THERE WAS THIS, too: I was no longer enc.u.mbered by my wife and mother-in-law. Why did I keep them at home so long, even though it was plain that they were making the lives of my children unbearable?

It could be, I suppose, because somewhere in the back of my mind I believed that there might really be a big book in which all things were written, and that I wanted some impressive proof that I could be compa.s.sionate recorded there.

I ASKED ROB Roy where he had gone to college.

"Yale," he said.

I told him what Helen Dole said about Yale, that it ought to be called "Plantation Owners' Tech."

"I don't get it," he said.

"I had to ask her to explain it myself," I said. "She said Yale was where plantation owners learned how to get the natives to kill each other instead of them."

"That's a bit strong," he said. And then he asked me if my first wife was still alive.

"I've only had 1," I said. "She's still alive."

"There was a lot about her in Mother's letter," he said.

"Really?" I said. "Like what?"

"About how she was. .h.i.t by a car the day before you were going to take her to the senior prom. About how she was paralyzed from the waist down, but you still married her, even though she would have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair."

If that was in the letter, I must have told his mother that.

"AND YOUR FATHER, is he still alive?" he said.

"No," I said. "The ceiling of a gift shop fell on him at Niagara Falls."

"Did he ever regain his eyesight?" he said.

"Regain his what?" I said. And then I realized that his question was based on some other lie I had told his mother.

"His eyesight," he said.

"No," I said. "Never did."

"I think it's so beautiful," he said, "how he came home from the war blind, and you used to read Shakespeare to him."

"He sure loved Shakespeare," I said.

"So," he said, "I am descended not just from 1 war hero, but 2."

"War hero?" I said.

"I know you would never call yourself that," he said. "But that's what Mother said you were. And you can certainly call your father that. How many Americans shot down 28 German planes in World War II?"

"We could go up to the library and look it up," I said. "They have a very good library here. You can find out anything, if you really try."

"WHERE IS MY Uncle Bob buried?" he said.

"Your what?" I said.

"Your brother Bob, my Uncle Bob," he said.

I had never had a brother of any kind. I took a wild guess. "We threw his ashes out of an airplane," I said.

"You have certainly had some bad luck," he said. "Your father comes home blind from the war. Your childhood sweet-heart is. .h.i.t by a car right before the senior prom. Your brother dies of spinal meningitis right after he is invited to try out for the New York Yankees."

"Yes, well, all you can do is play the cards they deal you," I said.

"HAVE YOU STILL got his glove?" he said.

"No," I said. What kind of glove could I have told his mother about when we were both sozzled on Sweet Rob Roys in Manila 24 years ago?

"You carried it all the way through the war, but now it's gone?" he said.

He had to be talking about the nonexistent baseball glove of my nonexistent brother. "Somebody stole it from me after I got home," I said, "thinking it was just another baseball glove, I'm sure. Whoever stole it had no idea how much it meant to me."

He stood. "I really must be going now."

I stood, too.

I shook my head sadly. "It isn't going to be as easy as you think to give up on the country of your birth."

"That's about as meaningful as my astrological sign," he said.

"What is?" I said.

"The country of my birth," he said.

"You might be surprised," I said.

"Well, Dad," he said, "it certainly won't be the first time."

"CAN YOU TELL me who in this valley might have gasoline?" he said. "I'll pay anything."

"Do you have enough gas to make it back to Rochester?" I said.

"Yes," he said.

"Well," I said, "head back the way you came. That's the only way you can get back, so you can't get lost. Right at the Rochester city limits you will see the Meadowdale Cinema Complex. Behind that is a crematorium. Don't look for smoke. It's smokeless."

"A crematorium?" he said.

"That's right, a crematorium," I said. "You drive up to the crematorium, and you ask for Guido. From what I hear, if you've got the money, he's got the gasoline."

"And chocolate bars, do you think?" he said.

"I don't know," I said. "Won't hurt to ask."

40.

NOT THAT THERE is any shortage of real child-molesters, child-shooters, child-starvers, child-bombers, child-drowners, child-whippers, child-burners, and child-defenestrators on this happy planet. Turn on the TV. By the luck of the draw, though, my son Rob Roy Fenstermaker does not happen to be one of them.

OK. MY STORY is almost ended.

And here is the news that knocked the wind out of me so recently. When I heard it from my lawyer, I actually said, "Ooof!"

Hiroshi Matsumoto was dead by his own hand in his hometown of Hiroshima! But why would I care so much?

HE DID IT in the wee hours of the morning, j.a.panese time, of course, while sitting in his motor-driven wheelchair at the base of the monument marking the point of impact of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima when we were little boys.

He didn't use a gun or poison. He committed hara-kiri with a knife, disemboweling himself in a ritual of self-loathing once practiced by humiliated members of the ancient caste of professional soldiers, the samurai.

And yet, so far as I am able to determine, he never shirked his duty, never stole anything, and never killed or wounded anyone.

Still waters run deep. R.I.P.

IF THERE REALLY is a big book somewhere, in which all things are written, and which is to be read line by line, omitting nothing, on Judgment Day, let it be recorded that I, when Warden of this place, moved the convicted felons out of the tents on the Quadrangle and into the surrounding buildings. They no longer had to excrete in buckets or, in the middle of the night, have their homes blown down. The buildings, except for this 1, were divided into cement-block cells intended for 2 men, but most holding 5.

The War on Drugs goes on.

I caused 2 more fences to be erected, 1 within the other, enclosing the back of the inner buildings, and with antipersonnel mines sown in between. The machine-gun nests were reinstalled in windows and doorways of the next ring of buildings, Norman Rockwell Hall, the Pahlavi Pavilion, and so on.

It was during my administration that the troops here were Federalized, a step I had recommended. That meant that they were no longer civilians in soldier suits. That meant that they were full-time soldiers, serving at the pleasure of the President. n.o.body could say how much longer the War on Drugs might last. n.o.body could say when they could go home again.

GENERAL FLORIO HIMSELF, accompanied by six MPs with clubs and sidearms, congratulated me on all I had done. He then took back the two stars he had loaned me, and told me that I was under arrest for the crime of insurrection. I had come to like him, and I think he had come to like me. He was simply following orders.

I asked him, as 1 comrade to another, "Does this make any sense to you? Why is this happening?"

It is a question I have asked myself many times since, maybe 5 times today between coughing fits.

His answer to it, the first answer I ever got to it, is probably the best answer I will ever get to it.

"Some ambitious young Prosecutor," he said, "thinks you'll make good TV."

HIROSHI MATSUMOTO'S SUICIDE has. .h.i.t me so hard, I think, because he was innocent of even the littlest misdemeanors. I doubt that he ever double-parked, even, or ran a red light when n.o.body else was around. And yet he executed himself in a manner that the most terrible criminal who ever lived would not deserve!

He had no feet anymore, which must have been depressing. But having no feet is no reason for a man to disembowel himself.

It had to have been the atom bomb that was dropped on him during his formative years, and not the absence of feet, that made him feel that life was a crock of doo-doo.

AS I HAVE said, he did not tell me that he had been atom-bombed until we had known each other for 2 years or more. He might never have told me about it, in my opinion, if a doc.u.mentary about the j.a.panese "Rape of Nanking" hadn't been shown on the prison TVs the day before. This was a program chosen at random from the prison library. A guard who did the choosing couldn't read English well enough to know what the convicts would see next. So there was no censorship.

The Warden had a small TV monitor on his desk, and I knew he watched it from time to time, since he often remarked to me about the inanity of this or that old show, and especially I Love Lucy. I Love Lucy.

THE RAPE OF Nanking was just one more instance of soldiers slaughtering prisoners and unarmed civilians, but it became famous because it was among the first to be well photographed. There were evidently movie cameras everywhere, run by gosh knows whom, and the footage wasn't confiscated afterward.

I had seen some of the footage when I was a cadet, but not as a part of a well-edited doc.u.mentary, with a baritone voice-over and appropriate music underneath.

The orgy of butchery followed a virtually unopposed attack by the j.a.panese Army on the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937, long before this country became part of the Finale Rack. Hiroshi Matsumoto had just been born. Prisoners were tied to stakes and used for bayonet practice. Several people in a pit were buried alive. You could see their expressions as the dirt hit their faces.

Their faces disappeared, but the dirt on top kept moving as though there were some sort of burrowing animal, a woodchuck maybe, making a home below.

Unforgettable!

HOW WAS THAT for racism?

THE DOc.u.mENTARY WAS a big hit in the prison. Alton Darwin said to me, I remember, "If somebody is going to do it, I am going to watch it."

This was 7 years before the prison break.