THE FORTIETH DAY . . .
(Tuesday, July 21, morning)
MACK:
Tonight. Her house.
In a real bed.
I can’t think of
anything else all morning, and my dogs know it. They’re goofing off
and nipping at each other and crossing leashes. Boo’s out with me
for my morning rounds. After three hours in the heat, she’s done. I
bring her up to the roof and water her and pen her, and she’s
asleep by the time I turn to lock the hutch door to head out for my
afternoon rounds.
I’m off tonight, but
Céce’s working. Me and Boo are going to pick her up at the Too at
nine. Tuesday nights are usually pretty slow, so Céce should be
done with her tables by then. If she’s not, Mrs. V. will cover the
last table or two, and then she’s heading down to the shore after
all. I can’t figure out if I’m more excited or nervous. I have this
weird feeling. I don’t know.
Sky’s crazy, blue
then brown, breezy then still, threatening conflagration, like that
preacher used to say back when I was a child and my mother took me
to church with her all the time to pray for money. Or maybe I heard
Vic mumble it over a crossword. Or maybe I overheard Céce saying
it, studying for the test between shifts. But somehow I know that
word. I wish I didn’t.
I drop off my dogs
and collect my pay. I stop at the bodega and grab a six of Sprite
for Céce and me, for tonight.
“You want a double
bag?” the bodega lady says.
“Triple, if you can
spare it,” I say.
“Triple?”
“For my dogs. You
know.”
“Of course,” she
says, but she doesn’t know what I’m talking about, and why should
she?
“To pick up after
them,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter,” she
says. “I’ll give you four bags if you want.”
“That’d be
fine.”
“Here, take
five.”
“I’ll rip ’em in half
and make ’em ten.”
“Knock yourself
out.”
Man, she’s cool.
Everybody’s cool. This is going to be
the greatest day of my life, even better than last night. Tonight I
will be in a real nice house with my girl. A home. I grab some
flowers, daisies. Tell you what, I’m so excited about being alive,
I can’t stop smiling, and doesn’t the bodega lady just smile too?
She’s whistling, and I carry her tune with me, out the door, the
cowbell jangling like a laugh. I’m lit up just like the sky.
Lightning falls all across it like God brushed a wirehaired jackal
and pulled the dross from the comb and just tossed it down on us.
The elevator’s out again, and I haul the fire stairs for the roof
to chill with Boo for a couple of hours before we go pick up Céce.
I can’t barely wait till eleven o’clock or so, when I’ll be kissing
her long and slow, and we won’t have to worry about anybody
happening upon us, like that one time in the park when I was on top
of her, and we heard owls hoot, except it was these kids watching
from the thickets. But now we’ll have a place to be alone together,
for one night anyway. Her lips will be so warm and salty and sweet
all at once, and her long hair will be black and shiny against the
cool white sheets. It’ll be so quiet, except for the whoosh of cars
down on the highway, but even that’ll sound nice because they’re so
far away.
My roof’s quiet. Too.
With the lightning, you’d think Boo would whimper at least. I
unlock the door to the elevator housing. “Heya, girl, wake
up.”
The dog is on the
floor, on her side.
“Boo,
come.”
Man, she’s really out
after that all walking.
“Boo?”
Wait, is she . . .
She isn’t breathing. I roll her head to me. Her tongue hangs slack
and gray. Her eyes are sunk in. Oh, God. Oh, no.
What did I do? Was it
too hot in here today? No, the air conditioner is on full blast.
Too cold? She’s no pup, but she’s too young to have a heart attack.
Was too young. Did I walk her too hard
this morning? She walked farther and faster and on hotter days. I
can’t figure it out, how I killed her.
I ruined it. This is
going to mess her up so bad, Céce.
I draw my Boo close
to me and cradle her, and aren’t I just lame, whispering to this
dead body, petting it. Her limp like this in my arms, I feel it,
that she’s not here anymore, and I can’t imagine where she’s gone.
It’s all through her, the coming stiffness. The cold.
Then I look over at
her water pot, full of bright green liquid. I sniff it. Antifreeze.
Dogs go crazy for it. Like a milkshake to them because of the sweet
smell. A tablespoon will kill a dog. Boo lapped up a lot more than
that. It’s all over the floor. In the window screen is a fresh rip.
The glass is chipped out at a low corner. The holes are big enough
to funnel through a length of garden hose.
I know what happened.
I do. But I just don’t want to let it be real, that a person could
do such evil. If that’s part of being human, I don’t want to be a
man. Right about now, I’d rather not be.
I can’t help but see
it, him, Larry: He waits till I’m gone. He takes out his knife and
cuts the screen. He cracks the window with a punch of his blade and
bends out the broken bit of pane. He funnels it through, the hose.
As he snakes it into Boo’s water pot, he’s gleeful. Maybe he even
calls her over with a gentle “Heya, pretty girl” as he lets the
antifreeze run. Boo trots over, tail whirling, grateful for the
sweet words and the sweeter drink.
He used kindness to
cut her down.
I don’t understand
killing. How can it be, that killing is natural? That it has to
happen? And it does have to happen. It really does
now.
This time the static
doesn’t pounce. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t strong. It’s the
strongest yet, just taking its time to build itself pure. It creeps
in, a growing itch to the back of my eyes, until the fingernails
dig in hard, and I’m sure my eyes will leak their jelly. I don’t
know how long this goes on, me holding Boo, the inside of my head
lighting up, the fever taking me from mourning to mad. No, this
isn’t mad, what I’m feeling now. This is moving into madness, sure
enough. I can’t hear anymore. Just the static, a tornado with
ambitions, the kind that’s bitter it wasn’t born a hurricane.
Outside the hutch window, the sheets are blowing horizontal. A dark
gray one takes leave of the dry line and flies off like the Reaper
starved for a fresh soul.
Boo’s body slides out
of my lap. After a second, she stills, her legs all wrong, her head
like she’d never let it be in life, twisted so strange, like she’s
looking back over her shoulder too far, too hard. Her eyes. I think
I know the last thing that came to them, the one thing that’s
stronger than love, app arently.
The rage swells like
a heat blister in my throat, heart, balls. Behind my eyes, just
clawed clean now.
I don’t know if I’m
being pushed out of the hutch or dragged, but I’m staggering across
the roof, down the fire stairs to Larry’s door. I see my fist
pounding on it. Like I’m possessed, and I don’t have the will to
stop the demon. This isn’t me now.
Larry’s cursing at me
from the other side of the door. He’s fading in and out of the
hissing noise, but I can just make out that he’s saying, “I warned
you I would get that filthy dog. Stinking up my sheets. Jumping
around and barking up there. I warned
you, dirtbag.” He says it over and over, and he’s
laughing.
The worst of it is,
she was so forgiving, my Boo. Men had wrung her out again and
again, forced her to live a life of battle and fear so constant she
couldn’t have thought anything but that terror was the natural way
of things. And she still had so much goodness spilling from her
that she trusted her heart to a man again. To me. She believed in
me. And I let it snatch her, the evil. She was sweetness and light,
and this Larry is that darkness they say is between the galaxies,
nothing out there. He was just made wrong. He can’t be a man. We
can’t be the same. But we are. Oh, how we are.
I hammer Larry’s dead
bolt lock with a high kick, once, twice, I’m in.
Larry reaches for his
baseball bat, mouth wide as his eyes.
The Sprite cans. I
spin the bags tight to keep the cans in there real good. And then I
walk fast at Larry and swing the six-pack at his face.
He bleeds bad. Spits
broken teeth. He’s still holding his bat, but limp, at his side. I
slap it from his hand and hit him again with the cans. Bust his
nose open.
On his knees, Larry.
Looking up at me. I can’t hear anything except the hissing now, but
I read his lips: “Please. I’m sorry.”
He sure is, boy, tell
you what.
I peel off into my
mind’s darker streets and lose myself. I keep hitting him, and
hitting him, and hitting him, until the cans explode.
Pink froth
everywhere. Then it’s a fast fade to shadows.
I’m sitting on the
floor, must be a while later. My teeth click in the prickly
hundred-degree heat. I scratch at a bedbug bite on my neck. One of
Larry’s cats stares at me from the kitchen counter. She flicks her
tail. Another cat licks at the dishes piling the sink. Out the
window the clouds are burnt rags.
The sound comes back
with the cop’s voice. “Son?”
I hear the echo of
little kids laughing, playing chase down in the
courtyard.
Blood slicks on the
floor. A slug trail from when Larry tried to drag himself to the
door. He made it halfway before I finished him.
“Yessir?” I
say.
“Put down the bat,
son.”
Condo I-beam rising
in the distance, ka-kong,
ka-kong.
I see the bat in my
hand. Slick. I start to remember it. Chopping at Larry after he was
dead.
“Son, do you hear
me?”
Church
bells.
“Yessir,” I say to
that nice cop who three times called me son.
Céce would have
stopped me. Just her touch would have been enough.
I’ll never get to be
with her again? That can’t be right. She believed in me. She had
faith that I was good. How could I let it come between us, the need
for the stink of blood in my shirt? How could I let something so
cheap one-up my love for her? It’s awful and true: No demon made me
do this. I did it. Wanted to do it. And I still think I was right to
do it. That it had to be. I’m the demon?
I was a man, hers,
and now I’m nothing.
My hand goes weak,
and the bat bangs the sunburnt linoleum and rolls hollow and
crooked across the sloped floor. With blood on my hand I touch my
forehead, then my heart, left shoulder, right, in the sign of the
cross. Then I fold my hands and I pray that Céce will forgive
me.
Except maybe it’s
better she doesn’t.
I look out the
kitchen window, up to the sky. Across the street, a pair of
sneakers strung over a power line turns in a hot wind that smells
of ozone. The rain comes.
(Tu esday, July 21, night)
CÉCE:
He’s
late.
I’m waiting out in
front of the restaurant. I keep replaying it: tomorrow, sunrise.
Waking up with him in that double bed down in the basement. The
light is good down there then. Clean. Boo will worm her way into
our cuddling. She’ll wake up with me every morning from now on, and
I’ll walk her around the reservoir. I’ll lose weight and be able to
eat more cheesecake.
He’s never late. ESP.
Push comes to shove, it isn’t real, right? C’mon. Probably had to
do something for his father. Haul trash, mop the halls, sweep the
stairs.
Half an hour late.
Why didn’t he let me get him a phone? I was going to add another
line to mine for ten bucks a month, and the phone comes free, but
he said no. I head into the kitchen to tell Ma I’m going over to
Mack’s. Everybody’s bunched around Vic’s laptop. Vic downloads
tomorrow’s crossword every day at about this time.
They’re not looking
at the crossword. They’re looking at me. They’re pale.
I step closer, and I
see they’re on the breaking news link, local edition.
“Oh Céce,” Ma
says.
Vic almost catches me
as I pass out.
(The next morning, Wednesday, July 22, the forty-first day
. . .)
He was inside me.
Moved in me. I felt him so clearly. His pulse. The sting of his
desperate heart. Marcy told me it would hurt, but it didn’t. It was
perfect from the first stroke. It was blindingly clear to me: We
were born for no other reason than to be together. He made me
shake. I was a mess, but he didn’t mind. He was shaking too. He
draped me, his torso overtaking mine, gently, softly, our lower
bellies brushing where the hair lightens. The throbbing was so
sweet I saw colors I didn’t know existed, and they shimmered to our
rhythm, all kinds of gold, like sunlight through leaves. After: He
held me, and I could cry in front of him and feel stronger for it.
I was a seagull driving for the full moon. But now wires lasso my
joints and pull me to the floor. A puppet flattened, chained to the
dustiest ground.
They’re calling him
the Soda Can Killer. In the print edition, he comes up just before
page six, where the gossip columns start. His mug shot looks
nothing like him. He’s not so much looking into the camera as
looking through it, at something far, far away. He doesn’t seem at
all surprised. He looks tired and, oddly, relieved.
Oh my god. It’s
really hitting me now.
Mack Morse killed a
man.
He hasn’t called me.
He’s just gone. I’m dragging the pictures across my phone screen.
Scrolling through smiles and touching and hugging Boo.
My Boo.
That man. Larry. How
could he? How dare he? If he wasn’t already dead, I’d claw him
blind.
I need Mack with me
so bad now. To keep me from wanting to break everything I see,
windows, the TV, the bones in my hands, creaking.
I have to salvage
what’s left of us. I have to hold her one last time. Hugging the
pillow doesn’t work. Hugging myself hurts worse. I need her. I need
Boo.
Vic drives me over
there, to the roof. Yellow tape everywhere. A cop sits on a folding
chair out front. “You can’t go up there,” he says.
“I have to,” I
say.
“Why?”
“Boo.”
“Boo?” he says.
“My dog. Her body. I
have to bury her. In the park.”
“Bury her?” the cop says. “You can’t bury a dog in a
park.”
“The
graveyard.”
“Miss—”
“You don’t
understand, Officer. That’s my dog up
there. I have to take her to her final resting site. My boyfriend’s
secret place.”
“Your
boyfriend?”
Vic hushes me and
steps in. “Listen,” he says to the cop. “You know Detective
Escobar, right? He’s one of my longtime customers—”
“Look,” the cops
says. “I can’t let you through the tape. And anyway, the dog’s not
up there.”
“Then where is she?”
I say.
“They took the
bodies. That’s all I know.”
I’m ripping the tape,
heading up there. I have to see. To be sure they didn’t just leave
her there. I have to take her to his hideaway, our hideaway, where
he buried the others, the ones he tried to save, the ones that
didn’t make it. That time he showed me. Beneath the pines. He
marked their graves with smooth stones. I know it was wrong, but I
couldn’t keep my hands off him. I pushed my mouth down on him right
there, I wanted to taste him so bad. He kept saying “Not here,” but
we did. Right there.
The cop is yelling,
but I don’t hear him. When he grabs my arm, I spin into him and
shove him off and scream, “Don’t touch me. Don’t. You. Fucking.
Touch me.”
He and Vic drag me
out and put me into the Vic-mobile. They hold my arms down, because
if they don’t I’ll start smashing them on the dashboard again. The
cop calls an ambulance, but by the time they get there, I’m spent,
too tired to cry. They ask my name, where I am, and the day of the
week, and I give them the right answers. The one guy says, “She’s
okay.” I laugh myself into a coughing fit, because that’s the
funniest thing I’ve heard in the longest time.
A few hours later,
we’re in an old courtroom with a high ceiling. Marble floors, dark
oak, ornate moldings everywhere. But the windows are dirty. The
lights are dark with bug cake. A thick filthy cobweb rope swings
from the ceiling. The fans don’t do any cooling, but they make a
lot of noise.
Vic’s detective
friend knows a guy at the Department of Juvenile Justice. Mack is
supposed to plead today sometime, could be anytime, depending on
how full the blotter is.
It’s
full.
The place is packed.
Me, Ma, and Vic are shoved into standing room only, way in the
back. We bob and weave and go tiptoe to look over the crowd, but I
can’t see any sign of Mack. Every three minutes or so, the judge
says, “How do you plead?” And some lawyer says for his client, “Not
guilty, Your Honor.”
Everybody’s so mad in
here. The heat. I have to step out for air. Ma comes with me, out
to the courthouse steps. I try calling down to Anthony again, to
tell him about Mack, but he’s still in a communications
blackout.
I still haven’t heard
from him. Mack, I mean.
“When’s he gonna call
me, Ma?”
“He’ll call you,
sweetie. Just give him a chance. He’s probably . . . We better get
back inside.”
“But what if he
doesn’t, Ma? What if he doesn’t call?”
And what if he does?
What can he tell me, and what can I say? I keep seeing them, the
words in the newspaper. What he did. The same person who clubbed
somebody to death told me he loved me?
An hour later, the
judge says, “Macario Morse, how do you plead?”
“Not guilty, Your
Honor,” Mack’s lawyer says. He’s the same court-appointed attorney
a lot of the others have. I can barely see Mack from back here.
They gave him a clean T-shirt, but his jeans are spattered with
dried blood.
He said I muted the
hissing, but I’m really starting to wonder now: If I was with him,
could I have saved him from himself? How do you do that, take a
baseball bat to somebody’s skull? His hands, once so gentle on my
body, are fists now.
The judge is saying,
“Bail recommendation?” when Mack cuts her off.
“Your Honor?” he
says. Mack’s lawyer tries to hush him, but Mack says, “I did it. I
killed him.”
The judge takes off
her glasses. She nods to Mack’s lawyer. “Is your client on
medication, legal or otherwise?”
“I don’t do drugs,
ma’am. I don’t drink either. I know what I’m saying, and I’m saying
what I mean. I’m guilty. I don’t want a plea deal either. I want to
pay in full. He murdered my dog, I murdered him, eye for an eye,
like that. He paid his due. What’s mine?”
The judge gets mad
and calls the district attorney and Mack’s lawyer to the bench and
gives them an earful.
Mack calls to the
judge, “I want fast-track sentencing. That’s in my rights. Give me
fast-track.”
I turn to Vic. “Why
is he doing this?”
“Shh now,” Vic says.
“Easy, Céce. Deep breath.”
“Why isn’t he
fighting this? Larry murdered Boo. All the newspapers said it:
mitigating circumstances. I don’t, he’s, it’s like he wants to go to prison.”
A security guard
tells me to quiet down, but mine is just one of many pleading
voices.
I turn to my mother.
“We could get him a lawyer and help put together an explanation for
why he lost it. I know everything about him. I could help him with
his case. He needs me, Ma. I can’t
desert him. I swore—”
“I demand
fast-track,” Mack yells.
The judge writes
something in her file and waves her other hand without looking at
Mack, and the bailiffs sweep Mack away.
(Five days later, Monday, July 27, late morning of the
forty-sixth day . . .)
He still hasn’t
called me.
We’re downtown again,
this time for Mack’s hearing. This place is a lot different from
last week’s mahogany-paneled chamber. It’s this small shabby room
with plastic chairs. No dais this time. Just a wobbly, chipped
Formica folding table. This dude slouches behind the table. Cruddy
shoes, no jacket or tie. Ring around the collar. No way he shaved
today. He’s been texting for fifteen minutes solid. His fingers are
flying, but otherwise he’s emotionless.
Mack’s father is
here. He’s nodding but not really listening as Mack’s
court-appointed lawyer whispers to him. Mr. Morse keeps checking
his watch and hissing, “Shit. Be
late again.” I tried to say hello
before, but he doesn’t remember me now that he’s sober, or
hungover.
This isn’t the trial.
There won’t even be a trial, because Mack pled guilty. His sentence
won’t come down for months, but today Mack gets to talk about what
happened and more importantly, to offer his genuine remorse. That
is, if he talks.
The guy behind the
table isn’t a judge. He’s a court-appointed interviewer. Based on
what Mack does or doesn’t say, the interviewer will make a
recommendation to a judge who will decide the final sentence. The
interviewer also has discretion to offer an appeal to the district
attorney’s office, if he thinks the DA’s penalty recommendation is
too severe.
It’s all too
confusing. Why won’t they just let me tell everybody about the real
Mack? The one who gives away his money to strangers and risks his
life to save abused dogs. The one who saves people. The one who loves me.
The one who killed a
man?
I try not to imagine
it. What his face looked like as he swung the bat at Larry’s head.
Would I have recognized him? How could that be Mack
Morse?
They bring him in. He
won’t look at me or Ma or Vic. He’s in a faded brown jumper, hands
cuffed behind his back. He knows I’m here. When he came in, he did
a double take on me before he dropped his head.
“Mack,” I say, but
the guard or whoever tells me, nicely, that I can’t do
that.
The interviewer dude
keeps right on texting without any acknowledgment that Mack is
sitting in front of him. He finishes his text and eyes Mack without
a word for a long time. He flips open Mack’s file and takes another
long time to study it. Then he closes the folder quickly, takes off
his glasses and rubs his eyes. “So you pled guilty straightaway,
without even waiting for a deal offer. What’s up with
that?”
“I did what they
said, the exact way they said it,” Mack says. “Why waste
everybody’s time on jury duty? Lying about big stuff, like murder
or love? It makes me sick. You do what you do, and as you reap you
must pay for it in full. The Bible says that.”
But what about us?
What about what we did? What we had.
What we made together. Doesn’t he owe it to us to fight for it? To
fight for me? Or was our love a lie, then?
“The Bible also talks
about forgiveness,” the interviewer says.
“I must’ve skipped
over that part.”
The guy nods and
nods, and then he sighs. “Are you sorry for what you
did?”
“Honest, mister? I’m
not all that sorry. You didn’t know Larry. He was evil. Everybody’s
playing it up like he was some sort of war hero, but my lawyer told
me he had a dishonorable discharge—”
“We’re not talking
about the victim here. We’re talking about you.”
“Okay, do I wish I
didn’t do it? Yeah, I wish, but wishing don’t mean I’m sorry.
Wishing don’t mean anything. It’s done, and there’s no going back.”
He sounds so different. Rougher. Harder accent. “What? You want me
to lie, tell you I’m sorry?”
“I want you to
be sorry.” The dude pulls his pen and
writes in his file. “I have to tell you, at first I thought that
the ADA’s petition that you be treated as an adult was extreme, but
now, seeing you, I think you’re well aware of what you did, and I
think you think you were justified in doing it. You are aware
you’re being treated as an adult?”
“I been treated like
a goddamned adult since I’m seven years old,” Mack
mutters.
“You have something
to say?” the interviewer says. “Speak up.”
“God-forsaken,” Mack
says even more quietly and to himself.
“Tell me what you
just said.”
“Fuck you, man. Just
make your report and let me be on my way.”
“You’re leaving me no
wiggle room here, son. I have no choice but to concur with the
ADA’s recommendation. Unless the judge sees something in you that I
don’t, I think you’re looking at a long haul. I mean, given the
heinous nature of this crime, your prior record, the fact you
skipped out on probation? I bet the judge gives you fifteen to
twenty-five, to life.”
“What does that even
mean?” I whisper to Vic.
“Shh,” Vic says. He
pats my hand gently, but his eyes are hard on Mack.
The interviewer
explains to Mack that he’ll be at a juvenile detention center until
he turns eighteen, then he’ll be remanded to an adult facility for
a long time after that. Mack seems to know all that already. He
shrugs. “We done?”
Two guards lead him
out. His shackles clink.
“Mack? Mack. Mack, please.”
I’m screaming, “Look at me. Look at
me,” but he won’t. He won’t look at me.
(Monday, July 27, afternoon)
MACK:
Can’t look into her
eyes. Not hers, her mom’s, Vic’s. Won’t. I’m dead now. The dead
shouldn’t look on the living.
Maybe just a peek.
One last stolen look. She came dressed so nice. She probably
thought they would give her a chance to speak for me.
She’s wearing that
junky stickpin.
I make myself look
away. If I lock eyes with her, she’ll have hope. She can’t have
hope here. Only one way this one’s going.
“We done?” I say to
my interviewer.
“You’re done,
yeah.”
“Thank you for your
time,” I say, and the interviewer looks at me like I got three
eyes.
They march me
out.
Last night I had this
weird thing, kind of a prayer I couldn’t stop thinking. I prayed my
mom would be here. If she knew about it, the hearing, I believe she
would have come. I do. I don’t know what she would have done if she
was here. But it would’ve been nice to see her.
The old man is here,
though. My lawyer got hold of him. Figured maybe the interviewer
would show some mercy, me being Pop’s only child and such. But with
the old man all in his dirty jeans and he didn’t bother to wear
shirtsleeves, all them tats on his arms, I don’t know what my
lawyer was thinking, bringing him into the building. The guards
escort us out together into a side hall and ask us if we want to
say good-bye. We both shrug. They take us to a holding
cell.
“Landlord tossed me
from the building,” the old man says. “I had to find me a new job
too. Thanks a whole bunch, Cario. Best I could get is casual-status
humpin’ at them damn Roadway docks.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
I am too. That was a sweet little janitor gig he had there.
Near-free rent in that basement apartment, decent pay, nobody over
his shoulder.
“Pulling the
overnight in them trailers? Like a hundrit twenty, hundrit thirty
degrees in there. Gonna be at least three, four years before I got
enough seniority to get me a spot on a forklift. I’m fifty-one
years old.”
“I
know.”
“The hell was you
thinking?”
“I
wasn’t.”
“Damn right you
wasn’t. Damn right.” He’d spit if wasn’t nobody watching, but the
guards are just a little ways off. “Thing is, boy? I think that
dude back there is right. You ain’t look too sorry to
me.”
I don’t say anything.
I’m sorry now all right. Being stuck in this here cage with this
idiot, can’t see a world outside of himself. His problems, huh? I’d damn near kill again to get
me a spot working a truck or any other damned thing, just to get
outside. I got nothing in my life but cages and idiots since last
week, and how many more cages and idiots to come. Never mind what I
told the interviewer, now I’m starting to feel sorry all right.
Sorry about every damned thing.
Can’t believe I’ll
never see her again. How can that be? How could I do that to her?
To them.
Boo.
I’ll never again have
a dog at my side. I’ll never again know the give and take of the
purest friendship.
“Y’all are on your
own now,” the old man says. “Don’t expect me to come visiting you.
I got to work. Damn, dude. Hell is wrong with you?”
Where do you start
with that one? You don’t. You eat it. “My box,” I say.
“Fuck you mumblin’
about now?”
“The Bible box. The
one Moms left me. I want you to have it.”
“Now what all would I
want with a fake wood box?”
“I owe you, man. You
took me around with you, you know?”
“And right about now
I’m damn sorry I did too.”
“The box. It’s under
my cot. Check it out.”
“Damn, I’m mad,” he
says.
“I know,” I say. “You
ought to be.”
“You don’t be telling
me what I ought and ought not be doing, hear? You? Telling me? I
wouldn’t let you do my goddamn laundry for fear
you’d—”
“For fear I’d fuck it
up, I know, you done told me how many goddamn times?”
He grabs my shirt. I
put up my hands to block him, but he gets a backhand in there
before the guards pull him off. He says, “I’m all right. I’m all
right.” Straightens his greasy shirt. Stares me down long and hard,
his eyes wet and angry. “You gonna have a hard time in
there.”
“I expect
so.”
“Damn. Damn. Shit.” I never noticed it before: He’s
pinching the inside of his wrist. “I tried, boy. I tried.”
“I know you
did.”
“I just couldn’t get
it together, you know? I tried so hard.”
“It’s all right,
man.”
“I don’t get it, boy.
Why didn’t you hold out for a plea?” I shrug.
“Maybe I’ll come by
on y’all’s birthday,” he says.
“You don’t got
to.”
“You don’t want me
to?”
“I hate birthdays,” I
say.
He nods at me for a
time, and then that turns to head shaking, and then he
goes.
In the city pound,
the mutts like me? The wild ones that bite? They put them down. I
used to think that was flat wrong. That you could save any dog with
training, with love. But now I know it: Once in a great while you
come across a dog that is a killer down into his blood, the one who
needs to be put away to keep the innocent safe, the one that’s past
redemption.
Every other row of
seats is ripped out of the bus. They space the seats double to keep
the riders from biting, kicking, strangling each other. None of
that matters now. I’m the only rider this trip. The cuffs choke my
wrists. The cuff chain loops through the seat-back rail four feet
in front of me. The chain is short. I have to lean forward, doubled
over like I been gut-shot.
The guard waves the
driver through. The driver gears the engine. The bus is green and
hacks green smoke. The bus shimmies on its way over the one-lane
bridge.
I made this trip once
before, the time I cut that kid. Short bid, wasn’t but three weeks.
It looks different now, the island. I notice stuff more this time.
Little things. Maybe because I know I’m not leaving. Not free
anyway. The bridge has green railings. The paint’s worn out like
paint wears from hands on it, but I don’t see any people walking
this bridge. Not the time I was here before and not this time
either. The island isn’t green but for a few weed tree thickets and
dying ball field grass. The island is rock, cinderblock and dirt
surrounded by rolls of razor wire coming up out of the water.
There’s more than one jail on the island. One for the ladies, a few
more for the men. And then there’s the juvie unit. They thought of
it last, for sure. It’s a hard-shell dome tent. They put it right
in the airport takeoff path, which is just a couple hundred yards
across the water. Every thirty seconds the ground shakes. The
planes look like they’re going to drill the dome.
There’s no cells in
there. Just bunches of cots lumped in raggedy rows. Scratchy
blankets. The floors smell like they swabbed them with outhouse
buckets. I know, we don’t deserve better, but I’m just saying,
summer nights, like a hundred and some degrees in there under that
tent, the jet thunder coming so patterned? You got a lot of angry
boys in there. Going into the tent alone? Not having somebody
inside? I feel like a bait dog about to get chucked into the
pit.
I go to my chest to
touch my peace medal, but it’s not there anymore. They took it from
me on account it’s a weapon. I guess I won’t get to write that
letter to Tony after all. He’s got to hate me bad by now. Good.
That’s how it’s got to be.
If I cry, the driver
will tell I cried, and then I’m marked for having the weak on me. I
keep my eyes wide to let the water dry in the wells.
The way she didn’t
pluck her eyebrows. Didn’t care what she wore and was the cuter for
it. The taste of her mouth. How that girl held me. If only she was
there that day, to quiet the hissing.
This evangel preacher
lady, she’s still doing her thing. I seen her when I was in here
last time. We circle up in ratty plastic chairs, careful to avoid
the ones with urine puddles.
Most of the fellas
don’t listen to the preacher lady. They just like the safety of
being near religion. They bring their softback notebooks and sketch
pictures and write songs and such. You have to sign the pencils in
and out, and they’re wrapped with tape like a football so you can’t
stab anybody with it. Some of the boys like to rhyme, and they make
beats together, sort of soft, and all this is going on while the
preacher lady gives her sermon, but she doesn’t mind. “Maybe it
doesn’t seem like it,” she says, “but God loves everybody just as
much as everybody else.”
And ain’t that just
scary for the truth in it.
“Listen here, boys,”
she says. “There was an old man, and he had two sons. One did
everything right, and the other everything wrong. The bad one ran
out with all his father’s money and blew it on a big fat
crack-smoking party while the good one stayed home and worked for
his father night and day and took care of the old man. The bad one
came back broke, hat in hand, and the good one was like, ‘Pops is
gonna stomp you, lazy, selfish fool.’ And don’t you know,” the
minister lady says, “the father has a big block party for the boy
who came back, and he takes him into his arms. The other son, the
one who honored his father and stayed by his father’s side, he’s
mad. ‘Why you giving him a block party after all the bad things he
did?’ And the father says, ‘Because my son was lost, and now he
found himself.’” The preacher smiles at us, suspicious. “Now, what
do you all think about that? That seem
fair?”
Nobody says anything,
because they weren’t listening, busy doing their drawing and
rhyming and stuff. But I don’t think that’s fair, that the slacker
got a better deal than the good brother. I don’t say anything,
though. I don’t like to talk out loud in front of preachers unless
I absolutely have to.
The preacher lady
sips water. The tent flaps are open to let in the air, what there
is of it in the heat. Just past the flaps are concrete courts,
rusted hoops, no nets. Weeds fork through cracks in the blacktop
patches. The stalks twitch in a hot breeze that comes, goes, and
never comes back.
One of the fellas a
couple seats down from me, he’s nodding off in his chair. He’s
drooling, spun out. Must have fakeswallowed in front of the nurse
and stockpiled his T-bars and double dosed. Thorazine is no joke.
He pitches forward.
I catch him before he
smacks his head on the concrete. I hold him with my arm over him to
keep him from sliding out of the chair.
This kid under my arm
here, he’s what you call a ragdoll. Throw him this way or that, and
he doesn’t care anymore. He falls asleep on my
shoulder.
Everybody’s
catcalling faggots and dick smokers and what all. Teakettle
whistling. But I stay with this ragdoll kid, because you can’t let
somebody fall and hit his head on the concrete. I scan the hecklers
and zoom in on the loudest, a big old country boy with eyes so
light blue the color bleeds out into the white part. He’s got his
sleeves rolled up to his shoulders to show off the desecrations to
his flesh, a pair of gothic crosses and white pride lightning. He
can’t be older than seventeen, otherwise he wouldn’t be here, but
he looks twenty-five easy, lots of confidence in those nasty eyes,
that smirk. This Blue Eyes is a wannabe boss all right. He’ll be
expecting me to crew up with him and his boys, for sure, starting
out at the bottom. I smile at him. “What you in here for, son?” I
say.
“You just called
me son?” Blue Eyes laughs, says all
proud, “This time? Grand theft auto, bitch. What you in for,
stealing a apple pie?”
“Just a little old
murder is all. I’m two-five to life, baby.”
One of Blue’s punks
cackles out, “I seen him on the TV. He’s the Soda Can
Killer.”
That just gets a big
old laugh.
They think that’s
weak, huh? Swinging a Sprite instead of a nineratchet? They keep it
up, they’ll know true violence.
The kid with his head
on my shoulder is awake now. He’s looking at me, too out of it to
wipe his own nose. I put my arm around his shoulder tighter, to
better hold him upright, to hell with what everybody
thinks.
From the corner this
guard watches me. He has a mustache trimmed real neat. He’s kind of
short. His eyes are fierce on me, but when I look at him, he looks
away. He’s been watching me since I came in.
The preacher lady
comes around offering Bibles.
“You gave me one
already, ma’am, last time I was in here.”
“I think I might
remember you, child. How are you, baby?”
“Good,
ma’am.”
“Did you bring it
with you, your Bible?”
“No ma’am, but I
don’t deserve the Bible no more.”
“Of course you do.”
She tries to put it into my hand, this little hardback pocket
Bible, but this other guard, a huge one, comes up and snatches the
Bible from her. He waves that tiny Bible in the preacher lady’s
face.
“Now ma’am, I warned
you about this last time you came in. I was nice to you, told you
all printed matter has to be softback cover.”
Preacher says, “And I
told you, the company that donates them
only had hardback books this time.”
“That’s not my
problem,” the guard says.
“Then what
is your problem?”
“’Scuse
me?”
Preacher says, “Even
when I brought in the softback that time, you wouldn’t let me give
them out.”
“That’s because those
had staples. Has to be softback with a glue binding.”
Preacher yells, “You
are going to deprive these young men of the saving grace of the
Holy Word?”
Guard says, “Now, you
know it’s not about that.”
“It is about that,”
preacher says. “It is exactly about
that.”
“I’m a religious man
myself,” the guard says as he walks off with the Bibles. “But next
time you try to give one of these boys a hardback book, I will have
you arrested.”
The preacher huffs
back to the middle of the circle. “Let’s sing,” she
says.
The boys stand and
hold hands, except for me and the ragdoll kid. I don’t like singing
much. Maybe if I was good at it, but I’m the worst. I hate the
sound of my voice.
I help the kid back
to his bunk. While he sleeps I sit at the foot of his cot and look
at the TV, but I can’t tell you what’s on it. All I see is Céce and
me being together, and damn it but I can’t even beat off with all
these kids and guards around and the moth-trap lights up there that
never turn off.
That other guard, not
the one who took away the Bibles but the one with the mustache, the
dude who’s following me from a distance all the time? Well, he’s
staring at me again. And when I look at him, he again looks
away.
I’m trying so hard
not to think about her, what she’s going through. She’s got to move
on. I don’t exist anymore.