Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

They’ve had me here since August 12. Today is April 1, April Fool’s Day, an appropriate day to put on end the long fiasco, but I’m scheduled actually for April 6. I waited this long to write so I wouldn’t have a lot of time to sit around wondering if I’d reached you, wondering if you’d answer.

Just had my supper. Now I’ll start a six-day fast and go to the gallows nourished only in my soul. So what was fny the condemned’s last meal? Same as always, rice in some kind of fishy broth, and two bread rolls. Bon appétit!

Kathy, I believe I loved you. It never quite happened with anyone else. I take your memory with me. And I give you my thanks in return.

Love, Skip

April 2 The Warden came by last night to convert me to Jesus and pick up my mail but I didn’t give him this letter. I guess I’ll wait a few days. I guess I hate

— Someone came into the bathroom. She recognized the voice of the

old woman who’d sat at the next table. “Did Eugene say what his son died of?”

“Eugene never had a son.” “Heart attack?” The stall two doors down banged open and closed. Kathy looked at her watch. She was late. She put the pages in her

purse and got up to go out past the old woman, who stood by the mirror

with her head cocked and stared at the floor. She went back and found Ginger and made her apologies and left. She made for the Radisson Riverfront Hotel, the first door around the

corner, and in the lobby looked around for the MacMillan Houses event. She gathered the function involved something for, or about, or by young women, for there were many present in the lobby—very young, twelve, thirteen, all of them pretty girls, explosive and giddy, heavily made-up as if for the stage, their imperfections made brazen by this accentuation of their beauty—knock-knees, low waists, blotchy thighs in short skirts, probably because they felt chilly.

Following the directions of a brass-plated sign by the elevators, she passed through the lobby and down a long hallway at whose ending, at a table, sat a woman with two shoe boxes. From the auditorium’s open double doors came the kindly, amplified drone of someone reading a speech from a page.

“Are you here for the MacMillan fashion show?” “Good. I’m in the right place.” “A to L, or M to Z?” “I think I’m looking for Mrs. Rand. I’m supposed to speak.” “Well —Mrs. Keogh is downstairs.” “I don’t think I know Mrs. Keogh. I think I dealt with Mrs. Rand.” “Mrs. Rand is at the podium.” “Do you suppose I can go in and sit?” The woman said, “Oh.” The idea seemed to strike her at the wrong

angle. “There’ll be an intermission.”

“Or I can catch her at the intermission. I’ll just sit over here.” Except for the woman’s chair and table, the area was bare of furniture. “Or I’ll be in the lobby. I’ll try back in a few minutes.”

“If that’s all right. If you don’t mind. I’m sorry—” “No,” she said, mortified, her face flaming, “I’m late. I’m very sorry.” In the lobby she sat in a chair upholstered with brown leather and

brass rivets and opened her purse.

April 2 The Warden came by last night to convert me to Jesus and pick up my mail, but I didn’t give him this letter. I guess I’ll wait a few days. I guess I hate to say goodbye. I didn’t convert to Jesus, either.

Once I thought I was Judas. But that’s not me at all. I’m the youth at Gethsemane, the one on the night they arrested Jesus, the sleazy guy who slipped out of his garment when the throng had hold of him, and “he fled from them naked.”

I think you’re interested in the concept of Hell. I remember you as something of an expert. Dante’s 9th circle of Hell is reserved for the treacherous—

To kindred

To country and cause

To guests

To lords & benefactors

I betrayed

My kindred out of allegiance to my lords

My lords out of allegiance to my country

My country out of allegiance to kindred

My crime was in thinking about these things. In convincing myself I could arbitrate among my own loyalties. In the end out of shifting allegiances I monogod to I betrayed everything I believed.

I have to restrain myself from writing down every little thing. I feel I could take note of every little thought and describe every molecule of this cell and every moment of my life. And I have plenty of time. I have all day. But a limited amount of popor, and moybo your But only so much paper, and only so much faith in your patience, so I’ll rein in my thoughts.

April 3 This morning they hanged, hung, or in other words strung up a guy, some leader of a Chinese gang. They do it right out in the courtyard here at the prison, Pudu Prison, not for from downtown Kuolo Lumpur, about a hundred yards from where I’m sitting, but I can’t see the rig from this cell. Cells across the gangway get the whole view. But condemned guys, no. They keep us on the other side of the building. If I chin myself l-ea on the bars of my window I can see the roofs of houses across the street. The first time I get a look at the scaffold will be the last time.

There’s some whacking with a cane, that’s the preliminary punishment, but we don’t hear any hollering. Anyway I haven’t. The guy this morning was the fourth to be stretched since I got here last August. I suppose he had it coming, even the caning. These Chinese gangs are nasty, nasty and mean.

Maybe I’m covering up my fear. I don’t mean to sound flip. Or I do mean to, just out of nervousness, but I don’t want you to think I’m going to the noose with a flippant attitude. Three days from today, that’s it. I die. With an empty stomach. No last meal but an unbeliever’s prayer. If you still believe, Kathy, pray for me. Pray for me if you still believe.

April 4 In South Vietnam I thought I’d been sidelined. Removed to a place where I could think about the war. But you can’t be sidelined in a war, and in a war you mustn’t think, you musn’t ever think. War is action or death. War is action or cowardice. War is action or treachery. War is action or desertion. Do you get the idea here? War is action. Thought leads to treason.

My uncle told me once of seeing a soldier throw himself on a hand-grenade. Do you think that guy thought about it first? No. Courage is action. Thought is cowardice.

The soldier lived. The tfw*g grenade was a dud. I bet he thought about it afterward, though, and plenty. Among the people he meant to save, would have saved if the grenade had blown him up, was my uncle. Uncle Francis survived that night, but the war took him eventually. Through the years I’ve heard rumors to the contrary, but he was the kind of guy to generate rumors, old Uncle Francis. A guy with at least three graves that I’ve heard about, and probably more, if I’d bothered to ask around. But I know he’s dead and buried in Massachusetts.

I am my uncle’s legacy. After he died, his spirit entered me. He died not long after I last saw you, Kathy. Just a few months after, I think.

I think you met him once. You called him a rogue. He was one of these guys who look like they’re put together out of small boulders, with the biggest one in the middle. He had a gray flattop haircut. Do you remember flattops? Do you remember my uncle? He was kind of unforgettable. He used to say, It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, Don’t interrogate your opportunities, It’s not what you do that you regret, its what you don’t do, things like that. He died, and his spirit entered me. There was some question about whether he actually died, but not on my part. If by any chance he was alive, his spirit couldn’t have entered me.

Please don’t think I’m getting mystical here. When somebody close to you dies I think it’s a pretty general experience, pretty runof-the-mill, to start noticing how they’ve influenced you and maybe to start cultivating thooo encouraging those influences to flourish. So thoy livo on our mentors live on inside us. That’s all I’m talking about. Not possession by ancestral spirits or anything.