You're just talking, he thought. Full of bullshit. There's a nine-millimeter in the drawer for any time you get too tired, you can always talk to Mr. Browning, he's got good advice when you're ready to listen. But he's been quiet thirteen years. Because you yourself are just talk.
He put down his TV Guide, there was no point. He rolled to his desk, he had caused the whole thing, it was the small slips of the mind that did you in. He'd gotten sloppy, left the money where the boy could find it. He should have locked the money up, hidden it somewhere else. There were bills all over, the hospital, he had another appointment, they wouldn't schedule anything together, it was a bunch of shithead tailchasers, they wanted to get their twenty- five a visit. It was the bush leagues, you didn't get good doctors at a little hospital like that, they were practically veterinarians. When they'd found that lump on his prostate, he could practically see their hands rubbing together, more tests and operations. He'd made another appointment with a specialist in the city, Indian guy, Ramesh, Ramid, barely understood what he was saying but he was good, a likable guy. Ramesh checked and checked but the lump was gone, probably never there to begin with. Told him: Doc, I never been so happy to have a man stick his finger up my ass. Took you the wrong way. Small careful man. Said I didn't like it any more than you did, Mr. English. After that he wouldn't look at you. Liked him except now you can't go back.
He rolled himself to the window, there was a quarter moon, he could see everything, the skeleton of the neighbor's house, Pappy Cross, gone twelve years. Moves to Nevada to be with his sons, within two weeks someone came and stole his gutters, security door, doublepane windows. Called him in Nevada to tell him, never got a call back. Whole house rotting to nothing.
There was a noise from upstairs but it was just Lee walking around. Soon she would have to go back, she would not wait around here forever as Isaac had. Admit it, he thought. A man would not have done that. What you did to that boy it is sacrifice yourself for your children, not the other way around. The boy was technically a genius, they'd had him tested but he had never told the boy 167, that was the number he'd scored, it was higher than his sister. But, he didn't know, there'd always been something about the boy he was smart and stupid at the same time. As if he was meant to do everything the wrong way. Junior league ball, the boy was twelve, they subbed him in for the pitcher, good arm but he chokes, eight runs straight, loses the game. Afterward acting like nothing happened. It made no sense. The feeling that gave you, watching your son lose the game, but he just shrugged it off, didn't care.
No, he thought, you never had any choice, Lee Anne left first and there was nothing more to it. And the boy could take it, he's stronger than she is. She talks one way but inside she's another. Would've killed her staying here.
Henry thought about it, he would have wheeled himself in front of a train for either of them. Went without saying. The boy was his son. It was normal to have a preference, his own father had preferred him to his brother, it was just the way life went. He did not have enough to give to both of them. No, he thought, that is a lie. You did not want to be alone and you made choices.
Either way it would have been time to let the boy go, make your final journey. Into the home with the old folks, men in diapers, cleaned by strangers. Last about two weeks. Life for a life. He watched the deer browsing around Pappy Cross's old house, wondered if Pappy was even still alive, the house had been on the market twelve years and one of the sons had come back, stayed in a hotel, contracted someone to cut all the trees down, even the young pines, forty- dollar trees, sold them to the mill and got the money out that way. He wondered if Pappy knew about it. Rotting house in a stump field, soon enough there'd be no trace, a million places just like this, right now and throughout time. Earth is made of bones. From wood and back to wood and you'll never know what came before you.
7. Poe
The new cell didn't have a window and they never turned out the lights but at least it was his alone. He knew it was late morning sometime; they had brought him breakfast, that had been a few hours ago though he wasn't sure even of that. It didn't matter, though. They would all be after him now, everyone in the prison, black gangs and white, a coalition of the willing, he had gone back on his word and taken another man down to boot, he had taken men from both sides. He wondered how he had done that, a basic rule, choose your enemies. He had chosen everyone. He wondered if he had killed Tucker. It didn't seem to matter much, it was the least of his worries, it was not a game of sums. No matter what you did in life, there was still your own death at the end of it. There was no question they would kill him, they would take their first chance.
He felt a shiver go through him and the sweat was coming fast now, he was drenched and cold where a second ago he had been warm. He was up on his feet and pacing around the cell, he was testing the walls with his hands, the bars, it was no use, the natural laws, he was going to scream, there were things inside that needed to escape. Only he would not. He would be a man. He would lie on the bed and calm his mind. He did. He was wet everywhere and his scalp was tingling, it felt like a heart attack, he would die there in his bed. After a few minutes the wave passed and there was a feeling of weakness and being emptied of everything.
And yet there was a way out. It was right in front of him, staring him in the face. He could tell the truth and change everything, his lawyer would want the same thing as all of them. That was the purpose of the lawyer. To get him out of here. To save his actual life.
Except it was not saving as much as trading. Isaac and Lee. But his life. Versus a promise he had made. Versus what he knew, there were good ones and bad ones and Isaac was one of the rare good ones. Him, Poe, from the natural standpoint he was where he was supposed to be, he belonged here and Isaac didn't. Maybe not this exact place, maybe this was not exactly where he belonged, but he admitted it, he was not surprised, not really. He had nearly made a vacation here last year, and his mother and Harris had gotten him out of it. It was not some unfair twist of fate, he had not been born a refugee, it was his own choices, he could be a man about it. He could accept the consequences.
And yet—if a lawyer asked what happened, it would be difficult to withhold a description of the events, it would not be human thoughts but another part of him. If someone asked him, he would tell. He would have no choice. But if they didn't ask him he wouldn't tell. It was a fair chance, it gave equal weights to both sides. Except he knew they would ask him. It was an obvious question: who killed the man in the machine shop? Christ it seemed so long ago, ancient times, part of the past. But it was the reason he was here. They would ask it and he would tell them. It was the truth, was all it was. It was nothing more than the truth.
He was up and pacing again, three steps to the back wall and turn and come back. Before lunch, they had said, that was when the lawyer was coming it had been some time now since breakfast. Yes, he thought, that is who you are. If there is any bad luck you will find it only it was not just luck, there had been many ways to avoid it, he hadn't taken any of them. It was hopeless, a lost cause. He had slept through life, let the currents take him. He had let the currents take him faster and faster and he had not noticed. He was at the end now, the big drop. It was not only college there had been other choices as well, choices that had revealed him to others, choices that half the town would have jumped at but he, Poe, had chosen another way. It was Orn Seidel calling him right after graduation, there was an opening at a company that did the plastic seals for landfills. Traveling all over the country. At new landfills they would lay down the plastic liners in preparation for garbage to be dumped there, to prevent leakage into nearby streams and such. At the old landfills they would seal them up, it was like a giant ziplock, a heavy layer of plastic overtop the garbage and then they blew them up with air to test them, just before they dumped the soil on top you could run across the acres of plastic, bouncing, it was like running on the moon, Orn said, it was fourteen dollars an hour to start. But it was not really running on t
he moon. It was working with other people's trash. Technicians, they called themselves, but it was not really that. It was laying plastic overtop of trash heaps, it was hanging around city dumps. Your country is supposed to do better than that for you, he thought.
And from Mike DeLuca's uncle, Poe's last big chance, strike three is what it was, dismantling work, taking apart mills and old factories, they had taken down old steelmills all over the country, locally and nationally. But another traveling job, Poe had applied and gotten the interview but there was so much traveling, it was living out of a suitcase the entire year, and the man giving the interview must have seen something in Poe's face. The work was all in the Midwest now, taking down the auto plants in Michigan and Indiana. And one day even that work would end, and there would be no record, nothing left standing, to show that anything had ever been built in America. It was going to cause big problems, he didn't know how but he felt it. You could not have a country, not this big, that didn't make things for itself. There would be ramifications eventually.
As for Mike DeLuca's uncle, he'd spent twenty years working in steelmills and then twenty years taking them apart, scrapping them, it was like his revenge against the steelmills, against getting laid off, but it was not really revenge, it was not a job anyone would want, the lies he had to tell when he visited the small towns and some waitress asked him so what're you in town for?
It was not all bad. He had lived a good life, the leader of the pack, a local hero, it was more than most. Slept with fourteen girls, it was more than most. Maybe one of them had a baby he didn't know about, life after death. Except it did not have to go that way. He could tell the simple truth. Truth and nothing but. He had not killed the man Otto, they would let him go and these men, Clovis and these men who would kill him here, he would never see them again.
It was the old saying, the truth will set you free. He could breathe outside and sit and feel the river air on him as he fished in the shade and ate egg sandwiches, jump a rabbit with a .22. Christ a .22 what he could do in here with that, a .22, the weakest of calibers, he could run the entire place. He could leave here, lie under the covers warm with Lee with her legs holding them up like a tent, smell of her smooth skin the slight rough patch between her legs. It was countless the pleasures of life there were millions, you could spend your entire life listing them, they were different for every person the feel of oak bark, light in a room, watching a big buck and deciding not to shoot it. It was a privilege you could lose at any time, he had taken it for granted, but he would change his life. He would make his life mean something. You could not go with the current and expect it to turn out fine, he had not known it before but he knew it now, he would change everything.
He lay down on the cold cement floor. He put his head under the bunk and lay there with his face in darkness. He could not tell the truth because it was not really the truth. Lee would not forgive him. She would see him for what he was. She would never think of him again, she would hate him more than she had ever hated anyone, it did not take a genius to figure that out. She already knew the story. It had been a mistake telling her. But he could not go back now, there was no way around it, she would not forgive him it was her brother, she would not be able to turn a blind eye to it.
He thought about that and felt even sicker, he was sweating again. No he could not allow that. He had closed the door on himself when he told her. But he could not lie anyway. He would not have done it anyway, ratted out his best friend, it was not in him to do that, he could think it but not do it. It was like look but don't touch.
Except he would just see. It was life. It was comparing ideas to actual life, it was not a valid comparison, it was words versus blood. He would see. When the lawyer came he would sign the papers and that would be all. He would not offer but if they asked him he would tell. He would have no choice. But if they didn't ask he wouldn't tell. Except they would ask. It would be the first question, most likely.
He could not talk to the lawyer. He would stay angry, he would think about getting Clovis or even Black Larry, he would take them down with him. He would go down a legend it was as simple as that, you could change your destiny that quickly. He heard a noise coming from somewhere. He was still lying under his rack. He looked out and saw a guard rapping on the bars.
“Cuff up,” he said. “Your lawyer's here.” He opened the slot in the door for Poe to stick his hands through.
Poe shook his head. He got to his feet and stood over the toilet and tried to urinate but he was too nervous, nothing would come out.
“Get the fuck over here and cuff up,” said the guard. He was a short fat man with thinning hair and a jovial face, a plump fat face, he could not help but look happy.
“I ain't goin anywhere,” said Poe.
“Stop being a fuckin hard- ass. Get the fuck out of that cell before I call the fuckin SORT team on your ass.”
“Fuckin call em. They can drag me out but I ain't going.”
“You are one stupid- ass motherfucker, aren't you?”
“Open that door and you'll see how stupid I am.”
The fat man stared at him with an amused expression. “Alright then,” he finally said. He rapped on the cell and began to walk away.
“Hey,” Poe said.
“Change your mind already?”
“What happened to that boy? My cellmate.”
“They took him to the hospital in Pittsburgh.”
“He comin back?”
“If he does I don't think he'll be much trouble to you or anyone else.”
“I don't give a shit about him.”
“No one else does, either. If they hadn't gotten him out of the infirmary so quick, there's about fifty guys who would have sat on his chest.”
“Is that gonna help me?”
“You aren't getting any new charges pressed, I can guarantee you that. Now get your ass over here and cuff up and see your lawyer.”
“No,” said Poe.
“Whatever your reason,” the guard said. “You might think your good buddies back home would do the same for you, but I can promise you they wouldn't, and if you don't believe me you can look around inside that cell there and tell me if you see them anywhere. So cuff up. Least give yourself a chance.”
“Don't trouble yourself,” Poe said.
The guard gave him a final look. Then he disappeared from view, and Poe heard him shuffling back down the hall.
8. Lee
She'd spent most of the day driving around, finding places to read and then driving, past the houses of old friends, teachers, but it was all the same. The place held nothing for her. Maybe one day it would, but not now. She had a few nostalgic memories, but not many. Mostly they involved being with Isaac. Or maybe she was just telling herself that now.
She'd always known it wouldn't be easy for him, his awkwardness around people, around her high school friends. No one knew what to make of him. He didn't know what to make of himself. With the exception of his sister, he didn't know anyone like him. And people his age tended to mistake his generosity for condescension, presuming that Isaac held them to the same impossible standard to which he held himself. Eventually, she thought, he must have decided to stop trying.
She could feel herself getting angry, at herself mostly but also at her former classmates. Her sophomore year, everyone was sitting around Gretchen Mills's room and someone, it might have been Bunny Sachs, said, “You guys do realize this is the hardest thing we'll ever do. Getting in here is basically the hardest thing there is in the world and we've already done it.”
But of course they hadn't done anything. They'd all been born to the right parents, in the right neighborhoods, they went to the right schools, had all the right social instructions, had taken all the right tests. There was simply not a chance they would fail. They'd worked hard but always with the expectation they would get what they wanted—the world had never shown them anything different. Very few of them had earned their places. Everyone admitted how spoiled they
were but underneath, there was always the presumption that they deserved it.
Of course, she hadn't said a word. She wished she had but she hadn't. It was easy now to look back and think these things, but at the time she'd wanted to fit in and go along with Bunny and think yes I deserve this happy life I'm living.
Isaac's friendship with Poe still baffled her. But of course her friendship with Poe must have baffled him as well. Maybe it was that people had always set them, Poe and Isaac, so far apart—Poe because of his talent for everything physical, Isaac because of his mind. The truth was they were both the best at what they did in that school. It was a special sort of small- town bitterness that must have thrived on seeing them both fail.
After Isaac's first visit to New Haven, she'd thought maybe he'd come back, a month during the summer, she would scrape together money for a full- time caretaker for her father, just for the month. By then she already had two credit cards—she would find a way to pay for it somehow.
But Isaac had not responded to her offers to come. He was already changing. No, she thought, he might just have cared about his father too much. Henry would have seen it as Isaac going on vacation in Connecticut, and Isaac cared too much about what Henry thought of him to risk it. You had it easy, she thought. You got let off the hook.
The truth was that Isaac was not as ready to leave as he claimed. He had had a longer time to think about their mother, whereas she was already being pulled into another orbit—she'd left for New Haven almost immediately. What kind of people Isaac and her father could have become in the intervening years, she had no idea. Anything could have happened. You got lucky, she thought. You were too selfish to even consider staying.
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