Clarence Major - My Amputations

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.”

Breaking and entering had in them the seeds of cherries, the mustard of virginity. Nervous saboteurs, Mason and man-Friday gave up on the crowbar. (Jesus stood on the lower landing while Mason rang the Berdseids' bell and the one across from it: all was clear and now…) Still, it was important not to wake the dead. Jesus was good with the small drill. It made only a tiny hissing. A round splash of daylight from the living room window inside gave them pride and hope. Couldn't use the damn hammer: big as an Irish banjo: too much noise. But wasn't it true New Yorkers minded their own… (say what?) “No, try to get the tip of the saw in—” “Yessir, boss.” Jesus' Puerto Rican accent fitted the southern Negro attempt like catcalls at an opera. “Gimmie the damn thing!” Mason rammed the little saw in the freshly drilled hole. Jesus whispered. “Ouch! it hurts so good!” “Use the next size.” Jesus easily enlarged the opening. Then the saw got in and slowly Mason worked it back and forth. Slowly, at first — then in one fit of impatience and fear he swung the saw viciously in and the old panel wood split halfway down. Amazing. A swift kick from palsy-walsy's western boot sent it in on the apartment's highly polished oak floor. Jesus, smaller than Mason, crawled through first. Then Mason stuck his tense head in, ooly-drooly, pulled his tight shoulders together, with his slim arms inside, he plunged for entrance. Tut-tut, brash my boy. “Wait — I'll open the door… ” but Jesus was too late. Mason looked up from his hampered posture like a humpbacked midget with a painful face stuck into the ridge. His eyes were those of a confused puppy. He could see Jesus grinning. “Don't stand there with that stupid grin— do something! I'm stuck!” No person claiming eight letters in his given name has a right to pull a vaudeville act when he should feel active despair. But the more he struggled the tighter in he got himself. Jesus: “Maybe if I rock the door.” “No, idiot! Take my arms—” Mason gripped the slender wrists — yanked. Nothing. Mason began to doubt his future: home runs, the whole bit. What about human dignity? After all, to hear him tell it, he was a writer . The pulling caused fish-headed pains in his ribcage. Birds beat their lice-bitten wings in his lungs. The air smelled like a fallout shelter of wet kittens. Jesus was licking his knife: about to cut or saw Mason out? They heard the elevator start downstairs.

Roy Seidel Ota had a clean skull that reflected the light above it. He was counting out on the desk edge in back a stack of dirty tens and fives. “No got twenties?” Jesus wanted to know. Mason kept a tight jaw. He was counting with Ota. With the loot in a paper bag they left Ota and Company, a crowded jewelry shop on Canal at the edge of Chinatown near the bridge. They knew they'd been gypped — one always was in this kind of transaction. Valenti and his cousin D'Amico had said they could get a couple of Thompson machine guns. Things were tight: at the moment they couldn't promise anything else. But first Mason wanted to get rid of The Impostor and he decided not to kill. Unnecessary. But do something with him. And Ferrand, mistake or not, he had to get even with that crook. Lots to do quickly. Take The Impostor to the edge of the abyss — let him jump: fall or fly. Give him to the clang-a-lang moonless night ride into a fuddy duddy region? The Impostor might even find a new life, settle down, marry, have an infant to play tulips with and never again become the target of captors or larks. If Mason could maintain a kind of stillness at the center of this frenzy he too might get through: right or wrong. Edith, when they got back, was relieved and waiting with the rented car. (She'd sold a helluva lot of hash and grass that morning and had extra bread. Naturally she was looking forward to the bank take: so it was worth it.) Brad had The Impostor ready with the blindfold and tied hands. It was already dark, safe. Edith told them they were gypped: five hundred, she said, was only a third what that stuff was worth. Painted Turtle was at a movie in the neighborhood. Edith said she seemed depressed. Mason grunted. The four of them went down with The Impostor. Brad held the guy's arm, leading him. Edith drove, still bitching about the five hundred: it all had to go to Valenti. Okay, okay. The rush hour traffic had passed. Edith wheeled the new Ford expertly out of the city, heading for Jersey. She came to a complete stop in a dark parking lot just outside the Lackawanna Railroad Yard in Hoboken. The street lights from Barclay didn't help down here. Mason was pretty sure he remembered the line they wanted was five tracks over from this end. Even in the dark nothing seemed changed from this morning. Yes, there it was: the door still slightly ajar. The engine would spit and cough at five in the morning. The Impostor would be tucked away behind a stack of empty burlap sacks. In his long journey west he might thank his stars — crossed or not: the injured free of the injurer. No law of opposites could be applied. If The Impostor had in the outer gray matter of his brain something even remotely associating him with the real master of ceremonies, then that cortex had been preserved as the ultimate secret with its thick Peruvian bark closed hermetically around the unbroken linkage of the two. Could he have been the author of such a mysterious disruption in the relation between cause and effect: if The Impostor were yin, Mason was not necessarily yang. Forced connections were possible. But this was labyrinth: like the outcome of Mason's romantic philosophy of asserting himself: taking the identity he wanted. If The Impostor was on a blind trip, so was your boy. And the rigor mortis of truth was with them both. Harebrained? You bet.