Primal (2 page)

Denise and Gary are also heading for the door. Denise
interrupts Alison’s thoughts, “Hi, Alison. You look thoughtful.”

“Just considering my old age.”

Gary says, “I’m looking forward to old age, sitting in an
armchair, watching the television, and reveling in being the full-time cynic I
know I am.”

Alison smiles wryly, “Gary, cynicism is an intellectual
overcoat; it’s just an empty gesture of sophistication. Smirking at the world
is a cop-out.”

“I think empty is underrated.” Gary holds the door open for
the two women. They smile at him and walk through. Denise and Alison are fairly
good friends even though Alison holds the minutes of her life closely, spending
most of her time with Hank, Jimmy, and a good book. Still, they enjoy each
other when thrown together by their daily lives or by school events. Denise has
a nontoxic envy for Alison and Hank’s relationship, the only two married people
she knows who visibly, demonstratively love each other. She sees them exchange
secretive smiles and she always has the feeling when around them that they are
sharing a fun and private view of the outside world. While she can’t help but
envy them, she’s happy to know a connection like that is achievable. She
studies them. She judges all of her dates against them.

“Jimmy’s birthday tonight?” Denise asks.

“Yes. Legions of in-laws eating like locusts and using my
bathroom guest towels.”

“Oh, you love it.” Denise teases her.

“True. Hank’s family is endlessly entertaining.”

“And then you’re out of town for the rest of the week?” Gary
asks.

“Four days.” They hear a wisp of reluctance.

“What?” he nudges her good-naturedly, “You’d rather be here
scraping gum off the bottom of your shoes?”

“It’s a close call.”

Denise asks, “Where are you going?’

“Nowhere you would go in a million years.” Alison gives them
both a warm smile and turns left toward the parking lot. “See you next week.”
But she won’t see them next week. And when she does see them again - they won’t
know her.

* * *

Warden Tummelson knows what it’s like to be God. He controls
these men’s lives - he controls their deaths. This penitentiary houses the
worst the human race has to offer: the baby eaters, the dismemberment junkies.
He’s the gatekeeper on death row. After eleven years here, Tummelson does feel
as though he’s the one imprisoned. He does the best job he can, but long ago he
stopped being able to get clean. No one knows he has begun to wash compulsively
and last week in the shower, he scrubbed the skin off his left elbow. When his
sister Amy gave birth, three weeks ago, to his first niece, he stood next to
her white fluffy crib in the hospital, but refused to pick her up. He would
not. He has been permanently and irrevocably sullied. He walks slowly over to
his office window as Wilkins and Doctor Kim stand on the other side of his desk
and wait. Tummelson wonders how he wound up here in this room making these
kinds of decisions. How he wound up a prison warden at all. It wasn’t something
he planned for or worked toward. He thinks most people wind up capriciously in
their life’s work - it is a surprise instead of a thoughtful journey to a
specific choice. It requires so much focus, and even more importantly, the
suspension of derailing events to successfully follow a path all the way. He
would love to know how many people, if asked, would say ‘oh, yeah, I’m doing
exactly what I planned,’ or for that matter, ‘exactly what I wanted.’ Kids,
when asked in grade school what they want to be when they grow up, answer
something interesting, something important. All children think they’re
important. It will be years before they realize they are a tiny component in a big
ugly human machine, and they are easily replaced. Some folks, he believes,
never realize that, maybe those are the lucky ones. He would be willing to bet
that no child, when asked to speculate on their future, says ‘I want to be a
middle manager at a packaging plant,’ or ‘a salesman in a discount clothing
store,’ or ‘a prison warden? Tummelson believes most people cannot trace the
path that got them where they are. It is circuitous and rife with intervening
events, a sick parent, a pregnancy, an application denied, a broken heart, a
lack of funds. The immediate necessity of making a living surely led him from
one stopgap job (where he never planned to stay) to another, and then another,
and so here he is today, standing in this stifling office with a desk drawer
full of Purell antiseptic gel. He turns to Wilkins and the frustration shakes
in his tone.

“Come on, Wilkins, every damn inmate on death row finds God
at the end. Ben Burne? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I’ve been watching him for a long time. He saved my life.
I’m telling you it’s genuine.”

“During the First National Bank robbery, which he pulled
with his brothers, he shot a twenty-year-old teller in the face for sneezing.”

“I know.”

“Two years ago at the Miami Brinks holdup he drove the truck
over a three-year-old who got in the way.”

“I’m not saying he’s a good guy, I’m saying he’s a guy with
a chance to do something good.”

Warden Tummelson turns his attention to the reserved,
small-boned, Doctor Kim who waits quietly in his finely tailored suit. His
refinement is an incongruity here. Tummelson is certain he would not last eight
minutes on the inside. This is a man, Tummelson thinks, who probably did choose
his life and he has a flash of envy.

“Why, doctor? Why can’t you do it here?”

Doctor Kim raises his eyebrows, “In a prison infirmary?
Impossible. Even if you could construct an appropriately outfitted operating
room, I could never achieve any level of sterility in this environment. The
danger of infection would be too high, and so it would not be a feasible
alternative.”

Not clean. Yes, that is surely true. No one knows that
better than Tummelson. He swings around and paces back and forth while fighting
a nearly panicked compulsion to wash his hands. The room feels hot and a drip
of sweat crawls down his back underneath his shirt. Tummelson crosses back to
the tiny window and pushes it open. Crisp heavy air wafts in. He breathes. It
helps. “Doctor, I understand you’re a normal person, and so, you can’t really
conceive of what kind of men live here.”

Doctor Kim responds with calm authority, “Look, I don’t care
if he found God, lost God, or ate God. There’s a young woman who’s going to die
if she doesn’t get that kidney. If your prisoner is willing to donate it’s
unconscionable not to find a way.”

“If I agree to this I want armed men inside the operating
room.”

“Again, infection. He’ll be unconscious, Warden, under a
general anesthetic.”

“Not good enough.”

“The guards could be allowed directly outside the operating
theater looking in. There’s a window. What if I arranged for that?”

“Jesus.” Warden Tummelson is torn. He paces with a furious
energy. He does not trust. How can this be done without risk? He didn’t mind
playing god with these degenerates, but he’s furious and frustrated to be in
this position with someone else’s life, someone good and deserving.

“Look.” Doctor Kim plays his trump card. Warden Tummelson
looks over. He is holding a 5 x 7 of the pretty, smiling young woman.

“Aw, shit, that’s unfair.”

“No. That’s reality, Warden. You’re going to kill this man
in a month and this woman is going to die without his help. This is a
no-brainer to me.”

“You don’t live in my world, doctor.” Warden Tummelson rubs
his temples; they’re just bursting. He can feel the blood pulsing through the
veins. His blood pressure is probably soaring again. He pulls the Excedrin
bottle out of his pocket and downs two pills without water. Then, he turns to
Wilkins, “Okay, bring him in. Let’s see what he has to say.” Wilkins walks over
to the office door, opens it and steps out of the room. Tummelson pulls open
his top desk drawer, squirts Purell into his palm and rubs vigorously. He
offers it to Doctor Kim who declines.

“You ever been to a penitentiary, doctor?”

“No, Warden, I have not.”

“Not much in the way of curb appeal.”

“No.”

“You and I are alike in some ways, you know. We’re both
God.”

“How is that?’

“You intervene to prolong life. I intervene to end it.”

“I suppose. Although, Warden, I am not a fan of capital
punishment.”

Tummelson smiles and nods, “Yes, well, folks who spend their
lives in friendly company, and who debate the death penalty during nicely
turned out dinner parties rarely are.”

“I am sure your perspective is different for very good
reason. And while I agree there are those who do not deserve to live, humans
are fallible, the legal system is fallible, and so we cannot implement
permanent solutions with fallible hands.”

Tummelson lays his eyes on Doctor Kim. Here is a face from
the outside, from the other world. He knows Doctor Kim can see the damage in
him. He just cannot care about that anymore.

Tummelson speaks in a whisper, as if he is imparting
something terribly important, “Doctor, we tell our children, before they go to
sleep at night, there are no monsters.”

“Yes, we do.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Yes, it is.”

“The monsters are us.”

“Sometimes.”

“No. They’re always us. Just not all of us - but us.”

Wilkins returns leading Ben Burne into the warden’s office.
Ben’s wrists and his ankles are secured in heavy chains and he shuffles in with
his eyes lowered. Ben seems literally smaller and certainly less powerful than
he did in the chapel. The palm of his left hand is completely wrapped with
white gauze and tape but still a little red seeps through.

Warden Tummelson asks, “So, Burne, you want to donate your
kidney?”

“After next month I really won’t be needing ‘em, Warden. You
can take ‘em both if you like.”

Tummelson studies Ben: his posture, his expression, his
demeanor - all submissive.

“You think giving away your organs is going to relieve your
conscience?”

“Nothing can do that. Living with myself is much harder than
dying will be.”

Tummelson leans in and Ben can feel the warden’s breath on
his face. “You don’t fool me, Burne. There isn’t a civilized cell in your
entire pathetic body.”

“I saw the girl on the TV. Said she needed a kidney. Just
thought she could have mine is all. Simple as that.”

“You deserve to suffer.”

Ben raises his repentant eyes to Tummelson and a tear forms,
“I’m going to hell for eternity.”

The warden exchanges a look with Wilkins who shrugs. “Hell
will be a picnic compared to what will happen to you, if I agree to this, and
you try something.”

“There are no picnics in my future, Warden.”

Tummelson’s temples throb. He notices that his mouth is dry.
Stress. He is pissed beyond rationality to be responsible for this decision. He
glances over at Doctor Kim who takes that moment to hold up the picture of the
girl.

“Maybe since you’re feeling so holy and contrite,” Tummelson
asks, “you’d like to tell me where we can find your brothers.”

“If I knew I’d tell you. I live every day in fear that they
will hurt someone else. If I could stop it, I would. But they, too, will answer
to God in the end.”

“Right. Get him out of here. I need to think.”

Wilkins takes Ben by the arm and they leave the office.

Doctor Kim, “Warden, I do not see your conflict here.”

“Doctor, no offense, but you have no idea what you’re
asking.”

Doctor Kim walks over to Tummelson’s desk and tosses the
picture on it. The young woman’s face smiles up at him.

“This is Jennifer Booker. She has three children under
seven. Look at this while you’re thinking it over.” Then, he leaves too.

* * *

“Yeah, well you’re so ugly when you walk past ‘em, flowers
die,” Jimmy teases his best friend.

Alan counters, “Yeah, well you’re so ugly you make my cat
throw up.”

“Yeah, well, you’re so ugly your mom has to tie a pork chop
around your neck so the dog will play with you.”

The two-story Kraft home pulses with relatives celebrating
Jimmy’s birthday. Nine-year-old Jimmy is stringy: his legs are spurting out of
his body with so much speed his weight cannot keep up. He looks like an egret,
all limbs and long neck. At the rate he is growing, his own arm length is
constantly changing, and so, he knocks over nearly everything he reaches for;
one day last week, a frustrated mother volunteer, at school, called him clumsy
and Alison got mad. She explained to Jimmy (within the woman’s hearing) that if
her arms were longer every single week she’d misjudge things, too. “Jimmy, your
dad is six-foot three-inches tall, so you are definitely on your way up,
kiddo.”

Classic rock pours out of speakers all through the home.
Every room is wired for sound; it was the only thing that was important to
Hank. The two-story bungalow is brightly lit and the rooms are alive with arguments,
tall tales, and laughter. Uncles tell the stories they have told for decades,
and laugh in all the same places; some teens pay attention to the stories for
the first time, and without meaning to, become tomorrow’s carriers of the
family’s oral tradition. The littler cousins, in a never-ending loop of
catch-me-if-you-can, and looking like chipmunks, dart from the warmly
upholstered family room of rich gold and red hues into the petite dining room,
barely clearing the legs of Alison’s antique French reproduction table. And
while Aunt Ruth constantly yells at them to slow down, sit down, calm down,
Alison never does. She notices this evening that they look exactly like the DVD
she played for her class today of the lion cubs socializing in the Maasai Mara.
This is the Kraft pride - the tribe she married into and it has been tricky.
She can decide the course of her own friendships, she can even turn away from
her own family, if she chooses - but her in-laws have a permanence in her life
that she cannot influence or control; the spouse decides. Alison is an only
child, so it is easy for Hank. He did not need to integrate with her brothers
or sisters. He was not subjected to the treacherous dynamics of an unfamiliar
family with its long-held grudges, inside jokes, and uneven affections. He did
not need to understand why different allowances were made for different family
members, why for instance, Cousin Keith was forgiven everything while Cousin
Carl was forgiven nothing. For Alison, none of it was easy. She married into a
sizeable and voluble tribe. She has found that with Hank’s extended family
there is a lot to adjust for, to compromise with, and to forgive. The
forgiveness requires the most plasticity. Alison learned that it is compulsory
to forgive in-laws for flaws and situations that would not generally merit
forgiveness in any other association. Alison finds ways to balance herself
around the harried, sometimes jagged edges of Hank’s family, with its outbursts
and its treaties, while always feeling a little unnerved by the pitch in the
room.