Jack Dann
THE DIAMOND PIT
Homage to F. Scott...
I'd be flyin' to find!
My Miss One-of-a-kind!
If I could only get –
If only I could get –
out'a this jail!...
"Rumplemayer's Basement Blues," 1921
It was like being in a storm, except I heard the thunder first. That was the sound of a dozen anti-aircraft guns firing at us from the summit of a sheer butte that rose like a monolith above the cruel curls of the Montana Rockies.
The setting sun was wreathed with gauzy clouds, and it tinted the cliffs and crevasses below as pink as stained glass flamingos. We were flying a British Moth with a 60-hp de Havilland motor—those Brits could certainly make an airplane. The Moth was steady as a table and was Joel's and my favorite for wing walking and stepping off from one plane onto another. I was in the front cockpit this time, just along for the ride. It had been Joel's idea to borrow the boss's beaut and skip out after our last performance to investigate "something goofy" in the mountains near Hades, which was more bare rock than a village set in the saddle between a mountain that looked like a two-knuckled fist and the mountain that was shooting bullets at us.
Joel swore and shouted though the communication tube and tried to get us the hell out of there, as bullets tore into the fuselage. Another burst hit the upper wing just above my head, which was where the fuel tank was located. My face was spattered with gasoline and I figured then and there that I had just bought the farm; Joel was shouting through the tube to tell me that everything was okay—when we were hit again.
I heard a ping as a bullet hit the motor, and an instant later I could barely see through the oily smoke and fire. I gagged on the burnt exhalations of fuel and oil that smeared over my goggles as the Moth went into a dive. Reflexively, I took over the controls, which were linked to the front cockpit, God bless Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland. I shouted back at Joel through the tube and pulled as hard as I could on the stick while working the rudder and aileron pedals. The compass was going all wacky, as though someone was playing over it with a magnet, pulling the needle this way and that. Although I couldn't see Joel, I knew that he had been hit. Another wave of heat swept over me and I figured I'd be lucky to have another few seconds before the fuel tank blew Joel and me right out of the postcard pink and purple sky.
I'd always wondered what I'd be thinking about in my last moments. I'd wondered about it every time I climbed into a Spad during Bloody April of 1917; I could fly as well as most anybody, although I was no Rickenbacker. I had figured I was going to get it in '17 or '18, but I never even took a bullet, not a scratch—I had the proverbial angel on my wing—and now here I was, about to get it in 1923, which was supposed to be the best year of my life. I remembered Dr. Coué's prayer, which everyone was saying: "Day by day in every way I am getting better and better."
Better and better.
"Joel," I shouted through the tube, "you're going to be okay. We're going to be okay." Day by day in every fucking way, and I felt that hot, sweaty tightness all over my face like I always do when I'm going to cry, but I slipped out of that because the old girl was making a whining keening sort of a noise, and then the motor sputtered and everything became summer afternoon quiet, except for the snapping of the wing wires...
And I found myself counting, counting slowly and the ground spun through the smoke, and I kept the nose up as the valley floor rose like an elevator the size of Manhattan, and I wasn't thinking about anything, not about dying or the tank exploding or the smoke or the smell of the oil... or my Mother, or Lisa, whom I had only dated twice, but she had gone down on the first date and said she loved me, and she had so many freckles, and three curly black hairs between her breasts, I remembered those three black hairs as I counted and by one-hundred-and-forty-seven I expected the giant hand of God to slap me right into the canyon floor and the fuel tank to explode like the sun and-
It was dark when they found me, but the moon was so big and bloated that everything looked like it was coated with silvery dust, except the shadows, where the moon dust couldn't settle. I don't know whether they woke me or whether it was the drip from the fuel tank, but once I realized I was alive and that this was certainly not heaven, I felt most every part of my body begin to ache. I moved my legs to make sure I still had them, and I tried to swat at the Negroes who were pulling me out of the cockpit. I don't know what was in my head because they were big men, and I was just swatting away, but they didn't throw me about or mistreat me or ask me any questions; it was as if they were just handling a fragile piece of merchandise, nothing that was alive, just merchandise. I started coughing as soon as they moved me, and I craned my neck for one last look at the plane... and at Joel, the poor dumb jake who just had to see if the stories were true about a grand castle on the mountain. Now Joel was dead, his face shot off, and I was being carried away by giants who were speaking a dialect like none I'd ever heard; in fact, I couldn't understand a word, although I couldn't help but think it was some form of Southern English.
And we hadn't even seen a castle.
Damn you, Joel.
I blacked out, and woke up as I was being thrown this way and that in the seat of some kind of souped-up, armored suburban; but this beast hadn't rolled off any of Henry Ford's production lines. It was a chimerical combination of tank and automobile. Instead of windows, the passenger cab had thick glass portholes, and Lewis machine guns were mounted on the hood and trunk. I could hardly hear the motor as we sped and jostled into the long purple shadows of the mountains above, and my captors were as quiet as the mountains.
When I woke again, after dreaming that Joel was fine and we were back in the Moth gliding silently through the night over castles and fairy lights, I found myself in the air indeed. The suburban was being hoisted up the sheer face of a cliff, rising into the milky moonlight; and, startled, I bolted forward. The two black giants beside me pulled me back into the cushioned softness of the seat and held me there. I tried to talk to them, to ask them what was going on, but they just shook their heads as though they couldn't understand me.
Then with a bounce the suburban was lowered onto solid ground. Two men and a boy were waiting beside a crane used on aircraft carriers to hoist boats and planes; and as they removed the cables that had been attached to the hub-guards of the huge truck-tired wheels, they spoke to each other in that peculiar dialect that was both familiar... and unfamiliar.
Once again we drove, only now we were that much closer to the sky. As I looked out through the porthole on my right, the moon looked green, radiating its wan, sickly light through filigrees of cloud; and the road made of tapestry brick was as straight and neat and ghostly as the fog and mist that clung to it.
We passed a lake that could have been a dark mirror misted with breath and reflecting the stars and bloated moon. I caught a sudden scent of pine, and then I saw it, a château—no, rather a moon-painted castle—with opalescent terraces, walkways, mosque-like towers, and outbuildings rising from broad, tree-lined lawns.
But my destination, alas, would be otherwise.
"Hell's bells, it's almost noon."
"Clarence, how would you know whether it was noon or what? Your wristwatch has stopped so many times, it could be midnight."
"Don't call me Clarence or I'll break your legs."
"You an' whose army?"
I snapped awake and looked around the room, which resolved around me. Walls, floor, ceiling seemed to be made of a piece, a smooth, translucent layer of opal, which glowed with light; but I could not discern the source of the suffusing light, nor could I see the inset marks of tile, only high, straight, iridescent planes that reached to a ceiling of the same substance. I was lying in a comfortable feather bed with a jewel-inlaid footboard; the bed and an ebony table and elbow chair were the only pieces of furniture in this smooth, glittering travesty of a monk's cell.
"Well, sleeping beauty has awoke," said Clarence. He had a pale, freckled complexion, red hair that was graying, and a pop-eyed look, no doubt because his eyebrows were so white that they seemed to disappear. "You're probably still feelin' dopey," he said to me. "The slaves drugged you so Old Jefferson could do his interrogation. Takes a while for it to wear off."
"Well, they didn't drug me," said the man who had been goading Clarence about his name. He was bald, tall, and aggressive; and he had a ruddy complexion like Clarence—it was as if both men were of the same Irish and Dutch ancestry. Both wore pants and shirts that looked like pajamas, except Clarence wore an aviator's jacket and the bald man wore a cap.
Eleven other men were standing in the room behind them, and a short wiry aviator—I was sure right then and there that they were all aviators—said, "Old man Jefferson drugged everybody. Even you, Monty. You just don't remember none of it, while we do."
"But none of us remembers much," said Clarence, who introduced himself as Skip, and then introduced me to Monty Kleeck and Farley James and Rick Moss and Carl Crocker and Eddie Barthelmet, Harry Talmadge, Keith Boardman, Gregory "Cissy" Schneck, "Snap" Samuel Geraldson, and Stephen Freeburg, who "was the only Jew in this mess of Protestants."
"You a Jew too?" asked the skinny, nervous upchuck who was called Cissy. There was a meanness in his voice, but he wasn't big enough to back it up, and I knew he was more dangerous than the three-hundred-pound hulk they called Snap.
I thought about saying yes, but I figured I might be here a while—maybe for life, from the look of them—and so I said, "No, I'm Catholic. You have a problem with that?"
"No, no," said Cissy, backing off. "I got no problem with Christians." Then in an undertone he said, "Long as they're Christians... "
"Where the hell am I?" I asked, some of the muzziness from the drugs finally clearing—if, indeed, I'd been drugged. I directed myself to Stephen Freeburg, who had the same kind of dark, sharp features as Rudolph Valentino, who last I heard had gone to prison for bigamy.
"You're in the Randolph Estes Jefferson Hotel," Freeburg said, smiling. "It's probably the fanciest, most comfortable jail in the world. And unless you can think of something we haven't, you're here for life."
"No, we'll get out," said Carl Crocker, a short, overweight, squarish chap with bristly brown hair—they must feed these guys pretty well, I thought; but everything was just words and thoughts wriggling like worms in sand. Nothing seemed real. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with wire. My eyes were burning. My head was pounding. Wake up, I told myself. Wake the hell up.
"Yeah, your tunnel," Freeburg said sarcastically. "Next, you and Snap will be drilling straight down." Everyone laughed at that.
I guess I looked bemused because Eddie Barthelmet, a reedy yet muscular man with thinning black hair, whom I figured immediately as the sort who kept his own counsel, said, "It's solid diamond underneath us. Hardest substance in the world."
I shook my head and grinned. I could take being the butt of the joke.
"I'm not joshing you. The whole goddamn mountain is diamond, except for the rock and stone above. And it's all owned by the Old Man, who isn't too willing to share, which is why we're down here, and he's up there." Everyone laughed at that, and Eddie just nodded toward the ceiling, as if some omniscient being were standing right above us. Then after a pause, he asked, "Did you happen to notice if your compass seemed to go wild when you approached the mountain?"
"Yeah," I said. "But I figured it had been knocked out of whack."
"No, the same thing happened to me. None of the others remember anything being wrong with their compasses, so I figure that the Old Man concocted something new. An artificial magnetic field, or something like that."
"Well, if he could change the official maps of the United States, he could screw up our compasses, I suppose," Clarence said. I didn't figure him to be the brightest of the bunch, but I couldn't help but like him. He seemed genuinely concerned, and maybe it was the way he slouched or patted the chair, I don't know, but for some reason I had the feeling that he was really at home here. He turned to me and said, "Don't worry, you'll be meeting the Old Man soon enough. And when you're ready, I'll give you the tour of the place and help you get set up. Now you think you're ready to tell us your name and how you came to be flyin' out here? You were flyin'...?"
I nodded and told them my name—Paul Orsatti—and I told them that I was a mail pilot, which I'd been for a while, until I got myself fired from New York Chicago Air Transport for being self-righteous; and I wasn't going to tell them that I'd been kicking around for the past year as a roustabout stunt flier, working for crummy outfits like Pitkin's Circle-Q Flying Circus. Or that I'd been playing piano in cheapjack speakeasies for nothing more than drinks and whatever change the Doras and ossified lounge lizards could spare. I didn't tell them about Joel, and how he'd heard rumors about there being something strange in the mountain near Hades. I only told them I'd gotten a bit off-course—next thing I knew I was being shot at.
And as if I'd been caught telling a lie by the Lord God Almighty Himself, I heard a voice calling everyone to attention.
A broadcast from above.
"Well, boys," said God. "Don't you want to have a chat? My daughter's accompanying me, so y'all better be on your best behavior, gentlemen. None of your usual filthy street patois. Now shake a leg!"
Everyone started swearing and complaining, but they obediently moved out of my room toward where the voice was probably coming from, and Skip pulled me along, telling me that I might as well know my keeper and get it in my head that I'm here and that's that and how it's not so bad, in fact, probably better than we'd ever have it back home in the real world.
We walked through a seamless corridor made of the same stuff as the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room where I'd awakened. Dim, pervasive light radiated wanly from the ceiling, and doorways were evenly spaced on both sides. I caught glimpses into other rooms, some larger than others, some dark, some brightly lit, and could see rooms that led into other corridors. I was in a polished, many-hued glass warren that could hold many more men than we who were here now. We crowded into an empty room, which was a high tower... a terminus of sorts.
I looked up at a large, brightly lit opening covered with grating and saw a man looking down at us—I assumed he was Mr. Randolph Estes Jefferson.
Some sort of lens must have also covered the opening because Mr. Jefferson seemed greatly magnified and also slightly distorted, as though his girth was being pulled toward the edges of the opening. He looked to be about forty-five and had one of those faces that always remind me of a pug dog: jowly and fleshy, yet absolutely intent—the proverbial dog with a bone. He stood erect, as though he was wearing military gear instead of a straw boater, blue blazer, and white flannel Oxford bags. If it weren't for that face and his bearing, he could have been a fashion plate. He was swinging what I thought was a cane, swinging it back and forth over the opening to the tower of our prison (but which was, in effect, just a grating in the grass from his perspective). A girl of perhaps eighteen stood beside her pug dog father. She wore a thin blue blouse with a pleated tennis skirt and a blue bandeau to keep her hair in place. Her hair was blond, curly, and bobbed, and although I couldn't see the color of her eyes, I imagined they would be blue. Her mouth was crimson, her face tan against the blue bandeau. Even with the slight distortion, I could see that she was perfection—a pure vision of youth and freshness and beauty.
"Hey, leave the old guy and come on down here."
"Push him through the grate, we'll take care of everything for you."
"They don't call me snugglepup for nottin'," Crocker shouted, and most everyone was laughing... except Mr. Jefferson. His daughter smiled warmly at all of us and bowed, as though she was being presented at a cotillion in New York or Chicago or Paris.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jefferson, "remember your manners. If y'all continue to embarrass me before my daughter, I shall be happy to instruct my slaves to forget to supply you with your daily rations, which I presume are to your expectations?"
"Slaves?" I asked Skip, who was standing beside me and rubbernecking, to get a better look at the girl.
"Yeah," Skip said, "he's got hundreds of 'em, I guess."
"The rations are fine, except we could do without the fish eggs," said Rick Moss, a short unshaven man, who was so muscular that he looked like he might have been a weight lifter.
"So the rations of caviar are not appreciated," Jefferson said. "Well, we'll take that item off the menu." Randolph Estes Jefferson sounded cheerful, as if he were merely a waiter taking an order and listening to customers' complaints. "Now my Phoebe loves caviar," he said, putting his arm around his daughter, "so I, of course, just assumed y'all would too. I figured your generation with all your jazz and Wall Street savvy was more sophisticated than mine."
But Harry Talmadge and Keith Boardman, who were standing beside me and looking quietly bored, were not exactly what you'd call jazz babies—Harry looked to be in his middle forties, but it would be difficult to guess whether Keith was in his fifties or sixties. He looked well fed and well exercised, as though he were someone who could afford to pamper himself and maintain his youth.
I thought it odd that our jailer Mr. Jefferson used "y'all" like someone from the Deep South, yet he had no accent at all... which was probably the same thing as having a midwest accent.
"Well, I don't mind the caviar," said fat Snap Geraldson. "I guess that makes me the only sophisticated guy down here." That got a laugh.
"Are you here to bait us like bears, or have you come up with a solution to our problem?" asked Freeburg.
"Ah, Mr. Freeburg, you are always so angry and so ready to argue how many angels might rest on the head of a pin. Aren't you satisfied with the Talmud I provided for your studies?"
"I've simply taken the bait," Freeburg said.
"Well, good for you, then. But we've been over and over my predicament. I—being a man of conscience—must bear the burden of keeping y'all in prison because to free you would be harmful to my family and myself and my retainers. You'll soon come to understand that, too, Mr. Orsatti."
I almost took a step back when he addressed me.
"I trust you're getting settled in comfortably," he continued. "The other boys will show you the ropes. If anyone mistreats you, just slip a note into the food slot. It'll reach me in due course. I've developed quite a paternalistic affection for all of you. Quite."
"We'd promise not to peach on you," cried Carl Crocker. "And that's the honest truth. Just let us go. Give us a chance."
"Ah, but you couldn't help yourself, could you, Mr. Crocker," Jefferson said, as he pulled a lawn chair over for Phoebe and then disappeared for a few seconds to return with a chair for himself. "You'd have to tell someone. And if you could come back and get past my slaves and my guns, why then you'd be the richest man on Earth. Would you like me to send some more gems down to you? You can have whatever you wish—diamonds, rubies, sapphires, a birthstone of your own weight."
"Won't do me any good down here," Carl said.
"Ah, you see, value is relative. But once you got away from here, these diamonds and rubies and sapphires would be worth as much as life itself. Surely you can see that?"
"No, I can't," said Carl.
"As I've asked you before, do you want me to have your wives and girlfriends brought here? I'll extend your accommodations. Y'all would have everything you could wish for."
"Except freedom," said Eddie Barthelmet. "What would it take to buy that?"
"You can't buy anything from me," said Mr. Jefferson. "All that I give is as a gift. When last we spoke—how long ago was that? Perhaps a few months ago?—I asked if you could come up with a better solution. Well, this is your chance. Propose."
"So you can dispose," said Eddie.
"Very good, very good indeed. The newer members seem to be quicker than the rest of you. You'll need to study to keep up."
"Then let us have some newspapers," shouted Crocker.
"Yeah, is prohibition repealed yet?"
"What would you care?" Mr. Jefferson said. "Whatever spirits you request are sent to you. What more could you ask for?"
That elicited shouting and swearing, and Mr. Jefferson just smiled and held up his hands. "Well, gentlemen, I see that we're finished."
"We do care about whether prohibition has been repealed," Eddie shouted up to Mr. Jefferson. "Just as we care about what the stock market is doing, what's the new dance, what's happening with the Fascists in Italy, what's the latest Zane Grey, is Dempsey still heavyweight champion, who won the World Series?"
"Giants over the Yankees, 5-3 in the fifth," I said in a low voice. Eddie nodded to me, and a few of the other boys started to argue the merits of the Giants and the Yankees.
"There's your answer," Mr. Jefferson said. He could only have heard me if he had listening devices planted in here, which, of course, he would.
"We need access to newspapers... and the radio," Eddie said.
"It will only stir you up, son, and make you yearn for what you can't have," Jefferson said. "You've got a library of the great classics of literature. That should be edification enough."
"I want The Saturday Evening Post," Crocker said.
"I want The Strand."
"I want Phoebe."
"Good-bye, gentlemen," Jefferson said.
"Wait," shouted Eddie. "Why not at least give us leave? At least, let one or two of us out for a few days. You could have your slaves guard us to make sure we couldn't run for it. We could at least see a ball game, or a movie. Then you could bring us back, and take another group out. As you are always fond of telling us, 'Money's no object.'"
Jefferson made a clucking noise and said, "That's a new twist, Mr. Barthelmet. Very good, indeed. Except my slaves would have to gag you and bind you so you wouldn't shout for help or make a run for it, and the constabulary might look askance at that. But even if you were a model parolee, you'd come back and yearn for what you'd seen. No, it would just deepen the pain of your circumstances. Allow me to bring your wives or lovers or friends to you."
"No," shouted Rick Moss, and he was echoed by the others.
"It's bad enough you've buried us."
"Let us the hell out of here, you bastid."
"Well, gentlemen, I think that's more than enough," Jefferson said. "Come on, Phoebe, enough diversion for you." He stood up, and I could see then that he had been holding a golf club, not a cane. We were buried under his golf course, and he and his daughter were just out playing eighteen holes. The sonovabitch!
There was a grating noise, and the opening above went black.
"Wait," I shouted reflexively.
The ceiling irised open, and Jefferson and his beautiful Phoebe looked down at us. "Yes, Mr. Orsatti?" he asked.
"I'd like a piano."
Jefferson laughed and said, "Done."
"That's all we need, more noise—"
"We could use some of that—"
"You boys can dance with each other—"
"It beats what we're doin' now—"
But before the ceiling closed, I could see Phoebe looking down—right at me—and smiling.
The piano arrived, as promised. It was a special-edition, pearl-white Steinway grand, which produced a huge, full orchestral sound, yet the keys had such an incredibly fast action that I couldn't help but open up with a boogie-woogie medley. My feet stomped on the floor as my left hand flew over the keys beating out syncopated rhythms that were so tricky that I dared not watch what I was doing, lest I falter; and my right hand, weaving various melodies through the rhythms of my left, might as well have had a mind of its own.
I was a one-man band.
I was also, needless to say, half in the proverbial bag. But so was everyone else, except Cissy Schneck and Farley James, a nice British fellow who had been an Oxford don before the war. I found out from Skip that he had been an ace pilot. He'd come over here to compete in the ocean-to-ocean air race in '19, the same year the Cincinnati Reds beat the Sox in the eighth game, which was a miracle. So was Farley James, I guess, because he'd come in second place and decided to stay and start an air flying company with Charlie Lindbergh. That surprised the hell out of me because Joel, may God rest his soul, said he'd worked for Lindbergh for a while.
"Hey, Farley," I called, and he dutifully came over to the piano, where Skip formally introduced us.
"Fahley, z'ish is Pauhhzzotti... "
"Skip tells me you had some business with Charlie Lindbergh."
Farley nodded, smiling at Skip who then began to lead everyone in another chorus of another new song I had played for them.
"Do you have any bananas?"
"Yes! We have no bananas!"
"Do you know Charlie?" Farley asked.
"Yeah, I met him through a friend of mine, Joel Wagner. Ring any bells?"
"Small world. Sure, I remember Joel. Good aviator. Dependable. What's he doing with himself these days?"
"He's dead."
Farley looked shocked, and he stared down at his shoes, which were so highly polished he could probably see his face in them.
"Did you ever talk to him about... a castle up in the mountains?" I asked.
His thin, sensitive face was tight as shellacked paper. He looked straight at me and said, "No." After a pause, he said, "But he was shot down with you, wasn't he... "
I started playing "Look for the Silver Lining," which everyone knew, then "Wild Rose," and "Ma—He's Making Eyes at Me" which Snap Geraldson sang in falsetto. That was something to hear... and see. Isn't often an elephant imitates a parrot being squeezed into a juicer. I played and sang Bessie Smith's "Downhearted Blues," and, of course, nobody knew who she was; but Rick Moss and Snap started dancing with each other. I taught them how to Charleston, which had just become all the rage, and all hell broke loose with everybody swaying back and forth, slapping their knees, swiveling around on the balls of their feet, and falling over like they'd been dancing in a marathon for two weeks. After a while I started playing slower tunes again like "All by Myself" and "Who's Sorry Now," and then even a little Lizst and Bach, and the party broke up, and—
"You can't sleep on the piana."
I don't know how he did it, but somehow Skip got me up and dragged me or walked me or rolled me toward my room. I remember seeing open doors that led into rooms with pool tables and ping-pong tables. I remember a kitchen and gymnasium and a room that was so bright I could barely look into it. I passed the fabled library that God had provided with all the classics but no up-to-date Saturday Evening Posts, and I remember feeling a pressure around my temples; I imagined that Joel and I were back in the Moth, and the engine was on fire, and my forehead was hot, and then something squeezed my stomach, and from far away Joel or Skip or somebody said, "Hot damn," and I dreamed about beautiful Phoebe looking down at me from the perfect golf-course gardens and tennis courts of Heaven. Her eyes, set in her sun-bronzed face like perfectly shaped transparent gems, were impossibly blue. Sky blue freedom.
...
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