Deacon Nate’s baritone sounds down in Row Two. “It’s him, that black Satan, Moral,” he yells. “Good Lord of Mercy, Church, put him down now!”
The wicked do come for me, just like in their Book. But they ain’t swift as the Holy Ghost or this blazing white horse riding in from Galilee.
I leap into their path. “Praise you in me, all up in me. You in me real good.” I sing and dance my chicken dance, arms and legs and Good News flapping all about in the first balcony aisle. “Stay up in me. You my salvation, Glory. Praise you in me.”
Dear Mr. Klezcka
by Peter Orner
54th & Blackstone
Castaner, Puerto Rico (Associated Press, April 7, 1958):
Nathan Leopold is learning the technique of his ten-dollar-a-month laboratory job in the hospital here and using most of his spare time to answer his voluminous mail. One hospital official said the paroled Chicago slayer has received 2,800 letters in the three weeks he has been here... He has expressed his intention to answer every letter.
The room is not as bare as you might imagine. In fact, it is crowded. A distant relative in the furniture business shipped a load of overstock from the Merchandise Mart. Sofas, love seats, end tables, floor lamps, a pool table. It took three trucks to deliver it all from San Juan.
Nathan, home from work, sits squeezed behind a large oak desk, big as a banker’s, and takes off his shoes. He rubs his sore feet awhile. He watches his birds. The canaries are, for a change, silent. He leaves their cage door open. He likes to watch them sleep, their heads up, their eyes vaguely open as if on a whim they could fly in their dreams.
He takes the next letter from the stack and sets it in front of him. He puts on his glasses. He reads.
When he’s finished, he brings his hand to his face and gently rests his index finger on the tip of his nose. He thinks. The room has a single window that looks out upon the village and beyond it, a small mountain. When he first arrived here this view was heaven. The spell, though, was short-lived. He no longer feels the urge to walk cross the village to the mountain and climb it.
Dear Mr. Kleczka,
I received your correspondence two weeks ago. Please accept my sincere apologies. I receive a great many letters and am doing my best to reply to them with a reasonable degree of promptness. Also, please understand that the mail delivery service here in the hills outside San Juan leaves a bit to be desired, although of course I am the last to complain.
Among other things, Mr. Kleczka, you call me God’s revulsion and express the wish that I choke on my own poisonous froth. You write that my employment in a hospital is the ghastliest joke Satan ever played and, as veteran of Hitler’s war, you know from whence you speak.
I do not doubt you, Mr. Kleczka. You write from what you describe as “the old neighborhood.” You say your father even knew me when. Let’s not indulge ourselves. I will not attempt here to defend the role I played in the death of Bobby Franks. Nor am I going to tell you of the thirty-three years I spent as convict 9306 in Joliet. I want you to know that I believe — this is something even we can agree on — that I am the luckiest man in the world. I am free and nothing you could conjure is more delirious. Yet delirium, I might add, always gives way to a fog that never lifts. This said, allow me to describe a bit of my work at the hospital. I met a woman today. She is dying of a rare disease. It is not pancreatic cancer but something far more uncommon. The disease is untreatable and the most that can be done for this woman is to prescribe painkillers and ensure a constant supply of nutrients because, apparently, this is the way I understand it, her body rejects those fluids necessary for the survival of her vital organs. In other words, her life leaks — from every available orifice. Her name is Maya de Hostas and she has two children, Javier and Theresa. There is no husband to speak of.
Maya de Hostas is dying, but it is a slow process. The doctor says it could take six months or perhaps a year. Do you scoff? Do you tear at this paper? Do your hands flutter with rage? Nathan Leopold is telling a story! Nathan Leopold, a story of suffering! Because as you hold this paper that my hands have touched, I am your symbol. You need a symbol, don’t you? You think of my youthful arrogance like it was yesterday. All the brains they said I had. All the languages they said I spoke. Russian, Greek, Sanskrit! My famous attorney glibly talking away the rope... The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land...
This very yesterday. It’s men like you, Mr. Kleczka, men with long memories, that make your city great. You sweep the streets of scum. Rich sons-of-bitches like me. This is no defense, Mr. Kleczka of 5383 South Blackstone, but allow me to tell you I love you. To tell you I love you for keeping the torch lit, for sitting down to write me. I am deadly serious, Mr. Kleczka, oh deadly deadly serious, and as I sit here — the waning moments of day purple the mountains — I imagine you. I imagine you reading of my parole with such beautiful fury. You wanted to come here yourself and mete out justice. Didn’t you want to get on a plane and come and murder me with your own bare hands? No gloves for such a fiend. You wanted to feel my death in your own glorious pulsing veins. And then take a vacation. Why not? Bring the wife and kids. It’s Puerto Rico.
But your wife said an eye for an eye wouldn’t help anybody or make a dime’s bit of difference to Bobby Franks. It wouldn’t bring that angel back and they’d only throw away the key on you. (Though of course your defense would have much to say by way of mitigation.) But the monster, you cried. Beast! Your wife is a wise woman, Mr. Kleczka, but you, sir, are wiser. And should you come here, know that my door is always open. I have done away with the notion of locks. I live in a two-room flat. If I’m absent at my employ, please await me. Make yourself at home. Don’t mind the canaries. I feed them in the morning. I keep whiskey, though the conditions of my parole forbid spirits, in my third desk drawer. Why not pour yourself a glass? I’ll be home soon. And know that as you strangle me or slit my throat or simply blow my head off, I’ll love you. As I bleed on this upswept floor (the maid comes only on Tuesdays), I’ll love you, Mr. Felix Kleczka of the old neighborhood. What else can I say to you? Do not for a moment think I say any of this slyly. I have been waiting with open eyes and open arms for the last thirty-three years, prepared to die the same death as Dickie Loeb, whose rank flesh is only less tainted than mine for being murdered sooner. Well, I am here. I will never hide from you.
I get a great deal of mail, Mr. Kleczka, as I said. Much of it is supportive of my new life. This week alone I received three marriage proposals. Your letter reminded me very starkly of who and what I am. Even so, I must ask you: Are there still old neighborhoods? Are there still fathers who knew us when? And should you decide not to come and take up the knife against me for reasons other than your wife’s wise Christian counsel, know that I think no less of you. Your cowardice, Mr. Kleczka, more than anything this I understand. Once a young man bludgeoned a child with a chisel. To make certain, I stuffed my fist in his mouth. My hands are rather plump now. Still, even now I recognize them some days.
Yours Truly,
N. Leopold
The dark outside the window now. He’s lived so long craving it. It was the light, all that light. He thinks now that he—
Now that he what?