by Meris Lee
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Published by The Hartwood Publishing Group, LLC,
Hartwood Publishing, Phoenix, Arizona
www.hartwoodpublishing.com
St. Elias
Copyright © 2017 by Meris Lee
Digital Release: May 2018
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
St. Elias by Meris Lee
Paroled after seventeen years of imprisonment in Texas for a crime she did not commit, social outcast Elias travels on an impulse, illegally, to the Copper River Valley in Alaska. Elias arrives in the small town of McCarthy, the gateway to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, with no ID, no friends, and no prospects, with the goal of escaping the ruins of her former life and finally seeing the mountain she shared a name with.
She finds work as a line cook at a hotel and forms relationships without revealing her past, eager to prove to the world and herself that she can be a truly independent adult. She finds herself falling in love for the first time and struggling with the complexities of emotions associated with such a monumental event. At the same time, a local law officer is bent on investigating and exposing her true identity.
As Elias wrestles with her new life’s demands, can she grow beyond her past and allow herself to love again?
Dedication/Author Notes/Acknowledgements
Dedicated to the Stop Six Sunrise Edition, where love and goodness persist despite adversity, and to the Ahtna People of Copper River Valley, who never relent in speaking up for the just and responsible use of the lands.
Chapter One
In late May, Elias Dotson found out she was granted parole, again. She was chopping cabbage in the kitchen when the warden delivered the news. She paused, uncertain whether to rejoice or worry. Twice before she had earned the privilege of leaving the central Texas prison farm she’d reluctantly called home since the start of the new millennium. And twice it was revoked just days before her release for failure to conform to social graces expected of the adult she appeared to be at first glance.
She had spent half her life so far in prison, incarcerated since the age of seventeen. So how could she behave like an adult when she hadn’t been treated like one, or given a chance to be one, under the well-meaning rehabilitation and reformation programs of the criminal justice system, where she never had to set her schedules, manage her finances, or determine how to make a living? Every morning, she woke up when the lights were turned on, proceeded to shower with her feet tippy-toed on the moldy tiled floor, and then reported to the kitchen for her cooking duties. Unsavory punishment was sure to be served had she entertained the idea of altering a tiny fraction of her routines. She was so used to being told what to do that she couldn’t make any sensible decisions for herself—at least that was the excuse she’d always told everyone.
Elias detested everything about the prison except for the kitchen, although her assignment included cooking leftover scraps and feeding the noisy, hideous hogs on the farm. She enjoyed the sorcery of transforming those ashen and shriveled haricots into sweet and smoky baked beans. She delighted in surveying the mess hall from behind the cafeteria line and seeing the look on her fellow inmates’ faces as they eagerly chowed down her tangy barbequed briskets. She had long ago decided she would become a chef once she left prison for good, although she was not sure how to procure such a position and how to keep it if she were awarded one.
Elias was ambivalent about going up in front of the parole board again. She botched the first parole for neglecting her kitchen duties due to the overwhelming excitement about freedom, and the second for getting into a fight with another prisoner who taunted her cellmate, Lucy. She didn’t even like Lucy, who had a habit of stealing her Doritos one chip at a time, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but she always did. Lucy was dirt poor and never had any visitors, whereas Elias had her stepmother, Helen, who visited once a week with a paper sack full of goodies from the dollar store. Elias never liked being teased at school for being an honor roll student when everyone else could barely keep up. When she saw Lucy targeted for being poor in the yard one day, she couldn’t help but take pity and threw a left hook at the bully, a whole foot taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than she was. She knocked out several of said bully’s teeth, created a bloody scene, caused a riotous uproar from the other inmates, and promptly lost her privilege to leave prison the following day.
When Helen, already annoyed by the new warden, who didn’t believe Elias’s stepmother could be a black woman, was informed of the bad news the next morning, she exploded. “Stop being so impulsive!”
She had come down to the prison farm, excited about taking Elias home, only to have that bubble burst yet again. “Think before you act,” Helen bellowed.
“There was no time to think,” Elias replied. “If you'd been there, you would’ve done the same. This woman got Lucy in a choke hold, and if I didn’t stop it, Lucy would’ve died.”
“The guards wouldn’t let that happen.”
“The guards cheered me on,” Elias told her, “along with the rest of the girls.”
Helen responded with a sigh, and Elias knew she had disappointed Helen yet again.
Elias had no memory of either of her birth parents. She had photos of her father, and so at least she knew his face. According to Helen, he was the kind of man who could fix anything. Helen was driving through the neighborhood one day in the middle of winter when her car broke down in front of his house. Looking for help, she knocked on his door. He answered, holding his crying infant, Elias, dressed only in a disposable diaper. Helen took Elias while he worked on the car. She wrapped Elias in a blanket, put her down for a nap, and cooked a meal with whatever scraps she found in the kitchen. He came back in to tell her the car was ready to go, but after they sat down to eat in the cramped, drafty house that one winter afternoon, she just never left, not even when he got drunk and died in a car crash when Elias was three.
Elias wanted freedom more than anything, but she was simultaneously afraid of it. She had but three years left in her sentence, and she now panicked at the thought of having wasted half her life in idle obedience behind bars instead of learning how to live unsupervised, not that it was a subject taught well, if at all, at the prison. She wondered whether she could use the remaining three years to catch up, to learn the proper ways of the adult world, if three years could make a difference at all.
But, well, it was all said and done now. Elias did everything she could to control her impulsive temperament and stay on her best behavior until the day she could see the light outside. She finished the day’s work in the kitchen and slept a dreamless night. In the morning, she changed into a knee-length cotton dress Helen brought her. She gazed into the mirror at her face, still pale despite the many afternoons spent baking under the Texas sun while feeding the hogs, and wondered whether she still looked like the seventeen-year-old girl who was sent to a prolonged, nightmarish time-out.
She absent-mindedly b
rushed her hair, long, straight, and black, falling nearly to her waist, and blinked and blinked as if trying to switch off her innocent green irises and turn on a more mature color, like hazel. She didn’t want others to see through her youthful appearance and see that, inside, she was just as childish. The cotton dress didn’t help, she thought. She needed something grown-up, woman-like. Yes, she was a woman, was she not? She certainly qualified by age. She ran her fingers through her hair and down her neck, took in the skin-on-skin sensation, and imagined a man’s hand on her instead. Her cheeks warmed. She laughed at herself. But in another second, she bit her lower lip and sighed. Who in the world would want her, an ex-con who knew better the life within the walls of a prison than without?
»»•««
Helen picked up Elias in the old ’97 Honda Accord, now rusting at the bumper and sporting a black garbage bag instead of glass on a rear passenger window. A dubious used-car lot sold them the car just weeks before the fateful day when Elias’s life took a seriously wrong turn. She had to force her mind away from thinking about it on the way home to Fort Worth because it saddened her, and she wanted to look happy for Helen’s sake.
Helen did most of the talking on the two-hour trip home, dishing out one idea after another about what they could do in the coming days. “How about a movie? Or a mani-pedi? Window shopping at the new outlet mall? Or maybe just go fishing? You used to love fishing. You still do, right?” asked Helen. “We can fry some catfish and have a little homecoming party. Get the neighbors and some of your friends from school. I feel like celebrating. My baby’s home, finally!”
“No.” Elias shook her head. “I don’t want a party. It’s not like I’m coming home from graduating college or serving in the military someplace dangerous like Iraq. I’m not proud of where I’ve been.”
“Well, I’m proud of you,” said Helen. “Look at you. You’re a grown woman now. Nothing is stopping you from going where you want to go. You can reach as far as you want. And speaking of college, you could apply soon—”
“Mom,” said Elias. “I don’t want to think so far ahead. I just want some time to chill and enjoy having you again.”
“Okay, okay. No pressure,” said Helen. “But you were a straight-A student before, and I don’t want to see your smarts go to waste.”
“Maybe you want to spend the money to get your car fixed first?”
“This car is just a car,” said Helen. “You’re the most important thing in my life, and my priority.”
“Mom…” Elias felt like crying.
“You know I love you, right?”
Elias let her tears go. She felt so undeserving of Helen’s affection and devotion. She imagined other people her age already working and giving back to their parents, and yet she was still a burden to Helen.
As they exited US 287 and rolled into their neighborhood, Elias surveyed the row of shotgun houses with boarded up windows, chain link fences, overgrown weeds, and leaky air conditioning units sitting precariously on the sills—some images of her childhood never changed. There was the same old food mart, the only store selling groceries within five miles of her house. The iron bars on the door and the men loitering outside looked just as they did seventeen years ago. A chapel stood every five houses, and the man who used to preach into a megaphone on Friday mornings was still there, delivering a sermon as they drove by. The neighborhood, situated in southeast Fort Worth, one of the most disadvantaged enclaves of the county according to some, didn’t seem to have changed in all the years she was gone. Elias wanted to take comfort in it, to tell herself she hadn’t missed much, but she was a little disappointed—the place felt forsaken before, and it looked forsaken now.
“Welcome home, baby,” said Helen with a warm smile as she and Elias both stepped out of the car.
Elias took a moment to study the restored shack house she’d grown up in. It still featured the same yellow wood sidings, and the hammock her father installed on the porch still swayed in the breeze. When she entered the living room, it smelled just as it did before, a mixture of Helen’s proprietary hair products and lavender-scented candles. Helen ran a hair salon out of their home. Elias grew up with the smell of shampoo, conditioner, and hair gel, as well as Helen’s customers’ jokes and laughter permeating their house, which now seemed so familiar and yet so foreign. She felt as if she were a stranger visiting somebody else’s home for the first time.
But the feeling didn’t last too long. As soon as Elias had her fill of the smothered chicken Helen made just for the homecoming, she felt more at ease with her new domicile. Although the old couch seemed a lot smaller and the bathroom more confined than she remembered, she was comfortable. Helen had left her bedroom as it was when she left for prison. The narrow white desk with her high school textbooks piled on top, the poster of the rock band Coldplay and the lyrics of “Yellow” pasted to the wall, the collection of lucky trolls with a wild array of bright colors for their hair standing on a shelf, and her periwinkle blue pajamas still folded and placed on her pillow as Helen always did before…
Elias touched the pajamas and then put them away in a drawer. They reminded her too much of those late nights when she would stay up to talk to Ce’Rainitee on the phone after finishing homework and studying for exams. Those innocent years were gone, and she didn’t want to be sad, not tonight.
She plugged her ankle monitor into a wall outlet via a charging cable and fell into a deep slumber as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Chapter Two
Elias nearly tripped while trying to get out of bed. She cursed silently. Roosters were still kept in her neighborhood, apparent by the crowing cacophony outside, and they didn’t care she might like to sleep in on her first full day out of prison. She reached down to uncouple the charging cable from her ankle monitor. A blue light on the monitor was supposed to be lit, but it wasn’t. The monitor didn’t charge. Elias wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t her fault the monitor was defective.
“Oh, good,” said Helen when Elias came in the kitchen. “I was about to wake you. You’ve got a doctor’s appointment in thirty minutes.”
“Do I have to go?” said Elias, throwing her arms around Helen. “I want to spend time with you today.”
“I want to make sure you have a clean bill of health to start your new life with.” Helen poured Elias a glass of green smoothie from a blender.
Elias wrinkled her nose and pushed the glass away. She showed Helen her right ankle. “My monitor didn’t charge.”
“I can’t believe Officer Paige hasn’t called,” said Helen. “I’ll call her. You drink your breakfast and hurry to your appointment. Go on.”
Elias picked the glass up and touched the rim to her lips lightly. “I don’t want to be late for the appointment.” She put the glass down and sprinted out the front door.
Walking in the soft, golden light of the morning sun was always Elias’s favorite thing to do in the neighborhood when there seemed to be boundless hope and renewed energy. The decrepit houses and unruly lawns looked less depressing and more like quaint features of this little piece of heaven where people genuinely cared about one another despite the worst of circumstances.
Her small joy dissipated, however, when she reached her old high school. She stared as the students chaotically roamed toward the entrance and then disappeared one by one through the metal detector guarded by two police officers. She sighed. She never thought she’d be envious of such an activity as simple as going to school, not when she was seventeen.
Her pulse quickened when she came to a house with a narrow porch and a tire swing tied to a tree in front of it. Mr. Flournoy used to sit on that porch and smoke, drinking a beer and watching the day go by. Despite her best effort to resist thinking about the past, memories surfaced and flooded her head with images of those scorching summer afternoons when she and Ce’Rainitee, Mr. Flournoy’s older daughter, hand-wrestled catfish in the pond and then sat on the tire swing to share a thick slice of chilled watermelon sprin
kled with salt. Mr. Flournoy called them vanilla and chocolate twist cone when they squeezed into the tiny space defined by three rusty chains. Heavenly, Ce’Rainitee’s younger sister, used to laugh when she saw them, with a face so angelic it made Elias ache in the chest just thinking about it.
At last, she arrived at the neighborhood clinic. Before she went in, she looked across the street at the vacant, one-level brown-bricked building with its parking lot fenced off. The building itself was boarded up, with graffiti on the walls and the roof caving in. Elias remembered sneaking into the nightclub there with Ce’Rainitee. The Flournoys left long ago, and although she wished her childhood best friend still remembered their innocent years together, deep down she had convinced herself there was no such thing as friendship and loyalty, and, extrapolating from Ce’Rainitee’s cruel, silent departure, there was no such thing as love.
That one afternoon seventeen years ago, when they met in Ce’Rainitee’s house to work on a Huckleberry Finn project and babysit three-year-old Heavenly. The toddler was watching Sesame Street when they discovered some crack cocaine stashed behind the television.
“This looks just like the crack they smoke at the club,” said Ce’Rainitee, rubbing the cream-colored substance between her fingers.
“And why is it here behind your TV?” asked Elias.
Ce’Rainitee shrugged, but Elias could guess why. Mr. Flournoy was known to be in and out of jail for possession of drugs. She didn’t want to embarrass her friend, so she didn’t press on. Instead, she suggested, “Wanna try it? See what the fuss is all about?”
Ce’Rainitee raised an eyebrow at first, but their curiosity soon got the better of them.
They had seen people smoke it at the nightclub and so they knew what to do. They were in a state of unreal euphoria when they decided to also examine Mr. Flournoy’s pistol. They knew he kept one inside the coat closet, just above the doorframe. Elias was the one who moved a chair to the closet door and stood on it to bring the gun down.
