The Tokyo-Montana Express (20 page)

He immediately called up the telephone
number in the ad and got the voice of an old woman. “You have a 1953 Chevrolet
for sale?” he said. “For fifty dollars?”

“That’s right,” she said. “It’s in perfect
condition.”

“I’d like to look at it,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “You can’t buy it not
unless you see it. I live on North L Street,” and she gave him the address.

“When can I look at it?” he said.

“You can come now,” she said.

“OK, I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he
said.

“AII right,” she said. “I’ll be expecting
you. What’s your name again?”

“Reynolds,” he said.

“All right, Mr. Reynolds. I’ll see you
soon.”

My friend hung up, very excited: $50!

In his mind he saw himself driving to
California in the most beautiful 1953 Chevrolet left in America:

A real sweetheart with only 15,000 miles on
the speedometer because the old woman only drove the ear to the store three
times a week and to church on Sunday.

A car with its original whitewall tires in
perfect running condition.

He was madly in love with that car by the
time he arrived at the address on North L Street. He felt like a teenager going
out on his first date with the prettiest cheerleader in high school.

The old woman answered the door.

She was very old but could still get
around, sprightly is the word.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m the man who called
you about the 1953 Chevrolet. Mr. Reynolds is my name.”

“Hello, Mr. Reynolds,” she said. “I’ll show
it to you.”

She put a coat on and stepped outside and
led him around the house to the garage.

“How are the tires?” he said, trying to
hide his excitement but failing.

“There are no tires,” she answered.

“No tires,” my friend said. “Oh.”

That knocked a little hole in his dream. He
would have to buy some tires for the car but he knew that it would be such a
wonderful bargain old car that buying some tires for it would be a small matter,
hardly big enough to be considered. After all, it would be a car in perfect
running condition. Tires were no big deal. He mentally subtracted the tires
from the picture of the car in his mind.

“What about the brakes?” he said.

“There are no brakes.”

“What? No brakes?” he said.

“That’s right,” she said. “No brakes.”

“No brakes?” he repeated.

“No brakes.”

He mentally subtracted brakes from his
dream car that already had no tires and moved on to another thing in his mind
but then he doubled back and thought about it again: No tires? No brakes?

Then without thinking he said to the old
lady, “What shape is the body in?”

“No body,” she said.

“No tires, no brakes, no body,” he chanted
like a child.

“That’s right,” she said, acting as if it
were a perfectly normal car to sell somebody.

He had met some pretty crafty used-car
dealers in his time but this old lady took the cake. What in the hell kind of
ear was she trying to sell him?

“Why doesn’t it have a body?” he said,
automatically like a child.

“Because it’s not a car,” she said.

“What?” he said as she led him through the
garage door into where an automobile engine greeted them. The engine was lying
on the floor in the middle of the garage.

“That’s a 1953 Chevrolet?” he said.

“Engine,” she said.

“Engine?” he said.

“Yes, engine,” she said.

“I thought you were advertising a car for
sale,” he said.

“Why would I do that?” she said. “I don’t
have a car. I just have an engine. Fifty dollars. Do you want to buy it?”

“I’m interested in buying a car,” he said. “I
want to drive it to California.”

“Well,” she said, motioning toward the
engine. “You can’t drive this to California, not unless you get the rest of
it.”

Thank you, ma’am
.

My friend went home and got the newspaper
and turned to the want ad section and looked up the ad for the 1953 Chevrolet.
He read it half a dozen times. He examined every word in the ad very carefully
as if he were reading a first edition of the Bible in Chinese and wanted to
make sure that it was an accurate translation.

Then he called the old woman back up on the
telephone. Her telephone kept ringing but she didn’t answer it. He let the
telephone ring for a long time before he hung up.

She’s probably showing it to somebody else?
he thought. He could see them walking around to the garage. He could hear
somebody saying to her, “How’s the engine?”

And her replying, “It’s in perfect condition.”

I saw a stage production of My Fair Lady in
Tokyo in Japanese and performed by an all-Japanese cast. I fell in love with
the Japanese actors and actresses singing and dancing in front of sets and backdrops
of Victorian London.

At one point, a handsome Rex Harrison-type Japanese
Professor Higgins was standing on the front porch of a London house in the
1890s beside a backdrop street of other London houses and he was singing a song
in Japanese about, I think, his love for a Japanese Eliza Doolittle.

I wondered if the backdrop houses were
filled with Victorian Japanese listening to him sing and hoping that it would
all work out tor the best.

I looked into the windows of the backdrop
houses but saw no one staring out and nobody came out onto any of the front
porches and the street was empty. Maybe everyone was in the back gardens of the
houses, having tea.

Other people have their lives, too. They
just can’t stand around listening to people sing, especially if it isn’t any of
their business.

My imagination is having a love affair with
people moving swiftly and efficiently in the dark. Their every movement is
calculated, like a saint to achieve the maximum amount of effect.

In other words: They know what they are
doing like the nightborn tides of the sea. The character of their actions
resembles the work of spies getting things done in the dark.

When their work is done and the stage
lights come back on and the play continues, the actors are no longer in the drawing
room of an elegant Victorian mansion but they are in a poor section of London.

I think if I had not become a writer, I
would like to have been a stagehand moving around like a spy magician in the
dark, taking furniture away: a couch, a desk, a piano in the dark, and
replacing it with the streets of London when the lights return.

I am very carefully watching the actor who
is playing a part older than his actual age. His hair has been frosted with
some kind of white stuff and then he is suitable, proper for the age of the
part.

In actuality what makes you older is when
your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and
all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain
that your civilization ever existed.

California has a population explosion
on its hands. There are close to 20,000,000 people in California and forty-eight
men on Death Row at San Quentin. In 1952 there were twenty-two men on Death Row
and the population of California was 11,000,000 people. If things continue at
this rate, in the year 2411 there will be 500,000,000 people in California and
2,000 men on Death Row.

I was over at San Quentin a couple of days
ago talking to Mr. Lawrence Wilson who is the warden of the prison. He was a
little annoyed when he said, looking up and in the direction of Death Row, “There
are forty-eight men on Death Row and the courts keep sending us more. If we
execute the men we have there now, that will be more people than were executed
last year in the entire country.”

Warden Wilson has a problem. California has
not executed a man since January 23, l963, when a farm laborer named James
Bentley exhausted all the possibilities of being a California citizen.

Of the forty-eight men now on Death Row,
over half of them have been there for two years or more. A couple of men,
Manuel Chavez and Clyde Bates, have been there since 1957. Years pass in
California before the condemned get to the gas chamber. Caryl Chessman was on
Death Row for so long that they were thinking about giving him a pension.

Death Row, California. What does it mean to
me as a writer and as a citizen of this state? I decided to find out. I called
up San Quentin and talked to Associate Warden James Park. I asked him if I
could visit Death Row.

In a friendly, almost folksy voice, he said
to me that it was frowned on. “They have a closed community,” he said. “They
get upset when strangers come around looking at the critters in the zoo.” But
Mr. Park did offer to show me the gas chamber. I guess that’s some consolation.

I went over to San Quentin a few days
later. I wanted to see how far I could go toward achieving a perfect vision of Death
Row.

James Park is a clinical psychologist who
graduated from UCLA, and he offered me a cup of tea in his office. He is a
relaxed and articulate man. He was wearing a very nice striped tie.

“What do the men eat on Death Row?” I
asked. I was not interested in last meals, but in the food they were eating
today. I figured the most important thing in a prison was the food.

“Well, let’s see,” Mr. Park said. He got up
and went into the main office. He went to a filing cabinet and carried back
with the week’s menu.

Seeing DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS on top of
the menu and then “Weekly Menu for CONDEMNED ROW” underneath gave me a strange
feeling. It was almost a functioning intimacy with death in one of its more complicated
forms, and there was a dramatic quality to the April 16th dinner.

Beef Noodle Soup

Cole Slaw

Sour Cream Dressing

Grilled Halibut Steak

Cocktail Sauce

Chicken Fried Steak

Rissotto

Btrd. Cauliflower

“May I have this menu?” I asked.

“I guess so,” Mr. Park said.