if it’s a letter from the Pope. Stop all that screaming or get off the porch,” she scolded. Like a letter from the Po
pe could have any impact on us at all. Lisa’s mom just didn’t understand, so we tried to calm down, but we couldn’t stop ourselves from telling anyone who passed by.
“It’s a letter from Ringo Starr,” Lisa told Lucy Leo, who owned the corner grocery store, but she smiled, shook her head and walked away. Lisa told Mr. Toporis, who worked in the steel mill, but he didn’t respond. She even told Dolores Lombardo, who ran an Italian restaurant, but all she could say was “Huh!” and continued up the street.
What did they know anyway?
“What’s it say? What’s it say?” Sharon asked after Lisa had been holding onto it for about fifteen minutes.
“I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet,” I told her.
Lisa said, “Let me read it out loud. I’m good at that.”
“Be very careful. The paper’s really thin.”
She gingerly unfolded the letter and held it in front of her. To which we all screamed again and continued through most of the reading. Lisa’s mom apparently gave up yelling at us and not wanting to hear anymore of it, slammed the front door in defiance. Lisa began to read:
Dear Bird,
We’re traveling on a train right now on our way to our next gig. Had a sec, so I been answering me mail. I like writing letters. Helps me pass the time.
I don’t like this traveling thing much. Gets me down. But the country’s good to look at out the window. A lot of things have changed since we’ve been back. People too. Some forever, but America is always fab. Looking forward to the American part of the tour.
Till then…
Love,
Ringo
We made her read the letter over and over until we could get through the entire thing without screaming or fainting, which was difficult because every time she got to the “we’ll be there soon” part, we’d start up again.
All the kids in the neighborhood had to come over and see it, even some of the adults. One man told us to keep it (as if throwing it away was even a possibility) because one day it would be worth a lot of money (as if I could ever even consider selling it). I just smiled at him to be polite.
We spent most of the day out on Lisa’s front porch, talking to the neighbors, periodically wailing over the letter and telling our stories. Somehow our stories took on a realism they never had before because of the letter. We actually had made contact with the Beatles and Ringo had responded. And, he had touched the very piece of paper we were holding. I’d never wash my hands again.
“Do you realize that Ringo’s spit is on this envelope?” Sharon said, sometime in the middle of the afternoon. Of course, we all shrieked. The realization that part of Ringo Starr was somehow with us was just too much for me to handle. I started crying so hard that I couldn’t stop until Sharon’s sister threw a glass of water in my face. By then, it had been Lisa’s idea to cover the letter and envelope in plastic wrap so that we couldn’t mess up anything. That way, Ringo’s essence would remain on the letter forever. Good thing too, because a few drops of water had fallen on the plastic wrap. That would have been a catastrophe!
“You girls are really crazy. Get a grip,” Mandy ordered. She had come over to see the letter like everyone else, but was annoyed by my incessant weeping. “Take a break. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
After that little episode, we calmed down. Maybe it was the water or maybe we had had enough time to assimilate what had happened. I didn’t know, but whatever it was, the rest of the day passed easily. Only minimal tears and screams.
Nothing could part us from that letter, and even though our parents wanted each of us to sleep in our own beds that night, we just couldn’t. So that night, the night of July 13, 1966, we slept at my house in Jeffery Manor less than a mile from the 100th Street bridge, on South Crandon Ave, one of the safest neighborhoods in Chicago, according to my dad.
Twenty-nine
September, 1987
Around dawn, I drove back to the motel and immediately took a shower in order to assess the damage. I had a split lip that could be covered with makeup as soon as the swelling went down and a large bump on the side of my head that burned when the water hit it. My dried blood liquefied and turned the water a bright red as it swirled around my feet and rushed down the drain, like a colorized Psycho. All in all, it wasn’t as bad as I had first thought, except for the chronic headache.
After the shower and four aspirins, I phone Mike.
“Hello,” he says, sleep still in his throat.
“It’s me,” I tell him while reclining on the bed, holding a washcloth filled with ice cubes against my nose, then my lip. Each hurts equally as bad.
“Where the hell have you been?”
I ignore his question. “I won’t be in today. Nursing a hangover.”
“You all right?”
I have to come up with some kind of story or Mike won’t stop drilling me. “Yes. Couldn’t sleep. Drove around most of the night. Got a little drunk, so I pulled over and slept it off in my car.”
“I mean about the missing videotape.”
I don’t want to answer him. Don’t know what to say. Can’t talk to Mike about it. Don’t want to tell him how I feel. What’s the point? So he can somehow try to fix my emotions? Like that’s at all possible. Like all he has to do is listen, tell me how he feels my pain, give me a hug and bam—I’m over it. What about the cuts on my head and lip? Maybe he can feel that pain as well.
He says, “Carly? You still there?”
“Yes. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later. Have to get some real sleep. In a bed.”
“Wait,” he says. “Did you get the new script? I left it outside your door last night. There’s some scene changes. Nothing that affects the prison. Some stuff they added in the police station. Might need to do a callback for that. You should probably take a look at it.”
“Didn’t see it. Let me check,” I tell him dropping the receiver on the bed and heading for the door. Sure enough, the script is sitting on the ground just outside my door. Must have walked right past it. “Got it,” I tell him once I’m back on the bed. “I’m really tired.”
“Carly, I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know why the Captain—”
I cut him off. “We’ll talk later. I need to go.”
I hang up.
All the changes to the script had been typed on bright pink paper. Don’t know why, but it makes me think of that flamboyant pimp I met on Maxwell Street while we were collecting extras for a different scene. Wonder if we need to do a callback on him? He’s such a problem.
I’m pacing now, and thinking. Back and forth from the bathroom to the front door. Something’s happening. Back and forth. Back and forth. Getting energized as I walk. Like somehow I’ve got a rechargeable battery inside me and the more I walk the more powered up I become. I keep fanning the pages of the script, over and over. There’s some connection. This script. Something. Arnold’s character, Danko, using whatever means to avenge his slain partner. Danko getting even. Getting his revenge.
Then, my Great Aunt Betty flashes up on my inner screen. There she is, playing the piano in her tiny apartment on the North Side. It’s Sunday and my dad and I have taken the I.C. train up to visit her. I’m carrying one of her pink birthday hankies in my pocket. “Out of respect,” my dad always said.
Once again she’s telling us what it was like to play the organ at the Chicago Theater when she was a young woman. How she helped raise my father with the money she made at the theater. Telling us that old joke about how everybody else had to pay to get into the movies but she was paid to go to the movies…and how she snuck my father in when he was just four years old to help her turn the pages on the sheet music. That’s it! The sheet music! Of course. It all makes perfect sense.
“I can still make it right. Prove that I’m not a chicken.”
Thirty
Sometime in the late afternoon, I drive back to my apartment in Chicago doing ninety most of the way. Feels good to be home. I’m able to chill
with a smoke and a couple shots while I go through some of my mail: ads for local businesses, discounts on grapes and red potatoes at the local Jewel Supermarket—I’ll rush right down.
My apartment, a 1923 brown-stone, with wooden floors and high ceilings, smells tight and stale. I open a window to let in some air and city noise. A mild rainstorm tries to dampen the end-of-summer heat and clean out the rotten smells. It’s succeeding. A cool breeze drifts in filled with the clean fresh smell of rain hitting the pavement and the sounds of cars rushing by on water. City music. It relaxes me like a fine wine or a Mozart symphony. Lincoln Park sits across the street, Lake Michigan just beyond it, rolling restless. City people busy with movement—feeling the thrill of life. I want to stay right here, never move, let life come in to meet me instead of me going out to meet life. Just relax. Just enjoy. Let Mike rule my world. Give it up to his power.
But the videotape has been destroyed.
The phone rings. “Hello?”
Mike says, “Hi. Finally! Wish you would tell me when you leave.”
“I’ll be back tonight.”
“Don’t bother. The prison’s on a lockdown. Nobody can move. Been locked in here all day. You can’t contact me. Captain Bob says it might take all night. Might as well stay home. Gotta go, some guy wants to use the phone. I better let him. He’s bigger than me. Bye.”
A click. Silence. I hang up.
Captain Bob? Can’t figure out if Mike knows about the destruction of the video or not and he’s just not telling me. Maybe he even asked for it. Protecting me, like he always does.
Aunt Betty’s sheet music is in my trunk, somewhere on the bottom, relegated to forgotten memories rather than cherished keepsakes. The trunk, Sharon’s dad’s World War II trunk, sits at the foot of my bed and has been with me ever since Sharon and her family moved to Wisconsin. We snuck it off the back of the moving van because we were sure Sharon’s mom would find it and ruin everything. Lisa couldn’t keep it because her little brother and sister were getting into all of her stuff, so I was chosen because our dreams were safe with me. What a thought. As if I could ever go back to those Beatles fantasies after Richard Speck.