Street of Angels

by Joe Derkacht

  #

  Praying sometimes under her breath, sometimes aloud, Stella Jo sat at Mertie’s bedside, clasping hands with her through the bedrails, as Mertie hung onto life by the slender silver cord, the golden bowl cracked, by all means, but not yet shattered.

  Light shone from the dying woman’s face (not that Stella wasn’t dying, just slower, like everyone else), a light Stella readily recognized as the glow of the spirit. Eyes fluttering open, one last time Mertie woke on this side of the River.

  Stella Jo leaned close to hear her words.

  “Jesus has forgiven me, I know it,” Mertie said.

  “Forgiven,” she agreed, gently squeezing her hand.

  “And you, you forgive me?”

  “I do,” she said, as solemnly as she had ever spoken those same two words to Leonard on the day of their wedding. She had never felt it like she felt it now, but deep in her bones she understood that forgiveness was every bit as much of a covenant as marriage.

  “I forgave you a long time ago,” she said, squeezing the hand again. This time, Mertie did not squeeze back. The dying woman’s face grew slack, the glow faded. While she might not see it with the eyes of flesh, Stella, with an inner clarity reserved for the spirit, saw the dying woman wade eagerly into the broad River. Waiting to meet her, with pierced hands outstretched, there was Someone whose infinite stride would easily carry her the rest of the way across. In the realm outside of (yet inextricably joined with) the prison and its infirmary, Mertie advanced, arms flung wide to greet that Someone, and was taken up to taste death no more, safely escorted from this world and into another by the Master.

  Seemingly in no hurry, a nurse inmate entered the room and switched off the buzzing heart monitor. “All she wrote, huh?” She muttered. “I’ll fetch the doctor.”

  The doctor, a gray little man in a dingy white smock, returned moments later with the nurse and pried Stella’s fingers from Mertie’s. He took the lifeless wrist in his hand to search for a pulse that was no longer there.

  “Time of death, 4:20 p.m.,” he announced, recording the passing in Mertie’s chart and snapping it shut with a flourish, like an inmate happily crossing off another day on the calendar until he should be released.

  Stella Jo looked at Mertie’s wasted, once pretty face. Imperceptibly, she shook her head, while inside she shouted hallelujah! If the nurse only knew! If the frazzle-haired doctor only knew! Mertie’s physical body was here, all right, but the real her, the new Mertie, was on a journey to the heavenly city, where neither moth nor rust, nor disease of any kind, could ever again bring corruption.

  ****

  Chapter 44

  He preferred the prison laundry to any of the other jobs they might have assigned him. While handling the prison population’s soiled clothes was unavoidably messy and unsanitary (if he let himself think about it), it was also appealingly clean, once everything went through the wash and was pulled from the driers. And yes, there was no arguing the fact it was hot, with hot driers constantly running and steam rising from the washers, or that there was any escape from the noise of the gas driers, either, the rumble of the giant spinning drums echoing from concrete walls. But all of the above were balanced out by the necessity of being on the move from the beginning of his shift all the way to shift’s end, affording little time for him to think.

  Thinking was something he didn’t want to do, not with the eternity of 87 more months of confinement staring him in the face. In Laundry it was non-stop action. Not adventure, mind you, but action. Everything had a sense of order about it, too. The clothing, blankets, and various linens came in dirty and disorganized, balled up in the big, rolling canvas bins, stinking of captivity and fear and despair, and they left clean, all of it folded, some items run through the steam presses prior to folding, and he was one of the men responsible for bringing order to the whole mess. After three and a half years in the slammer, there was nobody who could fold sheets more precisely than he or do better at putting a knife-edge crease into a pair of sloppy coveralls. Nobody. Which was a switch for him, never being so clean in all his life or nearly as orderly. Life on the road with Bert and Mertie had never left much time or reason for such niceties.

  Strange, really, if he stopped to think about it. Bert and Mertie, regardless of their circumstances, had always kept themselves scrupulously clean. They might drive a junk heap of a pickup for their only transportation or a fine Cadillac they managed to steal in their travels, but in either case they always dressed well and paid careful attention to their grooming. People don’t think you’re poor, if you’re clean and neat, he remembered his mother saying. They don’t ask none too many questions, either, boy, he remembered Bert often chipping in.

  That’s because cleanliness is next to godliness, Marky John, Mertie would cheerily say, and then pass the baton of her parental teaching duties to Bert.

  You pay attention, boy. Mark my word, a neatly dressed feller in an office gets away with a lot more than a poorly dressed bum on the street. People don’t think a neatly dressed man can have stealing on his mind like a dirty bum, when all it takes to satisfy the bum is a few bucks to get by for a day or two, while the neat one is looking to steal the shirt off your back and the whole closet along with it, if he can. Lots of people just naturally look the other way, when they see a neatly dressed man doing something he shouldn’t be doing.

  Specially them preachers, he would say, grinning over at Mertie. If they’re not the worst, looking and talking clean, and grabbin’ money at the same time from everybody...

  To Mark John’s mind, something had never quite added up there, because while they kept themselves neatly groomed and looking good in their nice clothes, nice clothes seldom came his way, or even haircuts when he needed them. In fact, he’d seen a lot of long stretches between haircuts until joining the Army. They talked about him, told people in public how he was their innocent little boy, but when it came right down to it, that was the most attention he ever received from them. The only other times were when Bert laid into him for talking to strangers. Talking to strangers was forbidden, except when a stranger needed to be distracted into looking the other direction. There was a lot of that, because Ol’ Bert preferred to drive cars belonging to other folks, at least until he could drop them at a local chop shop.

  Still hot from the giant driers, the sheets and blankets were trundled to him at the folding tables, where the real work began. In any given hour he could fold and bundle together 20 sets of sheets with their two blankets. The work kept him busy, but it wasn’t like he was killing snakes. A muggy September day, in combination with the heat and humidity of the Laundry building, pulled sweat from his pores like greasy raindrops. He bent over and wiped his forehead on a clean sheet. It wasn’t like anyone would ever know.

  “Hey! Tattoo! Kid!”

  He jerked to attention, caught red-handed. Oscar Lederer, civilian manager of the Laundry, had come out of his office and shouted from across the room. He could never seem to remember any prisoner’s name, calling everyone instead by whatever distinguishing feature was handy at the moment. Attired in jeans and undershirt, like the rest of the inmate workers, left Mark John subject to the nickname of “Tattoo.” There were plenty of tattoos in the prison population, and Mark John wasn’t the only gaudily tattooed prisoner working the laundry. Two other men came to attention at the same time.

  Lederer stabbed an unlit cigar in his direction. “You!”

  “Yeah?” Mark John said, straightening his stacks of sheets.

  “C’mere, kid. In my office!”

  He disappeared through his office door. Mark John scowled and unhappily pushed his work aside. It wasn’t like he actually enjoyed doing laundry, but he enjoyed interruptions even less. Especially when they came without warning from Lederer.

  The manager had seated himself at his beat-up steel office desk. Standing beside the desk, as if waiting for him, was a prison guard, muscular arms fo
lded over his chest.

  “Somebody here to see you, son,” Lederer told him in a subdued tone of voice. He gestured with his cigar toward the wall.

  “McIlhenny-Davies?”

  Mark John’s eyes had been on the guard, and only peripherally had he been aware of another presence. At hearing his name, he turned and saw the prison chaplain seated behind him. He scowled, knowing all too well that prison chaplains did not appear from thin air without good reason.

  “No McIlhenny to it,” he said curtly, to cover a sudden wave of anxiety.

  The chaplain nodded, not arguing. He held an envelope in one hand. “Do you mind, Mr. Lederer, if Mr. Davies and I have a moment of privacy?”

  Lederer frowned, and reluctantly pushed himself to his feet. The chaplain waited until he made his exit. The guard remained. The envelope was proffered to Mark John.

  “I’m sorry, but I have very bad news for you, son.”

  Mark John stepped back a pace, as if snake bit, and folded his arms over his chest. Lederer sometimes called him kid, but he’d never heard him call anyone son like he had a moment ago. It was far worse, under these circumstances, to hear the chaplain call him the same.

  “What’s the matter, son, can’t you read?”

  “I can read, I’m not stupid.”

  “Hey-hey,” the guard warned him from behind. “There’ll be no disrespect.”

  Mark John’s eyes were on the envelope, but he didn’t volunteer to reach out and take it.

  “Would you rather I just tell you?” The chaplain asked.

  Mark John nodded, afraid that if he reached out, his hand would betray him with shaking.

  “I’m terribly sorry but your mother has died. She passed away from cancer the day before yesterday.”

  “Th-th-that’s a l-l-lie!” Mark John stammered.

  The guard acted reflexively, cuffing him across the back of the head, felling him to the floor. Mark John gathered himself for another blow, covering his head with his hands. The guard reached for his baton.

  “Please!” The chaplain blurted. “Please, give him a chance to speak, Officer.”

  The guard hesitated, and the chaplain addressed Mark John. “What do you mean by that, son?”

  “S-she’s a l-liar, sir,” he managed to say. “She’s always been a liar.”

  The chaplain glanced at the guard, who took a step back but kept his hand on his baton.

  “Well now, that may very well be, but I don’t think she made this one up,” he said, eyeing him sympathetically. “We received the notice of her death from the women’s facility at Owaloosa. Because you were listed as her next of kin.”

  What followed was a blur to Mark John, and would probably always remain one. Hours later, sitting at the desk in his cell and staring down at his empty hands, he wished he hadn’t refused the letter of notification. Without that piece of paper, his mother’s death simply didn’t seem real to him. It was much more like an idle daydream, like his memory of having been escorted back to his cell by the chaplain and the guard.

  One thing for sure, though, this place he called home was real enough. The never ending noise of men, of whispers and shouts and murmurs of conversation wafting from cell to cell off concrete floors and walls, was real. Real as the smells, of sweat and feces and disinfectant. As if to test its reality, he rose from the chair and wrapped his hands around the cold steel bars. He leaned forward, head resting against them...leaned back, leaned forward, leaned back, leaned forward, slowly battering his brow of bone against unyielding steel. Warmth trickled down his cheeks, salty tears mixing with salty blood.

  Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe it was a lie--she was awfully good at lying--and sooner or later, the authorities would figure it out.

  Or it was just a bad dream... But what was one more bad dream, when all of life was a nightmare? He had gone from his years with Bert and Mertie into Army life in Vietnam with its jungle firefights, and from there traveled a short road that led to prison. Not only was life a nightmare, he was proof that it was a downward spiral. He wished it could be different, but he knew things didn’t get better, not like they did in some stupid children’s book or in even stupider movies. Maybe for some people, but not for him. It was his destiny, his fate, that life only went from bad to worse on the journey to hell.

  The immediate now, death and blood and tears, was simply another leg on the downward spiral, another agonizingly slow turn towards the inevitable. It was a place he had been before, and would be again, with the occasional side trip thrown in. But the overall direction was always the same--crushing and inevitable.

  He stopped battering himself and stood still, eyes closed to the corridor beyond his cell. Footsteps approached. Across the way, in the cell opposite his own, a man began cursing, and a guard called out for silence.

  “The man’s mother’s died! Can’t you let him have some peace and quiet?” The guard whispered savagely.

  “Sorry,” came the heartfelt reply.

  Mark John returned to the desk, and sat unmoving with his head in his hands.

  “You all right, Davies?” The guard asked. The voice was sympathetic. Far more guards were sympathetic to the prisoners than the prisoners allowed themselves to admit, but it was sympathy and compassion that did not last long when no one dared show appreciation for it. Word traveled too far and too fast among the prisoners that a certain guard was soft, or that a guard wanted something he shouldn’t be wanting, a stool pigeon or something worse…

  “All right,” Mark John mumbled, knowing the guard would continue to pester him for an answer. “I’m all right.” For good measure he threw in a few half-hearted curses, and the guard ambled off. It would be difficult to say if he’d been offended or if it was what he expected from an inmate.

  Hours later, when Jaime returned from a productive day of stamping out license plates in the prison factory, Mark John still sat at the desk, his hands over his face. Jaime sat on his bunk and immediately lit a cigarette. Silently contemplating the back of Mark John’s head? Hoping his gaze would penetrate hair and bone, let him see if he really had a brain?

  “The word is,” he drawled, “your mother died.” Not “passed on,” or “went to the Man upstairs,” or “went to heaven,” just a cold “died.”

  “Yeah,” Mark John replied, every muscle in his body tensing.

  Jaime stretched out on his bunk with a sigh, and puffed away on the cigarette. “Was it the lady who sent you all those care packages?”

  “No!” He nearly spat.

  “Ah, so it was La Madre del Diablo--”

  Those were the wrong words, calculatedly wrong, like gasoline thrown on the fires of his pent up fury. Mark John spun out of the chair and was on him like a wild animal. His first blow crushed the cigarette in Jaime’s mouth and was followed by a flurry of punches impossible to counter.

  Several guards came running in response to the screams of inmates in surrounding cells, screams of encouragement to the combatants, screams of approval for the impromptu entertainment it provided. The guards, seeing it was Jaime taking it on the chin, waited until Mark John paused to catch his breath. Then they entered the cell and waded in with their batons.

  “Two for the Hole! Two for the Hole!” They shouted, dragging Mark John out first. It surprised them that while both men’s faces were bloodied, Mark John’s was bruised and caked with blood.

  Lying in a fetal position in Solitary that night, he reflected that the day had not been a total loss. For one, he had proven he wasn’t about to be a pushover for Jaime any longer. For another--well there wasn’t another, when it came down to it. Well, maybe one thing--the knot he’d received on the back of his head in Lederer’s office didn’t smart as much any more. Or if it did, he couldn’t distinguish it from the mass of other knots and welts on his body, or for that matter from the pain in his heart.

  ****

  Chapter 45

  Soli
tary. The Hole. It was where he dreamed of abductions.

  The place was a cell, nothing more, nothing less. A cell with three walls, and bars for a fourth, and a “porch” beyond, with an outer door and a window for the guard to spy on him at regular intervals. It wasn’t an infamous tiger cage such as he had seen more than once in Nam, meant to break a man’s body as much as his will. It wasn’t meant to break you physically like that, but nonetheless was meant to break a man. Snatched out from the general prison population and left to confront one’s aloneness, to have little or no contact with other human beings for days or weeks, or even months on end, and to languish where the light of day and a blue sky gradually receded into memory like a distant dream--well, that broke a lot of men in short order. Maybe it should have broken Mark John Davies in short order, too, broken him in shorter order than a lot of the inmates. He wasn’t like a lot of them, reared in the cities, where the canyons between buildings were shadowed and sunless, or even in the suburbs, where block after block, mile after mile, the houses marched on in their sameness. He was a man of the open road and of wide skies. Life with Bert and Mertie had guaranteed that. They never stayed in one place for long, not with someone always after them, and them looking to the interstates as thousand-mile-long escape routes.

  And when they did set out roots among other human beings, which is a far cry from setting down roots, it was more often than not at some secluded farmstead or ranch, where transients either working the fields or wrangling animals were less likely to raise suspicions. Bert had perhaps been wrong about raising suspicions, though; certainly those people who live in seclusion are rarely not curious about their neighbors. But if he wanted to avoid others meddling in his affairs, in that at least he usually succeeded. Which is not to say that he could manage to stay out of trouble even in secluded country. If not born to trouble, he willingly searched it out on his own.