Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 32: Char’s ride visit

  Jared writes a lot about prison life and the extra quirkiness of the Ride. Most of these letters are fated to remain in Witson’s file. It really doesn’t matter to him, for he only cares about Aaren’s letters and the occasional one from his mom that finds its way to him via the mysteries of Steve’s connections, wherever he is on the Ride. He never gets any from Char, definitely hasn’t been expecting any, not after his parting words to her—I will hunt you down …!

  Quirkiness. Jared knows that if it could be explained, the Ride would merit the adjective quirky. It’s the main reason he writes every day. It’s a matter of maintaining some level of sanity. He can’t trust himself to remember accurately what doing time, being Inside, flitting about on the Ride really is like. So he writes, gives the letters to Steve. Mails them to his future self. Let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom let it be! . . . There will be an answer, let it be!

  Space travel: time travel. In prison, the dream is real and reality is a dream. It’s a fluid situation, one best described as “in flux.” The distinction between what’s real and what’s a dream ceases to exist, or at least to be meaningful. Jared fluctuates throughout the day, being “there” and then “there”— sitting right over there in clock time while actually living, breathing being somewhere else in dream time. This is what doing time is about—an experience that shifts between “normal” reality and being out-of-body, traveling through dimensions to other realities and dreams. Amazingly when in the joint, he always returns just in time for “Lock-up and Count!” It’s all as bizarre as it is cruel and amusing. They don’t call the joint “Stir” for nothin’, ya know! We’se all stir-crazy sons of bitches!

  How to explain to those who have never time traveled or slipped through dimensional space that he meets Char while walking in a penitentiary Yard? He touches her, feels her, asks her for the time of day. Then at night, he’s outside the perimeter fence, walking the streets of Minneapolis? At other times, in other dimensions, back in conversation with the Novice Master? When he so desires, Jared’s deep in a theological conversation with his dad, or playing ball with his brother, Joey—both of whom others judge as dead.

  Char’s also living on strange landscapes. Friends have been blown up in Vietnam and Weatherman factories. Too frequently she hears that a dear friend or Sister cashed themselves out using drugs. Others, like herself, have broken through to more mystical experiences. Most exciting, now she’s a mother.

  Not a single mom because all the Sisters help out. It was strange delivering without Jared there but she is glad that he didn’t know and still doesn’t. Off a bit in her original calculations, she delivered early at just past eight months. “Good Lord! Just imagine how worried he would have been knowing that!” In her heart of hearts, she’d like to report to him, “Mom and child are healthy and happy.”

  Given that their last visit at Millston was such a disaster, Char didn’t worry when Jared initially stopped writing. She wanted some time away from him, also. Although she didn’t voice the fact, she knew that he wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. She couldn’t risk visiting while showing, so she blocked out any negative thoughts until the child was born. “It’s a boy!” she heard—“Unbelievable! On Jared’s birthday!” August 6, 1971. Now the child is two weeks old and she—At least I don’t look pregnant.

  Forebodingly, something inside Char tells her that something drastic is about to happen. So when Agent Witson unexpectedly arrives at her commune, spins his story about the Ride, and says that he can arrange a visit, she’s not surprised, though somewhat wary. Him? She knew he was coming—she’d already welcomed him here today in her dream last night. It was him! To her relief, forebodingly bad is immediately checked off: “He’s okay, Miss Clark. Not to worry.” She’s happy that her foreboding seems to have been about something good. When Witson leaves—he had not asked about the child but knew everything from Aaren—she goes upstairs, picks up their son and coos, “I’m going to see your daddy!”

  However, everything comes at a price. “It’s agreed? You won’t tell anyone else about this?”

  “Okay.”

  “None of your Sisters or the Collective?”

  “Sure.” She hesitates. Witson anticipates, “Just make something up. Say I came to ask about how his mother’s doing. That I was thinking about getting her to visit, again. Something. You’re a clever girl.” Then he starts to leave, stops, speaks as if forgetting the most important point, “And not him. Especially him. You won’t tell him we met?”

  Agreed—agreed, agreed, anything agreed! Unhappily, Char nods yes to Agent Witson. But inside, happily, I’m going to see your daddy!

  Denial. At the moment the child was born, Char went into deep denial. During her pregnancy she suppressed the memory of that horrible, murderous nightmare visit with Jared. Abort the child! You’re unfit to have him! I do not want you to touch my child! Hear me clearly, Char, you cannot, I mean it—I command it!—you cannot have this child. If you do, now listen to me, if you do, I will hunt you down! Now, even deeper denial. A curious mother’s shield of protection—she does not want to think bad thoughts about “Your daddy!”—she whispers as she kisses him, lifts a breast to feed him. “Your daddy loves you so. He’s here,” as she touches her breast, “this is his body and your body,” she sighs with pleasure as her milk flows once again, “our body!”

  Foreboding. What Char doesn’t know is that Aaren pressed Witson to arrange the visit. Until his superiors told him otherwise, Witson repeatedly rejected her request. He had just moved Jared out of Marion and didn’t want him to get the idea that he was going to arrange for visits along the way. Like Jared, Thy will be done! is Steve’s attitude when given orders.

  For Aaren, Char is one of her most effective and cruelest weapons. The baby’s here now and she’s confident that when they meet Char’s broadsiding him with both her not telling him that she didn’t abort and then making him feel the loss, even the guilt, of not being at the birth, will rekindle the rage that ended their last visit. Actually, she’s hoping it will be more than rage—a double dose of fury at her for fucking with him over the abortion mixed with the poison of his being so powerless before. Aaren has gained an in-depth grasp on Jared’s psyche during her Ride visits. He’s babbled and babbled, slipped her out with him during escape dreams, taken him to meet people—his dad, brother Joey, Dikbar, even Bruiser—that he forgets but she doesn’t when the visit is over. It is her meeting with Quinn—unintended even in dreamland—that made it clear how to break Jared: Make him feel as powerless as he was with Quinn.

  Char’s Ride visit is over. “They said I had to leave at three, and here it is.” She stands up, straightens out. “I know this might have been more painful . . . that it’s probably more confusing to you than even to me, but when he told me, I knew I had to come.” Steve drove Char to a small town county jail somewhere in Ohio. He asked her to wear a blindfold for the last half hour, so she did. Weird.

  For the first time Jared touches her. He didn’t embrace or kiss her when they first met. Now he sculpts a space for her within his soul. He draws her close and hugs her, very, very gently. What more can I say?

  As she leaves the visiting room: Why even now couldn’t I tell him? Why did I come?

  As he goes back to his cell: Why even now couldn’t I tell her? About Aaren’s visits?

  This night Jared is on his knees, naked, baring all of himself, inviting the touch of creation to remold him, reincarnate him on the spot, position him for the rest of the Ride. Out loud he asks, “Has Char really been here—today?” And if she has been, did his dream become reality? He’s been so confused. He wakes from dreams feeling exhausted, at times ritually wiping invisible blood from his hands. Questions have come to him whose answers he is not ready to hear. Did I bludgeon her as Witson—me?— did that black kid? Did I beat the bitch like I did Bruiser? Did I watch the surgeons scrape her belly clean, pull out all her insides, forc
e her to eat my son, my sacrifice? Did I hunt her down as Quinn did me? Beat her, break her bones, set her on fire? He had dreamed all these violences before, often. He had actually feared that upon seeing her he would kill her. But after Marion, he’s waken too many nights drenched in sweat, panting, fearful that he is a killer—become a devotee of the gods of cruelty. He dreams himself as Quinn’s disciple, one of his henchmen, as one with Quinn himself pleasuring in sexual violence, ultra-violence.

  Has Char really been here today?

  Jared prays and prays every prayer that ever meant anything to him. Desperately—because he no longer believes in the power of prayer—he implores saints of every ilk and blessing from St. Jude, the Patron of Hopeless Causes, to St. Anthony, Finder of Lost Objects, to St. Anne, Mother of Mary, Grandmother of God. He prays with sound and feeling, whimpers and groans. He petitions through pain and fatigue, loneliness and desperation. He yearns, he beseeches, he grovels.

  Jared finds her in the lake—naked, swimming. Moving with a suppleness unfamiliar to him. “Hi!” she waves her arm, beckoning. “Come on in, Jared. It’s terribly warm . . . and delightful.”

  Jared wavers at the lake’s edge. His hands want to shed his shirt and pants but the paralysis creeps closer and tighter. The water’s kiss of foam beckons to his feet but fear pushes him back.

  “Come on in, Jared! Come! Come!” Char’s swimming with delight. Pleasure glistens her body. Her long hair floats in undulating waves around her; it caps her head with reflections of sunbeams like a liquid crown. Floating delta of female birthing. Gliding on the Earth’s moist valley. Quietly, patiently, beautifully it moves, thrilling Jared’s eyes with a hunger deep-shot to his toes, alluring, drying his mouth; unspeakable words.

  “Come, come on in,” Char calls, again and again, floating, bobbing, gliding. “Jared, it’s so wonderful, so wonderful!”

  Backing away, throat dry, hands oozing fear, Jared plunges away from the shore, repulsed by the foam. Running, running, the words catch him, imploring, whispering on the wind: Come come on in come Jared it’s wonderful!

  It’s always Char’s eyes—her look! Right through me to my soul!—that lure him into the deepest of dreams and startle him as he wakes, finding her looking at him. Jared laments, She’s out there. Inside here. And all that I’ve been is nowhere, stuck in-between.

  He remembers her sweet words, “Jared, before I leave I want you to understand one thing. I ache to be with you. Understand that, please. Being with you is always a joy—a mystery, but a joy for me. I store no dislike or displeasure in my heart. I do love you. I wish that love were enough.”

  Jared finds himself amid the wreckage. All others have died. He alone has survived.

  “Is this survival?” he asks himself. The pain in his left leg throbs.

  “Is this me?” The plane is slashed and gnarled, its beauty destroyed, its strength mocked in its death among rocks. To himself Jared laughs. He knows that he will die here. Die slowly—cursed, to survive just to die. The other bodies are secure in their places. Placed there by a destiny defying all. They lie mashed beyond recognition. All once strong, healthy bodies, now seeking the release of decay. So much pleasure and pain, Jared giggles into the pain of his leg, so much now dropped from the sky and but a smear, but a droplet upon the Earth.

  It seems to be too much, too much the snickering laughter of the eternal gods. Now men lie as feces on the stones. These strong-hearted males strewn like piss drops in a vengeful desert. Jared moves his leg again, raising and propping it on a rock, leaking the blood toward his heart, wishing for relief. He wants no sensation. He wants no awareness. He wants merely to rest here until death comes. All he asks—my final wish—is to hear the footsteps. To be told, “It’s a boy.” Then he could go, knowing that final vengeance is his.

  Awakened, he says to himself, in an effort to convince himself, “She was here, I know it.”

  Once home, Char goes straight to Aaren. “He said not to tell anyone I’m going, not that I went!” So Witson be damned, she’s talking to her soul Sister—as she now sees Aaren.

  “You didn’t tell him?” Aaren questions softly, with a surprised inflection, but it’s just a passive-aggressive mask as she fiercely restrains the rage boiling inside herself.

  “It’s not real in there.”

  Char picks up her son—sees Jared alive in his eyes.