This chapter is dedicated to San Francisco's Booksmith, ensconced in thestoried Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, just a few doors down from theBen and Jerry's at the exact corner of Haight and Ashbury. The Book-smith folks really know how to run an author event — when I lived inSan Francisco, I used to go down all the time to hear incredible writersspeak (William Gibson was unforgettable). They also produce littlebaseball-card-style trading cards for each author — I have two from myown appearances there.
Booksmith: 1644 Haight St. San Francisco CA 94117 USA +1 415 8638688At first Mom looked shocked, then outraged, and finally she gave upaltogether and just let her jaw hang open as I took her through the inter-rogation, pissing myself, the bag over my head, Darryl. I showed her thenote.
"Why —?"In that single syllable, every recrimination I'd dealt myself in the night,every moment that I'd lacked the bravery to tell the world what it wasreally about, why I was really fighting, what had really inspired theXnet.
I sucked in a breath.
"They told me I'd go to jail if I talked about it. Not just for a few days.
Forever. I was — I was scared."Mom sat with me for a long time, not saying anything. Then, "Whatabout Darryl's father?"She might as well have stuck a knitting needle in my chest. Darryl'sfather. He must have assumed that Darryl was dead, long dead.
And wasn't he? After the DHS has held you illegally for three months,would they ever let you go?
211But Zeb got out. Maybe Darryl would get out. Maybe me and the Xnetcould help get Darryl out.
"I haven't told him," I said.
Now Mom was crying. She didn't cry easily. It was a British thing. Itmade her little hiccoughing sobs much worse to hear.
"You will tell him," she managed. "You will.""I will.""But first we have to tell your father."Dad no longer had any regular time when he came home. Between hisconsulting clients — who had lots of work now that the DHS was shop-ping for data-mining startups on the peninsula — and the long commuteto Berkeley, he might get home any time between 6PM and midnight.
Tonight Mom called him and told him he was coming home right now.
He said something and she just repeated it: right now.
When he got there, we had arranged ourselves in the living room withthe note between us on the coffee table.
It was easier to tell, the second time. The secret was getting lighter. Ididn't embellish, I didn't hide anything. I came clean.
I'd heard of coming clean before but I'd never understood what itmeant until I did it. Holding in the secret had dirtied me, soiled my spir-it. It had made me afraid and ashamed. It had made me into all thethings that Ange said I was.
Dad sat stiff as a ramrod the whole time, his face carved of stone.
When I handed him the note, he read it twice and then set it downcarefully.
He shook his head and stood up and headed for the front door.
"Where are you going?" Mom asked, alarmed.
"I need a walk," was all he managed to gasp, his voice breaking.
We stared awkwardly at each other, Mom and me, and waited for himto come home. I tried to imagine what was going on in his head. He'dbeen such a different man after the bombings and I knew from Mom thatwhat had changed him were the days of thinking I was dead. He'd cometo believe that the terrorists had nearly killed his son and it had madehim crazy.
212Crazy enough to do whatever the DHS asked, to line up like a goodlittle sheep and let them control him, drive him.
Now he knew that it was the DHS that had imprisoned me, the DHSthat had taken San Francisco's children hostage in Gitmo-by-the-Bay. Itmade perfect sense, now that I thought of it. Of course it had been Treas-ure Island where I'd been kept. Where else was a ten-minute boat-ridefrom San Francisco?
When Dad came back, he looked angrier than he ever had in his life.
"You should have told me!" he roared.
Mom interposed herself between him and me. "You're blaming thewrong person," she said. "It wasn't Marcus who did the kidnapping andthe intimidation."He shook his head and stamped. "I'm not blaming Marcus. I know ex-actly who's to blame. Me. Me and the stupid DHS. Get your shoes on,grab your coats.""Where are we going?""To see Darryl's father. Then we're going to Barbara Stratford's place."I knew the name Barbara Stratford from somewhere, but I couldn't re-member where. I thought that maybe she was an old friend of my par-ents, but I couldn't exactly place her.
Meantime, I was headed for Darryl's father's place. I'd never really feltcomfortable around the old man, who'd been a Navy radio operator andran his household like a tight ship. He'd taught Darryl Morse code whenhe was a kid, which I'd always thought was cool. It was one of the ways Iknew that I could trust Zeb's letter. But for every cool thing like Morsecode, Darryl's father had some crazy military discipline that seemed tobe for its own sake, like insisting on hospital corners on the beds andshaving twice a day. It drove Darryl up the wall.
Darryl's mother hadn't liked it much either, and had taken off back toher family in Minnesota when Darryl was ten — Darryl spent his sum-mers and Christmases there.
I was sitting in the back of the car, and I could see the back of Dad'shead as he drove. The muscles in his neck were tense and kept jumpingaround as he ground his jaws.
213Mom kept her hand on his arm, but no one was around to comfort me.
If only I could call Ange. Or Jolu. Or Van. Maybe I would when the daywas done.
"He must have buried his son in his mind," Dad said, as we whippedup through the hairpin curves leading up Twin Peaks to the little cottagethat Darryl and his father shared. The fog was on Twin Peaks, the way itoften was at night in San Francisco, making the headlamps reflect backon is. Each time we swung around a corner, I saw the valleys of the citylaid out below us, bowls of twinkling lights that shifted in the mist.
"Is this the one?""Yes," I said. "This is it." I hadn't been to Darryl's in months, but I'dspent enough time here over the years to recognize it right off.
The three of us stood around the car for a long moment, waiting to seewho would go and ring the doorbell. To my surprise, it was me.
I rang it and we all waited in held-breath silence for a minute. I rang itagain. Darryl's father's car was in the driveway, and we'd seen a lightburning in the living room. I was about to ring a third time when thedoor opened.
"Marcus?" Darryl's father wasn't anything like I remembered him. Un-shaven, in a housecoat and bare feet, with long toenails and red eyes.
He'd gained weight, and a soft extra chin wobbled beneath the firm mil-itary jaw. His thin hair was wispy and disordered.
"Mr Glover," I said. My parents crowded into the door behind me.
"Hello, Ron," my mother said.
"Ron," my father said.
"You too? What's going on?""Can we come in?"His living room looked like one of those news-segments they showabout abandoned kids who spend a month locked in before they're res-cued by the neighbors: frozen meal boxes, empty beer cans and juicebottles, moldy cereal bowls and piles of newspapers. There was a reek ofcat piss and litter crunched underneath our feet. Even without the catpiss, the smell was incredible, like a bus-station toilet.
The couch was made up with a grimy sheet and a couple of greasy pil-lows and the cushions had a dented, much-slept-upon look.
214We all stood there for a long silent moment, embarrassment over-whelming every other emotion. Darryl's father looked like he wanted todie.
Slowly, he moved aside the sheets from the sofa and cleared thestacked, greasy food-trays off of a couple of the chairs, carrying them in-to the kitchen, and, from the sound of it, tossing them on the floor.
We sat gingerly in the places he'd cleared, and then he came back andsat down too.
"I'm sorry," he said vaguely. "I don't really have any coffee to offeryou. I'm having more groceries delivered tomorrow so I'm running low—""Ron," my father said. "Listen to us. We have something to tell you,and it's not going to be easy to hear."He sat like a statue as I talked. He glanced down at the note, read itwithout seeming to understand it, then read it again. He handed it backto me.
He was trembling.
"He's —""Darryl is alive," I said. "Darryl is alive and being held prisoner onTreasure Island."He stuffed his fist in his mouth and made a horrible groaning sound.
"We have a friend," my father said. "She writes for the Bay Guardian.
An investigative reporter."That's where I knew the name from. The free weekly Guardian oftenlost its reporters to bigger daily papers and the Internet, but BarbaraStratford had been there forever. I had a dim memory of having dinnerwith her when I was a kid.
"We're going there now," my mother said. "Will you come with us,Ron? Will you tell her Darryl's story?"He put his face in his hands and breathed deeply. Dad tried to put hishand on his shoulders, but Mr Glover shook it off violently.
"I need to clean myself up," he said. "Give me a minute."Mr Glover came back downstairs a changed man. He'd shaved andgelled his hair back, and had put on a crisp military dress uniform with arow of campaign ribbons on the breast. He stopped at the foot of thestairs and kind of gestured at it.
215"I don't have much clean stuff that's presentable at the moment. Andthis seemed appropriate. You know, if she wanted to take pictures."He and Dad rode up front and I got in the back, behind him. Up close,he smelled a little of beer, like it was coming through his pores.
It was midnight by the time we rolled into Barbara Stratford's drive-way. She lived out of town, down in Mountain View, and as we speddown the 101, none of us said a word. The high-tech buildings alongsidethe highway streamed past us.
This was a different Bay Area to the one I lived in, more like the sub-urban America I sometimes saw on TV. Lots of freeways and subdivi-sions of identical houses, towns where there weren't any homelesspeople pushing shopping carts down the sidewalk — there weren't evensidewalks!
Mom had phoned Barbara Stratford while we were waiting for MrGlover to come downstairs. The journalist had been sleeping, but Momhad been so wound up she forgot to be all British and embarrassed aboutwaking her up. Instead, she just told her, tensely, that she had somethingto talk about and that it had to be in person.
When we rolled up to Barbara Stratford's house, my first thought wasof the Brady Bunch place — a low ranch house with a brick baffle infront of it and a neat, perfectly square lawn. There was a kind of abstracttile pattern on the baffle, and an old-fashioned UHF TV antenna risingfrom behind it. We wandered around to the entrance and saw that therewere lights on inside already.
The writer opened the door before we had a chance to ring the bell.
She was about my parents' age, a tall thin woman with a hawk-like noseand shrewd eyes with a lot of laugh-lines. She was wearing a pair ofjeans that were hip enough to be seen at one of the boutiques on ValenciaStreet, and a loose Indian cotton blouse that hung down to her thighs.
She had small round glasses that flashed in her hallway light.
She smiled a tight little smile at us.
"You brought the whole clan, I see," she said.
Mom nodded. "You'll understand why in a minute," she said. MrGlover stepped from behind Dad.
"And you called in the Navy?""All in good time."216We were introduced one at a time to her. She had a firm handshakeand long fingers.
Her place was furnished in Japanese minimalist style, just a few pre-cisely proportioned, low pieces of furniture, large clay pots of bamboothat brushed the ceiling, and what looked like a large, rusted piece of adiesel engine perched on top of a polished marble plinth. I decided Iliked it. The floors were old wood, sanded and stained, but not filled, soyou could see cracks and pits underneath the varnish. I really liked that,especially as I walked over it in my stocking feet.
"I have............