Black River

by S. M. Hulse

  He’d gotten better. Of course he had, twenty years gone by, twenty years of daily practice. Farmer had always been a solid rhythm guitarist. It was an underappreciated skill, and vital to the band, but not especially showy. The breaks Farmer had taken on the bluegrass numbers had been competent but fairly simple, anything more than basic fingerpicking beyond his reach. Now he played quickly and clearly, and though there was still a hint of the rote about his playing—Wes would bet good money that Farmer always played a given tune exactly the same way—his fingers were fast and clean on the strings. Even now, he couldn’t hold a candle to the way Lane or Wes had played back in the day, but he’d come into his own as a musician. He seemed proud of it, though he was careful to check the pride so it showed only in the slightest satisfied upturn of one corner of his mouth.

  Wes didn’t recognize the first tune he played, or the second. “Play something I know,” he said.

  Farmer glanced sideways, and Wes saw he was right; Farmer had been avoiding the old tunes on purpose. He laid his palm flat over the strings, drummed his fingertips against the wood for a minute, then started in on “Blackberry Blossom.” It was a bluegrass standard, one they’d played at almost every show. Wes knew it forward, backward, upside down and sideways, but he’d never heard it like this. If he was honest, Wes had never thought much of the guitar. Though he’d only ever loved the fiddle, he could appreciate the allure of the banjo and the mandolin; the guitar, on the other hand, had seemed almost dull. No more. Farmer brought his attention to notes in such a way it was like Wes had never heard them before, and he kept a driving rhythm all the while. Lord, what Wes wouldn’t have given to play this onstage again. He could hear where Lane would start in on one of his crazy-fast licks, rolls all up and down the strings, slides and hammer-ons and pull-offs, and then Farmer would come back in, yeah, and do what he was doing right now, and then it would be his turn, Wes’s turn, and this is where he’d quit chopping and pull out all his slides and double-stops and slurs, and here came the shift from G to E minor, then the line he’d play so fast he’d snap a couple horsehairs, and he’d finish his break with a flourish and then blend back into the group, so easy, all together then, all three of them.

  “Right nice,” Wes said, when Farmer was done. The words choked a little coming out, and they weren’t even his; they were Lane’s, the understated praise he’d offer after an especially strong practice or performance.

  Farmer nodded his thanks, set the guitar back on its stand. “Wish you could play with me.” He said it simple, quiet, and despite the fact that Wes sometimes had a hard time with Farmer, Wes was glad to be with someone who knew him as he had been. Without Claire, he realized, there would be no one left back in Spokane who had ever heard him play. No one who knew he’d ever touched wood and horsehair.

  “That’s really why I got to go to this hearing, you know.” Wes crossed one boot over his knee. Thought for a minute. “Those folks on the board, they read the reports and think the riot was a couple days of hard times, bad enough, maybe, but over and done with. They don’t know what-all he took.”

  Farmer looked toward the window, but it was dark and Wes knew he wasn’t seeing anything but the reflection of the lights inside the living room. “Try not to take this the wrong way, Wesley,” he said, “but I’m gonna call bullshit on that.”

  Wes set his teeth against each other. “Why’s that, exactly?”

  “You weren’t so hell-bent on going to this hearing till you heard about Williams getting religion. You hadn’t done that, I think I’d probably been able to talk you out of going.”

  “You saying I don’t care that my goddamn hands look like this?” Wes held them up, palms toward his face, the fingers so far from parallel they’d have looked comical if not so grotesque.

  “No,” Farmer said. “I’m saying if the question of faith hadn’t gotten all mixed up in this, you might’ve talked yourself into not giving a shit about Williams. I mean, where’s he from, Wesley? Dawson County? The hell kind of life you think an ex-con’s gonna have out there? He ain’t winning anything here, no matter what the parole board decides.”

  “He’s got to be faking,” Wes said. “The born-again thing. Guys like that are always faking.”

  Farmer raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t give me that, Farmer!” Wes slammed his hand down on the arm of the chair. The cushion gave, and it wasn’t the sharp blow he’d been hoping for. “I walked the tiers for twenty-one years. You think I don’t know there are some halfway decent inmates? Sure, some of ’em move forward while they’re inside. They study for their GED, they make toys for other inmates’ kids at Christmas, they get sober and mean to stay that way, whatever. But I cringe every time I hear someone say one of ’em is a different person. They ain’t different. They’re still exactly the same person who did whatever the hell landed them in a cell.”

  “You telling me you ain’t ever seen a sincere conversion? I think I have, now and then.”

  Wes stood, paced across the room one way and then the other, ended up near the corner with the instruments. He nudged his fiddle case with the toe of his boot. “Do you remember how I played, Farmer? I mean, really remember?”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I do.”

  Wes knelt, pushed up the snaps on the case, lifted the lid. “What I had with this fiddle,” Wes said, “came from somewhere. My father taught me to play, okay, tunes and where to put my fingers and so on. But I had something else he couldn’t teach me. The first day I touched my first fiddle, I had something, under all that beginner’s awfulness, something my father never had and was never gonna have, no matter how many hours he put in.”

  “I know.”

  Wes took the fiddle in his hand and stood, and with the same gesture, the same rising, he brought it to his collarbone and lifted his chin and looked down along the varnished body to where Farmer sat. And with that single motion, he recalled the fine details of hundreds of days and evenings with this fiddle in this room, with this other man and a ghost. Days and evenings long past, still so close he could almost enter into them. “Whenever I picked up my fiddle, that something was there. All my life. I felt it, and anyone listening heard it. And whether you call it talent or a gift or magic or whatever else, that came from somewhere, right? Had to come from somewhere.” Farmer was staring, and it wasn’t until Wes brought the fiddle back down to his side and let it dangle alongside his leg that the other man nodded, once, slow. “What I felt when I played,” Wes said, “was the only thing that ever made me believe there was something else. Something more than just folks going through the motions day after day until there weren’t no more days to come.”

  “God,” Farmer said.

  “Guess so.”

  Farmer rose and crossed the room to Wes. He took the fiddle from Wes’s hand, gently, and knelt to lay it back in its velvet. “You know what the biggest test of my faith has been? Biggest in my life?”

  Wes waited, but Farmer kept a knee on the floor, hands working the ribbons over the fiddle’s slender neck, and Wes realized he expected a response. “Madeline,” he offered. “The accident.”

  Farmer closed the lid, snapped it shut. He rose, turned. “You,” he said. Wes looked down at the fiddle case. Maybe he ought to leave it here, with Lane’s Gibson. A shrine to what used to be. “I know it’s been a long time since we were close, Wesley. And I know you think I’m a meddlesome old man—don’t argue. Some truth to that, I know. But I’m also your brother-in-law, and I think I’m still your friend. So I hope you won’t see it as overstepping if I say it’s plain to me that all your life you been looking for something you ain’t found.” He looked Wes in the eye, and Wes saw a flicker of doubt that was stark as it was slight, there in the eyes of a man Wes had always assumed to be nothing less than assured in all things. “It’s made me question, Wesley. I don’t know why a good man like you can search and search and still not find what he’s looking for. I don’t know why the one thing that seemed to be leadi
ng you toward it got torn away from you like it did. I’m ashamed for all the times I told folks in the Bible study it was easy, that faith was just there for the taking, ’cause I see now it’s not always like that.” He stopped suddenly, ran a hand over his mustache once, twice.

  Wes said, “Feels like you’re still working up to the moral of the story.”

  Farmer stepped closer, dropped his voice. “Don’t go to this hearing, Wesley.”

  Wes glanced at the floor, felt his jaw clench. “You ain’t the first to tell me that.”

  “That’s because it ain’t gonna do you any good. Whether Williams walks or doesn’t, whether he’s really found God or hasn’t, none of that has anything to do with you, Wesley. None of it’s gonna get you any closer to what you’re looking for. And just . . . don’t quit looking for it, all right? Don’t give up. I don’t know why you ain’t found what you need yet, but it’s out there, and I do believe it’s gonna come to you in time.”

  Wes’s first impulse was to say time was starting to get short, but he looked again into Farmer’s eyes and saw the confusion there, and he felt his own features gentle a little. “I appreciate what you’re saying,” he said. “I do. But one thing I can tell you for certain is that someone else’s faith just ain’t much comfort.”

  Tuesday morning he woke early, before Farmer. He’d set the alarm but didn’t need it; he’d slept only fitfully, never certain whether the images loitering half hidden at the edges of his consciousness were dream or memory. He took his time dressing. No tie today—it mattered, for some reason, that he offer something casual in his appearance—but he wore his suit coat over a crisp white shirt. Liked the idea of two sets of sleeves. He’d taken to wearing his hair a little ruffled these past few years—Claire combed it loose with her fingers if he didn’t—but today he put a hard part in it, the way he had when he was younger. He looked at himself for a long time in the mirror, meeting his own gaze until he was satisfied he still knew how to control every feature, even his eyes. He set them steady and cold. Might be better to let something show through, give the board easier access to a sympathetic victim, but if he yielded even the slightest bit, he wasn’t sure he could keep the emotion burning in his heart from spilling onto his face. All or nothing. It’d gotten him through twenty-one years inside the gate. Surely it could get him through a couple hours more.

  He hadn’t heard Farmer rise, but he was in the kitchen when Wes went downstairs, listening to the final percolations of the coffeemaker. Farmer filled a mug almost to the brim and slid it across the counter toward Wes, who nodded his thanks and drank without waiting for it to cool. “I’ll go with you if you want,” Farmer said quietly.

  “I ain’t an old woman,” Wes said. “You don’t got to hold my hand.” He closed his eyes, passed a hand over his face. More on edge than he knew. “Sorry. I didn’t aim to take your head off like that.”

  Farmer accepted the apology without acknowledging it, offered a slight, hesitant smile. “Didn’t really expect you to take me up on it,” he said. “Wouldn’t feel right not putting it out there, though.” They drank in silence for a few minutes. Wes could hear an early freight passing through the canyon, its whistle sounding more clearly in the cool morning air than it did during the height of the day. “You remember Jamie Lowell?”

  “Worked evening watch on Lane’s tier, didn’t he?”

  Farmer nodded. “He’s a sergeant now, in Max. Good officer. I gave him a call yesterday, and he’s gonna meet you inside. I know you don’t like me sticking my nose in, Wesley, but I figured you’d rather deal with someone you don’t have to explain yourself to.” He scratched his bald spot absently. “He’ll let you stay after. Let you know what the board decides.” Wes heard a hint of dubiousness in his last words.

  “I know they might parole him, Farmer.” Wes leaned back against the counter, tightened his hands against its edge. “I ain’t gonna lose it, that’s what you’re thinking.” He glanced at the clock. It was one of those cartoon-cat types, with the swinging tail and shifty eyes. Must’ve been Madeline’s. “Well,” he said, “guess I better get going.”

  He made himself meet Farmer’s eyes, and waited for the platitudes and words of wisdom he figured Farmer had been saving up for this moment. But Farmer just gazed back, nodded once and said, “Guess so.”

  He stopped at the gas station on Main Street to use the head. Should’ve skipped the coffee; he was plenty alert, and it made him need to piss. And nerves. Nerves did that, too.

  There were things he’d never told Claire, never told the folks who came to interview him and write down every word he said. During the riot, Williams had pissed in the corner of the control room—no toilet, of course, but he didn’t even use the wastebasket. Pissed right down the side of the wall, a stream that soaked into the concrete where wall met floor, golden drops clinging to the thick industrial paint on the cinderblocks. The acid odor had made Wes suck his breath in through his teeth for a few minutes, but he’d already been smelling blood and his own burned flesh and the horrible sick scent that carried into the room on the smoke from the fires on the tiers. Wasn’t like the prison smelled nice even on a good day. But hours into the riot, Wes had to go, too. Held it long as he could. He didn’t want to ask Williams and risk setting him off, but finally the need was stronger than the fear, and he asked. Asked again. Begged, in the end. Still Williams denied him, and finally, without really making the decision, Wes pissed himself. Fought all the shame and anger and despair deep down into the depths of his heart and tried not to notice his own urine flowing warm down his leg, pooling in the chair and wetting the inside of one boot, puddling between his bound feet. His trousers had still been damp when he was rescued.

  Wes smoked a cigarette in the parking lot, ground it out beneath his boot and lit another. Got in the truck and pulled back onto the road.

  Clouds were beginning to come in over the mountains from the southwest when Wes turned onto the prison grounds, and the walls of the three main buildings—Low Side, High Side and Max—were silhouetted against the empty expanse of land in which they sat. Nothing like the old prison in town, this facility was bland and utilitarian, the three nearly identical structures set way back against the hills, a collection of smaller buildings scattered around them like unwanted offspring. From the road, Wes could just make out a figure moving at the top of the nearest tower. The sun was high in the sky, but inside the fences the metal-halide lights were all ablaze. The place was huge and imposing, yet impossibly dwarfed by its surroundings. The canyon opened up here, meadow stretching back toward foothills that gave way to the mountains that rose above the walls and towers. Ludicrous, in a way, to set a piece of this land off with concertina wire and electrified fences, even for the purpose of locking away the Bobby Williamses of the world.

  The visitors’ lot was mostly empty, just a half-dozen other cars and trucks bunched up at the near end. It was oddly silent as Wes walked the long, fenced outdoor corridor leading to the visitors’ entrance. At the old prison, the yard had bound itself so tight around the buildings that sound leaked from inside the cellblocks, through the broken panes of glass high up on the walls, through the very bricks, it seemed. Once inside the gate, it had been impossible to pretend there weren’t hundreds of inmates in there with you. Here, though . . . if he could’ve ignored the razor wire and the watchtowers, the place might’ve been an especially ugly school campus or business park.

  At the check-in counter, Wes set himself to the paperwork. His name. Inmate’s name. Driver’s license number. Reason for entry. By the time he signed his name for the final time, his right hand was throbbing. Good. Feel it.

  “Sergeant Lowell should be just another minute, sir,” the CO told him, pulling the clipboard and its chained pen back into his booth.

  Wes nodded.

  “Um . . . I’m sure they’ll deny parole,” the officer said. Wes glanced back at him. Kid hardly looked any older than Scott, but of course he had to be. Light brown hair, forehe
ad pocked with acne scars. Strong set to his jaw, though. “We study the, the . . . what happened in ’ninety-two. At the academy.”

  Wes looked at him for a long moment. He wondered what the kid saw when he looked at him. Something like a ghost, he supposed. A story to tell the other young COs at the bar tonight. Carver. You know, from the riot . . . “Well,” he said, “can’t say I share your confidence, but I hope you’re right.” It was good to talk like this. Good to practice being calm and collected, to make the fine adjustments to his voice so it would carry him when it was his turn to speak his piece.

  He turned at the sound of sharp and purposeful footsteps. Jamie Lowell was well into middle age now, but he still looked like the man Wes remembered, if more solid, more confident. “Wes Carver,” he said. “Good to see you, even if under shitty circumstances.”

  Wes nodded, hoped he could forestall a handshake. “Sergeant.”

  Lowell winced a little, laughed. “Hell, don’t call me that. I’d like to think we always got along all right.”

  Wes forced a smile to match Lowell’s. “Jamie it is.”

  They walked together down corridors that were new to Wes, but familiar nonetheless. Lines on the floor, painted silhouettes of footprints next to doorways, signs warning inmates to stay quiet, stay in line, stay away from the CO desks. Something important seemed absent, and it took Wes a few minutes to realize it was because of the relative silence with which Lowell moved. No keys. In Wes’s day, they’d all carried great rings of keys on their belts, and the jangling announced their approach to fellow officer and inmate alike. The inmates probably missed that. Used to be, the keys gave them a few seconds’ warning to hide their contraband or gather spit in their mouths. For his part, Wes was acutely aware of the lightness at his waist, of the absence of the equipment he’d always carried inside the prison. He missed his uniform, the authority and purpose that came with it.