Callisto (42 page)

I held up two fingers twisted together like pretzels. “Him and me are like that. He even got me my own little cell phone because he likes me so much, just you ask him about that. Yeah, Bob and Chet even invited me to the big meeting in Topeka July Fourth, kind of a special guest, you might say. That's not long now, too bad I'll probably be stuck here for something that's all a big mistake anyway. Bob'll be kind of pissed about it, me not showing up, I mean, but when you tell him how I got sidetracked I guess he'll understand okay.”

He looked at me like I'm making a joke, so I said, “No kidding, I'm their buddy. Just you ask the FBI if they didn't tap my calls back and forth to those two, well, mainly to Chet, calls I made on that phone they gave me for a gift and issued the invite to Topeka on. Talk to Agent Kraus and Agent Deedle, they'll tell you, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, but like you'd accept street directions from a totally drunk man.

“Maybe they can spring me outta here,” I said.

“You'll get that Bible tomorrow,” he says. “Are there any other works of a religious nature you might like?”

“Well, there was one religious book I read all the way through, it's called
The Way of the Nun
, but I don't think it's so famous as the Bible is. Or you could get me my favorite reading book which is
The Yearling
. Did you ever read that? It won the Pulitzer Prize. But not the short version for kids to read, the long one with everything in it the way the writer wrote it in the first place, that's the one I want.”

“I don't run a lending library,” he says.

“Okay then, just the Bible.”

He went away and I did some walking around in the cell, thinking this is the most exercise I'll get, walking circles in the cell, until I get to see the romper room that is, which is for exercising in, that soldier said. And while I'm thinking about him along he comes, and this time I read the name tag on his shirt, hard to read because it's black on brown, but this guy's name is Fogler, and he did not look happy, kind of chewing his own lips he's so mad about something.

“Quit that!” he barks at me.

“Huh?”

“Quit walking in a circle that way! You can walk back and forth or back, along the wall there, then come up to the front again, but no going circular. It's directly back and forth or in a square kinda, but circularizing is out, you got that!”

“Okay. I didn't know.”

“Learn!” he says and stomps away down the corridor again.
He must keep his eyes glued to the TV screen out there every second in every minute. This would be a big embarrassment the first time I had to take a dump with him or someone else watching. There is something not decent about that, I think.

Lunch was beef patties and fries, not bad at all. Fogler was just fooling with me about the shit food here. Then I got another visitor, this one is bald, also with glasses. He said his name is Lieutenant Beamis and he's there to ask me some questions, get-to-know-me kind of stuff he says, but what it is is these sheets of cardboard he starts holding up with splatters of black ink across them.

“You've probably seen this in the movies,” he says. “Just give me your first impression of these as I hold them up.”

“It's to show what kind of guy I am, I've seen it.”

“You could put it that way. What's this one suggest to you, straight off the top of your head without thinking about it?”

“Someone dropped the paint pot.”

“And this one?”

“Damn, he did it again.”

“This?”

“That is one clumsy son of a gun you've got making these.”

He let the sheets down. “I'd advise you to take this seriously, Deefus. You don't seem to realize you're in the worst kind of trouble. I'm actually here to help you, to customize our approach to your problem so we can resolve this.”

“I'm sorry, I thought you just wanted information, like where Dean Lowry has got his hideout.”

“Revealing that kind of thing could be useful in this instance, yes, but bear with me a little while and I'll just run
through these. It's the way we do this.” He held up those cardboard sheets again.

“Okay, that one is two zebras with football helmets.

“A butterfly that has got tattered wings.

“A face with eyes but no nose. That could be a mouth there.

“Elephants walking away from each other. Maybe they had a fight.

“A jungle plant with flowers, also beetles all around.

“Now this one ...I don't know...a feathery ladies' hat? Exploding?”

He set the inkblot sheets down and opened up a notebook and clicks his pen, then starts asking questions about my life so far, childhood memories and so forth, so I was happy to do that, then after awhile he wants to know, “Where and when did you begin to feel that society failed you?”

“Failed me? How?”

“Failed to measure up. Failed to provide what you need. Failed to provide for others in need?”

“I've got no fight with society. Society is fine by me.”

“But there are things you'd like to see changed?”

“Sure, everyone wants to change this or that.”

“What kind of changes would you institute if you were President, let's say.”

“Well, first thing, I'd organize to get me set free.”

“And after that?”

“Go on TV and tell everyone exactly how it happened, this big mixup.”

“What about other issues? Issues of faith, issues of social justice, that kind of thing.”

“Okay, I'd make it against the law to have commercials on
TV. There'd be this one channel, the commercial channel, where you go if you want to see commercials. People would like that, I think.”

“Anything else?”

“Uhuh, I'd make it so the TV companies can't put a laugh track on any comedy show. No more canned laughter, I hate that. And I'd like to see those Hollywood movie stars get paid less. I heard the big ones get fifty million dollars just to make a single movie. That's too damn much.”

“What about religion in the schools? Any opinion on that?”

I was getting suspicious of this guy. The inkblots meant he's a shrink, but his questions were not very shrinky. He's supposed to be asking me about personal stuff, like what happened when I lost my mom, stuff like that, and did I get over it and so forth, but he isn't doing that, he's asking all this other stuff, so maybe he's just another FBI in disguise. I decided I would test him about that, so I said, “How's Kraus and Deedle?”

“Pardon?”

“Agent Kraus and Agent Deedle. They're the ones brung me in.”

“That doesn't concern me. Were you happy in school?”

“Uhuh, a very popular student, always getting elected for this and that, kind of a nuisance all those positions on councils and committees and so forth, but hey, when the public wants you that bad you just have to go along.”

“My information is that you were a very withdrawn student, the opposite of what you're telling me.”

“Well, you have got the wrong information. See, that's what landed me in here, wrong information, which just goes to show you can't trust that stuff to be reliable.”

“I'll take that on board,” he says. “Now, how about your sexual relationships?”

“What about them?”

“Hetero or homosexual, for the most part?”

“I'm not gay. Dean was gay, his sister said, but I didn't get to know him all that well myself.”

“You didn't form a homosexual union with Dean Lowry?”

“No, he's not my type.”

“And what type is your type?”

“I generally prefer them female.”

“Generally?”

“Well, all the time. I'm not gay.”

“Did you have a sexual relationship with Fenella Myers?”

“Who?”

“A school companion. You gave her name when you told the hitchhiker you wanted a car delivered to Denver.”

“Oh, you mean Feenie. That name just sprung into my head when I did that. She doesn't even live in Denver, she goes to college in Durango.”

“We're aware of that. No sexual or close personal relationship with Miss Myers?”

“No, but I liked her. She was smart.”

“You're attracted to smart women?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Is that why you carry a picture of the Secretary of State in your wallet?”

“I think Condi's cute. I like her style of dressing too. You do hear some people say she's way conservative the way she dresses, but I think that goes with the job, don't you? I never once saw someone with a political job wearing Spandex or something.”

“So Doctor Rice is your ideal woman?”

“She's a doctor too? I knew she was a piano player as well as a political person, but I didn't know she's a doctor on top of that. How long did she go to medical school?”

“She's not that kind of doctor. You wrote her a letter of confession, but that confession contained incorrect information. What do you think would be her reaction to being lied to by someone who says he's an admirer?”

“I didn't lie, only Dean isn't where I buried him, that's the reason for all this mixup. I would not lie to Condi. And what you said about my wallet? I had pretty near four hundred bucks in there that got taken away from me. I'd like to have that back.”

“Have you written letters to public figures before?”

“Just to Condi. And once to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.”

“Who's that?”

“She's the one wrote
The Yearling
. That's my favorite book. I read it sixteen times now. I wrote her how good her book is.”

“Any reply?”

“I got this letter back from the book publisher says she's dead.”

“Nobody else? No political or religious figures?”

“No, but I'll be writing to Preacher Bob about all this.”

“Preacher Bob the televangelist?”

“He's a friend of mine. He should know what happened here. It was Preacher Bob's phone that set off the bomb, so he'll want to know about that. Can I have some paper and a pen?”

“You can request those items from Lieutenant Harding. How often have you voted?”

“Never have done. If Condi runs, though, I'll vote for her.”

He shut his notebook and clicked his pen. “That's it for now. I may ask you some more questions at a later time. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“No charge. You're a shrink, aren't you.”

“That's right.”

“I knew from the style of sexual questions.”

“That was very observant of you,” he says, and away he went. It was nice having company that didn't yell at me, but maybe he'll be back like he said.

Lieutenant Beamis must have said something to Lieutenant Harding because a minute later he's stood at the bars. “You have a request, Deefus?”

“Hi there, Lieutenant. Yeah, I'd like my four hundred bucks, maybe it's closer to three-fifty. And some paper and a pen to write Preacher Bob about all this.”

“You don't need money in here, we provide all essential needs. Pen and paper are provided only for a full and frank confession.”

“But I didn't do anything.”

“Then you don't need them.”

“Well . . . but I'd like to tell my side of the story.”

“Will that include the whereabouts of Dean Lowry and his cohorts?”

“What's a co-hort?” It sounded to me like some kind of girlfriend, which Dean would not have had any of those.

“Would that information be included in your written confession?” he wants to know, glaring at me all bug-eyed. This guy really is a crazy person.

“No ...”

“Next time you bring me to your cell on a wasted mission,
Deefus, you'll be punished. I'm not a man that likes to have his time wasted.”

And he marched away down the corridor. So no letter to Preacher Bob, that was a disappointment. And that money is good as stole from me the way he talks.

I did some more walking back and forth for awhile but nothing circular, then Fogler comes back and I'm thinking I must not have been concentrating and walked in a curve or something, but he's not mad at me, he's smiling very friendly, so maybe I had this guy all wrong.

“Okay, Doofus,” he says, “exercise time.”

“My name is Deefus with two ees.”

“You don't tell me how to spell, dirtbag, you just do what I say. Turn around and put your hands together.”

I did it and he reached through the bars to put handcuffs on, then he opened the door. “Step out and proceed along the hallway till I say stop.”

I come out and started walking but then he screams at me. “Stop! Did I say that way? The other way, shitwipe!”

So I went along the corridor the other way, still with no windows, and when we come to a door that's open he says, “Left turn!”

I went in and it's a room with a metal table and chairs, the spindly kind, and a heavier chair off by itself. “Get seated,” barks Fogler, so I went to the table, only he screams, “Not there, dickwad! That chair there!”

He means the other chair, so I sat on that one, thinking to myself how I'd like to get ahold of his neck and squeeze it for a good long time, I would really like that, but I kept up the conversation just to be friendly.

“Is this for exercise?” I asked him. “The romper room?”

“This here is it.”

“So I'm gonna get some exercise.”

“For sure, bro.”

Then two other guys come in wearing just T-shirts and camouflage pants with boxing gloves on, so these must be sparring partners, but where's the ring? Then in comes the pitfaced guy from the plane, so he didn't go back with the plane after all, or maybe the plane is still here. I nodded at him because we're acquainted, you might say, but he didn't nod back. I had got to notice even so soon as this that everyone here is rude, which I didn't think was the way military guys should be. I had wanted to be in the Army and now I'm thinking maybe I wouldn't like it. In the commercials they show you these handsome young guys jumping out of choppers and saluting the flag etcetera but nobody being rude.