Mr. 60%

by Clete Barrett Smith

  Matt made a couple more trips across the border for Big Ed. His nerves at the border crossing got worse, but Matt knew he had to deal with it, just part of the job. Money was no longer a problem.

  Jack deteriorated. The times he spent awake got further and further apart and lost all semblance of a regular schedule. The times when he was both awake and lucid were even rarer. He often spoke of people and places from his past. Many times, Matt could not understand the words at all.

  Jack ate less each day. Even though Matt wouldn’t have believed it possible, Jack somehow lost even more weight. He stopped going into the living room and spent his days and nights in the bedroom. Matt bought a foam pad and spread it out next to the bed and slept there each night.

  Jack hardly ever needed to go to the bathroom anymore, but whenever he did he used the portable toilet. Matt had to lift him out of bed, Jack clutching feebly at his shoulders, and set him on the potty. Often Jack would fall asleep sitting there, without having done anything. Matt learned the hard way to leave him there until he woke up again and did his business; otherwise he just went in his bed. Matt left a magazine or some handouts from his classes and a flashlight in the bedroom. He frequently sat and read, sometimes for an hour or two in the middle of the night, while Jack dozed on the portable toilet or stared slack-jawed at the wall.

  One night Matt was sitting on the bed, reading an old copy of Sports Illustrated. Jack had been dozing on the potty for over an hour. Matt read the same paragraph over and over, trying to stay awake. He sat very close, didn’t want Jack to roll off and hurt himself. It had been over two days since Jack had said a word that Matt could understand.

  “Matt,” Jack said, clear as anything.

  Matt dropped the magazine and looked at his uncle. Jack’s eyes were fixed on Matt, totally alert, searching his face. Matt couldn’t hold back an irrational surge of hope that Jack was getting better. It only lasted a moment. “Yeah, Jack?”

  Jack sighed heavily. He fixed Matt with his stare. “You never told me it was going to be like this.”

  Matt’s eyes burned. His breath caught in his throat before he was able to force the words out in a whisper. “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  But Jack’s face had gone slack again, and the light faded from his eyes. He dozed on the potty for another half hour before nature took over. Matt cleaned him up and eased him back into bed.

  Matt and Amanda were playing cards in the living room on a Saturday morning when they heard Jack tapping his spoon against the lamp in the bedroom. They walked down the hall together.

  Jack tried to speak but all that came out was a raspy wheeze. Matt and Amanda had both found that the best way to deal with this was to sit beside him on the bed and speak soothingly to him until he gave up the effort and fell back asleep. It usually didn’t take long.

  But his wheezing went on and on this time. He became agitated.

  “I think he’s really trying to tell us something,” Amanda said. “Prop him up. I’ll get some water.”

  Matt lifted Jack up and wedged some pillows behind his shoulders. Amanda helped him sip at a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” Jack whispered. He sipped a little more. “I need something.”

  “What, Jack?”

  “Pencil…pad a paper.” Jack rested, collected himself. “Need to write.”

  Matt rummaged through the drawers in the kitchen and brought Jack what he needed. Matt sat on the bed, Amanda in a chair, while Jack pressed the pencil to the paper. Jack paused and looked up at them. “Guy needs…little privacy.”

  “No problem,” Matt said. He and Amanda went back into the living room.

  Matt assumed that Jack would fall asleep, but half an hour later Jack tapped his spoon again and they returned to the bedroom. Jack was clutching a piece of yellow legal-sized paper in one hand. “Envelope,” he whispered. When Matt complied, Jack folded up the paper as best he could, his hands trembling, and with a concentrated effort managed to shove the paper into the envelope. His tongue was too dry to moisten the sticky flap enough to keep it closed. Amanda stepped in and did it for him, neatly sealing the envelope.

  “Thanks, dear,” Jack said. He motioned for Matt to come closer. Matt knelt on the edge of the bed. “Need a favor,” Jack said.

  “Anything.”

  “Need you…take this…to your mother.”

  Matt pressed his mouth into a line. He instinctively glanced over at Amanda for a second, then leaned into Jack and lowered his voice. “Jack, we’ve talked about this before. You know I don’t want—”

  Jack lifted one hand from the bed, cutting Matt off. “Sorry, kid…guy in the deathbed…makes the rules.” He smiled at that and for an instant looked like the Jack that Matt remembered.

  Matt stared at the envelope in his hands. He didn’t look up when he mumbled, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you.”

  Jack shook his head. He reached out and touched Matt’s hand until Matt looked him in the eye again. “No. Do it…for you.”

  —

  Matt drove the Buick Electra for over an hour on the freeway until he spotted the green sign with white letters. STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY.

  The squat gray building sat all by itself, surrounded by miles of fields and farmland. Matt eased the car through the gate in the twenty-foot security fence. He pulled up to the guards’ station.

  Matt answered a series of questions, and Amanda’s car was briefly searched. He parked in the visitors’ lot, then walked through another security fence to the main building.

  The faded checkerboard floor tile, drab white walls and strips of fluorescent lighting all reminded him of high school. He filled out a form at reception, showed his driver’s license, then underwent a brief frisking. It didn’t take long; all he had was the clothes he was wearing and Jack’s letter.

  Matt was led to the visitors’ room, a square, featureless area with small tables and chairs spaced evenly throughout. He was half an hour early for visiting hours and the room was empty. He sat at one of the tables and waited.

  He folded his hands on the table and kept his eyes focused there, but it was impossible to block out the memories of this room; the first time he had visited, so angry at his mom that he had hardly been able to look at her. The lame explanations and excuses for the shit she did were so much less convincing here than they had been at home.

  For the first couple of years that Matt had lived with Jack, his uncle had insisted that he visit at least once every three months. Maybe if he had been a little kid at the time, it might have worked. He might have been happy for the chance to at least see his mom. But he was thirteen then, too angry to even try to enjoy the visits. When he turned sixteen, Jack said he could make up his own mind. Matt hadn’t been back since.

  Eventually the room started filling up. Three women who looked to be in their twenties gathered at one table. An elderly woman with three small children, the kids arguing noisily in Spanish. A middle-aged man, alone. Matt glanced at the clock. With two minutes to go until visiting hours, nearly all the tables were filled up.

  Matt knew the drill. The thick security door buzzed and a guard in a green uniform stepped through. Behind him, standing single file in the hallway beyond, were the female prisoners. Only the first one in line was visible, though, a slim Latina woman in dull blue prison garb. The guard stood at the door and waved her through, and she walked to the elderly woman and the three children, who mobbed her. The elderly woman stood up on her toes to kiss the woman’s cheek while the kids clutched fiercely at her legs, the tallest one reaching up to hug her around the waist. The prisoner smiled and managed to wade through everyone and sit down, the kids immediately piling onto her lap.

  The next woman in line stepped forward. She had frizzy hair and dark circles under her eyes, and even though she looked like she was in her forties, there were way too many lines on her face. The guard nodded and she drifted off to one of the tables in the back of the room.

  Mat
t watched as each woman entered the room to find her family or friends. Totally against his will, a surge of hope rushed through him. But hope for what? That she would have figured anything out? That she actually had some sort of a plan for after she got released? That she’d be so glad to see him that maybe they could have a real conversation? He wasn’t sure. He tried to hold on to the anger, to keep it in the front of his mind. It should have been easier to do.

  One by one, the women kept entering and sitting at the tables. Soon the entire room was filled with a soft roar of conversation. Matt watched as a heavyset woman entered and sat down with the middle-aged man. Then the guard pushed the door until it clanged shut.

  Matt looked around, confused. Had he missed her?

  He stood and walked to the guard. “Hey, I was waiting for someone. Has there been, I don’t know, some kind of mistake?”

  “Name?”

  “Matt Nolan.”

  “No, the name of the inmate.”

  “Cassie—Cassandra Nolan.”

  The guard looked at the clipboard he was holding. “Nolan…Nolan…let me see.” He flipped through several pages. “I don’t see…oh, wait, here it is.” The guard frowned, then looked up at Matt. “Cassandra Nolan lost her visiting day privileges this month. Disciplinary action.” He looked at his clipboard again. “She’ll be eligible to receive visitors again three weeks from today.” All the air left Matt. He couldn’t speak, just looked at the guard. “Sorry, guy. Do you have anything you’d like to leave for her? I can make sure she gets it.”

  Matt looked at the envelope in his hand. He shook his head, stuffed the letter in his pocket, then turned and walked through the door for civilians.

  —

  Matt stalked back to the car, his vision narrowed down to one little pinprick of light just ahead of him.

  The anger burned through his body, but not for his mother. The anger was for himself, for being stupid enough to believe, for even a second, in a glimmer of hope. To wish for even a second that things might be different. He should have known that Cassie Nolan could figure out how to be absent even when she was a captive audience, that she could manage to be a shitty mother, even on visiting day.

  —

  Matt sat behind the wheel of the Buick for several minutes, not quite trusting himself to drive yet.

  He pulled the bent envelope from his pocket. He felt a twinge of guilt for ripping the flap open, but it quickly passed. Maybe something in there could help him give Jack what he needed as he neared the end. Or maybe there was something that could help Matt understand, even a tiny bit, how his mother could have ended up like this.

  He removed the yellow paper, his heart racing for some reason. He unfolded the letter and…nothing. Just a mishmash of meaningless scribbles, like when toddlers first pretend to write.

  Matt crumpled up the paper and tossed it out the window before driving away.

  Another week passed. During the rare times when Jack was coherent for a few moments, he didn’t ask about the trip to the prison. Matt didn’t remind him.

  Matt had trouble sleeping. He usually stayed up all night watching Jack and then dozed for a couple of hours at a time in the afternoons when Amanda was there.

  Neither Matt nor Amanda could get Jack to swallow his medicine, but there was no noticeable effect, no more screaming pain fits. He was in a place beyond pain.

  One night, a couple of hours after Amanda had left, Matt was reading a magazine on the floor beside Jack’s bed. Jack drew in a long, shaky breath. And then there was silence.

  Matt lay on the floor, waiting for the next breath. When it didn’t come he got up on his knees and looked at Jack. He lay there, his face completely slack, totally silent.

  So this is what it looks like. Death. Matt was dazed. There was no sadness, no relief. Just watching Jack lie there. He did not think of it yet as Jack’s body.

  And then Jack shattered the silence, sucking in a loud, raspy breath. Matt flinched, and the sadness was there, overwhelming him. And finally, the tears.

  Jack was quiet again, not breathing, for five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Matt didn’t breathe, either, waiting. He thought this must be it when Jack pulled in another ragged, horrible breath.

  It continued all night, the impossibly long pauses interrupted by short bursts of tortured wheezing. Matt watched Jack die a thousand times that night.

  —

  The light that filtered in through the blinds was gray when Jack stopped breathing for the final time. During the pause afterward, Matt waited for the next wheeze to rip up his heart some more. The silence stretched for several minutes before Matt admitted to himself that it really was over this time.

  He was going to reach out and touch Jack, but when he looked down he realized that he was holding Jack’s hand, had been holding it all night.

  Matt sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. He didn’t know yet how he was supposed to feel. He wasn’t any sadder than he had been yesterday, or last week. He just felt dazed.

  When he finally got up, he pulled the quilt over Jack’s face. He plodded down the hall into the kitchen area. He stared at the fridge and the cupboards, uncomprehending. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything, or even what the desire to eat felt like.

  He lowered himself onto a kitchen chair and stared at the trailer. It seemed different this morning. Before, it had been so tiny, so cramped. He and Jack had always been bumping into each other, competing for storage space and breathing room, before Jack had gotten sick. As Matt grew bigger throughout his teenage years, the trailer had seemed to be shrinking around him, suffocating him.

  Now it was cavernous.

  —

  Matt thought about getting up, moving to the couch, but that seemed like it would require too much effort. Grief had not taken over his mind yet—maybe it was too soon—but it had definitely settled into his body. He felt sluggish to the point of paralysis.

  He slowly lifted his head and looked at the clock. Again. It was only two minutes later than the last time he had checked.

  He went over the numbers in his head. Amanda’s last morning class would be over in nine minutes. It would take at least five minutes to get the Buick out of the student parking lot, given the lunchtime rush. Then five more to drive to the trailer park. Throw in a few more minutes because she wasn’t the fastest walker in the world. But half an hour should be a safe guess. Another half hour and he wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.

  Part of Matt’s mind was disgusted for this weakness. For thinking that being around another person would help, for allowing himself to form a bond with someone when those bonds always fell apart, one way or another.

  He told that part of his mind to shut the fuck up. Amanda had earned the right to be here today.

  —

  When Matt heard tires crunching through the gravel of the trailer park road he pushed himself out of his seat and looked out the kitchen window, even though only a couple of minutes had passed and it was way too early for her to show up. But it was just the old pickup truck from three trailers down. Matt shook his head, couldn’t believe he was acting like some kind of damn puppy.

  When the next two cars drove through the park Matt stayed at the kitchen table, waiting to hear if one of them would stop at the trailer. He told himself to play it cool but he couldn’t control his heart, which sped up when the cars got near. But both of them just drove on past.

  Matt moved to the couch. He lay down, and even though he didn’t feel tired, the sheer exhaustion from having stayed up each night to watch Jack took over and he fell asleep.

  A knock on the door jerked him instantly awake from a deep sleep. Two thoughts hit him simultaneously. The first was Jack is dead, and the realization was a hard, cold lump in the middle of his belly. The second was She’s finally here. This thought surprised and frightened him. He’d thought he was used to being alone, that he could handle it. But this was different. This wasn’t the alone that he felt at school, surrounded
by people who didn’t matter. He always had Jack back at the trailer, so being alone at school was a choice, part of the necessary barrier between him and the idiots he had to deal with there.

  Now that Jack was gone, the aloneness had changed. It was inside him now. It was feeding on whatever it could find in there, until Matt felt emptier and emptier. Even though he knew it was ridiculous to feel this way, he wanted to see Amanda to make sure he didn’t disappear.

  Matt rolled off the couch and opened the front door. Standing outside was Janice, smacking her gum and holding her cigarette.

  “Hey, kid,” she said.

  Matt just stared at her.

  Janice tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. She gestured with the cigarette hand, palm up, and waited for Matt to say something. Eventually, she said, “First of the month. Ringin’ any bells?”

  Matt turned, leaving Janice standing outside, and walked mechanically to the closet. He found his jar, stuffed full of cash, and pulled out the necessary bills. He returned to the doorway and held them out to Janice.

  “I didn’t used to have to remind you so much, ya know,” Janice said, pocketing the bills. She looked back up at him and her eyes softened around the edges, then crinkled up in concern. “You doin’ okay, kid?”

  Matt nodded.

  “You sure?” Janice tilted her head again. “You, uh, you need anything?”

  “No.”

  Matt shut the door. He returned to the couch to lie down, but sleep did not come to him again.

  Matt checked the clock less and less frequently. When nearly two hours had passed since the final bell of the school day, he admitted to himself that Amanda wasn’t going to show up.

  The anger helped. It rushed in like a wave and washed away all the useless emotions. Sadness and self-pity and fear. What good was it to ever feel shit like that?

  The anger helped sharpen his thinking. You can only count on yourself. If you expect someone else to help you through the shit, it’s only going to get worse.