3: Big Man With A Gun

Interview Transcript (Greenpoint, New York City, 1955) (Federal Bureau of Investigation) Agent: "What condition was the house in when you bought it?" Bukowski: "It seemed good, that Irish bastard made it out to be the goddamned palace of Louis the 19th, the way he went on. Copper pipes this, new wiring that, and on and on. The attic, the basement. He did warn me about the basement." Agent: "Oh yeah?" Bukowski: "Yeah."

Agent: "What did he say about the basement?" Bukowski: "He told me not to make any structural additions. Like I was some sort of engineer." Agent: "Why not?" Bukowski: "He said that the soil around the house was soft, and if I messed around, digging and stuff in there, I could collapse the house. He was lying."

Agent: "So why did you dig in the basement, if the man that sold you the house told you not to?" Bukowski: "I had to wake it up." Agent: "What did you have to wake up?" Bukowski: "The thing under the basement, genius!"

Agent: "Did that thing in the basement tell you to build those cells in your basement?" Bukowski: "It explained the big plan." Agent: "Did that thing in the basement tell you to starve those people to death?" (a pause) Agent: "Well?" Bukowski: "The thing in the basement says to ask my lawyer."

You think you know something about darkness until you drive across the middle of Kansas in the middle of the night. Every time I keep coming back to this darkness. Things happen, this and that, events... you know, life. "Shit happens," but I keep coming back to that stretch of I-70 out there on the prairie. You see, there's only one real choice out there -- for a stranger, at least -- and that's to follow the path, or not. You're so exhausted, though, that your only real choice is to keep going, because you're too tired to think about doing anything else. So I keep going, through that darkness.

After I killed my husband, I thought things were going to clear up there, for a while. I mean, he was so controlling... you know the type though, right? Wore wifebeaters, beat his wife in them. Standing over his body in the kitchen, I thought, "Well, that was easy enough." (This guy was pretty easy too, I mean, no offense.) My husband used to loom over me at night, when he'd reach for me in bed. Driving at night in Kansas, you hallucinate. Things looming over you, mile-high trees bending over the road, suffocating you. I killed him, but I returned to that darkness just the same. I killed him, and by that I made him a huge fucking bastard in his mile-high wife-beaters prowling the highway, picking up tanker trucks and hitting me with them...

So, I thought maybe I could do something about it, about the fact that he kept coming back. I mean, I had to try, right? Wouldn't you? You know what I did, and you're probably thinking I'm just a real, real sick little nutcase who does her own dirty work, and you're probably real fucking pissed at me too at the moment. But if you're trapped, the only way out of your own vast personal night is to go down that path. Trust me, you find yourself in the same position, and you'll have a little more sympathy for what I did.

The really awful thing is this -- well, you may think killing the priest was probably the most awful thing I did, and maybe it was. But the most awful experience for me has been the fact that I keep doing this stuff over and over, always returning to, you guessed it, I-70 through the big, flat Sunflower state. Every time I think there's another way out, another exit off this bloody interstate highway I'm trapped on, it's just an illusion, and I'm there killing another man. How many do you think I've killed? The actual number of dead bodies as the police count them is what, thirteen? Well, as I see it it's just one, because it's the same thing over and over. Maybe after a hundered or so I'll be all right. Hey. Maybe you're a policeman, finding this note, instead of this guy's wife/girlfriend/daughter/whatever. Oh well. (Found at a murder scene, Manhattan, Kansas, 1963)

From "Travels" of J. L. Richardson, 1898, London (Private Edition) ...the savages gave no quarter - our crew, who would have given the most hoary veterans of the English Navy a nasty turn in a pitched battle, cried out in terror as the red- and white-tattooed men swarmed up over the sides of our boat. They attacked with their hands, or whatever random tool they could pick up from the deck. Only one of them brought anything on board: a set of heavy manacles, which he swung about like a flail. Their attack was not so much a battle as it was an execution, carried out with the everyday efficiency of a butcher at his block.

After the attack, events grow - understandably, I hope - vague in my memory. They singled me out without a word or a sign; I presume it was because of my foreign white skin. I came to in the forward hold, face to face with one of the crew, his jaw smashed in by a length of anchor chain. I found the largest of the savages on my back, pinning me to the wooden planks. A fetid odor washed into the cramped hold.

It was a calm night in the cove where we had anchored, so I was surprised when the gentle roll of the deck beneath me was interrupted by a sudden heave to starboard. The boat held there a moment, and then righted itself. My mouth grew dry suddenly; the stench was overwhelming. The savage arose and dragged me up out of the hold. I came up to the deck facing out over the prow, and saw that the boat was notably lower in the water. I wanted to laugh, but all I could do was gasp, the air was so still and foul, briny, and metallic. The savage put his hand on my shoulder and gently turned me to face the main deck of the ship.

That the night was moonless was the only mercy for me, for I did not clearly see the thing on the deck, the thing that had followed the savages aboard. It was old, it was so old and strong... they brought me to it, and the shackles were used, my wrists bound to it above its elbows, my ankles above its knees, and the back of my head against its patient heart. And I became its voice.