Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
He waited for a beat or two, then began to speak as if nothing were out of the ordinary. He had crucial information to impart, and he would assume that Mayweather, at the other end of the line, was listening, and clear-minded enough to know what was being told him.
Chandler told Mayweather that the young woman’s parents were waiting here, they were very upset, would Al please put Cynthia Carpenter on the phone? Saying, in his calm, earnest voice, the voice of a friend one might trust, “Al, it will make a tremendous difference, believe me, if you cooperate now. People are saying what a good, generous thing you did, to let that other woman go, you were considerate of a pregnant woman, you wouldn’t hurt a woman . . .” Mayweather broke in vehemently, in an aggrieved voice, “I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t hurt a woman. Is my wife there?”
The wife. No doubt, this drama was about the (absent, estranged) wife. In the end, all drama is about family.
Chandler said, “Your wife isn’t here just yet, Al. They’re trying to contact her. Do you know where your wife is?” Mayweather said derisively, “How the fuck should I know where Gloria is, no I don’t. Try her parents. Try her boyfriend.” Mayweather continued for a while in this vein, angry and self-pitying, and Chandler thought it was a good sign, clearly Mayweather had not killed his wife before coming to shoot up Niagara Precision. Chandler said, “In the meantime, Al, there’s Cynthia Carpenter, she must be very frightened, she might need medical attention, don’t you think it would be a good idea to put her on the phone? Her parents are anxious to know that she’s all right . . .” Chandler waited, and repeated the request. He knew from prior experience that reasoning with an excited or deranged person is like trying to row a canoe with one who can’t, or won’t, use his oar properly. The canoe veers now in this direction, now in that direction, you must keep to a relatively straight course by brute will, a res-The Falls X 365
olute faith in the “good” outcome ahead; no hesitation, no private moments of doubt or alarm. Chandler knew how crucial this was. If something had happened to Cynthia Carpenter, Mayweather had no bargaining power. The hostage had to be living. “Al? Listen. People are anxious about Cynthia Carpenter, like I’ve said. You can imagine, yes? So, if you could put her on the line, for just a moment . . .”
Chandler felt dizzy yet elated, as if crossing a high wire. High above The Falls. High above a crowd of gaping strangers. They wanted him to succeed, yet they wanted him to fail. Performing on the high wire, in danger of stumbling, of falling. One false move, Chandler would slip and fall. And Mayweather would fall with him. “Al? Are you listening? If you could . . .” He could hear Mayweather speaking to someone in the background, but he couldn’t hear a reply.
The van was unheated, but Chandler had begun to perspire.
He would wait, he would try again. And again. As long as the police allowed him. This was his task.
Until at last, after minutes of frustration, Mayweather yelled what sounded like, “Here she is!” and there came on the line a thin, frightened voice. “H-Hello?” It was Cynthia Carpenter. Breathless, nearly inaudible, telling Chandler that she was “all right”—“sort of tired, scared”—“hoping police wouldn’t shoot into the building.”
Chandler assured her, police would not shoot into the building. Her safety was primary. Cynthia Carpenter said, desperately, “This man has not harmed me, I swear. He let me use the r-restroom. He has not hurt me, I
swear
. But he says—” She began crying. Chandler didn’t want to think that Mayweather might be holding a gun to her head.
He was feeling for the first time the visceral horror of the situation. It wasn’t about Al Mayweather whom he’d known as a boy in high school, it was about the hostage Cynthia Carpenter whom he didn’t know, until now, hearing her voice, he felt a tremendous sympathy for her. In terror of her life. Probably Mayweather had shoved her around, struck her. Certainly he’d terrorized her. Threatened to kill her. And she couldn’t know, at this moment, whether she would be allowed to live much longer. Chandler thought of his sister Juliet, and felt a surge of rage, hatred for Mayweather.
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Whatever the police do to him, the bastard deserves
.
But no. Mayweather, too, was a victim. Chandler had to feel sympathy for Mayweather, too.
He tried to keep Cynthia Carpenter on the phone longer. She was crying, hyperventilating. Chandler spoke as comfortingly as he could under the circumstances. Her parents were here, and were very relieved that she was “all right”; no, police would not fire into the building, for her safety was their primary concern; they would do whatever they could, to get her released. But they needed to know what her captor was expecting in exchange for releasing her. “Mr.
Mayweather doesn’t seem to be communicating very clearly, Miss Carpenter. Maybe if you—”
The phone was taken from Cynthia Carpenter, and Mayweather began speaking excitedly. Telling Chandler that sure he’d let the girl go—if his wife came, and changed places with her; he “just wanted to talk” to Gloria. Chandler repeated that Gloria wasn’t here, not just yet; police were trying to contact her, and when they did, Al could speak with her on the phone. Mayweather said that wasn’t good enough, talking on the phone, she’d just hang up, and he wanted her with him, he needed to explain to her, what was happening was her fault, because he loved her, but she didn’t love him, this was her fault and she knew it. Chandler listened sympathetically. Then, abruptly, Mayweather changed his mind and said he’d let the girl go if all the lights outside were switched off, police backed off and let him get to his car, and promised him “safe passage” out of the city. No guns, no roadblocks, no helicopters. “The girl will be with me, see? But I’ll let her go when I can. In Canada, maybe.”
“Canada! Well.” Chandler wiped his damp face on a paper napkin.
“That might be a little difficult to arrange. The bridge, the border . . .”
Mayweather wasn’t listening. Already he’d changed his mind another time. He wasn’t making sense, even as he spoke with a rapt, childlike intensity. Was Mayweather mentally disturbed? He didn’t sound drunk, but he might be drugged. Chandler glanced up at police officers, who were watching him. What to say? What to do? Mayweather was raving, ranting. More about Gloria and the kids. More
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about Gloria knowing this was her fault. It must have been a sign of Mayweather’s mental disturbance, he seemed not to recall why he’d come to Niagara Precision; why he’d shot a man, and had planned to kill another man. Chandler let him talk. As a boxer might punch himself out on his opponent, so Mayweather might punch himself out on the “crisis” man. When he began more often to pause, and to repeat himself, Chandler took up the conversation. Increasingly, it was a private, intimate conversation.
Chandler repeated that police were trying to contact Mrs.
Mayweather but in the meantime Al should remember that he was a father, too. Maybe that should come first, being a father. He had his children’s lives to consider. His family to consider. People who loved him, who were being hurt by this, anxious he’d be hurt, they loved him and didn’t want him to be hurt, this hadn’t gone so far it couldn’t be halted and turned around and there’d be a lawyer to protect Al’s rights, a public defender if he couldn’t afford a lawyer, the law would provide for him, Chandler would make sure of that. Chandler was speaking rapidly, inspired and not altogether certain of what he was saying, except it sounded right, it sounded plausible, and Mayweather seemed to be listening, you felt that he was gripping the phone receiver tight and listening. “You need to stay alive for the sake of your children and for the memory of your father, Al. That’s what you must do. The memory of your father, Al.
I
remember your father.”
In this moment it seemed to Chandler that he did remember Al Mayweather’s father. Maybe they’d spoken together. In the neighborhood. At the time of the OxyChemical lawsuit. The workers’ photographs in the paper. Not cancer but—what? Emphysema. Though maybe there’d been cancer, too. Leukemia? Chandler remembered: Mayweather had seemed so old to him, bald, and his face ravaged, but he’d probably been no more than fifty, a poisoned man who’d died young.
“What would your father think, Al? He’d want you to do the right thing here, let the girl go, Al, wouldn’t he? Al? Your father would want that.”
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must have spoken persuasively for shortly afterward Mayweather muttered what sounded like “O.K.” It was the turn in the stalemate, now things would happen swiftly as they usually did at such times, like ice melting.
In the garishly spotlit doorway a small figure appeared, moving tentatively. A murmur went up from the onlookers but was stifled at once. The young woman, very young-looking, lifted both hands to shield her eyes from the light. She walked slowly, swaying, as if the ground were tilting beneath her feet. (She was shoeless, in her stocking feet. This curious detail, Chandler would long remember and confuse with himself, as elements in a dream are confused. Had he lost his shoes, somehow? In the police van?) Police had their rifles aimed, prepared to fire past the terrified girl. This was the moment everyone had been awaiting and yet it was not a moment to be trusted. A TV or movie moment, yet one without a script. As Cynthia Carpenter in her stocking feet crossed the patch of grassless lawn there was the collective expectation, the exquisite dread, that now, at this precarious moment, as all were watching, the gunman might begin to fire; might fire at his enemies around the girl, or might shoot her in the back. Yet she continued, looking neither to the right nor left, making her way haltingly to the penumbra of shadow at the edge of the light where she was seized by crouching police officers in protective gear and brought to safey, and embraced by her weeping parents.
So it ended, the drama of the hostage.
So it ended happily, that might have ended so very differently.
A toss of the dice, Chandler thought. In the end, it had little to do with him.
Chandler would think long afterward how striking Cynthia Carpenter was! A girl of about twenty, making her way through a force-field of imminent gunfire and death, visibly shaking; her pale soft face like something partly melted, eyes smudged and lipstick eaten away and her ratted hair disheveled, but she’d made it, she was triumphant, for she was one who’d walked away with her life and forever afterward her life would be precious to her, a miracle granted to her alone. And this miracle would be preserved on film,
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forever. Where words faltered and failed, Cynthia Carpenter’s image would endure. Small compensation for her ordeal at the hands of a madman, still she would be “Cynthia Carpenter” of local legend, forever.
Now, the gunman inside the building was expected to surrender.
“Give it up”—his defiance, or his life.
Surrender, or kill himself.
In the excitement of the hostage’s release, Chandler had lost contact with Mayweather. The line had gone dead. When the phone was redialed no one answered. Chandler, panicked at what might happen now to Mayweather, fumbled for the bullhorn.
He was sweating badly now. His white shirt, he’d worn to school that morning, damp beneath the arms and across his chest. He’d tugged his necktie off long ago and believed he’d stuffed it in a pocket, but the necktie was gone, lost. A rivulet of sweat trailed down Chandler’s cheek like an oily tear.
Al? This is Chandler again
.
Al,
thank you
.
Thank you for releasing that girl . . .
It was an absurd thing to say, yet Chandler had to say it. He would praise the madman who’d kept a young woman prisoner by gunpoint for several hours, he would thank him for releasing her, and he would be genuine in his gratitude.
Al? Now there’s you. Will you pick up the phone? It’s ringing
. . . The phone was not picked up. the number was redialed, and again went unan-swered.
Al, talk to me! This is going to end well, now you’ve released the girl
and people can see that your intentions are good. But now you need to give up
your weapons, Al, O.K.? So that you don’t get hurt, Al. You can come out,
you’ll be taken into custody but not hurt
.
Think of your family, Al? Your children, your parents. Your father
.
He was a brave man, I remember your father
.
He should not have died so young. He’d want you to live. Al. I want you to live.
There’s no purpose to holding out any longer, Al. You’re smart, you know that
.
The police want you to lay down your weapons, just leave them on the floor inside there and come to the door, slowly
.
Let us see you, Al. I’m right here, I’m
watching. Extend your hands where we can see them. It’s going to be all right,
Al, see, you let the girl go, that makes all the difference, no one has been killed,
or seriously hurt, the girl is saying you treated her well
. . . So Chandler spoke earnestly, with increasing desperation; but there was no response.
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The phone was redialed, and this time the line was busy.
Al? Please. Put the phone back on the hook, talk to me
. . .
I want so badly
to talk to you
.
Swift as ice melting the crisis was moving, but Chandler now seemed not to be guiding it. Chandler could feel how he was losing it, the strange fleeting power he’d had. For a few dazed minutes, that power. Like a small upright flame. But now the flame was wavering, flickering. Chandler began to beg.
Al? You can trust me, Al. They promise
they won’t hurt you
—
they promise—if—
Chandler guessed that the police would give him another few minutes, then they’d break off this attempt to negotiate. The barricaded man no longer had anything of value with which to negotiate, except his life, and maybe, after these hours of strain, exhaustion, professionally restrained fury and disgust, Al Mayweather’s life wasn’t of much value. Police would begin their siege, tossing in tear gas, routing the doomed man. How many dozens of armed men, and Mayweather alone. Chandler was feeling desperate, he couldn’t fail now.