Shame (9 page)

Elizabeth didn’t respond to his bitterness. “If, as you say, you have no enemies, and no one knows about your past, how do you explain someone setting you up for Teresa Sanders’s murder?”

She made a point of not mentioning Lita Jennings.

“I keep hoping it’s an incredible coincidence,” Caleb said, “keep hoping that it will just go away.”

“The longer you indulge in your wishful thinking the more guilty you look.”

He nodded. Caleb knew what she said was true, but that didn’t make him any more ready to act on it.

“You know what it’s like to have a terrible secret?” he asked. “A secret you’re not even comfortable thinking about? A secret that’s as bad as a cancer?”

Yes, she did. She knew exactly. But she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe it’s that bad because you’ve kept it secret.”

“There’s a simple reason for that,” he said. “Living a lie is far preferable to living the truth.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You need to think about clearing your name.”

“Clearing my name? My real name is Gray Parker, Ms. Line.”

“You should get a lawyer. I can recommend several excellent ones.”

“Tomorrow,” he said.

Elizabeth nodded. She had the feeling Caleb had overused that word his entire life. Now tomorrow was finally about to come.

A
S ELIZABETH STOOD
to leave, Caleb didn’t raise his head to meet her eyes but instead spoke to the table. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay put for a few minutes.”

She didn’t, Caleb noticed, tell him that wasn’t necessary.

During the hour they had sat together, Caleb had repeatedly told the writer that most of his early life was “just a blank.” That was a lie, and he was sure Elizabeth knew it, but she hadn’t called him on it. Only once did he almost open up to her. She had forced him to make eye contact, had stared at him intently and asked if he remembered the night they had met. Caleb told her he didn’t, but he did. They had been introduced in a holding cell at Florida State Prison just a few hours before his father was to be executed. He had been coming, and she’d been going, and his goddamn father had been holding court. His father had been transferred to the Starke prison the week before when the governor had signed his death watch. That’s where the electric chair was. The chair was antique, a three-legged oak model built by inmates in 1923. It waited for him.

The lights in D. G.’s flickered. The coastal breeze had picked up. Two of the fluorescent lights faded out and then began the laborious process of coming back to life, making sounds like insects being fried by bug lights. The flickering lights took Caleb
back to his last meeting with his father. There were so many things to hate his father for, but in the end, he had tainted even that pleasure. Damn you for that, Caleb thought. Damn you for everything.

“Your father wants to see you,” his mother told him. She was already packing his bags.

“I don’t want to see him.”

“Shut your mouth. This might be the last time you’ll ever talk with him.”

“Good.”

His mama slapped him across the face. Then she started crying. That made Caleb feel worse than the slap.

The bus trip from Texas to Florida seemed to go on forever. His mama was used to it by then. She’d been to Florida for both of the trials, had left Caleb to look after himself for up to a week at a time. None of their kin was willing to take him in. He’d never told her how their own home had become a prison to him, how packs of boys had come around yelling taunts and throwing things. He hadn’t told her lots of things.

It had been almost two years since he’d last seen his father. They brought Caleb to a holding room where a man stood up that he didn’t even know.

“Hello, Son,” he said.

His father looked so different. He’d always been so handsome and cool, but now his head was shaved and his eyes were wide and agitated. He kept looking up at the fluorescent lights, kept flinching whenever they flickered and cracked. He stared at them as if he was following the flow of electricity. Then, he finally remembered his son was in the room with him waiting. They were both waiting.

“They’re juicing up Old Sparky again,” his father announced. “They’ve been playing with Sparky all week. Getting him ready for the big show. If you listen real close you can even hear him humming.”

Caleb hadn’t known what he was supposed to be listening for, but he tried his best to hear something. He tilted his head to the right, and then to the left, but he couldn’t make out any humming.

“Hear it?” his father asked. “Hear it?”

To please him, Caleb nodded.

Caleb kept sneaking glances at this stranger, at his father. What struck Caleb most was the lack of barriers between them. Even before his father’s imprisonment there had always been a distance between them that seemed unbreachable. But not now. In the holding room there wasn’t anything separating them. Their being so close scared Caleb, even though his father was shackled in manacles and chains, and there were two guards in the room. It wasn’t that Caleb was afraid physically but more that he wasn’t comfortable with their unexpected intimacy.

The condemned man noticed his son staring at his shackles. He shook the chains. “Like my bracelets?” he asked with one of his old smiles.

Prison hadn’t changed his father’s large, snow-white teeth. Nor had it taken the seductive wattage out of his smile. His light blue eyes were almost opaque, as if you could take an eraser and wipe away the color. His mama said the two of them looked just alike. Caleb didn’t want to believe that.

“Almost fifteen, aren’t you?”

Caleb nodded.

“We don’t have much time to talk, son. You’re my last wish. I figured there were some things between us we needed to discuss.”

His father kept rubbing his newly shaved head. He was nervous, acting much like an uncomfortable father faced with telling his son the facts of life. Or death.

“We all have regrets, son. We all do things we wish we hadn’t. Sometimes that’s all it seems like life is, one regret after another.”

He tried to smile for Caleb again but gave it up. “You can’t always look back. It’s not healthy. You have to look ahead. You understand what I’m getting at?”

Ever so slightly, Caleb nodded.

“I haven’t been much of a father,” he said. “I know you felt shortchanged.”

Caleb didn’t respond. Since his father’s arrest he had learned to be guarded, to keep his expression blank and give little or nothing away. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening.

“Lots of things about my life I wish I could change. I have a list of regrets, but even at your young age I suspect you’ve done things you wish you hadn’t.”

They looked at each other, and his father found something to nod at once more.

“They say a leopard can’t change his spots. I’ve always had lots of spots, Gray. I couldn’t change them, though Lord knows I tried.”

He knew his father wanted him to talk, but Caleb couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He was still afraid.

“I wish I could leave you something besides regrets, son. I wish I could tell you everything’s going to be all right, but I don’t want to give you any false hopes. Someday you might have a son, and you might have better things to tell him than I’ve had to tell you. My daddy never told me much either. About the only thing he ever impressed upon me was that when I had a firstborn boy, it was my obligation to name him Gray.

“You’re a son of the South, boy. That’s how you got your name. That’s how I got it. That’s how your granddad got it, and your great-granddad. I told you about your great-great-granddad Caleb. That’s where you got your middle name. Caleb hated Yankees through and through. He killed plenty in the War Between the States, but that was the kind of killing that makes a man a hero. They say ol’ Caleb came home with half an arm and one leg, but that didn’t stop him from having a passel of kids.
He named his oldest boy Gray. We all did. The Gray and the Blue, you understand?

“Your name’s the family legacy, son, such as it is.”

The lights overhead started flickering again. “Old goddamn Sparky,” his father whispered.

The large guard, the one called Sarge, looked at his watch and announced, “Time’s up,” but there was some leeway built into his pronouncement.

His father stopped noticing the lights. “There are so many things I wanted to tell you, Gray,” he said, “so many things I wanted to explain. But we don’t need to explain anything to one another. What happened previously is past, you understand? Water under the bridge. It doesn’t do any good to get all caught up with things we should have done, and things we shouldn’t have done. You taking any of this in?”

Caleb offered a nod.

“You’re going to be the man in the family now,” he said. “You’re going to have to look after your mama.”

His father shook his head and sighed. “I’ve been a bad father, but I was a worse husband. I wasn’t home much, and when I was I always managed to set your mama to crying. But that’s nothing you don’t already know.”

“Time’s up, inmate,” Sarge said.

Sarge’s second pronouncement was made with a little more conviction, but Caleb’s father didn’t look at Sarge or acknowledge his words in any way. Instead, he stared off into the distance as if he could see through the prison walls. Sighing, he turned back to Caleb, then shook his head.

“It won’t be easy for you,” he said.

His father’s sad tone struck Caleb much more than the words. Caleb already knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“Crazy world, son. You look for answers, and sometimes there just aren’t any. Don’t beat yourself up trying to find them. There are enough others out there that’ll be more than willing
to do the beating on you, so there’s no reason to do it to yourself. Choose your battles, boy. And make sure you’re not fighting yourself. That’s not a battle you can win.”

His father looked embarrassed, as if he wasn’t used to giving advice, or not worthy of offering it. But Caleb could see his need to talk was greater than his reluctance to counsel.

“When you wake up tomorrow, Gray, I want you to look at it like your life has just begun. Don’t take my baggage with you. Can you do that?”

Caleb wasn’t sure how to answer that. Finally, he just nodded.

“For your sake,” his father whispered, “I wish it were as easy as all that.”

“Time’s up, inmate,” Sarge announced. He put enough emphasis in his voice to show that he meant business this time.

His father motioned for just a little more time, his shackled hands held out like those of a supplicant. With his eyes he silently implored the guard, and in them Caleb saw a desperation he had never seen before.

“Another minute,” Sarge said. His tone made it clear he would begrudge every one of those sixty seconds.

With the extra moments, Gray Parker Sr. tried to figure out what to say to his son for the last time.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You never disappointed me, Son. Never.”

His declaration surprised Caleb. Tears pooled in his eyes. He felt like a fish, with his mouth opening, and closing, then opening again.

“Shhh,” his father told him. “There’s no need.”

“Time,” Sarge said.

His father’s last words to him were, “Be a good boy.”

Caleb watched his father being taken away. Four hours later the state of Florida executed him.

L
OCKING THE DOOR
behind them, they heard a man shouting, “Pepper, come here, Pepper.”

They could see him standing on the outskirts of the parking lot, leash in hand, whistling for his wayward dog.

Brandy and Joe said their good-nights at the door. Joe’s friends had a keg, and he was hoping they hadn’t finished off all of the beer. He loped over to his van.

“Pepper. Come on, Pepper.”

The parking lot was quiet, with only a few cars in the lot. Cardiff by the Sea was a quiet beach community that lived up to its tranquil name, closing down early on weeknights.

“Pe-Pe-Pepper.” The man’s tone was equal parts chastising and affectionate. He had spotted his wayward dog.

Brandy continued walking toward her car. Joe’s van started up. He pulled away quickly, spurred on by the thought of suds.