“Oh,” Marie says. “A friend of Roscoe’s? Come in. And letters? Where have they been? We’ve been waiting.”
Gerald shakes Ed’s hand the way I once taught him, firm and strong.
Wilson is already fed. He is out on the farm. He is in the barn working on a plow. He is repairing fence along the north pasture. He is walking rows, looking for signs of pest or disease. He is there, having escaped the mines—a quick run one night from his bunk, his papers long lost so nobody could track him.
The farm has stalled, going back a decade. They’ve gotten plow horses and mules, and they are barely getting by. This is how it must be without electricity, without power.
Ed eats quick, and he does not stay. Marie and Gerald wave him good-bye from the porch. Marie sits down to read my letters—every one of them—then she picks up paper and pen to respond. She writes for days, stopping only to shove paper into envelope, and envelope into the hand of a boy she’s hired for delivery. That boy brings them directly here. He walks into Kilby’s front offices and says, “Mail for Roscoe T Martin. I have directions to deliver it in person.”
“Right this way,” the warden says.
They find me in the barn mucking and milking, or in the library shelving. I’ll give the boy a few coins for his trouble, and Bondurant and Rash will lend me the afternoons for reading.
I will get my early parole, as Ed said I would, and I will go home to Marie and Gerald, and we will be as we never were—my time here in Kilby repairing us without our knowing.
Ed will catch a train to the Atlantic Ocean. “Atlantic Ocean,” he’ll say at the ticket window. “Quickest route you’ve got.” He’ll pay for his ticket with cash he earned in here. The man behind the glass will notice Ed’s missing thumbnail. He’ll notice the way Ed’s fingers crack along their edges, how they crack but don’t bleed. That man will never guess that those hands belong to Ed Mason, the man who built Alabama’s first electric chair. He’ll brush those hands, this ticket man in his booth. He’ll touch Ed’s hands as they make their exchange, and he won’t know what he’s touching.
I will never see Ed again, and it is still not morning.
IN the library, Rash says, “You sure are quiet today, Mr. Martin.” The events of last night feel as though they occurred months ago, years.
“I couldn’t find sleep.”
“You weren’t alone there.”
I picture Rash unable to sleep in his tiny village home. Was he thinking about Horace DeVaughn’s death, and with it, Ed’s departure? Like me, was he searching for a flicker in the lights?
In answer, he says, “Mason will be back before you know it.” His voice lulls as though to soothe a boy whose best friend’s gone on holiday. Is my isolation that clear?
“Right,” I say, wheeling away the shelving cart. I will suffer Ed’s absence on my own.
Today’s returned books are mostly fiction, barely read by the look of their date stamps. I slide them into their spots, something flimsy in their labels—that giant F, with the first three letters of the author’s last name. They are missing the balance of numbers.
I’ve moved over to the nonfiction, the 000s with their reference books. All of the dictionaries have pages torn loose. I can’t trace a pattern. Sometimes, it’s a page from the P’s, other times from the M’s, the A’s, the C’s. There are words these men must know and love enough to possess, which is hopeful, I think. Every time I replace a dictionary, I flip through it, trying to find the page I’d tear out. It will come to me, I’m sure.
Rash doesn’t seem to mind too much this destruction of library property. He includes new dictionaries with every book order.
I’m glancing through the Q–R section—quiverer (one that quivers), quoin (angle, corner), quop (throb), and on through quota and quotation and quoz (something queer or absurd); an interesting page, but not mine to tear out—when Rash’s voice interrupts.
“Roscoe,” he shouts. “Come on back to the desk.”
The opposite page begins the R’s, and I take in enough of them to judge the page mine or not. Rabbit is here, and rabble and rabies. Not mine. I leave the cart where it is and walk the narrow aisle back to Rash’s desk.
Taylor is standing there, the bulk of him at odds with the small spaces of the library. Here is the man of nineteen steps. He’s left me alone so long, I’d assumed I was free of him.
“Sir,” I say.
Rash speaks. “Deputy Taylor is looking for information about dogs. He needs someone to gather it together and dictate it to him. He’s asked for you specifically.”
Taylor looks me over like one of the calves at auction. “Martin, I’m looking for you to do the reading and then tell me the good bits. Think you can do that?”
“So long as I know what you’re looking for.”
“You being smart, boy?”
“No, sir.”
He squints his eyes and looks over at Rash. “He being smart with me?”
“I don’t believe so, Deputy.”
“All right. You get all the information you can and report back the parts worth hearing. That clear enough for you?”
It isn’t clear at all—what about dogs does he want to know?—but I nod my head for him anyway, hoping that Rash will help if the deputy doesn’t provide anything else. Rash must have some idea.
“All right, then,” Taylor says. “You’re the one, then. Now, you listen clear, hear me? Deputy over at Atmore’s something of a bastard, and he’s quick to remind me how he’s never lost a man—don’t you repeat none of this, you hear?—his dogs have tracked every single one. Got a real solid brag going, old Mr. Atmore.
“We’ve got a tougher course over here, Martin. You see, there’s thicker cover, more chances for the dogs to get called off on some other scent. You saw it that day you were out there. Lots of distractions. My dogs have done more than Atmore’s, but they couldn’t follow that Kelly stink, couldn’t get themselves going. Can’t let another man get by. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
The convict he’s talking about, this long-timer named Kelly, he’d gotten a tip from one of Taylor’s dog boys a couple years back—get someone else’s scent on you, and it’ll throw off the dogs. Kelly enlisted a younger man named McCullers to be his accomplice, and the two of them made a run from the fields one day, taking off together in the same direction. Kelly had McCullers wearing his clothes. So when Taylor set the dogs on the two different scents, they got disoriented. Kelly and McCullers crisscrossed their paths until Kelly finally broke off and McCullers sat down, waiting patiently for the dogs to find him. Supposedly, those dogs stayed put once they came upon McCullers, sure that they’d found the right scent.
McCullers was all gloat back in the yard. “Got Kelly freed,” he kept saying. “You bastards just wait. We’ve got ourselves a plan. I’ll be gone before you know it.”
“Kelly made you his slut,” Ed told him. “And you didn’t even ask for payment up front.” Got a big laugh from the mess, and McCullers made a lunge across the table, but the guards already had their eyes on him, so he only got one swing in before they hauled him away. They put him in the doghouse for a day or two, and over the next month we watched the pride seep out of him slow.
“You still here, Cully?” someone would ask.
“Where’s that friend of yours?”
“Hasn’t dug that tunnel for you yet, huh?”
McCullers is still here.
I thought only he carried the shame of that escape, but I realize it’s sitting heavy on Taylor, too. It’s his failure, just as it’s McCullers’s mistake.
And now, Taylor wants guidance from books.
“Here.” He pulls a scrap of paper out of his chest pocket. “Atmore spoke highly of this one.” A title and an author are written in sloppy writing. “I want you reporting to me soon as you can. Tell Rash here when y
ou’ve got something I can use, and I’ll have him send you on out to the pens.”
“Yes, sir.” I don’t want my Fridays in the library to turn into time with Taylor and his dogs, but I know better than to question these orders. Even Rash cowers before Taylor. We are all under his supervision.
Taylor nods and turns away, discarding us as he does any subordinate. Back to work, his back says.
When the door closes behind Taylor, Rash shakes his head. “You know why he needs someone to get his books, don’t you?”
“Imagine he’s busy.”
“That may be, but think about it now. He’s requesting books and verbal summaries. He wants you to tell him what you’ve found rather than give him a written report. Why’s that?” Rash is telling me Taylor can’t read. “Amazing, isn’t it? I’ve known for a while. He came in here for something about horse care a few years ago and made me read half a book to him. Don’t you go spreading this around, now. And you better never mention it to Taylor. I can’t even imagine the punishment he’d think up for such an attack on his reputation.”
I’ve watched any number of folks bluff their way into looking literate—both inside and outside these walls. Memory has a way of covering bases. People can get the look of a word without its letters making any sense, like Gerald with his early books. At first, all he was doing was reciting from memory the words his mother had read to him. He matched the words to the pictures. He didn’t read. He remembered. Some folks never make it past that step, and most times they figure out how to get others to do the work for them, like Taylor. He can get someone in the library to pull information for him so long as he paints it like a matter of time he doesn’t have. I’m a busy man, see, got me these inmates to watch and these dogs to train, don’t have the time to go reading.
CHAPTER 11
Marie knew Roscoe’s sentence. The newspapers reported it—such big news for their small county—but even before those inked words made their way into her hands, Sheriff Eddings came calling.
“It’s long, Marie. He’ll be gone awhile.”
“I assumed that.”
Eddings had rubbed at his wide neck. “You ought to see him off.”
“Oh?”
“Come on, Marie. I’ve known your family my whole life. Hell, I’ve known you since the day you were born. You’re not one to abandon your own.”
Marie hadn’t realized Eddings had been paying so close attention, or that he’d even had the mind and heart to make such observations. She tried to put herself at his vantage, watching over her family, its rises and dips. He had seen Marie’s mother grow sick, stopping by the house once to pay his respects. He’d donned one of the cotton masks everyone had to wear when entering her sickroom, and he’d stood close by her bed. Marie had watched from her place in the hall, noting that he was the only person outside the family to have gone inside. Her mother was contagious, and because Marie was a child, she was not allowed past the threshold. Influenza had taken one of her classmates already, and the younger sister of another. Even in the hall, Marie had to wear the mask. She would stand guard until Moa or her father shooed her away. “Go on and play,” they would tell her. “Your mother’s going to be better very soon.” They had to have known they were lying, but even as a child Marie had forgiven them. We mask what we don’t want to see.
Did Eddings remember seeing her in that hallway, both of them so much younger?
When her mother had finally died—wheezy and thin and angular—Marie had helped Moa in the kitchen, the two of them preparing the food for the wake, Moa’s most recent baby in a crib by the back door.
“You can talk to me, should you want to.”
“I know.”
Marie wasn’t one to talk, though. Her mother had known it before she died, and her father knew it as well. Small losses had been met with silence since she was a babe—her parents had loved to tell the stories of her stoic eyes and stubborn lips—and a loss so grand as her mother only brought her deeper into those same mechanisms. Talking did little. Dwelling did less. Gloved and masked, Moa took the sheets to the burn pile out back, and when she returned, Marie was already remaking her mother’s bed.
“Marie,” Moa remonstrated.
“No one’s going to want to see this stripped bare, and Father will want to sleep on a mattress again, anyway.”
Moa had dropped her scolding to hold Marie close, and Marie had allowed herself some comfort in the thick smells of Moa’s clothes, the ham and onions and biscuits, the sifty texture of flour entrenched in the fabric. Marie pulled away quickly though. There were still foods to cook, guests to welcome, hands to shake, condolences to accept. Her father was a mess. She would be strong. She was like her mother in that regard.
“I’ve volunteered to drive him myself,” Sheriff Eddings said. “You could ride along. I can give you some time together before they take him inside.”
“Time for what?”
“I don’t know, Marie. There’s an oak grove right there on the grounds. Maybe you’d want to take along a picnic? Maybe go for a walk?”
Marie pictured herself riding in Eddings’s car, sitting in the back with Roscoe, the sheriff their driver, a picnic basket on the front passenger seat, a blanket folded neatly underneath it. She saw them pulling up to a formidable institution, gray and brooding, windowless and wide. She’d never seen a prison. She would step from the sheriff’s car and pluck the basket from the front seat. Roscoe would take it from her hands because he was chivalrous. She would hold the blanket. They would walk into the trees—craggy, ancient oaks, shedding branches and leaves—until they found a place far from view, and there she’d spread the blanket. It would be the blue one from their bed.
“Come sit,” she’d say, and Roscoe would join her.
What would she cook for that last meal? A whole chicken, her bacon-and-maple beans, corn bread, a peach pie. She would make coffee, and they would drink it out of tin mugs.
Would they hold each other, her hands seeking out an ankle or a wrist, clutching hold of him like something disappearing? The last time she’d touched him was the night Sheriff Eddings had come, her hand on his where it squeezed her shoulder. “It’s nothing,” he’d said. “I’ll be right back.”
It had been everything.
“A picnic?” Marie asked Eddings.
“Jesus, Marie, the hell if I know what married folks do before one of them heads off to prison. I just thought you’d have it in you to see him again before he goes.” Eddings tugged again at his neck. “He’s having a hard time.”
“So are we.”
Eddings held his hands up, something of a convict himself, caught out at the end of a chase. “It’s your choice, Marie.”
It was her choice, but then a voice startled them both. It came through the screen door from inside, wary and disappointed. “Dad’s on his way to prison?”
“Yes, love.”
“And we can go?”
“No, love,” Marie replied. “We can’t.”
Marie had been honest with her son about Roscoe’s crime. “There’s one thing I need you to understand,” she had said to him early. “All the hardship we’re facing now—Wilson on trial and your father gone and the electricity cut off and the back payments we owe—it is your father’s fault.” She had held on to him, squeezing gently, willing the words into his mind. He’d been hers alone for so many years, trusting her, needing her, loving her—he must remember that time, the time before electricity, the time before they’d both opened their arms to the man she’d chosen to push away. “It was his fault,” she repeated.
“We can’t go see him?” Gerald asked through the screen door, his voice quiet and mistrusting.
“No.”
“But it’s like we’re abandoning him.”
There was that word again—abandonment. Marie hadn’t heard Gerald use it before. Maybe he’d been listeni
ng in since Eddings arrived, ingesting that word as one of his own. But he didn’t know that sometimes abandonment was right. It was necessary. Marie’d had to abandon the memory of her mother in order to survive the ensuing days. She’d had to abandon the farm for the university in order to get a job that could sustain her through poor growing seasons and a shortage of labor, bad seeds and too little rain. She’d had to abandon one thing in order to acquire something that would remain. Like her own marriage, she’d once thought, and her own children—they would preserve her.
She’d never intended to return to her father’s land.
But then Gerald had been born.
“Your father is the one who abandoned us,” she said to her son. “You’ll see that.”
“All right, Ma.”
Gerald stared out at them through the screen door with his child’s hooded eyes, his chapped lips, his mussed hair.
“Well, I did what I could,” Eddings said. “I won’t admit to knowing why you’re holding the anger you’re holding, but I suppose I can’t judge it none. You let me know if you need anything, Marie.”
“Thank you, Tom.” Marie would have liked to have given him some explanation, should she have known how to explain it—this place where she found herself. She could trace it to her mother’s strength and vibrancy, followed by her sickness. Isolation and austerity had bloomed in that hallway and then paused when Marie found herself in the Lock 12 village, Roscoe across from her in the mess hall, then a home of their own, and a belly. But it rekindled itself after Gerald’s birth, and Marie returned to it like a hungry stray. When her father died, and the land became hers, she knew she would go back, even if Roscoe didn’t follow. A part of her had wished he’d stayed behind at the dam, tinkering with his electrical currents, hunkering down in that seat of power. She would have known how to play the solitary woman. She would play it now.
But then a part of her had hoped they would be able to rebuild, that they could do this thing together—farming—while letting their other professions go. She’d brought them here for both their sakes, his as much as hers, and his failure to acclimate had delivered them to their current poor fortune—and the Grices’ poor fortune. Wilson’s arrest and incarceration rooted all the other veins of Marie’s anger, Roscoe condemning him to the very life her father had helped him to avoid.
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