West of Here (35 page)

ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
years later, even with the benefit of Haywood’s grim accounting of the fateful decision, Timmon Tillman, standing tall upon the same gentle incline — though it was bare of snowpack in high summer — would make the exact same decision as Mather and head due west straight at Olympus.

JULY
2006

Already, Hillary could feel the full force of her hangover approaching, a beating of blood in her temples, a fog of juniper rising up out of her throat. Beside her on the bed, flat on his back with the sheet pulled back, exposing the springy gray hairs of his chest, Franklin snored calmly in long, even measure. With her head propped on two pillows, Hillary stared straight ahead at the window, where the flashing neon of Bonita Lanes played upon the Levolors. Maybe it had been a little different with Franklin, maybe Franklin was gentler than most, a little more generous and attendant with his physical offerings, but now that it was over, she only felt dull and remote, like a stranger in her own body.

Hillary crept from beneath the covers and padded to her heap of clothing at the foot of the bed, where she dressed in darkness. When Rupert began to whimper, she stroked his big square head to settle him down. Franklin sputtered briefly, rolled over onto one shoulder, but didn’t awaken. Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, she closed the door behind her without latching it, crossed the living room, and slunk into the night, clutching her high heels.

The night was unseasonably cool. A thick marine layer was rolling off the strait. At the bottom of the steps, she fastened her heels, wobbled a few steps across the parking lot, and nearly tripped in a pothole. Wrestling the shoes off, she threw them aside disgustedly and proceeded barefoot across the lot. She never was comfortable in heels. Heels were frivolous. So much of being a woman seemed frivolous to Hillary. By tenth grade, she’d stopped cultivating her feminine mystique altogether. She started wearing shirts instead of blouses, chose wood shop over home ec. When she double-lettered in soccer and volleyball, a few of the boys started calling her Lesbo.

But her crowning moment of humiliation came junior year, when
Kip Tobin asked her to the prom. For about eleven minutes, she was foolish enough to believe that Kip actually saw something in her, until she intercepted a hushed confidence in front of Dave Gubb’s locker. That was the end of innocence for Hillary.

Going to that prom was probably the last courageous thing she ever did. She drank rum and root beers in the parking lot by herself beforehand, and showed up a half hour late. Kip and his friends seemed surprised to see her at all. Kip was not complicit at first. The punch line had already been delivered, as far as he was concerned. But Hillary grabbed Kip’s hand and dragged him onto the dance floor, where, finally, after a little encouragement from his wrestling buddies — Lauridson, Gubb, and Gasper, mostly — Kip began playing his role to full effect. And all night long, Hillary obliged, playing the fat oblivious Cinderella to Tobin’s leading man, as he spun her in circles on the dance floor, winking not so covertly at the jeering student body gathered round them. Hillary smiled through it all, until, finally, the joke got old, and apparently it no longer felt like sport to Kip. He was actually contrite by the end of the evening, or at least willing to let Hillary suck his dick in the parking lot after a half-baked apology. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Hillary had been pushing her breasts up against him on the dance floor all night, while the Lonesome City Kings maligned everything from “Space Cowboy” to “Thriller.”

But she showed Kip Tobin, didn’t she? She brought him to the knee-buckling edge of climax, and right when the flash pots were due to explode, right when his eyes started rolling back in his head, she bit into him as though he were a celery stick. Sure, he gave her a lump on the head, and a shiner, and rekindled his campaign of humiliation with a new fervor in the coming weeks. But who got the last laugh that night? And who got the last laugh the night of their ten-year reunion at the Seven Cedars Casino, when everybody was still calling Kip “Happy Meal”?

Somehow, though, that last laugh never redeemed her. Even now, twenty years later, barefoot and fogbound in the parking lot of Bonita Lanes, the sting of humiliation couldn’t have been fresher had Franklin Bell delivered it an hour ago.

AUGUST
2006

When his nine o’clock still hadn’t arrived at ten after the hour, Franklin anxiously checked and rechecked his schedule. Randall Hobart: assault with a deadly weapon, two counts aggravated assault, resisting arrest, a string of drunk and disorderlies, and a history of domestic calls. The thought of losing another one made Franklin momentarily queasy. After a final glance at his watch, he was relieved to discover a lean tattooed figure standing defiantly in the doorway.

“Hobart?”

Hobart nodded his shaved head, just barely.

“Step inside. Take a seat.”

Hobart took a seat, sitting low in his chair.

Franklin snatched the file off the desktop, and scanning it momentarily, began absently humming “Night Moves.” “Okay, Randall,” he said, at length.

“Nobody calls me Randall but my mama. It’s Randy.”

“Well, you’re ten minutes late, Randy.”

Randy narrowed a snake-eyed gaze at Franklin. “Yeah, well what can I say? Shit happens.”

“Not on my clock. And just what shit would that be, anyway, Hobart? What could possibly be more important than your parole status? You like it on the inside, is that it?”

“Hell no. My shit is all fucked up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“For starters, it means my old lady’s kid got himself locked up in psych ward. Cops picked him up high on acid or some shit. But not before he jacked a hundred bucks from my wallet.”

“This happened this morning?”

“A couple days ago. But she was supposed give me a ride. Instead
she’s down there at the loony bin. So I had to take the shame train. Fuckin’ thing was twenty minutes late.”

“Always somebody else’s problem, ain’t it, Hobart?”

“Fuckin’ a.”

“Always somebody else fuckin’ things up for you, ain’t that right? Somebody always makin’ your road tougher, right, Hobart? Isn’t that how it goes?”

“Just a-fuckin’-bout.”

“Let me ask you something, Hobart. What do you do for fun now that you’re sprung? No, wait, let me guess. I’ll bet you like to go down to the bar and have a few beers with your old lady, or maybe just solo. I’ll bet you like to feed a few crisp dollar bills into the jukebox and play some pool. And I’ll bet you’re pretty decent. Bet you run a table now and then. Bet you hardly ever lose — at pool, anyway. And I’ll bet you’re feelin’ okay for the first three beers or so. But maybe as the night wears on, you start feelin’ a little restless, like you been there before. Sorta stuck, am I right?”

“You ain’t wrong.”

“I know how it is, Hobart. You think I don’t know how it is? It’s cold out there. You find a little comfort, you stick. That’s human. We like that. We like to stick. Let me tell you about stuck, Hobart.”

But even as he began telling Hobart about stuck, Franklin knew two things: (A) that he already had this kid dead to rights and (B) that he couldn’t care less what became of Hobart as long as he didn’t break parole. There was no light in Hobart’s eyes. Hobart wasn’t the kind you inspired — too lazy and unimaginative. And dumb. Hobart was the type you cajoled into submission by dotting his
i
’s for him. You facilitated Hobart’s dependence by scaring him with paperwork, by convincing him, finally, that keeping your nose clean and following a few simple rules was easier than negotiating the intricacies of the state, should he fail to comply. Hobart was one of the ugly victories you ground out in the fourth quarter from the stripe, not the harrowing victories that distinguished the sterling record above all else. The kind of victory Timmon Tillman might’ve been. Tillman had potential. Tillman wanted something better for himself. The guy
read a lot of books — obviously, he was looking for answers. Maybe Franklin had asked the wrong questions. Maybe his pep talks had sounded disingenuous in the end. Where had he lost Tillman? Was it the second meeting, when Franklin had decided against his better judgment to keep Tillman on a steady diet of optimism?

“So you’re sayin’ it doesn’t matter shit about my past?” Tillman had said.

“Hell, no. That was then. All you gotta do is take the initiative, son.”

Why had he called him son? He’d never in a million years call a guy like Hobart son. So why Tillman?

“Bullshit,” Tillman said, halfheartedly.

That’s why, the halfheartedness. Because somewhere in him, Tillman wanted to believe in something, wanted his glass half full. Franklin could see in Tillman’s eyes the potential for decisive action, the determination to make some great leap in the face of lousy odds, the sort of reckless heroism that could drive a man to extraordinary acts.

“Look, we both know I’m stuck with the record,” Tillman had pursued. “Which means I’ve got shit for opportunities on the outside. It doesn’t matter what kind of high-minded bullshit I fill my head with — trust me, I’ve read books, hundreds of them in the klink: poets, philosophers, you name it. None of it means shit on the outside when it comes to getting ahead. The only thing that means shit out here is my record.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Tillman. But first things first: Stop sayin’ ‘shit’ every other word. Because the man who says ‘shit’ every other word ain’t the man that’s gonna get ahead.”

“Ain’t’s not a word.”

“I ain’t ahead,” said Franklin, pausing to sip reflectively from his eggnog container. “Ever think maybe I’m just talkin’ to myself here, Tillman? Maybe you and me, we’re not so different. What you need, son, is a plan.”

“Yeah, and what plan is that?”

Franklin narrowed a steady gaze at him. “Got me. And it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good if I told you. It’s gotta be your plan, on
your terms. And plans you don’t talk about. Any fool can talk about ’em. I reckon you could go down to any bar on Front Street and find somebody willing to give you an earful of plans. I’ll bet you heard all kinds of plans in the joint. I’ll bet you’ve heard the same plans three, four times from the same guys. Real plans ain’t like that — and damn it you’re right, I gotta stop sayin’ ‘ain’t.’ Plans you decide. Plans you act out, Tillman. Slowly. Steadily. Plans ain’t —
aren’t
— gonna happen overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Burned down awfully quick,” observed Tillman.

“True enough, son. Takes longer to build a life than destroy it.”

Tillman was a smart kid. A few warts on his personality, but nothing like Hobart. Kid like Tillman just needed a break. When the second session with Tillman wound down, Franklin had walked the boy to the door, and they’d talked about hobbies and interests with the sort of familiarity Franklin never shared with his parolees, because familiarity undermined his authority and sent the wrong message to guys who were always looking for access, particularly when it was easily gained. But with Tillman, Franklin had been familiar. He’d set the tone himself. He’d elicited familiarity. Tillman had said he liked camping. He’d said that it nearly drove him crazy in the joint not being able to camp. He said at night he would sometimes lie in his cell and stare up into the darkness, trying to summon the smell of a wood fire, a smattering of stars through the treetops, the grit of fish skin on a cast-iron skillet. Timmon was a poet when he talked about camping. And he didn’t say “shit” once.

“What about you?” Tillman wanted to know.

“Oh, no. Not much of a camper myself.”

“How come you never see black people camping?” Tillman wanted to know. “I’ve been camping two hundred times at least, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black person camping.”

Franklin laughed, and gave Tillman a warm, almost fatherly pat on the back. “Son,” he said, “we been campin’ our whole lives.”

“
SO, WHAT’S THE
deal?” Hobart wanted to know. “Can I leave now, or what?”

“Yeah, you’re free to go. And you best be on time next time, got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Watching Hobart leave the office, with a sneer and a nod of his blue shaven head, Franklin knew Hobart would be back. Probably even on time. Guy like Hobart wouldn’t have the balls or the ambition to jump parole. Guy like Hobart would keep fucking up time and again but never on purpose.

AUGUST
1890

The bumpy progress of the carriage inspired giddiness in the child. The world was brimming with endless quantities of sunshine — indeed, it tickled her face around every corner, set her eyelashes to fluttering. All around her were the stirrings of possibility, darting spritelike in and out of the shadows beneath the sunlit canopy. Whether or not she was coming or going anywhere in particular did not occur to the child. She had no thought of the future, no thought of the past. She was simply afloat in the sun-drenched forest.

Hoko stroked the child’s forehead in a way she had never stroked Thomas as a baby — gently with the backs of her fingers. Minerva gave a coo and a giggle and flashed a wealth of pink gums. Her front teeth had broken through at last.

As though the child’s mirth were some cue, Eva set aside her notebook — in which she’d been distractedly scratching out another false start on her story-to-be — and reached across the narrow aisle to scoop Minerva out of Hoko’s lap. Holding the girl aloft like a mirror, Eva felt the tears welling up once more and promptly manufactured the smile of a young mother. This was just temporary, she told herself, a few weeks at most.

“And how is Mommy’s big girl? Does Mommy’s big girl like carriage rides?”

As the child began to fidget in her arms, Eva quickly exhausted her store of placative measures: the tummy tickle, the nose rub, even the aching promise of the nipple, from which she’d recently weaned the child. But Minerva would have none of it.