You Believers

by Jane Bradley

  Billy nodded, wanted to say thank you again, but he’d said enough of that. He looked at his hands folded in his lap the way a little boy would do, holding his own hands to keep them out of trouble. The man spoke, but Billy didn’t hear the words. He looked up. “What?”

  The man was out in the aisle now, heading up to the front of the church. He stopped. “If you believed in God,” the man said. He shook his head. “You strike me more as an I-wish-it-could-be-true kind of man than a man who can really make that leap to believe.”

  “I believed in Katy. I still believe in Katy,” Billy said.

  The man took a few steps away and looked back. “So how long you gonna sit here and stare up at that cross like it’s gonna do something for you? You’ve been sitting in this church for more than an hour, and the only thing that happened to you was me.” The man smiled.

  Billy laughed. “And that’s a good thing. A very good thing.”

  “So go out there and find you another good thing on this lovely day.”

  Billy looked up at the altar. Not even in movies did God actually speak to someone while they were sitting in a church. In a comedy, maybe, but never anything serious.

  The man sat in a pew a few rows up and looked back at Billy. “So you believe in Katy. You believe, I’m guessing, in the love of Katy.”

  Billy nodded.

  “And what would your Katy like to see you doing instead of sitting here feeling sad and lonely in a church?”

  Billy smiled. “She’d like me to go home and weed and water her garden. It’s been so dry, you can’t water it enough.” He sat thinking about the garden. The tomatoes were so fat and ripe. He liked the sharp scent that flew in the air when he helped her pick yellow leaves from the tomato plants, and he loved that warm weight of the tomato in his hand. And the peppers, he liked to watch them go to red from green. Her peppers, they were red now. They’d be sweet. And the green beans, they were growing fast. They’d be too tough to cook if he didn’t pick them soon. Katy would probably really like it if he took some beans and tomatoes to her mom.

  He looked at the man, who was watching him the way some old men just like to sit and watch the clouds move across the horizon and guess what the weather will bring. “Her garden,” Billy said, “it’s thick with weeds. Even in a drought, they never stop. Weeds, they can always find a way to grow.”

  “So get to it,” the man said.

  Billy stood, finally knowing a good thing he could do with his day. “I’ll bring you some of her tomatoes. She would like that. Katy always liked to give people things. We could never eat everything she grew in that garden.”

  The man smiled. “I’ll be here.”

  Billy turned to leave. Stopped. “I didn’t ask your name. I’m Billy.”

  The man seemed to stand taller now. Maybe he’d needed to talk to Billy as much as Billy had needed him. “Rufus, and don’t laugh.” He smiled. “It was some classic Roman name. They gave me hell back in school.”

  “It’s a good name,” Billy said. “Takes a good man to carry that name. Katy always said we needed to know each other’s names, even the names of strangers. She liked to think if you had a name, it would be just a little harder for that stranger to disappear.”

  “I like that,” the man said. “Billy, you go do what Katy would want you to do this day.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll bring you tomatoes from the garden,” Billy said.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Rufus said.

  Billy walked back down the aisle, pushed open the door, and stood at the top of the steps, just breathing the breeze stirring in the air. Katy would like this, Billy thought. And for the first time in a long time, he was happy to be heading home.

  Pain Is a Passing Thing

  Jesse lay in his bunk and stared up at the ceiling. He moved his eyes along the top row of the cinder-block wall, his gaze drifting from left to right, back to the next row down, again left to right, next row down again, as if this were doing something. Nothing to do but stare at the walls and pick at the tobacco tar stuck under his nails and try not to make noise until he was sure Fat Mack in the bunk below was asleep. Fucking luck, Jesse thought, to get locked up with a freak. But it could be worse. And at least at the work farm he could get out in the air, even if it was just to go down the rows of tobacco and pull the leaves. Fuck this, he thought, fuck, fuck, fuck. He squeezed his eyes shut, remembered he’d get nowhere with that way of thinking. He had to have a plan.

  He opened his eyes and waited for Fat Mack to slip into those snoring sounds he made when he wasn’t faking sleep. Fat Mack was one mean man. They said one second he was just a fat man with a lazy eye and pissed off about something, and the next second a knife punched a man between the ribs, and the man fell to the floor, and Fat Mack, he was gone. The best thing to do with Fat Mack was stay out of his way.

  That was what the guards told him that first day, said, “We’re locking you up with the meanest motherfucker we’ve got. Fat Mack hates a cellmate. We don’t know what he does to them, but they always crying and begging to get switched out.” They said they figured Jesse for a fighter, not a crier. They were taking bets on who’d win this one and told Jesse the money sure wasn’t riding on him to win. The guard had laughed as he shoved him into his cell. The door clanged shut, and Jesse had stood there, his eyes on the heap of a fat man squeezed into the lower bunk, the slick, balding head mottled like a cantaloupe. The pasty fat face lay still on the gray pillow, the puffy eyes closed. Jesse knew fat people slept hard. They slept deep, were slow to rise. But then they said Fat Mack moved like a rhino when he wanted to. Jesse stood there watching.

  Once he was sure the man was asleep, Jesse started pacing quietly, not making a sound. Back in juvy they’d called him ghost boy for the way he could sneak up. He had paced the cell until he was feeling steady and thinking everything would work his way, and when he stopped to get up on his bunk, he turned and saw Fat Mack’s eyes open and dull and gray, staring just the way a gator in the shallows looks out, waiting for the prey in sight to move a little closer. Jesse didn’t flinch. He just stood there smelling sweat and piss and something a little sweet and rancid, like fruit cocktail going rotten somewhere in a corner of the room. It was the smell of bodies locked up a long time, the smell of bodies leaching into the concrete, the mattresses, the paint. He just stood still and met the fat man’s gaze.

  They stared like that, Fat Mack still as a mountain and Jesse standing there. Jesse didn’t have a choice but to be the first to move. “Fuck this,” he said, and with one smooth leap he was up in his bunk. Then he heard Fat Mack laughing this low, chuckling sound that shifted to hard and breathless laughing. Fat Mack coughed and laughed. Then he spat. Jesse heard the splat of it right there on the floor. “They call me Fat Mack,” he finally said. “And I don’t mind being called Fat Mack.” He stopped talking, was just breathing like he was working up the words. Then he punched at the bottom of Jesse’s bunk. Jesse didn’t know if he’d used his fist or his foot. Fat Mack said, “Don’t ever underestimate a fat man, boy.” There was that breathing sound, and then that punch to the bunk again. Fat Mack said, “You.” Jesse lay there a few seconds trying to figure what was next. “What they call you, asshole?”

  “Jesse.” He spoke the name to the ceiling, hoped he hadn’t already pissed the fat man off. “They call me Jesse.”

  “Well, all right, then,” Fat Mack said. That was pretty much all they said that day. But it had been three weeks now. Three weeks of watching, waiting, holding back.

  Now Jesse looked up at the ceiling. He thought of Mike. He should have guessed Mike would turn on him. Jesse would get out of this mess, and Mike would go down. Jesse had already been asking if anybody knew Mike Carter, little baby-faced, punk-ass bitch. Nobody claimed to know him, but when Jesse put together enough money for a hit, they’d be lining up. Jesse whispered, “Hey, Mike, I know where your granny lives.” He lay there waiting for the sounds of Fat Mack below sinking into his sleep.

&nb
sp; When he thought about Mike, that juice ran in his blood like electricity sparking, and he had to move. He needed to get up, but he hated the way Fat Mack’s eyes stayed on him when he walked around the cell. Jesse clenched his jaw, released. Clenched his fists. His hands ached from all the pulling of those tobacco leaves. Fuck this. He clenched his arms, released. Legs. Released. Then his whole body clenched, five counts, released. The clenching, releasing, it helped. He listened. The snoring was steady now.

  Jesse slid to the floor. Checked Fat Mack’s face. Jesse crouched down to do his push-ups. He locked his legs, held his weight on his toes and his palms. He lowered slowly, then up, and down, and up. They worked his ass off out in that tobacco field, but if he didn’t stay at his push-ups, sit-ups, he’d get soft. Hell, look at Fat Mack. They worked him all day, tying bags on the flower heads of those tobacco plants so they’d go to seed. They worked him, and he was still fat, a puddle of a man spreading out wherever he sat. Not me, Jesse thought, feeling the sweat break as he pumped up and down.

  Fat Mack coughed, and Jesse stood, looked down at those gray eyes, the one drooping. They said he’d had a stroke once. Good God, he was an ugly man. He grinned, only half his face moving. “You look like you’re fucking something.” He shook his head. “A man’s a sad case when he gotta try and fuck a floor.”

  Jesse stared down at him, thinking how good it would feel to kick Fat Mack in the mouth. Jesse grinned. “Shit, I get all the pussy I want.”

  Fat Mack pulled himself up. He smiled. “Yeah, you so bad, ain’t you.”

  Jesse sat on the metal bench bolted to the floor, heard the buzz that reverberated off the walls, signaling that another hour had passed. They weren’t allowed to have watches, clocks. One hour was as good as another. “Fuck this,” Jesse said.

  Fat Mack said, “What? What’s the ‘fuck this’ for this time?”

  “I don’t like not knowing what time it is.”

  Fat Mack shifted. Jesse hated the way every time the man made a move, there had to be this breathing sound. “Well, that buzzer you just heard, it said that it’s one more hour before lunch. Then the next buzzer will say lunch, and the next means time to get back out in the fields.”

  Jesse looked at his hands, blistered and the nails caked with tar. “What happened to the idea of convicts making license plates?”

  “This ain’t the movies. You in cotton county, tobacco row.”

  Jesse picked at his nail. “I ain’t no slave.”

  Fat Mack made a coughing, laughing sound. “Yeah, you are.”

  Jesse dug a little tar loose from under his nail, flicked it to the floor. “Ought to at least give us gloves.”

  Fat Mack shook his head. “It’s a work farm. Ain’t your momma’s rose garden.”

  Jesse gave him a look. How’d he know his momma had a rose garden? He went back to his hands, thinking of her garden, her special gardening gloves, her shears, her hat. She always had the right tools for everything she took on. Except Jesse. Jesse stood, walked a few steps across the cell, gave Fat Mack a glance. “I hate being watched.”

  “I know,” Fat Mack said.

  Jesse went back to the bench, sat down. He looked at Fat Mack. “I hear you like to cut. Get right between the ribs, and the air goes like a busted balloon. I hear you don’t even blink.” Fat Mack said nothing, just watched him with that flat-concrete gaze. It was the kind of face a stupid man could fall into, trying to get some kind of meaning out of it. “I get it,” Jesse said. “You don’t need to say nothing.”

  “You want me to tell my business so you can tell your shit. I ain’t interested. You think you’re the first one to fuck up a gal?”

  “You don’t know me. I’m one bad fucker. I’m—”

  Fat Mack raised his hand. “Don’t say it. Jesus, God. I know you the devil boy.”

  “All right,” Jesse said. “Forget it.” He hated it when Fat Mack called him devil boy, but he’d let him have it. He knew it’d be useful to have a partner if he wanted to make a break. And nobody wanted to mess with Fat Mack. They said he could run like a rhino. With the tobacco plants a good five to six feet high, it’d be nothing to disappear in the leaves. If there was more than one running, the guards wouldn’t have a single target. It’d be useful to create a little confusion in the leaves. Jesse chewed at his nail, trying to get a little bit more of the tar out. He looked at Fat Mack watching him. “It true you move fast as a rhino when you’ve got the need?”

  Fat Mack shrugged. “It’s what they say.” He grinned.

  Jesse had to look away from that face. “I hear that’s how you slip the shank in. Nobody expects you to move that fast.”

  “It’s called a knife. Only in here do they call it a shank. Ain’t ever been nothing but a knife to me.”

  Jesse kept his eyes on his hands. “I’m planning on a way to run free of this place. Down at the end of the field, there’s a little dip in the land. I figure if you run through the tobacco plants, they can’t get a clear view to shoot. They might see movement, but they can’t see exactly where you are. If you can get down to that little dip in the land, there’s a good twenty yards they can’t see nothing from where they stand guard in the field.”

  “They don’t stand guard,” Fat Mack said. “The guards sit high on those horses. I do believe sitting high on those horses gives them a better view of those little dips in the land. And those guards think nothing of kicking a horse in the ribs to make it run. They’d be right on you before you got a chance to cry to momma for help.”

  Jesse kept talking. “I’m saying you run through the tobacco plants—I don’t mean run down those nice clean rows where the horses can chase you down easy. You keep your head down and run across the rows of plants. The horses, I’ve watched them, they don’t like the smack of those leaves. They always back off a little when a guard tries to take them straight through those rows. The ground goes uneven where the plants rise, and those leaves, they can smack.”

  “And I guess you have no trouble running in ninety-degree heat while getting whipped by those leaves.”

  Jesse shrugged. “Pain is a passing thing, man. I can take that.” He looked at Fat Mack, who kept his eyes dead while he slowly, just barely shook his head. Jesse studied his hands as if the plan were right there. “I’ll get past that,” Jesse said. “Keep running until I’m clear of the leaves to that dip in the land. And I know just half a mile west is a river, and I’m home free once I hit that river.”

  “Home free,” Fat Mack said. “Like it’s some ball game out there.”

  “I’m just saying I’ve heard some have broke and run from this place. Why not me? I’m fast. And you could break with me.”

  Fat Mack lifted his head a little, his eyes on Jesse like he was coming into clearer focus. “So you want a diversion, a big diversion while you make your run for the river.”

  “Nah, man. It’s not like I need you. I just heard you can run, so maybe you’d want to run with me.”

  Fat Mack leaned back into his bunk, his eyes fixed on Jesse. He laughed while his eyes stayed dead. Then he broke into coughing and just coughed and breathed until he got steady. He shook his head. “Nah, it’s not like you need me. You’ll just disappear into those leaves ‘cause you’re the devil. You can outrun anything.” He struggled to sit up again, farted, not a sound, but the smell came creeping out.

  Fat Mack grinned. “You break from the line, devil boy, they’ll be on you like flies on shit. And you seem to underestimate those rifles. The guards on the horses, they the fucking elite squad. Cowboys. Marksmen. You think those guards don’t practice, you think they don’t sit up there just hoping for a chance to get a round off at one of you idiots thinking you can run? I’ve seen them at the end of the day—while we’re heading in to eat, they go out to the fields for a little target practice.” Fat Mack paused, looked Jesse in the face. “Hell, man, you’ve heard them out there, firing at the plants we’ve bagged. Plants six feet tall with these canvas bags tied on top, looking l
ike a row of scarecrow heads out there in the fields. They do it for entertainment. Getting ready for the real thing. Like you on the run. Once I saw how they like shooting those things, I told them, ‘Give me a marker and I draw a face on those bags for you once I tie up those flower heads.’ They like that. Feels like they’re blasting a man’s face off when they take aim.”

  “Those bagged plants can’t run,” Jesse said. “They planted in the dirt. Ain’t nothing to hit something standing still. And I can run. I’m the—”

  Fat Mack drew up, looked at Jesse and raised his finger. “Don’t need to try to convince me with that devil bullshit. I see what you are.”

  “You don’t know half what I’ve done. If you knew, you’d know I’m not just some other asshole sitting in your cell.”

  Fat Mack settled back. “All right. Every man’s got to tell his story. That’s why I hate a cellmate. You been trying to tell me since you walked in here. Tell me about the other one. You so damned proud of it. You led her out in that field like a lamb to slaughter. You know how fucking cliché that is?”

  “I did. She walked right out of that truck. She stopped, and I said, ‘Don’t you want to get high with me?’

  “‘Sure,’ she said. So she came over, stood right next to me. I could see she was shaking, so I smiled, lit up, offered her the joint. She reached. I let it drop to the ground. She bent for it, and I grabbed her up by the neck and squeezed.” He looked at Fat Mack. He had his attention all right. “The little bones in her neck popped like bubble wrap.” Fat Mack nodded. “I threw her down, looked up, and even the trees seemed to be shaking. Little brown birds flying away. I scared the trees, the birds, even scared the fucking worms under my feet.”

  Fat Mack smiled. “I guess the devil could do such things.”

  “I finished smoking that joint. And she stared up the way dead things do. Then I noticed her neck; it was so white, little blue veins. I had her knife in my pocket, a little pocketknife. What did she think she could do with that? I made a swipe on her neck with the blade. Just a thin red line barely. And I told you I like to make things bleed.”