The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (64 page)

“But this Brandon guy you hired: he’s good, right?”

“Lena LoVecchio thinks he’s good, so that’s what I’m going on. Hey, speaking of my family history? I’ve been reading the thing Janis wrote about that ancestor of mine. It’s pretty interesting, actually. Old Lizzy was quite a gal.”

She reached across the table and took my hands in hers. “I love you, Caelum,” she said. She was blinking back tears.

“I love you, too. And you know something? After you get out of here, we’re going to have a decent life again, you and me. No matter what we end up owning or not owning.”

The mic clicked on.
Tap, tap, tap.
“No handholding, Miss Quirk. You know the rules.” Maureen withdrew her hands from mine and gave the CO an apologetic nod. Held up her palms so that he could see them. I looked over at him, sitting up there on his elevated platform like Zeus on Mount Olympus. I flashed him a snarky smile and
held up my hands, too. Clenched and extended them the way Kareem Kendricks had done a few hours earlier.

“So how’s Velvet?” Maureen asked. “I haven’t seen her for a while.”

“She’s good, I guess. Moze has been giving her some creative license with those gargoyles of theirs, and she’s come up with some pretty freaky variations. Not that
that’s
any big surprise. She’s heading up to Boston this weekend for some big rave thing—bunch of bands that play the kind of noise she misidentifies as music. The Micks are away this weekend, too. Nancy Tucker and I are gonna have the whole place to ourselves.”

“Nancy’s doing okay?”

“Getting a little forgetful about where the litter box is,” I said. “Follows me around squawking, wanting to eat, after I’ve already fed her. You think there’s such a thing as feline Alzheimer’s?”

Maureen smiled. “How’s she getting along with the Micks’ cat?”

“Just fine, now that they’ve got separate accommodations and never see each other,” I said.

“So where are they going?”

“Hmm?”

“You said the Micks are going away this weekend.”

“Oh. Different directions, actually. He’s heading down to New York for some big trade show at the Javits Center. Trying to woo some bigger accounts, I guess. He’s a pretty good businessman, that guy; his wheels are always turning. And Janis: she’s flying down to New Orleans. Proposes her dissertation game plan on Monday, and if that goes okay, she’s well on her way to getting her Ph.D.”

Maureen said she wished she could read Lizzy’s story.

“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly carry it in here and hand it to you. How about if, after I finish it, I mail it to you?”

Mo reminded me that inmates could only receive books shipped directly from Amazon or Barnes&Noble.com

“Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?” I said. “That the history of how
this esteemed institution came into existence would be disallowed as contraband?”

Mo said that I could donate a copy of the manuscript—mail it to the prison library. Then she could check it out and read it.

“Good. Great. You know how Lizzy’s campaign for a separate female penitentiary got started? She was on this committee for the betterment of prisoners or something, and while she was taking a tour, this one inmate slipped her a letter. Back then, they used to throw ‘fallen women’ in with the men. I guess the conventional wisdom was that they were just throwaways, anyway. Beyond saving. So in her letter, this woman describes how the women who let the guards and trustees have sex get special treatment, and how the ones who don’t got abused. So Lizzy reads the letter, starts lobbying for a separate women’s prison run by women. She kind of got sidetracked by the Civil War, I guess—that’s the part I’m up to now, but … What is it, Mo?”

A sadness had come over her face. Things hadn’t changed much, she said; sex was one of the few things that women on the inside could barter with, and some of them weren’t above making deals with the officers who were interested. It was all about power and powerlessness, she said. “I think the ratio of fiends to angels may be about four to one at this place, too. Some of those fiends get to go home at the end of an eight-hour shift and some don’t.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but a
tap-tap
of the CO’s microphone interrupted me. “Miss Quirk, I need to see you for a moment.” Oh, Christ, this wasn’t about our handholding, was it? Mo and I exchanged worried looks. Then she got up and started across the room.

As I watched their exchange, I thought about the coincidence: how Maureen had just said the same thing Janis had said out on the back stoop that morning—that from era to era, nothing really changed. And they were right, to some extent: about all the ways that blacks were kept down, still. All the ways that women were exploited. But
they were wrong, too. After Columbine, every damn school in the country developed a lockdown policy, same as the prisons. Schools weren’t safe havens anymore. Every damn parent in America sent their kids out the door in the morning and, for the rest of the day, kept an ear cocked for trouble…. And 9/11: chaos had come rushing in that day, too. Mohammed Atta and his henchmen fly those planes into those buildings, Bush says “Bring ‘em on,” and now we’ve got Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib. Torture’s okay now, Cheney says, because these enemies live in the shadows, the dark places, and so we’ve got to go to those dark places, too. Kareem Kendricks goes off to fight a war against the wrong enemy and gets his hand blown off and his mind fucked up. Comes home again, and he’s older than his father….

Mo came back over and took her seat. “Everything okay?” I asked. She nodded. There’d been a message. They wanted her to go over to the Med Unit after our visit. One of her hospice patients was asking for her.

“How’s that hospice thing working out for you, anyway?” I asked. “Not too depressing for you, I hope.”

Just the opposite, she said. It made her feel good to be useful again. And some of the deaths she’d witnessed were beautiful.

“Beautiful?”

“I don’t know, Cae. I guess it’s one of those you-have-to-be-there things. I witnessed death all the time at the nursing home, and a lot of them were moving, too. But it’s a different experience here. Near the end? Their last couple of days? They finally get to put down all their pretenses and defenses, all their guilt and regret. And this … peacefulness comes over them. And, hey, death isn’t pretty, especially for someone dying of AIDS-related complications. But I don’t know. I guess it’s their smiles that are beautiful. Their courage. Strange as it sounds, I’m finding that hospice is the most hopeful and life-affirming place on this entire compound.”

“Reminds me of something I read in a Flannery O’Connor story
once,” I said. “This selfish old lady’s about to get shot, okay? By this escaped criminal? And right at the moment when he lifts his rifle to blow her away, she reaches out to comfort him. And O’Connor says something like, it’s too bad we can’t all be dying all the time, because that’s when we’re our best, most decent selves.” The smile dropped off Mo’s face and she looked down at the table. Too late, I realized what a stupid fucking idiot I was—that Mr. English Major’s stupid literary reference had just sent her back to Columbine.

“Mo, I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She looked up, smiled bravely. “It’s okay, Caelum.”

“So tell me,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “How are things going with the new roommate?”

“Crystal? Oh, it’s just so sad. Prison is the last place that poor kid should be. She’s just a scared little girl.”

“How old?”

“Sixteen. But she looks and acts like she’s about twelve. And she’s slow. I’m not sure, but I think she may be mildly retarded.”

“You find out what she’s in for yet?”

She nodded. “Homicide. Her baby wouldn’t stop crying, so she shook him until he stopped. Dislodged his brain. Sunshine, she’d named him; he was only three weeks old. The father was her mother’s boyfriend.”

“Jesus, that’s …” I couldn’t even find the words.

“There’s this group of women on our tier who are so cruel to her. It’s like a blood sport, you know? They’ll do that here: travel in a pack, pick off the weakest member of the herd. At night, after lights out? They do this thing where they call to her. ‘Mmmomm-my, ssss-stop shhhh-shhaking me.’ And they
laugh.
They think it’s hilarious.”

Ozzie’s remark came flying back at me:
Give G.I. Joe a hand.
The way his buddies had high-fived him in the hallway after class. “Amazing how cruel people can be, isn’t it? What’s that about, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Self-loathing? Survival of the fittest? … Some nights I just climb up onto her bunk and hold her, rock her until she
cries herself to sleep. I could get in trouble if they caught me. We’re not supposed to be on each other’s beds. But she’s just a baby, Caelum. She
needs
to be held.”

She looked so sad, so beaten down by it. Even her new hairdo seemed to have wilted. A few minutes later, the guard at the desk announced that visiting time was over. I stood, embraced her across the table and gave her a peck on the cheek. “See you day after tomorrow,” I said.

Maybe yes, maybe no, she said. According to the jailhouse grapevine, a lockdown was coming, sooner rather than later.

“God, I can’t wait until you get out of here,” I said.

She sat down again, and I walked away from her and toward the door. Silly superstition or not, I held to my policy. I did not look back.

PASSING THE GUARD STATION ON
my way out of the prison, I swung right and started the quarter mile up Bride Lake Road to the farmhouse. Then, spur of the moment, I braked, U-turned, and headed into town instead. I pulled into the strip mall on Franklin Street. Got a six-pack at Melady’s and a foot-long at Subway. Decided to swing by the Mama Mia to see if Alphonse was still there. Al was always good for a few laughs, something I sorely needed.

But the bakery was dark. A sign taped to the door, scrawled in Al’s handwriting, read “Re-open soon. Sorry for the incovience. We appreciate your buisness.” Two misspellings in one sign: the guy was hopeless. Was it his folks? Had he had to go down to Florida again? If so, why hadn’t he called to let me know? … Well, I guess I knew the answer to that one. He’d left several e-mails and phone messages in the past weeks.
What’s shakin’ Quirky? How’s Maureen?
Did I want to get together and grab some dinner? Did I want to go for a spin in the “dream machine” that widow from Rhode Island had finally sold him? I’d deleted all his overtures.

Home again, I tossed my sandwich onto the table and put the six in the fridge, minus the bottle I opened and emptied in two long gulps. Went into the bedroom to change out of my teaching clothes. That’s when I heard it, echoing from somewhere out back.
Bang … Bang! … Bang!

Was someone stupid enough to be hunting deer at dusk? Didn’t sound like gunfire, though. It was loud and percussive—something slamming against something else. What the hell was it?

Bang!
…
Bang!

Standing at the back door, I tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. Grabbed my jacket off the hook and headed out toward the orchard. There was a motorcycle parked in front of the barn and, beside it, Moses and some guy shaking hands. “Okay, then,” I heard Moze say. “I won’t be back from New York until midday Monday. Why don’t we start you on Tuesday morning?”

“Hey!” I called. “You know what that sound is out there?”

Moze shrugged. “I was wondering that same thing my damn self. Hey, breaking news, man. This here’s our new guy.”

I nodded at the lanky kid standing next to him: shaved head, hooded sweatshirt, baggy hip-hop jeans. He looked familiar—a former student, maybe? Whoever he was, my mind was elsewhere. “Nice to meet you,” I called, although we hadn’t really met.

Bang!… Bang!… Bang!

I took a few more steps toward the orchard, then stopped, called back. “Hey, Moze! You talk to Alphonse lately?” He shook his head. “I just went over to the bakery. It’s closed.” He shrugged.

I walked through the abandoned orchard. Most of the trees were just standing dead wood, and those that were still hanging on had yielded the pathetic, nugget-sized apples that littered the ground. Would’ve sickened Grandpa Quirk to see what had become of things.

I stopped when I got to the clearing. Stood there a moment and took it in: Ulysses swinging a sledgehammer over his shoulder and bringing it smashing down against the concrete slab that had been the apple house floor.

“Hey!” I called. “What the hell you doing?”

He stopped, turned and looked at me for a second or two. Then he tossed aside the sledgehammer and started picking up chunks
of the busted cement and throwing them onto the pile in the wheel barrow.

“I can’t pay you now.”

“You don’t have to pay me,” he said. “This is just something I gotta do.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Unfinished business.”

He picked up the sledgehammer again and swung it.

Bang!… Bang!… Bang!

I could feel the violence of each blow in the pit of my stomach. Technically, he was trespassing.

“Getting too dark out here,” I called. “Another twenty minutes and you won’t even be able see what you’re swinging at. You could get hurt.”

“Full moon,” he said, pointing to the sky as proof. “They give me some tests at the clinic. Said my liver’s shot. I’m living on borrowed time.”

I told him I was sorry. Told him he could come back tomorrow if that was what he needed to do. “And I’ll give you a hand. We can finish it up together. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

He stood there, panting, his hands trembling badly. “Tomorrow? Yeah, okay. How about if I stay here tonight then? Sleep on your couch, maybe?”

“No, I don’t think—”

“I ain’t seen Nancy Tucker in a while. Kind of like to have a little visit with her, if that’s okay. And that way, I can save myself the trip back here. Get an early start. I do better in the morning.”

Against my better judgment, I agreed.

“You’re good people,” he said. “Take after your aunt.”

Maybe things weren’t as bad as they’d said they were, I told him. Maybe he should get a second opinion.

“Nah. When your time’s come, it’s come.”

In the house, under the harsh kitchen lights, he looked like he was
dying: his skin tone was ghastly, the whites of his eyes were yellow. He had an odor about him, too—b.o. and alky stink, sickening and sweet, the way Daddy had smelled near the end.

“You hungry?”

“Nah. I ain’t got much of an appetite these days. I could use a little nip, though, if you got one. Little something to calm the jitters, help me get to sleep. That way, I can get up bright and early tomorrow and finish the job.”

“You don’t
have
to finish it on my account,” I reminded him. “And maybe you shouldn’t be taxing yourself. Busting concrete’s hard work.”

“So what do you think? Can you spot me a little something to drink?”

As long as he ate a little something, I told him. I put half of my sandwich on a plate and placed it in front of him. Put a shot glass and an unopened quart of vodka on the table. What did it matter at this point?

“None better than Lolly,” Ulysses said. “That gal was salt of the earth. Whenever I think about that day I come over here and found her wandering out there by the clothesline. Socks on her hands, talking gobbledy-gook….”

He was right about the jitters. As he poured his first shot, he got more vodka on the table than in his glass. Spilled some more on the way to his mouth. He downed it in one gulp. I poured him his second.

“Tell you the truth, I was always a little bit sweet on Lolly,” he said. “All the way back to high school, when I used to come over here and pal around with your dad. Didn’t dawn on me until later that I had the wrong equipment. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“I was a little dense about that kind of stuff back then. I knew from the service about queers. But I didn’t realize that some women … You know when it dawned on me? About Lolly? Happened right
here in this kitchen, before your dad and me shipped out to Korea. We were sitting around the table, having some beers. Just wasting time, you know? And we started horsing around, roughhousing and such. Tipped over a coupla chairs, I remember. And Lolly come in from the barn and said she’d take us both on in arm-wrestling and come out the winner. And we said yeah, yeah,
sure
you could, and then that’s just what she goddamn did. Took me on first and beat me without much of a problem, and she’d just beaten her brother when the old lady walked in. The grandmother. She was getting up there by then, but she still ruled the roost. She looked around at the empty beer cans and the tipped-over chairs, and I thought, uh-oh, Alden and me are in for it. But she didn’t say nothing to us. What she done was, she lit into Lolly like nobody’s business. Read her the riot act about what a sad state of affairs it was that she could teach all those prisoners next door how to act like ladies but her own granddaughter was a lost cause. Alden just sat there, kinda smirking, I remember. Enjoying not being the one who was in trouble for a change, I guess. But that’s when it dawned on me. Hit me like a ton of bricks: Lolly had more man in her than woman. Probably all that farm work she did, I figure. Turned her mannish.”

“It’s not about what kind of work you do,” I said. “It’s about who you are. Gay or straight’s something you’re born with.”

“Oh. That right?” He reached again for the vodka bottle. “But she was always good to me, Lolly. Helped me out plenty of times.”

“You know, Ulysses, maybe after you finish your sandwich, you’d like to clean up a little. Get out of those clothes and grab a shower.”

“Nah, that’s all right,” he said.

“Because to tell you the truth, you smell a little funky.”

“Oh. I do? Okay then.”

“I can lend you some clothes. Put yours in the washer.”

He lifted his arm and sniffed. “Yeah, all right. I didn’t realize.”

When I heard the water going, I made him a little pile: sweatshirt, sweat pants, underwear, socks. Thinking he was already in the
shower, I opened the bathroom door to place them on the hamper. He hadn’t stepped into the tub yet. He stood there, naked and cadaverous, sobbing at his steam-clouded image in the mirror. He turned and faced me. “I fucked up my whole goddamned life, didn’t I?”

He had; there was no denying it. Still, I tried to think of something. “You were never a mean drunk,” I said. “That counts for something.” I handed him the clothes and left the room.

I put sheets down on the couch. Got him a blanket, a pillow. By eight o’clock, the vodka bottle was half empty and Ulysses was facedown and fast asleep. Nancy Tucker had climbed aboard and made herself at home on the small of his back. She was sleeping, too.

Standing there, watching the two of them, I couldn’t help but smile. He’d had a crush on Lolly? Good thing he’d never acted on it; she probably would’ve clocked him…. Another couple of months, I thought, and the last of the trio would be gone : those three naïve buddies who’d strolled down to the recruiting office on their last day of high school and signed on to help fight the Commies in North Korea. Poor, old, cirrhotic Ulysses was finishing his unfinished business….

I thought about Kendricks then—his shoving his daughter off his lap after she’d made that innocent comment; his need to make himself a “hard target” in a classroom where no one was shooting at him…. Thought about those poor Columbine kids—how they’d hidden in plain sight under tables, behind counters and copy machines, and then the two of them had marched in and shot them like fish in a barrel…. Thought about how, strange as it was, that one of their potential victims had followed us back East and ended up living right here at the farmhouse. Velvet had found herself a safe haven, first down at the bakery when I was working the night shift, then here, upstairs with the Micks. She’d found work she liked, too, or maybe even loved: mixing, pouring, and finishing those foot-high sculptures, then packaging and shipping them off to strangers. Decorating her grotesques….

In the bathroom, I pissed away the beers I’d drunk and picked Ulysses’s clothes off the floor. I set the washer—small load, hot water—and
started the cycle. “Long freakin’ day,” I announced, out loud, to no one. I grabbed Janis’s manuscript off the counter where I’d left it that morning and headed into the bedroom. Propped my own and Mo’s pillows against the headboard, climbed between the sheets, and opened Lizzy’s story to the place that, that morning, I had bookmarked with a napkin. I read.