The drone of the engine filled the cabin with a cold blast of mile-high air. Fred felt his hat jump off his head, the sudden brightening through his eyelids. It was everywhere. The mechanic tapped his shoulder again and when he looked the lid was off the box. The color was Cosmic Orange and the print black; rubber-banded in bundles of five hundred. He tried not to see the blue in the corner of his eye, beyond the threshold, let alone the vast green squares bound by gray bands of roadwork, traffic like lines of code; let alone the shiny metal of ponds, scattered rooftops congealing into a town, their own burgeoning shadow darkening six blocks at a time. Impossible. He felt his stomach trying to squeeze emptiness out of itself and heaved, fought it. The mechanic shoved a bundle at him. Fred let go of the frame. When he pulled the rubber off it came alive, a handful of paper tongues. The mechanic gestured impatiently and, without looking, Fred stuck his arm out over the earth and thought the wind would take it off. Don’t throw them, just open your hand. His sinuses pounded. A sudden thin trail of confetti if you’d looked up at the sound of the plane or, if you hadn’t, nothing till they came fluttering gently down into trees and yards and onto sidewalks and car tops, lawns, lots, public spaces, falling like the leaves you were raking, so that you looked up now and saw them in the sky and your first thought was monarchs heading south, not the Second Amendment coming at you out of the blue in Halloween colors.
The mechanic had done this over the Ho Chi Minh trail out of a converted Cessna. Ten to thirty per hundred square meters, he said, but they only had a hundred thousand.
After the first bundle he took them out of the box himself but still wouldn’t look. When he’d lost count he couldn’t feel his face anymore. He and the mechanic took turns. The plane hauled to port, starboard, the lanyard grew taut like a leash, slackened. Five boxes, just over fifty pounds apiece. The mechanic dragged them out from each side of the cabin in an alternating rhythm so as not to unbalance the plane. Five boxes, four counties. Some of them blew back inside.
When they returned to the airfield a sheriff and someone from the FAA were there.
A week later Issue 7 was voted down in one of the largest turnouts in state history, and Fred picked up his coat at the dry cleaners.
App.# 05/496,391
DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
Combination embodying an index mirror rotatable about a predetermined axis and bringing a sighted object into juxtaposition with the line of sight of the optical system at the center of the horizontal mirror of an arcuate informational grating concentric with the axis of rotation of the index mirror and an index arm rotatable in consonance with the index mirror, a light-emitting diode at the proximal end of the index arm arranged to project a beam through the reference grating at the distal end of the arm onto the informational grating, and a phase detector arrayed at the proximal end of the index arm to receive the beam refracted through the conjuncted gratings.
They’d stayed in touch, and the two of them went shooting together as they might have gone fishing or golfing had Fred been given to either pursuit. Both belonged to the same club, participated in the same competitions, frequented both indoor and outdoor ranges with spotters and referees, practiced on both stationary and moving targets. Sometimes, though, they preferred a less formal setting and would meet at a location roughly halfway between the city and the prison the warden administered. Where he’d once been a guard. A desolate, ravaged expanse reachable now only through a complication of back roads, unmapped, unmarked by any sign that might indicate what it had once been or to whom it now belonged.
“Behind the back,” the warden would say, and they’d park in a patch of dirt, step over a chain sagging between two low posts and, in no hurry, roam the ruin. Walls crumbled waist high, sprouting rebar, abandoned automobile chassis pierced by weeds and home to other living things, rusted fixtures in rusted cement where machinery once stood, but what had been milled or made there not even Fred could tell and the warden didn’t particularly care; he was just looking for things to put holes in.
His feet were still flat but only Fred still used his nickname.
Long silences, low hills, scrub, a pond more or less in the middle that was a breathtaking poisonous blue not even algae could survive. The place looked war-torn. Occasionally they came across other visitors there for the same purpose, or riding dirt bikes, or seeking some diversion not apparent and perhaps not yet decided. Children playing at soldier. Rarely were greetings exchanged or distances closed; if you weren’t alone in this place, as a courtesy you would pretend you were.
Stop, shoot, move on. The warden’s wife packed them a lunch.
“That wall.”
“You mean what’s left of it.”
“That brick in the corner.”
“Which corner?”
“The one with the brick.”
Inhale. It is easier to aim too high and lower the weapon to the target than the other way around. Hold your breath and steady the piece.
A chunk of brick gone in a burst of red powder. The sound crackling, fading, traveled, faded.
The warden’s shot went wide. Fred said, “Just about put that one in orbit.”
“Windage,” the warden said, and they walked on. Followed a line of railroad tracks till they disappeared in the ground as if bound for the underworld. Fred carried his Woodsman, the warden a .45 Ruger semiautomatic, and though the warden was an avid hunter he and Fred shot at no living thing, and this also by unspoken agreement.
Fred had shot to kill only once in his life. He was a boy in his own backyard; a common blackbird out of a tree with his .22. When he’d gone to where it had fallen its wings were in disarray and there was a perfect round drop like a red berry at the tip of its beak. The feathers, iridescence in black. Uncommon in death.
He’d never known.
The warden was talking shop.
“Caught one of the old boys in East Block cooking pigeons in his cell,” he said. “Ran a line right to his mattress springs.”
“You don’t feed your inmates?” Fred said.
“I’m told it didn’t smell half bad. Thinking I might put it on the card.” He looked at Fred. “Maybe he should put in for a patent.”
“He’d better have a lot of time on his hands.”
“As a matter of fact he does,” the warden said. “But I guess you should know.”
“I guess I do,” Fred said.
The warden coughed. “You and your projects.”
“I like to keep busy.”
“There anything left to invent?”
“Not until somebody invents it.”
“So what is it this time?” the warden asked.
Fred waited. They had not fired a shot in a while. “Kind of a sextant.”
“Don’t we already have those?”
“This one’s electronic.”
“Well it’s about time,” the warden said. “And what do we do with it again?”
“Find your way,” Fred said. He didn’t mind; he knew what the warden said and what he thought, and how to figure the difference.
“Well,” the warden said, and they stopped again. “Where the bodies are.”
They stood on a low rise, over the blue pond that seemed to be the epicenter of the calamity no one would explain. It’s depth was also unknown and the subject of local legend. Around them they could see only the no-man’s-land men had made, and the sun getting low. There was no need to pretend now.
“Think you can make something that’ll find your way to a woman?” the warden asked.
Fred looked into blue death. “They turn from me.”
“Maybe it’s the way you look at em. Maybe give Buddy Holly his glasses back. Hell, let your hair dry out—looks like you change your oil with it. And put some meat on your bones, they like a little more to look at.”
“I guess you’d know.”
The warden laughed. He had been married more than thirty years and his bones were buried in it. No children. “I just think that�
��s a lot of house to be knocking around alone in. Ever thought about selling?”
She’d taken two jobs to keep it after he passed. “I promised her.”
Passed, he’d said. Passed away. Something you did in your sleep.
The warden cleared his throat. “Sometimes my mouth springs a leak and I plug it with my foot,” he said. “That’s not what I came here to talk about.”
There was a large flat boulder near the edge of the pond. A spatter of birdshit, almost in the middle like a bullseye.
“I know what you came here to say,” Fred said. He looked at the gun. “That cannon you’ve been lugging around must be getting pretty rusty about now.”
“Since you mention it,” the warden said. He raised the pistol, took aim at the white patch on the boulder, and pulled. The comical poof of a squib load. Black smoke rising from the breech, the rich smell you either love or you cover your face.
“Don’t you ever just want to go bowling?” the warden said. He looked like he needed to sit.
“Windage,” Fred said.
“Smartass,” the warden said. He pulled back the slide with a handkerchief and looked down inside the weapon.
“Yup,” he said. “Goddamn black powder.”
“The smoke,” the warden said, his back to Fred. He unzipped his fly. “The smell.”
Fred turned around. The gun at his side, pointing down.
“I couldn’t begin to tell you what it smelled like,” the warden said. “I just thank God the family wasn’t there.”
He watered a dead tree.
“Thank God,” Fred agreed. Then he said, “I understand there was arcing.”
“Arcing.” The warden shook and zipped. “There were flames coming out of his ears like road flares. Like he was something out of hell.”
Fred turned around. “I guess some would say he was,” he said. “That he was going back where he came from.”
“Would you?” the warden asked
Fred shrugged. “I’m a guy who fixes copy machines.” “You’re a guy who drops messages out of the sky.”
“I believe in some things.”
“Well wherever they’re going they’re mine till they get there,” the warden said, “want em or not. I can’t let it happen again.”
Fred heard the dogs, wailing and whimpering. Cruel and unusual. Not uncommon.
“When we tried to get him out of the chair it came off his bones like he was a slab of ribs.”
“Amperage,” Fred said, looked at an empty shell casing on the ground. “What now?”
The warden sort of mumbled. “Department of Corrections investigation.”
“Keep it in the family.” Fred kicked the casing away.
“I know what it sounds like and it sounds like what it is and more power to it,” the warden said. “Last thing I want is some board of inquiry busting my balls, touching the place up with their white gloves.” Action News had been bad enough, chasing him to his car like some scammer bilking widows. He set the Ruger on the rock and opened the brown bag his wife had given him. “I’ve met the governor once and didn’t plan to do it again. I hear his wife likes the ladies. Ham or salami?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Fred said. The warden’s wife still cut off his crusts.
The warden said, “I’m not sure what I’ll come out of this smelling like, but you can bite a big chunk out of my ass and there’s still plenty to go around. I’ve got to look ahead.”
“Got another one lined up?”
“Take your pick,” the warden said. “They’re all on borrowed time.”
Someone’s brother, someone’s son.
Humanity. Amperage.
“You never know when a warrant’s coming through,” the warden said. “Whoever it is, I’m supposed to see him out, and right now I don’t even have the furniture to do the job. That chair looks like it’s been in World War Three. You couldn’t use it for kindling, let alone.” He took a bite. “I guess yours is ham.”
Fred took the sandwich and held it; he wouldn’t have minded the crust.
“The thing is,” the warden said, “it’s like you said: we want to keep this thing in the family.”
“Anyone figure out what went wrong?”
“We’ve narrowed it down to the sponge or a bad electrode.”
Fred looked at the pond. “Bad electrode would reduce the voltage. What’s the drop?”
“You’re asking the wrong guy. You’d have to take it up with my maintenance supervisor.”
“Maintenance. What about your electrical engineer?”
“Engineer.” The warden might have spat if he hadn’t been chewing. “All I’ve got is a plant chief who doesn’t even know how to run a 110-line in his own house. Had to ask one of my guards. That chair was built by the inmates themselves I don’t know when—turn of the century, maybe? Used the wood from the old gallows. Leg stock is an old rubber army boot with a strip of copper, helmet looks like a hair dryer made of tin. That’s the state of the art.” He looked at the ham. “There are no specialists, son. Better eat that before I do—I’m sorry but I get hungry when I’m upset.”
They sat on the rock and ate facing the sun. Distended and red, its motion perceptible, like a ball of blood sinking under its own weight. The blue pond blackened with the loss of light, as if turning its true color.
The warden looked at Fred. “What did you say your line of work was again?”
The Census Bureau had eliminated inventor as an occupation in 1940.
“Anyone ever show an interest in any of those gizmos of yours?”
A letter from GE. A nibble.
“Well good on you,” the warden said, and looked at his watch.
“I mean that.”
They finished and started back.
First, the legs.
White oak, kiln-dried. Who cared what it looked like? They might. He’d done his homework, taken Polaroids. Ran his hands over boards in the lumberyard, feeling for flaws. The smoothness of it, the muscle. Whorls in the pattern like small galaxies of grain.
He’d made a rocking chair for his grandmother once.
The smell of basements. He’d tiled the floor, finished the walls, hung fluorescent tubes though for wood it was always tungsten. Washer and dryer at one end, sink, the furnace with its tentacles of ductwork. Everything else was workspace: table saw, drill press, jointer, shaper, all the shelves and their plastic tubs filled with hardware, spare parts, bits and pieces. Round blades hanging on nails, circles of teeth. Miter boxes, an acetylene tank as tall as he was. He was always adding shelves. Two small windows and a drain in the sloping floor. He was sure he’d emptied the ashtray but it was always full.
He cut the legs from two-inch stock. Each pass a momentous encounter—is it the blade that screams or the wood? Sawdust in small drifts on the floor. A smell of newness, a part of the world coming apart, reconfiguring, finding another form. No wonder it sounded painful. He wore goggles over his glasses, a dust mask, chiseled square tenons in the tops of the legs and routed grooves in the sides to capture the tongues of the corbels. He drilled high-pitched holes in the inside faces for the pins that would connect the legs to the seat frame. He worked without plans or drawings but there was never any doubt about the joinery. No one was watching.
He’d covered his cup but tasted wood dust in his coffee. He’d laid the pictures in a row on the bench, and the ones the warden had given him. A reminder. The ashtray smoldered. He doused it with the dregs of his cup.
He left only to go to Mass. He believed in the body and soul and the occasional necessity of evil. It was not a perfect world, but the next one would be. You helped what you could help. He would be the middleman.
He added a padded backrest, adjustable. Civilized.
He drilled out the mortises at the drill press, squared them off with a mallet and chisel. He cut the corbels, the rails, the stretchers and slats, the wooden washers, the dowel pins and panels. In the interest of common decency, he assembled the fram
e. He pinned and glued the back slats to the stiles, then chiseled the ends of the dowels flush with the frame. The arms captured the leg tenons with through mortises, and sat a quarter-inch proud of the shoulders of the legs.
The seat was made of Plexi, perforated—no indignity of diapers, catheters—a removable drip pan underneath. A seat-belt made of aircraft nylon with a quick-release latch. Ankle electrodes turned of naval bronze built into the leg stock, one for the left, one for the right. He’d done his homework: most chairs used only one contact, they were passing current through only half the trunk. That was no way to treat a human being.
He believed in certain things, and torture wasn’t one of them. (Excepting certain cases where innocent lives were at risk.) Whatever pain had filled their days would not attend their death.
He’d calculated the voltage and the amperage, the number of applications and the interval between them. He allowed for the dissipation of adrenalin. The second one would be the last.
The helmet was not attached. It was made of leather and lined with copper mesh and sponge. He tried it on and looked like an Inca high priest or Depression-era halfback. The sponge not manmade but the skeleton of a creature that resides in large colonies at the bottom of the sea. He’d been able to obtain only small pieces of it, had to sew them together by hand, but he had doubts about the conductivity of its artificial counterpart. Just look at the pictures.
The chair was big because men had grown bigger since back when the first one was built. It had three legs.
He drank coffee and emptied the ashtray. Felt it in his back and shoulders. Broke night.
* * *
The diner was named for its owner’s mother and never closed. When Fred covered nights he would sit at the counter with the shiftworkers and clubhoppers who didn’t have jobs in the morning, drinking coffee and smoking, waiting for his pager to go off. Chrome, glass block. Maybe a little dessert. Brenda knew she didn’t have to ask but Brenda wasn’t in. Her replacement was a heavy, scrubbed-looking woman with square shoulders and gray hair. They must have pulled her off the day shift, but Fred didn’t go there days. She gave him a menu in her pink uniform, told him the special was tuna noodle, with a bun. He gave it back.
Layman's Report Page 6