Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

“Why?”

“I thought I could save my husband’s life,” Dorothy said and, so quietly she didn’t think he’d notice, she started to cry.

“Look there,” the driver said some minutes later. “That’s where all the magic happens. I’m home.”

The guards at the gate didn’t need to see identification. They didn’t even ask her her name. They didn’t bother with the driver either, just waved him on through as though he were pulling up to discharge a guest in front of the entrance to a hotel. When he stopped before what Mrs. Bliss took to be some sort of administration building he got out of the limo and came around to Dorothy’s side to open her door and help her out. Now she was there she wondered why it had seemed so important to come.

“It’s a big roomy car and very comfortable,” Dorothy said, “but three hours in a closed automobile is a long time to sit. I wonder could I stretch my legs a few minutes before I go in?”

“Stand around in the yard? It’s your call, Mrs. Bliss, but not all these guys are as civil as yours truly. Not everyone here is in for a victimless crime. Ain’t all of us forgers, what I’m saying.” He winked. “Some of these characters ain’t seen a woman in a long time.” Quite suddenly Mrs. Ted Bliss was alarmed. She was well into her seventies and what he said seemed one of the cruelest, most patronizing things anyone had ever said to her. So much for men’s bravery and nerve. Mrs. Bliss felt quite ill and turned to enter the building. The driver touched her arm as if to stop her. “Hey, no, I’m kidding,” he said. “It’s like they say in the papers. The place is a country club. You see anybody with his back on a bench lifting weights? You see a single tattoo, or some bull con make eye contact with some cow con? No, Mother, you stay outside and enjoy the fine weather, I’ll go tell Señor Chitral you’re here.”

Before she could object the man had disappeared. Terms, things, conditions, had certainly changed, but Mrs. Bliss could not have said what or how. Of course she felt odd standing by herself out in the prison yard — she was sure that’s what it was; dozens of men dressed in what, despite the neat, neutral appearance of their cheap, open white dress shirts, tan slacks, and inexpensive loafers, could only have been uniforms, loitered or strolled about the quadlike yard like students at a university between classes — but not in the least vulnerable, as safe, really, as she would have felt at the Towers. (And it was a fine day. It seemed strange to Mrs. Bliss that they could have stepped into a car three hours ago and stepped out again three hours later into the same fine weather. This was a penitentiary at the edge of a swamp. How could it have the same climate as the world?) She hardly believed she was in a prison among desperados and villains. People conducted themselves in perfectly ordinary, orderly, civilized ways. They might indeed have been scholars discussing the issues and topics, illuminating for one another the ramifications and fine points. Dorothy wondered if the inmates had “quiet” or “free times” imposed on them like children at summer camp, say, or if this was the way they walked off their lunches. There couldn’t have been more than forty-five or fifty of them about, perambulating what were more like kempt grounds than anything as sordid as a prison yard. She wondered if the rest of the population might not voluntarily have gone back to their cells — rooms? — to nap or write letters. It certainly wasn’t what she expected, or like anything she’d seen in the movies. Yet it was a prison yard. She saw guards with rifles, with guns in holsters, and all the rest of power’s lead and leather paraphernalia. They weren’t on the tops of walls in little tollbooths on watchtowers, though, but walked about, almost mingling with their prisoners. If anything should happen, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, the guards would be in one another’s way. Everybody would be in everybody else’s line of fire. Yet neither guards nor inmates seemed particularly wary. Individuals greeted each other easily, indifferent as old acquaintances, almost, she thought, the way residents of one Towers high rise might say good morning and ask after someone else’s health who lived in a different building. What they didn’t show you in the movies was how ordinary it all was, the simple, edgeless decency of people who had been arbitrarily thrown together. Or was this simply the cream of the crop, the best a place like this had to offer?

They greeted Dorothy, too, some of them, inmates as well as guards, and inquired, solicitous as clerks in department stores, if they could help her.

“Oh, no,” Dorothy told them, “thank you, I’m just waiting for somebody.”

They were charming, charming. Of course, Chitral had been charming, too.

A guard came up to her.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I understand you’re here to see someone. It could be a while. Bob Gorham’s fixing to practice his touch-and-go’s in a few minutes. He’s got a beautiful day for it. Why don’t you come watch? Rodge’ll let you know when your party shows up.”

“Rodge?” Mrs. Bliss said.

“It’s Roger. Rodge is just what they call me,” a second guard said.

“Come on,” the first guard said, “runway’s round the side of this building.”

Mrs. Bliss went with him. Most of the convicts were headed in the same direction. It wasn’t a long walk and the guard was careful to set his pace to Mrs. Bliss’s. In minutes they were within sight of the runway. “We can stop now,” the man said. “We’ll be able to see just fine from right here. Plus this way, when your party comes, you won’t have so far to walk back.”

“That wasn’t far,” Mrs. Bliss said.

“Well, I know it,” the guard said, “but…I’ll be honest with you. You promise not to tell?”

“Tell what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bob’s a square shooter. Well, for someone of the criminal classes, I mean. But the true facts of the case is that this is the first time he done this without his flight instructor riding shotgun. There’s always the possibility that him and fate could run afoul. From here you get a good enough first-rate view, but you’re still standing far enough back and to the side of the airstrip that if he loses control or his engine stalls and his plane, God forbid, drops out of the sky you’ll be protected.”

“This happens?”

“ Could happen, could happen, but it won’t. One-in-a-million,” he said dismissively.

Mrs. Bliss was reminded of Hector Camerando and his talk of long shots and locks and fixes. What, did most people live beneath such heavy protection? Mrs. Bliss couldn’t remember when she hadn’t played cards. Poker, bridge, the rummy variations. But for her, for all of them, the stakes had always been the coffee and coffee cake, the sweets and kibitzing and gossip and conversation. She couldn’t remember the size of the biggest pot she’d ever taken or even, over the years, whether she’d won, lost, or broken even. Perhaps she was foolish, she thought, not to keep better records.

But then, about fifty yards away, she saw a man in an inmate’s vaguely preppy uniform, wearing goggles and a tight, old-fashioned cloth aviator’s cap on his head, climb into the cockpit of a small, single-engine plane. A moment later Mrs. Bliss heard him start up the engine.

“But isn’t he a prisoner?” Dorothy said.

“Bob Gorham? Five to ten years’ worth. He’s got but months to serve before he’s up for parole, but shoot, I guess he was bored.”

“You mean it’s only a few months until he gets out and he’s taken up flying?”

“Got a beautiful day for it. Beautiful day.”