Cypress Grove (8 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Homilies—and a lot of time staring at the join of cinder blocks. Counting them, tracking where at one end of the cell there’s maybe a hail-inch before the top line of mortar, at the other end almost two. Or where a previous tenant scraped away the mortar between blocks on the wall beside his bed and the toilet. Did he spend that much time on the toilet? Boredom, like blind faith, engenders strange errand lists.

Nine hundred and sixty-four cinder blocks, from where I sat.

Six weeks in, I wrote away to New Orleans and Chicago for transcripts. Nothing about this endeavor proved easy. While you were allowed two letters a month postage provided, sending money remained a tricky prospect, and both schools required five-dollar fees. The prison chaplain came to my aid. Reading those transcripts once I got them was like looking in the mirror and finding someone else’s face. Could I ever have been that callow? Had I actually taken a course called Revolutionary Precepts, and what on earth might it have been about? Two semesters of medieval history? I hadn’t a single concept, movement or date left over from that.

Who
was
this person?

Someone, apparently, who’d been on the express train, a dozen or so stops away from getting a master’s degree. Strange how I’d managed to forget that. Stranger still to wonder where all of it—all those hours and years of burrowing, the knowledge issuing from them, the ambition that led to them—might have gone. None of it seemed to be in me anymore.

By this time I’d suffered through a cellmate in the bunk above murmuring words aloud as he read from his Bible and another given to Donald Goines’s
Whoreson, Swamp
Man
and Kenyatta novels. Then Adrian came along, by which time I myself sat nose sunk like a tomahawk in college catalogs and bulletins. Our gray, featureless submarine went on plowing its way through gray, featureless days. And I, it seemed, while still submerged could complete my degree courtesy of the state that held me in such cautious esteem.

Nowadays, of course, in the house Internet Jack built, there’d be nothing much to it. But back then the labors involved proved Herculean. Each month or so I’d receive a thick envelope of material. I was expected to read through it, write the papers required and complete a test at its end, then mail the whole thing back, whereupon another envelope would arrive.

That was the theory. But often two or three months would go by before I received a packet, at which time I might be handed three of them, one, or a mostly empty envelope. Could have been inmates with a grudge working the mail room, some guard’s petty meddling or arrogant notion of control, or it could have been just plain workaday pilferage. Never an explanation, of course, and you learned quickly, once those doors slammed shut behind you, never to question. Had it not been for the protection afforded me by fish-nor-fowl status and, later, by one teacher’s taking an unwarranted interest, I’m sure the college soon would have scoured me from its pot. But it didn’t. I’d gone into serious overdraft, but checks were still being cashed.

October of that second year, I received my M.A. The elaborate certificate, on heavy cream-colored bond replete with Gothic lettering and Latin, came rolled in a tube such as the ones in which other inmates received the
Barbarella,
Harley-Davidson and R. Crumb posters taped to the walls of their cells. University regents wished to inquire, an attached letter read, as to whether I would be continuing my education at their facility. Forever a quick study, having now survived inside and in addition found my way through thickets of university regulations, I felt as though I’d turned myself into some kind of facility veteran, slippery enough to slalom around raindrops, savvy enough to ride the system’s thermals. Better the facility you know. You bet I will be, I told university regents.

If every year April comes down the hill like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers, then October steps up to the plate glum and serious—never more than that one.

Lifting a pound or two of prison clothes off the counter, I’d picked up a ton of grief with them. That I’d been a cop was not supposed to get out. But guards knew, which meant everyone knew, and every one of them, inmates and guards alike, had good reason to despise the various shipwrecks that had cast them up here. They weren’t able to slit society’s neck or shove the handle of a plumber’s helper up Warden Petit’s rear end, but there
I
was. From the first, starting out small and escalating the way violence always does, I’d met with confrontations on the yard, at mealtime, in the showers, at workshop. Two months and half a dozen scrambles in, I received a rare invitation from Warden Petit himself—I hadn’t been able to back off fast enough, and guards, looking away, had given me time to break the guy’s jaw before moving in—who wanted to tell me how proud he was of the way I was handling myself.

“Thank you, Warden.”

“Tremendous pressures on you out there. I appreciate that, you know. I see it. They never let up on a man, do they?” A triangular patch of hair had been left behind on his forehead as the rest withdrew. He made a show of consulting papers on the desk before him. “Like a cup of coffee?”

“No.”

“Scotch?” His eyes came back up to mine. I’d been given a folding chair designed, apparently, for maximal discomfort. Reminded me of the bunk and toilet in my cell.

“You’re dripping blood on my floor.” He keyed the intercom. “Get Levison in here,” he said, then to me: “Don’t worry,” as he smiled. “We’re used to it. And it’s not really my floor, is it?”

Petit was like those guys who as hospital administrators a decade or so later would start calling themselves CEOs, wanting to live just a little large. He wore a light gray suit that made him resemble nothing so much as a block of cement with a head balanced atop. The head kept nodding and bobbing about like it wasn’t placed well and might topple off any minute. Hope springs eternal.

“Absolutely not mine. It’s the taxpayers’ floor.”

His personal floors, I had no doubt, would be scoured clean. By inmates or trustees if not by his own scab-kneed wife.

“You’d best get on down there. Medic’s waiting for you at the infirmary.”

I was almost through the door when he said: “Turner?”

I stopped.

“You’re on good road. What, two months more? Don’t let ’em skid you out. Do it easy.”

“Do my best.”

As I left, Levison, seventy-plus if he was a day, shuffled past me carrying bucket and mop. Squirt bottles and rags hung on his pants like artillery.

Next morning, this guy steps up to me in the shower. I see him coming, the shank held down along his leg, see the fix in his eyes. At the last moment I shove out my hand and swing the heel up hard. The shank, a sharpened spoon, pierces his chin, pins his tongue. He opens his mouth trying to talk and I see the tongue flailing about in there, only the tip able to move as he slides down the shower wall.

Was that enough? Did I have to kill him? I don’t know. At the time it seemed I’d been left no choice. Another homily, another of the commandments we live by, says once a man steps up to you, you have to put him down.

Neither did the courts feel
they
had much choice. In their hands my three-year sentence blossomed to twenty-five.

Chapter Nineteen

“I SERVED EIGHT MORE YEARS, got another degree, in psychology; a master’s again, and began thinking maybe I could make some kind of life out of that. What else did I have to build on? By the time early release came around, I knew I wanted to work as a therapist. I set up in Memphis, made the rounds of school social workers, doctor’s offices, community centers and so on to introduce myself and leave business cards, started picking up clients. Slowly at first, and anybody who walked in. But I had some kind of real feel, an instinct, for the acutely troubled ones—those at the edge of violence. Within a year that’s mostly who I was seeing.”

Sheriff Bates was nigh the perfect listener. His eyes had never left me as he leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable, wordlessly inviting me to go on. Then he propped it up: “You found work you were good at. Damn few of us are ever lucky enough to do that.”

“I know; believe me. Knew it then.”

“But you quit.”

“After six years, yes.”

He waited.

“I’m not sure I
can
explain.” Where’s a movie-of-the-week plot when you need one?

A mockingbird lit on the sill and peered in at us, chiding.

“That the one Don Lee took to feeding?” Bates asked.

Daughter June nodded.

“And you wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”

In what was apparently a longtime private joke, she batted eyelashes at him.

“Time when that girl was eleven, twelve, every week she’d show up after school with some kind of orphan or another. A kitten, puppy, a hatchling she claimed fell out of a tree, not much to it but a skull, feet and hungry mouth. Once, a baby rabbit—they say once those have the stench of human on them, parents seek them out and kill them.

“You’d best go ahead and feed the thing,” he said after a moment, “else we’ll never hear the end of it.” Then to me: “You’ve done some hard wading against the current.”

“Off and on.”

“More on than off, from the sound of things. Work like what you ended up doing, that has to be like police work, demands a lot of you. And the better you are at it, the more it takes.”

“True enough. Just being on the job, on the streets, not anything in particular that happened, made a difference. Changed me, damaged me: the point could be argued. All those years tramping around in other people’s heads was a kind of repeat.”

“Not to mention prison.”

We watched June, outside, scatter birdseed on the sill and back away from it as the mockingbird returned. Glancing up at us, she waved.

“One day ostensibly like all others, sitting there with my morning coffee and appointment book, I looked out the window and realized the floors were gone. They’d just dropped out from under me, they were gone. I knew I no longer trusted anyone or anything. That I could see around, through and behind every motive—my own no less than everyone else’s.”

“So you decided to be alone.”

“I’m not sure it was a conscious decision. How much of what’s most important in our lives ever is?”

June came in and pulled her purse from an open desk drawer, saying she had to pick up Mandy at school, she’d drop her off and be right back.

“That time already, is it?” Bates said. And I, once she was gone, that I hadn’t known June had a child.

“No reason you would. But she doesn’t—not yet, anyway Friend of hers, Julie, works as a nurse, twelve-hour shifts twice a week. June helps out. The two of them went right through school together, kindergarten on up, you couldn’t pry ’em apart with a crowbar.”

“June and Julie.”

“Cute, huh?”

“Other kids must have had fun with that.”

“Only the first time or two. You haven’t seen it yet, but that girl has a temper’d make a grizzly back off, go home and call out for food.”

“Someone else takes care of the child once she drops it off?”

“Julie’s brother. Clif’s not old enough to have his license yet, but he goes over after school and stays with Mandy till Julie gets home. Has dinner waiting most nights, too, I hear.”

The phone rang.

“Sheriff B—”

He looked at me, shook his head.

“Yes ma’am, I—”

His end of the conversation was like a motor turning over again and again, never catching.

“Yes ma’am. If—”

“Yes ma’am. Can I—”

“What—”

He tugged a notepad towards him and scribbled something on the top page.

“We’ll get right on that, ma’am,” he said, then, hanging up, “Surprise you?”

It took a beat or two for me to realize the last comment was addressed to me, that he was referring to what he’d told me about June and the friend’s baby.

“A little, Sheriff.”

What I’d truly been thinking was whether I was still in the United States. This couldn’t be the same country I saw reflected in news, TV shows, current novels. Mind you, I didn’t watch TV or read newspapers and hadn’t read a novel since prison days, but it all filtered in. Thoreau, Zarathustra, Philip Wylie’s superman alone and impotent on his mountaintop—in today’s world they’d all be aware what shows were competing for the fall lineup, the new hot fashion designer, the latest manufactured teen star.

But people watching over friends’ children as though their own? A teenage brother taking responsibility for his sibling’s child?

Bates tore off the note he’d just made and tipped it into the wastebasket.

“Time you dropped that ‘Sheriff’ business, don’t you think? Friends call me Lonnie.”

Five or six responses came to mind.

“Friend’s a tough concept for me,” I finally said.

“It’ll come back to you.” He smiled. “You like chicken?”

“We’re pleased you could join us,” Shirley Bates said.

“Thank you for having me. The food’s wonderful.”

“Nothing fancy, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t know, the magnolias add a certain festive touch.”

“You like them?” Pleasure lit her face. “Lonnie thinks they’re silly. It’s something my mother used to do.”

Mine too—I’d just remembered that.

Afterwards, the sheriff and I helped stack dishes and take them out to the kitchen through a door propped open with a rubber wedge of a kind I hadn’t seen in years. Declining offers of further assistance, Shirley said, “You go play good host, honey. God knows you can use the practice. I’ll finish up here.”

Bates poured coffee from a Corning ware percolator into mugs with pictures of sheep and deer. A sliding door opened directly from the kitchen onto a patio. Four or five white plastic chairs sat about, the grid inside a grill was caked with char above white ghosts of charcoal, jonquils sprang brightly from a small plot by the house. A rake leaned against the wall nearby, tines clotted with dark, brittle leaves. We sat chatting about nothing of substance, sequence or consequence. When a knock came at the wooden gate to the driveway Bates called out: “Come on in.”

He wore a dark blue suit whose double-breasted coat drained half an apparent foot or so off the actual height I encountered when I stood to shake hands. Around lower legs and cuffs were swaths of whitish-looking hair from a house pet, dog or cat. Leather loafers long neglected, a silk tie carefully knotted early that morning then forgotten.

“You must be Turner.

“Mayor Sims,” Bates said as we shook hands.

“Henry Lee. Please. Thanks for having me by, Lonnie.”

“Been way too long. And you’d best go in and pay respects to Shirley before you leave—if you know what’s good for me.”

“I will, I will.”

“So why don’t I go get drinks. Black Jack as usual, Henry Lee?”

“You have to ask?”

“Beer, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said.

“You’ve got it.”

It took Bates a long while to get those drinks. A couple of times I saw him edging up to the kitchen window, looking out. I had little doubt he meant for me to see that.

“So,” Mayor Sims said, sinking into a chair. “You going to be able to pull that layabout’s butt out of the fire on this?”

“We’ll see.”

All about us, over by the house, near the gate, above a solitary fig tree, the cold chemical light of fireflies came and went.

“How’s your mail delivery these days?” I asked.

“I have noticed a difference.”

“Glad to hear it.” I listened to mosquitoes spiraling in close by my ears. Whatever the reason, I’d never been much to their taste. They come in, do the research, apply elsewhere.

“I’ve been wondering how you were able to go three months without ever noticing no bills had been paid.”

“Point taken.” We watched a bat flap across moonlit sky. Scooping up gnats, mosquitoes and moths as it went, no doubt.
Joyful
is a human word, but it was hard to watch the bat’s flight without its coming to mind. “My wife always took care of household bills, balanced the checkbook, all that. Anything needing my attention, something out of the ordinary, she’d let me know. Dorothy’s in a nursing home. I put her there two weeks ago. Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Took me a long time to admit to myself something was seriously wrong. A lot longer to admit it to others. Damn, I was getting forgetful myself, you know? Dorothy always hid it well. And when something did get past us and hit the wall, there I’d be, ready with an excuse for her. Besides, the way I was brought up—you too, would be my guess—whatever happens in the family, you handle it. You take care of your own.”

Lonnie emerged with our drinks and the two of them made small talk for a few minutes, hunting seasons, local football, that sort of thing, before the mayor excused himself, stood, downed the remainder of his drink in a single swallow, and went inside. Moments later the mayor came out, said good-bye to the two of us, strode through the gate and was gone.

“Other than that you set me up?”

Full night now. Fewer mosquitoes, and the cicadae had quietened. Deepening silence everywhere. Stars brightened, intense white as though tiny holes had been punched in a black veil, letting through the merest suggestion of some blinding light that lurked just past, waiting.

“Get you another?”

I held up my half-full bottle.

“I live here,” Lonnie said. “Sometimes—”

“I understand.”

“Man’s full of himself. And I don’t approve of a lot of what he does. Few years back, the city council passed an ordinance that rental houses had to have internal plumbing, bathrooms. How they pushed that past him I don’t know, since he owns almost every unit of cheap housing in the county—all those plywood, used-lumber and tarpaper shacks south of downtown?”

I’d seen them. Hell, I’d grown up with their like.

“Toilets went in wherever it was easiest. In kitchens, bedrooms, on the porch. Crew had it all done within the week. I’m going to freshen this up. Sure you don’t want another?”

He was back in moments but instead of resuming his seat stood looking off at the dark silhouettes of trees.

“He doesn’t need me or anyone else to approve of what he does. I don’t need that, either. Don’t have to approve of him, I mean.”

“I understand, Lonnie. I really do.”

“He told you about Miss Dorothy?”

I nodded.

“Been coming a long time. We all saw it, long before he did. Some ways, I think it’s changed him as much as it has her. Never had children, there’s just the two of them. Man has to be lonely.”