The imagination may be built for looking ahead, but you can’t pretend it’s got no influence when you’re looking back. Gilbert Sorrentino observed that art was “the act of smashing the mirror,” and so when it comes to Bedlam, finally I have to give up on tracking down sources and meanings. I have to trust in its power to break through my own mirror, scuffed and pitted, and get clear. Dzanc Books, thanks for the smash.
Des Moines, IA 2014
Over 4000 Square Miles
What Hartley couldn’t take were the Town Halls. Up the coast from the Everglades the limousine carried him, cutting through Fort Lauderdale to reach the ocean. Then it was one resort after another, places where most of the buildings had been put up since 1975, getting wealthier as they headed north. Deerfield Beach, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach. And in each town Hartley would be amazed by the Town Hall. They were dinky, flattopped, single-story jobs, a slap in his face it seemed. They were painted effeminate seashell colors, with stucco walls that looked like wrinkled paper. Even the lettering on them looked like paper, like something Hartley’s kid could do. The one in Boca Raton had obvious plastic flowers standing lamely around the front door.
“Are you kidding me?” Hartley complained. “You call that a Town Hall?”
Garbeau, sitting beside him, right away cracked up. She was from Vermont originally and knew what he was talking about. The limo driver meantime lowered the divider between the front and rear seats.
“What’s the matter with that, man?” the driver asked. “Ain’t they got Town Halls where you come from?”
Garbeau laughed even harder, putting her head in Hartley’s lap. Hartley felt her throat trembling through his swim trunks.
“What they make ’em like where you come from, man? Your Town Halls got reefer on ’em or something?”
Garbeau had brought along a cigarette pack filled with joints. Hartley cupped his out of her reach now and concentrated. The driver was a big middle-aged black man, with a classic serene expression, like soggy jungle leaves.
“I’m quartered at Fort Devens,” Hartley said. “That’s in Ayer, Massachusetts.” He tried to make it clear he was still complaining. “And up in Massachusetts a Town Hall is serious business. A Town Hall up there has got a plaque for the war dead. It’s got a cannon on the front lawn.”
“That so?”
“Hartley, God.” Garbeau tweaked the inside of his thigh as she sat up. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re a soldier.”
Hartley nodded; he’d heard it before. But with that he fell silent. He moved his eyes from the rear-view mirror, where he’d been watching the driver, and he took a couple nervous tokes.
“Not in Florida, man,” the driver said finally. “A cannon on the front lawn is way too heavy for Florida.” The car was in cruise gear and the driver’s voice had changed. “This here, man, this the shadow world. Don’t you know that? All these fine new buildings, don’t let ’em fool you. Florida Indian land, pirate land. It’s alligator land, you dig?”
The driver’s voice was rounder, more hushy. Easily he fell into his tall tale. It seemed President Carter—“that’s President, Jimmy, Carter, you dig”—had to wrestle an alligator in order to win some important endorsement from the Seminole Indians.
“I heard that story,” Garbeau said, suddenly businesslike. To Hartley it seemed like she hadn’t spoken in twenty years. “I did research for that story, in case we were going to use it. Carter had to send a couple Secret Service down.”
Hartley started to regret his last couple tokes. Too much grass made him anxious.
“Course,” the driver said, “ain’t that hard to wrestle an alligator.”
“That’s what I heard,” Garbeau said. “Just have to stay clear of the tail.”
The driver nodded seriously. Hartley racked his brains for some joke to break up this insane conversation. In the end he could only tug on his dogtags and say directly, harshly: “Look, I don’t want to be a tourist. All right? You guys are filming my life down there. That’s what I want to see.”
Garbeau had lit her own joint by now. With the artificial smell of the air conditioning, the car stank.
“You told your wife,” she said, “today you’d be a tourist. You told her that last night you were out watching us shoot.”
Hartley filled his lungs with more smoke.
Noon. He was farther out of his head for noon, Hartley realized, than at any time in the last dozen years. When they pulled onto a public beach above West Palm, he sat in the shade with his elbows hooked over his knees. Slowly the sand irritated the white scars on his lower back.
His trouble was, when he complained it came out like a wisecrack. Garbeau and the driver had treated that entire business of the Town Halls as if it had been some kind of joke. And now Garbeau came and said he sounded like a little kid. She sat beside Hartley, gulping down a fried-clam lunch with doped-up speed. There were good reasons for his being here, she said. Her company had brought him down so that he’d serve as Special Advisor on a television docu-drama. They were filming the story of his escape from prison camp and his flight, alone, back to his own position in the winter of 1967-68. Garbeau’s company was trying to tell a simple human story without political overtones, a story of one man’s struggle to survive that would be truly meaningful for real people everywhere. Hartley tried saying he’d heard this speech before. But Garbeau only laughed.
“Look,” Hartley said, “if I’m just going to be doing the tourist bit, Claire should be here.”
This time Garbeau’s laughter had an edge. Something confidential; it made his groin tingle. Mildly, she pointed out that his wife Claire would be down no later than next week. Hartley had to look away. Claire and he had talked it over for three nights running and each time they’d reached the same decision. One parent should remain with the kids while they took their exams.
“Good reasons,” Garbeau said, finishing an enormous milkshake. “All very good reasons. So don’t be a crybaby. It’s high tide and I’m going in to body-surf.”
He sat watching her. When Garbeau stood up after riding her first wave in, the three patches of her wet string bikini came at him like a rose thrust in his face. Hartley had always thought he’d be a success at adultery. Or at least, he’d thought so since the Army had started sending him out on local publicity assignments. Sitting round with media types and New England pols, he’d been impressed by how much better in shape he was than most married men. Put Hartley in a T-shirt and jeans, and he’d look like everybody’s lippy teenage grease monkey. This at thirty-two. Plus, the first joke out of his mouth and the women would start asking him, my my Captain Hartley, is that the way a soldier talks? What does the Army do when it finds out the truth about you?
It was the war-hero business. He’d always known it gave him an advantage. Only last night, at the hotel bar, he’d pressed the advantage home.
“I’m so glad you’re here with us,” Garbeau had told him. This was after dinner. “You make our story true to life.”