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CHAPTER SIX

 

YEAR 1961

 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

WEST VIRGINIA

 

THE SHABBY BROWN, enormous ex-sideshow tent, standing in the midst of the pebbled lot, had finally closed its busy flaps. The heavy, orange dust churned from the spacious parking lot had settled back to the ground as the last automobile entered the county highway. Inside the old revival tent, two gray-haired men: the first, rather fat, just under five-nine, donned in a charcoal sharkskin suit; the second: tall, lean, and wearing an assortment of farmhand-styled work clothes, were sitting at a foldup table behind a narrow, homemade pulpit.

 

     “Have mercy, oh, mah humble soul,” the fat man glowed. “Harry, ain’t this amazin'…! Just span yer peepers over all this dough! The easiness of the takes ceases not but to amaze me, my good fellow—two rings, three watches—Here, you can have this beauty. And good - God! Looka hyah—a truck title, signed, sealed, and squandered, mo’ than lahkly the one left in the front parking lot. Barney down in Augusta County will take care of that baby. But we sho gotta pawn a bunch of this other junk tomorrow, y’ see, before we go too far; we might have problems here in West Virginny. But the money, Harry! Grab our trusty and draw a beeeg yellow highlight roun’ this generous ol’ town,” he gloated with a chiseled smirk. “Oh, how they love to be entertained. Hell of a week, boy! Hell of a week!”

 

     The preacher’s slow-witted cohort sat numbly at the table, but with a concerned expression. “Those people yer cousin Homer sent us, they did a swell job. But I ’bout blew the old leg-stretchin’ trick tonight, huh? I started pushing my left leg through my pants bottom, instead of my right. Would have twiddled their minds, huh? my left leg a foot longer than my right, huh? And you’re supposed to be healin’ my right leg?”

 

     “Don’t worry, Jasper.” The preacher could not cease his handling of the money. “Just be careful next stop,” running his lusting fingers over and over through the piles of cash, “or we’ll have to see yer durned chiropractor again.” His eyes were frozen to the hundreds, sewn to the fifties. “Your last visit cost me thirty-five bucks.” He threw his head back, aglee as he shoveled the coins into a bag. “Let’s go, Bubba,” he smiled broadly, “steak’s on me.” Walking to their automobile, he bluntly exclaimed again but with an exceptionally wide grin. “These suckers! I just cain’t believe,” and he patted his jacket pocket, “THIS…!”

 

———

 

SHANAN, because of a quantity of supportive outside influence from home-side, had secured his discharge from the Navy, before finishing his signed-for hitch. Owing to Shanan’s colorblindness (a condition of which he had no prior knowledge), the Navy could not keep its romantic promise of Electronics School, and had stationed him in a squadron in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Shanan thereafter decided to strike for no military field of employment whatever, but to remain on base, as it were, no more than a hired hand. Subsequently, and because of this sailor’s spirit of stubbornness, squadron administration was finally forced to issue him an early discharge. Despite Shanan’s unbendable mindset, however, his squadron’s Captain did genuinely appreciate him, at least moderately, on the following occasion:

 

 

     Inside the crowded Dome in Virginia Beach, celebrating sailors and their celebrating wives at the annual Squadron VA Eighty-eight shindig were buzzing with lively chats, and it seemed a fifteen-word limit for each contributor was in propria persona. There were men squeezing themselves closer to the wet bar. There were friendly voices crying their liquid desires, with arms and hands stretched high into the smoky and perfumed air, waving single or multiple fingers in frantic circles toward fever-footed, pot-bellied bartenders wearing broad, white aprons tied loosely about buoyant rings girdling their chubby necks. There were street-clothed Navy personnel among the participants of this festive extravaganza, with their paraffin-coated cups of various cocktails, beers, colas, or water, merrily bustling tightly between the four corners of the many tables of the feast, leisurely savoring all manner of tasty hors d’oeuvres, tasty morsels from the seabed of the Atlantic, and sandwiches in abundance fanned round the edges of immense oval platters.

 

     There were fascinating women a plenty—wives of commissioned and petty officers, and a number of seamen—also duly partaking in their share of this eventful evening, which was an especially eventful evening. There was Shanan. Shanan had dumped an imposing variety of whiskies and rums, spirits known and unknown to upright man, into his oversized paraffin-coated cup, already half-filled with a yellowish-green three-point-one draft-barrel beer, launched the exorbitant swill to his presumptuous lips, eyeballs squinting insanely at all the spinning ceiling lights surrounding the hall, and chugalugged down through his fireproof pipes the entire contents from hell. Painless moments passed, undeniably painless; and, mentally paralyzed, doing what appeared to be a breathless impersonation of an Easter Island stone-head, unconscious completely, yet on his feet—miraculously, he threw not his mug but someone’s drinking glass violently onto the dance floor, effecting a quarter-inch cut just above the sheer-stockinged left ankle of the squadron Captain’s high-pitched wife. Shanan, totally unaware of his foul deed, came to, and dizzily, in the kitchen off the rear of the banquet hall, finding a not-so-merry boatswain’s mate first-class hugging him against a mammoth refrigerator and raising a free hand as if it were capturing within its pudgy grasp a supersonic fly.

 

     The Captain interrupted this scene of looming justice just as Shanan was about to receive a deep five, ordered the first-class petty officer to leave the kitchen, and, after hearing Shanan’s slurred denial, cordially asked him for, “…a two-dollar loan?” Shanan had a slush fund in operation back at the base: three dollars for five, five dollars for seven, and so forth, and the Captain knew it and was broke, or his wallet was somehow inaccessible. People are people. The Captain quietly told young Bin that if he peeped a sound to anyone about this transaction, or if he even ^hinted at monetary interest, he would, with a perfectly clear conscience, “hang your skinny little ass from the nearest yardarm.” The squadron’s Captain, nonetheless—believe this or not—thanked Airman Apprentice Bin warmly for throwing the glass, and commanded him to return to the squadron barracks posthaste, and let his bed catch his body before that boatswain’s mate first-class did. The Captain’s wife, if the well-honed blade of truth were fully unsheathed; and why should it not be? had reservedly danced the Captain’s stern off throughout the evening, and the Captain had wanted to mix with other wives before the convivial night had exhausted itself thoroughly. An apprehensive Week to the day joined her brothers and sisters “favorably” within coffins of memories both fretful and shaking, both dead and alive, and the Captain repaid Shanan his well-spent two dollars, silently—no monetary interest.

 

 

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

 

Shanan’s extremely dry flesh, and allergies by the score, had at last demanded he bus over worlds of curious but untouched freedoms to Phoenix, Arizona, bicycle-accident fund provided. Short story shorter: Simply attempting to cash a modest check, the authorities threw him into the Maricopa County Jail. Still and all, the check was simply not his check. Nor were the ten pair of pants he had stolen from several nearby department stores, in which he had incredibly poor taste and would invariably steal the cheapest.

 

 

DAILY, close to a hundred-and-fifteen dry-yet-sweaty degrees were recorded in the sixth-floor quarters of the Maricopa county jail. No air-conditioning functioned, and cutoff jeans was the uniform of the day. Two prisoners threatened Shanan sexually, but he stood his ground, acted like a man, and they retreated. He was faced with a fight but once, yet gaining respect had to be first priority, win lose or die. Only a precious few of the inmates gave a hoot for morality (standard of good and right conduct).

 

     The better part of the inmates played cards or board games on a long steel table in the day room (also used as the dining area), read paperbacks of a wide range of titles, or fought viciously among themselves whenever the urge arose. An inmate of the more intellectual class spent his days writing a novel. He had dreams of evolving into a famous author, and was steady at his bunk, with scribing pen and hopeful paper.

 

     Four inner cells housed more than eighty men, and the place was packed to near overflowing, among them—a couple homeless guys, winos, jaywalkers, shoplifters, deserters, burglars, forgers, sneak thieves, two pick-pockets, three professional stickup men, several pimps, a murderer, a bad cop, and a six-foot-nine, shy exhibitionist.

 

     The inmates liked Shanan, the master check writer (attempted check writer, mind you, of sixty-five dollars), tough guy or not, usually not. Cell number two, located in the rear of the tank, was the White House, which housed the more hardened men and the elected president, who more or less ran the entire tank (far more than less); and they, after a month of observation, tempted Shanan to move in and bunk with them. They were not getting strange; they simply did not want problems befalling their daily profits, or the Tank Thief. Choosing, rather, to bunk in with the dispossessed, an inborn tendency you might say, he declined their noble offer.

 

     However, lest you should find yourself misunderstanding the whole of the setting, Shanan stole for the White House: He was —their, Tank Thief. The White House had honored him with this title, with all due proof, and always doled him a liberal percentage of the booty. Thereafter, whenever the White House boys decided to do a dash of shopping, Shanan was the natural who maneuvered the score (victim) away from his cigarettes or candy bars, usually stowed securely (or so the score believed) beneath his mattress. The mark (score or victim) was not ever the wiser. As I submitted in the last paragraph, the inmates liked Shanan and, unfortunately, trusted him. Furthermore, the White House aristocracy would have long-bagged anyone if he had not liked Shanan.

 

     Along with his scoundrelly duties, Shanan became the Tank Barber, frankly because he bragged he could cut hair. He would cut anyone’s hair for five cigarettes or a candy bar or a sweet-roll; and, after six wily performances, Shanan was in constant demand. Of course, demand was inspired by the White House: They selected a half-dozen helpless inmates for trial runs, and if a subject did not want to sit still for Shanan’s barber schooling, they would tie the candidate to a huge steel garbage can, for his privileged appointment. If he fussed, he got a Mohawk-styled shearing. ’Twas but one lone protester—the first. A week of the scissors and a tad more training, and the boys in the White House were getting the finest of clips.

 

 

AS THE SIGNIFICANCE of his dispirited situation increased, a homesick night arrived wherein Shanan was starving and ate thirteen trays of Spanish rice. Twelve— “Jeeez! Is this stuff good!” prisoners hated— “This is just like my Mom used to make!” the stuff and gave— “Hey, guys, how often do they feed us this stuff!” him their trays— “Man! I could eat this stuff all day!” to keep his mouth occupied.

 

     As Shanan was devouring his immense collection of supper, the others, their keen interest and eager chatter escalating by the minute, began making wild-and-wooly wagers with their candy, morning pastry, back-rubs, and cigarettes, venturing solicitously that their boy, Shanan, either could or could not eat the entirety of the thirteen portions of Spanish rice. As their compounding starchy-edible-seed conqueror was finally swallowing his last gulps, the day room became a virtual madhouse, with the men screaming and cheering loudly and mingling closely around the long, steel dining table. The toughest, baddest, meanest man among all those in the tank solemnly offered his kindly assistance and personally spoon-fed the last three mouthfuls and the last piece of rice to him. Shanan, arms and hands now draped limply at his sides, eyelids at half-mast could not move a muscle, nor could he blink.

 

     The vice president of the White House beamed delightedly and asked politely if he could touch Shanan’s by now blimpish stomach. Acquiesced, and after the vice president had poked just above the naval lightly, a small white dot appeared and gradually faded into the surrounding hue. The jailhouse glutton’s gluttonous belly now resembled a bright-pink water-balloon—stretched to its maximum usefulness. In the year nineteen sixty-seven, eating boiled eggs, rather than Spanish rice, a motion picture actor by name of Paul Newman used this same scenario in the movie Cool Hand Luke. Shanan, on the other stripe, was still allergic to eggs, and the prisoners would have half killed for them, anyway.

 

     In conclusion to this eat-feat of endurance, two jovial men: one from the winner’s circle, and one nondescript loser, made a cradle by coupling their arms and carried Shanan gently to a steel bench running the length of the steel bulkhead segregating them from another tank. The rest of the inmates brandished wider than normal smiles and laughed in absolute amazement.

 

 

NOT A QUARTER of an HOUR had elapsed, and Mr. Spanish-Rice-Lover screamed himself off the steel bench by the steel bulkhead. The others, focusing instantly on the man and the scream, jumped to their feet, fastened their unbelieving eyes on him and that which was unbelievably behind him, and added clarifying screams to his “—FIRE…! FIRE…!”

 

     The County Jail administrators, not agreeing with the choice of the man the Mexicans in the tank adjacent to Shanan’s had voted in as their president, had insisted the inmates select another leader. This infuriated the Mexicans, and they riled themselves into a state of temporary madness, setting afire their mattresses, books, blankets, and whatever item they could grab that would burn, including their garments. Large areas of pale green paint on the riveted steel bulkhead behind Shanan were blistering into half basketballs. The temperature skyrocketed to what seemed to be more than a hundred and twenty-five seething degrees in less than ten fearful minutes. County-jail guards were simultaneously trying to extinguish the raging fire and fend off a raging pack of Mexican arms and fists. In between sprays and blows, they beat the offensive Mexicans half to death, who, in return, injured several unarmed guards in the skirmish.

 

     Attempting to gain a clear breath of fresh air, yet with little success, wide-eyed Shanan’s slender body pressed hard against the iron bars dressing the center of three now-gutted day room windows as men were crushing in behind him, panicking, yelling through the bars of the windows, “Help! Get us out’a here!” They burst their lungs a hundred times through those sooting, jagged openings. Ashy smoke poured in from every orifice imaginable, streaming mercilessly through cracks, through loose mortar, and through tiny holes, relentlessly in-whiffling itself unhindered—as if by its nature possessing a free pass into Shanan’s tank. Wobbly ladders extended to their limit from the top of fire trucks were all but colliding with neighboring branches. Scrambling toward the upper floors at breakneck speed, as if invisible wings were lifting visible black rubber boots swiftly upward from rung to rung—firemen, often half dangling from the side of ladders, trying to manage a tighter grip at every rung, ascended with tugged hoses and portable apparatus, as if life itself were depending upon their success, and it was. A criminally insane half-hour of exertion, and the fire danger was subdued and so were the Mexican prisoners, wounded or otherwise, broken glass, blood, and ashes strewn everywhere! Shanan and his co-victims could breathe again.

 

 

Lamentable consequences (lamentable, depending upon from whose side an individual considered this particular state of affairs) from this mass fire attention, or so they reported, terminated a well-planned jailbreak attempt from Shanan’s tank. In ready for that very night’s escape, two iron window-bars had mysteriously reformed themselves, had sawn themselves off crudely at their base, and were now pretzeled upward from their top iron casing. Eleven hardcore prisoners were to leave after dark, in a mere handful of hours. At midnight, they were to have slithered down a series of tied and twisted bed sheets and blankets to the fourth-floor roof, and from there—every man for himself.

 

     This whole show was White House originated and organized. They had shrewdly traded hordes of their personal imports to obtain blue jeans from men perplexed but unquestioning, and had unraveled the thread from the britches a single strand at a time. With this achieved, the White House men grouped eight one-foot lengths of the blue and white cotton threads and dexterously knotted each of its ends, thereby fashioning short cords of cotton cable, and assembled two-man cutting crews into round-the-clock shifts. These crews fed drops of water, and sand manufactured from ground bricks loosened from the walls of two jail cells, by minuscule drips and pinches around the base of each iron bar, and figure-eighted the assembled cotton strands briskly back and forth, shhff-shhff, shhff-shhff, fervently until they had sawn through the base of each iron bar adorning the window in the rear cell, and, in due course had, shhff-shhff, shhff-shhff “…cut clean through them suckers.”

 

     Although Shanan had taken part in severing the bars, he was not among those preparing to leave: He was not facing endless years of imprisonment as they were. Nineteen pairs of used jeans, and in a grueling week and a half, the abrasive, wet sand had eaten through the two center bars, but altogether in vain. No break would ensue. The guards had inspected Shanan’s tank for fire damage. They found none; but they had quickly spotted the sawn bars, had prevented the break, and threw the ringleaders swiftly into solitary confinement.

 

 

A CLOSED-MOUTHED MONTH dispensed its incommunicado prophecies, and Shanan was at last liberated from that exemplary institution whose clever associates are ever subject to providential ways and means to fill. The criminal court judge had sentenced Shanan to prompt expulsion from Arizona, and three years out-of-state probation. As Shanan was bagging a meager bundle of clothing and odd sundries, and souvenirs, from beneath his bunk, several White House inmates quietly requested he make two rather sensitive telephone calls to acquaintances of theirs in the city. If he was successful, they had asked him to return to the front of the courthouse at two P.M. sharp, and remove his sport coat. The inmates had written special phone numbers diagonally across Bro Bin’s flesh, just under his left arm, making them appear as if they were old tattoos.

 

     ‘Do not expect favors from an inmate cut loose’ is a common jailhouse proverb, even in the best of lockups; however, Shanan was not your common inmate. By two P.M. on the nose, he had accomplished the telephone calls faithfully and was standing near the front lawn of the courthouse, gazing silently up at the sixth floor of his past, granite home. Lowering his big, brown eyes slowly down the old stone wall and over to the thick, brass-covered doors of the courthouse, he slid his jacket off the back of both arms. Swinging it loosely over his right shoulder, he, with a skip, a wink upward, and a smile, departed light-footedly off toward the East. The roar from the top floor sounded as if Shanan had just single-handedly won the World Series. This was the first time in his whimsical life that an entire body of his equals (or a reasonable facsimile), despite the size or the circumstances, actually liked him. What was more, resulting from the beautiful Arizona climate, and his settled nerves, his dry skin now had the glow of a mythological icon, exiled to New York—the first time.

 

     During the ninety discomfiting days of Shanan’s incarceration, his cage of decay had unfolded so large a collection of inhuman events clean from under the palisade of hell, including the bad cop who hanged himself involuntarily, that Mr. Newman could have made fifty more jailhouse movies, if he survived the first of them.

 

 

YEAR 1962

 

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

LATE WINTER

4:00 A.M.

 

DEEP and freshly fallen snow cloaked the frozen ground of the muted, moonless morning; and Shanan, taking advantage of the yet falling ambient sound-muffler, had just shattered the window of the office of a locally owned family restaurant and tavern, immediately adjacent to his home.

 

     Although the smithereening was nearly soundless, Shanan ran stealthily, leaped high over a concrete-block fence, and waited, not breathlessly, but patiently…to see if nearby residents or a prowl car policeman had heard the smash…. He studied the concrete-blocks, and eventually feeling assured that law and order was not going to show its assiduous face to investigate this break—though faint—in the morning calm, he carefully extracted the remaining pieces of broken window, hopped through it deftly and into the office: unlit and pintsize in every direction. Moving quietly as a mouse in cheap sneakers, he slipped into the familiar barroom: as familiar as in a favorite and often-visited haunt of his: Mister B. Arnold. Many spirits of Christmases past seemed to be merrymaking in the dimness and recesses of the barroom. A clink of toasting champagne glasses, or was that an echo from the breaking of the window glass? A shuffling of feet upon the floor, or was that a sound of his own? Nevertheless, the outdoor streetlight adding to the neon-sign-adorned windows offered him luminous assistance, and he, wondering if he were nervous or simply high-strung (a shuffling of feet upon the floor, or was that the sound of his own?), wasted little effort in prying open and stripping the vending machines of their tumbling and clinking nickels, dimes, and quarters, quarters, and more quarters, a number of them rolling at ten thousand thunderous decibels and slamming a seismic forty-nine-point Richter BOOM, fulminating (huge-eyed) against an exterior wall.

 

     With this out of the way, Shanan, sweating a reduced version of Niagara Falls, located a cracked bar-broom and swept the tinkling, cigarette-machine broken glass tightly against the wall (so Joff, the middle-aged and good-humored bartender, would not trip or cut himself while opening the place at daybreak). Shanan, now hearing footsteps, leaped through the office window, tracked misleading paths through the falling and fluffy snow speedily north, south, east, west, and finally around the block, through a backyard, through the falling and fluffy snow, and through the back doorway of his home—filled with coal-executed warmth. He climbed the rear stairs to his room and counted the newly acquired illegal loot from the Birch House Restaurant, stoically, very stoically (nearly a hundred and fifty dollars stoically), hid it ingeniously in a dusty sparrow’s roost a foot behind a broken freeze board in the attic, and retired to bed. Only six days had passed since he had last climbed through a window of the—Hold on—stolen, I say, stolen from the Birch House Restaurant. Shanan was now a serial criminal, somewhat suspected by city detectives.

 

 

THE NEXT EVENING, after selling the coins to a stolen-coins broker for dollar bills, minus the customary ten percent, he was kicking back (as they used to say metaphorically) in the ample basement lounge of the Syracuse United Service Organization (U.S.O.), pretending he was still military connected: He was a liar. As he nursed his soda pop, he told a woman friend (they were seeing each other but had no physical relationship) who was employed solely as a U.S.O. hostess, to comfort the young men whose homes were anywhere but in or near Syracuse, that he would have to stop seeing her.

 

     “Why?” she inquired defensively, “We like each other, and my job with the newspaper pays well enough if you ever run short. I hear you’re only paid twice a month.”

 

     “Money isn’t a problem, Joyce.” He bent forward unhurriedly, took a fast sip of his drink, relaxed against the back of his chair, and confessed, “Nobody knows this, Joyce,” lowering his voice, “but I’m a burglar.” Joyce did not react. “And I got a hunch, Joyce…I ain’t kidding, a strong feeling, see. I had a dream: I was hiding in my family’s attic, and the cops caught me; it was like I was alive and aware of everything, in the dream I mean. My dreams come true; this kind does, anyway. You wait,” he intoned, “within ninety to a hundred and eighty days, I’ll be behind bars.” With his confession verily laid at the feet of the hostess, Shanan half-drowned his tonsils with his social refreshment, raised his head, gargled thrice, and exited the building. The evening was now dark enough to begin his saloon-shopping for scores, easy marks, pigeons—roses with many names—and babes of the shadows.

 

 

OVER THE PAST YEAR OR SO, Shanan had drunk half the city, under the table, and had slept with at least half the feminine freebies in the downtown quarter, and half the hookers, rarely paying a penny…impressive chat. His first sexual encounter was not until after his discharge from the Navy, and the experience was so explosive, he was forever compensating for lost epochs. Shanan was a fornicator.

 

     Now, consequential to Shanan’s unrestrained life style, the flesh of his body had become riddled with eczema and devastated by a spreading staph infection. Shingles, scales, scabs, and boils covered half or more of his entire body. Prostitutes in the downtown clip-joints wanted no part of him. Offering triple-money on a Sunday night availed nothing. He looked fifty and admitted it, but was equally curious as to why the appearance of prostitutes nearly always reflected an age far greater than what they were.

 

     In a rundown section of town, he rented a filthy two-room cockroach farm—with a complementing bathtub, filled with life. Unaware of the more advantageous social structure of his world, he was hardly ever home, or seeking gainful employment. He chose, instead, to drink throughout the night; involve himself in a saloon fight once in a blurry moon; gamble until cocks were crowing themselves hoarse; became rather familiar with Miss Miranda: in the city jail every so often; and, if he was not lifting a wallet from the back pocket of a drunken wino, he would inevitably be found hitting the sunup edge of the night with a babe who would tolerate his company at her dive for a morning of irrelevant, or should I say irreverent, chitchat. He was a two-bit, hustling, slick-talking, haughty young no-account man with a clever gift of gab and a wild taste for the lowlife.

 

 

QUITE DETACHED FROM THE ABOVE

 

NORTH-SIDE METHODIST CHURCH

 

SUNDAY MORNING, and church bells were singing their silvery invitations to the desirous of spiritual gain, to shame-ridden hearts, and into sleepy organs of hearing dwelling within the close and distant neighborhoods—all within earshot of the spiritually tolling exhortation. Spring semester had finished its course, and apart from commanding regular steps into the sanctuary, the church leaders scheduled no Sunday school for the rest of the summer. Today’s session would be the last until the start of September.

 

     “And this season’s Honor Class Golden Award…goes to—!” the jubilant superintendent exclaimed. “Shan, get up here and receive this.” The other teachers and children stood and cheered and applauded and gave a loud ovation to Shanan and his excited group of smiling six- and seven-year-old boys.

 

     Six captivating months beforehand, the North-side Methodist Church Sunday school superintendent had approached Shanan at his home, with this woeful “…lack of teachers…Gosh, Shan,” predicament. He had not plied his attendance other than holidays; therefore, he was not quite able to say no. Guilt often rides a white stallion gallantly to the gate of atonement, but dismounting and entering through it requires genuine bravery. Nonetheless, if ever a productive need arose, Shanan could be quite a scholarly yet gentle disciplinarian. So, he had taken the job.

 

 

AS SHANAN AND HIS YOUNGER SISTER, Flo, were casually leaving the regular Sunday Service, she complimented him good-humoredly on his award. He turned to her, wide-eyed, dumb-like, and— “God, I’m still hung over from last night, Flo.” Shanan stood teetering. “Could you please take me home so I can get a nap? I’m whipped.” The latest Sunday school Honor Class Golden Award winner was the only person in his family, who did not own an automobile.

 

 

THERE WAS Shanan. Two ambitious Weeks had slyly outdone themselves since he had received the Sunday schoolteacher’s award. He had eaten a politely catered breakfast, had finished the Sunday newspaper crossword puzzle, and rose from his chair, smiling, proud of his ability to define every word—in pen—in less than half an hour. Doing those difficult puzzles wearied him, and he walked off and laid himself down upon the narrow cot in his cell in the City Jail: nineteen counts of burglary! A two-time offender, he was facing fifteen to thirty years—the hard way.

 

———

 

A BREAK IN THE WHETHERS

 

IN THE EARLY NINETEEN SIXTIES, certain sub-government factions (as similar bands have since the resurrection of Christ, and more so since the early eighteen hundreds) will begin years of recruiting paycheck-attracted celebrities and private individuals surreptitiously, including a selection of judiciary personalities, eminent novelists, clergy, church members of diverse faiths, and scientists of natural history, to mock, misrepresent, comic and/or mythologize specific religions, religious and Biblical figures, subliminally or patently obvious, not excluding Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and Buddha, and not excluding the Royal Champion of the King James Bible. Appointment mission: the spreading of doubt—to undermine the authority of books of national and global faiths (Example: Refrain from physically punishing your disobedient children), to undermine (as they will other like-luminaries of the church) the true historical morals of James I, the first Stuart king of England, married to Anne of Denmark in fifteen eighty-nine, and succeeded to the throne by his son, Charles the First. Many will be recruited to produce Godly events from historical and ancient times as hilarious and ribald episodes with lewd characters in an attempt to neutralize, dishearten, de-gender, and reduce to pure superstition, if not ashes, the Faiths of the world.

 

     These activists will actually find revolutionary lines of attack by which to alter the United States Constitution, in favor of atheists, one named Madalyn Murray O’Hair (whose body will disappear from the face of the Earth shortly thereafter, not to be found until in a form of a Potter’s Field in the year 2001, a near prototype of the abiding place of Judas Iscariot). O’Hair and a gang of others like her, all United States extremists, will win a temporary victory in a nineteen hundred and sixty-three U.S. Supreme Court case decision declaring the exercising of prayer in public schools unlawful and banned, and times will change: Children will become radically uncontrollable. Madalyn Murray O’Hair herself, or so it shall appear, having cast her thirty pieces (her silver dollars) to the burier, will be banned from the face of the Earth. Presumptuous gossip of her converting to Christianity will follow her disappearance—assumed—more so to incite jeers and taunts from her past equals, yet possibly for inspiration.

 

     As the forsaken pages of the Book of Moral Years are turned and made vague by the personal and uninhibited desires of Her readers, new and ostentatious religions, scriptures, and holidays will appear, for no apparent reason, and will begin to splinter-group the faiths of millions. An ounce of cyanide cannot be detected in a pound of granulated sugar, nor an ounce of hatred in a singing congregation. The more fractured a belief in the landmarks of morality, the more enmity in the masses: impossible to avoid.

 

     The concept that our venerable Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations are no longer Christian-associated holidays based on the birth of Jesus the Christ of God will be imbedded thoroughly throughout the world. Christmas and Easter haters and charity-less persons (miserly, covetous) and groups will try their level best to degrade Christmas, and Easter, into something just for pigs or something celebrated only by heathens and the unconverted. A range of protests will sound, though, as may be heard in a future family event wherein a sister will cry, “Heathens are trying to remove Christ from Christmas!” followed by a brother elucidating clearly, “Sis, you don’t mention the name of Jesus in public or to anybody. And I’m your flesh-and-blood brother, and you’re offended whenever I begin talking about him in your house. Seems to me, my sister, those heathens are only doing you a favor,” followed by an introspective sister, “?… ?…”

 

 

EVOLUTION will become virtually the new religion of the day and, in time, we will be able to look forward to our “mythical cousins,” monkeys, apes, and canines casting ballots in their own electoral districts, “…and why shouldn’t they?” In the future, this new school of thought will be taken advantage of prematurely, as tricksters will be arrested for voting at the polls, but under their dog or cat’s clever name. To counter these short-lived depravities, and because of obvious mood swings in political correctness (people in general, showing open indignation at hearing their name applied to a dog or a cat or a gold fish or an automobile: “Ol’ Betsy,” or a boat: “Judy’s Mistake,” or a fat pig: “Ferdinand,” ad infinitum), laws will be enacted against the naming of vehicles, computers, and pets after human beings, “Junior” included. Pet names like Spot, Puff, Ruffles, Sniffles, Tinkles, Sprinkles, Puddles, Piddles, Splash, and Tidal Wave will be government-approved. Naming your toy French poodle “Gigi” will be considered a Class-B Felony.

 

     Nevertheless, a positive side to these disquieting interruptions will emerge eventually. From fear inspired by an unusual, newly discovered—in those days—doctrine with regard to dying, death, and the grave, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist), the Church of Scientology, and other non-Christian groups (Christian defined as a person believing and acting upon the tenets of the Lord, Jesus (the Founder of the Faith), or His Holy Bible, particularly the New Testament, not merely presenting themselves as “nice folks,” often erroneously) will be clamoring for baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. The age of the recipient will not be a criterion. An inexplicable ripple from this (though militant and murderous mobs will arise in attempts to crush this religious phenomenon) will be that none of the baptismal participants will depart from their original Faith: A Hindu will remain a Hindu; a Muslim will remain a Muslim; and so on in like manner will do the rest of their eager-to-be-sprinkled counterparts.

 

     Coffins, crypts, and burial chambers of all types will become practically obsolete, and bodies will be simply wrapped and planted in the earth or burned quickly or simply laid out in the sun, at “obscenely tremendous savings”: a custom of certain peoples and Third-World countries since the beginning of nations. Many funerary particulars and embellishments for the dead will be always found on sale and purchasable at cost-cutting department stores, wholesale outlets, a wide variety of other national markets, including mom-and-pop grocery stores.

 

     In those very same days (sparked negatively by complaining superstars and famous headliners crying over “…insensitive lack of press coverage on…” the death of their pet), upon the death of world-loved celebrities, along with the miles of directly related media articles, numerous biographies, dedicated memorials to iron bridges, concrete buildings, and the renaming of obscure countries, dedications of a new nature will appear concurrently. At first but not as harmoniously, these dedications will be found in adjacent page and time slots by Government mandate, including cause of death, and not to exclude missing persons of no celebrity status. Equal-length national editorials will cover a comparable demise of a randomly selected, totally unheard-of individual, and his or her grieving family and friends, regardless of how few in number, from anywhere on the globe. Joadie Kay Jones, for example, eighty-five years old, who died in Maryville, Tennessee, December twelve, nineteen hundred and ninety-four, who might have raised seven children, scrubbed floors all her life, and went to church faithfully every Wednesday and Sunday.

 

     This law of equal representation, enacted under civil and equal rights amendments, will pertain to all relative occurrences. For a brief time, this shift in celebrity-glorifying will prove to be a novel enterprise, but soon thereafter, news media moguls and page- and news media time-purchasers will determine happily—that grandiose publicity for the dead be reserved for the extremely illustrious: presidents, kings, queens, monarchs, and prophets of God.

 

 

AN INCREDIBLE new piece of legislation will be sanctioned by law as the Good Person Act. Individuals showing no arrest record whatever for the first eighteen years of their life will be entitled to personal-purchase discounts throughout the United States, her territories, and commonwealths. The NEW I.R.S will tally proof-receipts; and, preestablished rebates will be deducted from the citizen’s tax responsibilities. These discount figures will escalate thereafter in five-year increments based on the keeping of a clean record by the recipient. Arrests and arrests with convictions—with regard to special cases, including acts of immorality, will be erasable through manifold times-and-terms agreements and conditions.

 

     This peculiar law will prove to be a boon to the United States of America government economics, as tax dodger statistics will decrease substantially. Those Good Persons not found in a tax-paying bracket—the elderly, the less fortunate, or the homeless, will receive receipt-compensation cash vouchers, food- and housing-costs compensations, medical privileges, or clothing tokens.

 

     For the majority of our populace, saving both important and redundant receipts will become a new way of life, and people of circumstance will be gathering the carelessly discarded proofs of purchase and receipts from the streets, supermarket ashtrays, and floors in public and commercial buildings; and, the U.S.A. will look physically twenty percent less polluted. Deplorably, though, many false arrests will be made due to spite and prejudices found within law enforcement agencies.

 

A HANDFUL OF YEARS SHALL PASS, and prosperity of “goods for the needy” in the United States and countless other First- and Second-World countries will reach a height not yet accredited to the history of the world. Retail prices will modify themselves to within easy reach of the poorest among the poor, who will be less of a puzzle—yet no less apparent. Quite before this time, however, rebate offers (a soon-coming brilliant marketing contrivance) will prove to be beyond difficult to receive, as companies will irreverently neglect sending them to the purchasers until their third or fourth request—or the threat of a lawsuit. Thus, in time, rebates will be referred to by many and oppressively as just another cheap corporate hustle (bigger yacht for the C.E.O.).

 

 

IF THINGS DO NOT CHANGE

 

LEGISLATION allowing the murder of human babies in the womb at various stages of development (including halfway out of the womb) will advance to the six months out of the womb level. Parents will have a six-month sympathy option (due primarily to the slashing of state and national aid to the poor) to dispose of their children under government supervision and claim the right to command that the baby be slaughtered if the parents do not think they are capable of the raising of “it.”

 

     Failing orphanages worldwide by the tens of thousands will take immediate advantage of this slippery opportunity to lighten their financial load. Consequently, the diminishing of faith in God will flourish.

 

     Added to the last sentence above: Leaders of major Christian religions will cease to teach the once-commanded requirement of baptism for the redeeming salvation of the soul, though their own Lord, Jesus, had mandated His apostles to go into all the world, baptizing and save the believers. Because of this and hardcore motion picture productions and television programs and the arrogant media and entertainment industry at large, the macho factor in what used to be classified as “normal human beings” in this country, as well as a host of others, will rise visibly to a level of “When they try their hardest to be nice to you, flamboyantly scorn your cheery, lovable neighbors, and make sure they hear or see your—cool—expression.”

 

     A categorical jealousy will emerge against happiness these unemotionals do not possess for themselves. For, in their nights, their barren Soul will shriek into their tormented mind: “You may not have the life tomorrow beyond that which you occupy this day, and the sun will still be shining for others.” The sins occupying their restless spirit will appear to them as impossible to remove. Nevertheless, the day will come eventually in which their tears shall flow, their mournful cries shall be heard, and the loving hand of God will dissolve their sorrowful obstacle.

 

 

STATE PASSPORTS and requirements of State Line and Border Fees at each crossing will become mandatory, enacted by Congress as Operation Jackpot. Regardless of how close to a state line a man or woman lives, he or she will want to have his or her State Passport handy and time-stamped when entering states outside the region in which he or she resides. Violators of this law will be investigated thoroughly, hit with high-dollar fines or up to a year in jail, or receive tougher penalties if convicted of line-crossing connected with a crime. This convenient legislation will vastly increase government employment and government revenues more than dramatically, cut significantly into every form of illegal interstate transporting, and confine criminals to narrower margins of search-and-seizure rules. Crimes in virtually every category will be greatly reduced. The reins of Big Brother will be tightening to ineffable and unexplored peripheries; and, the need for high-tech electronic tracking equipment will be monumental and cause new employment for more than hundreds of thousands.

 

 

NOT LONG into the twenty-first century, a fiercely debated worldwide law will find its way into the chambers of the code assemblers of First-World nations. If the statute is approved, city, county jail, and prison officials will not release the entire body of anyone who has died while in custody, after proven guilty beyond all question and doubt of an act or acts of crime of heinous proportion, premeditated murder included.

 

     Instead of committing the dead prisoner immediately to his or her family member(s), the state will mummify the brain and the heart of the body of the deceased and encase them in two blocks of casting resin seven inches greater than the organs’ girth: a suspending process all but calcifying the specimen for eternity. Administrators will ship these resin-entombed items to restricted and heavily patrolled areas in the far northern reaches of the world, and order them interred in permanent glacial ice mounds, at depths exceeding two hundred feet.

 

 

IN CONCLUSION to the above assemblage of foreshadows, as the new century—the twenty-first—swiftly approaches, a marked increase of false prophets and Jesus and Ark of the Covenant sightings will rise from the face of the Earth and the faces of the Highly expectant.

 

 

YEAR 1963

JULY

 

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK

 

THE NEW BILLIARD HALL was filled with wild celebration the day Shanan was set free and entered therein. A year had elapsed, and Shanan was released a hundred percent clean. His flesh was healed, the boils were gone, and he no longer wore the countenance of a fifty-year-old. He would have received his discharge long before July, but just enough suppers after his placement, vowing that no man, God, nor the devil would ever steal his summer, he made a dramatic escape into the intoxicating caress of his Freedom-Loving Sunny Holiday. Shanan was caught two adventure-filled, yet happy months afterward, in the quaint town of North East, Pennsylvania. The arrangement was brief and quiet, and proper authorities delivered him to the smiling troopers waiting at the “rainy” New York state line.

 

 

HIS BILLIARD HALL PALS cheered, hoisted him immediately to their shoulders, paraded him ceremoniously around the pool hall for five Mardi gras-styled minutes, and set him gently to his feet.

 

     “We got a beauty planned, Shanny,” a friend of his boasted candidly. “At least five grand in the place. We can get in without a problem, and we know you can open the safe. We get in, open the back door for you—You in with us?”

 

     “I didn’t steal for the money,” Shanan blurted in rebuff, “or because I was greedy; I stole for the excitement, man: the adventure!” he stressed. “I don’t want to leave town again. I’d miss the babes!”

 

     He owed not a soul, and judicial process of law arranged to show no conviction on his record. Concerning his confinement, they had placed him in a unique hospital, to heal and to do a medical stretch. His parents had swung a deal with the judge: a boyhood friend of Shanan’s father, the father of Shanan’s boyhood pal, Perry, the peer he had wrestled in grammar school—Well… they knew Shanan needed help, anyway.

 

 

THE NEXT NIGHT, as stars were twinkling their brilliant yet silent rhythms throughout the Milky Way, and as lovers were parking their vehicle by the shores of lakes and ponds, Shanan stepped back into the billiard hall, smiling widely, arms, hands, and wiggling fingers flaring outwardly—to nobody.

 

     Adjusting his feelings to the abrupt emptiness of the place, and knowing he was a rather efficient pool hustler and, having manipulated unconscious handicaps in many a contest of the past, had trimmed nearly every fame-named shooter and pool hustler in town—at least one time—though they would not admit their embarrassing loss in public, he relaxed. Shanan, likewise, had suffered his poverty in the trade; memories of tunneling both hands uselessly to the bottom of his pockets were not unusual; but this night, the pool hall was without another player, excluding Dennis the manager. So, Shanan took a seat and grabbed a book to scan until the next pigeon—as he called them—came in to shoot a game.

 

     Shanan was a floater: in this instance an airhead, and if you are not familiar with airhead, sleepy hollow will suffice. He was a likable sort; nonetheless, a scattering of individuals considered him somewhat weird, and the result of his light-minded trait usually left him a loner.

 

     Mr. Pool Enthusiast was reading a magazine article about his billiard hero, Willie Masconi, the world-renowned straight-pool shooter, action photos galore, when, breaking the circumfluous silence in the establishment, the telephone pealed a half-ring from the back wall…and rang again. Dennis splashed a rag into the counter sink and ran to the receiver—a moment—“Damn!” he exclaimed, mouth widening as if it were an agitated yawn. “You kidding…?” Dennis finished his electrified conversation in less than sixteen seconds, stood aghast, stared blankly at the ceiling, clunked the telephone back onto the hook, and returned quietly to the main room of the pool hall. Shanan’s ears in radar mode directed his vision toward the counter, took note of an expression of hopelessness, decided this scene was not exactly in focus, and pressed the manager for details.

 

     “The Jacks brothers,” Dennis exploded, “got in a terrible accident out at the Quarry! Kelly’s dead, and Mickey’s in a coma in the hospital, with his head caved in like a soup bowl.”

 

     “Soup bowl?”

 

     “You deaf?” Dennis shouted, “A soup bowl, man, a soup bowl. They said his head looked like a soup bowl! His head was bashed in so bad—TOOK OUT HALF HIS SKULL!”

 

     “I can hear!” Shanan turned, rested the magazine onto a coffee table, and turned again toward the speaker. “Well?”

 

     “They were drinking,” Dennis fired back, “and partying. And coming back to town, they lost control and cut a telephone pole in two with the front of their car. They were doing a hundred, the cops figured, and on the Quarry road!”

 

     “Gads!” Shanan exclaimed. “Are you kidding? The Quarry road’s a pretzel—”

 

     “No, I’m not kidding; I’m telling the truth. They hit the pole, it swings out toward the field; but the pole was still connected to the wires. The sucker swings back, kills Kelly on the spot, and bashes Mickey’s head. Right now, them that were in the car are in the hospital. Wasn’t it Kelly and Mick wrecked your bike on the telephone pole when we were kids?”

 

     “Yeah…so?”

 

     “You don’t get the connection, Doof? They wreck your bike on a pole, and now a pole masacrates them.”

 

     Shanan lowered his brows and glared deeply at Dennis. “You’re sick, man! How can you talk something like that? What about Jimmy in his souped-up sports car, when he got killed hitting the City Garage? Did he ever throw a garage at anybody? DUH…? Jimmy wouldn’t’ve hurt a flea.

 

     “You ain’t cool, man, talking that way—let’s clear this up right now! Mickey and me are buddies. I don’t hold twenty-years-ago stuff against anyone. Not now, not in my mind, not in my heart, not ev—I ain’t that kind of scum. I don’t even remember it anymore, and you go double-puking this garbage? You’re brain’s living in slop, Dennis. If the pole my bike was wrapped around didn’t kill me, why would it mean a pole had to kill Kelly?”

 

     “Well, they knew—”

 

     “You’re not making sense, man; you’re the doof,” he flared. “Everybody did trash, and we’re still doing trash, and hey, so are you, Dennis, by talking this…this—I haven’t heard a word you said, Denny. But keep talking like you are, and Mick’ll cream you when he gets fixed and out of the hospital.” Shanan took to his feet and left—thoroughly disgusted. Dennis stood watching from behind him, silent, feeling a twinge of shame….

 

 

BECAUSE MICKEY and Shanan had chummed together for years, the Jacks family naturally thought…and soon a soft knock rattled against the front door of the House of Bin. Mickey’s brother Steve entered. He and Shanan had known each other since kindergarten and had kept their friendship, to a favorable degree, warm: A spiritual type of respect existed between the two of them. Steve was not a partier, was home sleeping the night of the accident, but was now standing proudly before Shanan, representing Mickey and his family.

 

     “We were sort of wondering, Shan,” Steve sighed, rather stoically. “Seeing you and Mickey were kind’a tight...well...we were hoping you wouldn’t…mind...joining his pallbearers. We already buried Kelly—Gee, Shanny…” Tears were drifting along his lower lids, rising to escape his proud eyes, yet Steve remained pacific and courageous and held them back.

 

     Without hesitating or asking when or where the wake would be held, Shanan accepted the honor, and modestly. “By the way,” he inquired, “how’s Wendell?” Wendell was the brother doing the driving the night of the accident and was only injured.

 

     “He’s pretty bad off, Shan. He’s drinking, condemning himself for the whole—He just sits around wishing it were him instead of...well.…”

 

     “Steve,” Shanan consoled like a clergyman, “tell Wendell…I, my family…we care for him. He’ll come through it okay. God will take care of everything.” An hour or so went by, and, upon the completion of a domestic task, Shanan called Steve for the date and the name of the funeral parlor. Respect….

 

 

When SHANAN retired for the night, he whispered a long prayer for Mickey, and meditated flat on his back for the better part of a half an hour. For a second or two, he thought he heard Mickey’s voice moaning from somewhere, hollow, as if intensity were insignificant. Forgetting not his friendship, in the passage of years, he would again say occasional prayers for him and Kelly. Mickey and him were buddies, and he missed him—“Period!”

 

†