Twenty-seven

IN fall, along 1-5 in the shadow of Mount Shasta, we repaired potholes, pouring, raking, and tamping hot tar. Evenings I tutored. I didn’t sleep well, only a few hours each night before I woke and brooded, often trying to understand how my life would proceed from here on.

I couldn’t imagine a future. A convicted felon can’t practice law. And my passion for music had cooled as I saw I had no gift for composing. After all I had experienced in Evergreen, if I had a gift, songs should’ve come to me. They didn’t.

I tried to make some kind of peace with the killing I’d done, like Alvaro and other veterans of a war they suspected was futile and perhaps wicked but they fought anyway. But few or none of those veterans had mashed a tiny fallen man with a tire iron.

That Pop gunned down Danny Katoulis and went on to become a far more than decent man gave me some hope. But he had Mama to help him.

I had nobody. Not Pop or Alvaro. Their highest motive was justice. They couldn’t forgive me because they never blamed me. They blamed Little Vic. Mama would’ve blamed Vic and me both and forgiven us both.

Forgiveness had to come from someone like Mama who could see my evil heart and love me anyway. Mama could forgive anybody because she knew we all are part God, part devil. Like God is love, the devil is pride. And pride had turned Vic and me into killers.

FOR all of us who hadn’t tried to flee or assaulted any guards or fellow prisoners, Thanksgiving was a holiday. A Calvary church from Mount Shasta brought us turkeys, yams, biscuits, and canned creamed corn.

But what made me almost glad to be alive was, we got to eat with our families. Because the mess hall wouldn’t hold everybody, we ate outside in an icy wind, on frozen benches with our feet in snow.

I saw Pop at the gate. But when they let him enter, he didn’t hustle over to me like he had every weekly visit before. He loitered just inside, chatting with other visitors, while a woman all bundled in a ski cap and full length down coat walked toward me. Until she came so close I could see her frosty breath, I didn’t even dare to hope she could be Ava.

She wore no makeup but her lips and cheeks were rosier than ever. Her hair was braided. She looked a few years older than she had three months ago. She was too tan for a hippie girl in winter. And she looked so happy I stood waiting for her to announce her engagement to some Honolulu surfing legend or brain surgeon.

“I asked your dad where Alvaro is,” she said. “He told me to ask you.”

So we sat on the frozen bench and I told her the story of my brother’s journey. I told her Alvaro wrote me a letter most every day and that he phoned Pop often and promised he would come home as soon as he helped the Van Dykes get settled.

“Where are they going to settle?” she asked.

“He doesn’t say. Pop doesn’t ask.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Clifford, I love you, and your family. Do you think I would turn in your brother?”

“Maybe you’d turn in Roy. He killed your boyfriend.”

“You’re my only boyfriend,” she said. And though she had read the rules that forbade prisoners and guests from making any physical contact, her hand crept and folded over mine.

“Maybe Costa Rica,” I mumbled. My heart swelled. But I looked around and saw three to six more years. Then my heart broke open.

Ava let me weep on her breast, even after a guard shouted at us. He was a decent guy. When I waved at him, he turned and walked away.

 

THE END of The Do-Re-Mi, but hardly the end of the story.

Next you will want to read The Vagabond Virgins and learn what becomes of the all these mysterious Hickeys.