The Mars Room(75)

The mountains beyond the yard were forever, too, but they were not the automated concrete prison forever. I dreamed of ancient worlds up there, a lost civilization of people who would give me a chance. It was a childish dream that came from a book we read in Hauser’s class. The mountains, brownish purple on a winter afternoon. People in a hut where a fire crackles. They take in the stranger and teach her to live. In some of my daydreams, Jackson was already there with those friendly strangers, waiting for me. He was among the people who would give me my chance. He was dirty and strong, a feral boy who had made his way bravely. He was there in the hut, waiting with the others for my arrival, my rehabilitation, to use the language of this place. They don’t help you with it. You have to do it yourself.

“When I get out of this place maybe I can try to do something for you,” Sammy said.

I knew she meant what she said, but Sammy was in and out of prison and barely able to help herself. She was a loyal person with problems of her own.

I’d written probably forty letters to the case manager. The case manager sent only one letter back, a short note saying that my rights had been terminated and suggesting I get a family court lawyer if I was attempting to appeal the termination, but that I should understand terminations were almost never overturned.



* * *



Serenity Smith had been in protective custody almost a year now. Some had given up the fight, figuring they would never mainline her. Laura Lipp kept it up. It was her passion. There were people who felt that Laura Lipp was not a good leader for the group, since she had murdered her own child, an infant, to get revenge on a man. Two young women, newbies looking to make names for themselves, beat up Laura and cut off all her hair.

Laura kept a low profile after that. The movement grew against Ms. Smith, newly validated by its loss of Laura as leader. The Norse was involved. The Norse informed on women who held hands, which was illegal at Stanville. So was hugging, or any kind of sustained physical contact between inmates. “This is all out,” the Norse said. “I ain’t living with deviants. They want to throw a man in the pen with us and expect us to take it.” The Norse talked about Stanville as if she were its redneck protector of family values, a proud defender of the institution’s standards, and not just one more pathetic and angry prisoner. Teardrop, too, got involved, probably because for Teardrop aggression and beating on people were a good outlet. Teardrop and Conan, historically road dogs, got into it over the issue. “How can you not want to protect a sister?” Conan asked, meaning a black sister. Teardrop said the last thing she needed was ghetto motherfuckers up in her grill. They fist-fought in the port-a-potties on main yard and Conan won. Teardrop was moved out of our room.



* * *



“Has anyone gotten past an electric fence?” I asked Sammy. We were walking our track, out of listening range from the watch office microphones.

“Two guys at Susanville.”

“But how.”

“They used something wood to wedge up the bottom of the fence and went underneath. A broom handle, I think. Dude at Salinas Valley climbed. He grounded himself somehow. Almost got over and they shot him down.”

Conan jogged toward us. “I was running, and over near the bathrooms I saw this white figure, a man, with his arms open. He was in white clothes, the pants kind of belled at the bottom. I thought it was Elvis, you know, from the wild years, when he got fat and had those stupid sunglasses. But when I got closer, it was the trash bins.”

Conan’s vision was going bad from his diabetes. He had an appointment to see a medical technician’s assistant, which was our version of doctor, in eight months’ time.

“Hey what did Elvis drive?” Conan asked me.

I hadn’t laughed about him mistaking the trash bins for Elvis. He always turned to cars when he knew I’d gone bleak.

“A Stutz,” I said, but with no life in the words or in me. “He drove a Stutz Blackhawk.”



* * *



Jimmy Darling had gone to Graceland with a camera and said there was nothing to film there. Nothing to see. Except for the graffiti on the wall surrounding it.

Isn’t it all made to look glitzy and impressive? I asked.

Yeah, he said, it is.

What about the car?

The car, he said, was like the Virgin Mary on toast. Try to photograph it, and the miracle vanishes. He’d paid extra to see the airplanes. Elvis’s private jets. Inside one was a double bed. Stretched across it, over the covers, a super-wide airplane seat belt. Looking at the belted bed, and the one executive’s chair, near the window, Jimmy Darling felt the spirit of Elvis in the plane, up late, inside the night, hurtling across the sky, lonely as hell, no one with him in his darkest hour. Jimmy Darling was visited, in the airplane, by the wind of Elvis’s empty soul.



* * *



Hauser, too, knew the mechanical museum at Ocean Beach. “See Susie Dance the Can-Can,” he said, as proof. The Camera Obscura, where a large dish showed the froth of the waves. Kelly’s Cove, which in my group wasn’t about surfing, just drinking, and boys. A huge sign that announced Playland, but no Playland around. Only the sun-bleached sign next to a fake cliff, man-made, which people said was there to trick the Japanese during the war.

There’s a pizza place up Irving, Hauser said. They spin the dough in the windows.