“You’ll let me know within the minute of finding out, won’t you, Northrup?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll bring his head to you on a platter. I’m real sorry. We’re all great admirers of yours, Miz Rice.”
“Thanks.”
Jesus. This was nice.
When I turned on the ignition the car didn’t blow up. I pulled out of the lot and glanced back at Agent Northrup waving, his ass on the line.
Then he turned, shoulders slumped.
Damned auspicious start.
* * *
Waco lies in what is referred to as the post oaks area of East Texas, though the post oaks were cleared long ago, the land denuded. I read that in the tourist guide the agent gave me along with the map. It lay opened on the passenger seat.
The eight-lane highway out of the airport was clogged, the brown ground on both sides as ugly as denuded implies and then add strip malls. But my exit came right up and within a few minutes green hills seemed to rise up out of nowhere, one after the other, and I did realize the beauty and serenity of the hill country just as Northrup had said.
I found a station playing oldies on AM. My stepfather loved rock ’n’ roll. So did I.
It was early fall, the hills lush with vegetation, and atop each one a vista, always a little bit different from the previous one. Some hills shot straight up like mossy cliffs, and some were a series of rounded stepping-stones, bare on top. Each hid something new: Fort Hood, a thriving military community that covered 340 square miles with the largest collection of soldiers and fighting machines in the world; next to it a stretched-out piece of land so flat a bulldozer might have leveled it, and in the center a town called Flat. Then, in the distance beyond Flat, I could see a perfect mound, not a hill. From a crest in the road it looked to be so symmetrical it was as though a giant’s child had filled a cake mold with damp sand and turned it over. Atop the mound, directly on its apex, a town called Mold.
While I drove, I pictured Rona Leigh looking out from the Mountain View Unit window at a view of Mount Rushmore. Funny how your mind drifts when you drive by yourself with no one to bother you and only the sound of The Doors in your ears. The mountain Rona Leigh viewed—if prisons had viewing windows, which they don’t—was no Mount Rushmore, judging from my ride through hill country.
All the tiny towns I passed were identical, all the same as Thalia in The Last Picture Show. They were beat-up but quaint. Each had a movie house too, no longer abandoned since Texas was enjoying an economic boom. The picture shows themselves hadn’t returned; the theaters were now banks or gun stores or real estate offices or, mostly, churches. Churches called The New Church of Jesus’ Love.
People preferred the twelve choices they got at the Cineplex to the one choice they’d had at the picture show.
I passed hills that had areas of chalk exposed, and then I came upon a causeway taking me over a long blue lake edged with the whitest sand that turned out to be more chalk. A sign said BELTON LAKE, and my guidebook told me it was man-made, “an impoundment of the Leon River and several creeks that flow through the area.” That was a nice idea. There were a few small boats, people fishing.
At the end of the unnamed drive, I passed an unobtrusive sign that read TEXAS INSTRUMENTS and got a glimpse of the low sprawling buildings of a corporate headquarters hidden amid the hills. Pretty. I wondered where the employees lived. Mold, maybe.
Then just rolling landscape, mile after mile, and at about the time I began to wonder where the hell this damned Gatesville was I saw a road sign right in front of the Last Supper Cemetery. Five miles to go.
I passed over an expressway, the speedy route to Waco. And then a turn past a drive-in movie that was showing four feature films. The drive-in marked the head of Main Street, Gatesville, which was not the least bit beat-up, and then there was the old movie house, spruced up, showing four more. This town hadn’t closed its movie house; it never even had to close its drive-in.
Gatesville was glossy, picturesque—shiny new banks and stores and small businesses, a new elementary school, and a renovated courthouse, “one of the finest remaining examples of Romanesque Renaissance Revival of hand-cut and carved limestone.” First I’d heard of that particular revival. The guidebook didn’t tell me what the brown trim was, but it was stone and as beautifully grained as marble. At first I thought it was polished mahogany and, when I got closer, petrified redwood.
I pulled up in front of the library, which is always a great place to talk to someone with a brain who can give you dependable directions. Librarians never say, Don’t worry, you can’t miss it. They make clear how to avoid missing it.
When I turned off my ignition, I finally saw something I hadn’t seen since I’d left DC: human beings outside their cars. Traveling through Texas it soon becomes clear that people exist in brief glimpses dashing from their cars or pickups into a store or bank. No one walks from one place to another, and certainly no one goes for a stroll. There is no casual meandering that I could detect. There are these famous road signs all over Texas warning drivers they are in a prison area and shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers. There were several such signs on the way to Gatesville. I never saw a hitchhiker, because all hitchhikers are escaped cons. If they weren’t, they’d be in a vehicle.
In the library I went to the checkout desk and asked about a map of the town, something handed out with abandon at libraries compliments of the advertisers, another plus when you need dependable directions.
The librarian immediately held one out. “Y’all lost?”
Plural. Maybe she thought I had friends out in my car. “Not yet. I hope this will help.”
“I’d be glad to help, ma’am,” she said, big friendly Texas grin.
“I’ve got a reservation at the Holiday Inn. But before I ask you how to get there, I wondered if there’s a real hotel. Here in the center of town.”
“No, ma’am, there is not. We’ve only got the motel chains. Most visitors to Gatesville—well, they like their anonymity.”
She’d broken the ice, enabling me to segue right into the questions I needed to ask.
“Is the prison in that direction then? Where the motels are?”
“Which prison are you interested in?”
“You’ve got more than one?”
“We’ve got six.”
“Oh. The women’s prison.”
“Four of the six are women’s prisons.”
“The Mountain View Unit.”
She didn’t bat an eye, just took the map from me, opened it, and spread it out on the counter. “The women’s prisons are in a cluster just here.” I leaned in. “A quarter mile down State School Road, which is two blocks up Main, that way.” She pointed.
“A quarter mile?”
“That’s right.”
“Kind of close.”
“Kind of convenient. This is a company town.”
“Is there a state school there too?”
She smiled. “That was what they told us we were gettin’ years ago when the Texas Criminal Justice Department came on up here one day and cut a quarter-mile drive from Main Street to a big old farm they’d gone and bought. When we found out they were buildin’ medium-security jailhouses, it was too late to do anything about it. So we named the road State School Road out of spite.”
“The Mountain View Unit can’t be medium security.”
“That’s right. It’s got its own designation. Death row is considered something beyond maximum security, since the only prisoners inside are sentenced to lethal injection.”
She said lethal injection in the same timbre I’d use for community service.
“You’ll know it when you see it because it’s the only unit with razor ribbon goin’ round.”
“Seven women are housed there, is what I’ve been told.”
“I don’t know the exact number. I know it’s small, but then I hear it keeps growin’ all the time. If you want my advice, ma’am, you’ll stay at the Best Western. It’s newest and i
t’s the closest to the prison, right by the entrance to the bypass. Think you’ll do better there than at the Holiday Inn.”
“Thanks. Is the bypass a road?”
“Yes, ma’am. The department decided they wanted a bypass to the Waco highway.”
“What does it bypass?”
“The town. Which is good. We don’t get the prison traffic anymore.”
“I guess you’re expecting a lot of traffic pretty soon.”
“That’s right. Anything else?”
I didn’t want to leave her on a down note. Keep your librarians happy. “What’s the reason the bypass doesn’t have a name?”
“Town couldn’t decide who to name it after. Every town meeting forever after has been a fight over what to call it.”
“Who would you like it named after?”
“Emily Morgan.”
“Who was…?”
“She was a whore who kept Santa Anna so busy that the Texas Rangers were able to turn around and defeat his army after he took the Alamo. Never would have been a Republic without her.”
Texans have such a sense of humor. As opposed to couth. I decided to get a rise out of her.
“Could I walk from the Best Western to the prison?”
“Walk?”
“Yes.”
“No, ma’am, you can’t. No sidewalks.”
“I don’t mind walking along the side of the road.”
“You mind getting picked up by the Highway Patrol? They’ll figure you just strolled off the fields. But if you don’t like drivin’ you could ride.”
“There’s a bus?”
“I meant a horse.” She was having fun with me too.
“I don’t have one.”
“Want to hire one?”
“I’ll drive.”
We shook hands and I thanked her for the map. I took a look through it. Holiday Inn should reconsider their decision not to advertise there like Best Western did.
I drove two blocks and took a left onto State School Road. There in back of Main Street was a little cluster of houses, the first Gatesville housing development. The closer I got to the prisons, the newer the developments, small houses neatly tended. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division, employs more personnel than any other business in the state. Learned that in my guidebook.
I drove up over a hill where I could see a collection of buildings not unlike the Texas Instruments headquarters, except the surrounding area had been cleared of any trees and foliage. To my right was a sign that directed visitors to a boxlike reception building. I bypassed it.
Tilled fields spread out to a far distance, and women in loose white gauzy tops and white pants—thin fabric blowing in the wind—were hoeing. A few were on horseback. The prisoners appeared to be supervised by their own. There must have been several hundred women farming. I think only one of them wasn’t black or Hispanic. She could have been, though, with her hair dyed blond.
Glittering in the sunshine was coiled razor ribbon atop the only fence, a fence encircling just one of the buildings, like the librarian said. But there was no mountain in sight of the Mountain View Women’s Unit. No Mount Rushmore for sure. The tallest thing I could see was a two-story guard tower by the gate in the fence. I turned into a short driveway that led to a parking lot directly in front of the gate. Another sign. This one was black with red letters: WARNING! ONCE YOU CROSS THIS POINT YOU HAVE CONSENTED TO A SEARCH.
Four cars were parked in the lot, with room for maybe a dozen more. I angled into a space and watched the women in the fields. They didn’t look at me, they worked. The sky was bright autumn blue; there was no sound. All was calm and peaceful.
I got out and walked up the short sidewalk to the gate. At the head of the sidewalk, yet another sign, same colors as the last: BEWARE! YOU ARE ENTERING AN AREA WHERE COMMUNICABLE DISEASES INCLUDING HIV ARE PRESENT.
Something told me I wouldn’t have found the signs of this prison industrial complex on the driveway entering the corporate industrial complex that was Texas Instruments.
3
The guard in the tower did not look my way as I approached the gate. Security was not what I expected. Maybe when a prison is the size of a beach bungalow, things get scaled down. I rang a bell. A second guard came out of the low building. I identified myself, showed him my ID, and told him I was there to see the warden. He introduced himself. “Corrections Officer Captain Harley Shank, Agent. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He told me the warden was in his home. He pointed. On the other side of the Mountain View Unit, almost hidden by the only grove of trees left standing, was an old farmhouse, yellow with white shutters. I thanked him.
“More than welcome, ma’am. Uh … Agent.”
I could have walked to the house, but as my existence hadn’t aroused anyone’s particular interest, since obviously word had been passed that I was coming, I didn’t want to act suspicious. I got back in the car.
The warden wasn’t home. The woman who answered the door was apologetic. She wore the same white clothes as the women in the fields. House slave.
She said, “Sorry, ma’am, warden been called away. He back in one hour, give or take. He say, tell you to visit with the chaplain if you like. ‘Fore he gets back. Reverend Lacker. Chaplain expectin’ you.”
“Where would I find the chaplain?”
“He livin’ in town now. In a rented room.”
“Why is that?”
“You might ask the man, ma’am.”
She gave me an address on a slip of paper. Reverend Lacker lived on Main Street. Before I’d left for Texas, I learned that Rona Leigh’s chaplain was her husband, had married her some time ago. I drove back into town, retracing my route up State School Road.
* * *
A large and battered Bible was situated front and center on the coffee table next to a bowl of Wheat Thins and a pitcher of lemonade. He poured two glasses.
He said, “Though I like to think my guidance has prevailed, Rona Leigh’s acceptance of Jesus Christ as her savior is the thing that showed her what makes up a human being. Showed her what a human being is. How a human being acts. How a human being should be. This is something she had to learn, since she’d never been taught what the rest of us are taught before we go on to take such things for granted. She has worked long and prayed hard to become a human being.
“Previous to her spiritual rebirth, she was not a human being but, instead, an empty vessel inhabited by Satan. The devil made her his den. His cave. When Rona Leigh put herself into the hands of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, she threw off Satan and was born again, praise God.”
Of course. He smiled. Benevolently, I’d have to say. Made me think of the Beatles, Paul McCartney, cherubic but smooth. Full of smiles. Beaming relentlessly. How everyone had loved the precious mopheads. The Christian right had noted the phenomenon.
I said to the radiant chaplain, “Reverend Lacker—”
He interrupted me. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I have been temporarily relieved of my duty as the unit chaplain while I guide my wife. Until my ministry is returned to me I prefer your calling me by my first name, Vernon. Not Reverend Lacker, thank you.”
He smiled a new smile, contrite.
Now I knew of three Vernons—Elvis’s father, Vernon Jordan, and this one, Rona Leigh Glueck’s husband.
I said, “Well, then, Vernon, you can call me Poppy.”
I could tell by his face that he wouldn’t. He didn’t.
This third Vernon said, “To put things more simply where it concerns my wife, Miz Rice, let me use the purest words of Jesus Christ through the witness of John, chapter three, verses five through seven: “I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not wonder that I said to thee, ‘You must be born again.’”
I listened politely. It is so absolutely amazing that men
have gotten away with disregarding women’s sole role in childbirth in order to bestow the real credit upon the baptizers—themselves.
Vernon reached into the bowl of Wheat Thins. He grabbed up a handful and started munching. I was relieved that the bowl hadn’t been filled with pork rinds. I can only handle so many clichés. But I needed to ingratiate myself with him. I needed trusted access to his wife.
“Vernon, why should it be as simple as that? How could anyone accused of such a bloody and brutal crime find redemption with such ease?”
He took my words in. Something registered in his eyes. Surprise. His gaze took me in. Me the human being, not me the nonentity he intended to blow off with scripture. The smile plastered on his face eased up. He said, “Could it be you came here meaning to take me seriously?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He studied my eyes. He said, “I fear people like you … women like you … Excuse me.” He breathed in deeply, gave a long look skyward through the ceiling, and then his eyes met mine again.
“I pray to the Lord God to help me keep from sliding into the sin of the naysayer. For making judgments I must leave to Him. Judge not lest ye be judged. I neglect to heed His words, may He forgive me my limitations. But … well, you see, ma’am, women who are as worldly as yourself treat me with derision.”
I had to make this guy my friend. “Their loss, reverend.”
He didn’t correct me this time. “Let me be candid, ma’am. Those very women happen to frighten me. As do you, though you resist making judgments, a Christian virtue I surely need to pray for more deliberately, as I just said.”
“My job is to resist making judgments till all the facts are in. Making sure all the facts are in and that the facts are true.”
“And that is my job as well. But I didn’t mean to say—”
“Reverend Lacker, tell me please, what specifically do you fear? I don’t understand.”
“Literally?”
I wondered what that was supposed to mean. I didn’t ask. “Yes.”
“I fear that you will freeze my sperm and render me obsolete.”
Love Her Madly Page 4
