“What in the H.?” my father mutters, cuddling the baby more awkwardly than Capone. The baby begins to cry.
“Just doing a bit of baby-sittin’ is all.”
Little Walt is starting to fuss now, twisting his small head.
“Rock him a little, why don’t you?” Al suggests, eyeing the tiny baby, whose face is growing redder in the half-light.
My father ignores this. “How’d the bars get cut?”
“Ain’t tool-proof up here. You know that.”
“Who did this?”
“I didn’t do nothing. But I might have seen somebody working on ’em with dental floss and cleanser. Dental floss and cleanser cut anything. Did you know that?”
“Might have seen?” my father asks as the baby continues to fuss.
“Been a lot of activity here tonight. Case you missed it. Hard to know where to focus your eyes is all.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
Capone coughs. He looks my father straight in the eye. “Only got three more years. And I got my own son. What’s his mama gonna tell him—I pull a stupid stunt, get myself locked up for the rest of my life. I know a cockamamie plan when I hear one, but I’m no rat.”
“That’s not going to cut it, Al.”
Capone looks down at the baby my dad is holding. “He was sleepin’ with me. He’s squallin’ with you, boss.”
“Who was involved?”
“Didn’t see no one up close. My eyesight ain’t so good anymore,” Capone tells my dad.
“What in the name of Peter and Paul!” Trixle’s boots pound down the aisle.
“Beats the life out of me, Darby,” my father tells him.
“A trooper. I am a trooper,” Nat tells Trixle proudly.
Trixle squints. “What’s she saying?”
“She found the baby,” I tell Trixle.
“Ain’t possible.”
“She sure did, Darby,” my father murmurs, glowing at Nat.
“I’ll be gar darned. She’s the one told me they didn’t have guns too.” Trixle looks at Nat, a flash of surprise in his eyes before he turns his attention to Capone. “Bars cut?” Trixle asks.
“Yep,” my father says.
“Baby’s okay?”
“Seems fine,” my father answers.
“Rock him a little, will ya?” Al says. “Don’t like to hear him squallin’ that way.”
“What happened, 85?” Trixle asks.
“Didn’t see much, Officer. Busy as I was baby-sittin’ and all.”
Trixle eyes the opening. “I’ll get the key. Can’t stay in that cell.”
“Don’t see why not. If I was gonna leave, don’t you think I’d have hightailed it out of here already?” Capone asks.
My father ignores him.
“Isn’t that right, Moose?” Capone nods to me.
“Don’t talk to him!” my father barks.
“Ahh, boss. He’s a good boy, your Moose. I wouldn’t go getting in the way of that, now would I?” Capone’s eyes are hard, challenging my dad.
Trixle comes back with the key. The door clanks clean open again. “Had enough of your shenanigans tonight, 85. Put you in the Hole. That ought to help your eyesight. Gonna be twenty-twenty when I’m done with you.”
“The Hole?” Capone raises his hands. “That ain’t fair. I been baby-sittin’ the warden’s baby. Should be gettin’ good time for this,” he shouts as we walk out.
My father shakes his head. “Not sure what you do with a guy like that. He does good things. But then he goes and does bad things right over the top of them,” my father says as he tucks the blanket around Piper’s little brother. “Now come on, let’s get you home where you belong.”
35.
THE PIXIE JAILER PLAYGROUND
Thursday, September 19, 1935
Right after the escape attempt, there is a euphoria that envelops the island. Everyone from Warden Williams to Darby Trixle is amazed by what seven kids were able to do all on our own. No one can get enough of the story, demanding we tell our version of events again and again.
My parents are practically bursting with pride because of what I did and because of Natalie. Not only did Natalie understand exactly what was going on, but she figured out something I hadn’t. This very fact has given us hope we didn’t have before. Natalie is getting better. Maybe not in the dramatic way my mom thinks she is . . . but better for Natalie.
How did it happen that three convicts came so close to escaping from the world’s most secure prison? Slowly some of the pieces begin to fall in place. Mae delivered the boat keys to the island wrapped in her handkerchief. A convict swept them up with his push broom and slipped them in his pocket. The keys probably came from an officer on Angel Island. Our boat, the Coxe, is owned by the army, and someone on Angel Island has a key.
Capone helped out his hospital cellmate Seven Fingers, but he did not try to escape. He was smart enough to know the escape was ill conceived. He wanted no trouble with the guards who have the power to extend his sentence or with the cons who would kill him if he didn’t contribute to the escape. He got Mae to bring in the keys to the boat. He played his banjo every night to mask the sound of Seven Fingers sawing the bars with his floss. And he conveniently got behind in his guard shoe-shine service, so he had two pairs of guard shoes in his cell: one for Buddy and one for Seven Fingers. One Arm stole a pair of the warden’s shoes, which were three sizes too large.
Each morning we wake up and find out something else. We still don’t know how Seven Fingers got out of the cell house. No one knows how he got that key. My dad says we may never know.
It all seems so exciting and then one day . . . it isn’t.
That’s the day we find out the warden thinks the cons had help from the inside. The escape, he says, could not have happened without the aid of one of us.
Then my father, Associate Warden Chudley, Trixle, Mattaman, Bomini, and every other officer not on duty is called to the warden’s office for a meeting that lasts all day and on until the wee hours of the night. One by one and in groups every man on the island is personally grilled by the warden. More meetings go on for days, and when my dad comes home each night, his toothpick box is empty and the deep furrows down the sides of his mouth are back.
He and my mother close the door of their room and whisper well into the morning. I go into Nat’s room, stand outside their door, even sneak into the secret passageway, but all I hear is muffled mumbles.
No one knows what’s happening now. Natalie, who was supposed to return to the Esther P. Marinoff School the night after the escape, is still with us. And when I ask my mom why Nat hasn’t returned to school, she evades my question with a tight-lipped smile, giving no inkling of what’s going on.
Finally, when I can stand it no longer, my father agrees to talk. There’s some debate about whether Natalie should be included in the discussion, but in the end my dad decides that Natalie has earned this right. She’s allowed to sit in her favorite spot on the floor, flipping the pages of her books. It’s as if Natalie has earned a place in our family she didn’t have before.
My father paces. He picks up his box of toothpicks from the coffee table and moves it to the kitchen table, then moves it back.
I look from my mom to my dad, wondering why they are so upset. “We’re not going to be kicked off the island, are we?” I ask.
“No,” my father answers, his eyes watchful.
“What did the warden say?”
“What can he say? The passmen worked at his house. It was his idea to throw that party and invite all of his best men. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”
“What about Natalie? Is he mad at her?”
“How can he be mad at her? She found his baby son. Even Trixle gave Natalie credit for letting him know Seven Fingers was unarmed. Course, Darby being Darby, he waxed eloquent on the need for a full report to J. Edgar Hoover, until Mattaman pointed out that right now in his own living room was a bar spreader being
used as a carnival pole.”
“It’s the centerpiece of Janet’s pixie merry-go-round.”
“So I’ve heard. Janet says she found it on the westside beach. Says it just washed up on the island. I don’t think that one’s flying. The bar spreader is made of steel. It would sink like a stone for one thing.”
“Do they think Trixle had something to do with the escape?”
My father shrugs. “It hasn’t been ruled out.”
I think about how much I hate Trixle. How he tries to trip me up whenever he can. How awful he is to Natalie. How sick I felt when he talked about how he treated his brother. If I open my mouth, I’m putting Natalie in jeopardy. But I wasn’t brought up to let someone else take the blame for something he didn’t do, even if it is a nitwit like Darby Trixle.
“The bar spreader was in Natalie’s suitcase,” I tell my father. “Jimmy threw it in the bay, but he can’t throw to save his life, so it didn’t go very far. Janet Trixle found it and decided to use it for her pixie ponies. She had no idea what it was.”
“Natalie? Natalie’s involved in this?” My mom’s voice is wrung tight.
My father gulps as if he swallowed one of his toothpicks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Bottom drawer,” Natalie murmurs, pulling at her dress like it’s bothering her.
My father ignores this. His attention is riveted on me. “How did it get in her suitcase?”
I shake my head. “I dunno.”
My father frowns, trying to see inside me. “You don’t know?”
The question hangs between us. He clearly thinks I know more, but I’ve told him the truth. I have no idea how the bar spreader got there.
“Moose, remember when you had that nightmare about 105? Was that after you found the bar spreader?”
“Yes,” I whisper, focusing my attention on my baseball bat, which is leaning against the door to my room.
“And that’s when the metal detector went off? And Riv thought it was because of the metal buttons.”
“Yes.”
My father looks at my mother. My mother nods a tiny nod. “That fits,” he says. “But why did you suspect 105? That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“I just did.”
“You just did?” My father’s voice has a hot edge.
I study the pattern on the carpet. “I think he . . . 105, he, um . . .” I’m breathing hard like saying these words requires more lung power than I possess. “. . . liked her,” I mutter as the memory of 105 holding hands with Natalie comes flooding back.
My mom and dad stare at each other, their faces washed gray in the dusk. My mom nods to my dad as if to signal him to go on.
My dad takes a deep breath. “You were right to worry about 105,” he says. “Sadie called us a few days ago. She said that Johnny Jay, Alcatraz 105, aka Onion, worked as a gardener at the Esther P. Marinoff School for a few weeks and then he disappeared. Apparently, he faked his references and they didn’t know his background. They only found out because they discovered a letter he wrote to Natalie.”
I swallow a big gulp of air. “A letter? He wrote her a letter?”
My father bites his lip. “Yes.”
“What kind of a letter?”
He groans, stares out the window at the guard tower. “A love letter,” he whispers.
I look at Nat, who is concentrating on her button box. She has taken all of her buttons out and she’s putting them back in a new order.
“The letter said 105 loves her?” I ask.
My father makes a clicking noise. “It was a goodbye love letter, isn’t that right, Helen? It said he was going back home to Portland for good.”
“Everyone at the Esther P. Marinoff knows who he is now,” my mom whispers. “They aren’t going to let him anywhere near Natalie.”
“The man lied about his references. Can’t blame him for that. Hard enough to get a job with half the country out of work. It’s impossible if you’ve got a record.” My dad shakes his head. “It’s not going to be easy to prove he put a bar spreader in Natalie’s suitcase.”
“We won’t need to prove that. We won’t be prosecuting,” my mother snaps.
My father splits a toothpick in two. “Of course we will, Helen.”
“Over my dead body.” My mother’s voice has gone cold as a cadaver. “The papers get ahold of this and what do you think will happen? Think this through, Cam.”
“Crazy Daughter of Alcatraz Guard Aids Escape,” I say, “but the cons never got the bar spreader. Natalie didn’t help the cons to escape; she helped stop them from escaping.”
“I know what she did. You know what she did,” my mother says. “But what will some reporter who wants a sensational story make of it? We can’t have that much attention focused on Natalie. The warden will kick us out of here. He’ll have no choice.”
My father shakes his head. “Why didn’t you tell us about this, Moose?”
“Same reason we didn’t tell him, Cam,” my mom whispers. “He was protecting us, just like we were protecting him.”
“He should have told us.” My father sighs. “Nobody can do this all alone. Nobody has all the pieces. We need each other.”
“And what if Moose had told you? You would have run up to the warden in a heartbeat. We’d be off the island with no means of support and no way to pay for the Esther P. Marinoff School. You think Moose doesn’t know all that?” My mom is on the edge of her seat. Her chest is heaving from the force of her words.
“It wasn’t the right thing to do,” my father insists.
“In a perfect world you’d be right,” my mom answers.
“Helen, come on. Look what happened here. The whole place fell apart.”
“The bar spreader didn’t cause that. The bar spreader didn’t do anything but prop up a seven-year-old’s pretend ponies,” my mom tells him.
“Okay,” my father says, “but it could have. We got lucky is all.”
My mom leans in, her pupils so large they take over the brown of her eyes. “Maybe we did, but like you said, there’s enough blame to go around here, Cam. The warden is going to dig the deepest hole he can and bury this. He’s going to see the light just like Trixle did. Do you think he wants to give a report to J. Edgar Hoover that says everything fell apart while he was throwing a party? The only people who really were on top of the situation were kids. Can you imagine those headlines?”
“Kids Apprehend Escaping Prisoners,” I say.
“The kids. We kids. We,” Natalie mutters like she’s practicing for Sadie.
“We need to tell the warden about this, Helen.” My father’s voice is calm but deadly firm.
“We will do no such thing,” my mother answers.
“Helen.” My father’s eyes bore a hole into her. “I can’t live this way. We will tell the warden and we’ll see what happens. But you’re probably correct,” he concedes. “So long as the press doesn’t get wind of it, the warden will most likely let this go.”
My mom doesn’t answer, but I think she knows she’s lost this one. Her silence is consent.
“And from now on I want to know what’s going on, you understand?” My father points a toothpick at me.
“Natalie caused problem. Natalie. I caused problems,” Nat mutters.
“No, you didn’t, sweet pea,” my dad tells her. “You made me proud and don’t you forget it.”
“I am a trooper,” Nat whispers. “I am. Me.”
My father walks over to where I’m sitting with Natalie. He pats my shoulder awkwardly and gently touches her hair. “We’re a family of troopers. We’ll get through this, Helen, the same way we always do . . . by doing the right thing.”
36.
KIDS ON THE ROCK
Sunday, September 22, 1935
Eventually things settle down. Whether this is because of the talk my father has with the warden or not, I really don’t know. But the sudden fear that hit our island disappears and everything goes back to the way it was—a
lmost everything anyway. Associate Warden Chudley is demoted. The warden finally realized what my dad and everyone else had known for some time. He was not up to his job.
But the biggest change as far as I’m concerned occurs among us kids. What happened when the cons tried to escape changed the way we think about each other. Each of us contributed something important that dark afternoon. Janet saw Theresa running down from up top and she came out with her bullhorn. Theresa found out she’d been right about the importance of Mae’s hummingbird hanky. Jimmy figured out what was going on and snuck down under the dock to set loose his flies to swarm the cons at exactly the right moment. Natalie’s attention to detail helped her spot the fake guns and let me know about them in her own unique way. Annie made use of that perfect pitching arm. And Piper discovered that deep down inside she might just have it in her to love her baby brother.
But it wasn’t just that. It was what Mrs. Mattaman said too . . . about how everybody disappoints you at one time or another and you have to forgive people. That seemed to make a difference too.
At the parade grounds today, Annie throws the first pitch and we all find our places. Jimmy is catcher. He still can’t throw to save his life, but he taught himself to catch pretty well—not bad at all. Theresa is shortstop and I’m on first base. Janet Trixle is up at bat and Natalie is the ump calling the pitches, which she does with machine-like accuracy. And of course Annie chucks her perfect pitches over the base one after another.
Not surprisingly, Piper isn’t here . . . some things never change.
After we’re done playing, Jimmy and Annie and I are walking back down to 64 building when I tell Jimmy it’s too bad he had to let all his flies go and he says, “You don’t care about flies.”
“Yes, I do,” I insist.
“You try to, but that’s different.” He nods toward Annie. “Annie’s never liked the flies, but she told me right at the start. It’s easier that way. This island is too small for pretending.”
I feel the slap in his words and I really want to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not. “Sorry, Jim,” I say.