Shackles

music-Ma’s brother was a professional accordion player-and dancing, and homemade dago red and grappa from another brother’s ranch in Novato. It was a special occasion so I was allowed to drink a glass of strong red wine with the meal, and combined with the sun’s heat it made me woozy. Some of the guests and relatives laughed, my old man loudest of all, but Ma wasn’t one of them. She never laughed at me. She never laughed at anyone.

She never laughed much at all.

Big woman from Genoa. Big sad loving woman who traded the old world for a new one, and made the best of a life she didn’t deserve. She was exactly as I remember her-not a saint, no, but good. Down deep where it counts, as good as anyone God ever made.

The Forty-Fifth Day

He was here last night!

He came back, he was here, he was right here in this room watching me while I slept!

When I woke up and saw one of the doors across the room standing partway open, saw in front of it the straight-backed chair he’d sat in that first night, I thought I was hallucinating. I came up off the cot with chills racking me, scrubbing at my eyes, staring. But the chair stayed where it was, the door stayed open, the son of a bitch was here.

Rage boiled up, a black savage rage, and I lost control for a time… I don’t know how long. I shouted curses, I ripped at the chain until my hands started to bleed. I hurled empty cans from the garbage carton at the chair and the open door. Then, all at once, the wildness was gone and I was down on all fours, spent, my breath rasping out in little puffs of vapor like smoke from the fire inside.

When I could stand again I went to the window, looked out. But it was an act of reflex: I knew there would be nothing to see, nothing to alter the same old view. And there wasn’t: He was long gone.

He must have come in the small hours, when he could be reasonably sure that I would be asleep. Left his car some distance down the road so the sound of the engine wouldn’t carry and wake me up. Picked last night because the weather was clear and there was a full moon, bright and silvery-it was the last thing I saw through the window before I slept. Made his way around on the other side of the cabin, all stealth and cunning, and let himself in through a window or another outside door. Eased that inner door open, eased the chair through, stood or sat there watching me sleep, the moonlight spilling in and making every detail clear to him. Enjoying what he saw… oh, he enjoyed every fucking minute of it, you can bet on that.

I knew he couldn’t stay away. Knew he’d come back at least once to check up on his handiwork. And I should have known it would be this way, skulking around in the night, watching me in the night and then making sure I’d realize it when I woke up and he was already gone. Far more satisfaction for him that way than facing me, talking to me, giving me even a few minutes of human contact. And far more torment for me.

How long was he here? Five minutes, ten, twenty, thirty? Over there in the dark, watching, something evil in the dark watching and smiling and feeding on what he saw like some kind of vampire… Jesus, every time I think of it it makes my skin crawl, it adds fresh fuel to my hatred and my longing to destroy him. I’ve never felt this kind of bloodlust before, nothing even remotely like it. It’s an ugly and frightening thing, like an alien substance alive and growing in my body. And yet it’s also sustaining somehow-a force I can use to help shore up my faith and my resolve.

Setting all this down on paper has calmed me, put me back in control. But I don’t think I can write much longer. The palm of my right hand is cut and abraded from the chain, and holding the pen, pressing down with the point, is painful. There’s pain in my left heel, too, where the goddamn leg iron slipped down during my frenzy and dug into the flesh.

Enough for now. I better wash out all the cuts as a precaution against infection.

The leg iron.

The leg iron!

The Forty-Sixth Day

I’ve found the flaw in his plan, the weak spot in his “escapeproof” prison. There’s a way out of here, just as I believed all along-and all along it has been right here in front of me, I have been staring at it day after day, I have been carrying it with me every time I move.

The leg iron.

It was when I went into the bathroom yesterday to wash out the cuts that the realization came to me. I was sitting on the floor, working on the gouge in my heel with the wet washcloth, pushing the leg iron up out of the way with my left hand… and then I saw, really saw, what I was doing.

The leg iron had slipped down off my calf. In the beginning it had been tight around the calf, then a little less tight, and a little less tight, and yesterday, for the first time, it had slipped all the way down. I must have lost at least 20 pounds in the past six weeks, maybe as much as 25. And I’d been heavy when he brought me here, 245 or better-Kerry had been after me to start dieting again. I must be down around 220 now. My pants are baggy, my shirt hangs on me like a scarecrow’s: flattening gut, tightening thighs, thinning calves. I always did have big legs, and when I put on weight the fat tends to deposit there as well as around my middle. Go on a lengthy diet and one of the first places the weight loss is visible is in my legs.

Sitting there on the floor I straightened out my left leg and foot so that the heel pulled back in against the ankle; then I worked the iron down as far as it would go. Got the lower edge over the gouge in my heel, over the heel itself by a fraction of an inch until the upper edge of the iron bit hard into the flesh of my instep. A little of the wildness came back into me then, and I had to fight myself to keep from trying to force the iron any farther. The worse thing I can do right now is to cut up my foot; cuts might get infected, the foot might swell.

I thought then of slicking it with soap, to make the metal slide more easily over the flesh. But it didn’t help, not yet anyway: I still couldn’t get the iron down any farther on my instep.

I’ve got to be patient. I can afford to be patient now that I’ve found the means of escape. I’ll lose more weight; with the amount of food I’m eating and the daily exercise program, I can’t help but lose more weight. All I need is another fraction of an inch off my foot. People don’t think of losing weight off their feet but it happens. Shed enough poundage, you’ll see the difference on just about every part of your body, feet included. I know, I’ve been there-fat and not fat, fat and not fat, a vicious cycle all my adult life.

Another month to six weeks should do it. Six weeks maximum. The remaining provisions will hold out that long, I’ll see to that. And I’ll hold out too if I’m careful, don’t overdo anything, don’t cut up my foot, don’t catch pneumonia. Patient and careful. The day will come. That’s the only way to look at it.

The day will come when I’ll be free again.

The Fifty-Second Day

Two hours of calisthenics in the morning, one hour in the afternoon, another hour before I go to sleep at night. If I’d tried to keep up that kind of schedule before my world shrank to this stinking prison, I would have put a killing strain on my heart. But I’ve eased into it gradually, and I pace myself through each session, and with the absence of close to thirty pounds (it must be close to thirty by now), there doesn’t seem to be much strain at all. I’m plenty tired by the time I crawl under the blankets, and I sleep quickly and deeply, but it isn’t the sleep of exhaustion.

The muscles in my arms, shoulders, and legs have become visible; my belly is almost flat. I’m turning into… what’s the expression these days? Hunk? That’s it: I’m turning into a hunk. Wait until Kerry sees me. She won’t recognize me.

I won’t recognize myself, either. Because I still haven’t looked in that cracked mirror in the bathroom. And I