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It was near dark when Mack exited the Indian Nation Turnpike and drove into the town of McAlester. The seven-hour drive from Amarillo had taken ten, due to many stops. Most of them unnecessary. The smell of Popeye’s fried chicken drifting through the air vents triggered a hungry growl in his stomach and he debated about stopping one more time. But he knew his mother would be waiting up. Like she always did. And would have cooked. Like she always did. So he drove straight through town and out again, veering north onto a narrow two-lane road leading into low hills.
His headlights scraped across oak trees with leaves the color of rust, hickory trees cloaked in gold, and state road signs that read, CAUTION: HITCHHIKERS COULD BE ESCAPED INMATES. Rounding a bend, Mack saw Oklahoma’s state penitentiary come into view. Just as he remembered, Big Mac was lit up like a giant Christmas tree, one skirted with guard towers and security fences.
Long before he’d been born, the town fathers had been given a choice: to have the state university there, or the state pen. In his growing-up years, he’d tried to figure out why they had decided on the pen. Right then, he began to wonder if his father might still be alive if they had chosen differently. He grew suddenly angry, thinking how his father had died prematurely.
“If you were still alive,” he told the man who had been in the ground twenty-five years, “I wouldn’t have to make the decisions I’m making.”
He braked hard as he realized some of the lights ahead were from police cruisers blocking the road. His heartbeat speeded up as he mentally ran through the implications of the roadblock, none of them good. For a half-second, his mind backtracked to another period in his life. A time and place where night occurrences meant you had someone’s ass in your scope—or maybe that someone, better at jungle warfare than you, had already pulled the trigger on yours. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, thinking there must have been a time before then. But if there was, he couldn’t pull it from his memory.
Hell, he thought. Scientists had found that the earth had experienced many time periods. Why had he been limited to two? That time when he didn’t drench his clothes at the drop of a hat . . . and now. But those sweet moments of grace were gone for good.
He eased to a full stop and watched two uniformed men walk his way. They stopped briefly, scrutinizing the Texas plates on his Bronco. When the older man walked to the driver’s side, the other man to the passenger, Mack rolled down both windows.
“Howdy, Mack. Heard you was coming in tonight.”
“That so?” Mack shook the hand that Luther Winslow extended. The man had reported to his father years ago when he was the prison farm supervisor. Judging from the patch on his khaki shirt, Luther had worked his way up through the ranks.
“Yeah, Betty was due a perm. She left your place ‘bout five. Called me soon as she got home, told me to keep an eye out. Ruby and Sister were okay when she left.”
“That’s a relief.” Mack tilted his head toward the prison’s location. “Riot or break?”
“Break.”
“In a maximum-security prison? How the hell could that happen, Luther?”
The man shrugged. “Two sons-of-bitches kayoed a greenhorn guard out in the fields.”
“Anyone killed?”
“No. This idn’t a repeat of your daddy’s story—thank the Lord.”
Mack eyed the roadblock and cruiser ahead, lights flashing. “But you haven’t caught them yet.”
“No, but getting close. Looks like they headed west, not north towards your place. Hounds picked up their trail, hot on their heels as we speak. Your women aren’t in any danger, Mack. They were, I’d move them outta there myself. You know I would.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Mack did not finish saying what he was thinking. He would be taking care of any further danger to his mother and aunt soon enough.
“What’cha doin’ home this time of the year, Mack?”
Mack eyed the overweight man leaning on the passenger-side door. He and Billy Joe Turner had been high school classmates, but never friends. The friction between them was generational, a shared sentiment carried forward with resolve. Billy Joe’s father, Washburn Turner Jr., called Junior for short, had been on duty the day Mack’s father was killed.
Mack had harbored gut resentment ever since, sensing the wrong man had died that day. When the Turners took an uncommon interest in him and his mother after his father’s funeral, it seemed only natural to tell them to get lost and stay lost. His mother had scolded him for his unchristian conduct. When he expressed suspicions about his father’s death, she had ridiculed the idea, telling him he shouldn’t second-guess the Lord’s intent. “Not the Lord’s intent I’m questioning,” he’d told her. “All I know is a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Those Turners are hiding something—I don’t know what, but something.”
Mack pulled his thoughts back to the present. “So, your dad still working at the pen, Billy Joe?”
“Well, hell no—not for a long time. Grandpa’s accumulated a good bit of land hereabouts and Daddy quit the pen to manage the business. Given he’s not a spring chicken, looks like I’ll be taking over soon.” Billy Joe grinned big. “We got quite an enterprise going here. Figured you’d know that, Mack. What? You don’t keep up with the homeboys no more?”
Mack stifled a snort. “I keep up with the important things.”
After high school, Mack and Billy Joe split ways. Billy Joe followed in his father’s footsteps, going to work at the prison, and he had joined the Marines, putting an end to the generational animosity. Or so he thought. He hadn’t given a thought to Billy Joe Turner in more than twenty years, but when he locked eyes with him right then, time dissolved.
Noticing Billy Joe zeroing in on a manila envelope on the dash, Mack quickly shoved it under the front seat. Billy Joe moved his attention to the sleeping bag, portable camp stove, and toolbox in the back end of his Bronco.
“Well, now,” Billy Joe said, eying the gear. “I heard building had slowed down considerable in the Panhandle. From the looks of this rig, it’s gone to hell in a handbasket. You living in this thing, Mack? It’s a doggone pigsty. You moving back home, that why you’re here?”
“Family business,” Mack said stiffly. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that he would have to account to Billy Joe Turner for anything. “My work keeps me on the move, so I haul my tools with me.”
“I’d hire you in a minute, you were so inclined.” Luther Winslow laid a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “You know that, don’t you, son?”
Mack turned to the older man. “Thanks, Luther. But like you said, this isn’t a repeat of my daddy’s story. Besides, Amarillo suits me. You can see what’s coming at you out there in the big and wide.”
“That’s what I hear.” Luther grinned. “How’s that old saying go? Ain’t nothing between Amarillo and the North Pole but a bob-wire fence and it blew down last winter.”
“Just the way I like it,” Mack said, nodding.
“Family business, huh?” Billy Joe said, working his way back to Mack’s earlier comment. “Yeah, I hear that grandpa of yours is giving your Mama the dickens.”
“You have, have you?” Mack muttered, wondering how the jackass at his elbow had learned of his family’s business.
“I’d do it, was me,” Luther said, chuckling.
Mack wished he knew what the two men were talking about. All his mother had said when she called him to come home was that he needed to talk some sense into his grandfather. He downshifted quickly. “Better get on down the road, check on Mama and Sister.”
Nodding, Luther motioned Billy Joe toward the barricade. “Open ‘er up.”
As Billy Joe began dragging the roadblocks to the side of the road, Luther bent close. “I’m sure your womenfolk are fine, but I’d bet a dollar to a donut that Ruby is waiting up with her double barrel loaded and cocked. So hail the house before you walk up.”
Mack pulled through the roadblock, recalling the time his father was working night duty at the pen and an escaped convict found his way to their house. He had stayed up to keep his mother company that night. First, they had heard a squeak on the front porch, then seen the doorknob turn. Cool as a cucumber, his mother had called out her warning. “Open that door and I’ll unload both barrels.” The convict never tried the door again, but he had stayed around the rest of the night, scratching on windowpanes and throwing rocks on the roof. His father had captured the escapee when he got home, figuring something was amiss when he found the house lit up brighter than the state pen. He had a phone line run to the house right after that and kept a fresh box of shotgun shells handy for Ruby at all times.
“Bet she would’ve pulled that trigger,” Mack said, grinning. Then his face took on a grim set. “But that was then. This is now.”
Asphalt turned to fifteen miles of gravel road. Mack drove fast, thinking of all kinds of ways an escaped convict could evade searchers, even hounds. Whiteface Herefords, bedded down in shadowed pastures, were the only living things he came across. At least, any living thing that he could see. He swung right at a T in the road and drove past a cluster of old farmhouses and single-wide trailers. Diehards left over from days when it paid to grow cotton and peanuts and sweet onions.
A couple of miles on, he pulled into a narrow tunnel of oak and hickory trees at the end of which sat a Craftsman-style house. He killed the engine and lights and coasted the last fifty yards, running surveillance on the place. Pulling to a stop, he sat staring at a front porch lit by a bald 40-Watt bulb. The place had not changed much from when he bought it with his mustering-out pay for his mother, aunt, and grandfather to live in.
And Whitey.
Mack rolled the window down and grinned at the scrawny dog panting outside the car door. “Some watchdog you are.” He reached out and scratched the old dog’s ears. “What’d you do, recognize the sound of the Bronco? Legs might be gone, but there’s nothing wrong with your ears.”
Through the front window, Mack could see a stooped woman sitting in a chair, looking like a ghost floating behind the lace curtain. The long, stick-shaped object next to her could be mistaken for nothing other than what it was. He sighed, thinking that an intruder would be on his mother before she had time to take hold of the gun. Wrestling his duffle bag from the backend, he opened the car door quietly.
He took a minute before going inside, letting the night enfold him. The racket of katydids, crickets, and frogs bombarded his ears, sounding like a discordant gospel choir. Like flickering specters, fireflies hovering in low boggy places moved en masse when the slightest breeze stirred. Standing water and rotting oak leaves in the creek back of the house gave the heavy night air the smell of a sweet-sour mash.
“A jungle,” he mumbled. “A goddamn fucking jungle.” Rubbing away the smell of sweat in his nose, he shouldered his duffle and walked toward the door.
