Free This Old Man by Lois Ruby Page A

session, but the next kid’s, too. Maybe even his whole evening. All that was left was for Quinn to fall into a kettle of tar at the bottom of a manhole, and my day would be complete.

8
    Darlene her family to go home to on weekends. I had this idea to go someplace to celebrate Darlene’s homecoming.
    Elizabeth nodded, dubiously. “I just don’t know, girls.”
    â€œOh, come on, Elizabeth,” Jo pleaded. “You can trust us. And it’s broad daylight, what could happen to us?” We all pleaded and begged and watched Elizabeth’s face change as she nodded yes. I thought maybe she let us go so she and her boyfriend, Jeremy, could have a couple of hours alone together in the house.
    We decided to go to Fisherman’s Wharf and then possibly take the ferry out to Alcatraz. We rode the cable car past Chinatown. I hoped for the most unbelievable of coincidences—that Wing would get on and go with us to the Wharf. Of course, with thousands of people in Chinatown, and hundreds of Saturday tourists, I knew I wouldn’t see Wing. He would have been embarrassed to come with us anyway, and if he had, I would have been constantly checking to see how he liked things. As Chinatown dropped behind us in our climb up Powell Street, I remembered that Wing often spent Saturday afternoons with Old Man. I pictured him in the musty hospital room, hearing poems, and I wondered if he ever had any fun.
    The Wharf was packed with people. Some had obviously come to San Francisco believing it would be as sunny and warm as the southern California beaches, and now they huddled and shivered together in spring clothes.
    Elizabeth had given us each two dollars from the house entertainment fund, plus we had a little pocket money. Mine I spent on a shrimp cocktail “to go.” I made the six or eight little shrimps in the delicious spicy tomato sauce last for half an hour, and then I sucked the life out of the plastic spoon.
    Then we had a big decision to make. Should we go tour the battleship Balclutha , which was in dry dock, and see where all the horny sailors used to sleep? Or should we take the ferry out to Alcatraz Island and see where all the horny prisoners used to sleep?
    â€œThose poor monks,” Jo cried. “And to think, they were only out there for murder and rape and aggravated assault.” We opted for murder and assault rather than the chaste high seas, so we bought our tickets for the ferry.
    Alcatraz Island is twelve acres of solid rock a mile and a quarter out in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It used to be a federal prison site, and I’d grown up hearing Hackey’s stories about daring escapes through the icy waters. He even knew someone who had made it, or at least told me he did. The prison was closed by the government when it got to be too expensive to run. After all, everything had to be brought in by boat, even the prisoners. Then some militant American Indians occupied it for a couple of years, until California got it back and made it a national monument. The ferry guide had a few other things to say about Alcatraz, but I didn’t pay that much attention. The view around the boat captivated me. How awful it must have been for the prisoners to be on that bleak rock with the spectacular view of San Francisco, so close, but just out of reach. Maybe they’d rather have had no view at all than to be tantalized that way.
    The bay was calm, gently rocking the ferry boat. Darlene seemed very uneasy and finally admitted she was “sort of scared of water.” We made a circle around her. Jo tucked Darlene’s arm under her own. The wind off the bay blew carelessly, and our hair lashed our faces. Jo just stood up and defied the wind, which carried her cheap perfume away with it.
    As we neared Alcatraz, I imagined how it must have been to be banished to that island and to have the unrelieved wind turning your skin to leather through the years. The rock was so