Let us start at the beginning. It is a very good place to start. I however do not know the beginning. I only know what the young man told me. When you are forced to share a cell, it is hard not to tell all. Mostly it just happens. You talk to forget the pain, the hunger. Something clicks and you have to talk; you might be dead tomorrow.
I slowly came to hate him in that cell; he hated me from the get-go. Something about my face, he said, being just plain boring. I always look now, for the boring, fearing I too will one day see it. I hated him because he never accepted his lot as cast. Ever. He never just did things the easy way, the way I had done my whole life. I slowly came to love him in that cell; he loved me from the get-go. Something about my soul, he said, shining bright and pure but always secretly yearning for the Big Sleep. I loved him because he refused to forfeit his integrity but, in the end, always managed to do just that.
He was a mess; so am I. We talked about the way things had been. The girls and the booze and the stagnating wonder of America in a dangerous new century. The days were theirs; the nights belonged to us. In slivers of moonlight I taught him chess on chips of concrete marked in our own blood. It was all we had, really: concrete and blood and the dry Southland heat.
We had only been trying to help, to clean up and rebuild after the San Andreas Fault had finally shifted, and churned the Los Angeles Basin into a froth of concrete and twisted steel. The aftershocks had been fierce, relentless. Our Sons of the American Revolution chapter had called up a ‘Phoenix Brigade,’ thirty fearless men eager to help their most desperate fellow countrymen, regardless of color, craft or creed.
We were ambushed in the smoldering rubble somewhere south of James M. Wood. Scrambling they came, the mad rush of a fearful starving mass. The very earth seemed to spit them forth, machetes flashing in the sunrise.
Why the two of us were spared is unclear. We were tortured, but what could we realistically have told them? That the Valley was still burning? Simply look to the hills, to the north, for that still-expanding wall of smoke. That FEMA was now hopelessly overwhelmed? That agency hadn’t been right since Katrina. With wildfires and extreme weather ravaging the Union, their resources had been already stretched far too thin. Maybe our captors enjoyed the torture; perhaps it becomes easy, if you push a man far enough. Maybe, they did it because someone told them to do it; maybe I will never know.
I would fix his wounds as well as I could. One day he found a needle. He learned to fix me up too, but my stitching always healed better. We scratched the walls to mark the days. They stopped feeding us. We didn’t really miss the burnt tortillas, but food is food, plain and simple. Desperate, we ate cockroaches and drank our own blood. We sucked fresh air through stress fractures in the reinforced concrete walls. Water seeped up sometimes from a broken pipe, to pool in the corner.
Like a warrior couple of antiquity we nursed, scolded, wept. We had bared all and shared all: our bond was complete. We were as close as two men can become and not want to fuck each other. Weak from hunger, we knew the end was nigh. “Jump them with fists of jagged concrete,” we whispered to each other in the dark. “Kill or be killed; at least go out swinging.” Secretly we each prayed to die defending the other. Our hearts were noble and pure and sang as one.
“Tomorrow... tomorrow.”
The next morning, twenty days after the ambush, the young man was gone. The steel door to our cell stood ajar. Drag marks and splattered blood led outside. Sparrows erupted into blinding early light, scolding me in their fright. Shifting mounds of bricks. Rubble and smoke. To the east, the Library Tower rose tall and straight amongst its crooked neighbors. I cursed myself for not having awoken in time. Wailing and tearing at my hair, I fell to my knees, cutting them among the jagged red brick. Tears rained down to mingle in the dust with the fresh blood. Gasping, my heart broke. I grabbed a brick and slammed it into my head over and over.
When I awoke the sun stood at azimuth. Blind hope flooded my being. I stumbled back inside. “He’s just hiding,” I repeated to myself, “he’s still here.” I searched for hours in the dusty heat. The needle was gone; he was gone. The crude chess pieces scraped and rattled in a pocket of my tattered fatigues; I dug a small hole and buried all but one.
As the last handful of soil drained through my fingers, I vowed to all things right and true to keep his memory – his stories – alive. Fresh tears welled. The shard of concrete marked with my blood, his blood, our blood, pulsed in my fist. I searched the heavens for some sort of sign: spotlights stabbed suddenly skyward into the failing light, caressing the Griffith Park Observatory in slow circuits.
“If only I can make it there, I will live,” I thought sadly to myself.
My name is Colonel Reginald Steele. I dedicate this to you, Luce Baine Jutland. Forgive an old man if he misses a detail or two, here and there.
If you still live, know I love you.
If you are dead, may you rest in peace.
