I knew he couldn’t stay away. Knew he’d come back at least once to check up on his handiwork. And I should have known it would be this way, skulking around in the night, watching me in the night and then making sure I’d realize it when I woke up and he was already gone. Far more satisfaction for him that way than facing me, talking to me, giving me even a few minutes of human contact. And far more torment for me.
How long was he here? Five minutes, ten, twenty, thirty? Over there in the dark, watching, something evil in the dark watching and smiling and feeding on what he saw like some kind of vampire … Jesus, every time I think of it it makes my skin crawl, it adds fresh fuel to my hatred and my longing to destroy him. I’ve never felt this kind of bloodlust before, nothing even remotely like it. It’s an ugly and frightening thing, like an alien substance alive and growing in my body. And yet it’s also sustaining somehow—a force I can use to help shore up my faith and my resolve.
Setting all this down on paper has calmed me, put me back in control. But I don’t think I can write much longer. The palm of my right hand is cut and abraded from the chain, and holding the pen, pressing down with the point, is painful. There’s pain in my left heel, too, where the goddamn leg iron slipped down during my frenzy and dug into the flesh.
Enough for now. I better wash out all the cuts as a precaution against infection.
The leg iron.
The leg iron!
* * *
The Forty-Sixth Day
* * *
I’ve found the flaw in his plan, the weak spot in his “escapeproof” prison. There’s a way out of here, just as I believed all along—and all along it has been right here in front of me, I have been staring at it day after day, I have been carrying it with me every time I move.
The leg iron.
It was when I went into the bathroom yesterday to wash out the cuts that the realization came to me. I was sitting on the floor, working on the gouge in my heel with the wet washcloth, pushing the leg iron up out of the way with my left hand … and then I saw, really saw, what I was doing.
The leg iron had slipped down off my calf. In the beginning it had been tight around the calf, then a little less tight, and a little less tight, and yesterday, for the first time, it had slipped all the way down. I must have lost at least 20 pounds in the past six weeks, maybe as much as 25. And I’d been heavy when he brought me here, 245 or better—Kerry had been after me to start dieting again. I must be down around 220 now. My pants are baggy, my shirt hangs on me like a scarecrow’s: flattening gut, tightening thighs, thinning calves. I always did have big legs, and when I put on weight the fat tends to deposit there as well as around my middle. Go on a lengthy diet and one of the first places the weight loss is visible is in my legs.
Sitting there on the floor I straightened out my left leg and foot so that the heel pulled back in against the ankle; then I worked the iron down as far as it would go. Got the lower edge over the gouge in my heel, over the heel itself by a fraction of an inch until the upper edge of the iron bit hard into the flesh of my instep. A little of the wildness came back into me then, and I had to fight myself to keep from trying to force the iron any farther. The worse thing I can do right now is to cut up my foot; cuts might get infected, the foot might swell.
I thought then of slicking it with soap, to make the metal slide more easily over the flesh. But it didn’t help, not yet anyway: I still couldn’t get the iron down any farther on my instep.
I’ve got to be patient. I can afford to be patient now that I’ve found the means of escape. I’ll lose more weight; with the amount of food I’m eating and the daily exercise program, I can’t help but lose more weight. All I need is another fraction of an inch off my foot. People don’t think of losing weight off their feet but it happens. Shed enough poundage, you’ll see the difference on just about every part of your body, feet included. I know, I’ve been there—fat and not fat, fat and not fat, a vicious cycle all my adult life.
Another month to six weeks should do it. Six weeks maximum. The remaining provisions will hold out that long, I’ll see to that. And I’ll hold out too if I’m careful, don’t overdo anything, don’t cut up my foot, don’t catch pneumonia. Patient and careful. The day will come. That’s the only way to look at it.
The day will come when I’ll be free again.
* * *
The Fifty-Second Day
* * *
Two hours of calisthenics in the morning, one hour in the afternoon, another hour before I go to sleep at night. If I’d tried to keep up that kind of schedule before my world shrank to this stinking prison, I would have put a killing strain on my heart. But I’ve eased into it gradually, and I pace myself through each session, and with the absence of close to thirty pounds (it must be close to thirty by now), there doesn’t seem to be much strain at all. I’m plenty tired by the time I crawl under the blankets, and I sleep quickly and deeply, but it isn’t the sleep of exhaustion.
The muscles in my arms, shoulders, and legs have become visible; my belly is almost flat. I’m turning into … what’s the expression these days? Hunk? That’s it: I’m turning into a hunk. Wait until Kerry sees me. She won’t recognize me.
I won’t recognize myself, either. Because I still haven’t looked in that cracked mirror in the bathroom. And I won’t—I will not look in a mirror again until I get out of this place. I wouldn’t know the gaunt, bearded stranger in the glass, and I don’t want to know him. He isn’t me; he’s a stand-in, a surrogate, an impostor. The real me is waiting down inside—he hasn’t gone anywhere, he’s just in a temporary state of suspended animation—and once I’m away from here he’ll come out again. And when I finally do look in a mirror I’ll see him, not the stranger with the beard and the terrible eyes.
Does that make any sense? I don’t know. I don’t care much right now.
Using soap for grease, I can work the iron the tiniest bit farther over my heel and down along my instep. And that’s all that matters.
* * *
The Fifty-Ninth Day
* * *
Another tiny bit closer to freedom. Almost half the leg iron will slip over my heel now before the lower edge binds hard into the instep.
I have to force myself to eat two full meals a day; have had to for the past week. There is a part of me, a kind of imp of the perverse that lives in all of us, that keeps insisting I eat tiny portions or nothing at all, because that way I’ll lose weight even faster. Yes, I keep telling the imp, and maybe then I’d die of malnutrition before I could get the iron all the way off. Or at least make myself too weak and sick to walk away from this cabin once I get free of the shackles. It’s still winter outside, there are still occasional snow flurries, and there is snow on the ground and it is still damned cold. I can’t travel on foot in freezing weather with only a topcoat for warmth and protection. I’d collapse before I made half a mile; I would probably die of exposure.
No, I must eat regular good-sized meals to keep my strength up. The weight is coming off slowly, naturally; there’s no sense in trying to accelerate the process. Patience. Patience and care.
What I have to concentrate on now is the future, what happens after I get out of here and out of these mountains. For the first time since he chained me here, I have to start looking ahead, start making plans.
I need to concentrate on him, too. How can I find him unless I have some clue to who he is, where he might be? And the key to that may well be the thirteen weeks’ supply of provisions.
Why thirteen? I’ve got to keep asking myself that question until I come up with the answer.
What is the significance of thirteen?
* * *
The Sixty-Fifth Day
* * *
More old memories crowding up to the surface, unbidden and this time unwanted. Unpleasant memories of my old man, of the way he lived and the way he died.
I hated him, growing up, with as much intensity as I loved my ma. And after his death I forgot him, shut hi
m out of my mind and my life so completely that now, forty years later, I can’t dredge up even the slightest image of him. Just vague impressions—gestures, random actions, shouted words. And all of those distasteful.
I was seventeen when he died. Once he was buried I said good-bye to Ma and I joined the army and went away to fight in the South Pacific, in another of this century’s collection of wars. When I came home again, after four long hard years, no scars on my body but the first of many on my psyche, Ma and I never once talked about him, not to each other and not in each other’s hearing. Neither of us mentioned his name until the day Ma died, five years after my return. Then, on her deathbed, she said with some of her last words, “Try to forgive him,” and I said I would, for her sake, but I couldn’t. And I never have.
He was a drunk, my old man. That was his worst sin because it was the root of all his others. He was all right when he was sober: a little gruff, a little cold and distant, but you could deal with him on a more or less reasonable basis. It was a different story when he had liquor in him. He became abusive, he slapped Ma around and he slapped me around until I got old enough and big enough to put a stop to it. He gambled heavily—low-ball poker, horses, boxing matches. He lost job after job—he worked on the docks, mostly, and was in the middle of the “Bloody Thursday” clash between police and striking longshoremen in 1934—until finally no one would hire him anymore, not even relatives. He still brought home money now and then, sometimes in large amounts, but he wouldn’t say where he’d got it, and when that happened he and Ma would fight and then he would start drinking and storm out of the house and stay away for two or three days. I found out later that he was mixed up in some sort of waterfront black-market operation. But I didn’t tell anyone, least of all Ma; it would have hurt her even more, put even more lines in her round Italian face and even more pounds on her round Italian body. (He drank to excess; she ate to excess for solace and escape. When she died, prematurely, at the age of fifty-seven, she weighed 247 pounds.) I should have confronted the old man about his black-market ties, but I didn’t do that either. I wish I had. Sitting here thinking about him now, after all these years, with the bitterness undiminished by time, I wish to Christ I’d stood right in his face and told him what a son of a bitch he was.
It was the booze that killed him. He was drinking a fifth and more of whiskey a day in the last couple of years of his life, and it ate like acid through his liver and put him in the hospital and killed him within a week of his admission. I went to see him at San Francisco General just once, at Ma’s insistence. The impression I have of him then is of someone small and wasted and old, even though he was only fifty. I didn’t say anything to him—he was partially sedated at the time—and I only stayed a minute or so. Ma stayed a long time. She went every day and stayed a long time and then came home and fixed huge meals and ate most of the food herself. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. I spent most of that week, that deathwatch, in my room reading pulp magazines and army enlistment brochures and vowing to myself that I would not be like my old man, I would not, I would not drink whiskey and I would not steal and cheat and I would not hurt the people who were close to me.
I’ve lived up to those vows the best way I know how. I don’t drink whiskey, I’m reasonably honest, I don’t willingly inflict pain on those I care about or on any decent human being. Whatever else I am, whatever my shortcomings, I am not my old man’s son.
Sudden insight, one I’ve never had before: He made me the way I am today. In his own uncaring, selfish, drunken way, my old man made me exactly the kind of person I grew up to be.
* * *
The Seventy-First Day
* * *
The heater died this morning.
I turned it on to low as I always do, to let it warm up slowly, and right away it started to make a series of loud pinging and thumping noises. I watched it for a few seconds, went to shut it down again—and there was a banging, a flash with sparks in it, and the thing died. I switched it off, let it cool for an hour, and switched it back on. Nothing. Dead as hell.
And outside it’s snowing again and the temperature must be ten below zero. Exercising kept me warm for a while, but once my body cooled down I had to fold myself up in one of the blankets and drink cup after cup of hot coffee until it was time for the next set of exercises. I’ll have to keep wearing the blanket and drinking too much coffee and tea every day from now until I’m free. Eat more and exercise more, too, to maintain my body heat. The threat of pneumonia, of freezing to death, is twice as severe now, with all the life gone out of the heater and its corpse lying over there bent and broken against the fireplace, where I hurled it in a moment of rage and frustration.
But it can’t be much longer until I’m able to work that leg iron all the way over my heel and off. Another couple of weeks at the outside. I can stay healthy that long … I’ve got to stay healthy that long. I won’t let that frigging heater finish me when I’m this close to freedom.
* * *
The Seventy-Fifth Day
* * *
Five straight days of snow and chill moaning winds. Drifts piling up outside, deep enough to cover the lower third of the shed. Meat-locker cold in here—so intense three nights ago that I had to flatten out one of the cardboard cartons and wrap it around my body under my clothing. The instant coffee is almost gone, and there is only half a package of tea bags left. At least I don’t have to worry about the pipes freezing and cutting off my water supply: If that were possible it would have happened by now. Whoever plumbed this place must have used copper piping.
Sniffles in the morning, chronic runny nose, but no major symptoms of illness. So far.
I can get the leg iron, now, to within half an inch of coming off. Frustrating, that last agonizing half inch, but I just don’t dare try to force it any farther. I must have lost nearly thirty-five pounds but I still need to shed another five or so. God, how long to do that? Another ten days to two weeks at the most. I don’t think I can stand the waiting any longer than that.
* * *
The Eightieth Day
* * *
Sunshine, the first in more than two weeks. And the temperature has climbed a good fifteen degrees in the past twenty-four hours.
Thank Christ.
* * *
The Eighty-Fourth Day
* * *
Out of coffee. Out of crackers and cookies and most other things. Enough provisions left to last about three more weeks—more than the thirteen he planned.
Thirteen, thirteen. That damned number haunts me, and yet its meaning continues to elude me.
But I’ll be gone from here before the food runs out. Long before. Soon. Any day now. Every time I sit down to try removing the leg iron again, I start to sweat and tremble with anticipation. Still can’t quite do it. Almost, but not quite yet.
* * *
The Eighty-Seventh Day
* * *
So close …
* * *
The Eighty-Ninth Day
* * *
It isn’t thirteen years or thirteen weeks, it’s thirteen days. That’s the significance in the number, that has to be what this is all about. Why didn’t I realize it before this? Blocked out the details, that’s why, the same way I blocked out the image of my old man.
Thirteen days in April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-two. Thirteen long, difficult days. But if that’s it—and it must be because I just don’t see how it can be anything else—I still don’t know who he is. Or the exact nature of his motive. Or why he would wait all this time, nearly sixteen years, to take his revenge.
He wasn’t someone directly connected with what happened back then; I’d remember him now if he was. And yet I must have met him, we must have had some kind of contact, else why the disguising of his voice, why the ski mask to keep me from seeing his face? A relative or friend of Jackie Timmons, as crazy as that possibility is?
A relative or friend of the sixteen-year-
old boy I killed?
* * *
The Ninetieth Day
* * *
FREE!
* * *
Part Two
Salvation
* * *
* * *
Shackles Page 9