One

 

I was late getting to the prison.

I stopped to piss at a Shell station outside Green Mount and my mind took to wandering and when I pulled back onto the highway I must have turned north instead of south. Fifteen minutes went by before I realized I was driving in the wrong direction. Oh well. Vince had waited four years for this day, another hour wouldn’t kill him.

Still, it was just like me to screw up his release day.

The Shawnee State Work Camp lay at the butt-end of the state, not far from where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers collide. Shawnee was a nothing town in one of the poorest counties in the state, maybe in the country. You want to see perfect, abject poverty in all its wondrous manifestations—economic, spiritual, intellectual—where the whites are just as poor as the blacks but the dumb fucks still think God blessed them with a superior skin tone, go to Shawnee. If you ask me, the only reason anyone stays here is because he’s too dumb to find the way out.

The work camp was a new facility, cost state taxpayers three hundred million, but you’d never know that from looking at it. It was shabby, like a massive shed or army barracks constructed of discounted sheet metal. Windowless with looming guard towers and razor wire fencing choked by wild oats and ragweed, like the contractors tried to blend the building into its bleak surroundings.

The landscape was flatter than a bookkeeper’s ass and a feral February wind roared over the fields and snapped the ragged flags on the official flag pole.

Out front of the gate two dudes sat hunched on a bench smoking cigarettes. Each had a prison-issued backpack resting at his feet. I parked the van in the five-minute pick up area and kept the engine idling while a guard gave me the stink eye from his heated shack. I studied the two guys on the bench. The smaller, wiry guy was Vince Carroll. Other than the scraggly beard, he didn’t appear to have changed much in the eight months since I’d seen him last. He wore a black wool cap and a brown Carhartt jacket over a black hooded sweatshirt and a pair of ratty Levis. Same as always. I had no idea who the other guy was, but he looked like a larger version of Vince, tangled beard, wool cap, and some kind of heavy pea coat. I eased out of the van and strode over to the bench. Neither one made to get up.

“Hey little brother,” I said.

The big fella spat hard and said, “You’re late.”

I glanced at Vince.

“Probably got lost,” Vince said and flicked away his cigarette. “Ain’t that right, big brother?”

“Only twice.”

Vince grinned back at the big fella. “Never had a sense of direction worth a dick.”

Vince stood up and gave me a bear hug with enough pressure to crack a couple short ribs.

“Good to see you,” I said.

“Good to be seen.”

I stooped to pick up his backpack, but he got there first.

“How you been?”

I immediately regretted such a stupid question.

“Living the dream.” He swung the backpack over his shoulder.

The big fella said, “If you two are about done with your little gay reunion, I’m freezing my balls off here.”

I gave Vince a look, but he was already moving across the icy lot toward the van.

“Damn, I thought I’d feel different being outside them gates,” Vince said. He paused a moment and shrugged. “Nope. Feels the same. You feel any different, Pritch?”

“Feels a hell of a lot colder,” Pritch said and tossed away his butt.

I sidled up alongside Vince and jerked my head toward the big guy. “What’s his deal?”

“Oh,” he said, “I told Pritchard we’d give him a ride.”

My face fell. “Uh—”

Pritchard must’ve overheard us talking. He glared at me, daring me to contradict my brother. I leaned in toward Vince, voice lowered. “Where’re we taking him?”

Vince shrugged. “How would I know? I just met the ugly sonofabitch twenty minutes ago.” He turned to Pritchard. “Where to, Pritch?”

Pritchard seemed to think that over. “First strip club we come to.”

Vince ran his hand over his scraggly beard and laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Not a bad idea.” He blew into his hands and gave the van a once over. “Hey, cool ride. Nice and roomy. New?”

“A year old. It’s Reva’s.”

“Who’s Reva?” Pritchard said.

“Denis’ wife.”

“Who’s Denis?”

Vince halted and draped his arm around my shoulders. “This is Denis, dumb ass.” He rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. “You see what I’ve had to put up with? I ain’t talked to anyone with an IQ over eighty in four years.”

“Don’t expect too much out here, either,” I said.

Pritchard went around to the back of the van and tossed his backpack into the cargo area. He snorted loudly.

“What?” Vince said.

Pritchard nodded toward me. “His wife ate cocks twenty-four-seven.”

I turned to Vince, dumbstruck. Had he just insulted my wife? Vince went around to the back of the van. I thought he was going to knock Pritchard into next week, only he started chuckling. Christ. The last thing I needed was to get into a brawl in front of a state prison with some Neanderthal ex-con. I clenched my fists and took a step toward Pritchard. “What’d you say about my wife?”

Vince held up a hand and pointed toward the back bumper. “Your license plate, dumb ass.”

I studied the plate. 8KX 247.

It took a moment to register. “Oh for god’s sake!” I said. “I never even noticed that.”

“Somebody down at the DMV sure hates you,” Vince said. He laughed again and moved toward the driver’s side. “I’d find out who’s responsible for that if I was you.”

I stared at the license plate, surprised I’d never noticed it before; amazed that it took a caveman to point it out. I shook my head. No way could that have been an honest mistake.

“You coming?” Vince called.

“Uh huh.” I thought about calling Reva at work. Wouldn’t she be surprised? Driving around for a year with those plates. But I didn’t want to talk to her about it in front of Beavis and Butthead.

“How about giving me the keys?” Vince said. “I haven’t been behind a wheel since forever.”

“Do you even have a license?” I said.

“What do I need a license for? It’s not my van.”

I shook my head. “I’m driving.”

Pritchard climbed in the sliding door and Vince eased into the passenger seat and strapped on his belt without even being told. Then he glanced out the window. “Drive by the guard shack.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Let’s not drive by the guard shack.”

As we rolled off the lot, Vince ran down the passenger side window and flipped off the guard with both middle fingers.

The guard didn’t react. Good for him.

We pulled onto the highway and pushed north into a light snowfall, the heater cranked as high as it would go, a long three-and-half-hour drive ahead of us. In the back seat Pritchard hacked up a mound of phlegm. “How do you roll down this window?” he said.

I pressed a button to unlock the back window.

“Never mind,” he said, swallowing.

I threw up a little in my mouth and washed the bile down with the last of the morning’s cold coffee. So it was going to be that kind of day.

Vince sat quietly beside me; he alternately took in the bleak landscape and stared hard at my profile. He said, “You look good. Family life agrees with you.”

“No complaints,” I said.

He nodded. “So. How’re my niece and nephew?”

“Good. Growing like weeds.”

Vince broke into a smile. “Got any pictures?”

I slipped my phone out of my back pocket. Steering with one hand, I pulled up some recent photos of the twins with the other and handed the phone to Vince.

He grinned. “Them are some good-looking kids,” he said. “Must take after their uncle.”

Pritchard leaned over the back seat. “Let me see.”

Vince ignored him. “Jesus. Look how much taller Mandy is than her brother. Last time I saw them they were like the same size.”

“That’ll happen,” I said.

“She playing YMCA ball?”

“They both are.”

Vince smiled. “Just like we did.”

“Well, like I did. You mostly rode the bench.”

“You’re nuts. I was a superstar,” Vince said. His eyes went distant. “I sure would like to catch a game.”

“There’s three left.”

“Yeah? I’m going to catch one of them.”

I believed he meant it. He went through every picture on the phone before handing it back.

 

 

The highway cut through long stretches of dead browns and rusted grays, past the occasional slanting barn and distant cow cluster, amid dull landscapes of forgotten things. You could taste the emptiness like the last sip of beer.

Vince took out a pack of Camel filters from his jacket and cracked the window.

“What’re you doing?” I said.

“What’s it looking like?”

“Dude, you can’t smoke in here.”

Vince stared at me and tried to gauge my earnestness. “Seriously? Bro, I did not put my life on the line in Iraq so I couldn’t smoke a fucking cigarette.”

I sighed. “I know. It sucks, but Reva will have a shit fit.” I tried not to sound like a whiny baby—with only moderate success. Vince fumed and tossed the pack of cigarettes and the chrome Zippo on the dashboard. Pritchard snorted from the back seat. I’d about had it with him. I was five seconds from stopping the van and dropping his dumb ass on the side of the highway.

“We’ll stop at the next rest area,” I said. My lame attempt at reconciliation.

“Forget it.”

Vince switched on the radio. Sammy Hagar. For a while he and Pritchard argued over the music selection. Pritchard was partial to classic rock: Seger, Van Halen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, old man crap, while Vince preferred old country. Same as me. Pritchard called it “twangy hillbilly shit” and the two almost came to blows. I reached over and fiddled with the dial till I came across a Christian radio station. We quieted down to listen. I turned up the volume, hoping for a few laughs. Predictably, the husband-wife team spent ninety percent of the time soliciting money from their poor, stupid, gullible Christian radio listeners who probably didn’t have a pot to pee in. Give us your cash or the commies and queers win. I didn’t see anything funny about that, so I snapped off the radio and we drove awhile in blissful silence. I’d glance in the rearview mirror every once in a while hoping Pritchard had fallen asleep. Nope. Wide awake, arms crossed over his chest, staring angrily out the window. God knows what he had to be angry about. He was a free man, after all, with a free ride.

Vince’s eyes drooped heavily. I thought he might’ve nodded off, but after a moment he turned to me and said, “Why didn’t you bring Reva?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t Reva come along?”

“She had to work.”

“Who’s Reva?” Pritchard said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“She the one from the license plate?” he said.

“Boy, you are treading on thin ice,” I said.

Vince turned around in his seat. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

That shut up Pritchard for a while. Vince turned to me and said, “Where’s she working these days?”

“She got on at the library, the children’s section.”

“Really?” He thought that over. “She’d be good at that.”

“She likes it a lot.”

“I bet the twins love it.”

“Yeah. Next best thing to her being home all the time.”

“They like to read?”

“They love to read,” I said.

“Just like their dad.”

“Nothing like their dad.”

Vince laughed. “I read a lot at the work camp. Mysteries mostly. Mysteries and crime novels. That’s about all they had in there.”

“Crime novels? Really?”

“I know, you wouldn’t think they’d allow that. But you want to get bad guys to read, you don’t offer those romances or fat Russian novels.”

I thought about that. “I guess that makes sense.”

 

 

We made a pit stop at a Huck’s convenience store outside of Pinckneyville. The genius of Mark Twain peddling Cheetos and Coca Cola and gas. I filled up the tank and went to the restroom to make room for more coffee. When I got back to the van, Vince was behind the wheel, cracking the neck of a pint of Jim Beam and hitting on a joint. He’d picked up a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, too, though there was no sunlight to speak of.

“I’ll drive awhile,” he said, and lapsed into a thirty-second coughing fit. “Damn, I ain’t had anything that good in years.”

I searched my jacket pocket. Sonofabitch. I’d left the keys in the ignition. “Didn’t I tell you no smoking in the van?” I said.

“Cigarettes,” Vince said between coughs. “You said cigarettes.”

“And where the hell did you get a joint? I was only gone like five minutes?”

“Ask and you shall receive,” Vince said.

“The Lord provides,” Pritchard said.

Vince coughed and held out the joint. “Want a hit?”

“No, I don’t want a hit. I want you to—”

“Hey, don’t Bogart that joint,” Pritchard said.

Vince passed the joint to Pritchard and kicked the engine over.

“Vince, you’re not driving,” I said. “You’re stoned and you don’t have a license.”

Vince adjusted the rearview mirror. “Fuck that. I did not put my life on the line in Afghanistan so I couldn’t smoke a doobie in my brother’s van. Now get in or we’re leaving your ass.” He slammed the driver’s side door and threw the van into reverse. The van backed up fifteen or twenty feet past the pumps.

“Goddamn it, Vince,” I muttered under my breath.

A mad look came into his eye and he giggled maniacally, the joint bobbing between his lips. Drugs, alcohol, four years in stir and traumatic brain injury were a bad combination.

Vince jerked the van forward and almost clipped my right shoulder. Pritchard urged him on enthusiastically. He threw the van into reverse, backed up, shifted into drive, and aimed the nose right at me. I suppose he was getting a big kick out of this. A little payback for time served. I had no choice but to make a break for the convenience store. Luckily, the wheels spun on the ice and failed to get traction. Halfway to the entrance I caught sight of one of the clerks, a big-boned twenty-something gal with chopped up green hair standing by the front doors, obviously dismayed at the scene unfolding in the parking lot. I rushed inside the store and strained to catch my breath.

“You know that guy?” she said.

“You mean that maniac trying to kill me? Yeah, that’s my little brother. He just got out of prison like two hours ago.”

“Looks like he’s in a hurry to go back.”

The van pulled up to the entrance and Vince laid on the horn and took a pull from the whiskey bottle. “Time to hit the road, bro! Get your ass in gear!”

I gazed at the clerk and shrugged and walked out the doors to my certain doom. Pritchard was now riding shotgun. “You’re in back,” he yelled through the rolled-up window.

I cursed under my breath and climbed into the back seat.

“Hold on to your Bibles, folks!” Vince cried and the van peeled out, tires squealing.