by Carolee Dean
I find it, but there is no sign of the pink eyesore my mother was driving. I do see a Chrysler convertible with a frame around the rear license plate that says MITCH’S MOTORS . I park next to it and go inside. I’m about to ask for his room number at the front desk when I hear his loud, obnoxious voice coming from the bar. I find my uncle Mitch drinking tequila shots and talking to the bartender. “Those were the days,” Mitch brags. “When me and Dozer Dawson played for the Texas Longhorns. I remember this game against A&M—”
“Uncle Mitch!” I say, hurrying up to the bar. “Have you seen Mom?”
“There he is,” Mitch tells the bartender, a definite slur to his words. “Dozer Junior. Wanna drink, kid? It’s a helluva night for a drink. Did you see your daddy’s picture on TV? Never thought I’d see the day. Pour my nephew a shot, bartender.”
“I’ll have to see some ID.”
“Forget the liquor,” I say, even as I imagine the tequila on my tongue and burning through my veins. “I’ve got to find Mom. Did she come back here?”
“Thought she was with you,” he says, motioning for the man behind the bar to refill his glass. I’ve never seen my uncle visibly drunk before. He can usually consume great quantities of liquor with no visible effects. I wonder how much he’s been drinking and when he started.
“Mitch, I gotta find her.” The bartender has turned away, to dry some glasses. I lower my voice to a whisper. “She has the gun.”
“What gun?”
“The one that killed Jack Golden.”
Mitch pauses mid-gulp and puts down his glass, his eyes becoming steady and hard. “Where the hell did she find that?”
“It was hidden in a box buried in the barn. Mitch, I’m afraid she’s going to …” I can’t finish my thought. “She was really upset. What if she hurts herself?”
“You afraid she’s gonna go shoot herself in the head like our daddy did?” he says too loudly.
“Please, you gotta help me find her.”
“You worry too much, kid. Your mama doesn’t have the gumption to kill herself. She hates pain too much.” He says this with a coolness that makes me want to shove that shot glass down his throat.
“Then why did she take the gun?”
“How the hell would I know?” He picks up the glass again and tries to act like this isn’t a big deal, but I notice his hand is shaking.
Something suddenly clicks into place in my mind, like when you’re looking all over the floor for the last piece of a puzzle, only to realize you’re already holding it in your hand. “The Cadillac Levida saw … You were there that night!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, motioning for the bartender to pour him yet another shot. “I was in Vegas at a blackjack table with at least twelve witnesses.”
“You’re lying.”
“One of them was the manager of the casino.”
“A friend of yours?”
“Yep, and he’d testify as to my whereabouts.”
“Would he lie on the stand to help you?”
“Your sniffin’ up the wrong pant leg, kid.”
A smile starts to spread across my face. “I know why my mother took the gun. She’s going to bring it to the police and tell them what really happened that night.”
Mitch’s grip around the shot glass tightens. He tries to smile, but his lips can’t quite make the effort. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” He stands to leave. “I’m finished,” he tells the bartender.
“Yes, you are!” I say before I go. He’s wrong about my mother. She has a lot more gumption than he realizes.
I drive to the Huntsville police station, looking for the hideous pink car. I’d love to hear what she has to say to the police. I know I can’t go inside and risk getting arrested, but I could wait for her to come out and tell me the story. Tell me how she’s cleared my father’s name. But the car isn’t there. Maybe she’s gone to Livingston, straight to the prison warden, I tell myself. And so I get on the road that has now become so familiar to me I could drive it with my eyes closed.
When I get to the Polunsky Unit I still don’t see the pink car, but it doesn’t matter. My mother could have gone to the police in Brenham or Austin. I get out of my truck and smile as I look through the razor wire at the front door and imagine my father walking outside, a free man. “Soon, Dad,” I say out loud.
As I get back on the road I pass a black van, and my heart nearly stops beating. I look in the rearview mirror and am relieved that it doesn’t turn around to follow me. “Don’t let your mind play tricks on you,” I say. It was just a black van. It doesn’t mean anything. Even so, I keep checking my mirror the whole way back home.
When I finally arrive, it’s late and the farmhouse is dark. I drive up to the trailer, and there is Wade, sitting on the steps waiting for me. Good old dependable Wade. As I get closer, I see that he is shaking. I hurry out of the truck, afraid something has gone wrong.
“Where’s Jess?”
“Down at the farmhouse with your grandmother. Levida put her in the guest room with Charlotte.”
“Are you okay, Wade? Did something happen?”
“Hell yes, something happened. I was stuck in that cellar for an hour, till your grandma came and got me.”
“What did the cop want?”
“Turned out he just came by to make sure Levida was okay, but I didn’t know that. Got so scared down in that cellar I pissed on myself. I can’t go back to jail, Dylan.”
“I know.”
“Next time they come, they’ll be comin’ for us.”
“I know.” A victory for my father doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods. I’ll probably be going into prison just as he’s getting out. If the police don’t catch up to me, Eight Ball eventually will.
Wade looks up at the stars. “Sure is pretty here,” he says. “Would have made a nice place to settle down.”
“Yeah,” I say. I’d never be caught dead living in a town like Quincy. I can see its appeal for Wade, though.
“I can’t stay here no more.”
I nod. “Do you want my car?”
“Nah, we’re takin’ Dorie’s truck.”
“She’s going with you?”
“Something I been meaning to tell you … we got married a couple of days ago!”
“You got married? How? When? You haven’t even been here long enough to get a marriage license.”
“Dorie has a friend at the county clerk’s office.”
“Oh, Wade, why would you want to do something like that?”
“It ain’t a crime to try to do the right thing,” he snaps.
“You didn’t give them this farm as an address, did you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Wade …” I start to tell him how he’s led the cops straight to our doorstep, but then I realize they’ve already been here, and sooner or later Arnie Golden is going to tell the police we’re wanted in California. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, Wade. You’re right. I’m glad you’re trying to finally go legit. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” he says, his anger going as quickly as it came. “Dorie said we had to be married before we consummated our love or else we’d go to hell. I just couldn’t stand the thought of her in hell.”
“What about you?”
“I wasn’t so worried about myself. I been in worse places.”
“When is she coming for you?” I ask.
“Any minute now. Dylan, I’m sorry to run out on you like this, but I just can’t cover your back no more.”
“You think you’re covering my back?” I ask, unable to hide my disbelief. He’s done nothing but cause me trouble since we left juvie.
“We been goin’ in different directions for a long time. We don’t want the same things.”
“Really?” I say, a little indignant. “What do you want, Wade?”
“I just need to find a place where I belong.”
“Like with the Aryans who almost killed you? Or the BSB who
almost killed you?” Wade is leaving any minute and I don’t want to argue with him, but I can’t seem to stop myself. The stress of the last week has left me frayed and raw, and part of me can’t believe he’s running out on me now, even though I know he has to.
“I ain’t sayin’ those were the best choices. They were just the best choices I seemed to have at the time. Besides, we never would have met Eight Ball or ended up in juvie if your uncle hadn’t gotten us jobs with Jake Farmer.”
“Uncle Mitch. He’s the cause of everything bad in my life.”
“I ain’t blamin’ you. I’m actually glad things turned out the way they did, or else I never would have found Dorie … or the Lord. But there’s a time to say no, Dylan, and now is that time. They’re coming after us, and I wish you’d leave with us, but I know you won’t. But I can’t be here when they come.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want to tell you this, but Dorie says you’re draggin’ me down.”
“I’m dragging you down?”
About that time Dorie drives up in her pickup truck. “I gotta go now. Dorie left a note for her father explaining things, but if he starts asking questions, will you let him know I plan to take good care of her?”
“Sure, Wade,” I say, even though he’s never been able to take care of himself.
He gets into Dorie’s truck, turns to me, and says, “You’re the best friend I ever had.” As I watch him drive away, I realize he’s done something I never had the guts to do.
He has said good-bye.
38
MONDAY MORNING I LOOK THROUGH THE BOX FILLED WITH my father’s clothes, find the old cowboy boots at the bottom. Try them on and am surprised that they fit. Then I walk down to the farmhouse. Over breakfast I tell Jess and Levida about my conversation with Mitch and why I think my mother took the gun. “That could mean good news,” Jess comments, but Levida doesn’t say a word and as the day wears on, her silence becomes more and more irritating.
It is a day of waiting. Waiting for the lawyer to call. Waiting for my mother to return. Waiting for Arnie Golden to show up with his police friends and haul me off to jail. Waiting for Eight Ball and Ajax and Spider. I wonder if it really was Ajax I saw last night driving the black van. I tell Jess she should leave, for her own safety, but she won’t go. I’m secretly glad. She’s all I have left to hang on to.
I should leave too, but I just can’t until I find out if my father is going to live or die. And what about my mother? She still hasn’t returned.
“Do you believe in fate?” I ask Jess that evening after supper as we sit on the living room sofa, watching out the window, waiting for something, anything, to happen. No one has called, no one has arrived, and the tension in the house is a hair trigger.
“I think you’re my fate,” she says, squeezing my hand, but I pull away from her, jumping up from the couch and pacing across the braided rug that I’ve worn thin.
“No, I mean, do you think we choose our destiny or do you think something else chooses it for us?”
“Like God?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I don’t think God would want anybody to end up on death row.”
“Well what about karma, or bad blood, or destiny? What do you believe?”
“I think we make choices, and those choices lead to other choices.”
Levida walks in from the garden with a basket full of green beans and starts washing them in the sink just like it’s any other day. “How can you wash vegetables at a time like this?” I ask her, but she doesn’t reply.
I walk over to the sink and turn off the water, forcing her to pay attention to me. “Why hasn’t anybody called?”
“Why do ya think?” she says coolly.
“I don’t know. Maybe something happened to my mother. Maybe Mitch got to her. Maybe she was in a car wreck and never made it to the cops. Maybe we should be doing something.”
“Like what?” she asks, drying her hands on a towel and putting them on her hips.
“I don’t know. Like going to the police. You could talk to them. You saw Uncle Mitch driving the Cadillac.”
“All I saw was a car. That don’t mean nothin’.”
“Were you drunk that night?”
“Dylan!” Jess says, stepping in to stand between me and Levida. “Don’t say things you can’t take back.”
But it’s too late for that. “Is my father going to die because you were too drunk to know what happened that night?”
“Dylan, stop!”
Levida just shakes her head. “Foolish, foolish boy. You still don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Were you drunk that night?” she says, pointing a wrinkled finger at me.
“Don’t be stupid. I was six years old.”
“Then why don’t you remember?”
“I was SIX YEARS OLD!” I yell at her.
“Your father, my son, is about to die for a murder somebody else committed. Do you really think he’d do that for your uncle Mitch?”
I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out, because if she is right … then my mother is not at the police station turning in my uncle.
“You can’t remember and your father won’t talk. Who is the one person you would both go to the grave in silence to protect?”
“Dylan, are you okay?” asks Jess as I slump into one of the dining room chairs. My grandmother is right. My father would never die for Uncle Mitch.
Levida, kneeling in front of me, takes both of my hands in hers. “Dylan,” she says softly. “Dylan, you’re the only one who knows. Tell me who shot Jack Golden.”
“I don’t remember.”
Her grip on my hands tighten. “Who shot Jack?”
“I don’t remember!” I’m shaking so badly I’m afraid I’ll fall off the chair.
“You saw what happened!” she yells.
“I can’t remember!”
“Leave him alone,” says Jess. “Can’t you see how upset he is?”
Levida lets go of my hands and slaps me hard across the face. Then she grabs my collar and starts shaking. “WHO SHOT JACK GOLDEN?”
“Stop it!” screams Jess, pulling my grandmother off of me.
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember! I DON’T REMEMBER!”
“Yes, you do,” says my grandmother, her voice soft as a whisper.
And then I begin to cry. A flood of tears pours out of me that I can’t stop. A flood of regret, of sadness, of hopelessness. Jess puts her arms around me and rocks me like a little kid.
“Who shot Jack Golden?” Levida says.
“My father.”
Levida covers my hand with hers. It is warm and calloused and I grab it, holding on for dear life, as if it’s the only anchor in the world. “Is that what you honestly, truly believe?”
“Yes.” I still cannot see it, but it is the only explanation.
She pats my hand and nods her head. “Then your father is going to die tomorrow, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”
THE HOUSE WHERE JACK DIED
This is the house where they found Jack dead.
This is the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the floor
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the wall, splattered in red,
standing next to the floor,
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the door leading into the tomb.
This is the wall splattered in red,
standing next to the floor
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the clock hanging over the door.
This is the wall splattered in red
standing next to the floor
in the room
of the ho
use
where they found Jack dead.
This is the bird coming out of the clock
hanging over the door
in the wall
by the floor
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the song in the heart of the bird
coming out of the clock
hanging over the door
in the wall
by the floor
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
These are the words
to the song of the bird
coming out of the clock
hanging over the door
in the wall
by the floor
in the room
of the house
where they found Jack dead.
This is the man who sits in the cell.
Eleven years have come and gone.
Jack is dead, but he lives on.
He waits in silence, but he still can hear.
The ancient song echoes in his ears.
The sound of time with its tick tick TOCK!
The song of the bird coming out of the clock,
hanging over a door leading into a tomb,
where there stand four walls splattered all in red,
and a floor where a good man fell and bled,
in the room of the house where they found Jack dead.
These are the words of the cuckoo’s song,
as he asks us who will right these wrongs.
The cuckoo sings and the cuckoo wails,
for the dead who cannot tell their tales.
Rage all you want, but at close of day,
justice is mine, and I will repay.
THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE
By D.J. Dawson
If you are lucky, you will never watch a man die by lethal injection, but you might be curious all the same. I know I was. So I asked my lawyer to tell me what happened in the death house down in Huntsville. He informed me there was a radio broadcast put on a few years back called “Witness to an Execution.” You can listen to it on the Internet if you care to. I can’t because I don’t have a computer, so I had to read the transcript. You don’t actually hear a man die, but you’ll hear the voices of people who have watched it happen, some of them fifty or more times.
