Power in the Blood (11 page)

I had spoken to Grandma Winger earlier that morning to tell her that her grandson, the one she had raised like a son, had been killed. At the time, I thought he was killed while trying to escape. She refused to believe it. She said that they were coming to visit him this Saturday, and he knew it. According to her, he liked prison and had no desire to leave. He told her that it was the best he had ever lived. I believed that, and it made me mourn even more.

“When are you planning on having the funeral?” I asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Saturday, if you was able to make it.”

I was silent. The light from my clock cast a green glow at a fifteen-degree angle on part of the bed, the back wall, and the ceiling.

“Listen, Preacher, we know Ike was no good. We not asking you to say stuff that ain’t true.”

“Good, because I couldn’t. And about Ike being no good, I’ve never met anybody that had no good in them.”

“Well, he was close,” she said.

“God loved him,” I said.

She was silent. And then she said, “You really believe that? You just saying it?”

“I really do. Sometimes it’s all that I do believe, but I never seem to be able to shake it. Probably because I need to believe it.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. I had said too much again. I often found myself telling strangers what I needed to say, though what I needed to say was often very personal and painful and often made them feel uncomfortable. I went to confession wherever I could— wherever it was safe and anonymous.

“Can you do it Saturday?” she asked, her voice sounding slightly desperate.

“Yes, I can. I will.”

“Thank you, Preacher.”

“You’re welcome. Good night,” I said after she gave me the time and place of the funeral on Saturday in Tallahassee.

I rolled over after hanging the phone on its cradle and stared up at the ceiling. It hadn’t changed. The wind outside caused the aluminum of the trailer to bend in and out, sounding like a whip cracking. I looked at the clock to watch the minute change. It seemed to take far longer than sixty seconds.

I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror on my dresser against the wall across from the foot of my bed. It was dark, but enough light came in the window from the streetlight and in the door from the bathroom down the hall so that I could see myself in shadow. It looked artistic, like a low-lit black-and-white photograph. I lay back down and looked at the clock again. Everything I had just done took less than a minute. I decided to get up and work on my funeral sermon for Saturday. My thinking was that the challenge might exhaust me so I could fall asleep.

Preparing the funeral sermon of a stranger killed under suspicious circumstances was challenging. I grew weary, but I still couldn’t sleep. At one point it got so bad, in fact, that I went into the den and watched nearly an hour of infomercials. I had to do something about this.

On my way back to bed, I stopped by the bathroom—mainly for something to do. Looking in the mirror, I discovered that I looked as tired as I felt, which wasn’t good. As I turned to head back to bed, I noticed a small pile of clothes near the shower. It was about two day’s worth. I smiled as I thought of how Susan hated that. Having that thought gave me a strong urge to leave them there, which I only overcame because if I left them in reaction to her, she would still be controlling my life. I bent down, scooped them up, slinging one sock between my legs as I did. When I reached for it, I saw something that froze me in sheer terror.

On the back of my left leg, there was a cut about two inches long.

I dropped the clothes and bent down even farther to take a closer look. It wasn’t very deep, but it was deep enough—deep enough for AIDS-infected blood splattered on it to get into my bloodstream.

My heart, racing up until this point, seemed to stop altogether. I grew faint and nearly fell over, but was able to catch myself on the towel rack. Suddenly, I had the urge to jump into the shower and scrub the cut.

I did. In the shower, I inspected my body for other cuts and scratches. There were none. At one point, I stared at the violent scars on my upper body. It would be tragically ironic to survive a gunshot wound to the chest, a knife wound to the abdomen, and then die of a narrow two-inch long cut to the leg.

For the rest of the night I asked myself one question over and over,
When did I get the cut?

Please, God, let it have been today.

At two thirty I was lying on my side in bed with my eyes closed counting deer, each looking like a female version of Bambi. I could feel my exhausted body giving in to the approaching sandman. My breathing became heavier and slower, and I was actually on my way to the land of dreams, or so I thought. As it turns out, I was headed to the land of nightmares—the waking kind.

The nightmare began when I found the cut and continued when, for the second time that night, my phone rang.

“Hello,” I said after fumbling around with the receiver for a few seconds. I sounded sleepy again. This time I was.

“John John,” the voice said.

My heart started racing and I could feel the first of what I knew would be many waves of nausea coming over me. I wanted desperately to hang up the phone, but it was too late for that now. A new rule: From this point forward, I would not answer the phone after midnight.

“John John,” the voice said again. That voice was slightly slurred, slightly desperate, and very scared.

It’s amazing what can trigger a memory: a single smell, a song, or a voice. And this voice, above all others, triggered memories that I would pay to have surgically removed. It was the voice that haunted me at night.

The voice was the voice I heard within the sound of my own when I had been drinking. It was the voice of my mother, and she only called me John John when she was drunk. I hated her. I hated her for who she was, but I hated her even more for who I was. The fact that she had called at nearly three in the morning meant that she was in a detox center and wanted me to come and get her out. I didn’t know which detox center because I didn’t know which city she was in these days, but she had been in them all. When she and Dad had divorced, I had actually believed that she was out of my life, but like a recurring nightmare, she always forced herself back in and always at night.

“John John, answer me. Are you there?” she asked like a little girl lost in the woods at night.

“I’m here,” I said, and that was the truth. I was here, and she was there, and that was the way it was going to stay.

“John John,” she slurred again, “they got me locked up again. I’m dying. You got to come and see me.”

“Mom, you’re not dying; it just feels like that. You’re just having withdrawals. Remember? How could you forget? You’ve done this many, many times. They’ll pass eventually.”

“No, you don’t understand, Son, I’m dying. I haven’t been drinking. Come see me at the hospital, Son, before it’s too late. I love you. I love you, John. You’ve always been my favorite.”

“That’s what you tell everybody when you’re drunk. And you are dying. I was wrong before. Alcohol is killing you.”

“I know, Son,” she said and then began to cough. It sounded as if she dropped the phone. Her act was definitely improving.

It took maybe two minutes, which seemed like thirty, for her to pick up the phone again. When she did, she said, “I’ve got to see you, Son . . . before I die.”

“What you’ve got to do is get sober. I won’t come near you until you’re sober again. Got it?”

“I swear I’m sober, Son. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I stopped believing you a long time ago. Get cleaned up and dried out, and then call me, okay?”

“You don’t understand, Son—”

“Mom,” I interrupted, “I’m hanging up now. You call me when you’ve been sober for at least a week.” I hung up the phone.

I probably wouldn’t hear from her for quite a while. She hadn’t been sober a full week for as long as I could remember.

Please, God, help her get sober and to get her life back together. And, please, please, don’t let me have AIDS.

The next morning, inmates stood outside the chapel underneath the brilliant sun that had long since burned off the fog and dew from the night before. The sun was so intense, in fact, that it seemed to explain why all the blues and grays in prison were so muted: it had faded them. After I was situated in my office, Mr. Smith began bringing the inmates in one at a time. The first one was a kid who had recently had some spiritual experiences that he didn’t understand.

The second was a middle-aged white man who had been inside less than thirty days of a thirty-year sentence. Needless to say, he was devastated, not only because he missed his children and his wife, but also because he had killed two teenage girls while driving under the influence. He was remorseful and offered no excuses. I was moved by both his words and his actions. He spoke slowly, was silent a lot, and occasionally a single tear would roll down his cheek leaving a jagged streak on his sunburned skin.

We talked for a long time. I don’t know if it helped him; though he said it did, I had my doubts. Before he left we scheduled a weekly appointment together for an indefinite amount of time, and he signed up to attend AA.

After he left, and before Mr. Smith could bring in the next inmate, the phone rang.

“I’ve got an emergency message for Tommy Hines,” the shrill voice said over the noise of the bad connection. “I need him to call home.”

“Okay, ma’am, if you’ll hold on just a moment, there is an emergency notification form I have to fill out.”

I retrieved the form. “Okay, the inmate’s name is Tommy Hines?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the nature of the emergency?” I asked, flipping through the morning’s mail that sat on the left edge of my desk.

“Whatcha mean?” she asked.

“What is the message?” I asked as I separated the inmate requests from the outside mail.

“His son was killed,” she said quickly.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Your relationship to the inmate?”

“I’m his wife.”

“I am so sorry for your loss,” I said.

“When can he call me?”

“I have to get some more information first. What is your phone number?” I asked. Then I saw it: another single piece of typing paper, trifolded, taped, with one typewritten word on the outside: “Chaplain.”

“Nine, zero, four, eight, seven, one, four, five, six, one. But they’s a block on the phone so he can’t call collect.”

When she said that, a little red flag went up inside my head. “Okay, I need the name and telephone number of the hospital or funeral home where he is.”

“Whatcha mean?” she asked in surprise.

“Before we are allowed to give an inmate any information from the outside, especially a death message because of the security risk that it imposes, we must first verify it with an outside official: either a hospital or a funeral home,” I said, but I was thinking:
Open the letter, see what it says. Is Anna in danger?

“That’s bullshit. His son is dead. Just let him call home, dammit.”

“Ma’am, if his son is dead, then he will be at a hospital or a funeral home and all I need is the number to one of them.”

“You son of a bitch. I hate you prison pricks.” And with that she hung up that, phone.

I received approximately six emergency calls a week for inmates. Of those calls, at least two are people who are trying to get in touch with inmates who stopped calling or writing. The inmate probably didn’t have a son.

Daily, I am confronted by inmates who are running scams. They try to manipulate every situation—they know of no other way to operate. Many of their families do the same thing. However, there are those who truly desire help both spiritually and psychologically. The key is not to grow cold and cynical because of the abusers and to be able to discern the difference between the genuine and the con.

After I hung up the phone, I carefully peeled the tape back and opened the letter. I could tell almost immediately that it was produced by the same typewriter as the other one. It said: “Chaplain, if you don’t back off, I’m going to kill you. Just back off, or you’re dead. I will kill you and that girl you love. Killing’s better than fucking. I love it. I will probably fuck her and then kill her. But I might kill her then fuck her. Back off!”

The institutional mail was delivered every day but Sunday. The note had probably been sent the previous night. Who was it about? I loved Anna, but was it that obvious? The other note had spoken of protection, now this one of threat. Were they about two different women? Anna and who? Sandy Strickland? Who else had I been seen with recently?

My office door opened while I was still rereading the letter. When Mr. Smith didn’t say anything, I looked up. Tom Daniels was standing there. I nodded my head toward one of the chairs across from my desk as I carefully folded the letter and stuck it in my desk drawer. He sat down. He looked better than he had yesterday, like maybe this case had breathed some life into him. His face wasn’t as red, and his eyes were not bloodshot. If the case continued to be eventful, he would probably replace his addiction with it for a while. I used to have the same experience from time to time.

He looked down at the clipboard that he was carrying, flipped through a couple of pages, looked back up at me.

“Look, the superintendent said we got to work together. Neither of us is happy about it, but whatcha gonna do, right?” He said it as if we were suddenly pals.

I knew that the superintendent’s words alone were not enough to bring about this change in him, but I said, “Right.”

“So, I say the investigation is more important than our dislike of one another. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I agree, but I don’t dislike you. And before all of this is over, I wish you would give me the opportunity to talk with you about things.”

“I’ve heard your excuses before.”

“I don’t intend to offer you any excuses, but then again I never have. You’ve only heard things from Susan’s perspective.”

“Listen, I don’t want to discuss the past now or ever. Let’s just concentrate on our jobs and do the work. I don’t care for you, never have much, but we can work together. I can work with anyone.”