Clarence Major - My Amputations

“… He was born in, I think, red-dirt Georgia, grew up, maybe, in hog-butcher Chicago, had many thick-headed problems in elementary and high and was a hardcore dropout… got into trouble in the Air Force… He's got something against all of us: was busted for possession… served time in Attica from 1977 to 1978; while there he was betrayed by a guy who claimed to be… this other so-called writer was receiving grant money due him, the real writer… the Foundation had gained a reputation for giving such awards to ‘people of talent and accomplishment’ who had not been widely recognized for their professional efforts… Victim he surely was… It's true he'd been a fart and a troublemaker from day one, he'd fathered — in and out of unholy wedlock — possibly as many as fifty kids, certainly a minimum of thirty-five… Before going into the joint he'd come through, so they say, many failed marriages… Though there were those who protested his right to everything, even his birth, he insisted he was born December thirty-first, 1936 in Georgia at Grady with wristband number 105847 clamped tightly to his little red arm… He was taken home to six-o-seven McGrader Street, South East, by his parents… so how did he find himself years later in Amesville, ready one fine day to step down from a John Deere and set out to reclaim his identity?… Well, parole ended: that was certainly a factor plus a private detective in New York had agreed to find the culprit… But, Jez, it was like coming out of amnesia with a sudden cold memory of endless dark tunnels of the past… Walking away from that tractor, he looked up at the pancake in the Sherwood Anderson sky and took a Saroyan-breath, exhaled it… Minimum wage was chicken, no birdshit… He stepped through freshly turned earth till he gained a road then the highway… Beat his blunt toetips on concrete… He stopped in the city of Amesville for a cup of coffee… A yellow-white cat with one green eye, one blue, leaped onto his lap… He rested his elbows on the red-dotted plastic tablecloth… Cat refused a sip of the brew… Clock on wall reminded him of something: what was it: gave him an awful feeling of anxiety… clocks were always running: warning you of the thing you didn't want: that magnetic force: hands without fingers: radium into visible light… He had to move on: it was urgent… He though the cat was… he set her down… He didn't have much faith in his luck to thumb a ride so he began walking… His mudfrog, a birthmark on his right forearm, itched horribly… Ass still sore from the tractor seat… He stopped to rest under a tree: turned out to be Joyce Kilmer's… Quick! a train was coming along the tracks only a few feet from the tree… Was he dreaming? A woman was tied to the tracks where another set crossed… He got to her in time: untied her and threw himself and her into the ditch as the iron beast shot by… she was nutmeg color: a dark beauty and spoke in a musical and mysterious voice… said she was from a reservation in New Mexico, had worked the canteen circuit, made movies, danced professionally, hung out with gangsters, but was now seeking a new life… She told him her name was Painted Turtle… He was heading for New York and she, well, she'd go there just as soon as she'd go anywhere… ”

A barrage of bullets swept the room. Mason hit the floor and crawled under a table. Munich was not a safe place. He'd been talking to an old friend, Lilia Pant, when the violence struck. Leaves fell from winter trees. It snowed upside-down. Knucklebones broke in butterfly lava. Gangsters were moving in. Who would have thought the gambling room (called The Wheel) at the Greta Garbo Entertainment Palace would become the scene of buffoons of death? Pant hit the floor too. Some folks ran. A barracuda fell from the wall and got stuck on Marlene Dietrich's head as she too fled the madness. The air felt like that of a Prussian boarding school. Except at the moment nobody was much for bedside-baroque-chatter. Gunsmoke seeped into wool cotton and silk. Screaming and crying competed with drum rolls and bells. A stranger under the table with them said, “It's just carnival time coming early. Somebody thinks it's February.” Another, who introduced himself stiffly and drunkly as Eichberger-the-Calan, spoke: “If we crawl slowly, being sure to stay under the tables, we can make it to the Faust-Mephisto Room where they're showing an erotic film of Otto and Lucie against a yellow sky. They're supposed to be immoralists who've escaped the Russian October Revolution. Lots of finger-fucking.” Mason figured he had nothing to lose so he was the first to follow this Rasputin. Lilia trailed him. They were snails with scales moving along the surfaces of the soggy orange rug. Rasputin's big ass waved in front of Mason's reluctant face. He held his head sideways. He could still hear shouting and fists smashing into wine glasses and Peter Lorre-lips. In the Faust-Mephisto Room the three escapees stood and blinked. Mason's sugar-coated eyes saw an orgy at its peak. Geese were flying up out of flesh. One man was dancing with a bullhorn hanging from the crack of his ass. Intestines were scattered around the floor. Expressive ladies and unrelenting men were deeply engaged in a daisy-chain of sixty-nine action. Projected on the wall was an ongoing series of scenes depicting Otto and Lucie in goggle-eyed combat: frosty steam lifted skyward from their action. Lilia Pant groaned. “Here we go again!” Mason laughed with her. Six sailors emerged from a torpedo and joined the carnival. One waved to the camera. An expressive lady grabbed his left thigh. “Oh, Chief Mack-Verand! You're back!” He took off his mask just as Lilia fainted in Mason's bruised arms. Rasputin said, “Oh, my dear!” Back in The Wheel the gunfire stopped. Mason could hear the official counting of the dead.

Early December sky over Catania was filled with a calmness in casual contrast to the chaotic life below. (The day before, Mason'd driven his Fiat up onto one of the giant white ships of the Tirrenia line at Genova; he'd paced the upper deck while gangs of Italian kids, lovebirds, old folks and crew, also restlessly wandered about: a long tiresome voyage; older passengers sprawled before the TV set in the lounge absorbed in artificial light. This thing — il dio, il re, l'eroe! The food was horrible. Fearing he might throw up he stood at the rear watching a crazy flock of gray gulls flapping in the ship's wake which, in its splitting of the sea skin, turned up fish they fed on… When he woke in the morning he was sick, truly. Claustrophobia in his narrow private space got to him. He was sure the room was bugged. Why hadn't they simply arrested him? How much more rope would they give? They docked at Palermo and in line he drove the Fiat off into the honking, busy city. Famished. He went to a restaurant a truck driver he'd met in the lounge recommended. This guy was from Napoli and knew his way around. Here he pigged out on lasagne verdi al forno and two big bottles of vino. Stuffed, warm and a little tight, he drove that long green stretch through plush countryside to Catania.) The sky, as I said, was serene. Below: one way streets that didn't make sense: insane intersections crammed with cars and people crossing in every direction with no direction. Madness! Whistle-blowing traffic cops who made no sense either. It was dusk. Lighted shops. Packs of teenage boys intent on their desperate enterprises (one tried to open Mason's door at a stop)! It took an hour to find the damned hotel — instructions had been so poor. Hotel Pericolo: the perfect secret of the sunny southern tip of Italy! A warning—? In the hotel room he took a shower and while doing so the phone rang. Wet, he answered. Professor Carlina Momachino wanted to know if he'd arrived and if all was well. Well how?… That night Mason had dinner with the Momachinos: polla alla cacciatora. A childless happy couple: she, a specialist in American fiction, he a specialist in marble. He looked like a palm tree with arms and she was this little dainty thing all motion and flutter with painted nails and pointed toes. Signor Vito Momachino drove him back. Exhausted, he went to sleep and while there found himself in this strange market place called Albano (wait, hay, this wasn't Italy, whhha…) off some place called Gran Via to the, uh, right and another way, Casa Christino; and passing showcase glass seeing himself (just like some prison mugshot of himself) and here an old man was pushing his way through the crowd carrying a poster with some squabble about some government official whose identity was in question but there was a caption about the Union of the Democratic Center or the Centrists or was it the Left. Boy oh boy. Then this young dark guy — he could have been Italian or Spanish or even French — came knocking his way through — pushing aside two chubby senoras with yellow straw baskets, knocking over stalls crammed with cheap leather colorful cotton radiant metal glazed plastic painted glass and the guy, a hisser, tugged at Mason's sleeve, speaking in what sounded like Spanish or maybe Italian all the while flashing a wrist of Bulovas and all Mason could think was, Take me to your padrino. You from Morocco? And the watch-pusher said he was Pocoraba or Ernesto or Piazza but it didn't matter; in a nearby cafe they ordered government approved vino blanco. Now you don't want coca leaves, right. You got cash. When can you get it. Senor Aristides Rayo Barojas you see. Very formal. And suddenly they were at the entrance of a cluster of dilapidated chartreuse apartment buildings. Across the street for no reason: a fancy hacienda surrounded by kidney-brown debris and a vacant lot of broken bottles and gun shells. Before Pocoroba knocked on wood he kindly requested five hundred — not lire — but pesetas! Mason vaguely suspected he was somewhere in Spain: again, after… Mason unhanded the bread and waited. His moneybelt itched worse than a mudhound. A servant came and led them to Barojas: through tall dark hallways with pictures of thieves generals ancestors fingering the handles of swords, guys with chins stuck out, dudes with waxed mustaches curled up to a fine finish. It all felt like black lace. The languid summer outside hadn't ever reached this depth. The watch-pusher and Mason waited in a canary-yellow room lined with gold-painted Nineteenth Century volumes nobody'd touched in fifty years. A rotund gentleman in a smoking jacket entered. “I am Senor Barojas.” He didn't offer his hand. “May I help you?” Mason realized he didn't know why he was here. Barojas obviously sensing the confusion spoke again: “Don't be shy. I have the documents ready. Do you have the money?” But the dream he woke on was of Edith in New York and he had an erection straining up through it — her? — then one thing led to another and he knew he had to lecture at nine at, what was this place, Universita di Catania, section: Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia, Cattedra di Letteratura. He sat on the side of his bed waiting for the right moment to stand. Why had a player in such a casual ancient moment come back tugging at him with her big-girl erotic self. A light changed in him: brilliant green.