Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

How do I describe the shock, the timelessness of the moment, the rapid beating of my heart, the buzz in my brain that sucked the air out of my lungs, filled them with the poison of instant grief? The sickness rose up from my stomach and spread through my body and my veins, like rigor mortis.

All I could do was close my eyes, try to convince myself that the accident had been a figment of my imagination, like a nightmare. But they had revived me in the hospital bed I’d been strapped to some thirty-six hours before, and they had made a point of telling me the entire story of the accident, detail for detail, as if I had not been a part of it or the cause of it, or as if I had not been stained with my wife’s blood or as if I had not been there to smell the smoke or feel the fire. As if I had not seen the flashing red-and-white lights of the cop cruisers and useless ambulances. As if I had not seen the tears shed, not for Fran, but for me. And when I asked them why they had to tell me all this so soon and in such detail, they said, “So you’ll believe it.”

They called themselves doctors, priests, and friends, and they surrounded my bed and told me the story of my wife’s death as if the reality of it was good for me. You must tackle the grief head-on, they’d said. The Lord dishes out only what you can handle, they’d said. The death of my wife was like a commendation from the Lord because He knew I could take it. Your wife, they said, she’s an angel now.

Go fuck yourself, I said.

I felt the anger boil inside my gut, and I would have killed them all if I’d had the chance. I would have ripped their heads off. But all I could do was lie in the hospital bed and feel my face distort and my muscles wrench because they had me strapped to that mattress and they had the God awful nerve to tell me the truth about my dead, decapitated wife and the bald-headed man who’d gotten away with it.

And somehow, one year later, I was climbing a hill I had not climbed in thirty-five years. And as my lungs began to collapse from the strain, it did not seem possible that it had taken only thirty minutes to make the entire climb, because it seemed to have taken much longer when I was a kid. And when I reached the peak of Old Iron Top, I could plainly see Cassandra through openings in the heavy vegetation surrounding the rocky clearing. She stood on the rock face, dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt that was now unbuttoned. Under the shirt was an elastic band, like an Ace bandage, only wider. The flesh-colored elastic was wrapped flat around her entire stomach as if to hold it in, like a makeshift girdle. And as she began to button her shirt up over it, I could only assume that Cassandra was pregnant and didn’t want anyone to know about it, least of all me.

I quickly moved to the left of the trail and ducked down in the tall grass while Cassandra buttoned her shirt. She ran both hands through her long brown hair so that I could see the tattoo on her neck, and then, from where I crouched in the tall grass, I saw her pull that.32 caliber pistol out of the pocket of her jeans. I saw her walk to the opposite side of the clearing and toss the pistol into a patch of thick briars. She made a quick check of the surrounding area and only when she was certain no one had seen her did she begin to make her way back across the rocky summit toward the trail. I was forced to lie down flat in the grass and remain as still and quiet as humanly possible. More than humanly possible. Because, after all, she was about to pass right by me, and I did not want her to know that I had seen everything and that I now knew for certain that she was not the woman I had thought she was.

I WAITED THERE IN the tall grass for more than three minutes after she’d passed. During that time I held my breath and listened to the steady, rapid pulse pounding against my temples. I could only hope that she would not make out my tracks in the soft earth. I hoped her concern about getting rid of that.32 and concealing her pregnancy was so great that she wouldn’t worry about footprints.

When all was clear, I moved out of the grass and sprinted across the granite clearing. Stepping down into the thick vegetation, I fought my way through the briars and pine scrubs. I squatted and felt with my hand around the area where I thought the pistol might lie. It took about five minutes of tearing and scraping the skin on my left forearm, but eventually I found the piece resting on a nest of thick tree roots.

I stood up and began picking the briars away from my shirt and pants. Maybe it was the cold, almost slimy feel of the tree roots, but for some reason I began to picture a nest of snakes and I moved back onto the clearing as quickly as I could. I cracked the cylinder of the snub-nosed revolver and brought the six-round chamber up close to my face. I smelled each chamber separately. The pistol had been fired in the past three days. I was certain of it. The smell of the exploded gun powder was that fresh, that pungent. The question was this: Had Cassandra fired the pistol? If not, then why would she go to all the trouble of hiding the piece on Old Iron Top?

Standing on the open rock face, I knew that the answer most likely lay in the events that had gone down in Athens the day before. Maybe the answer lay with Vasquez. But then everybody knows that dead men don’t talk.

ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR of the Times Square catwalk, three buck steers pin Wash Pelton down on all fours. They pull his pants down and stick it to him from behind. They make no attempt to squelch his screams because the louder he screams the more they like it, the more it turns them on.

Oh God, I say, as his screams burn a hole through my skull. Get me out of here.

To my left, the blunt barrel of a black-plated.38 service revolver is stuffed inside Wash Pelton’s mouth, while a shiv made from a razor blade planted inside a plastic toothbrush handle is pressed up against his throat. The rebel inmate holds Pelton’s head back, mouth open. He manages this by grabbing onto a fistful of hair, pulling the hair back like the reins on a horse. Pelton gags on the pistol barrel. I see his eyes rolling in their sockets while the rebels take turns on him. His Adam’s apple does a bobbing dance. Blood runs from the gash in his neck. Sweat oozes through the pores of his forehead, runs down his face, off his nose, mixes with the blood on his neck.

I try and turn away, but the inmate who has hold of me won’t allow it.

Pressed against the back of my head is a spoon that’s been lifted from the mess hall. The spoon has been scraped along the concrete floor of a prison cell until razor-sharp. Directly to my right, the barrel of a police-issue M-16 is aimed, point-blank, at Mike Norman’s head. But Norman can’t stand up. Norman lies on his stomach on the wet concrete floor of Times Square. A black-and-white helicopter hovers overhead. Below, a crowd of twelve hundred inmates faces us, the hostages on parade. They wave their fists in the air, not in solidarity, but in a defiant show of force. Why give a sign of peace when you can wave a fist?

I lower my head, stare at my bare feet flat against the gray concrete. I feel the edge of that sharpened spoon suddenly pressed harder against the back of my head, ready to spear the skin and bone.

“On three,” the inmate behind me says. “We execute on three.”

I MANAGED TO MAKE the hike down from Old Iron Top without falling, despite the smooth-soled cowboy boots. I jogged the entire way, feeling the muscles in the backs of my legs tense up as I grabbed onto the thick branches and tree trunks lining the narrow footpath. The day was growing noticeably hotter, even in the shaded woods, and by the time I reached the bottom, I was drenched in sweat and out of breath.