The ‘64 Jag XKE theft wasn’t worth the sentence but they framed me with five sport car grabs to clear the books I truly believe. I bowed to the judge like an award winner. I guess that didn’t help my cause. I lost the security deposit at Palmetto Manor. My girlfriend Lydia cleared out the furnishings, all Goodwill or Salvation Army purchases: a sleeping bag, AM/FM radio, lawn chair and electric frying pan, dinner plate, bowl, utensils and a USS Miller DE/FF coffee cup that I’d lifted from an MGB, top down, keys in ignition, sure handled corners nicely. She mailed me a magazine photo of the sweet sayonara Jag. I tucked it into my Lives of the Saints that they let me keep in my cell instead of the Bible. I had a notebook where I revised their biographies. St. Servulus the Beggar hit the lottery for ten million. St. John of Matha received a helping hand too. His boat stripped of rudder and sail became a fancy yacht anchored in Monaco. I transformed St. Saturnus, martyred by a raging bull, into a playboy Arizona rancher. Every year he put on a spectacle better than the one at the San Fermin (beheaded) Festival in Pamplona, Spain. My Aunt Teresa gave me the volume when I was a kid. She spent time in NYC when she was young. She mentioned her “sweet beat boyfriend” often. My Mother would shout “Borscht?” and they’d laugh like maniacs. Sometimes the name is on the tip of my tongue but just “Kojak” falls off. I can’t make heads or tails of it. She also talked of a good friend named Dottie who housed and fed down-and-out folks or the unlucky as Teresa put it. “The woman should be a Saint!” she said, pounding a fist on the kitchen table. My Aunt quoted St. Teresa of Avila in her letters, “To have courage for everything that comes in life—everything lies in that.” The one that stuck with me was “Pain is never permanent,” that I repeated a thousand times when three fellow inmates accused me of being a spoiled rich guy because of my name and beat me up. My mantra convinced them I was crazy and they steered clear of me. Unfortunately, my name doesn’t smack of Sainthood. My name is Amory, after a kid who lives in a novel. My Mother loved him or the author: a guy who parted his hair down the middle. My last name is Loft. Lydia calls me Lofty. I was disappointed I couldn’t find “Lydia” in the Lives. She cleared that up having already covered that territory, knew all about St. Lydia, the patron Saint of dyers. The color purple is associated with her. Lydia had sheets and negligees that shade.
I memorized the feast day names from January 1 through December 31. Lydia liked to hear me sing off her birth month, February, St. Brigid to St. Oswald. Listing Saints was my way of practicing focus. I’ve always had a tough time locking my mind in place. I usually washed dishes in restaurants or diners. I tried warehouse work but I’d neglect to include something or other in a truck I was loading. I left rolls of fabric curing in an oven too long my four-and-a-half days in a textile mill, ruined them. They demoted me to sweeping. I took a lot of razzing because of the burned cloth. The company made a mistake passing out checks at noon on Fridays. I slipped out as soon as mine was in hand. The gas station eight hours was a disaster. I put a quart of oil in a car radiator. After that, it was strictly dish-washing, stand in place and let the dishes, pots and pans come to me. What a joy at the end of a shift, black conveyor belt a lonely road. Once, I brought in a piece of yellow chalk, made lanes. A colleague named Brad saw my highway and turned it into railroad tracks. “In memory of Neal,” he said but didn’t explain. Brad smoked cigars and sang songs he said were from Garage Band Central. He gave me a book of his stories. I loved one set in Aliquippa, PA that ended with a guy named Dave-O savagely rolling a tire at his fleeing sibling. “It took him down like a duckpin from a distance of forty feet.” That’s bound to find its way into one of my Saint revisions. Who knows what will replace the tire or whose Saint life it will be? Besides, my Aunt Teresa bowled a perfect duckpin game.
I’m not stupid. Lydia says I have a way with words, a gift of gab, one of the best-spoken people she’s ever met. I study the Saint patrons in Lives, the way I did preparing for my GED exam that I just did pass. I adopted St. Christopher, patron Saint of travelers after I saw three statues of him on the dashboard of a yellow pickup truck with a decal for Luray Caverns on the back window. I took the sun’s reflection in that showy paint as a signal to embrace Chris. I bought a beautiful replica at a religious goods store, not plain white but painted so expertly that he and the baby Jesus looked real. Luckily, I snatched it off the dashboard like Ali pulling back a jab so the cops wouldn’t think it belonged to the XKE. The men in blue got a big laugh at St. Christopher’s expense. Hadn’t I been a part time traveler with my auto hobby? (Lydia says they call Irish Tinkers, Travelers!) Elvis isn’t a Saint but many people think of him that way. So what if Chris is dumped and null in the eyes of the Church?
The statue accompanied me every theft. I didn’t blame the old Christ hauler for my arrest: all good things must end. The authorities let me take him to the joint. The magnet at the base is strong enough to secure on the metal at the head of my bunk. Don’t take me for a religious zealot. I am a true believer though. Including the Saints in my tales should count as prayers, at least. Yeah, I’m a Good Samaritan Traveler just like Chris! There’s a funny story that goes with my lockup: the doctor that owned the XKE sent a card thanking me for not leading the cops on a chase that might have resulted in damage to his precious vehicle. I wrote back asking him to check his registration for the exact color of the Jag but he never responded. The doctor’s last name was Chrisov, close enough I’d say.
My prison job was traditional, cliché and butt of many jokes. I was a peon in the license plate manufacturing operation. Archie, my boss, was a murderer doing three life terms. I wondered if a St. Archie or Archibald ever existed; if so, he missed the Lives like Lydia. That plate press was his pride and joy. He worked at it as if a man turning out chalices, talked to it, was always smiling, clucking and drooling. At least five or ten times daily, he chuckled about a car thief landing in the license tag operation. He’d hand me a couple of plates, say, “Amory Loft, go find a Rolls for these. Would ya please do that for me kiddo?” In one of my fantasies, he owned a bar, walls covered with license plates, every inch. Sometimes I’d move my fingers over the embossed numbers and plates like a blind man. I shared that with the slammer shrink. She asked if I’d ever faked blindness on a street corner holding out a tin cup. I had not. She said I could not visualize consequences and that was behind my thievery. I overheard her tell my counselor that I probably couldn’t even spell “consequences.” I spelled it backwards in my head for myself. In another session, I revealed that my fascination with cars began when I was a boy of seven. A Mercury 8 from the movie Rebel Without a Cause drove out of the TV screen into my head and there was no exit. She just wrote furiously on her legal pad. After that, I kept my notions to myself, fearing transfer to the State Hospital.
Once I asked Archie if he ever did any practical joking with what went on plates. He looked at me as if I were going to be his fourth victim. I shelved inquiring about his crimes. He stood over 6’5 I figured, and had Goliath mitts. I tired of the job in a hurry, requested the kitchen citing my last dish-washing employment at a seafood restaurant, The Fillet and Claw in Cocoa Beach where I met Lydia. How classy the place was didn’t mean jack to my counselor. She told me I’d given up my right to choose. I’d have a better chance at escaping. Archie seconded the motion, complained he didn’t want to break in a new apprentice. All I did was move stacks of plates from cart A to pallet B until there were enough to swing the hot rod forklift jockey named Jimmy into action. His crime was smuggling drugs from Mexico in hollow domino pieces. His jerky manner said he had a narcotic pipeline into prison. He’d chipped “D.E. #3” in his machine’s paint. I quizzed him about it. He went into slurred conniptions when I told him I’d never heard of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt. His eyes were cocked flame-throwers so I backed off and said, “Oh, that Dale.” He spat on my shoe. I imagined Jimmy using the forklift to poke a wall exit to freedom. I made a note to have one of the Saints make a getaway in that fashion. When Lydia finally visited me, she brought no hacksaw in a chocolate cake just a St. Lydia medal. She said don’t ever forget me. I stayed calm, envisioned some fabric miracle might come of it, get me a transfer to the laundry; wrong again but swallowing it like a communion host got me a stay in the infirmary that I appreciated. No more St. Christopher statue: they were afraid I’d eat him too.
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author bio:
Thomas M. McDade is a former programmer/analyst residing in Fredericksburg, VA, previously CT & RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Virginia Beach, VA. At sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE/FF 1091).