by Cassia Leo
Corgie tipped his hat back and scratched his head. “Once I charged him ten cents for the extra piece of toast, and he tried to run me over in the parking lot on my way home.”
“And you guys want me to wait on him?” Stella tucked a dry rag into her apron waist.
Cayenne laughed. “He’s all yours.”
Great. Stella slipped past Cayenne and went through the swinging doors to the tables.
Charlie was already seated again, wiping off his table with Stella’s rag. She pulled the order pad from her apron, took the pen out from over her ear, and slid into the booth across from him.
He was visibly startled. He stopped moving the towel and laced his fingers together, staring at his hands.
These people thought they already had her beat. No way, no how. Stella leaned forward against the table. “OK, Charlie. Let’s get something straight. I’m your waitress today, and you’re going to tell me what you want. Then I’m going to give it to you. So what will it be—ham-and-onion omelet with extra toast or chili burger with ketchup?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she tapped her finger on the table. “Did you drive over here, Charlie? I thought they wouldn’t let you drive anymore.”
His head began to shake back and forth as he bent over. All she could see was the top of his gray hair.
“So Charlie, what is it? Omelet or burger?”
“Omelet.” Charlie kept his head down.
“With extra toast,” Stella said.
He glanced up. “Don’t forget three grape jellies.” Head down again.
“OK.”
“And an extra napkin.”
“OK.”
“And I like to have my jellies early so I can peel off the foil.”
“Sure. I’m here to give you what you order.”
He looked up again, and Stella saw that he had startling light-blue eyes, the sort that made young girls melt. She wondered about him, how he came to be Crazy Charlie and not just Charlie. She had a feeling there were a lot of damaged souls in this town.
“Is that all?” Stella asked.
“Yes.”
She slid out of the booth and ripped the order off her pad. She waved it at Cayenne and marched to the window to stick it on the metal wheel.
“You’re a dead woman,” said Corgie.
“Amen,” said Cayenne.
Stella crossed her arms and stood firm. “I am not. Where’s the grape jelly?”
Cayenne snorted again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re out.”
*
Stella sat in Grandma’s rocking chair at the end of her first day, carefully removing her shoes. She’d have to buy something more practical, and soon.
Her feet were purple and red, squinched up at the toes. Even her most comfortable flats couldn’t hold up to eight hours of hustling.
Her butt had been pinched, her waist had been squeezed, and her hair touched more times than she could count. The whole evening had been like playing dodgeball, but the missiles hurtling at her were all male appendages. Corgie had been right about rough. Charlie had ended up being the easiest part of the day, although the bellow he made when she’d told him about the jelly could have been heard across three states. He was long gone before she got off, so she didn’t have to worry about a collision with his unlicensed vehicle.
The ones who’d scared her the most all had the same tattoo—a shamrock with “AB” on the leaves. She’d asked Cayenne about it, but she wouldn’t talk, saying some things should just stay unspoken. But Stella had understood from their talk that they had brothers on the inside, and they planned retaliations against other inmates, or went after people on the outside based on what was said at visits. The whole business made her fear all the more for Dane.
She didn’t have a bed yet. It would be delivered the next day. Stella glanced through the door of her bedroom at the pile of blankets that would serve as her sleeping place yet another night and couldn’t make herself walk over to it. She rocked instead, a steady soothing movement that undoubtedly calmed ’most anybody who’d ever been held in one as a child.
Stella heard the alarm and knew it came from the watchtower on the corner of a prison. Men scrambled inside the walls across dirt and cement, some falling. She ran among them and searched for Dane. Everywhere inmates piled up, sandbars in the sea of people. She called and called for Dane, but she couldn’t find him. All of the prisoners looked the same.
Finally she startled awake and realized her phone was ringing. She hadn’t known the ring.
She lunged for it. “Hello?”
A whiny voice came on. “You have a collect call from inmate Dane Scuffield from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Do you accept the charges?”
“Yes! Yes!” Stella gripped the phone tight now. He’d never called this early. She squinted at the clock. Actually, it wasn’t early. She’d slept on the rocking chair clear through lunch.
“Stella?” Dane’s voice made her legs feel wobbly, so she sat on the floor by the little table that held the phone. “You there?”
“I’m here.” Her words were rough with sleep.
“You feeling okay?”
“I worked the night shift. I was just getting up.”
“You got a job?”
“I did. I work at the Sinners’ Cafe.” She attempted a laugh. “It’s fitting.”
“How is your new place? Beatrice said you found one.”
Stella looked around the gray peeling walls and stained carpet. “It’s great. Sort of empty still, but there aren’t too many furnished places around.”
“I miss you. It’s hard to imagine that I can’t touch you.”
Stella was glad to already be on the floor. “I know. I don’t know how to do this.”
“I don’t either. You got the forms, right?”
“Yes, Beatrice brought them. I sent them in the minute I had an address here.”
“It takes a couple weeks, but Maggie—the caseworker—she’s good. She might get it done faster.”
Stella squeezed her eyes closed, trying to remember his face, the angle of his jaw. She only had the one set of pictures, and he had already begun to fade in her memory. They’d had so little time. “I hope she does.”
A loud banging came through the line. Stella tensed. “You okay?”
Dane’s voice was strained. “Just time to go to the yard.”
“Okay. I’m glad you called.”
“Bye, Stella.”
By the time she choked out her own “Bye,” the line had gone dead. Stella set the phone back on its cradle. What was she doing here? Did she really intend to wait for him?
She lay back on the floor, staring up at the popcorn ceiling streaked with dirt and stained from leaks. Life handed you all sorts of things. She wasn’t going to let her life go sour too. No way. No how.
***
39: Maggie Has News
THE guard slid the door open after the daily inmate count.
Dane and Alex got up from their beds to head down for rec time. Dane hoped to call Stella again. The more he could talk to her, the better he felt. He still didn’t want her to wait for him, but he couldn’t let her go. Maybe when they saw each other in person it would help. He was getting the drill down. As long as he didn’t get into any fights or let Alex get him sucked into a scheme, he would get contact visits straight off, sitting across a table from Stella in a big room with dozens of other families. If he screwed up, he would have to stay in the room with phone booths and glass, or lose visitation privileges completely.
This weighed on his mind every hour, with each approach of another inmate, every conversation with Alex where his cellmate planned some other attempt to move contraband. He withdrew into the smallest, darkest part of himself, hoping to attract no attention, forging no alliances, and keeping to the fringe. He saw others doing the same, looking furtively from corners of the rec room or along the walls of the yard, trying to become invisible.
He got in line with th
e other men on the five walk, but the guard jerked him aside. “You got a meeting.” He kept Dane with him as the other white-shirted men crossed over the bridge away from the cells to go downstairs.
A second guard led Dane out of the housing unit, through the metal cage, and back across to the administration buildings. Dane kept his head down, watching his own feet move across the concrete paths. He had no idea if what was happening was routine or something out of the ordinary.
They went down a corridor he recognized from his first day. The guard pushed him through a door. Inside, Maggie waited for him at her desk. She still wore her coke-bottle glasses, and her hair still looked like taxidermy. But she had on a more normal dress, not the one with big shoulders. She smiled with light-pink lips and gestured to the gray chair. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Scoffield. We have a matter to discuss.”
He sat in the chair, and the guard moved to the door. Maggie got up and closed it. Dane kept his hands on the desk, folded together. When she came back around, she sat on the corner rather than in her chair.
“You’ve been contacted by your father.”
Dane’s head snapped up. “Who?”
Maggie picked up an index card. “Bud Scoffield.”
“I haven’t seen him in twenty years.” Nor did he want to. Ran off and left his mom with two rough boys. Married some other woman.
“He said you two talked regular.”
“You talked to him?”
“When ex-cons try to get in for visitation, it gets noticed.” Maggie returned to her chair. “Did you know he did time?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him much. Phone calls on Father’s Day. Sometimes he sent something on a birthday. Not often.”
“Well, he spent five years in prison for armed robbery.”
So much for Ryker being cut from the same cloth. Dane was looking more like his dad every minute. “When?”
Maggie scanned the card. “Looks like 1966 to 1971.” She read on silently. “He wasn’t allowed to leave Florida for another three years of probation.” She looked up at Dane. “That’s why he couldn’t see you all that time.”
“Nobody ever told us.”
“He probably didn’t want you to know.”
“How did he find out about me?”
“I’m not sure. But you got two requests for visitation at the same time. The first was your dad. The other was a Joe Fontaine. Your old boss?”
Old Joe. He must have tracked down his dad. “So now what?”
“Well, if you want a form to go to Joe, we can send that out. But your dad is a problem. We have to get special clearance to allow previous offenders to visit inmates.”
“You think he’d do something?”
“Just a formality. We have trouble with gangs sending messages to the inside. I’m sure you’ve seen some of that.”
He hadn’t, but then he talked to no one but Alex. “So you won’t let him in?”
“It’ll take some extra paperwork. I brought you here to ask if you even wanted it. You have to initiate the forms.”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
Maggie pushed a letter toward him. “He was straightforward about his record and included his discharge papers. That’s why we knew who he was. He seems like he’s got your interests at heart. Take this, read it. See how you feel. I’ll send the papers tomorrow, and you can fill them out or not.”
Dane stood up with the letter, glancing cursorily at the words. The handwriting looked like his own, which bugged him. As he stepped out the door and the guard walked him down the corridor, he read a few lines.
I know what you’re going through, son. I wasn’t there for you growing up, and now you’ll know why. But I’d like to see you now, if you’re willing. I know you’re keeping your head low and not talking to anyone, if you were like me. It can get mighty lonely. If you won’t see me, I get that. It’s what I deserve. But I hope you’ll consider it. I’m right sorry about your mom dying. She was a good woman. Too good for someone sorry like the man I was back then.
Dane crumpled the note in his hand. He would have chucked it, except there was no place for it to go. The hallway was bare, the doors closed firm. Outside was just dirt blowing in the wind. He didn’t have pockets. The guard led him out into the yard where the five walk was milling about with the rest of Housing Unit 4. He climbed the crumbling steps to the highest point near the wall, and sat down to tear the letter into tiny pieces, barely confetti dots that sailed into the air and drifted out toward the river that he could smell but had never seen.
***
40: High Expectations
STELLA pulled the plastic off the dress and hung it on the closet door. She stepped back to her bed and sat down, studying it from every angle. Plenty long to meet the length requirements at the prison. Nothing transparent. No cleavage. The emerald green would offset her hair perfectly. Cap sleeves. Cinched waist. The skirt swirled when she turned, as she had done plenty of times at the store. She kept imagining how she would walk up to Dane, seated at a little table, he had explained on the phone, and they could sit across from each other.
He’d be allowed one brief kiss, then they could hold hands and talk. If the room wasn’t too busy, the visit could go on as long as they wanted. He didn’t have work duty, so nothing would cut them off until the visitation hours ended.
Stella couldn’t believe this day had finally arrived. Six agonizing weeks had passed since she’d last seen him at the hearing. Thanksgiving was just a few days away, so she’d get to see him yet again. She was working at the Sinners’ Cafe most of the day, but Rennie was working part of her shift, and Stella part of hers, so they could each get a chance to go up there.
She glanced at the clock. One hour until visitation began. Last time she’d been there, it had been easy to walk up and sign in. Now that she had her papers, it would be a breeze. Stella would smile brightly at the cranky old biddy at the desk, then wait her turn on the benches to be called back.
She grabbed the dress and held it in front of her, spinning around the room. Seeing him this way wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t what she wanted. But it was something. After weeks of waiting, long hours at the cafe, dodging the pinches of strange men and leers of late-night hoodlums, she would get to do something entirely for herself.
*
Stella pulled up to the gates in her green dress. Her hair in the new scrunched style. She checked the matching eyeliner and bright eye shadow. Hopefully Dane would like it. It wasn’t a look she’d had before. She’d gone from eternal teenager to adult while he was away. No doubt he’d changed too.
The guard noted her ID on the clipboard and let her through. Instead of the half-empty parking lot she remembered, though, cars were jam-packed, parking along the ends of the rows and up against the walls.
“What in the world?” Stella cruised slowly along the edges, dodging people thronging toward the door. Why were there so many people here? Her heart began thumping painfully, worried that their perfect visit would be thwarted.
She squeezed the Mustang between two trucks, a spot larger cars couldn’t manage, and could barely open the door enough to slide out. She hid her purse under the seat, removing only her papers, her ID, and a plastic bag with change in it for the vending machines, just as the instructions had told her.
The line forming up to the door was long, snaking along the building for a hundred yards.
Stella walked to the end of it. Everyone seemed jovial and chatty, dressed more nicely than her last visit. She stood behind an elderly woman leaning on a cane. “What’s going on?” Stella asked. “It’s never this busy.”
“Thanksgiving!” the woman said. “The out-of-towners come the weekend ahead, as they can’t make it up on the holiday.”
Well, hell. Stella glanced at her watch. She’d promised Dane she would be there right when they opened, but with so many people in front of her, it would be a long wait. She hoped he didn’t mind.
A chill wind blew through, and she tightened
her sweater around her. She could feel the scrunchiness coming out of her hair already. Damn. None of this was going according to plan.
“Might as well settle in,” the woman said. “It’ll take an hour or more just to get in the door.”
“Will they limit everyone’s visits?” she asked.
“Oh, certainly. I’d be surprised if anyone gets more than twenty minutes.”
Twenty! Stella could already feel her good mood deflate. Why couldn’t this have been a week ago? Their horrid luck that she would get approved right before a major holiday.
“Chin up, girl. He’ll be right glad to see you.” The old woman smiled, showing great gaps in her teeth. “My boy is always happy to get a visitor. Breaks up the day.”
Stella leaned against the wall of the building. They hadn’t moved an inch yet. She knew she should be happy with anything she got, but still, she felt miserable.
***
41: First Visit
DANE paced the length and width of his cell.
“Take a chill pill, dude,” Alex said. “You’re making me crazy.”
Dane leaned his hands on either side of the window, sun slatting through the bars. It looked directly into another window just like it in the next building over. He couldn’t see anything, but still he peered out, as if his line of sight could turn corners and follow paths, down to wherever Stella might be waiting.
Or maybe she hadn’t come.
The guards had been busy, escorting inmates down the walk in a steady stream. Visitation had begun hours ago, and it had to be getting close to the end.
She wasn’t coming.
He’d just talked to her yesterday, and she’d seemed keen on coming to visit. But she also talked about all the men at the cafe. He hadn’t told her how their tattoos marked them as gangs. But maybe she knew. Maybe she liked one of them. Maybe all this was some sort of front to get to him. Maybe he’d pissed off the wrong person inside, and they were planning something.
