Pay the Piper

by Joan Williams

  Please understand I offer no excuse for what happened. Some things have never been explained, such as the fact that the rifle was not where I would have dropped it or put it down when the deputy found it. It was about ten feet behind where I stood, in the living room. There is the question of where Sallie was all this time; she said she was right behind me, I think, and did she do anything—push me, pull me, grab the gun? Greg and I did not have any fight before the shooting, this much I know. Maybe we had words; we probably did.

  You must know what it does to me to write all this down. Please please let it be the last time. For weeks afterward I seemed to find flecks of blood on me when I looked at my hands. Under my nails, in the quick, in the winding stem of my Rolex, which I scrubbed and scrubbed in jail with my toothbrush. I will hear that screaming until I die and I suppose as long as there is breath in me I shall see those guts streaming all over the floor when I close my eyes, and remember how it felt, trying to put them back. They wouldn’t stay.

  I have gone over this a thousand times, usually at night. But not always. Sometimes at work in prison it comes to mind whether I want it to or not, and I lose touch with reality awhile, trying to figure out what happened and why. I have never found a satisfactory explanation.

  Before you came here, I had long ago decided I owed something to somebody for what happened, and I was adjusted to the idea of pulling whatever amount of time society required of me. I had no particular desire to get out as soon as possible, once my fear of the place began to subside. It’s a peculiar way to repay society for what took place, but if that’s what it took to square things, then I was willing to do my part. But what no one will ever understand is that keeping me here is not the real punishment I suffer. I carry that with me, wherever I go, and I have no idea how long it will last, perhaps always. Someday I hope I can think of this without the hurt that wells up in me every time the thing comes to mind. Time has helped a lot. I had to tell the psychiatrist at the hospital under sodium pentathol what happened, but the nurses said I had so little recollection of the whole thing that my sense of guilt was unrealistic; there just wasn’t any, except that I knew I was involved somehow.

  Sallie said afterward that I had been jealous of Greg. I don’t agree. I can see why I should be punished and why I should be made to suffer. But what I cannot see is why anyone else should be made to. Why should you?

  I have no bitterness over all this. There is no resentment in my heart toward anyone, and I am looking for no one to blame. If I had been a little older and wiser, I don’t believe any of it would have happened. But I did not know what to do to ward it off; I did not know how to stop it.

  Laurel, I loved that boy.

  10

  When there were escapes, the sergeant was too busy to distribute mail. It lay in the hallway, stacking up in a frustrating way: worse than when the sergeant sat there censoring it slowly, his lips moving over each word. Finally Hal had so much mail from Laurel he laid it over his cot, forming what seemed a patchwork quilt.

  The guys have begun to tease me. Once they hid my mail, but I was so morose they produced it quickly. It’s hell to wrap your life around one moment of each day.

  Another day guess what I found on my pillow! The tiniest pair of Dr. Denton’s nighty-nights you’ve ever seen—complete with feet. I’d forgotten just how small babies really are. Everything collected for the victims of hurricane Camille and unused has been sent up to the prison. Yesterday a whole truckload of paper plates arrived. What a place. I hadn’t known it would beat Matagorda for nuttiness.

  With Laurel on his mind he had begun to fear what others did—Buddy; his new confidant, the chaplain; Pris—that he might run. Are you crazy? she responded. But he continued to write about escapes. After a runaway was caught, obnoxious rules were made which did no good. People kept running. The only convict he’d talked to who ran said that an hour after he left he’d have given a thousand dollars to sneak back into his cage, but could only run.

  He nearly died of hunger and thurst and mosquito bites and got an added ten years. Last night, the turkey boy on shift at the poultry farm stole Grady’s horse and swapped that for a pickup and abandoned that to hit the woods. But those hills and woods were unfamiliar to him and the hounds ran him all over, and he got tired. The sergeant had gone into his locker and found a note from his wife which read simply, “Baby, I need you.” He had six more months and now has three years. So much time for so little freedom. Once I would have thought such thinking was crazy, but now I understand.

  Thirst, Laurel corrected. How could convicts help imagining things their wives and girlfriends were doing? He got out the only picture of her he had, with an interview in an old Mid-South Review. There was a picture of him at a party in Delton in evening clothes.

  I wish you could have heard the comments about the picture here. “Don’t he look dig-nee-fied,” and “Where do you keep your wall safe?” After I showed your picture and explained something about you, Gus said, “I knew you’d end up taking one of these little split-tails with you, but I figured it’d be some of this local talent.” I wonder if he’s ever seen any of the local talent. I love the way most cons put women on pedestals. Split-tail, yet! It makes you sound like a tropical fish.

  Laurel, when I first saw that picture I was sitting on my porch at Matagorda and remember thinking your hair made you seem like an angel. I thought how lovely you were and I thought, I bet I could love that girl—but she’d be too intelligent for me. The voice that spoke to you in Connecticut sent you to me, and you did appear like an angel—a gift from heaven. I will always wonder at it.

  Images rose to his head. What about her agent, her editor, book reviewers: were they all trying to get into her pants? What about William, even—he was in the house! Hal, she wrote him,

  I don’t need that pressure when I’m contemplating a divorce alone, worrying about what finances will be, and thinking about leaving my child for you if Rick won’t come with me. Three fourths of my married life has been totally without sex. And one fourth has consisted of quite brief affairs and a few attempts with William. It is unbelievable to look back on when I realize what it will be like to be married to you. My sap has only begun to flow again, it seems, since the time when I was a teenager.

  I feel strongly that what you should be saying to me is, “Why in hell didn’t you leave him or have more affairs?” My life consisted of thinking day by day, I can’t exist like this. Only I kept at it year by year. Really, I look at all these long marriages around me and think, I did achieve one. It is an all-right marriage. I went on believing I was doomed to a life of loneliness, though by the time I was forty I was despairing, and then all that ended the afternoon I walked into that crazy prison.

  There was a period, though, of about seven years when I had no sex at all, either with William or anyone else. My seven lean years, I call them. To tell you the truth, I resent surprise and criticism from you concerning anything I’ve done. I feel that with William as a husband, I should have been looking around constantly in hopes of an affair. I wasn’t, and I turned down chances because I didn’t picture myself running around when I was a mother. I wasn’t anybody’s wife. I was William’s housekeeper and knew every Sunday night for years he was shacked up and I sat there alone those Saturdays and Sundays, and other times too. As a woman who knew herself not to be bad-looking, to feel time passing, to feel in ways I’d never been married, is it a wonder I despaired? I told you about my affair with Edward. The first time he touched me I cried because a male creature had touched me. Because I had some physical contact with another human being, a grown-up. Well, to hell with it all. I’m sick of thinking about the past.

  But she returned to his past.

  You poor suffering man, you beat the walls of the jail with your hands till they bled? If only I’d known that day in the library, I’d have kissed your fingertips and your palms. You say jealousy helped destroy your marriage with Sallie, that you are your “own worst enemy,” and
so I hope to hear no more; you know I’m never going to behave as she did. But why, if you never strayed, was she so jealous about you? Was it her own insecurity or because you had left Carla and might then leave her? You are right that when you put your head between my breasts and heave a huge sigh of relief, you will be safe. And I’ll be safe when I’m next to you. Today is such a nuzzable day, I wish you were here. If ever with separation, time, and distance, you think that we’ve been swept away by our emotional natures, you don’t have to feel committed. We can resume again when I come back south. Meanwhile I will not desert you, I promise. But whenever we are finally together, won’t we drown in one another?

  Apologizing about his jealous nature, Hal recalled to her he was mighty innocent about affairs. Remember, he had told her that was the way he was, strictly monogamous. What’s an all-right marriage? baby, he asked.

  Laurel set a triumphant foot on the stairs of a small office building in Soundport. For years she had frequented a dress shop on the ground floor without realizing law offices were above it. Soundport was becoming a different town to her. She thought of Hal looking at her picture in the magazine several years ago, evidently in loneliness, or he’d not have thought of loving her then. It was strange she had gotten the name of a lawyer through her mother. She had a friend whose daughter was also divorcing. She had her husband followed and found out he was seeing ten women. “That’s better than one woman, Mother,” Laurel said.

  She looked out from a window on the landing; the town had such a sense of normality. The large white Congregational Church opposite seemed to stare back at her. Stores had window boxes full of late-blooming flowers, overflowing impatiens. Laurel hated being the self she was, going upstairs with pink bunny-rabbit tails bobbing at her heels, keeping Peds from slipping into her tennis shoes.

  Time-wise, she wrote Hal. That’s the way people here talk. Time-wise, I had to see this lawyer in my tennis dress. Right away, Mr. Cohen told me he could not get Rick for me at his age. A judge would ask him who he wanted to live with. With me, Laurel thought. Only what about moving south? On their first meeting, she decided not to tell Mr. Cohen her future plans. He asked for a retainer, and she thought again about the expense of running one’s life alone.

  Things continued to be different from when she was an ordinary housewife in Soundport. Now she had a tiny key to a long slit of mailbox, in a nest of them at the post office. Daily she turned that key with a stealthy air. Suppose an acquaintance appeared asking what she was doing with Box 56 or, worse, suppose someone asked William why his wife had what seemed an unusual possession for a suburban matron? Who were all the other people opening boxes? Secret lovers too? Even business people had an air of suspicion attached to them. Box holders had shady natures. She was stunned by the smut mail that arrived for her box number: solicitations for dirty books and films with explicit pictures of sex acts. She sent them along to Hal through Buddy. Might as well give all the men in the cage a thrill, she wrote. She felt herself a traitor to her sturdy aluminum box at home, its faithful red flag ready to go up or down, a traitor to a Grandma Moses scene along her road of apple trees, as if she were a rotten apple hiding among perfect red ones on Grandma’s round trees.

  When she set out for the beauty parlor, William asked why she was going on a Saturday afternoon. “We ought to do something together then.” She wanted to tell him, William, it’s fifteen years too late for you to be saying that. Yet there was an implication of future companionship she ought to consider. William used to spend all his leisure time with Rick. Now Rick had his own pursuits. He confided, too, that he left home to avoid his dad’s list of chores attached to the refrigerator. She might tell William, but she did not want to get Rick in trouble, or herself for meddling. William’s words, however, made her sad for him. “Let’s practice my backhand when I come home,” she said. Then in the shop she wrote: I’m in the stupid beauty parlor with heat blowing all around my ears, but since I’m unable to hear anything, I feel a little alone with you.

  When hunting season began, cars and trucks streamed past the prison on their way to the woods. Hal wrote about the scene longingly, but kept his humor. Huh? he replied.

  You can’t understand how a friend was allowed to drive in and deposit two bucks at my camp? They just let him come on in. It was nice to get that close to the woods again. I used to live for fall and winter, when I could spend time in the woods and be with animals. Some of the times I’ve been least lonely were when I was alone there. Another person might not understand what I mean, Laurel. But I think you do.

  The sergeant was a little nonplussed about the deer, until Hal promised him venison. Fortunately, a cage mate knew how to butcher, too, and helped him.

  The sergeant wants to know if I’ll take his boys rabbit hunting later on. I said sure. Can Jubal learn to track deer? I can’t wait to share these things with Rick. You’ll be amazed, baby, at how patient I can be in bringing about the sort of relationship I want with him. I can last a long time and take anything in the way of rejection. In the end I’ll make him see and feel my love. It’s so hard to explain that I did love Greg and wouldn’t have deliberately hurt him anymore than I would have if he were my own son. You are pulling me out of a maze I’d never have found my way out of alone.

  Having chastised him for his jealousy, it was her turn to feel it.

  Guess who came by my office when she was visiting a free-world friend here? The little nurse, Rosalie, who sat up all night with me at the hospital.

  The one who knitted him socks, Laurel sneered.

  She wanted me to kiss her goodbye. I said I couldn’t. I didn’t mention you. Rosalie said she was just so lonesome. Aren’t we lucky all that loneliness is over for us, angel? Yes, I did call Sallie “baby.” And, all right, I didn’t mean it, if you say so. But “angel” is my own word for you. I’ve never called another woman that. Or said to another woman before that I adored her.

  Last night, Laurel, I lay on my bed loving you hour after hour. I finished at three in the morning and had to cram the sheet in my mouth to keep from crying out in my agony. I feel that prison has reduced me to so much degradation. A grown man has no business behaving like that.

  Rosalie was certainly forward, Laurel thought. After all, on her second visit to the prison, she only asked if they could have a baby. With William I never felt we made a baby out of love, or started one either. Aside from thinking of Matagorda, she thought Rick would be wooed there more easily if there was a sibling.

  There was a price to pay for Hal’s confiding in the chaplain, for enlisting his help in kiting out letters. The chaplain also let him phone sometimes on his WATS line, the way Buddy did. Or let him call from a public phone when they were away from the prison. In return for these favors, Hal had to agree to be on the chaplain’s speaking team. He had been asked before and refused. Unlike the time when he was out with Buddy, he had to stand up before strangers and bare his soul about why he was in prison.

  I’ve been once, Laurel—right after we missed our chance in Greenwood. Today in my unhappiness I looked back, trying to figure out why fate would play such a cruel trick. Maybe this is the aspect of prison where society gets paid off. I wondered if God might think I was becoming too complacent because I had you, and that I needed more punishment. But that can’t be because you are punished too. I do believe in God. I depended on Him when there was absolutely no way out, and I made it. And after all, He must have sent you.

  With the speaking team, I stood on a dais before a youth group. No words would come out of my mouth. Such sorrow welled up inside me about our missed chance, and images of you as I’d thought to know you. When I began talking, my voice wavered. Soon there was not a dry eye in the house; even the chaplain had tears. He put his arms around me and said no other prisoner on his team had ever made such an impact. I felt guilty that I suffered, not over transgressions already committed but over one I longed to commit. You won’t stop loving me?

  She suffered over his demean
ing himself to help them, and loved him more.

  The only way I could stop loving you, Hal, is to cut out my heart, my soul, my marrow, the essence of myself. We’ll have to forgive God the hurricane that kept us apart.

  Always when Hal grew morose, she tried to lighten his mood.

  Who was going to pay the whore in that little town if you’d gone to one? Nobody offered to pay me. Got any baubles, beads, or a little corn to barter?

  They went over and over their missed chance.

  Darling, when you wrote about the fight breaking out in the bus on your way back from the Gulf Coast, and how the walls were covered with blood, I went cold. Suppose something does happen to you! How will I know? Now Mr. Grady is talking about buying an airplane to fly in important visitors and wants you to be the pilot? How much else must I worry about? I wish you didn’t know how to fly. But you could keep going and fly to Connecticut. That place is insane. They let a visitor land in his two-seater and take his trusty friend up for a flight over the camp!

  Hal, I can imagine what it was like for you that day being driven across those tracks in a bus, looking out and expecting to see me driving in. You are right: If our eyes had met it would have been like some old movie. Also you are right that I’ve got to let Mr. Cohen actually start this divorce. I must tell William. Then if you get a two-day pass in November, I could certainly come down. I’m sorry I missed the rodeo. No matter what happens, Hal, I’ve got to come down there soon. I’m dying, as much as you are. What do you mean, you refuse to plant flowers around a red house for me, like the other guys? Don’t you love me? I’m glad your turkey and fixings were good last year, even if you had to eat them with a spoon.

  “… birthday,” William had said. She stared up from the breakfast table, thinking of Hal. What had William said? He could not afford to buy her a birthday present this year? “That’s all right,” she said. Not one inexpensive thing after fifteen years? He had been talking about something before that. A new roof. She shrugged away the importance of a present. She was glad not to have lived the way Hal confessed he and Sallie had lived, always in debt. He bought two airplanes he couldn’t afford and used to do acrobatics—and yes, he wrote, wearing Snoopy goggles and helmet and scarf—landing in fields near the pools of friends at parties, to their delight. He had been a card. Till the day he suddenly decided he could kill himself, and he quit. She was of two minds about Hal’s life. He should have been past all that at his age, industriously working to save money the way she and William had been, always with goals in mind. On the other hand, admittedly she was intrigued by the high-flying Delta social life, by all the partying and drinking, and felt she had missed out on something. There was a recklessness in her nature that longed for Hal’s past life. How could William be so short of money?