Safe from Harm (9781101619629)

by Evans, Stephanie Jaye

  • • •

  Now, I’ve seen the inside of a police station before, and not only as a visitor. Back when I was in college, I’d been in a fracas or two. And I’d been hauled off to the station where my buds and I had been invited to cool our heels and our tempers, but they hadn’t officially arrested us—they hadn’t processed us. We played ball for the University of Texas and back then that meant special treatment. I’m betting it still does though an amazing number of college athletes find themselves on the wrong side of the law nowadays.

  This time I was sent to an empty white room with a bank teller’s window. There I was invited to slide all my personal belongings through the tray beneath the glass. The unsmiling lady behind the glass printed out an inventory and passed it back to me to sign and date.

  One black leather bifold wallet.

  One hundred and seventeen dollars and thirty-five cents.

  A MasterCard debit card, a Visa card, a Lowe’s cash card (I had returned a tool set without the receipt), my health insurance card, and my proof of insurance. A picture of Merrie and Jo at the beach, circa 2005. A picture of Annie Laurie circa 1987. Four business cards with my name and title (Senior Minister), as well as the church name, address and phone number.

  An iPhone.

  A SONIC Drive-In mint.

  A completely useless pearl-handled pocketknife Annie gave me for our first wedding anniversary.

  My car and house and mailbox keys, a key to the church, all on a silver James Avery key chain in the shape of a shield, FEAR NOT, FOR I AM WITH YOU engraved on the back.

  A black leather belt, size thirty-eight.

  A pair of black shoelaces.

  My jacket.

  My wedding band.

  When I left bloody handprints on the forms I had to sign, the officer sighed, asked to see my hand, told me to wash it—I did—and handed me a bandage the size of a nickel. I stuck the bandage in my shirt pocket and clasped a wad of paper towel. That did the job.

  Then I was escorted to a holding cell. The sign over the cell said, MAXIMUM CAPACITY: FOUR. I joined six other men already inside. Five minutes later, Alex made us eight. His cheek was scraped and an eye was swelling.

  “You okay?” I asked Alex.

  From the floor, a large black guy who clearly worked out on a regular basis said, “Don’t bother the kid, old man.” He said it like he meant it.

  Alex told the guy, “It’s okay, I know him.”

  The guy shook his head in disgust. “Dude.”

  “His daughter is my girlfriend.”

  “She’s your friend,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “No, she’s my girlfriend, Mr. Wells. Cara is my friend. Ashley is my friend. Jo is my girlfriend.”

  “Truth,” said a voice from the back.

  I saw a tattoo on the protector’s biceps—the number seventy-five and the U of H cougar. “You go to U of H?”

  A grunt of affirmation. I took in his size. “Play ball?”

  “Offense.”

  “Hey!” I stuck my hand out. “Offensive line, UT, 1985.”

  The guy’s huge hand engulfed mine. “Dude.” He nodded sagely.

  I looked for a place for Alex to sit, but there was nothing beyond the open metal rim of the toilet in the corner, and I didn’t suggest that. The floor space was taken up by five of the six other guys already sitting down.

  “What’s with the eye?” I asked Alex. “The cops didn’t rough you up, did they?”

  From the back, “Testify!”

  Alex touched the puffy flesh around his eye. “No. That was Mr. DeWitt. I pulled him off when he was trying to knife you. Used my gun to put him in a headlock. He caught me in the face with his elbow. “

  There was a soft chorus of “Dude!”

  A skinny white guy stood. “Sit your ass down, son. That was some stand-up action.” Alex said no, but hands reached out and pulled him to the open floor and he sat.

  “What the gun for, dude?” someone asked.

  “This old man had a gun on my girl.”

  Everybody in the cell looked at me.

  “This one here?” asked a voice that made James Earl Jones sound like Tinkerbell.

  “No, man, I told you, that’s her dad.”

  There was a general shuffle as the men settled back down.

  “Tell the tale, bro.”

  Alex told the story. He told a good story. Of course, he was the hero of this story, but I’m usually the hero of my stories, too.

  Fist bumps all around.

  “Righteous!”

  “You fight for your lady, bro.”

  “You get out, you take your girl on the town. Gotta celebrate.”

  Alex, warmed by the approval, and wearing his black eye like a war wound, said, “Can’t.” He gave a head toss in my direction. “He won’t let me take her out.”

  Seven pairs of eyes fastened on me.

  “She’s barely fifteen,” I explained.

  Alex said, “She’s been fifteen for a month.”

  I made my appeal, “Anyone here have daughters? How am I supposed to keep her safe?”

  The offensive lineman rose to his feet and draped an arm over my shoulders. He looked down at me. I’m six foot three. I don’t think anyone has looked down on me since I was a child before this night.

  “I have a baby sister,” the guy said. “She’s four years younger than me and since our dad died, I’m all the daddy she’s got. I hear your pain, man. But you can’t. You can’t keep the girl safe. Because you can’t tie her up, and the more you try to, all the more the girl is going to run. You dig? You teach her right, you lay the truth out there for her to see, tell her where wrong acts take a girl. Dig? And you pray, man. I got calluses on my knees praying for my sister.”

  I had calluses of my own.

  A round man who was dressed like a Mormon missionary in a short-sleeved white business shirt said, “What you have in the boyfriend, here, is an ally.”

  The chorus said, “Amen!”

  He continued, “This young man earned his stripes today. He didn’t tackle the problem on his own. He recognized your rights and your interests. He told you about the situation even though he knew he’d pay a price with the lady in question. And he put his life on the line. A man who will lay down his life for your daughter—”

  I leaned my back on the cold bars, and it’s different leaning your back on the bars when you’re a forty-plus preacher than it was when I was a twenty-year-old lineman with my buds around me singing “Jack and Diane” and Bobby Bee, our running back, doing a nice, but not called for, falsetto. I said, “The old guy was too drunk to hit a wall.”

  U of H gave me a gentle squeeze that sent my breath rushing out.

  “Is that what you thought when his gun was on your daughter?” My heart got hot and heavy remembering DeWitt’s gun pointed at my baby girl.

  The short-sleeved business shirt said, “Do you think Alex laid it on the line for your daughter?”

  I nodded. Swallowed.

  “Sounds like he saved your butt, too. That about right?” It was U of H talking.

  The piping voice said, “Alex, that’s the glory part, rushing in and saving the chick. But you gotta do right by her, understand? No playing fast and loose, got it?”

  A voice cried out, “Or the old man bust your butt!”

  U of H released me and sat down so he was on eye level with Alex. “I’ll bust your butt, dig?”

  “This mean you let the kid take her out?” asked a new voice.

  “I have to talk to her mom,” I said.

  Alex said, “You know Mrs. Wells thinks it’s okay for me to take Jo out.”

  “Dude,” said U of H.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Dude,” said U of H.

/>   “All right,” I caved.

  Alex sprang to his feet and held his hand out to shake. Unnecessarily dramatic, but I shook. The cell applauded and a guard came in wanting to know what the noise was about. No one told him. He told a Peter Cartwright that he was being released and a guy dressed in scrubs gave us a wave and left. The skinny white guy sat down in Cartwright’s space.

  After that, Alex insisted I take his floor space and I said no and he insisted and I said no and U of H grabbed me by the pants leg and pulled me down until I was sitting.

  The dinner hour arrived, none of us knowing what hour that was, as watches and phones had been confiscated. Dinner was served on school lunch trays without cutlery of any kind. It consisted of chicken-fried meat patties with cream gravy, canned corn, little cubes of carrots, and month-old rolls. It looked like a school lunch that had been sitting uncovered in a warehouse for nine months.

  The short-sleeved business shirt said, “Look.” He picked up his cutlet of ground meat and a neat circle of congealed gravy rose from the tray with it. He gave the cutlet a shake and the gravy flapped like stingray wings.

  I said, “Dang,” and the James Earl Jones guy rumbled with laughter.

  “Wait until you see breakfast,” he said.

  U of H put his tray on the floor and slid it out of the cell. Alex and I followed suit.

  Business shirt propped his stingray cutlet over the roll and built a carrot square rampart around it. He flicked corn kernels at the stingray, making bomb noises. You have to appreciate a man who can create his own entertainment.

  A guard came to the cell. “Seventy-five? Your coach is here. He bailed you out.”

  U of H groaned. “Coach is going to run me until I drop. I hope you let him know this is all about an overdue registration sticker,” he said to the guard.

  “You got arrested over an overdue registration sticker?” I said incredulously.

  We exchanged names and numbers that we couldn’t write down and probably wouldn’t remember. But I would remember his jersey number.

  • • •

  The cell thinned and filled, thinned and filled. I made Alex sit down. Sleep was impossible, but some slept.

  At last, a guard called our names and Alex and I went through the interminable business of recovering our belongings, relacing shoes, threading belts through belt loops, slipping my wedding ring back on my finger.

  As we were escorted into the receiving room, Jo launched herself at me—uh, no. It was Alex she was aiming at. Alex, her white knight.

  Annie sat in a molded plastic chair, smiling at me. I walked over to her and she stood and put her arms around my waist.

  Her mouth touched my ear. “Bear,” she said, “I’ve always had a thing for bad boys, you know that?”

  I laughed.

  “Come on. Let’s go to The Breakfast Klub,” Annie said.

  Seventeen

  We piled into the car and went to The Breakfast Klub, a Houston institution. Any morning of the week, you’ll find the power elite drinking coffee and talking politics, hipsters and musicians who haven’t been to bed yet, construction workers and businessmen, standing in line for their turn at one of the dozen tables.

  Alex and I were starving, and between us we placed orders for plates of fried catfish, grits and eggs, for waffles and fried chicken wings, for pork chops and eggs and biscuits. Jo wanted only coffee but Alex insisted she drink a glass of Breakfast Klub Choco-Milk with him and she did. She wouldn’t have done it for me.

  Over the roar of the gospel music being blasted from the sound system, Jo and Annie Laurie filled us in on what Alex and I had missed.

  Jo and Cara had arrived at the trailer park full of bravado. Jo knew where the extra key was hidden—Phoebe had shared this knowledge with Jo and Alex in case they ever needed a place to “be alone.” Uh-hunh. What Jo didn’t know was that there was someone living in the trailer—Phoebe’s grandfather. Mr. DeWitt had moved there a few months after Phoebe had moved in with her father. But Jo and Phoebe were no longer friends by then—Phoebe hadn’t given Jo that update.

  All the lights were out, so Jo wasn’t alerted to the fact that there was a new tenant. She let herself in and was patting down the walls, looking for a light switch, when she stumbled upon Mitch DeWitt, who had been sleeping on the floor. He rose up and scared Jo half to death. Evidently they both screamed and DeWitt grabbed his gun.

  To my mind, a gun is a tad excessive when you’re facing down a five-foot-two-inch mite of a girl. About the worst you could have coming to you would be a heavy dose of sarcasm—teenage girls are masters of sarcasm. I mean, what was she going to do? Flail him to death with her itty-bitty hands?

  It turns out Mitch DeWitt was on solid legal ground, though. In Texas, a “person is presumed justified in using deadly force to protect themselves against an unlawful, forceful intrusion into their dwelling.” I asked if it could be considered a forceful intrusion when Jo had used a key to get in? A key that had been offered for her use by the then-owner of the trailer? Annie put one of her biscuits on my plate and told me she had asked her sister Stacy’s husband Chester, a lawyer, exactly that question. His response was, did we really want to go to court to find out?

  Annie said that Chester had called Mark Pickersley, who called Mitch DeWitt, and told him that if he wanted to continue to live in the trailer, he needed to drop the charges. Mark said he was the one paying for the space the trailer took up. DeWitt dropped the charges. Annie told Mark we would pay for having a new front door installed, since I had damaged the bolt, lock and the framing around the door in my eagerness to get in.

  “How did Brick do with the eulogy?” I asked Annie.

  She put two of her fried chicken wings on my plate and I ate them, too. I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch the day before.

  “You would have been proud, Bear. I can’t describe it to you. It will have been recorded. You need to listen to it. It was comforting. Reassuring.”

  “How was Mark about the last-minute change?”

  “He was confused, but it all happened too quickly for him to react, and then Brick did such a lovely job.”

  I nodded. I crooked my hand at Jo to come over, and she put down the biscuit she had been nibbling on and came to me. I sat her on my knee, her back to her mom, put my hand beneath the weight of her hair, and I lifted it up. High on her nape, right below the first tendrils of dark hair, was a tiny bird. It looked red and sore and there was a sheen of salve on it. I tapped beneath it with a finger. Annie’s mouth made an O.

  “It’s a phoebe. That’s a bird.” Annie’s eyes got watery and she sniffed.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked Jo.

  Jo’s eyes were level on mine, unflinching. “Yes. It was supposed to.”

  Okay. My child was atoning. I got that. I would have preferred a less permanent mea culpa, but if it had to be a tattoo, well, this was a small and discreet tattoo. I could live with it. Just as well, since I was going to have to.

  Alex had watched the exchange carefully. He said now, “Jo, your dad says it’s okay if we date.”

  Annie added eyebrows to her O.

  Jo looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. “You’re grounded now, but when that’s over, yes. You can go out with Alex. There’s going to be restrictions, but yes.”

  Annie said, “How did that come about?”

  I explained that our entire jail cell had voted and Alex had won. Jo slipped off my lap and went back to Alex. “How long am I grounded for?”

  “Five hundred years.”

  “Dad!”

  “Four-fifty.”

  “Dad!”

  “Your mom and I will talk about it, Jo. It’s going to be a long time. You could have been killed. This is a big deal. But I don’t want to talk about it right now. Where is Cara, by the way?”

  “Home and grounded,�
� said Annie Laurie.

  “Good,” I said.

  Jo had guts, I’ll give her that. I like a woman with guts. I like them to stay alive, is all I’m saying.

  From: Merrie Wells

  To: Walker Wells

  Jo says you spent the night in jail. I bet her $50 you were there to bail someone out. Do I owe her or does she owe me?

  • • •

  After my shower, I had to go over to the Pickersley-Smythes . . . wait. Scratch that. I had to go over to the Pickersleys’, as I would now be calling them, and apologize for letting them down at the memorial and for Jo’s prying. I called ahead.

  Mark met me at the door and took me back to the kitchen where Liz was constructing an elaborate sugar-free dessert tray to drop off for her Bunco group. She gave me a crimped smile and asked me why my daughter thought it was okay to break into other people’s homes and had we had this problem with her before.

  “Sit down, Bear. She doesn’t mean it that way.” Mark poured me some iced tea and pushed a bowl filled with sweetener packets my way. He leaned against the kitchen island and watched his wife’s preparations. I drank the tea unsweetened. I hate sweeteners. I know lots of diabetics, all of whom keep sugar on hand for the thousands of people in the world who aren’t diabetic. But not Liz.

  You know, I was there to do the groveling bit, but I thought it was a little harsh to call Jo a housebreaker. Especially since Phoebe had entered our house without permission more times than we could know. I said, “Liz, Phoebe showed Jo where the extra key was hidden, and—”

  “It’s not Phoebe’s trailer, anymore.”

  “And she didn’t know anyone else was living there—”

  “Does she break into the model homes here in the neighborhood? Since no one lives in them?” Liz set a pastry down on the tray with enough force to crumble it. “She likes to use other people’s property as if it’s her own, is that it?”

  Mark choked on his tea. “Liz, could you stop busting his balls? What do you care, anyway? It’s a lousy trailer—you’ve barely even set foot in it.”

  “Excuse me, Mark, but I’m the one who cleaned that trailer from end to end when Jenny died and you moved Phoebe here. I thought the idea was we’d sell it to give you some much-needed personal funds. In case you wanted to contribute. To the household.” She gave him a poisonous smile and he smiled right back.