Do Not Pass Go (9 page)

They were a nice little couple, the kind who'd live in those houses on the hill. Were they ashamed to be coming here? What did their prisoner
do
? What was his crime? Their talk was as polite and deliberate as if they were talking over coffee at the kitchen table, not as if they were in a place with bars and locks and guards.

There were two windows on either side of the steel door on the far wall, and Deet could see disorderly lines of prisoners in the same blue suits passing by, looking curiously into the visiting room.

Deet searched their faces to see what could have brought them to jail, but they were so ordinary. Where were the perverts, the steely-eyed hoodlums, the disgusting underbelly of society? They were prisoners, in jail, but they looked like anyone else you might see in the streets. Some were laughing and calling out to each other, just like kids passing from class to class in the halls at school. It was hard to believe the lack of drama
in jail. Two prisoners went past the windows dressed in orange suits.

Deet turned to Andy. “Why do some of them have orange suits?”

“That's what you got to wear when you're in seg. Segregation. Means you're being punished for something, like if you got a write-up for something. If you're really, really dangerous you have to wear red.”

The guard let in another prisoner, a pretty girl with long orange hair. Her prison uniform was bright yellow. Deet felt a moment of shock and hoped his face hadn't shown it. Somehow he hadn't thought about women going to jail.

She picked up the phone and leaned her face close to the glass to talk to Andy. She was chattering fast, and Andy was just nodding and saying “uh-huh” once in a while. Andy called her Della.

The door clanged open again and a young guy bounced up to the stool opposite the fat girl and the baby, full of good humor.

“Say hi to Daddy,” she said, holding the baby up close to the glass. She waved the baby's hand for him.

There was lots of chatter in the room now, so Deet didn't feel like an eavesdropper anymore. The guard popped his head in again and saw Deet sitting without anyone opposite him. He picked up the phone and gestured to Deet to do the same. The phone was so black and greasy-looking, Deet was almost reluctant to pick it up.

The guard's name was on the identification badge clipped to his pocket.
TOBOLOWSKY
. Mr. Tobolowsky. You probably had to call a guard “mister.” He was a thin, slope-shouldered little man with a mild face, so small the big bundle of keys at his hip looked as if it might unbalance him. His name was too big for him as well.

“Who are you visiting?” the guard asked.

“Charley Aafedt,” said Deet. Deet felt like Mom had. He'd hated to say Dad's name out loud.

“I'll go get him. Maybe he didn't hear his visitor page,” the guard said. He smiled at Deet in a friendly way and left the visiting room. Deet scowled at the metal counter. He thought he would rather have one of those mean-looking guards he had seen when he came
in than this guard. It confused him to find a guard so likable.

In a few minutes the door opened and Dad came in. Behind him Mr. Tobolowsky threw Deet a stiff-handed, cheery salute and slammed the door shut again.

Dad stood by the door for a
moment, as if he wasn't sure whether he should come into the room or not. He looked shocked to see Deet. Mom must not have told him Deet was coming.

Dad looked very different. Bad. Something about the color of his skin, and the dark places under his eyes. Deet had forgotten how Dad walked, a sort of tipping-forward walk, toed in a little. He had forgotten the way he shook his head back to get his hair out of his eyes.

He sat on the stool opposite Deet and picked up the phone. Dad didn't say anything for a minute. He looked down at his hands spread limply on the counter, and Deet could see he was trying to get himself under control.

“You don't look like you got much sleep,” said Deet.

Dad shook his head. “Hard to sleep in here.” Dad rubbed his free hand over his hair and stared at the grimy steel counter on his side of the glass.

“I can't believe I let you in for this. I can't believe my kid has to visit me in jail.”

Deet was quiet for a minute, listening to the fat girl and the baby, the murmur of the old couple asking what sounded like polite questions, and Andy talking to his girlfriend, telling her the troubles he was having with his car. Ordinary conversations. Nobody was having a hard time like he and Dad were.

Dad still didn't look up. “She said she wasn't going to let you come.”

“She doesn't think it's so bad here now. Not as bad as she thought at first.”

Dad looked up at that, startled, and gave a little snort.

Deet thought it might be better to change the subject.

“The girls are fine,” he said, though Dad hadn't asked how they were. “It's a pain in the butt to get them ready for school. I'm glad I don't have to do it
anymore.” He mimicked their voices and waggled his head. “This shirt is the wrong color. I don't like this peanut butter. I need money for the book fair.” Stupid. He shouldn't have mentioned money.

Dad smiled sadly.

“And I'm learning to cook,” said Deet.

He was having trouble finding things to talk about. Dad didn't want to hear him rattling on about stuff like this.

Dad had on the blue prison uniform, a short-sleeved cotton top with a V-neck and baggy blue cotton pants. The uniform looked more like pajamas than regular clothes. The T-shirt underneath was supposed to be white but it was bluish, like it had been dyed in the wash. And dumb-looking canvas slip-ons, the kind tourists wore in the summer.

Those shoes really bothered Deet, they were so lame. It was like Dad wasn't a man anymore with those shoes on. Dad had worn just boots all his life, leather work boots.

There was something about the whole uniform that was humiliating. Powerless. Deet had never thought
about clothes before, but he could see now that they made a difference.

“I'll bet you hate those shoes,” said Deet.

Dad threw him a grateful look. “You got that right.” He looked with disgust at his feet. “These are prison shoes. You can wear your own shoes if you order them through the commissary. You can't bring any in because they think you'll smuggle drugs in in the heels or something, so you have to order them. Smuggling is the big threat in here.”

“You going to order some?”

“No,” Dad said curtly. “I'm not spending any money while I'm in here. I guess I wouldn't be here if I'd learned not to buy things I didn't need.”

The fat girl's baby was screaming with delight, smacking his little palms against the glass, while his dad on the other side of the glass smacked back. He looked as delighted as the baby did. The girl was having a hard time holding the phone as the baby lurched forward more and more recklessly to pound the glass.

It was getting a lot louder in there, and hotter,
almost steamy. The old couple were still talking quietly and courteously to their prisoner, but Andy was talking louder and louder to be heard above the noise of the baby. His girlfriend, or whatever she was, Della, was standing up while she was talking, restless, twirling the phone cord and looking over her shoulder at the prisoners passing by in the hall outside the visiting room.

Suddenly she dropped the phone and darted to the window to pound on it as a group of women prisoners passed by. She shouted something at them. Deet could almost hear her through the glass, she was so loud. Then the girl gestured urgently to the guard watching the women pass, and he came to the door and opened it. The guard waited for her impatiently while she ran to the phone again and explained something to Andy. Then she bounded out to join the other girls, and the door shut behind her.

Deet looked at Andy with surprise. Andy shook his head.

“I took my lunch hour two hours late so I could come see her, and she wants to go play volleyball with the girls.” He said the last few words in a little high,
mincy voice. He twirled the stool around and stood up. “See ya,” he said to Deet cheerfully, and nodded to Deet's father. He went to the door and pushed the signal button. He waited a minute until the locks clunked, then he opened the door and left the room.

Deet turned back to his father. The baby was still making a lot of noise, so he didn't feel too uncomfortable asking the question he couldn't hold back.

“What did
she
do?” he asked.

Dad shrugged an
I don't know
. Then he leaned so close to the glass that the mouthpiece of the phone bonked against it. He made a sort of tent over the mouthpiece with his hand so he couldn't be overheard on his side of the glass.

“Most of the women in here are here for drugs or drunk driving, shoplifting, bad checks.” He stopped to think a minute. “Or domestic abuse.”

Deet looked blank, so his Dad said, “For beating someone up, you know, like their husband or boyfriend.” Dad half-smiled at the look on Deet's face.

“I know, you don't think of women doing things like that.” Dad shook his head. “But it's just hard to
imagine
anyone
getting so uptight that they want to hit the people they live with. Actually hurt them.”

“A few of those women who walked by were old. With gray hair. They looked like
grandmas
,” said Deet.

“I guess you never thought old people could get in trouble, huh?” said Dad. “I guess I never did either. There are lots of old people in here. Some of them have been in and out dozens of times. One old guy told me he's spent most of his life in jail.”

It reminded Deet of detention at school. There were always the same kids in there, week after week. It had seemed so odd to him that they never learned, never wanted to stay out of there in the worst way. And come to think of it, none of them seemed ashamed, the way Deet would have been if he got a detention. It was ordinary to them, as ordinary as it was to these guys to be in jail.

Deet lowered his voice.

“What's it like in there?”

Dad thought a minute.

“Crowded,” he said. “I used to think
our
house was
too small. Now it seems like more room than anyone could ever use up. There's eight of us in this one cell, just a little space, about as big as the laundry room at home. Double bunks and a little space in the middle. So all you can do all day is sit in your bunk. If you need anything, you have to call out through this hole in the door. Like if you want a pencil sharpened or something, you stick it through the hole. There's a toilet in there too, behind a little partition. That's all. Couple of times a day you can leave, going to meals and to the gym, showers.”

Dad turned his hands over and looked at the palms. “Look how clean my hands are. I don't think they've been this clean since I was a little kid.”

Deet had known there was something else strange about Dad, and that was it. He didn't have grease under his fingernails or in the cracks of his palms.

Dad looked back up at Deet. “You know, I used to think everyone in jail was a bad guy. But there are some nice guys in here, regular guys, like anyone. There's me, and these seven others in our cell. They were really nice to me when I came in, explaining things, loaning me stuff.

“There are two Indian guys from different villages, came into town for the dog races, got drunked up, got in a fight. They won't be in long, not that they seem to care how long it is. They're so cheerful you'd think jail was a Sunday school picnic.”

Dad always said that about a Sunday school picnic, as if that was the most mellow thing he could think of. But Deet had once been at a Sunday school picnic with Sally, and it had been a pretty crabby affair, especially after it had started to drizzle.

“Then there's Ben, the bunk under me. Young guy. But this is his zillionth time being in here. He's been busted for everything there is—assault, drunk and disorderly, drugs, vandalism, you name it. He can't seem to stay out of the place. I don't know why. He gave me a couple of books to read, otherwise I would have gone crazy just lying on the bunk all day.”

Deet tried to picture his dad reading. He'd never seen him read anything but the newspaper. Deet used to think he could read all day if he had a chance, but once he did, and it made him feel half-sick and woozy. He had a hard time getting back to reality
when he finally came up for air. It was a very odd feeling.

“Send me some books, will you? You have to mail them. Smuggling rules again.”

Deet nodded okay. He was already thinking about what he'd send Dad. Steinbeck. Maybe the Hobbit books. No, not the Hobbit. You had to have a little experience reading before you read something like that. You didn't have to imagine much to read Steinbeck.

Dad counted off his cellmates on his fingers. “There's a black guy, the bunk on top of me. He's the oldest one there. Real quiet and gentle. He just plays solitaire all day on his bunk. Doesn't say much.”