And suddenly, right next to me, there was another voice.
Mike’s.
And it yelled, “Go to hell, you moron!”
I turned to look at him, and suddenly there was a deep silence, Gillian, and into the silence the guard said, “What?” He said it very quietly. He didn’t seem at all shocked. He asked the question as if he hadn’t quite heard what was said the first time and was politely inquiring about it. “What?” he asked.
And through the hanging dust, Mike answered, “Go to hell, you fat bastard!”
The guard walked over to us. The hammers had stopped. The dust was settling now. We stood staring at him, our legs manacled together, the sweat and the dust and the tears streaking our faces, our throats dry, squinting against the bright hot sunlight as the dust settled. The guard wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, either. He seemed a little hurt, like a night-club comic who’d been heckled by a drunk. He stood very close to us with the rifle hanging loosely at his side, and with the heel of his right hand cupped over the handle of the billet on his belt.
Very quietly he said, “Who said that?”
No one answered. I was shaking, Gillian. I was ten days away from getting out of that place, Gillian. I could see spending another two years on that rock pile. I could see everything I’d worked for vanishing as I stood there in the sun, biting my lip, gripping the handle of the sledge tight, keeping myself from shouting, “He said it! Mike Arretti said it!”
The guard waited patiently. “Well, what do you say, mates?” he asked, and there was more silence. “What do you say now?” Silence.
I had begun crying, Gillian. Not out loud, not so any of the men standing around the silent pile of rocks could tell I was crying, there was so much sweat on my face anyway, and tears from the dust, but I’d begun crying soundlessly, waiting for Mike to say something, waiting for Mike to tell the truth, waiting.
“Well now,” the guard said. “This don’t look too good, does it?” He waited. Then he turned to me slowly. Slowly and deliberately, he turned to me and said, “What do you say, Regan? Who’s the wise guy here, Regan?”
I didn’t answer.
“Come on, Regan,” the guard said. “You know who did the yelling. Now, how about telling me?”
I didn’t answer. The guard kept staring at me, and the tears kept streaming down my face, but I didn’t answer. The guard nodded briefly, and then turned, apparently starting back for his chair in the shade with the walkie-talkie resting on its seat. It was then that Mike shoved me.
He shoved me with all the strength of his arms, and I went pitching forward, and Mike pulled back on his leg so that the chain pulled up tight. I tripped and went falling toward the guard, grabbing at him for balance as I fell, the leg iron holding me. I thought I was going to land on my face, Gillian, I thought I’d smash my face on the rocks. I grabbed at the guard’s clothes, and he swung around with his eyes wide, his right hand sweeping toward the billet, and then he raised the club, and I tried to say “No!” I tried to shout, “No, I’m falling! I’m only...” but he hit me. He hit me once, sharply, on the top of the skull, splitting it wide with his first shot. I was on my knees, clinging to him, when I felt the blood gushing onto my forehead and into my eyes, and I turned and looked at Mike Arretti and I saw him through the blood, standing there and leaning on his hammer with a smile on his face, a smile, Gillian, a smile! The guard hit me again, on the shoulder this time, numbing my right side. I fell over into the dust.
It could have been worse. They could have put me in solitary, they could have left me to rot in that goddamned prison. Or they could have refused even to consider any future parole requests. I didn’t get out that May, Gillian, but actually they were pretty decent about it. I reapplied for release in December, and it was six months after that when they finally let me go. I didn’t leave Camp Elliott until May of 1947. Mike Arretti had cost me a full year.
I saw him in the recreation yard two days before they sent me to Treasure Island for my discharge. He smiled at me, Gillian. The son of a bitch smiled.
The third job David got was in the public library on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. Unlike the other jobs he’d held, he seemed to like this one. He recognized, of course, that it was only a temporary thing, but he felt completely at home in the small room where he worked, the sunlight pouring through the arched window that overlooked Bryant Park, a window surrounded by stone like an ancient cathedral. The books that passed through his hands were sometimes old and yellowed. He received manuscripts faded with time, written in script that was ancient and strange. He handled the books gently and with great respect. Alone in his tower room, he felt an enormous sense of continuity as history passed through his hands on the pages of dusty volumes and manuscripts. The official title of his job was “Accessioner.” One of his duties, among many others, was the marking of all new library acquisitions with the official library seal. Any book, pamphlet, or manuscript that found its way to his desk was instantly numbered on the page after the title page, and again on page 97 if the material ran that long. Gillian promptly dubbed him “The Lord High Accessioner,” and when he’d been at the job for a month and got his first raise, she shopped the stores off Sixth Avenue for a Japanese army medal and a libretto of The Mikado. She tore out page 97 and the one after the title page, and on the flyleaf she wrote:
8/10/48
Banzai!
In commemoration raise, from loving, humble, honorable servant,
On Sunday, they went to Central Park to celebrate. They had lunch at the Tavern on the Green, and then wandered leisurely over the paths, directionless, turning each bend by whim alone. They stopped at Cleopatra’s Needle, where Gillian read the translation of the hieroglyph for the first time, fascinated by it. “Are those lobster claws?” she asked, looking up at the metal figures at the base of the obelisk.
“Crabs, I think,” David said.
“They were probably added later.”
“No, I think they’re part of the original.”
“Do they have crabs in Egypt?”
“They have crabs everywhere. Crabs are one of the oldest forms of animal life.”
“Oh, such a smart-oh,” Gillian said. “What happened? Did you get a book on crustaceans yesterday, huh? Is that what happened, Accessioner?”
They walked west to the Shakespeare garden, where someone had smashed the glass front of the plaque telling why the garden was there. They came upon an old brown house, which seemed to have been transplanted from some Scottish moor. A girl was sitting on the stoop before the locked door, reading a comic book. They stumbled onto the lake suddenly, and Gillian laughed when she saw the hundreds and hundreds of people in rowboats. “I can’t understand it,” she said in mock puzzlement. “Such a nice day, and nobody on the lake rowing.” They took a winding path up from the lake and found an orchid corsage under one of the bushes. Gillian picked it up and held it on the palm of her hand.
“Now thereby lies a tale,” she said. “What do you suppose it was doing under that bush?”