It was the booze that killed him. He was drinking a fifth and more of whiskey a day in the last couple of years of his life, and it ate like acid through his liver and put him in the hospital and killed him within a week of his admission. I went to see him at San Francisco General just once, at Ma’s insistence. The impression I have of him then is of someone small and wasted and old, even though he was only fifty. I didn’t say anything to him-he was partially sedated at the time-and I only stayed a minute or so. Ma stayed a long time. She went every day and stayed a long time and then came home and fixed huge meals and ate most of the food herself. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. I spent most of that week, that deathwatch, in my room reading pulp magazines and army enlistment brochures and vowing to myself that I would not be like my old man, I would not, I would not drink whiskey and I would not steal and cheat and I would not hurt the people who were close to me.
I’ve lived up to those vows the best way I know how. I don’t drink whiskey, I’m reasonably honest, I don’t willingly inflict pain on those I care about or on any decent human being. Whatever else I am, whatever my shortcomings, I am not my old man’s son.
Sudden insight, one I’ve never had before: He made me the way I am today. In his own uncaring, selfish, drunken way, my old man made me exactly the kind of person I grew up to be.
The Seventy-First Day
The heater died this morning.
I turned it on to low as I always do, to let it warm up slowly, and right away it started to make a series of loud pinging and thumping noises. I watched it for a few seconds, went to shut it down again-and there was a banging, a flash with sparks in it, and the thing died. I switched it off, let it cool for an hour, and switched it back on. Nothing. Dead as hell.
And outside it’s snowing again and the temperature must be ten below zero. Exercising kept me warm for a while, but once my body cooled down I had to fold myself up in one of the blankets and drink cup after cup of hot coffee until it was time for the next set of exercises. I’ll have to keep wearing the blanket and drinking too much coffee and tea every day from now until I’m free. Eat more and exercise more, too, to maintain my body heat. The threat of pneumonia, of freezing to death, is twice as severe now, with all the life gone out of the heater and its corpse lying over there bent and broken against the fireplace, where I hurled it in a moment of rage and frustration.
But it can’t be much longer until I’m able to work that leg iron all the way over my heel and off. Another couple of weeks at the outside. I can stay healthy that long… I’ve got to stay healthy that long. I won’t let that frigging heater finish me when I’m this close to freedom.
The Seventy-Fifth Day
Five straight days of snow and chill moaning winds. Drifts piling up outside, deep enough to cover the lower third of the shed. Meat-locker cold in here-so intense three nights ago that I had to flatten out one of the cardboard cartons and wrap it around my body under my clothing. The instant coffee is almost gone, and there is only half a package of tea bags left. At least I don’t have to worry about the pipes freezing and cutting off my water supply: If that were possible it would have happened by now. Whoever plumbed this place must have used copper piping.
Sniffles in the morning, chronic runny nose, but no major symptoms of illness. So far.
I can get the leg iron, now, to within half an inch of coming off. Frustrating, that last agonizing half inch, but I just don’t dare try to force it any farther. I must have lost nearly thirty-five pounds but I still need to shed another five or so. God, how long to do that? Another ten days to two weeks at the most. I don’t think I can stand the waiting any longer than that.
The Eightieth Day
Sunshine, the first in more than two weeks. And the temperature has climbed a good fifteen degrees in the past twenty-four hours.
Thank Christ.
The Eighty-Fourth Day
Out of coffee. Out of crackers and cookies and most other things. Enough provisions left to last about three more weeks-more than the thirteen he planned.
Thirteen, thirteen. That damned number haunts me, and yet its meaning continues to elude me.
But I’ll be gone from here before the food runs out. Long before. Soon. Any day now. Every time I sit down to try removing the leg iron again, I start to sweat and tremble with anticipation. Still can’t quite do it. Almost, but not quite yet.
The Eighty-Seventh Day
So close…
The Eighty-Ninth Day
It isn’t thirteen years or thirteen weeks, it’s thirteen days. That’s the significance in the number, that has to be what this is all about. Why didn’t I realize it before this? Blocked out the details, that’s why, the same way I blocked out the image of my old man.
Thirteen days in April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-two. Thirteen long, difficult days. But if that’s it-and it must be because I just don’t see how it can be anything else-I still don’t know who he is. Or the exact nature of his motive. Or why he would wait all this time, nearly sixteen years, to take his revenge.
He wasn’t someone directly connected with what happened back then; I’d remember him now if he was. And yet I must have met him, we must have had some kind of contact, else why the disguising of his voice, why the ski mask to keep me from seeing his face? A relative or friend of Jackie Timmons, as crazy as that possibility is?
A relative or friend of the sixteen-year-old boy I killed?
The Ninetieth Day
FREE!
Part Two. Salvation
The First Day
It came off with almost no effort. All the long days of waiting, all the struggle and frustration of trying to work it free, and on this last day, this first day, it came off with the same ridiculous ease as removing a shoe.
I dragged the chain into the bathroom, I sat on the floor and took off my left shoe and sock, I greased my ankle with a mixture of soap and a little fat from the last can of Spam, I eased the leg iron over the heel and pushed it down the instep. And there was a moment of binding and resistance, just a moment, and then it slid right off, all the way off, and I was sitting there looking at it-an empty pair of locked iron jaws held in both my hands, shining a little from the grease, like a skinny obscene gray doughnut with a huge hole in the middle. I must have stared at it stupidly for a few seconds before I reacted. Then I yelled out loud and hurled the thing away from me, couldn’t bear to be touching it any longer, and half-crawled, half-stumbled out of the bathroom.