A. Homes - The End of Alice

Ruined. Stained. This unplanned eruption has wrecked my routine.

Heavy knock, pounding at the door. “Can you hear me,” the sergeant shouts. He is back, he must have gone off to run an errand.

“Yes,” I say. “Of course I can hear you. I’m not deaf, you know. No need to yell.”

“Assume the position,” a second muffled voice commands me.

“It’s time,” the sergeant says. “Are you ready?”

I am. I am so excited I can hardly contain myself. With my legs spread, my back to the door, arms extended up over my head, I stand ready.

The door opens. The room fills with guards. They grab me roughly. I smile. I try to turn my head to see who’s there. My jailers are not in their usual attire but in riot gear, flak jackets, helmets with the visors pulled down. They, too, realize it’s a special occasion. I can’t tell who is who.

“Is that you, Jenkins, Smith, Williams?” I ask.

They don’t answer.

They kick the debris of my packing process out of the way. Accidentally, and I forgot to mention this before, my haste, my hurry, caused the television set to fall to the floor. Parts of it are now scattered around the room.

I am cuffed, shackled, belly-chained.

I try to play along. When I speak, my words come out with a spray. “Spectacular sunrise,” I say, speech suddenly sloppy, sloshy with superfluous saliva, my s’s surprisingly sibilant.

“Did he spit? I just saw him spit. He spit at us,” one of the guards says.

“Don’t worry, we’re covered,” another adds.

I nod in the direction of my bed, my belongings neatly piled, wrapped in white linen. “My luggage,” I say— l ’s lazy, elongated with loads of lugubrious loogies. “Shall I take my l uggage with me now or do I get it later?”

They are pulling me out of the room. I try to joke, to break the ice. “Why couldn’t the milkmaid milk the cow? She had no regard for the feelings of udders.”

I am taken through corridors I’ve not seen before, though it’s difficult to know for sure. Rat maze, a monkey house for men. The noise, the constant tremulous roar, the echoes of the caged, is deafening.

The committee room. Rumor, rampant, rife, rarely accurate, paints a portrait of it as a limbo land of three doors, the one through which the prisoner is led, one through which the committee walks, and a third that supposedly opens onto a long road, a broad and uncrowded street. The reputation of the room presents a place where persecution persists, performance is primary, and punctuality is preferred. And I have heard that the prisoner is kept chained like some wildebeest supposedly for the protection of the furniture, which on occasion has taken flight, split the air, and splintered, cracking committee heads and ruining the antiquities — desks and chairs made of that rare upstate governmental wood known as Oh, Albany.

We’re buzzed in. All in all, it’s not what you’d expect; no spotlights, no proscenium, no bleachers or orchestra pit, none of the stuff of an extravaganza. I am unimpressed.

There is a table covered in white cloth, four chairs, a small stenographer’s desk, and a single seat set apart.

I take the single seat and scope out the room. I am looking for the three doors. There is the one behind me, the one through which I passed. On that same wall is a second one, and the third on the opposite side of the room is clearly marked, labeled with a red and white sign that says Exit.

Door number three. I’m banking on it. Let’s make a deal.

The three committee members enter through the second door. One is a youngish man who looks vaguely familiar— is this what they mean by a jury of one’s peers? And there are two women, one black and middle-aged and the other an old white woman with white hair — I find her the most frightening.

I stand.

Guards tackle me from behind, slamming me down. “Oh,” I say, expressing my surprise as they pin me to the floor, forcibly causing my breath to escape. Their boots are pressed into my neck, my back — leaving prints, I’m sure, on the back of my clean white shirt — and I’d tried so hard to put myself together, to make a pleasant appearance. Their disregard for my outfit is most distressing. Chains are produced and wrapped round and round me in a display of metallurgical madness. I’m then lifted back into the chair and my links are locked to the floor. A leather strap not unlike a seat belt is fastened around my gut, holding me in proper posture. I am incredibly secure. I don’t resist.

The members take their seats and arrange the high stacks of paper that are before them on the table.

A secretary appears with a pot of coffee and a tray of Danish. Coffee is poured and each of the panelists picks a Danish. A pitcher of cream is passed around.

“There seems to be a problem,” the woman with white hair says, licking her fingers.

“Yes,” the man says, looking, I assume, for the sugar. He glares at me.

I nod.

“Is there any Sweet’n Low, saccharin, or Equal?” the black woman asks.

The secretary shakes her head, sits down, and stenos everything they’ve said so far with the world’s fastest fingers.

“Let’s start with the simple things,” the black woman says, turning her attention to me. “Do you know why you’re here?”

I nod.

“You’ve been held in this facility for twenty-three years?”

“Yes.”

“And how has that been?”

“Fine. Good. Well.”

“How do you spend your days?”

I pause a moment to think.

She continues, on my behalf, “You read. You’ve checked out four thousand one hundred sixty books from our library since you arrived, implying, given our inventory, that on several occasions you’ve read the same thing twice?” She raises her eyebrows; they appear to turn into fully formed question marks.

Terrified, I nod.

“You write,” she says. “You’ve mailed fourteen thousand five hundred sixty-four letters; if nothing else, you’re prolific.” I think of the unmailed letter tucked into my luggage, fourteen thousand five hundred sixty-five letters. “And,” she continues, “you exercise. You’ve been in the outside yard two thousand eighty-two times.” She pauses. “And yet we don’t seem to be able to keep you entertained.” Again she stops. “I’m referring to the incident on the Fourth of July.”

She is wearing a red blouse, a red silk blouse, with red flowers — it’s the first time in years that I’ve seen such bright color. I can’t keep my eyes off it. Red flowers. Sunlight. My grandmother’s geraniums. Mama is home, she comes into the yard.

“We have taken possession of you,” the old woman says, scaring me. “As though you were our own, we have kept and cared for you. How do you think we feel to have failed so miserably?”

“You make us look bad,” the man says. “It’s embarrassing.” He pauses. “We must put our feet down.”

Boom! A stack of files, a pile of notebooks, falls to the floor. The sound is heart stopping.

“Is this some mock execution?” I blurt. “Am I supposed to find this arousing?” I rattle my chains, loud as I can. “A perverse and pornographic plethysmograph? Are you measuring me? Do I measure up? Are you jerking me off with your chain-link routine? I can tell you I’m not amused. I am limp as a lady.”

Fear has eaten my sanity.

“Let’s just get on with it, shall we,” the man says, his voice shaking.

There are big windows in the room. Lots of light. Bright. White. A shade flaps in a breeze, knocking against the window frame.

“Columbia County case No. 71-124,” the secretary reads aloud.

“August 1971. Defendant aged thirty-one, white male, single. No record of previous arrests. Personal file. Born Richmond, Virginia, on March eleventh, 1940. Father, employee Commonwealth Bank, suffered giantness, deceased as of 1945. Mother, mentally disordered, manic-depressive type, alcoholic, frequently hospitalized, committed vehicular suicide July 1949. Defendant raised by maternal grandmother, deceased, natural causes, September 1970.