Cry Me A River (6 page)

He felt their eyes on him. His tepid skin flushed hot as searing blood surged through his pulsating veins and spiraled to his light, giddy head. He approached the gate cautiously, ever aware of the small surveillance camera mounted just above the entrance. The gate swung open, and he followed the sidewalk to a huge metal door. His stark eyes fell on the bold black letters posted on the wall: No weapons. No drugs. No alcohol. All visitors will be searched. All violators will be prosecuted.

He pulled the door open and stepped inside. Directly ahead of him was a second door. To his left a uniformed man sat in a small office behind a large Plexiglas window. He was a portly man, in his mid-to-late
fifties. The hair on his balding head was black save for the tiny patches of gray about his temples. His pale white skin had begun to wrinkle, and the whites of his sky blue eyes held a jaundiced tint.

“Can I help you?” the man asked. His tone was gruff; his stare, cold.

“I’m here to visit a inmate,” Tyrone said.

“Ain’t no visitation today!” the man said in a thick southern drawl.

“They told me I could see him.”

The old man stared at him for a moment. Then he narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow, confused.

“They who?” he asked.

“His attorney,” Tyrone said. “Mr. Johnson.”

The man sighed, leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his short, grubby fingers over his bald head.

“Who you trying to see?”

“My son,” Tyrone told him. “Marcus Stokes.”

He watched the old man push a coffee cup aside, then touch his thumb to the tip of his tongue and begin looking through a stack of papers, agitated.

“You Tyrone Stokes?”

“Yes, sir.”

The old man eyed Tyrone coldly, then slid a piece of paper through a slot underneath the Plexiglas.

“Sign in,” he said.

Tyrone signed his name, then looked at the clock hanging on the wall behind the man. It was ten minutes until one. He noted the time and slid the paper back through the slot. He heard a buzz, then a click. The large metal door opened. He walked through, and the door clanged shut. Waiting in the corridor, behind the door, was a second officer. He was a young man, tall and athletic with grayish eyes, short, dark brown hair, and thick, bushy eyebrows. He had a pistol strapped to his
waist, a metal detector dangling from one hand, and a tiny bucket in the other. Their eyes met, and the officer extended the small bucket toward Tyrone.

“Empty your pockets.”

He seemed serious, but not gruff. Stern, but not mean. Tyrone removed his keys and his loose change and dropped everything into the bucket.

“Is that it?”

“Yes, sir,” Tyrone said. “That’s it.”

“Raise your arms above your head.”

Tyrone lifted his arms high above his head, and the officer ran the scanner underneath his left arm, down the outside of his left leg, and then up the inside before switching to the other side and repeating the same.

“Turn around and face the wall.”

Tyrone turned and stared at the wall. It was a plain cement wall that was bare save for the round mirror in the corner just below the ceiling. Through the reflection in the mirror, he watched the officer slowly drag the scanner down his back, over his butt, and about his ankles. Satisfied that all was safe, the officer returned his things, then uttered, “Follow me.”

Tyrone followed him, fully expecting to be led deep into the bowels of the prison, traversing a maze of slamming doors while walking past hordes of half-dressed, tattoo-covered men peering at him from behind steel bars. Instead, he was led down a long hallway, through two sets of solid steel doors, and into a moderate-size room. Inside the room, there was a long row of chairs, each in its own tiny cubicle, and each neatly aligned behind a thick glass partition that spanned the full length of the wall. He took a seat before the glass and stared wide-eyed at the empty chair on the other side. The door opened and two officers escorted Marcus inside. “My God,” Tyrone mumbled as his gaze fell on the frail
shell of his son hobbling toward the empty chair, swinging the chains girting his hands, and dragging the shackles binding his feet.

One of the guards loosened his hands, and, as if in a daze, Marcus eased into the chair, then lifted the phone from the hook and placed it to his ear. He looked at Tyrone, and his large, empty eyes revealed the hopeless soul of a broken man. His hair was long and unkempt. His face unshaven. His teeth dingy. His body bent. He was living, but he was no longer alive.

“How you doing, son?” Tyrone asked. He did not look directly at Marcus, but at the two officers who had led him into the room. Neither left. Both stood back against the wall watching Marcus, guarding the door.

“Awright,” Marcus mumbled. His voice was unemotional, lifeless.

Tyrone parted his lips to speak, then paused. Lingering just beneath the surface of his iron constitution, his frayed emotions threatened to erupt and release an avalanche of raw, naked emotions. His mind counseled him to be calm. Inside his head, he heard himself trying desperately to still his pounding heart and relax his wretched nerves. He swallowed, feeling a glob of saliva slide off the back of his stiff, thick tongue and down the hollow of his parched, throbbing throat. He concentrated on trying to steady his trembling hands and calm his shaky voice.

“They treating you awright, son?” he asked.

Marcus nodded, but did not speak. Again, Tyrone looked at the guards; only this time, they were looking at him. Though he knew they could not hear what he was saying, he sensed that they were aware that he was talking about them.

“You need anything?” Tyrone asked.

“No, sir,” Marcus said, then averted his eyes.

There was an awkward silence. Tyrone shifted his eyes to Marcus. Marcus looked at him briefly, then looked away.

“You seen Mama?” Marcus asked. His head was bowed, and one of his hands clasped the phone while the other lay across his lap.

“Not yet,” Tyrone said uneasily.

“This been hard on her,” Marcus confided, his voice tinged with regret.

“I can imagine,” Tyrone said in an understanding tone.

There was a pause. Marcus raised his head for the second time. The whites of his puffy eyes were red, and the skin of his chestnut-colored forehead was marked with several thin, dark lines. He seemed tired; he looked old.

“You back home?” he asked softly, timidly.

Tyrone shook his head, then paused. He saw Marcus furrow his brow, and he knew that the boy was confused. He had not understood. He wanted an explanation. “Cedar Creek,” Tyrone told him. “Least for the time being.”

“Grandma Hannah’s.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Got out a few days ago. Been there every night since.”

Marcus looked at him; then his sullen eyes dropped submissively.

“Glad you got out,” he said. His voice was dry and mechanical. “Don’t reckon I ever will. Least not alive.”

“Don’t say that, son,” Tyrone said. “Don’t ever say that.”

Marcus raised his head, and there was a faraway look in his gloomy eyes.

“I had a dream the other night.” He spoke in a frightened whisper.

Tyrone looked at him but did not speak.

“It happened.” He paused, and his eyes widened. He was reliving the dream. He was seeing the whole thing. “They strapped me down….” His heaving chest began rising and falling. “And they did it…” His hands began to shake. The chain began to rattle. “They killed me.”

“Naw, son,” Tyrone said, shaking his head slowly. “That ain’t gone happen.”

Marcus’s quivering mouth hung open. His head was perfectly still. His unfocused eyes were staring straight ahead, looking at nothing, seeing nothing.

“I went to this place …” He said that, and his voice trailed off. “It was dark … so dark.”

“Son, you just scared,” Tyrone said. “That’s all. You just a little scared. It’s gone be all right. I promise you that.”

“People were crying,” Marcus continued as though in a trance. “I heard moaning.” His twitching eyes narrowed, and he slowly looked about. “Daddy,” he whispered in a voice laced with terror, “I was so scared.”

“It was just a dream.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You ain’t gone die.”

“I keep asking God why this happening to me. But he don’t tell me nothing.”

“Marcus!”

“I just want it to be over.”

“Marcus!”

“I just want to go home.”

“Marcus!” Tyrone shouted into the phone. He leaned forward, his tensed face against the thick glass separating them. “I want to help you, son,” he said. His voice was stern; his teeth, clenched. “But you got to pull yourself together.”

Marcus stared blankly at his father; then his moist eyes dropped, and he slumped in his chair, quiet.
Tyrone looked at the guards. There was a smirk on what had been stoic faces. This was what they wanted. Now that the day had been chosen and the time had been set, they wanted to see him squirm. They wanted to see him cry; they wanted to see him suffer. They wanted him to beg like that little girl had begged. He had shown her no mercy, and now the state would show him none.

“Tell me what happened, son.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Marcus declared fervently. His eyes searched his father’s face, pleading for understanding. “I swear to God I don’t.”

“Why were you in that store?”

“Mama sent me,” he said. “She was cooking.” His voice had become soft, childlike. “She needed some onions and pepper and a can of milk.”

“But you didn’t buy anything.”

He had heard that line of reasoning before, and hearing it again caused his tired, dreary eyes to well. It had been his downfall. Proof offered by the state that his had been a devious plan, hatched in a sick mind, executed by a cold-blooded killer. The store was a ruse. He was a stalker. She had been his prey.

“I was checking prices like I always do,” he explained. His voice was deflated, and the tears from his eyes rolled down his face and connected underneath his chin. “That’s all,” he said. “Just checking prices.”

“So when you left, you went to another store.”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled.

“Did anybody see you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, son. Think!”

Marcus’s wet eyes were blank. Several times he opened his mouth as though he was going to speak, but no words came.

“Did you buy anything?”

He nodded.

“What?” Tyrone wanted to know.

“Onions, pepper, milk.” He was talking, but he was no longer there. The words were coming from a place deep inside of him. A place that was dark, lonely, painful.

“Can you prove you were there?”

He dropped his eyes and shook his head. He frowned. His mind flashed back, and again, he was rambling. “He tried to get me to make a deal.” He raised his head and stared straight ahead. “He wanted me to plead guilty.” Marcus paused, thinking. “I didn’t know what to do. He kept saying if I didn’t confess, I was gone die, but I couldn’t. I didn’t do what they say I did.” His voice faded, and he became introspective. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I ain’t gone get another chance. Maybe I’m gone die. But I just couldn’t say I did something I knew I didn’t do … I just couldn’t.”

“Who told you to confess?”

“Captain Jack.”

Stunned, Tyrone opened his mouth to speak, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the guards moving toward his son. He saw one whisper something to the other, then yell, “Time!”

Marcus rose clumsily to his feet, and they grabbed him by both arms. He turned and looked back at his father with sad, pleading eyes.

“I’ll be back, son,” Tyrone mouthed. “I’ll be back.”

Marcus nodded, and Tyrone watched him hobble away.

A
fter leaving the prison, Tyrone drove back to Brownsville with a staunch determination to know the man whose charge it had been to save his son’s life and to rid himself of the nagging questions gnawing deep within his troubled soul. There was in him the feeling that the contest for his son’s life had not been a battle in which Captain Jack had fought to win, but a game in which Captain Jack had played not to lose. There had been no knights, or pawns, or kings or queens, but there had been talk of deals, struck between friends, in quaint little rooms, over cordial glasses of brandy or stiff shots of gin.

When he pushed through the door of Captain Jack’s office, Janell was sitting behind the desk up front, with her head bowed and her arms folded before her. There was a cup of coffee on one corner of her desk, several large books on the other, and an open file lying before her. Their eyes met. She smiled at him, and he approached the desk, ever aware of the lingering scent of her perfume in the cool, dry air.

“Can I see Mr. Johnson again?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, he’s out of the office until tomorrow,” she said. “Can I help you with something?”

Tyrone hesitated before answering. He had looked at her earlier, but he had not seen her. She was tall, five-seven or five-eight. That, he had noticed before. But he had not noticed her straight white teeth, or her big, beautiful brown eyes, or her long black hair that was pulled back and clamped behind her head, exposing her high cheekbones and her smooth brown skin. He had noticed her professional demeanor, but not the exquisite manner in which she dressed. She wore a navy blue skirt, a matching jacket, and a white shell. Her nails were sculptured and finished in a French manicure. She did not slouch, but sat tall with her back straight and her shoulders erect. She had a thin herringbone chain about her neck and two tiny gold studs in her ears. Her fingers were bare save for the single pearl that she wore on the ring finger of her right hand.

“I was here earlier,” he said. “I’m—”

“Marcus’s father,” she interrupted. “I remember.”

Tyrone nodded but did not speak.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

Her question caught him off guard. He had not anticipated Captain Jack being away from the office; therefore, he had not anticipated a conversation with her. There was a window to his right. Through the window loomed a gas station. A pig farmer had pulled a truck and a trailer filled with hogs next to one of the pumps and was filling his truck with gas. Tyrone was looking at the oversized man, who was adorned in overalls and wearing a big cowboy hat, when the man set the nozzle back in place and screwed the cap back on the gas tank, but he was not seeing him. He was collecting his thoughts; he was formulating his next question.