“So I see,” Tucker said. “Put a fair bit o’ size on you.”
“Yeah, well, survival of the fittest, right, Daddy?”
Tucker didn’t reply.
“Guards were the toughest,” Travis continued. “Try as I did to bulk up, they always got you in numbers. And with weapons, yet. Batons, pepper spray, Tasers…” He started on a fingernail. Bit and peeled the nail away, spitting it to the floor after. Blood immediately pooled around the cuticle. He stuck the bloodied fingertip in his mouth and periodically sucked on it as he went on.
“They had a celebration one night, the guards did. One son of a bitch’s birthday, I think,” he said. “I had to stand in class after that night, Daddy. Shove a sock down my backside for a good couple of days to stop the flow. I was like a woman during her time, Daddy. You believe that?”
Again, Tucker didn’t reply. Nor was he meant to.
Travis continued. “You know I was so scared, so outnumbered, so desperate that night that I tried threatening them with our name? Tried telling them I was a Roy, and that nobody fucked with a Roy and got away with it, blah, blah, blah…” He pulled his fingertip from his mouth. The bleeding had subsided some. A hangnail remained. He studied it like it was a puzzle. “Well, like I told you, Daddy, nobody cared I was a Roy. Meemaw dead. Uncle Harlon dead. Mama dead. You locked up in here, leaving your only son to fend for his life in that shithole they call Hell on Earth…” Comment ripe with bait, Travis placed a condescending eye on his father and waited.
Tucker bit instantly. “Son, if I’d known my lawyer was gonna screw me like that—”
“Screw you?”
Tucker dropped his head and exhaled frustration. “If I’d known my lawyer was gonna screw you like that, I never would have done what I done.”
“You mean confess to something you didn’t do? Stay and look after your son like you was meant to?”
“But I did do it, son. I did commit murder.”
“Only the one. No reason for you to confess to it all. You coulda pinned it on Meemaw and Uncle Harlon. Coulda pinned all of it on Meemaw and Uncle Harlon. They was dead, who woulda been the wiser?”
“Them Daigle boys, for one. They saw me cut their mama’s throat.”
“Their word against yours.” He shrugged, started working on the hangnail. “Might have had a chance.”
“Son, I was doing the right thing. Everything that happened back then…it just all got outta control. I avenged your mama’s death, and I stand by that, but everything after…” He shook his head. “Harlon, your meemaw…they got so carried away. I’m all about eye for an eye, but I ain’t no mindless killer.”
“And so therefore you saw fit to cop to it all and send your boy to Hattenworth.”
Guilt left the cocktail. One hundred proof rage now. “How many times I gotta tell you, boy? That lawyer, he fucked me—sorry; he fucked you. Far as I knew, you was heading up north to some fancy private school that was gonna do you well, so long as I confessed to it all. I was doing the right fucking thing, boy. Looking after your future, is what I was doing!”
Travis appeared completely unfazed by his father’s outburst. Looked, in fact, as though he’d expected it. His reply was low and even: “Shoulda given it a bit more thought, maybe,” he said. “Like I said, I think pinning everything on Uncle Harlon and Meemaw woulda been wise…” He then looked hard into his father’s eyes. “Or maybe you coulda just left me in the care of my aunt Trudy.”
As quickly as it had arrived, Tucker’s undiluted rage was gone. Guilt too. It was a new cocktail, the ingredients hazy to Tucker, they were so rare to his system. But to swallow his pride and guess, he might have thought at least one of them was alarm—something under the fear label. And though he swallowed it down just the same as the others, this too crept its way back up and found his face against his will.
His son’s knowing little smile told him that.
“That’s right, Daddy,” he said. “I did some digging when I left Hattenworth. Who woulda thought there were more Roys in the swamp? One of them your very own sister.”
Chapter 9
“Half-sister,” Tucker said, regaining his composure. “Different daddies.”
“Still share the same blood, don’t you? Tell me, Daddy; why even bother with the whole ‘school up north’ thing? Why not just leave me in the care of your own flesh and blood?”
“Boy, I ain’t seen your aunt Trudy in I don’t know how long. And that’s by choice. The company she keeps…her daddy…You thought your meemaw done some bad things? Your uncle Harlon? Me?” He shook his head. “Hell…Trudy and them make us look like choir folk. They do bad shit for fun, boy; not because they’re in the right. I didn’t want you staying with folks like that.”
“So I was better off where I was put, was I?”
Tucker once again fought for control. “Don’t know how many times I need to tell you the same fucking thing, boy. Far as I knew you was heading up north. And you know what? Knowing Trudy and them like I do, yeah, you just might have been better off where you was put.”
Travis sat back, looking mildly amused. “Well, if that isn’t the goddamnedest thing I ever heard someone say to me.”
Tucker broke. “Oh, enough with this fucking song and dance you’re doing, boy. You come here saying you wanna grant me forgiveness, and yet you keep going on as if I did wrong by you on purpose.”
“I did come here to grant you—”
“Bullshit, you did. You keep spinning tales about how rough you had it at Hattenworth, knowing it would eat me up some.” He snorted hard, coughed up phlegm, turned, and spat it on the floor. “Making a man feel guilty as all hell ain’t how you go about granting forgiveness, boy.”
Travis had raised both brows the moment it was voiced. Now he repeated it. “Spinning tales?”
“Well, how the hell should I know how many of them are true or not, boy? I don’t think you need reminding that all of this”—he waved an arm around the visitation room—“is on account of your lying. If you only told the truth from the start and said that Daigle boy whipped you fair and square, then your meemaw would still be alive. Your uncle Harlon would still be alive. Your mama would still be alive…” Tucker broke eye contact after mentioning his late wife, refusing to give his son the satisfaction of his pain. He quickly collected himself, looked back at Travis, and finished with: “And I wouldn’t be in here for the rest of my life, and you never woulda done a single day at Hattenworth, now, would you have?”
Travis’s stone face now matched his father’s, the patronizing little expressions that surfaced now and then as though they never existed. “Well, fuck me…” he said in just over a whisper. “I was wondering if you were gonna have the nerve to say such a thing.”
Tucker’s affect remained flat. Not even the slightest ripple. “I didn’t say anything you didn’t already know, boy.”
“And with this ‘boy’ stuff, yet. No longer calling me your son,” Travis said.
“I’ll start calling you my son again when you start giving me a reason to.”
Travis laced his hands together on the table, started twiddling his thumbs. He looked down at them for a moment, then back up at his father.
“I blamed you, Daddy,” he said. “Whether you want to believe me or not, my time at Hattenworth was exactly like they call it. Hell on Earth, it was. And in a weird sort of way, holding on to that anger I had for you is what got me through it all. Many a night I thought of taking my own life. The only thing that kept the razor off my wrists or the sheets from around my neck was the thought of meeting up with you one day and getting what was mine.”
“And what might that be?”
Travis shrugged. “Revenge, I suppose. Don’t know how I woulda gone about it, you being locked up in here and all. Still, didn’t stop me from fantasizing about it all the same.”
“What changed your mind?” Tucker asked. Then, with a slight tilt of the head: “Assuming it is changed.”
Travis lo
oked up at his father with only his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. It wasn’t no religion or no headshrinker or nothing like that. Towards the end of my stay, when everyone started leaving me be, I had quite a bit of time on my hands. Time for thinking…time for—what do they call it—introspection?”
Tucker gave a short splay of his hand that said no idea.
“Anyway, I got to thinking quite a bit, and I realized that you was trying to do right by me. That the reason I was in such a mess was all my own doing.”
“And yet you come in here with one hell of a chip on your shoulder. Acting like you was out for some kind of revenge.”
Travis looked down at his thumbs working against each other again. “Yeah, I know. I guess once I seen you, some of that blame I held on to all them years come rushing back. You’re my daddy, I ain’t seen you in years, and I come off like a right prick from the second we start talking.” He looked up at Tucker and shook his head. “What good is that introspection if it all goes to shit when it matters, right?”
Another rhetorical question that Tucker left alone.
Travis went on.
“The thing about your sister, Trudy? I don’t even know why I brought that up. Yeah, I found out about her after I left Hattenworth, but I was over it all by then. I’d already forgiven you. And I knew you would have left me with her if you thought it was the right thing to do. Hell, I wasn’t even gonna mention her name today…” He shrugged. “But like I said, the second I seen you, that old blame came rushing back, and I mentioned her all the same, didn’t I?” He shook his head, disgusted with himself.
Tucker felt that odd pull in his gut again. Compassion trying to surface against his will. He suppressed it and brought his attention to the recent tattoo on Travis’s forearm. “Rationem…three? That what that says?” he asked, gesturing towards it.
Travis looked down at his forearm as though he’d forgotten the tattoo was there. He ran a finger over the raw lettering and continued to stare at it as he spoke. “Yeah. Started it my last day at Hattenworth.”
“What’s it mean?”
Travis chuckled. “Nothing as is. Haven’t had a chance to finish yet.”
“Well, you got all the time in the world ahead of you now.”
Travis looked up at his father. “I suppose I do. I’m fixing to do it sooner than later, though.” He paused, looked at the tattoo, then back up at his father again. “Maybe I come see you again when it’s done?”
Tucker gave a small shrug. A play at indifference. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
“Okay then.”
Another pause and then: “I don’t forgive you, Daddy.”
Tucker couldn’t fight his surprise. “Come again?”
“Forgiveness is something you grant to people who done you wrong.” Travis swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You never done wrong by me.”
Tucker looked away. Throat tight, eyes burning. “Get the hell out of here, son. And when you come back, you bring me some of that jerky I like. Commissary charge a small fortune for it in here. You remember the kind I’m talking?”
A smile teased the corner of Travis’s mouth. “I remember. And now that you’re back to calling me ‘son’ again, I suppose I just might.”
They stood, hugged hard, and went their separate ways.
Chapter 10
Hattenworth. Christ, they’d sent his boy to fucking Hattenworth.
No, strike that—his piece of shit lawyer had sent his boy to Hattenworth. Knew exactly what he was doing too, the son of a bitch. Not even the grandest mixup could account for such a mistake. It was deliberate.
Tucker envisioned the lawyer after his confession, in some fancy country club with all his other lawyer scum friends, dressed in silk and reclined in leather, drinking their pricey booze, laughing over his retelling of how he got some ignorant swamp fool to actually send his boy to Hell on Earth in exchange for a confession. And then they would all erupt in laughter, reveling in the victory.
Hate burned in Tucker’s chest. May God strike him dead now if he wasn’t going to find a way to make his lawyer pay. Sure, he’d never physically be able to get his hands on him, and a letter to the man would likely result in a condescending little laugh, a crumple, and a toss in the wastebasket. Or maybe no crumple. Maybe the letter would make a trip to his next gathering at the club for all his fellow scum to see, another unanimous round of laughter at his expense the result?
The hate was like acid now. He needed something. Anything to make this right. He wondered what the media might have to say about it. What the media might have to say about the torment his boy had to endure. What the media might have to say about the torment his boy had to endure because of a lawyer who took advantage of his client’s lack of know-how, using all his fancy lawyer tricks and talk to get Tucker to confess in exchange for not sending his boy to a good institution up north as he’d been told, but to a place where rape and beating were the norm, chiefs of those abusers the fucking staff. Yes, he wondered what the media would say indeed.
Tucker, reclined on his cot with his magazine, never once reading the magazine since picking it back up, lost in the prospect of revenge, set the magazine aside and sat up. It was less than an hour before lights out. Less than a half-hour. COs would be walking their routes soon.
He hopped off his cot and went to his cell door. Pressed his face against the bars and strained his eyes right to get a decent look down the length of the cell block. He saw a CO starting his route at the far end. And of course it was his buddy. His gum-cracking, wannabe-tough-guy buddy that Tucker would trade five hundred dollars credit at the commissary for one good minute with, in a locked room with no windows.
“Hey! Hey!” Tucker called.
“What the hell is it, Roy?” the CO hollered back.
“I wanna make a phone call.”
Had it been anyone else, such a futile request would have resulted in a round of laughter from all cells on the block. No one laughed when Tucker asked. Everyone did, in fact, get very quiet. Such an urgent request from such a stoic prisoner. It was far too curious.
“Oh, you do, do you?” the officer replied. “Tough shit.”
Tucker banged the heel of his palm against his cell door—a definitive boom that carried its way down the length of the block, its strength amplified by the sudden quiet among the prisoners. “Come on”—what the hell was the prick’s name again? Jones? Jackson?—“Johnson!” And then, with all the pride he could manage to spare: “Please!”
“There’s no way you’re getting a phone call this late, Roy. Now shut the fuck up.”
Tucker banged the heel of his hand against his cell door again. Another definitive boom echoing down the atypically quiet block.
“You bang that cell one more time, and I’m gonna come down there and bang your fucking head!”
“Bring a phone,” Tucker said.
The cell block erupted in laughter.
“SHUT UP!” Johnson yelled.
The block took its time quieting down. Red-faced, Johnson stormed towards Tucker’s cell, boots clacking against the concrete, baton pulled and brandished for all passing cells to see.
When Johnson arrived at Tucker’s cell, Tucker was seated behind the tiny desk in the corner of his cell, busily scribbling something onto a piece of paper with a prison-issued safety pen. He did not look up upon Johnson’s demonstrative arrival: a final, heavy clack of the boots in front of his cell; melodramatic snorts like some cartoon bull gearing up to charge. Only when he banged his baton on the cell bars did Tucker stop writing and look his way.
“What?” Tucker asked impatiently, as though none of their conversation moments ago had taken place.
“Oh, you don’t need a phone anymore?” Johnson asked.
“You told me ‘no.’”
“That’s right.”
“So then what the hell do you want?”
“Why do you need to make a phone call so bad, Roy? W
ho the fuck wants to hear what you gotta say?”
Tucker turned back to his notes. “That’s my business.”
“You ever want that phone call, you better make it my business too.”
Head still in his notes, Tucker snorted and said: “Right—’cause a turnkey like you calls the shots around here.”
Johnson banged the bars with his stick again. Corrections officers often resented being referred to as guards, believing the term simplified their profession. An archaic term like turnkey? That was a blatant kick in the nuts, and Tucker knew it all too well.
In a loud whisper, Johnson said: “I’m trying to be nice here, Roy. You want that phone call or not?”
Tucker stopped writing again. He turned in his chair and faced Johnson completely. “What, you actually gonna let me?”
Johnson smirked. “I might if you ask me nice.”
Tucker made a face. “What kind of faggot talk is that?”
Johnson’s smirk vanished. His nostrils flared. Still managing a loud whisper, he said: “You sure as hell ain’t making this easy, Roy. You want that fucking phone call or not?”
Tucker stood and approached the bars. “What’s the trade?”
Johnson cocked his head as though such a notion was foreign to him. It was anything but. “Trade?” he asked.
Tucker loathed such dances. Refused to indulge them. “A minute ago there was no chance. Now there is. You don’t like me. So what’s the trade?”
Johnson nodded slowly. “Fair enough.” He leaned in, lowered his voice further still. “Mule.”
Tucker frowned. “I don’t do that shit.”
“You wanna make that phone call tonight, you will.”
“I’ll make it tomorrow.”
“Oh, you will, will you? You know, sometimes I think that ego of yours gets in the way of certain truths around here, Roy. One bad word to the warden from me, and the soonest call you’ll ever make will be a fucking osprey’s in solitary to keep your arrogant ass company.”
Tucker had to work hard to unclench the fists at his sides. “Why you doing this?” he asked. “You got mules.”
Wildlife- Reckoning Page 4
