“I want the yard closed, the work crews recalled, and a count taken immediately. Call the superintendent, and ring him straight through to my office when you get him. Find Inspector Fortner, and get him back to my office with some incident reports.”
If the colonel was upset by what had taken place, I couldn’t tell it. He always operated at a fevered pitch, always barking out orders, always coming on way too strong, imitating a hockey player attempting figure skating. I glanced over at Shutt. He looked as if he had just killed a man. His whole body, which appeared to be trapped in adolescence, trembled.
“Are you okay?” I asked him while the colonel reported to the superintendent what had happened.
He didn’t look up, so I repeated the question. When he finally looked at me, he appeared to be in a trance, not knowing where he was.
“What?” he mumbled.
“Are you okay?” I repeated a third time, this time slowly.
He looked shocked at the question and shook his head forcefully. His pubescent face was pure fear; he was obviously in shock. He dropped his head again. I slid my chair over next to him and put my hand on his back. My hand actually moved from the force of the tremors running the length of his body. Though it was in character, I still found myself amazed at the colonel’s insensitivity.
“Colonel Patterson, Officer Shutt needs to see a doctor immediately,” I said when he had finished briefing the superintendent.
“What? No, he doesn’t. Do you, son?”
Son didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at the floor.
“Call medical, now,” I said, employing the colonel’s method of communication by raising the volume and lowering the tone of my voice.
“Ah, hellfire, Chaplain. He’s been trained. He’ll be all right.”
“Call medical now, or I will. And if I do, I’m going to declare a medical and psychological emergency. Then you can explain to them why you didn’t.”
The colonel snatched up the phone, pushed three buttons, and yelled into the receiver, “Get medical to my office now.”
“Chaplain, you need to get a few things straight about the way things work around here. If I wasn’t leaving this afternoon for three weeks of special training, I’d take you under my wing and make things real plain for you. But the short version is this. I—”
A quick knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the superintendent, Edward Stone, a deliberate-moving black man in an expensive suit.
“Colonel, Chaplain, Officer Shutt,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes stopped on Shutt. “Have you called medical, Colonel?”
“Yeah, they should be here any minute,” he said curtly, as if he were talking to a new officer and not the superintendent of the institution.
“He’s obviously in shock. How are you holding up, Chaplain?” Mr. Stone asked.
“I’m okay, I think,” I said, and my voice still quivered slightly with the anger I felt for Patterson and the memory of those lifeless black eyes.
“I heard how you responded to the, ah . . . situation. Control said you reacted with no hesitation. You never know until it comes down to it what a man will do in those kinds of situations. You’re still new around here, but everybody’s trust level for you just jumped up several notches. Isn’t that right, Colonel?”
“Yeah, you never know what a man will do in a crunch,” he said, careful to respond to Mr. Stone’s first comment and not his second.
“Let’s have medical check out Officer Shutt and let the chaplain go home. We can take their statements tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Patterson said as if Mr. Stone had asked him.
“Sir, I’d really like to stay and help out if I can,” I said to Mr. Stone.
“No,” he said, and I could tell that there would be no further discussion about it. “You go home now. We’ll take care of everything here. I’ll drop by and see you at your office in the morning.”
Before I could respond, the colonel’s phone rang and the medical personnel arrived to collect Shutt. As I helped him to his feet, I assured him that everything was going to be okay. The nurses quickly helped Shutt to the door. I followed them out. Just before I closed the colonel’s door, he hung up the phone, and I heard him tell Mr. Stone that the deceased inmate in the trash bag was Ike Johnson.
After a long, hot shower in the training building, during which I scrubbed Ike Johnson’s blood off my body, I drove up to the state park and tried to clear my head.
For as long as I had been a praying man, I had never found a better place to get in touch with God than Potter State Park. The park was roughly sixty acres of sage brush, pine trees, and wildlife, with long, winding trails cut through the dense woods. At its center were two small ponds with a small pathway running between them. That pathway, for me at least, was the path of peace and the way of wisdom. I spent most of the afternoon up there and felt better for it. Had I stayed until nightfall, which during the summer was still several hours away, I might have been completely distracted from thoughts of Johnson’s vacant black eyes. I opted instead to drive home and order pizza.
An event, as it turned out, which proved to be distracting in other less spiritual ways.
Chapter 2
I was half-undressed when my doorbell rang. I guess if I were more optimistic, I would say that I was half-dressed—and that the glass of seltzer water without a coaster on my dresser was half-full. My dresser, like every other piece of furniture that I scrambled to get after the divorce, was not worth the trouble of a coaster. It had been a gift— actually its previous owners did not know that it was a gift; all they knew was that they threw it out. The dresser, like the house trailer and the rest of the furniture, did not bother me too much, that is, until I had company, which thankfully was not very often.
I was surprised when I heard the doorbell, not only because I was half-undressed, but also because I had placed my order for pizza less than fifteen minutes before. It had always taken Sal’s at least twenty-five minutes to deliver out here in the sticks. Since returning to Florida’s panhandle after my world fell apart, I had made my home in a dilapidated, butt-ugly trailer in a small trailer park on the edge of Leon County. I quickly pulled my pants back up and whisked by my gem of a dresser on the way out of my room, pausing only long enough to secure the two folded bills on its corner.
The trailer had been repossessed, and its previous owners were obviously not a gentle breed. It was situated on a thatch grass prairie on what was supposed to be Phase II of an expanding mobile home community called the Prairie Palm. Presently, Phase II was a community of one, due in large part to Phase I, which resembled a trailer junkyard more than a place where people actually lived. The trailer park got its name from the lone sabal palm, Florida’s state tree, that stood in the center of the sixty-acre plot. The lonely tree seemed to me to be an appropriate metaphor for my isolated existence here and for the state I so loved. For Florida is a lonely appendage on a continent it resembles little.
As I walked down the extremely narrow hall of my not-somobile home, passing over the pale yellow linoleum that curled up so that it no longer reached the thin blond paneling of either wall, I remembered the two-story brick home that Susan and I had shared on Atlanta’s north side. Amazingly enough, this felt more like home, except for the filth of course. I opened the door and extended my hand and the money that it held in one flowing motion, more from practice than a God-given talent. Expecting to see Ernie, Sal’s nephew, who resembled the Sesame Street puppet of the same name, I made an audible expression and suddenly felt naked without my shirt when I saw the pert young delivery person with big brown eyes staring up at me. She was actually more than pert; she was beautiful—but her orange, white, and blue uniform, which included wonderfully fitting navy blue shorts and a baseball cap, made her look quite pert. She had shoulder-length brown hair pulled through the hole in the back of her cap to form a ponytail that swung from side to side as she moved her head. Her dark skin,
which I first noticed on her muscular legs, seemed to be her natural skin tone rather than tanned. Her face was kind and soft, with features that reminded me of Bambi. Though Bambi was a boy, and apart from the muscular build of her body and the uniform that covered it, or at least part of it, there was nothing boyish about her at all—at all. Her face was flawless, with the one exception of her slightly crooked nose, which apparently had been broken. However, it made her all the more attractive.
She looked confused as I handed her the money and seemed to take it more out of reflex than anything else. I took the box from her and realized why she looked confused. It was a parcel and not a pizza. The oversized blue block letters on its side read QVC, and then I remembered.
Sometimes late at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I would lie on my old green vinyl couch and flip through all the channels for hours— the exciting life of a bachelor. Last Friday, as I flipped past the QVC home shopping channel, I saw the IBM Thinkpad sub-notebook computer at an unbelievably low price—on their easy-pay plan. The easypay plan was a wonderful plan whereby one—me, in this case—can buy things that one cannot otherwise afford.
“Actually, this job pays very well. All I need is your signature,” she said with a notable measure of amusement.
“I’m sorry. I was expecting a pizza,” I said, a little unnerved by such a stupid mistake in front of such a beautiful woman.
She handed me the pen and electronic clipboard that required my signature as she cut her eyes toward me and flashed me a quick smile. As I signed the pad, I sensed her staring at the round pink scar on my left oblique and long, thin white scar across my chest. I looked up at her.
She looked away. “Pizza, huh? You one of those health-food freaks? I bet you have a Sony Walkman and one of those nifty little exercise bikes, don’t you?”
After I signed the pad, she attempted to decipher what I had written on it. In the distance, I could hear the sounds of poverty coming from Phase I of Prairie Palm. The sounds of poverty were those of people—people with time on their hands and not much else. Children yelling and laughing, the revving of automobile engines, and the loud distorted music of cheap car stereos and boom boxes swirled together into the sad and badly mixed sound track of life in the rural South. The only artist my ears could discern was John Mellencamp, which justified the volume. Appropriately enough, it was an acoustic version of his tribute to life in a small town.
I was born in a small town and I live in a small town. Prob’ly die in a small town. Oh, those small communities.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have introduced myself. My name is John Jordan.”
“Why?” she asked. Her severe expression made me feel as if I had said something wrong.
Educated in a small town. Taught to fear Jesus in a small town.
Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic that’s me.
“Why, what?” I asked.
“Why should you have introduced yourself? I’m just delivering a package. This isn’t a social call or anything,” she said. She seemed annoyed. “You’re not making a play for me, are you?”
“Well, I’m just saying it’s polite, and you know . . .”
“Relax. It’s perfectly all right. I’m sure a man in your profession introduces himself to nearly everyone he meets, whether they want him to or not. What are you, a priest? Wait until I tell my friends I was hit on by a priest.”
For about a second I couldn’t figure out how she knew, and then it dawned on me that my clerical collar still hung around my neck.
But I’ve seen it all in a small town. Had myself a ball in a small town. Married an LA doll and brought her to this small town. Now she’s small town just like me.
“I’m the chaplain at Potter Correctional Institution,” I said touching my collar.
“Oh, I see,” she said with a tinge of what seemed to be embarrassment for me. “I make deliveries over there sometimes. Big place.”
I made a mental note of that.
No I cannot forget where it is that I come from. I cannot forget the people who love me. Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town. And people let me be just what I want to be.
“My brother, Stan, is a Methodist preacher. He says that chaplains aren’t real ministers. He says if he ever can’t make it as a pastor, he knows that he could always become a chaplain.”
“I’m a real minister,” I said, the wounded child inside showing through my voice slightly.
“Relax. I’m just kidding.” She turned to head back down the rocks and pebbles that served as my driveway toward her big colorful Federal Express truck that matched her uniform. The rhythmical blinking of its flashers—slightly slower than my heart—had a hypnotic effect on me.
I was just about to ask for her name and maybe even her number when Ernie sped into the driveway, jumped out of his car, and ran to my doorstep, where I was still watching her in amazement.
Got nothing against a big town. Still hayseed enough to say look who’s in the big town. But my bed is in a small town. Oh, and that’s good enough for me.
“Sorry I’m late, JJ. Uncle Sal’s getting slower and slower,” Ernie said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Sal’s pizza is still worth the wait.” I looked at him only momentarily and then back with the eyes of a hunter towards Bambi. She had disappeared inside the truck. Ernie had seen her too. He was trying to hand me the white pizza box in his left hand with little success. I wanted to look at my future just a little longer first.
“Do you want the pizza or the pussy?” he half-whispered.
“What did you say?” I asked as I dug into my pocket for the pizza money with one hand and slapped him on top of the head with the other, knocking his cap off in the process and revealing a shock of black tangled curls roughly the texture of Ernie the puppet’s hair.
“I said, that will be eight dollars and eighty-nine cents,” he said as he handed me the box.
I was still feeling around in my pockets for the money when I decided to take one more glance at the truck. She was standing in the opening on the passenger’s side waving Ernie’s money in the air.
“This one’s on me, Preacher. I need the tax deduction,” she said.
“Thanks” was all I could say. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have had a very nice buzz going by this time of the day and I could have come up with a better response than “thanks.” I always found that I had plenty to say once liquor had removed my inhibitions. I used to be able to charm the pants right off of them, although not this one I suspect. Recovery has its disadvantages too.
Ernie ran down the driveway and across the road to her truck and got the money faster than I thought possible. They exchanged a few words, laughed, and then she drove off. I was instantly jealous. As Ernie crossed over the road again, I walked down the driveway to meet him at his car.
Well I was born in a small town. And I can breathe in a small town.
Gonna die in this small town. And that’s prob’ly where they’ll bury me.
“Please tell me you know who that was,” I said, sounding a little more desperate than I would have liked.
“Sure, that’s Laura Matthers. Her sister Kim and me are on the homecoming court together Friday night.”
“This Friday night, as in day after tomorrow?”
“Uh huh.”
“Thanks, Ernie.”
“She’s got a boyfriend,” he said unaware of the damage that those words would do to me.
“They almost always do, Ernie.”
“Uh huh.”
I stood for a while in the middle of my driveway after Ernie drove away. The sun was setting, its fiery bite replaced by a glorious orange and pink beauty. To the east, toward Tallahassee, the Apalachicola River snaked around the corner of the Prairie Palm property. Its banks were lined with pines, cypresses, and a seemingly infinite number of other trees and plants so unique and beautiful that Elvry E. Callaway seemed justified in believing this to be the site
of the original Garden of Eden.
As I walked back up the driveway toward my little tin home, I thought how appropriate that the little tin man lived here, but I also thought that a woman that beautiful who drives a one-ton FedEx truck had to have had a tragic life. We were perfect for each other. And though I still couldn’t shake the image of those lifeless black eyes from my mind, I also had the feeling that things were heating up in the small town.
Chapter 3
The following morning, I stood in the chapel office of Potter Correctional Institution. A stack of mail and the package that housed my new computer lay on the desk before me. I moved the unopened mail to one side of my desk and set the box in the center. The box took up so little space on my small desk that I felt justified in having mistaken it for a pizza. Opening the package and extracting the computer inside released a flurry of small packing peanuts into my office, many of which were scattered abroad by the small fan oscillating on my file cabinet.
The dull gray walls surrounding me added to the illusion of a snowstorm. Watching the flying peanuts sail through the vacant room inspired a troubling thought. If as a pastor of a prestigious church in north Atlanta my ornate office had been an expression of who I was trying to be, maybe my current empty and sterile surroundings were an expression of who I really was. My office had nothing personal save three pictures that inspire me hanging on one wall: Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham, for obvious reasons, and Jimmy Carter, to remind me that the best man was not always the best man for the job. A portrait of Jesus weeping sat on the right corner of my desk, his dark eyes drinking in the sorrow and suffering of the world. Daily I read his words, “I was in prison and you visited me.”
MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH Page 2
