Peter Orner - Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

I’m talking fundamentals, Sarah, follow me? You make something in this world, take, yes, a child, and then? Then?

Don’t be daft. We got bills to pay and cocktails at the Dolinskys’ at eight.

Dolinskys? What could we possibly have to say to them that hasn’t been said?

We can’t be late. Doris made reservations at the Lobster Pot for quarter to nine. They’ll give our table away.

So much for mine wife’s wise counsel. Not that I don’t enjoy a good cocktail as much as the next man. Glenlivet for me, thanks. Nobody can say Walt Kaplan doesn’t have a certain amount of class. But listen: What I’m getting at is silence and what it means in a world where there’s not any, at least we think there’s not any, but we got a whole lot coming, you know? I tell the kid, Knock it off, Orangutan, you got a father in here thinking… and if the kid heard, which even if she did, she didn’t, she might have stopped at my door and spoken through the keyhole and said, Thinking about what, Daddy? And I might have said, I’m remembering things, which is hard work. You think remembering things is a peanut, Peanut?

Remembering what?

Lot of things. For instance the hurricane of ’38, when I, your father—

That story!

You think a story dies?

(Her little mouth breathing through the keyhole.) Five hundred times I’ve heard that same story.

Five hundred and one, five hundred and two, five hundred and three. Your mother is home here in Fall River, and you and I, Orangutan, are out on the Cape at Horace’s place in Dennis. A little father and daughter vacation from the dragon, and the dragon calling up and squawking, Didn’t you hear the weather? Get out of there! Evacuate! You’ll get swept to—

China, the kid would say through the keyhole. We’re always getting swept to China in this family.

Precisely! And Walt Kaplan knows who’s boss. The man takes good orders, and he blankets you up. You were two years old and your feet were like a short fat man’s thumbs. I ever tell you that? That your feet were like a short fat man’s thumbs? Every time you tell anything, you have to add something new. And your father, great and fearless father, carries his daughter to the mainland in his Chrysler Imperial steed. Last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the hurricane of ’38 sent half the Cape into the Atlantic. They called it the Long Island Express. New Yorkers got to have their nose in everything. They even take our disasters. Rhode Island blew away, too, but nobody noticed. What’s half of Rhode Island anyway? Is your mother never wrong? No — she hasn’t got the time. She’s got Louise Greenbaum on the line. Paging Sarah Kaplan. Sarah Kaplan. Louise Greenbaum on the line . So, yes, hail the Sultana! But salute the infantryman, too. Walt Kaplan, hero of the Sagamore Bridge. Write him down as a footnote in the annals, hearty scribes!

And so Walt sits in the unstillness of his shoe-box study and thinks about fundamentals.

You make a kid, and the wind comes and tries to air mail it to Asia. Insurance got Horace a new house. The claim: Act of God. Act of God? State Farm’s going to send me a new kid? That only happens in the Book of Job. Last car, Walt Kaplan, dodges the terrible wrath of wraths, but how many more to come? How many acts has God got left? What on earth compares with the shame of not being able to protect your daughter, your only only? Let a father weep in peace, Orangutan. That fuckin’ thumping. Hellion child. The devil’s spawn. Sarah, my yappery-yapperer. Not the clock that dooms us, but the us of us. We’re walking, talking Acts of God. Don’t you get it? The thumping will not echo. It only booms in the brain, in the silence which is nowhere. A grave has more hold than the noise of this house. Miriam’s feet tromp up and down the stairs. You say I don’t get out enough, that I waste my life’s blood cooped up here being morbid, being stupid. Sarah? Sarah? You hearing me?

The kid’s gonna die, Walt. I’m gonna die. You’re gonna die. Tell me something else, you genius.

Don’t laugh at me, woman.

You want me to start weeping now? This minute? We got cocktails at Dolinskys’ at—

That’s it. I’m asking you, I’m really asking you — how is it possible that we aren’t in a permanent state of mourning?

I ironed you a shirt. It’s on the bathroom knob.

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn’t a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can’t, I won’t, because to save her once isn’t to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn’t silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can’t hear you.

Castaner, Puerto Rico (Associated Press, April 7, 1958)

Nathan Leopold is learning the technique of his 10 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, from all parts of the United States. He has expressed his intentions to answer every letter.

The room is not as bare as you might imagine. In fact, it’s 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 at a large oak desk, big as a banker’s. He takes off his shoes. He rubs his feet awhile. He watches his canaries. The birds 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 another letter from the pile 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. The room has a single window that looks out upon the village and, beyond it, a small mountain. When he first arrived here, it was heaven. The spell was short-lived. He no longer feels the urge to walk across the village to the mountain and climb it.

Dear Mr. Kleczka ,

I received your correspondence two weeks ago. Please accept my most sincere apologies. I receive a great many letters and am doing my best to reply with a reasonable degree of promptness. Also, note that the mail delivery services here in the hills outside San Juan leave a bit to be desired. Among other things, you call me God’s revulsion and express the wish that I choke on my poisonous froth. You write that my employment in a hospital is the ghastliest joke Satan ever played and, as a veteran of Hitler’s war, you know from whence you speak. I do not doubt you, Mr. Felix Kleczka. You write from what you describe as the old neighborhood. Let’s not indulge ourselves. I am not going to tell you about the last thirty-three years. I want you to know that I believe — I am sure this is something even we can agree on — I am the luckiest man in the world. I am free and nothing you could imagine 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, the doctor assured me, 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 to the bloodstream, 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 the patient is leaking away. 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, Mr. Kleczka, but it is a slow process. The doctor says it could take more than six months, 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 is telling a story of other people suffering. You remember my youthful arrogance like it was yesterday. All the brains they said I had. All the books I’d read, all the languages they said I spoke. Russian, Greek, Arabic. They say I even knew Sanskrit! My famous attorney glibly talking away the rope. I still repeat his speech like a prayer. The easy and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. It is men like you, men with long memories, that make our — your — city great. You sweep the streets of scum like me. This is no defense, Mr. Kleczka of 5383 S. Blackstone, but allow me to tell you I love you. I love you for keeping the torch lit, for taking the time to write to me. I am deadly serious, oh deadly serious, and as I sit here — the waning moments of light purpling the mountains — I imagine you. I imagine you reading of my parole with such beautiful fury. You want to come here yourself and mete out justice. Don’t you want to get on a plane and come and murder me with your own bare hands? No gloves for such a fiend. And then take a vacation. Why not? Bring the wife and kids. It’s Puerto Rico. But your wife says an eye for an eye wouldn’t help anybody and certainly wouldn’t make any difference to Bobby Franks. It wouldn’t bring that angel back, and they’d only throw the key away on you. (Though, of course, your defense would have much to say by way of mitigation.) But the fiend, you cried. Animal! Your wife is a wise woman but you, Sir, are wiser. There are times, of course, when only blood will suffice. Should you make the trip, know that my door is always open. I live in a two-room flat. If I’m absent at my employment, please wait for me. Make yourself at home. Don’t mind the chatter of 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? And know that as you strangle me or slash my throat or simply blow my head off, I’ll love you. As I bleed onto this unswept 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 done away with sooner. Only maggots know the truth. Well, I am here. I will never hide from you. I get a great deal of mail, 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 people who knew us when? And should you decide not to come and take up the knife against me, know that I think no less of you. Your cowardice, 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, I recognize them for what they are, some days .