Going Home
Going Home"GOING HOME" ©1994, 2001 by John F Clennan, the third of the Christmas trilogy, was first published by THE ICONOCLAST of Mohegan Lake NY in 1996 as part of the original TALES OUT OF COURT. Said Phil Wagner, editor of Iconoclast, of GOING HOME, "there is something magnetic to the story; I can't tell you exactly what." This became one of the three Christmas scenes described in IF ALL MEN WERE ANGELS . Going Home was first published by Iconoclast. Phil Wagner said of Going Home: "it is strangely compelling." http://www.thebookden.com/allmen.html
If All Men Were Angels
A few minutes before 5:00 p.m., this late autumn Friday, I had just finished the last interview in Hunter’s Point Correctional Facility. I looked down on the wobbly desk at a book a street preacher had handed me outside the facility. Remonstrating the cause of righteousness to prisoners released early for the holidays and to other passersby on Queens Boulevard, preacher cajoled an apathetic audience with threats of hell fire and damnation. "The Great Delusion," I smirked as I held the book, "it should be required reading in law school."
What had Mr Bridges the stocky turnkey prated when he threw open the steel gate to admit me to the jail earlier that afternoon?
"Over a twisted trail they tumble
For a truth they find elusive
And in the haze they fumble
With proof's inconclusive."
Outtakes from IF ALL MEN WERE ANGELS were published by the legendary Bill Loepkey's Inditer Dot Com of Canada.
Against advancing illness and frustration which the legal system imposed, Bill Loepkey promoted literature and culture on the internet. It is no small recognition that his countrymen have hono[u]red Bill in their Bibliotek Nationale. In many respects Angels complimented Mr Loepkey's complex situation: a fascination with the new electronic against the onslaught of an illness induced by the marvels of technology.The central message of IF ALL MEN WERE ANGELS twisting the themes of hope and despair agianst the background of the Third Industrial Revolution might have been met a receptive audience at
Inditer Dot Com .
Going Home is the turning point of IF ALL MEN WERE ANGELS . It speaks directly to the issues not spoken of today in the milquetoast polite semblances of political correctness inside the US: the cost of error.
I signaled to the guard standing outside the interview booth, muscular shoulders crossed over a powerful chest, that I was ready to leave. With a disinterested smirk reaching across his face to the frosted edges of his neatly trimmed sideburns, the guard’s starched blue tunic creaked as he led me through a narrow grey painted cinderblock corridor lined with empty chairs.
Stopping in front of the institutional parole office, the guard jovially said, "They're releasing a prisoner, a guy named --- eh--- Riviera-- unexpectedly. God-damned lawyer got the order signed and drove it over here. Couldn't even wait for the ink to dry and let the inmate get another weekend of free food."
“A long weekend at that and missing the facility’s turkey dinner,” I was dry in my reply.
I looked to see if Inmate Riviera had reached the "farewell" point but all I could see through the aperture in the grey cinderblock wall was a desk with A Christmas tree on it. Was it really Christmas already? I wondered.
“Have a turkey or be a turkey!” the guard declared.
I laughed and took a seat. I opened my book to its preface. "Quebec City, August 1865: WARNING SOME MIGHT FIND THIS OFFENSIVE." I looked up the guard was hovering over me waiting for a response.
"Around the prisons," I replied with a smile, "You get used to delays getting in and out of the facility."
"Even a small jail like Hunter's Point has its share of twisted turns," the guard remarked. "Mr Bridges, the Escort Officer, will be with you shortly. Maybe he'll read you one of his famous poems while you wait."
"Bridges, the bard of the Bastille and the back stairs in hidden corridors of power..." I replied.
"You know what," the guard told me with a wrinkled brow, "Bridges told some inmates cut loose earlier in the day."
"No."
The guard quoted Bridges:
"`Staining for the simple melody,
Whispering a wistful sigh,
Attending the pleasantry
Til "Going Home?" I cry.'"
"Like a prisoner could understand what Bridges really meant..." I replied.
I leaned forward to see if the inmate was near the door but all I could hear was women's' voices chattering about Christmas shopping on Metropolitan Avenue.
The preface to THE GREAT DELUSION continued: "The author assures all his readers, French and English alike, that his book is a work undertaken only after careful researches into original source material and careful interviews with all known witnesses to events described herein."
Unnoticed by me, Mr. Bridges, the escort officer, had quietly stolen into the corridor.
Putting aside the Great Delusion, I asked, "No parting poem."
Blinking both eyes, Bridges squelched a chuckle. "Wait," he said in a quiet breathless voice.
I returned to THE GREAT DELUSION, "And assure my readers that I came to these conclusions, as horrifying as they maybe to all Christendom, with great reluctance..."
When I looked up, Inmate Riviera had just reached the Christmas tree. "And," whispered Officer Bridges, "He's about to get the Christmas present."
As Inmate Riviera reached the desk just inside the office a woman's voice cautioned: "You better read the conditions the Board added or you could be back here tout suite."
The former inmate bounded out the door with a big smile clutching a sheath of official papers in one hand and a shopping bag of personals in the other.
"All set?" the guard asked perfunctorily. "Bridges, get these civilians out of my jail," The guard, jocularity gone from his voice, thundered the order with special roar at the word “civilian.”
Bridges took out his roll of keys and opened a door to the winding staircase that led to the first floor. On the climb down the perilous narrow staircase, Bridges and prisoner talked amiably like co-workers about different guards and inmates in the six story building.
I suspected that I was being somehow played the fool. "What fate had been decided and for whom?" I wondered.
When we reached the ground floor and walked past the institution's galley marked off by a thick fence, the prisoners basting the Christmas turkey looked away when they saw Riviera, now steps away from release. Several inmates did nod or call out to me.
At the gate while I signed out in the official visitor’s book, Riviera the released prisoner turning to Mr. Bridges asked, "I was a real brat here, to everybody, the superintendent, the guards, the parole officers and the inmates, but you've been decent to me on the way out -- Why?"
Bridges laughed so hard that his muscular body shook. "Son, you'll be back," Bridges smiled.
Riviera looked for a full minute at the open gate before he ran for it, I nodded to Mr. Bridges. "Alright I guess we'll have to hear your poem."
Bridges smiled softly:
"My name is Mr. Bridges
Lone Sentinel of the rampart
where a tired worn out warden
holds the key to every heart"I watch 'em jump for joy
rejoicing at fortune's gate,
But if they're gone 'fore five o'clock
I'll have them back by eight."
As I stood on the corner of cobblestoned Van Damm Street in front of the facility, the early autumn sunset had already vanished in a grey haze and the street lights started to flicker, cars passing by flipped on their headlights and the rumbling of commuter trains in the Hunter's Point station announced the onset of rush hour.
Poets, maybe even Mr Bridges, call this time the Blue Hour when the refraction of the last light from the sun gives everything a grayish-blue tinge. Actually, the grey haze is unromantically spewn up from exhaust of cars firing up to begin the homeward bound commute.
Looking at my watch, as I braved the brisk Autumn breeze on broad cobblestoned Van Damm Street, I decided to ride out the rush hour in the diner diagonally across the street. Riviera, the former inmate, already had danced under the Merry Christmas banner stretching across the thoroughfare through the traffic.
When I reached the diner, Riviera was sitting at the far end of the counter. In a booth near the door, there were four or five men dressed like workingmen from a local factory.
"The diner's trade on Friday evenings is usually not quiet so brisk," I told the waitress as I studied the workmen's faces which seemed vaguely familiar. "Former prisoners?" I wondered aloud, "Guards out of uniform?"
Waiting for my order, I took a booth and returned to the tract THE GREAT DELUSION. "The events described in this book bespeak almost unimaginable debauchery and violence to basic concepts we hold as tenets of faith..."
The manager interrupted my readings. "Counselor there's a call for you - must be important." He pointed to the kitchen with an air of authority.
"No doubt," I thought aloud, "some inmate's relative is wondering why a son, father, brother etc won't be home for the holidays..."
As I walked into the kitchen, a waitress put a bottle of beer in front of the released prisoner and retreated.
In the kitchen the manager handed me a phone which was left dangling off the side of a desk crammed in a corner. "Hello -- hello --," I yelled. "No one here."
"Go ahead call back your office." the manager said pleasantly.
I dialed the office's number, but reached the answering machine. It was after 5:00, the secretary had already left.
"No one there!" I exclaimed.
"It should be safe enough," the manager nodded to the waitress. She went through the swinging doors into the restaurant. "Sorry for the inconvenience," he apologized.
Re-entering the restaurant, I saw a half-empty beer bottle sitting on the counter with a clump of wrinkled papers next to the bottle. The circle of workmen had gone and I could see a cluster of the routish gentlemen dragging the inmate across Van Damm Street back to Hunter's Point Correctional Facility. They had just passed under the Merry Christmas banner which on the reverse side promised "MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.."
I leafed through the crinkled papers that looked as if they had been clutched preciously in Inmate Riviera's fist. One of the sheets bearing Riviera's prominent signature read: Special Condition of Release
"You will not use or possess alcohol,
frequent establishments where alcohol
is sold or used or be in the company of
persons drinking or possessing alcohol."
I turned to find Mr Bridges at my elbow. He was just buying coffee for the guards on shift. His expression held the supreme triumph of the moment.
"Long wandered in reels of boldI offered my hand in macabre congratulations, "Mr. Bridges, does it hurt to be so smart?" "Who me?" Bridges raised an eyebrow playfully. "I'm only a prison guard, Mr. Lawyer."
Ferreting Fableaux yet untold
An Explanation simple yet sublime
A treasure of sterling underlined"Apparently no apologies
a damning doomsday synthesis
Tacit whisperless regrets
`Were all men angels?', no less."
Email the Author - - Angels Outtakes - - If All Men Were Angels - - - The Fullosian Moment
Arthurian Legend * FULLOSIA PRESS * * FULLOSIA * * * RPPS CULTURAL SERVICES