My Amputations (Fiction collective ;)

by Clarence Major

  Breaking and entering had in them the seeds of cherries, the mustard of virginity. Nervous saboteurs, Mason and man-Friday gave up on the crowbar. (Jesus stood on the lower landing while Mason rang the Berdseids' bell and the one across from it: all was clear and now . . . ) Still, it was important not to wake the dead. Jesus was good with the small drill. It made only a tiny hissing. A round splash of daylight from the living room window inside gave them pride and hope. Couldn't use the damn hammer: big as an Irish banjo: too much noise. But wasn't it true New Yorkers minded their own . . . (say what?) “No, try to get the tip of the saw in—” “Yessir, boss.” Jesus' Puerto Rican accent fitted the southern Negro attempt like catcalls at an opera. “Gimmie the damn thing!” Mason rammed the little saw in the freshly drilled hole. Jesus whispered. “Ouch! it hurts so good!” “Use the next size.” Jesus easily enlarged the opening. Then the saw got in and slowly Mason worked it back and forth. Slowly, at first—then in one fit of impatience and fear he swung the saw viciously in and the old panel wood split halfway down. Amazing. A swift kick from palsy-walsy's western boot sent it in on the apartment's highly polished oak floor. Jesus, smaller than Mason, crawled through first. Then Mason stuck his tense head in, ooly-drooly, pulled his tight shoulders together, with his slim arms inside, he plunged for entrance. Tut-tut, brash my boy. “Wait—I'll open the door . . . ” but Jesus was too late. Mason looked up from his hampered posture like a humpbacked midget with a painful face stuck into the ridge. His eyes were those of a confused puppy. He could see Jesus grinning. “Don't stand there with that stupid grin—do something! I'm stuck!” No person claiming eight letters in his given name has a right to pull a vaudeville act when he should feel active despair. But the more he struggled the tighter in he got himself. Jesus: “Maybe if I rock the door.” “No, idiot! Take my arms—” Mason gripped the slender wrists—yanked. Nothing. Mason began to doubt his future: home runs, the whole bit. What about human dignity? After all, to hear him tell it, he was a writer. The pulling caused fish-headed pains in his ribcage. Birds beat their lice-bitten wings in his lungs. The air smelled like a fallout shelter of wet kittens. Jesus was licking his knife: about to cut or saw Mason out? They heard the elevator start downstairs.

  Roy Seidel Ota had a clean skull that reflected the light above it. He was counting out on the desk edge in back a stack of dirty tens and fives. “No got twenties?” Jesus wanted to know. Mason kept a tight jaw. He was counting with Ota. With the loot in a paper bag they left Ota and Company, a crowded jewelry shop on Canal at the edge of Chinatown near the bridge. They knew they'd been gypped—one always was in this kind of transaction. Valenti and his cousin D'Amico had said they could get a couple of Thompson machine guns. Things were tight: at the moment they couldn't promise anything else. But first Mason wanted to get rid of The Impostor and he decided not to kill. Unnecessary. But do something with him. And Ferrand, mistake or not, he had to get even with that crook. Lots to do quickly. Take The Impostor to the edge of the abyss—let him jump: fall or fly. Give him to the clang-a-lang moonless night ride into a fuddy duddy region? The Impostor might even find a new life, settle down, marry, have an infant to play tulips with and never again become the target of captors or larks. If Mason could maintain a kind of stillness at the center of this frenzy he too might get through: right or wrong. Edith, when they got back, was relieved and waiting with the rented car. (She'd sold a helluva lot of hash and grass that morning and had extra bread. Naturally she was looking forward to the bank take: so it was worth it.) Brad had The Impostor ready with the blindfold and tied hands. It was already dark, safe. Edith told them they were gypped: five hundred, she said, was only a third what that stuff was worth. Painted Turtle was at a movie in the neighborhood. Edith said she seemed depressed. Mason grunted. The four of them went down with The Impostor. Brad held the guy's arm, leading him. Edith drove, still bitching about the five hundred: it all had to go to Valenti. Okay, okay. The rush hour traffic had passed. Edith wheeled the new Ford expertly out of the city, heading for Jersey. She came to a complete stop in a dark parking lot just outside the Lackawanna Railroad Yard in Hoboken. The street lights from Barclay didn't help down here. Mason was pretty sure he remembered the line they wanted was five tracks over from this end. Even in the dark nothing seemed changed from this morning. Yes, there it was: the door still slightly ajar. The engine would spit and cough at five in the morning. The Impostor would be tucked away behind a stack of empty burlap sacks. In his long journey west he might thank his stars—crossed or not: the injured free of the injurer. No law of opposites could be applied. If The Impostor had in the outer gray matter of his brain something even remotely associating him with the real master of ceremonies, then that cortex had been preserved as the ultimate secret with its thick Peruvian bark closed hermetically around the unbroken linkage of the two. Could he have been the author of such a mysterious disruption in the relation between cause and effect: if The Impostor were yin, Mason was not necessarily yang. Forced connections were possible. But this was labyrinth: like the outcome of Mason's romantic philosophy of asserting himself: taking the identity he wanted. If The Impostor was on a blind trip, so was your boy. And the rigor mortis of truth was with them both. Harebrained? You bet.

  Money. Mason packed his W two-sixty-three. Money: a jockeyship itself: owing its fiber to confidence. Bamboozle there (even in his memory of child support which he paid, “buying his way out of guilt,” one judge said to his lawyer) in that sandcastle. Now the “stolen” money given to Ferrand: stolen because Ferrand had no right to it. He'd walk in: “Fucker, you doublecrossed—” then shoot the cigar outta the joker's mouth. For starters. No, he'd be more serious, factful. After all he only wanted the bread back. Mason arrived. Ferrand in his one-horse office sat with his kicks on his desk. Calmly, sweetly Mason told the detective the truth. It didn't impress. Then with ten-speed passion Mason shot: “I don't like being deceived. Once I climbed a pole for clarity: I was deceived. Then you pretended to give me the hoof marks of the man who snatched my—uh . . . ” “ . . . your wallet?” “Ferrand, I came here to get my money back.” He took out the machine. Ferrand's pig-smile didn't take wings. Mason plunged on, hysterically: “I came to you sincerely. What a fool I was. I'm going to shoot you, and you know it. I came wearing the ugly mask of a dead mullet with glazed eyes. I coughed blood on the way. Ferrand, I—” He disliked his own pleading. It generated his anger; need for revenge. Mason saw that Ferrand was mindful of the pistol: as though it had a life. “I tell you: no cheap, two-bit private eye's gonna stand in—” but as Mason talked he angled the W two-sixty-three a way from Ferrand, carelessly, and in that moment Ferrand whipped out his own weapon, a forty-five, and in no time had it against Mason's forehead where his worried eyebrows met. “Nigger, don't you know I'll kill you. You mean nothing to me or nobody else! What kinda dumb nigger are you, huh? You talk like you just came down from heaven, boy.” Ferrand was turning red as he backed Mason—at gunpoint—toward the door. “Now get out of here before I have you strapped and sent to the nut ward at Bellevue!” As Mason turned to leave Ferrand shot at his left shoe. The bullet hit. Close range like that it had to take off the whole foot, right? Wrong. This explanation is called instant gratification. I don't believe in bait, foreshadow, the Judeo-Christian work ethic, the Theory Z Management philosophy, negative votes, October, gold diggers, Freud's reality principle, so: the bullet bounced off left—leaving a tiny hole in the window as it sped its way across the abyss created by this building and the one next door: it smashed through the window of another office—that of an importer of Hong Kong toys. Of course Mason was wearing his steel-toed boots from welding days.

  Halfway through the “daring” stickup Mason felt less like a greenhorn than he'd the moment they stepped into the glassed, sterile and staid enclosure. You should've seen ‘em: Mason with a Thompson, Jesus fanning the silver thirty-eight (that probably would've misfired), Brad bullyng customers and clerks with Mason's W two-sixty-three. Tw
o guards they disarmed and herded over with the jittery, dapper customers by teller windows. Mason and Brad held them at attention while Jesus jumped about—behind counter—with his potato sack filling it from cash drawers opened on command. The three saw everything they did through the dimness of nutmeg nylon smelling of Edith's Evening in Paris. Contrary to the plan: Edith was at the wheel alone. The Turtle did not show when the time came. Edith kept the Buick from Hertz hot. She was already dreaming of a vacation in Saint Tropez. While Jesus was busy with his Idaho's Finest bag, Mason stood firmly—yet with a mind as dreamy as Edith's: he'd show the world . . . that Ferrand hadn't been worth going back to though Mason'd had a mind to return and shoot up the place. And though they'd settled for one Thompson—look how things were going! Jed'd yakked on about the seasonal rhythm, a certain wisdom, yet he'd made a kind of sense about how human-rhythms turn out . . . in line with other life-rhythms. Jed'd yakked a lot, mostly about his great old pa, and his wonderful grandpa, wise men, in touch with nature, and the great simple life of hillbillies. Mason and Jed sometimes shared a bottle of booze after the day's chores and that character, Jed, would get so caught in his love for his hill folks and their “wisdom” he'd forget he was talking to a traditional enemy of his people. One time ol' Jed whimpered, “My gosh, boy, I forget you colored when I'm talking to ya. You just like anybody else. How you get like that?” Jesus finished his sack job. They all backed toward the turnable doors. Everything was going just dandy till Mason stumbled over a two-and-a-half-foot silver-coated metal ashtray filled with cigarette butts and decorated sand.

  Boy, was he hot to trot! Mason'd just left the Valenti-D'Amico place of operations in Little Italy and was walking north on McDougal. He held in his right hand, at stomach-level, a dark blue booklet, looked with dancing eyes at its cover; the thumb and index of his left hand poised, ready to lift the cover back. As he walked he read: United States Government Printing Office. He looked at the snapshot of himself on the fourth page: didn't like the expression puttering around the full mouth. The passport photographer's fault: no sensitivity to subject. Too much a mug shot. Number J111967. Cover again: in gold letters: Passport. Beneath those precious words, also in gold, was the United States' seal: an eagle facing left with a left-talon clutching thirteen arrows and a right one clamped around a branch of olives—strength and peace. That's me, jack, strength and peace! Not a native son for nothing! Above the eagle's head: a mandala with stars at center representing the original (again) thirteen colonies. Well, this was Mason's passport and he felt close to the lofty efforts those sparkling stars represented. He'd get on a soap box for them: you bet your boots: after all this was his country, too. Wasn't it? Opening the booklet again with proper reverence, he whispered aloud the language of the third page: “The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen(s) / national(s) of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.” God! Just think! the support of the entire government behind his identity! Money talks, yessirree boy. He turned to the fourth page again: “Warning: Alteration, Addition or mutilation of entries is prohibited. Any unofficial change will render this passport invalid.” Then this vital data: name, place of birth, date of birth, date of issue—which was February 3,1980—and date of expiration—February 2, 1985. The picture again: although the expression was not his it was the face of “a serious writer” like those on the jackets of novels: the tormented look, the scowl, a permanent expression of cynical disapproval. A man of profound thought? Spare me. The next page gave him only a fluttering pause: “Notice: This passport must not be used by any person other than the person to whom issued or in violation of the conditions or restrictions placed herein or in violation of the rules regulating the issuance of passports. Any willful violation of these laws and regulations will subject the offender to prosecution under Title Eighteen, United States Code Section fifteen-forty-four.” This followed by blank pages for entries and departures, for visas. At the end of its last two there was more—the highlights: “This passport is the property of the United States Government. It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the Department of State. The passport is not valid unless signed by the bearer on page two.” Mason stopped at the corner of Prince and placed his heavy left boot on the top of a fire hydrant, balanced the booklet on his knee, and with his trusty Bic signed the thing. Happy day: signature du titulaire. The gods smiled. Znotchy was in high gear. Mason stepped briskly: he was making it in America. Hotdog! Yet he was no penance payer: any judgment would be secular since he wasn't a 1940s James Cagney of the Lower East Side caught excruciatingly between Church and State. If repentance must be then make it a civic sacramental ordinance: his forgiving priest was his own knowledge that he'd done his so-called best, that the Forces had been so powerful, so overwhelming, and poverty and misuse so pervasive, that he could not have done better otherwise. Lie? The Department of Justice would not agree. So: absolution wouldn't be forthcoming? How about confession? Had the system nailed him so profoundly to the cross? He insisted that the angels of The System had lice under their wings. He too? You bet. Was there guaranteed another sea up ahead? No, but he had no trouble at all getting a driver's license in the ctesired name. He went downtown to the Municipal Building and stood in line like everybody else. That was the hardest part. The passport did the rest. Applying for a Visa Credit Card wasn't quite so copesettic. The computer said The Impostor already had one. “Uh, excuse me, I forgot.” A day later, elsewhere, Mason applied—with fingers crossed—for a Master Charge card. Luck would be with him.

  Mason Ellis sang “Diddie Wa Diddie” like Blind Blake, crossed the street at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second like the Beatles on the cover of Abbey Road and reaching the curb leaped into the air and coming down did a couple of steps of the Flat Foot Floogie. (Earlier, in his room at the Gramercy Park Hotel—just north of the park, he'd kissed himself in the mirror! Yes, yes he'd moved: did ya think he wuz gonna stay in that fleabag . . . ?) He climbed the grand stairway. Inside he found Reference. Selected the volumes to update “his” activities. A photocopy machine added technological sparkle to a dreary corner by a drinking fountain. He took the books there and xeroxed the pages he needed. It was like discovering a map of the unknown world: The Grand Lake the Shadow Mountain the Rainbow Curve. Then: feeling paralyzed as in a dream unable to move he stood trim, halfway between sturdy shelves where he'd returned heavy volumes and a reading table, holding the copies at chest level. His cards exposed—? the dealer dealing from the bottom . . . ? was his opponent putting the squeeze on him? Was there some recent history of “himself’ he had missed out on? What madness was responsible? Was he a man who'd missed a train because of a threat-of-loss . . . ? What'd The Impostor done since seventy-nine? Spare us. He longed for wish-fulfillment, it alone—and none of the above. Mason took the stairway down. Dazed—he started walking rather than taking any of the buses headed for Washington Square, or Cooper Square. As he threw himself against the Hudson winds sweeping up Fifth, choked on the gas fumes of the taxis racing down, he closed his eyes against Reagan posters pushing for president in November, against Carter posters too, everywhere—on the backs of buses, on billboards. Too much. Then bong: he bumped into—what?—a person? a light pole? a bus? Mason opened to see the big man stepping around him, cussing. But, uh, wasn't he Reverend Jack Mackins, the preacher of those wonderful reformatory sermons at Attica? Looking over his shoulder Mason felt pretty sure the huge wobbling fella was Mackins. A typical Sunday morning Mackins sermon: “One day each of you will open the closet door and step inside. You'll crouch there in the dermal membrane of darkness with the Lord. The darkness will not be illuminated by your whipped trust. You will have to earn strong faith. You must hear God breathing. The skin of his eyes will glow in the dark and fill you with fear and the nightfall cry of the loneliest whippoor-will on earth because of a light pouring
out. Then you'll find yourself pushing like a sonofagun for the beginning. Your own, that is: you won't find it: what you'll discover will vary.” Reverend Mackins raised his fist “to the heavens.” “No matter what your experience may be in that darkness, endure—do not perish! . . . Now, bow your heads, boys. Lord, save and forgive these poor boys sitting here on this holy day of rest, before me, in your care, without citizenship, locked up like cattle going to slaughter. Lord, they are not hopeless. I have walked among them and know the richness of their souls, the keenness of their minds. Lift them to your bosom. Nourish them in the wind of your voice, the fire of your breathing. Give them a chance for a life outside of crime, a sinless life: deliver them to a safe place beyond the excruciating controls of ethnic ghettos. Give them at least a little Civil Rights Movement or something to believe in. It's hell down here, Lord. (Give the women too an Equal Rights Bill: deliver them from bondage!) Dribble something down. I beseech you, One on High, perform frontal lobotomy on anybody who wants to fuck over somebody else without it being in dire self-defense . . . ” Jeux d'esprit? Mason remembered this sort of outcry as being better than gold, sharper than a Saturday-night-switchblade entering a cliché. Mackins, dammit, had imagination! Mason'd gotten ideas for stories from those upstairs-thoughts . . . One term in one paragraph on one page of the sheets in his pocket worried him. It was: “post-modern.” Mason didn't know what it meant. As he strolled southward still, he puzzled over it. Aside from its strictly utilitarian purpose—uprightness and stuckedness—it declared itself separate from modernism (so he'd read). Modernism depended heavily on the metaphoric: as a rejection of 19th Century Romanticism and its sentimentality it was made possible by many factors—among them (and this with a straight face): one) psychoanalysis; two) Einstein's theory of relativity; three) in Physics, the breaking of that hussy link between effect and sister cause; four) the downfall of Joyce Kilmer's tree; then five) that . . . locomotive; six) the rejection of the assumption that language offered a logical means by which one might understand—. (What'd all this wooden horse-trading talk really mean? was it some sort of new-fangled way of giving a bad weather report?) Then, what was metaphor? Was Mason to believe what he'd read about himself and metaphor? Maybe Garbo's “I want to be alone,” was metaphor? or “I am.” Model for reality? Marcus Garvey's headgear was metaphor for Malcolm X's eyeglasses. Jelly Roll Morton was metaphor for Stevie Wonder. Huh? But this rejection of letting one thing stand for another . . . ? Interesting, yet . . . Maybe The Impostor believed the text represented nothing outside itself. I don't, thought Mason. Reverend Mackins knew God by his first name: was the name the same as the, uh, ah, spirit, I mean, body . . . ? Miss Inbetween was metaphor and Miss Acheass was metonymy. So be it. Text as permanent property—free of outside clut. Okay. Like Cubism: a peeled conceptual orange oozing Cezanne's blood and sperm: synthetic, analytical, geometric. Mason glanced up at the overcast dome. There was a promised full moon behind that shit. Hay-bob-a-re-bop. He was on his way. Hi-de-hi-de-ho. Mason still had the will to endure: while ten thousand people choked to death on their grub each year here. Saaay whaaat? To say nothing of . . . Hay, shouldn't he cut out this shit and call a speakers' bureau? After all, he was a well-known author in need of some immediate action.