The Escape Diaries: Life and Love on the Lam

by Juliet Rosetti

  I landed with a bone-jarring thump on the perimeter road. I was outside! For the first time in four years I was not, technically, in prison. Digging out the gravel imbedded in my palms and using my tongue to take roll call of my teeth, I scanned the terrain. Beyond the road was no-man’s-land, a flat stretch of ground with all vegetation slashed away, as wide and exposed as an interstate highway. Expecting to hear a bullhorn-amplified voice ordering me to halt any second, I slithered commando style across the open stretch until I reached the woods opposite. Then I scrambled to my feet and ran.

  Taycheedah is located in the middle of the Kettle Moraine, the range of wooded hills that snakes across the length of eastern Wisconsin, tucking calendar-cute farms among its rolling ridges and hardwood forests. In fall, when the sugar maples are blaze orange and the scarlet maples are—well, scarlet—the Kettle Moraine makes the New England woods look like end-of-season clearance sale colors. But that great color explosion was weeks in the future. Right now the trees were still in their green, full-leafed, convict-covering phase. I would hide in the woods, I decided. I’d gather roots and berries, I’d hunt game with a bow made of saplings. I’d live in a pine bough lean-to. Swiss Family-of-one-Maguire.

  I imagined myself aiming a homemade spear at a bunny. I pictured the bunny chuckling merrily as my spear thwunked into a nearby tree and splintered into twigs. I envisioned myself showering beneath a freezing waterfall, using moss for tampons, shaving my armpits with clamshells, and attempting to skin roadkill with a chunk of sharp stone. I’d have the sky, the stars, and the great outdoors. But no toilet paper, clean underwear, or M&Ms. And if I wanted to get right down to it, I didn’t actually know how to make a fire to char my squashed squirrels. In Girl Scouts they’d tried to teach us to produce fire by rubbing two sticks together, but all I’d ever produced were blisters.

  Okay, so not the woods. So where instead?

  Where was the best place to hide a marble?

  Inside a bag of marbles.

  I had to find a place where a solo woman wouldn’t stick out like a nun at a strip club. I needed to put as much distance as I could between me and the prison before the man-eating dogs glommed on to my trail.

  Keeping to the cover of the woods, I began moving parallel to Taycheedah’s access road. This was a lot harder than it sounds. These weren’t nice woods. These were evil woods like the one in Snow White where she’s escaping her evil stepmother. Low-lying branches slapped me in the face, thorns shredded my arms, mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I climbed barbed wire fences set in the middle of the woods by some inconsiderate idiot. I crashed through the brush with all the stealth of a tank battalion. I cursed a lot. As the hours wore on, I became convinced that the prison authorities had set up night vision cameras in the woods and were watching my bumbling escape on screens in the control center, laughing so hard they drooled on their starched white shirts. They were purposely not swooping in and grabbing me because of my entertainment value.

  A thicket of thorny brush forced me to steer away from the access road. When I finally angled back to where the road ought to have been, I discovered that it had treacherously disappeared, leaving a bog in its place. I plunged into swamp water up to my knees. Mud sucked off my right shoe and I had to grope through oozing slime before I finally retrieved it, trying not to think about the things that might be paddling around in that gunk, itching to crawl up under my pants legs and insinuate themselves into personal parts of my body.

  By the time I climbed out of the swamp I was completely lost. For all I knew, I’d walked in a circle and would find myself back at the prison. It was now pitch-dark and raining like God’s power showerhead. Shivering from cold and shaking with muscle fatigue, I collapsed onto a mossy log and started bawling. Mouth wide open, snot drizzling from both nostrils, not caring if the hidden cameras were watching or not. What had I been thinking? Why had I even wanted to escape?

  I used to lie awake nights fantasizing about breaking out of Taycheedah, inspired by the great escape movies—Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, The Fugitive. But I knew they were fantasies; in real life most escapees are caught within a few hours. The same thing would happen to me. I was going to be caught and punished. Tossed into solitary, sentenced to a hundred years plus my life sentence. When I died, they’d lock my rotting carcass in a cell to make sure the sentence was carried out.

  Sirens warbled in the distance. The woods distorted the sound so I couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from. Emergency vehicles out for storm victims or police cars sent to chase me? At this point I didn’t care.

  All right. Here was my plan: I would sit here and wait until the bloodhounds found me. I would plead for mercy. I’d say I’d suffered a bout of tornado-induced insanity.

  Plead insanity, advised my lawyer, Sterling Habenmacher. Your husband was going to divorce you; you were going to lose him to another woman; you were going to be kicked out of your own home. So you went a little PMS and offed your hubby. Happens all the time. Plead temporary insanity and we’ll get you off with twenty-five years.

  I hadn’t listened to Sterling Habenmacher. I had refused to say I was insane. I had faith in the American justice system. I’d gotten up on the witness stand and told the jury that I hadn’t killed my husband. I had no idea how my husband’s blood had gotten on my nightgown, how my nightie had gotten stuffed behind the clothes dryer, or how the gun that killed my husband had gotten wedged in a heating duct. I didn’t even know how to operate a gun.

  So much for the American justice system. The jury hadn’t believed me. The jury had believed the sneering, swaggering, finger-stabbing prosecutor. The jury had looked at the bloody nightgown, the video, and the gun and reached a verdict of guilty. The jury had the IQs of specimen cups.

  Thinking about my expensive, inept lawyer and the barracuda prosecutor who had gotten himself elected to a judgeship off publicity from my trial, I started feeling angry all over again. The anger warmed me. I locked my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I scowled at the rain. Pull it together, Maguire!

  Doctor Richard Kimble, The Fugitive, had explained to the jury how the one-armed man had murdered his wife, but the jury hadn’t believed him, either. He’d been convicted and sentenced to death. When the bus taking him to prison crashed in front of an oncoming train, did he sit there like the stupid peanut in the song, waiting to get smashed into peanut butter? No. He’d hauled ass. He’d spent the rest of the movie jumping off dams and prescribing lifesaving treatments for accident victims while tracking down the one-armed killer. I knew every detail of his escape because The Fugitive was the most popular Friday night Rec Room movie at Taycheedah.

  Neurons were slowly firing in my frozen brain. Was I going to sit here like a chump, wasting the opportunity the tornado had plopped in my lap? Was I going to meekly return to Cellblock 23 without being able to brag about encountering a single hot young hunk out trolling the woods for some no-strings-attached convict sex? No, I was not.

  Fisting the tears out of my eyes, I wiped the snot off my face with my rain-soaked sleeve and racked my brain, trying to formulate a new plan.

  Okay, here it was:

  Step 1: Ditch the jumpsuit. Not only did it stand out like a neon traffic cone in the dark, not only was Wisconsin Correctional stamped in big black letters across the back,

  not only was it a garment designed for the sheer purpose of humiliating its wearer—but it made me look fat. Dress Angelina Jolie in an orange jumpsuit and I guarantee you Angelina Jolie will look fat! Jumpsuits aren’t so bad for guys—all they have to do is unzip it and whip it—but for female plumbing, jumpsuits are insane. You have to unfasten the top, slide it down your hips, and pull it under your butt every time you need to pee. When I find the sadistic male who invented this garment I am going to stun-gun him, hogtie him, and staple his equipment to the crotch of a jumpsuit. “How easy is it to pee now?” I’ll snarl.

  Step 2: Get the hell out of this swamp.

  Escape tip
#3:

  Have your backstory ready.

  My feet flew out from under me and I was falling, scrabbling for handholds on slick mud, landing painfully on wet pavement. Pavement—this was a road! As I drew myself up onto my skinned knees, a car whipped around a curve, pinning me in its headlights. It braked sharply, fishtailed on the wet pavement, and screeched to a stop a few yards away.

  From breakout to busted in five hours. Must be an all-time record for shortest escape. I was a bungler, a loser, a dud! I deserved to be dragged back to a cell. Hauling myself upright, I flung up my arms in surrender, hoping the prison cops wouldn’t shoot me or stun-gun me or beat the crap out of me with rubber hoses.

  The car’s window rolled down and a female voice timidly called, “Hello? Are you all right?”

  I squinted through the rain at the driver, a lone woman in a Toyota with a dented rear bumper. Relief washed over me. She wasn’t a cop; she was a civilian, and she was eyeing me uneasily, which was understandable. I was wet, filthy, and naked except for my dingy prison bra, underpants, and cheap sneakers. The neon jumpsuit was buried deep in the swamp.

  “Umm . . . are you hurt?” Her voice quivered; she sounded like she wished she hadn’t stopped.

  I limped over to her car, favoring my banged-up left knee and crossing my arms modestly across my chest. The backwash of the headlights revealed a small, middle-aged woman wearing rain-spattered eyeglasses.

  “I was in an accident,” I said, throwing in a little moan for extra color.

  The woman stared at my underpants and bra. “A car accident?” she asked, skepticism creeping into her voice.

  Good point; where was my car? I took a deep breath. “I met this guy at a bar? And he asked me to go to this party with him?” In the dark, with my shoulder-length hair plastered to my face, I figured I could pass for a girl young and naive enough to go with a guy she didn’t know. The woman’s eyes widened; she was buying this. Encouraged, I gabbled on. “Only . . . he drove me to this road back in the woods? And we started, you know—making out. But when I told him to stop . . .” I let my voice trail off.

  “You’re shivering, sweetie—get in the car.”

  She leaned across and opened the passenger door. I limped around and flumped into the seat. The fabric was warm and nubby against my wet, goose-pimpled skin. The woman put the car in gear and we drove off, tires slooshing on the wet pavement. I kept glancing uneasily over my shoulder, expecting flashing lights and sirens.

  The woman misinterpreted my nervousness. “Do you think that man is after you?”

  “What? Oh, he might be. He seemed so nice at first, but when I wouldn’t let him—you know—he started ripping my clothes.” The words tumbled out jerkily, but my hesitations must have added to my credibility because the woman was tsking in all the right places. “He—he forced me down, said I’d been asking for it and now I was going to get it.”

  Was I overdoing it? No. She was hooked, eager to hear more. I said, “Maybe it was my fault. If I hadn’t—”

  I’d said the magic words. “It was not your fault,” the woman snapped. “It’s never the victim’s fault.”

  Bless you, Oprah. Thanks to you, an entire nation now knows not to blame the victim.

  The woman reminded me of my Aunt Beatrice. Bright blusher, smeared lipstick, breath that smelled like a Coconut Colada. She wore a pink pantsuit and pearls and looked like she’d just come from one of those girly things—a bridal shower where the guests have to fashion a wedding gown out of toilet paper or a baby shower where someone swings a threaded needle over the pregnant mom’s belly to predict if the baby is a boy or girl.

  She turned on the heater and blessedly warm air blasted out. “Did he . . .” She stopped, embarrassed, obviously avid for salacious details, but not wanting to press.

  I was getting into my story. I decided that the make-believe pervert ought to get a little payback before I made my escape. “I kneed him in the—the guy place—and hopped out of his car and hid behind a tree. He finally took off, but I was scared to walk on the road in case he found me, so I ran into the woods. Then I got lost—”

  “He tried to rape you, then he left you alone in the woods? That’s outrageous! It’s just too bad we don’t have the death penalty anymore!”

  A sentiment shared by my ex-mother-in-law, though I didn’t mention it.

  “We need to get you to the police station, honey. What’s your name?”

  Name? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Inventing the imaginary rapist had used up all my creative powers. My mind was as blank as a shaken Etch-a-Sketch.

  “Dorothy.” It was the first name that popped into my mind. I could have slapped myself. Dorothy, for God’s sake!

  “Dorothy?” She gave me a startled look. “That’s an old-fashioned name.”

  “My mom loved The Wizard of Oz,” I said lamely.

  I’ve always been called Mazie, but my real name is Margarita. Swell name, huh? Why didn’t my parents just call me Daiquiri or Singapore Sling while they were at it? I was named for my mom’s mother, who was Italian and contributed her dark hair and black eyelashes to my gene pool. The blue eyes, the freckles, and the small frame came from the Irish side of the family, the Maguires, who are rumored to have leprechaun blood.

  “Pleased to meet you, Dorothy,” said my rescuer. “I’m Betty Winkler. Such a shame we had to meet under these circumstances, but it’s lucky for you I stayed so late at my niece’s baby shower. Who knows what creep or crazy might have picked you up!”

  “Fer sure,” I said, trying to sound like an eighteen-year-old. Now that warm air was blasting over me I started shivering violently.

  “You must be frozen, being out in that rain. The radio said a tornado touched down around here.”

  Don’t turn on the radio again, I prayed.

  Momentarily taking her eyes off the road, Betty swerved into the opposite lane. I clawed at the sissy handle, wondering whether Betty might be a tad off her meds, but then realized she was just reaching for something in the backseat. She veered back into her lane, triumphantly flapping a hooded sweatshirt in my face. “Put this on before you catch your death. It’s my grandson’s; he’s twelve—he’s always leaving things in the back. I don’t have anything for your legs—”

  A siren screamed behind us and I nearly jumped out of my cold, clammy skin. A police car swarmed up alongside us, lights flashing, and Betty pulled over to the side of the road. I eased my hand to the passenger door, ready to spring out into the water-filled ditch and swim for my life.

  The cruiser blazed past at warp speed, siren warbling. Betty nosed out onto the highway again. “I should have flagged him down,” she fretted. “We need to report that animal who attacked you. I could call on my cellphone, but under the circumstances—well, I just think it’s better to report it in person.”

  “Right.” I wrestled myself into the sweatshirt. It was gray, with Gravity Sucks in glow-in-the-dark letters over a cartoon of a skeleton skateboarder hanging in air. Designed for a male of the hip-hop generation, it covered my butt and flirted with my thighs.

  “Now where do you live, Dorothy?”

  “Fond du Lac.” Safe enough. It was the closest city.

  “Oh, I do too. What’s the address?”

  Address? I didn’t know a single street in the city. Then I remembered that our prison chaplain moonlighted at a college in Fond du Lac. Something Catholic-sounding.

  “Marian!” I shouted.

  “Marian College?”

  “Right. You could drop me at my dorm.”

  Betty shook her head. “I will later. But first I’m taking you to the police station.”

  A wave of panic surged through me. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  Betty’s hand found mine and she patted it. “Listen, honey, I know you’re feeling scared and embarrassed, but nowadays the police are trained in how to treat rape victims.”

  “But he didn’t—you know—”

  “Only b
ecause you were lucky. The next girl that monster picks won’t be so lucky. It’s our duty to report him.”

  “If a storm victim died because I was bothering the police with my piddly problem, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  “It is not a piddly problem! Listen to me, Dorothy—you need to contact your parents, too. If something happened to my daughter, I’d want to know. And don’t worry, because I am going to stay by your side every step of the way.”

  We were both quiet for a minute, Betty focusing on driving as traffic grew heavier while I frantically tried to come up with a way to ditch this do-gooding stick-tight. We were at the outskirts of the city now. Mini-marts, McDonald’s, Targets, Jiffy-Lubes. Anywhere, USA, hideous as a minefield, but I drank in the neon signs and concrete boxes as though I was on a tour of Tuscany. All I’d seen for the past four years was the inside of a prison, and I was starved for the sights of the outside world. But unless I stopped Betty’s hell-drive to the cop shop, I’d be seeing that prison again a lot sooner than I wanted.

  Get your game on, Maguire! Think.

  “My dad is going to go ballistic when he hears about this,” I ventured. “He’s really overprotective.”

  “Well, of course. What father wouldn’t be?”

  Time for the Maguire spin doctors to go into overdrive.

  “My pa is, like, ultra protective,” I said, deciding that Pa sounded more NRA than Dad. “When Pa hears about this, he’s going to break out his assault rifle, hunt down that guy, and drill him full of holes.”

  My pants should have burst into flames over that whopper. I winged a silent apology to my real-life dad, Michael Maguire, who hates guns and is so softhearted he won’t even swat spiders.

  “Oh, dear,” Betty said.

  I threw a little vibrato into my voice. “Pa is going to kill that man and then Pa will get sent to prison. And it’ll all be my fault.”