Sutton (41 page)

And while you’re at it, God? A smoke?

He remembers Sex Maniac’s matches. He manages to get one lit. In the corner of the abandoned barn, with some hay and scrap wood, he starts a small fire, which is his salvation.

At dawn he sets out again, finds the highway. Within minutes a truck pulls over.

Car broke down, Willie says, wringing wet, teeth chattering. Damn Ch-ch-chevys.

The trucker doesn’t notice anything unusual about Willie’s appearance or demeanor. He doesn’t notice anything about anything. He’s hauling oak tables to the Bronx and he’s mad for company. Tables make damn poor company, he says.

But what he’s really mad for is sleep. They’ve only gone a few miles when Willie sees the trucker’s face drifting down down down to the steering wheel. Willie taps Trucker’s knee. Trucker jerks awake, looks at his knee, looks at Willie, eyes narrowed, as if Willie is a pervert. Then Trucker realizes that he almost killed them both. Sorry, Trucker grumbles, aint been sleeping much lately, trouble at home.

He fumbles in the breast pocket of his work shirt for a cigarette. He comes out with a crumpled pack, offers one to Willie. Even before he looks, Willie knows. Chesterfield. He takes the cigarette, puts it between his lips. Trucker lights it with a silver Zippo. Willie thought the cold milk was delicious, but that was nothing compared to this Chesterfield. The first puff tastes sweet, like the first bite of cotton candy at Coney Island. The second puff tastes spicy, peppery, nutritious, like the steaks Eddie and Happy bought him when he was down on his luck. Smoke fills his lungs and quickens his blood and instantly restores his vitality, his will to live. He takes another drag, and another and another, and tells Trucker stories, riveting stories, fantastic stories, wildly untrue stories, which keep them both awake. If life has been nothing more than a build-up to this moment, this ethereal high, this bonding with a stranger, then it hasn’t been in vain.

He watches the snow-filled woods fly by, and the highway signs, and he speaks again to God, who feels closer than the gearshift. Dear Lord, I don’t know what I’ve wanted from you all my life. Communion? Amnesty? A sign? But with this Chesterfield I finally know what
you
want from
me
. You’re agreeing to the covenant I proposed. I hear you. And I will
show you
that I hear. I will change.

He smokes the Chesterfield to the nub, to nothing, until it burns his fingertips. Even the burning feels good.

Trucker drops him right at the turnoff where the cops shot Eddie. Willie doesn’t let himself think about that, doesn’t think about anything as he waves to the George Washington Bridge and walks and walks all the way downtown. He focuses on his footsteps in the snow, and on the fact that it’s a beautiful winter morning and he’s not in C Block. He’s in New York, New York.

He’s in Times Fuckin Square.

He stops, looks up. Hello, Wrigley sign.

Neon fish, pink and green and blue, swim through the blizzard. Above the fish, in blinking green neon:
WRIGLEY SETTLES THE NERVES
. And above the neon letters the Wrigley mermaid welcomes Willie home.

He ducks into the Automat, hands his last dollar to the nickel thrower, who hands him twenty nickels. He buys a fish cake and a cup of piping hot coffee and takes it to a table by the window. He eats slowly, watching the people, but there aren’t many people—it’s early yet. When his food is gone he drinks the hot coffee, every drop. He runs a finger around the inside of the empty cup and runs the finger inside his mouth. He stares at the steam table, imagines piling a plate with beefsteaks, creamed potatoes, creamed spinach, poppy rolls, apple tartlets, jelly cookies, pumpkin pie. He holds his last twenty cents in his fist and closes his eyes and feasts on the smells. Not just the food smells, but the New York smells. Cigars, peppermint, aftershave, plastic, leather, gabardine, urine, hair spray, sweat, silk, wool, talc, semen, subway funk and floor wax. Ah New York. You stink. Please let me stay.

At the stroke of nine Willie steps into the phone booth and dials the first employment agency listed in the yellow book. The woman asks his name.

Joseph Lynch mam.

He hears her typing a form.

I’m new to town, mam, and I need a position, anything, just till I can get on my feet.

She doesn’t have much.

Anything, he says again.

The only thing I can think of—no, wait, Sandy filled that one yesterday. Hum-dee-dum, let’s see. Where did I put that goshdarned card?

Willie squeezes the phone.
Anything
.

Ta-da, she says. Porter.

Mam?

The Farm Colony out in Richmond. That’s Staten Island. Ten dollars a week, plus room and board, Joseph.

I’ll take it.

It’s on Brielle Road.

She tells him the name of the head nurse, but it doesn’t register. She says she’ll phone the head nurse to say Joseph is on his way.

Porter, he tells himself, walking to the ferry. Porter? He thinks of Porter from Rosenthal and Sons. How the mighty have fallen. Except the mighty were never mighty. And the fallen were never fallen. With one of his last three nickels he buys a ticket on the ferry. At the gangplank is a newsstand and on every front page is his face. He tries to read the articles from a distance, but he can’t. His eyes are getting bad. In four months he’ll be forty-six years old.

The whistle blows. All aboard.

He flows with the crowd onto the ferry, eases onto a wooden bench and turns his face to the window, pretending to sleep. Half the passengers are reading papers, staring at his photo. At last, when the boat pulls away, Willie jumps up, runs onto the deck. No one else is out there, it’s too cold. He leans against the wooden rail, leans into the wind, watches the city grow fainter.

The ferry churns up a wake of thick white foam. He puts a hand on his empty stomach, wishes he’d thought to save one bottle of milk.

A seagull appears. It hovers beside the boat, only needing to flap its long gray wings once every five seconds to keep pace. Willie would give anything to be that seagull. He thinks about reincarnation. He hopes it exists. He hopes this stray thought won’t anger the Catholic God who’s gotten him this far. Who now holds his marker.

As Manhattan disappears behind a wall of mist, Willie drops into a fog. He grips the wooden railing and imagines falling over. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes sense—end all this running. He can feel the first shock of the white foam, then the bitter cold water. He can taste the salty brine, see the murky green darkness, followed by that different darkness. Waiting for that different darkness—a minute? five minutes?—would be the hard part.

The ferry enters deeper waters. It’s a hundred feet down out here, he read that once. He knows what a hundred feet of darkness will feel like. The tunnel beneath Eastern State. And Meadowport Arch. He feels himself floating down, down. His body might never be found. There will be a victory in that.

He starts to climb the railing. Now he looks up. The Statue of Liberty. So beautiful. He looks at her feet. He never noticed before that she’s stepping out of leg-irons. How has he never noticed this until now? He looks and looks and suddenly shoots out his arm and raises his hand to the statue. I get it, he shouts, smiling. I get it, honey.

He climbs down, pushes himself away from the wooden rail.

I get it.

Photographer drives onto the ferry. As soon as the Polara comes to a stop Sutton steps out, limps to the rail, looks eagerly at the water. He points. Look, he says. There she is. Jesus, isn’t she beautiful?

Photographer wipes the mist off his lens, shoots Sutton pointing at the statue
.

Did you know, boys, that island where she stands used to be a prison?

Is that true? Photographer says. That can’t be true
.

The morning after I broke out, I got to this point and I was on the verge of despair. No, not the verge. I despaired. Right here. I tell you, I was two seconds from jumping. But she told me not to
.

She? Told?

Sutton faces Reporter. She talks kid. She’s the patron saint of prisoners and she ordered me to keep going. I know it’s cornball and square these days to love the Statue of Liberty. It’s like loving U.S. Steel or Bing Crosby. But we don’t choose who we love. Or what. And that morning I fell for her. No other way to say it. I knew her, and she knew me. Inside out
.

After fifteen minutes the ferry slows, floats toward the pier on Staten Island. A ferryman, wearing a Santa hat, emerges from the pilothouse. All ashore, all ashore
.

Reporter and Photographer climb back into the Polara. They wait for Sutton, who reluctantly follows
.

Photographer drives slowly off the ferry. A one-legged seagull stands in the way. Photographer honks. The bird scowls, hops off
.

We’re looking for Victory Boulevard, Reporter says. Mr. Sutton, you remember the way?

Silence
.

Mr. Sutton?

Reporter turns. Sutton is grazing in the donut box, his mouth smeared with Bavarian cream and jelly. Jesus, Sutton says, these donuts are the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I never had such a sweet tooth in my life
.

They pass block after block of tiny houses, identical, each one with barred windows, an American flag, a lawn Santa or reindeer. Photographer looks at Sutton in the rearview. Willie, brother, you walked all this way? On no sleep, no food? Wearing a prison uniform? Seems impossible
.

I keep telling you boys, it was
.

They turn up a hill, around a bend. They see a deep woods, then the faint outlines of massive brick buildings, dozens of them. Drawing closer they see that most of the buildings are covered with graffiti. Trees grow through their roofs and glassless windows
.

Whoa, Photographer says. Ghost town
.

A hurricane fence surrounds it all. Photographer pulls up to the fence
.

This was the famous Farm Colony, Sutton says. Before Medicare, before Social Security, this was where New York put its sick and old and poor people. Thousands of them
.

A landfill for humans, Photographer says
.

A big one kid. Fifty buildings. A hundred acres. Not a happy place. But the perfect hiding place for me. And it had a kind of strange beauty. Twenty-four hours after I busted out of Holmesburg, I landed a job here. In the women’s ward. As a porter. And for a while, shit. I was happy. I was actually happy. Because it wasn’t me
.

TWENTY

The head nurse points to the floor. She’s crowding sixty, loveless, bloodless, squeezed into a white elastic nurse’s uniform that seems to cut off her humanity along with her circulation. I want to see myself
right there
, she says.

Willie, wearing gray coveralls,
JOSEPH
stitched in red over the heart, squints. Mam?

The floor, Joseph. Your job is to make the floor shine like a mirror every night, so I can see myself in it every morning. The women in this ward have nothing. Less than nothing. The least we can do is provide them with a clean floor.

Willie nods, moves his mop a little faster. Yes mam.

Willie thinks Head Nurse might be insane. She goes on. And on. She talks and talks about the optimal shine and luster of the floor until Willie fantasizes about mopping it with her.

But in time he sees her point. There
is
a noticeable improvement in the overall mood of the women’s ward when the floor is clean. He’s always worked hard, taken pride in whatever he’s put his hand to. Why shouldn’t he be the best mop-per he can be? As he did with robbing, he makes a study of mopping. He never knew there were so many wrong ways to mop, or that there was just one right way. Lots of hot soapy water, two cups of ammonia, a smooth semicircular motion when applying the vanilla-scented wax. Like frosting a cake. He stands back. Voilà. He recalls that most of the banks he robbed had dull floors. Figures.

About once a week people walk a bit more gingerly across Willie’s floors—a woman in the ward has died. Aside from mopping, the other part of Willie’s job is loading the deceased onto a horse-drawn wagon and delivering her to the morgue. He dreads this task, but tries to perform it manfully, respectfully. Other porters call the morgue wagon the meat wagon. Willie never does.

This is the price of freedom, he tells himself as he lifts the lifeless woman into the wagon.

Better this than the Burg, he tells himself as he lifts the woman out.

Godspeed, he tells the woman as he drapes her onto one of the marble slabs.

On his day off Willie goes exploring. The Farm Colony sits in the center of Staten Island, a wilderness of thick, primeval woods. He can’t get over the variety of trees—maples, sycamores, elms, oaks, peppers, apples. Some were here when George Washington was alive, and their longevity gives Willie an odd feeling of comfort. He lies at the base of an old elm, floating on his back in the pool of shade, and feels calm. He tries to think of the last time he felt calm. He can’t.

One of the women in the ward tells Willie that Thoreau used to come to these woods. To get away.

Newspapers say that two of his fellow escapees—Kliney and Akins—have been recaptured. Only Willie and Freddie remain at large. So Freddie wasn’t shot after all. Good for Freddie. Go Freddie go. Willie hopes he’s wearing four-inch lifts, feeding papaya to some heart-stopping showgirl in Havana.

Then, gradually, newspapers move on. It’s 1948. A new era. With Truman’s bony finger on the Button, no one has time to worry about some Depression-era bank robber. Willie the Actor is dead, long live Joseph the Porter. In the Farm Colony library, Joseph reads several books on reincarnation.

The women of the Farm Colony adore Joseph, and he thinks of them as he thinks of the trees. They provide a kind of comfort, a psychological shade. Willie spent much of his life in a world of men; Joseph dwells happily in a world of women. Of course many of the women talk as much as the trees. But several are chatterboxes. While waiting for his floors to dry, Joseph likes to sit with them, listen to their stories. They’re alone, like him. They’re trying not to think of tomorrow, like him. They’re stuck here, like him. They despise banks. Many ended up at the Farm Colony because they lost their life savings to a failed bank or a crooked broker.