It had happened more than once that Ethel Kincaid had approached Cressida Mayfield’s parents in public places, individually—Arlette she’d approached on the front walk of the battered women’s shelter in the suburban village of Mount Olive at which Arlette had become a frequent volunteer following her daughter’s disappearance, with a demand that Arlette “make full disclosure” of the whereabouts of her daughter; Zeno she’d approached in a Carthage restaurant in which Zeno was seated with friends, denouncing him as a “class-warfare enemy” whose daughter had “run off” and was alive somewhere in an “illegal conspiracy” to keep her innocent son in prison.
At a performance of Euripides’ Medea staged at Carthage Community College in the spring of 2008 the startled audience had at first thought it was a continuation of the play, performed in “modern dress,” when, after the lights came up, a middle-aged woman with a ravaged-girl’s face leapt into the aisle to declaim in a loud voice that here she was a “true loving mother”—“not a crazy monster-mother like Medea”—but did anybody “give a damn about” her?
Only after some minutes did it become clear, to a portion of the audience at least, that the thin, excitable woman with eyes like the glittering steel balls of a pinball machine was in fact Ethel Kincaid the mother of Corporal Brett Kincaid who’d confessed to the murder of Cressida Mayfield in the fall of 2005.
The shrewdest maneuver Ethel Kincaid had yet attempted was to sue for public funds as a victim of 9/11.
Too God damn bad she hadn’t thought of this until nine years after 9/11—four years after Brett was incarcerated—so it was hard to get people to take her lawsuit seriously arguing that she, Ethel Kincaid, was a victim of the terrorist attack if indirectly, as her only son Brett had been sent to Iraq to fight El Kwada—that is, the Muslim terrorists—and in that terrible place he’d been wounded in combat and sent home “disabled” and “defective” and as a result of this was “incarcerated” in a maximum-security prison in a Godforsaken corner of the state, hundreds of miles away virtually in Canada. None of this was her fault as the damaged lives of family members of individuals killed in the World Trade Center or in the hijacked airplanes were not their fault but the result of the terrorist attack from which the U.S. government had not protected its citizens. Ethel had written to the President in the White House as to other, more local politicians and not one of them had responded; and now she was picketing Beechum County family services believing that she deserved an upgrade on her payments and should not have to prove “paupership” but be allowed to own a car, at least.
In her state of nerves since July 2005, Ethel had retired from clerical work. She had not yet sought out employment, knowing there was a bias in Carthage against her.
She did collect unemployment. But that was a laugh, living at the “paupership line.”
Far away in Dannemora, New York, Brett knew of these remarkable episodes in his mother’s life through Ethel’s boasting of them over the phone.
Steeling himself to listen. And sometimes, as her voice rang in his ears like struck glass, he did not listen.
“Never guess what your crazy old mother was doing just this week!”—so Ethel would exclaim as soon as Brett came on the line.
Saying, when Brett failed to respond as a normal son would respond, “Somebody has got to keep your case alive, God damn it! And that somebody has got to be your mother since nobody else gives a shit.”
Ethel yearned to visit Brett at the prison but couldn’t make the long trip by bus, her health had been ruined since that terrible summer of 2005—a bus trip would kill her. There was an offer from a cable-channel talk show to tell her son’s side of the story if Mrs. Kincaid would allow the TV crew to drive her by “limousine” to Dannemora and accompany her to the prison gate and afterward be interviewed by the host frankly and candidly on the subject of visiting her only son in prison and such invitations Ethel considered seriously—wistfully—but Brett flatly refused.
“The world needs to be educated to your side of the story, Brett. So you will be granted a new trial or your sentence commuted by the governor.”
And when Brett still failed to respond, saying in a wounded voice, “All the world believes you are guilty, Brett. Your enemies never gave you a chance and some you’d thought were your friends turned out to be your enemies and you have to do something about it.”
The corporal seemed to be summoning himself from a long distance but then could manage only a shrug of a murmur his mother could barely hear: “Why?”
AND ANOTHER CALLER from Carthage was Arlette Mayfield.
Juliet’s mother! Mrs. Mayfield! The corporal could not bear to hear the woman’s voice and refused to come to the phone.
Out of cowardice, shame. Could not come to the phone.
And so, Arlette wrote to Brett Kincaid in the Clinton Correctional Facility, Dannemora, New York. He’d had to steel himself to open the handwritten letter for his instinct was to quickly dispose of it.
Dear Brett,
I am sorry you will not speak with me. But I will try again—of course.
I would like so much to hear your voice, Brett. I would like to see your face. I think of you so often—I pray for you. I think the bond between us is very deep though you and my daughter Juliet were not married yet it had seemed at times—(forgive me, this is strange to say, I know)—that you were my son-in-law. And of the Mayfield family.
There is so much between us, Brett, we must speak of before it is too late.
We were in the courtroom at the sentencing and it was then I felt so strongly, that you were of my family. Though I could not acknowledge it at that time. My heart was broken, I think—the loss of Cressida, that was also a loss of you.
I would not ask you about Cressida, Brett. So many others have asked you Why? Why do such a thing but I would not ask you. If I came to visit there I would only just request to sit with you for a while in quietness and we would discover what God wishes from us. (I know it is forgiveness on my side but there may be more than this.)
No one knows that I am writing to you, Brett. Not my dear Juliet nor my husband Zeno who would not understand for these years have been hard on him, without faith in God to guide him. My husband is a public man as they say—he is not so easy in his own soul.
And even Juliet, who is a Christian, as you know, has not had an easy time, so I would not tell Juliet, at least not at this time.
You are in my prayers, Brett. There is so much more that must pass between us!
In Jesus’s name
Arlette Mayfield
This letter was dated July 9, 2008. The third anniversary of that night.
Several times Mrs. Mayfield wrote to Brett and each time he did not reply but kept the letter neatly folded in the Bible Father Kranach had given him; then, for what reason he could not have said, impulsively he did reply to Mrs. Mayfield’s letter of November 11, 2008, writing on lined notebook paper with a stub of a pencil Dear Mrs Mayfeld thak you. I have read your letters many times & but I don’t think it is a good idea right now. Sincerly, Brett Kincaid.
SCREAMING. LIKE SOME sort animal torn apart by hyenas.
Screaming screaming! But worse, when the screaming ceased.
AT THE START of his incarceration it had been his thought—(it was both a hope and a fear)—that—maybe—Juliet might call him, or write to him. For it was astonishing, that so many individuals kept in phone contact with prisoners in the facility, presumably women who were wives, mothers, girlfriends, sisters; no inmate so unattractive, so truculent or debased, so much a loser, there wasn’t at least one female willing to remain attached to him in some mysterious way.
It was true, the corporal had received letters from women in Carthage and elsewhere, a number of these from young women who’d known him as long ago as high school, even middle school—but he hadn’t answered any of these letters nor even in most cases finished reading them. And more often now, a letter with a return address not known to him was quickly disposed
of for he had no wish to enter into the fantastical musings of another regarding himself.
For the female entranced by the prisoner, particularly a prisoner who has been convicted of killing another female, filled the corporal with disgust.
You don’t know me Brett Kincaid. But I believe that I know you.
Hello! In a dream you bade me write to you Brett Kincaid. And
so—
Such letters on pastel-colored stationery exuded a sickish fragrance. You were meant to luridly imagine, the writer had pressed these pages against her breasts powdered in talcum.
But Juliet Mayfield had not written. And in truth, Brett had not expected her to write to him.
What he’d done! Not only Cressida but Juliet had been destroyed, he saw that now.
Yet still, in a weak moment he fantasized that Juliet might wish to contact him. If only to state that she would not ever see him again, and had not forgiven him.
They’d been so very close at one time.
He had loved her so much. So deeply.
Strange to think of it now, as one whose limbs have become gangrenous might strain to recall a time of health, what it could have been like—then.
He’d sent her away, finally. Fearful of hurting her. It had been the wisest decision.
In confused dreams she did come to him. Though it wasn’t always evident if the female figure was Juliet Mayfield.
Her features blurred as in a film that has begun to disintegrate.
Her terrible screams. Such screams, the girl could not have drawn breath between them.
Before he’d left for Iraq for the second tour, he’d had a premonition.
The first tour, blindly he had not—he’d believed that he was a U.S. soldier on a mission of justice. He’d believed that God would protect him—everyone in his platoon had believed this, without question.
But the second time he’d known. He’d given to Juliet the sealed envelope Only open this if you never see me again.
Juliet had stared at him frightened. For she too had taken for granted that he would return exactly as he’d left her; whether by the grace of the Christian God or by the U.S. forces’ superior firepower, American soldiers were protected.
He’d been in a state of extreme emotion when he’d written that letter. Yet now, a few years later, he could not recall what he’d written.
He supposed that Juliet might have opened and read it. And, after he’d confessed to killing her sister, thrown it away.
Couldn’t remember a single email of the many—hundreds?—he’d sent to Juliet and to others from Iraq. Pictures he’d sent. A dizzying succession of emails and each so immediate, so urgent and breathless typed hurriedly in those brief minutes of relative privacy snatched from the buzzing oblivion of the soldier’s life.
They’d been proud of him. For a while, damned proud.
He’d wanted to think that his father Sergeant Graham Kincaid had been proud, too.
No matter the elder Kincaid had said of the Gulf War it was a shit-hole and everything to do with the war, the U.S. military, and “patriotism” was for asshole-suckers.
He’d taken a dim view too of folks back home—asking their damn questions like they had a right.
Still, Brett had to think his dad would be proud of him—if just his father knew.
Before the injuries, that is. Just Corporal Brett Kincaid in his dress uniform standing so straight and tall and looking so good, you had to smile.
Makes you feel good to be proud of the young corporal who’d been a good sweet decent kid, a great athlete at the high school, before 9/11 and the U.S. Army.
Purple Heart—that was the medal everybody knew.
Iraq War Campaign medal which was just a shitty medal everybody got who was sent to Iraq and didn’t seriously fuck up like get killed or jailed by the military police.
The Infantry Combat Badge was a good one. Bravery under fire, soldierly courage and skill. Not bad for the corporal with half his brain shot to shit.
Highest medals were the Silver Star and the Medal of Honor he had not been awarded of course nor had anyone he knew, or would ever know. He’d explained this but somehow writing the “human interest” feature about Corporal Brett Kincaid focusing on his “return home” and his “rehab” and “upcoming marriage”—(at the time, he and Juliet Mayfield had been engaged)—the giddy female journalist had included in the last line of her piece for the Carthage paper something called Gold Medal for Valor.
Juliet had tried to placate him. He’d been disgusted, furious.
Like it’s all a joke, fucking joke he’d said furious and Juliet had stared at him as if she’d never seen him before and he’d said like tossing a match into something already smoldering, Fucking cunt make a joke of me she’d better stay out of my way.
FLARING UP, like a match tossed into gasoline.
First time anyone saw him in a rage—cell mate, fellow inmates, COs who’d come to trust and to like him—was astonished, disbelieving.
Kincaid? Him?
Yeh shit he lost it. Man!
First eighteen months at Dannemora he’d been OK. As near-normal as he would ever be “disabled” and “defective” and on a drug-regimen like the HIV inmates whose meds were mandated by the New York State Department of Health. (How many of these inmate-patients in the facility, some of them visibly sick, gaunt and dying in the infirmary, the corporal would discover when he became an orderly in his second year at Dannemora.) Initially he’d been kept in isolation and on suicide watch which necessitated twenty-four-hour fluorescent lighting in his cell, he’d had to learn to sleep with his face hidden in his hands like some kind of wounded nocturnal creature. In isolation and kept separate from one another the majority of inmates were criminally insane sex-maniac-murderers and criminally insane sex-maniac-child-murderers and among these Brett Kincaid was the youngest and most “cooperative” inmate. Crossing-over into this place which was a clear and visible manifestation of Hell in which his punishment was assured was placating to him, who did not now feel the obligation to punish himself.
Soon he would realize that the prison was a place of madness. A malaise like a great toxic cloud had settled upon the weatherworn buildings of the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora contained within the long encircling sixty-foot-high concrete wall and this was a malaise breathed-in by all without exception.
He would learn, from Father Kranach, that Dannemora had formerly been the site of a nineteenth-century mental asylum, the largest in New York State.
How many had died on this site, and their bodies buried in a forgotten graveyard somewhere outside the prison walls.
Madness like spores blown out of the rich dark soil, into the grayish air.
Much of the time, he did not speak. He did not speak aloud. Though like ceaseless thunder thoughts raged inside his head. He could handle such thoughts like rotting inside but not outside so that you gave off an actual stink and attracted attention. He did not wish to attract attention. Very still he could hold himself, in wariness and in readiness, as if his legs had been shot off; as if he was just a torso, a trunk of a man, a body—corpse. Worst times when he panicked having to check his fingers and his toes—(removing his shoes, socks)—to see that those jokers Shaver or Muksie hadn’t clipped off trophies with the trauma scissors meaning the corporal might’ve lost fingers or toes; or earlobes, or his dick and balls.
Took his meds as prescribed. These too were mandated by the New York State Department of Health, with which the officials of the correctional facility had to comply.
Prescribed for chronic pain, muscle spasms, “rushing thoughts”—shortness of breath, diarrhea/constipation—these were powerful drugs of the category called psychoactive.
There were others in the facility so “disabled” and “defective”—an army of the walking wounded.
He was liked and trusted by the COs. White kid, Iraq War vet, sulky-quiet but “cooperative.”
Not often, the corporal was taken
to see a doctor.
A medic took his “vitals”—blood pressure, heartbeat, weight, height. Peered into his eyes with a bright blinding light, inspected the interior of his mouth.
His mother would bitterly complain, he wasn’t receiving the kind of medical attention, neurology-CAT-scan treatment and rehab, his condition required. His mother would file lawsuits against the New York State Department of Corrections and the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora, her wounded-veteran son was being discriminated against by officials in collusion with their enemies.
What’d he need of rehab, he could exercise by himself in his cell. In the yard, he could exercise. After eighteen months transferred out of isolation and into another part of the prison population where he was allowed hours out of his cell, and he was OK.
How’re you feeling, son?
OK.
Taking your meds, son?
Yessir.
You sure, you are taking your meds?
Yessir.
Not throwin em in the toilet, son?
Nossir.
Not sellin em, eh? Not?
Nossir. Not.
FLARING UP, like a match dropped into gasoline.
It was Muksie solid-bodied as a wrestler, grown older, heavier and his bullet-head cocked to one side as in the deafening din of the dining hall he’d flashed what appeared to be a weapon fashioned out of a toothbrush harassing one of the younger inmates. And Kincaid was on him quick and silent as a pit bull and like a pit bull impossible to pull off striking and pummeling the bullet-headed inmate until both men were struggling on the floor and guards rushed shouting to pull them apart.
Shrieking, shouts and screams like females being killed. Chairs were overturned, plates and trays thrown to the floor. Fights broke out among inmates in the large space like a sequence of small explosions rising to a single deafening roar.
Last the corporal knew, the alarm was blaring.
Dragged away from Private Muksie he’d have murdered if he hadn’t been stopped.