Spoonwood (5 page)

By late July I'm three months old and bitterly disappointed with my progress so far. Spontaneous Combustion rubs it in.

“You should be half the size of a fully grown human by now,” he says, “running around, talking, getting into trouble, giving detailed excuses for inexcusable behavior. But look at you, still on
your back, sucking on bottles for pleasure, unable to speak, moving only your bowels, sleeping sixteen to eighteen hours a day.”

“We babies sleep so much because we're depressed,” I whimper. “It's hard to grow when you're depressed.”

“You're stealing sorrow from your cubby of memory—a misdemeanor of stealth-pity, but I should not criticize since my own demeanor is often amiss.”

When the cat isn't tormenting me, I torment myself. The whole infant thing is all about working through a major depression brought on by the trauma of birth and the realization that one has a small, useless body, an immature brain, and no sex life.

I compensate by drifting into nostalgia for the old days right after birth, when I'd been naive enough to think that my grownups were part of me.

“Your logic is sound,” Spontaneous Combustion says. “Trouble is, you are departing from a clawed premise. You have needs, your elders responded to those needs; all creatures work to promote their own interests, but yours promoted your interests before their own. Therefore, you reason—what? Tell me what you reason.”

“I am one with them. We must be all One. We are One.”

“Your mother put that idea in your head through dreams. We—who is we? Well, if you are one with them, you can refer to yourself as me or us. Can move back and forth between first person angular and first person rural. I plus we cannot equal one, no? Yes. In the end, as you now know, having abandoned the ideas of your immature mind, linguistic trickery is a trap: pursuing the meaning of words makes a creature mute or cynical, or moot and cyclical, and what's lost is the feel of knowledge, as in: let's just say we are not one; we are One. (Note the breakdown in logic.) Or, even, we are won. More ridiculously, we are Juan. Was that what you meant, a confusion of Juan?”

“I don't know,” I say.

By the end of the second month I was beginning to see that my grownups were not me, that everyone in the household was not me. My needs were not tied to their needs. Because I cried, because I was cold from a wet diaper, and because a grownup came
to my rescue did not mean that the grownup was cold, that the grownup was myself. Not only was I helpless in the world, I was alone, outnumbered by the not me's. Not to mention confused and abused by the family cat.

Flash ahead to my third month. I ask Spontaneous Combustion the big question: “Why do my grandmother and grandfather take care of me?” His answer: “They are meeting their own neurotic needs to help somebody who is cute. Cute is all you have going. When you're living on your looks you can't help but be insecure, because you depend so much on other people for validation as well as sustenance.”

I avoid these philosophical dilemmas posed by Spontaneous Combustion by sleeping as much as possible and when awake concentrating my efforts on physical pleasures—savoring nourishment, wallowing in the temporary euphoria of expelling bodily waste, and in my spare time sucking everything in sight (I am especially fond of my feet).

It's summer in New Hampshire, no air conditioning in the mobile home, so the windows are open all the time. Sounds of the outdoors distract me from my introspection—songbirds in the morning and at dusk; coyotes howling at night; owls asking the eternal question
who who who;
crows squacking off and on all day; wind blowing through trees and over the grass; cars going by on our road, producing a Doppler effect (which I like); various courtship rites of loudmouthed insects and frogs,
peep peep, seep seep;
the distant hush of the distant interstate. I don't know what to make of these languages, just too many for me to learn. I'm realizing what Spontaneous Combustion has been pointing out all along—my human stupidity. Disappointment leads me into a new and exciting strategy. If I cannot reason out noise into meaningful utterance, why not just internalize it for enjoyment? In other words, I have discovered music. My despair lifts.

The outdoor sounds make me realize what I should have known already, that the ordinary noises of the indoors are also music.

“It's about time you figured out that one can make music by attentive listening,” says Spontaneous Combustion. “It's neither
the quality nor the organization of noise that makes music, it is the quality of attention paid to the noise that makes music.”

Four days before my release I'm in the fields pulling weeds. Behind me is corn, tall and almost ready for picking, peering critically over my shoulder. A house guard shows up, says something to the field guard, who tells me I have visitors. I and the house guard walk back to the jail.

“What would you do if I ran away?” I say to the house guard, whose name is Earl.

“I'd chuckle,” Earl says. “No doubt you'd swim across the river, like they all do, figuring you'd have a better chance in Vermont. Sleep in the woods at night. Then what?”

“Good point, Earl,” I say, but I'm thinking about this idea of sleeping in the woods. It doesn't seem so bad. “Who wants to see me? Is it the cops?”

“They don't tell me nothing,” Earl says.

Since it's not visiting hours, I think maybe the police are going to interrogate me again. The first time they talked to me I was nervous and truthful. This time around I will be relaxed and deceitful. I will give them names of people in Upper Darby I despise. I will tell them that Upper Darby is the drug capital of northern New England. Drugs maintain their standard of living, their prestige, their influence at the State House in Concord, in the halls of Congress. I will perjure myself in court just to see the Upper Darby snobs squirm.

My fantasy suddenly vanishes. I loved Lilith Salmon. How could I slander her people? What's the matter with me? Why this unreasonable anger? By the time we walk into the building I'm frightened as a child at what I imagine will be this interrogation. All I will have to offer them will be the naked truth. I know nothing. In every sense of the words, I know nothing.

It's soon clear that it not the police who have come to talk to me. I'm not called to the visitors' lounge, nor to an interrogation room, but to the superintendent's reception parlor. I sit down in
the biggest easy chair. Earl is relieved by another guard I don't know, who says, “On your feet.”

My body stands, but my mind remains in the chair.

The prison superintendent enters with Persephone Salmon, Monet Salmon, and Garvin Prell, the very people I had in mind to incriminate in my crazy musings.

“Have a seat, young man,” the superintendent says. He looks a little bit like President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but with a full head of graying, reddish hair. I'm thinking about
Mad Magazine
line art, how every president resembles Alfred E. Newman. The superintendent says a few words to Garvin Prell and leaves the room. After he's gone it occurs to me that he never looked my way. A prisoner is noticed only if he escapes. In other words, his identity is acknowledged by his absence.

Garvin is a couple years older than myself, and I remember seeing him around from time to time when I was growing up. But he went to private school and we had no more than a nodding acquaintance. He's a runner and bicyclist and looks the part—not big, but lean and hard and fit. It's obvious from his looks that he eats right and works out. He's wearing a suit and a red power tie. His sandy hair is artfully tousled. He's known around Darby as a swordsman. Birch looks more like him than like me. The bile collects at the bottom of my throat.

Monet Salmon is Reggie Salmon's younger brother. He's tall, squared away, wearing khaki pants, light hiking boots, and a blue button-down shirt, his face tanned gold the way all the Salmons tan. Monet is an impressive-looking man, a country gentleman in his early fifties, and never mind that he doesn't measure up to his older brother, who was taller, better looking, more forceful, and a visionary, the founder of the Salmon land trust. Local people will always think of Raphael “Reggie” Salmon as the Squire, Monet as the Pocket Squire. I'm surprised to see Monet here. He and Persephone never got along.

I've seen the snapshots, and I know how beautiful Persephone Salmon was when she was young, more beautiful than Lilith, as Lilith was aware. Lilith's features were like her father's—strong
and handsome and cleaved, her body, as her father was fond of saying, like a racehorse. But Persephone's features are delicate, fine, proportioned, from her little turned-up nose to the double-upsidedown “V's” of her upper lip. As a young woman she was compared to Grace Kelley.

I haven't seen Persephone since the funeral. I barely recognize her. Age and wear and tear had begun to catch up with her anyway, but Lilith's death has speeded up the process, done something bad to her on the inside that shows on the outside. A flare-up of arthritis has rounded her shoulders, twisted her body, gnarled her hands. She has bags under her eyes, a thousand wrinkles, loose skin under her chin and cheeks; her lips are dry and thin. Her hair has stiffened and turned an ash color. Her alabaster skin is roughed and reddened by a rash. Chain-smoking has stained her fingers and teeth. What amazes me is why she's done nothing to make herself look better.

“This is quite the prison,” Persephone says for openers.

“This is not a prison, Mrs. Salmon. It's a house of correction” I say, addressing Persephone but looking at Garvin.

“Well, we do stand corrected?” Garvin says, not sarcastic exactly, just trying to be clever.

“You knew Lilith quite well,” I snap at him.

“Everybody in Upper Darby knows everybody else,” Garvin says.

“Garvin is like a son to me,” Persephone says.

“We're a tightly knit community,” says Monet.

I want to ask Garvin if he had an affair with Lilith, his sister, since Persephone thinks of him as a son. But I'm too weary to play word games. Instead, I say to nobody in particular, “Why are you people being nice to me when deep down you're not nice?”

Persephone looks at me directly. I cannot hold eye contact with her. “What do you plan on doing when you get out of here?” she asks.

“What do you care, Mrs. Salmon?”

“I don't—not really.” Her voice is thick with a cigarette rasp. She turns toward the guard, who stands by the door. “Is it all right if I smoke?”

“Yes, mam. We ask that you use the ashtrays.” The guard points to a black plastic ashtray with holders scooped into the edges.

Persephone lights a cigarette. “Forgive me, I'm nervous. A year ago I had a husband and daughter. Today they're gone. All I have is my grandson.”

“You never came to see him,” I say.

“That first month was pretty difficult for all of us,” Monet says. “Persephone was sedated for most of the time, weren't you?”

I fight off an involuntary surge of sympathy for this woman, who (correctly, it turned out) advised her daughter to stay away from me.

“Garvin, you'd better take over,” Persephone says. “I'm a little too wrought up.”

“It's okay, Persephone—it's okay,” Monet says.

“Shut up, Monet,” Persephone says.

Monet steps back, embarrassed. Garvin whispers a few words in Persephone's ear, calming her down. I admire Persephone's anger. It, if not her, is embraceable.

Garvin opens his briefcase and pulls out some papers. “We've drafted an agreement. We will leave it with the guard for you to study. Will you need a reader assistant?”

“I've been to college, Mister Prell,” I say.

“Well, I guess I knew that,” Garvin says in a soft voice. “Mrs. Salmon wishes to adopt her grandson.”

Suddenly, I'm alert. “He would live with you?” I say to Persephone.

“With me and my niece, Katharine Ramchand,” Persephone says.

“Think of what Mrs. Salmon can do for that boy that you cannot,” Garvin says. “She can send him to the best schools, introduce him to influential people, give him a stable environment.”

“What else? What's the catch?” I say.

“We ask that you surrender rights of visitation and that you leave Darby,” Garvin says.

“You want me to give up my son,” I say in a huff, but it's all acting. I'm thinking about the road, the freedom. I visualize myself sitting on a rock out west someplace, a beer in hand.

“It would confuse him and probably confuse you if you both lived in the same community,” Persephone says.

Now I'm thinking about my mother, her search for roots. Not finding. Her disappointment. Her offer to raise Birch as one of her own.

“It's only right that he knows who his father is,” I say.

“That's correct,” Garvin says. “And Mrs. Salmon has thought of that. When the boy reaches the age of eighteen he will be told who his father is. He will then be able to decide whether he wishes to make contact with same.”

“Eighteen years—it's like a prison sentence,” I say.

“Think of it as eighteen years of free child care, unburdened by the responsibilities of parenthood,” Monet says. This despicable man has seen through me; I guess it takes one to know one.

“Mrs. Salmon has included a generous financial settlement of fifty thousand dollars,” Monet says.

“Fifty thousand?” I say.

“That's correct—direct payment upon signing of the papers and surrender of the child,” Monet says.

“Sleep on it and get back to Garvin in the morning,” Persephone says. “The superintendent will allow you to make a phone call.”

That night I lie on my back on my prison cot, thinking. The smell of cow manure sashays in through the open, barred windows. My truck is in good shape, outfitted as a homemade camper with gas stove, a comfortable bed, a portable toilet. I'll see the country right into fall, go down to Mexico for the winter, head for Alaska come spring. Pick up odd jobs along the way. With fifty thou for back-up, I can live forever on the road. I visualize the money in various denominations, like green snow fluttering down from the heavens. I do not think about my family. My only inner conflict is whether I will have a drink before or after the
signing. The following day I leave a phone message with Garvin's secretary that I agree to the terms. Signing is set at the Salmon mansion for two
PM
of the day I'm to be released from jail.