When Mason and Jesus stepped into Sanchez's Bodega at Sixth and C a gray stickup artist was already holding a nervous W two-sixty-three on the leather-skinned old man and his single customer, a gaudy Puerto Rican woman in a Sears & Roebuck blue flower print who was whimpering in terror. The gunman, with matted long light hair, looked like a burned-out flower child. His trigger-talk was unconvincing. Yet, uh, y-yet… it took Mason and his sidekick a full minute to comprehend what was happening. A sluggishness held Mason right up to the moment of Judge Colt-perception. The gunman, a boy excitable, impulsive, grouchy, hog-wild, nuts, was a true danger — and Mason and Jesus knew it. And moved like they knew it. He waved his impressive machine pistol at them. “All right, get over there with her—” California accent? And as Jesus and Mason obeyed, Mason's plan was to stick up the boy after he stuck up Sanchez. Why not? He had to get there by hook or crook. No moron could be tolerated in his path. The old man handed over the stack of dirty bills to the kid. As the flower child stuffed them into his jeans he relaxed the gun slightly. When he looked down at his own hand, Mason rushed him — pushing Jesus' old, worn, rusty forty-five into the boy's right ear. “Make one move an you're a goner. Hand it over.” Mason meant the W two-sixty-three. The kid obeyed. Mason stuck the weapon down in his belt under his jacket. “All right, the money, kid!” He handed it over and the hippie shot. Mason's mudfrog itched but this was no time to scratch. While the old man was profusely thankful, and reaching for the money, Mason was opening the machine pistol — no magazine. “It's empty!” Sanchez took the dough out of Mason's hand. Mason gave the old guy a startled look. “Gracia, gracia…!” And guess what? Mason nor Jesus had the twist of heart to tell him he was not truly in spirit vindicated. Meanwhile, Mason saw the kid hauling ass through traffic against red. Mason and Jesus, embarrassed, stepped out backwards, ruffled and guilty, as the grocer offered them ten bucks reward. Some Witches' brew this venture turned out to be. Well, at least they had an impressive weapon — exactly the one Mason dreamed of. In fact, perhaps there was more irony here than farce: the machine pistol cost more than they probably would have lifted from the cash register. Was this the same Mason who in the joint had read The Author's works over and over again till he convinced himself he was the writer and no longer the reader? Paradoxical or not, he was still the imposterous bilker! Quoting Conrad! — and I'm sure he could quote Melville's The Confidence Man—and might yet. I grant him agility in his mission but little else. Was he a single snow-rooted and arctic flower-weed in a storm? The Island, of course — as corny as it is — was himself, and he had, in a sense, not left it, not reached it. Although Joyce Kilmer's so-called tree was only a symbol, it spoke out of a complex anxiety in this drinker of scamper juice: namely his need to maintain a sort of membranous contact with nature through the printed sheet held to light. “Naked he was forced to stand in the sunrise, his incisions bleeding… ” That confidence now shaken by insistent irony, one so penetrating Mason now felt was lost as, say, Conrad's Marlow when he found himself plunging on deeper into the hoosegow he called darkness. Mason's icky self-deception was excruciating: a madman, surely: a mirthlessly deranged four-flusher who meant to dream his way through very serious, ugly business. His mission, you see, had him rushing downstream toward a great waterfall. Painted Turtle had the potential — though not the willingness — to turn him into a respectable citizen, a man of true integrity and credibility, but never mind: he hadn't been ready even if she'd been interested enough. Plus she was moody, depressed, at the end of much failure, a helpless singer without a song, unable to return to Zuni where others still managed to be whole, she too was lost. So Mason fumbled on, hearing the buzz of C's and the drip of Z's deep within. A chiseler well-oiled by guilt and grief, Mason carried the weight of symbols: fish and bird ones. Walking with his “friend” Jesus, he now found himself on the filthy, desperate streets of the Lower East Side again, carrying a gun, a victim of many trick mirrors. Here no shade as under that jazzed up tree. No sir. This was jalopy, jellybean poverty — as background, and in the foreground, in himself: sluttish rage and self-doubt. No mandrake here. Grim, grim, grim. And it was precisely this contrast he needed now and hated: it blazed in him with its discoloration of his so-called lyric nature. Lyric, uh, nature? So be it. No one escapes romanticism: not even tough guys. In fact, I swear, especially not tough guys. He surely needed a formula for clarity of direction: perhaps this: in a mixture of bay leaves, rosemary tops, two and a half pounds of pig fat, dump eight baby swallows (fresh out of nest with tails and longest feathers removed) then place in blender. Add salt and pepper to desire. Switch on. While at Attica, Mason read the Book of Knowledge (1687) and now seriously tried to remember some of the ancient formulas for “clear sight.” Who was to swear the 1654 Pharmacopoeia entirely out to lunch? Moral guy, this. Morality applied only to the content of one's attitude. Hem was right: it was what made you feel good. Don Quixote had good intentions but his attitude was without reliance. Clarity? Did Mason really want it, reach out decisively for it? I smelled a rat. Remember Nietzsche (not a friend of mine!) said, “Aren't books written precisely to hide what is in us?” And another dead man, also puzzling over the relation between “clear reality” and confessional writing, Jack Kerouac, in Vanity of Dulouz—go to it Jack: “I'll… get to believe… I'm not… Jack… at all and that my birth records… published books, are not real… that my own dreams… are not dreams… that I am not ‘I am’ but just a spy in somebody's body pretending… ”
Being an electrician was not the world's truest vocation and although inkslinging was closer, you bet, it too was not. Old Jed Oxford out yonder in the sluggish Amesville air, standing ankle deep in the rich soil was in his work closer to the ultimate one. Mason'd learned Jed's deepest commitment was old as humanity itself: to nature. Jed'd believed human beings were bound to and shared nature like all living things. Yet Mason, crazed with his notion of being somebody he wasn't, hadn't found in himself any willingness to follow Jed's calling. Danny Kreutzer was the electrician and he was expensive. But this way was better: no direct confrontation with nobs. Just walk in and take the pretty jewels, crisp money, silent ready stuff. Pronto: find a fence. Next the big guns. Then the driver's license; the passport. Like clockwork. Kreutzer himself was a picaro, so said pal Rodriguez. Mason and Jesus went up in a taxi. Kreutzer's was in the Bronx. They rang the door in a massive ugly building at Waterloo Place near Crotona Park. A happy Mephistopheles, he agreed to go to work for them on a ten percent commission. Usually got twenty. On the subway back down they idly read the grafitti and the names of kids trying to make their presence felt in this barking dog show. This far uptown Mason missed the vegetable carts of First. God, did he need clarity now — and where the hell was that eater of Irish cherries and grapes, Celt? Painted Turtle was acting funny. Melville couldn't be quoted (“I hope I know myself… ”) out of context. Well, rats, nothing was easy. In a voice happy-as-ducks-in-Arizona! Kreutzer said on the phone to Mason: “Come on over. I got the roundup. Bring a hundred — fresh lettuce.” An hour later, Mason and Jesus stepped into the apartment of one Danny K., for the second time in one week. Kreutzer's shit-eating grin was loaded with sandbags and heretic clouds, a mist hung close to the floor of his swampy mind — all this: in his face. Mason's circumspection meant nothing to Electric Danny. Mason handed over the money scraped together from Edith's purse, Painted Turtle's savings, Brad's shirt pocket, Jesus'jeans, Mason's wallet. This was in exchange the scoop: The Berdseids, a sure shot, lived in Apartment Eight-F in a high rise at Riverside Drive and West Seventy-Eight: lots of valuable jewels, expensive dinnerware, antiques, perhaps stored-away cash, silk bedsheets. Mason asked Kreutzer if he knew a fence. We don't use that word around here, he said. “Transaction-agent” was the expression (Z state sez one thing, Z church Cs another: like Z difference between wiping ya arse with one hundred percent cellulose and steel wool.) Mason and his thuggish sidekick left armed with Berdseids' information and the address of Ota and Company. In search of their scheme they went down and checked out the Riverside Drive apartment door. Careful not to be too obvious. They'd have to take the hinges off? Natural movable joints these days were easier to crack than a hundred and eight varieties of dead-bolts. The Birdseids were always away mornings after eight and never home before three. Never? Well, risk was always. An old door with wood panels. Maybe they'd have to remove one. Could turn out easier. Jesus had equipment. When they got back Edith was upset, said McKay had been crying for over an hour. No response. How was that fink Kreutzer? Edith said she'd never put her confidence in him: something about the curve of his face. They could hear the whimpering. Mason felt bad. But maybe they were bogus tears? He thought: shit, this guy might really be The Author or even Pep West, who cheated his way into college, through college, who steamed open other people's mail. Mason wanted to kick himself in the butt for his boneheadedness. Now the problem: what to do with the remains of the unbreakable, uh, mistake. But his train was derailed when Painted Turtle came in wearing black lipstick, with punk paint on her cheeks. Imagine, a woman forty or more—! but there was a white feather stuck in her hair. Brad, in the kitchen doorway, cracked up. Jesus was telling Edith rumors about Danny being fluff. Mason was depressed suddenly: no one here was a breathing living character: he went over to the closet and looked in. “You'll get your justice so shut up!” Painted Turtle behind him, yanked his arm. “I need to talk with you. It's urgent. Let's go for a walk.”