Back Roads (29 page)

The sheriff takes the pen from me, then says something kind of weird.

“I’m sorry, son,” he tells me. “I know that you must have loved her.”

I don’t bother telling him I still do. I’m not going to stop just because she killed someone.

This place is not so bad. It has a great view. A bank calendar view. Miles and miles of soft green hills that look like they’d make a great bed if a giant came stumbling through the valley and needed a place to crash.

The food could be better and so could the company, but I’m not very hungry or social these days so it doesn’t matter much. I haven’t been allowed to have visitors yet, but my new shrink says I should be able to see Jody soon. She’s the only person I want to see. Only because I want her to see that I’m okay.

Betty wants to see me, but I don’t want to see her. I’m still mad at her for turning in Amber. I know she thought she was doing what was best for all of us but it wasn’t her place to make that decision. I had my reason for doing what I did.

I told her this when I saw her in the police station the day after my arrest, and she said she knew I had my reason but it wasn’t a good one. I didn’t kill Callie Mercer. Choosing to sleep with me may have ultimately, unwittingly led to the circumstances that ended her life, but I did not pull the trigger.

Then she said I would be cheating Amber by taking the blame for her crime. She took a human life. She took a mother from her children. A wife from her husband. A daughter from her
parents. She needed to be punished if she was ever going to have CLOSURE.

I have CLOSURE on my wall now. My new shrink told me to write down the words I see in the air. I have a ton of them taped up. We’re allowed to have tape in here. We don’t have to use tapioca.

I have a ton of Jody’s fortunes taped up too. She sent me her whole FORJUNS envelope. Every time I look at one I picture her carefully pulling out the strip of paper as delicately as if she were straightening a fairy’s wings, and I feel a little better before I feel really shitty.

She sent me a letter too. I’ve only been able to read it once, but I’m going to keep it forever because I know how much work she put into it. I’ve started a dozen letters back to her, and they all begin with how proud I am of her letter. I never get around to finishing them though. Hers says:

I still have Skip’s letter too. I keep it in my one drawer with some other stuff. They’re pretty good about letting you keep PERSONAL EFFECTS here as long as they fit in the drawer. Callie’s art book wouldn’t fit which is okay because I think it was only a loaner.

I’ve got Mom’s Bible and her map in the drawer too, and Mom and Dad’s wedding picture. And the crocheted doll. They
let me keep her because they don’t know what I use her for. I don’t think I’m ever going to want a live woman again.

The only other thing in here is a card from Church. I know he picked it out himself because the front is a cartoon dog wearing a party hat shouting, “Congratulations.” The inside says, “Way to go! I knew you could do it!” I know his mom would have guided him in a different direction if they had shopped for a card together. I have a feeling Church’s mom doesn’t think I’m such a nice boy anymore.

I’m not exactly sure what would have led her to that conclusion. Amber’s story made the eleven o’clock news, not mine. It turned out I wasn’t sent to jail for murder after all and the only reason I’m in here is because I started laughing when they told me Misty was the one who told the police Amber and I had an incestuous relationship. And I couldn’t stop laughing. Or maybe I was screaming. I don’t remember. The only thing I do remember is shitting myself. Shitting yourself in front of strangers and fucking your sister are two things you don’t ever forget.

At least Betty hasn’t turned her back on me like Church’s mom. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t be so hard on her for that reason alone. And to tell the TRUTH, if I’m going to be mad at her for the whole Amber mess I should be mad at Elvis too.

TRUE, Betty was the one who went to the sheriff’s department when she heard about my arrest and told them I had been at her office until almost midnight the night before and I couldn’t have done it; but on its own, that really wouldn’t have meant anything. I still would have had time to kill Callie. I didn’t show up at the police station until almost 2
A
.
M
.

She asked them if they had talked to my sister, but that wouldn’t have meant anything either. They already had my signed confession.

They decided to go out to the house anyway and the way the sheriff explained it to me was no one was there except for a big
shepherd mutt lying on an old, burnt-up couch chewing on a pair of girl’s cutoffs spattered in blood.

Amber wasn’t any better at burying than she was at aiming.

I was upset all over again when I heard Uncle Mike had really gone through with it and just left Elvis there. Betty wouldn’t take him either. I came pretty close to begging. I even asked the sheriff and a couple of the deputies to take him.

Betty did end up finding a home for him though. She told me he’s living with a nice family. They live in town so he doesn’t have as much space as he’s used to but he’s still very happy.

Bullshit, I told her. He wakes up every day and looks around him and wonders what terrible thing he did that would make the one person in his life who was supposed to love him unconditionally turn his back on him. That’s what he thinks, I told her. I don’t care that he’s only a dog.

I do a lot of thinking myself these days but only on select topics. I guess that’s the way I’ve always been. My new shrink says that’s okay. He says that’s not my biggest problem. He says my biggest problem is when I accidentally start thinking about things I don’t want to think about, I can’t COPE.

EARTH-CROSSERS. I told him that’s what I call them. He loved that. He told me it was a brilliant analogy. He’s always lying his head off like that. I asked him once if he’s got a book with a chapter in it called “Compliment Psychos and They Will Be Your Friends.” He laughed and told me I’m very witty and perceptive. I said I was being serious.

I guess some of what he says is TRUE though. I still can’t think about Misty without screaming. I can’t think about what has become of little Zack and Esme Mercer’s lives. I can’t think about Jody’s notes. I can’t think about Callie’s six seconds.

I’ve always figured when a mother sees the big one coming and the sky light up like a thousand suns, she sees her children’s faces in every one of them. Callie would have thought about her kids as she faced down Amber. She wouldn’t have thought about
herself. Not her boyish, banker husband or the grandfather who gave her the hills she loved. Not me or the God she was on her way to see. She would have thought about her kids and how they were going to wake up in the middle of the night, for years to come, calling for her, and she wouldn’t be able to get to them.

She’s going to hear them too. No matter where she ends up. Heaven. Hell. Or some netherworld in between. She’s going to hear them call to her. That’s the worst part about the whole thing. Damning Callie and her kids to that fate. They deserved better. Them and Elvis.

The biggest surprise is I CAN think about Amber now. Not everything. But some of it. I try to think positively when I think about her future. It would be nice if she had one of those trials like O.J.’s where everybody knows she did it, but they let her go anyway because they don’t like the prosecutor’s hairstyle. But that shit only happens on TV.

I can think about our childhood again, and I can even think about her snuggled up against my back in bed at night and how that may have been the only calm she will ever feel in her entire life.

My new shrink says that particular memory isn’t healthy for me because I’m only remembering part of it. I’m not remembering the whole TRUTH and he knows how hung up I am on the TRUTH. He’s seen my room.

I guess I see TRUTH in the air a lot. I’ve written it down about a hundred times and taped it to my wall.

“Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it.” Confucius said that. I’ve written that down too.

I guess I always thought I was someone who loved the TRUTH but constantly had it hidden from me. Now I realize I’ve always had a lot of TRUTH staring me in the face, but I’ve ignored it on purpose because I don’t love it.

The TRUTH is the TRUTH sucks sometimes. People are the only ones who care about that. The only thing separating me
from Elvis isn’t my ability to face or deal with or deny it. It’s that I let it bother me. I’m trying really hard to stop. Because the TRUTH is I’ve already wasted so much of my life lying to myself.

The TRUTH is all those times Skip tried to kill his brother, Donny, I thought he was being a real asshole.