“That’s no problem at all,” she says. “I’ll bake it right away so it has some time to sit. I’m sure I can find a little brandy for soaking. Just don’t tell anyone.”
Horace’s heart flutters to know they share this secret.
“What do you remember most about the cake?” she asks.
“I expect I wouldn’t know. I was just a young ’un,” he says. “I do recall it was dark as molasses and had pecans. It surely was the best thing I ever tasted.”
“Well, I’ll be careful to find ingredients that were around when you were a boy.” Miss Polk’s eyes seem less focused, as if she’s gone away to her kitchen and is already measuring out the flour.
His eyes well up from anticipation. This makes it hard for him to see the floor as the guard leads him back to his cell. Only later does he realize he’s forgotten to ask Miss Polk to please burn the edges. Horace hopes he can trust the guard to give her the message.
Chapter 11
Daylight nudged Ginny awake, not Dot’s typical knocking or rough shaking of her shoulders. Roscoe hadn’t stayed the night after revealing the details of Samuel’s passing. He’d said he didn’t feel right with Dot in the same house even though he’d slept in Ginny’s room at the barracks occasionally. Truthfully, she’d wanted to be alone anyway.
By now, Dot was probably finished preparing the morning meal, so Ginny didn’t bother to jump up and race to the prison kitchen. Instead, she grabbed her robe from the foot of the bed and headed to her own kitchen to scavenge for breakfast.
“Sleep well?” Dot’s presence at the kitchen table startled Ginny.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“Breakfast’s done. Lunch is prepped,” she said. “I wanted to check on you. Here, have some coffee.”
“I better have some food as well,” Ginny said. “Yesterday was so crazy I didn’t feel up to eating.”
“Roscoe told me. About yesterday, that is. Actually, he asked me to come back here to check on you this morning.”
Ginny wished everyone would stop worrying so much about her, but she couldn’t blame them considering her roller-coaster emotions and erratic behavior.
“You knew about Samuel, too?” she asked.
“Of course. I was in your room when Roscoe told you,” Dot said. “I guess that was during one of your blackouts.”
Those troubled Ginny the most. She couldn’t fathom why her mind allowed her to hear some of what went on around her, like her mama’s piercing criticisms, but not Roscoe’s explanation of how Samuel had died. The brain’s ability for self-protection made Ginny shudder.
“Let me make you some eggs and bacon.” Dot got up from the table, but Ginny headed her off.
“No, please sit. I’ll just have some bread and butter.”
Dot joined her, saying it wasn’t polite to let her eat alone. She heaped spoons of fig preserves on Ginny’s bread as well as her own.
“I got other news to tell you,” Dot said. “Anna quit. I heard she gave Roscoe a tongue-lashing on her way out.”
The prison nurse had kept mainly to herself, so Ginny didn’t know her well. The women in the prison didn’t have the collegial relationships many of the guards shared. Truth was, Anna intimidated Ginny. The nurse had a real education and her work seemed important. Plus, when Anna was with Roscoe, they appeared equals, not an employer and subordinate.
“What happened? Why’d she leave?” Ginny was too curious to wait to hear Roscoe’s side of things. Dot’s version would have to do.
“It was about Sam,” Dot said. “Or, rather, that was the last straw. A guard near Roscoe’s office heard the woman ranting about how she believed Roscoe when he promised things would change at the prison. She said she’d wanted to leave since those men cut their heels all those years ago.”
Ginny grew more and more defensive with Dot’s retelling of the confrontation. Roscoe had done the best he could. The changes may not have been as dramatic or as public as reformers might have liked, but there’d been progress. And Ginny had seen the toll it’d taken on him.
“Well, shit.” Ginny left her uneaten bread on the plate and went to dress.
* * *
Ginny could think only of getting to Roscoe. Some days she figured their love was something of a miracle, but other relationships seemed just as miraculous. Couples survived the Depression and world wars and childrearing and infidelities and any number of daily hurdles threatening their momentum. Ginny’s and Roscoe’s challenges were different, and mostly unspoken. But they’d bound them tighter and tighter over the years, even when they didn’t realize it. Maybe that bond began when she was a little girl. It was only recently, though, that she’d begun to think of them as one unit and not two separate people. And right now, Ginny sensed he could use her support.
The dress she threw on needed ironing. How ridiculous, though, that in the past she’d worried about things like wrinkled clothes or hosiery with runs, or cakes that fell or whether it’d be a rainy winter. Those trivial concerns just masked the unchangeable things that bred hopelessness: like murderers and rapists who would kill and rape again given the chance, starving inmates who work half the day with bleeding feet and hands, and guards whose humanity was erased permanently by a system decades older than the hills.
Ginny’s hurried steps turned into a run, until she found herself in Roscoe’s office, blocked by Tim’s earnestness.
“I have to see him,” she said. “Right away.”
“He’s on the phone, ma’am. He can’t be disturbed.” Tim appeared poised to throw himself in front of the closed door to Roscoe’s office should she lunge for it.
Roscoe’s angry voice rose and fell. As loud as he was, Ginny couldn’t make out much, except he didn’t want some inmate transferred to the prison.
“Who’s he talking to?” she asked.
“Superintendent,” Tim said. “We’re supposed to be getting a new death row inmate. Some guy who killed a family in New Orleans. Shot seven people, even a little baby. The trial ended yesterday. They’re speeding up the execution.”
While the crime was heinous, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have extremely violent offenders at the prison. And because the guy had been sentenced to the electric chair, this was the only place in the state he’d be housed.
“Why is Roscoe so riled up?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “I can’t make out what he’s been yelling about, but he’s been on the phone for fifteen minutes. If I were him, I’d think twice about talking to the superintendent like that.”
Anna’s resignation could have triggered this foul mood. The prison had a hard time attracting qualified medical staff, and he probably didn’t look forward to hiring her replacement.
“Do you mind if I wait?” Ginny sat down on the chair in front of Tim’s desk, straining to make out what had now become mostly a tirade of curse words.
“Maybe we shouldn’t eavesdrop,” Tim said, turning toward the door.
When Roscoe slammed the phone into its cradle, Tim and she both stood.
“May I go in now?”
Tim shrugged, sensing it was futile to stop her.
She knocked soundly and opened the door a crack. “Roscoe?”
He looked up from his desk only for a second before stuffing papers into a satchel and grabbing his hat from the coat rack. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and the stubble was startlingly gray.
“I can’t talk now,” he said.
“I’m sorry about Anna. You know, leaving her post so suddenly.”
“It wasn’t sudden. She threatened to quit every other week.”
He brushed past Ginny, leaving a file folder on Tim’s desk. “I’ll be back tomorrow after dark. John’s in charge until then. Make sure he gets this. He’ll understand.”
“Roscoe?”
“Leave it be, Ginny. I’ll explain when I get back.”
Roscoe walked down the hallway, his boots clicking angrily against the tile. His aggravation made h
er think twice about chasing after him. Her uncharacteristic hesitancy was every bit as unnerving as Roscoe’s mood.
“Where’s he going?” she asked Tim, who’d poured her a cup of coffee.
“Baton Rouge, of course. It’s the fifteenth.”
Ginny looked at him blankly.
“His hearing with the prison board is this afternoon,” he explained. “Surely you knew.”
Roscoe hadn’t said a word and this embarrassed her.
“Oh, yes, the prison board,” she lied. “I guess I forgot.”
“That’s to be expected, ma’am,” Tim said. “What with you being sick these past weeks.”
Her shame only grew with the realization that everyone in the prison was aware of her “spell.” They just didn’t know the reason for it because Roscoe had covered up Samuel’s mutilation.
“I sure hope he doesn’t lose his job,” Tim continued. “He’s the best boss I’ve ever had.”
She thought to remind him that Roscoe was his first and only boss, but left instead.
* * *
With such an agitated mind, Ginny wouldn’t have been able to sit still at the house, so she headed to the kitchen to help Dot with lunch. When Ginny described the exchange in Roscoe’s office, Dot shared her worry that he’d been brought up before the prison board.
“Why didn’t he tell me, Dot?”
“Do you have to ask, considering just three days ago you were still refusing to talk or eat?”
Dot was right. Ginny’s drama had eclipsed everything going on in his world. In true Roscoe fashion, he’d tried to protect her rather than seek her support or advice. He would be at the hearing in less than an hour, fighting for his job.
“I wonder if this is about Samuel, or the last suppers. Oh, shit . . . the renovations to my parents’ house. Maybe that was the last straw.”
“No sense wondering about the whys,” Dot said. “He and the superintendent bust heads on a lot of things. Might just be his time is up.”
Thinking she could cost Roscoe his job made her sick to her stomach. All these years, Ginny thought of the prison board as mostly impotent and their warnings, without teeth. But they had the power to sack both of them. And while Ginny could start fresh anywhere, she doubted Roscoe could do anything else. She tried to picture him on a tractor, or maybe helping a customer at a feed store. It was a silly exercise. Her mind could only conjure him in his drab tan prison uniform and worn boots, the brim of his hat stained with sweat. Or on a horse, surveying the inmates working the fields. Or making the sign of the cross when he signaled an execution to commence.
“You could call him tonight,” Dot suggested.
“He didn’t even say where he was staying.”
“You going to let that stop you?” she asked.
“I suppose not.” After they finished the afternoon chores and evening meal, Ginny knew just where she’d go.
* * *
The admin building was mostly empty at six, but Ginny counted on Tim to stay late, even without Roscoe around to see his brownnosing. Yet, when she got to the office, the door was locked.
“Goddammit.” She looked around to see if anyone had heard. The halls were empty, the only noise coming from outside in the parking lot.
Ginny pulled a bobby pin from her hair and worked at the lock. It looked so simple in the movies, surely fiddling with it a few moments might do the trick. When the door swung open, she shouted in fright.
“What the hell?” John, the guard from the Waiting Room, towered above her. The bobby pin hadn’t worked. He’d opened the door from the inside.
After listening to her incoherent excuse, he ushered Ginny into the office and closed the door behind them.
“What’s gotten into you, trying to break into the warden’s office?”
“Why were you in here with the door locked?” she asked, going on the defensive.
He shook his head. “Not that I owe you an explanation, but Roscoe left a file for me to read and I didn’t want to be disturbed. And yet, here you are.”
Contrition wasn’t a strong suit, so Ginny didn’t bother to try. “Roscoe left in such a hurry, he didn’t even tell me where he was staying. I thought Tim might know. When I found the door locked, well . . . I . . .”
“You did what you always do,” he said. “Break the rules.”
His statement struck her as harsh. “Break the rules?”
“Never mind. Try the Howard Johnson. The prison board usually puts folks up there when they’re visiting.” John walked through the outer office and into Roscoe’s private office, assuming she’d leave.
“Wait a minute,” Ginny said, following him. “What do you mean, I break the rules?”
His visible irritation stoked her curiosity, even if she probably didn’t want the answer.
“I like you, Ginny. I do. But you take liberties and now Roscoe’s ass is on the line.”
When he sat behind Roscoe’s desk, her heart almost broke. It was like looking into the future and seeing someone take Roscoe’s place. Wrong size, wrong age, wrong stoop of the shoulders.
“Liberties?”
“Come on. I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” he said. “Someone reported you and Roscoe. They told the board he made exceptions to the rules for you . . . like those death row inmate meals. And now, that house of yours is a daily reminder to everyone that you have special privileges.”
Each example cut a little deeper until Ginny felt the truth would bleed her out completely.
“And Jesus, the mess with Samuel? There was no keeping that a secret,” he said.
“I never meant—”
“Of course you didn’t,” he said, bitingly. “I know he told you Sam refused a meal. He mentioned it might even be hard on you. But you still went against him.”
Her hand reached for the chair back to steady herself. She would not cry in front of John. She’d not let him think she was using tears to gain sympathy. It wasn’t deserved.
“Yes, you’re right. Just please tell me how to fix this,” she said.
“Ginny, there ain’t no fixing anything. A lot of the men don’t respect him. Others will follow suit once they find out about the board hearing,” he said.
“And you, John? Do you respect him?”
He ran his hands over his face as if buying time to formulate an answer she could stomach. His hesitation hit her low in the gut, which was already twisting with long-overdue shame.
“I do respect him. Always have,” he said. “But I’m one man. There’s very few in Louisiana who think change is a good thing when it comes to this place. The next warden won’t be like Roscoe.”
Next warden. John wasn’t holding out any hope that the hearing would go well.
“Won’t you take the job?”
“Not in a million goddamn years. Now, will you leave me to my work? I’d like to get home to my wife at a decent hour.”
She nodded and headed back to the house that could be part of Roscoe’s undoing.
1934
Moonshine and Madness
Joe’s dark spells on Monday mornings were almost always the result of his weekend drinking binges. Roscoe learned to steer clear and often drove to Catahoula Lake to fish on Saturdays, sometimes sleeping in the cab of his truck overnight to avoid being roped into drinking with him.
Seeing as how he hadn’t been to dinner at Joe’s and Miriam’s in three weeks, he gave in and showed up on the doorstep with a bottle of busthead whiskey. Joe had taken a shine to sour mash during Prohibition and kept several bottles stored under loose boards in his closet so he’d never run out, but Roscoe figured he better bring a peace offering.
Miriam smiled and kissed him on the cheek, but then whispered angrily, “You’re a son of a bitch to bring that in my house.”
“Nice to see you, too, Miriam.” He placed his hat on the rack near the door and smoothed his hair.
Joe’s eyes were already glassy when he stumbled forward to offer a handshake. “Well, old
buddy, finally decided we were good enough to eat with, huh?”
The end table and lamp had been overturned and several framed photos were now lying broken on the floor.
“Something happen here?” He scanned Miriam’s face for an answer as well as any sign she’d been hit. It wouldn’t have been the first time. On occasion, he’d busted up rows between the couple and ended up with a shiner himself.
“Not any of your goddamned business, friend of mine,” Joe said, sitting on the sofa. “Is that for me?”
Roscoe handed him the bottle and sat down next to him. Miriam excused herself to set the table in the kitchen.
“Man, you got to lay off the hooch, if not for Miriam’s sake, then for Ginny’s.” Roscoe kept his voice low so Miriam couldn’t hear.
Joe pressed a finger into Roscoe’s cheek, leaving a painful mark. “Don’t tell me how to raise my girl.”
At only three years old, Ginny was smart as a whip and headstrong, but sensitive, too. He couldn’t bear to think of the things she’d witnessed in this house. It made his blood boil to imagine Joe raising a hand to his daughter.
“She already in bed?” Roscoe asked. “I thought I’d say hello.”
“Now you after both my girls?”
It was an accusation Roscoe was used to. Joe didn’t have to be very drunk to start in on how he’d seen Roscoe eyeing Miriam’s ass or that he knew they met secretly behind his back.
“I’m not after your wife. And I don’t know a thing about child-rearing. I just care about your family,” he said.
Joe leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’re a good friend, Roscoe, old boy. A good friend. Now where’s that food?”
* * *
The pot roast was so dry that each bite stuck in Roscoe’s throat, threatening to choke him. Miriam wasn’t the best of cooks, but she always set a nice table, so he complimented her on it just to keep the conversation pleasant.
“She was a real looker when we were in high school,” Joe said, pointing a knife at his wife. “Man, the other guys were jealous when we hooked up. Should’ve known by looking at her mama that she’d turn out to be a lardo.”
The Last Suppers Page 14
