You Believers (44 page)

Fat Mack sat on the tailgate of the water truck, gave the guard a wink, and sipped cold water from his cup. “You know he hates being watched.”

The guard squinted at the field, looked to the other guards, who were scattering, circling the field. “Well, he’s got his audience gathering now.” They knew exactly where Jesse was going, and they were giving him time to get there. He was surrounded and didn’t know it. Fat Mack stood and looked over the other prisoners, cuffed and face-down in the dirt road leading out to the field. Guards stood ready to blast anyone who moved. The guard poked at his arm with the butt of his rifle. “Time to cuff you too, Mack.” Fat Mack turned, let himself be cuffed with the big-sized cuffs made for men over three hundred pounds. “I’d put you on the ground,” the guard said, “but I’d have to order in a crane to pull you back up again.”

Fat Mack nodded, looked out over the field where Jesse was running. He called out for the others to hear, “Go on, devil boy! Run like a motherfucker! Get the hell out of here!” A few of the men on the ground cheered but went quiet when the guard yelled to shut up.

The guard leaned close to him. “Nice. You keep rooting for your devil boy.” He gave Fat Mack a wink, but Fat Mack just stared back, giving nothing. The guard squirmed a little and looked back out at the field as if he could see something besides tobacco plants
out there. “They gonna blow his head off just the way they blast those bagged flower heads.”

Fat Mack nodded. “He’s bagged all right.” He looked out at the field, saw the guards circling in.

Jesse felt the ground dipping under his feet. He was in the blind spot now, that little dip in the land where they could see only the leaves shaking on the plants. He could hear the horses at a distance, though. He kept his head low. The horses seemed confused somehow, kept crossing back, not coming straight on him. He heard a guard shout, “Where the fuck he go? How’s a man disappear in the middle of a field?” Jesse grinned, pushed on. A tobacco leaf slashed at his face, scratched his eye, stinging, knocking his breath back. He covered his eye with his hand, pushed on, swallowing the pain. The eye burned, tears running down his face. He pushed his head down lower, tried to shield his good eye. He’d be blind if another leaf smacked his good eye like that. He kept running, thighs and back burning from the strain. He could tell by the lay of the land that he was near the river. He went left, toward it, kept running. He glanced ahead to the top branches of the line of trees. Just behind the trees would be the river. The shouting of the guards was fainter now. But he could still hear the rushing sounds of horses, the pounding of their hooves on the ground as if they were right on him. He thought of the guards, what they could see. Fat Mack had said they were aching to take a shot at a man running through the fields. He kept running, listening for the guards closing in, his skin burning wherever the leaves hit. He stood a little taller now as he ran, taking some of the strain out of his back. Still no sound of the guards. He’d lost them.

He could see the clearing just ahead, and he was out of the tobacco in the little strip of open land before the line of trees. And just
beyond the trees, the river. He could smell the coolness in the air. He whispered, “Home free,” as he headed for the trees. The trees stood tall and thick. He could smell the river. It would soothe his burning skin. He’d dive in, swim under, moving through the river like a trout. The current would carry him fast and far away. He stretched his legs, stood tall for the longer stride, the faster run across the clearing. The trees were just ahead. He pushed on harder, the clearing wider than he thought it would be. He ran hard, thinking,
I just gotta get to the trees
. If they saw him in the clearing, they’d shoot to kill. They wanted that. He listened for them, heard only the sound of his breath and the pounding of blood in his ears and the rush of his feet across the ground. The trees, he could smell them; he could feel the coolness of them just a few yards away now. “I’m free.” The sound of laughter rippled in his head. “I’m free,” he panted, “free.”

He heard a shout, smelled a horse. He heard a laugh, a crack rip the air. And the land snapped, burned to black.

Fat Mack stood at the end of the line, watching the men ahead filing through the door, all cuffed, heads down, docile, just the way the guards wanted. One dead man in the field was like chum in the waters. The guards would be hungry now for another shot, another chase, anything to break the monotony of day after day herding men to and from the fields. There would be a twenty-four-hour lockdown. Then back to the routine, but the talk of a man shot in the field would hang in the air like the stench of backed-up drains. Fat Mack listened to the guards just behind him, laughing at how good it had been to circle the running man, taking their time, letting him wear himself out, think he was on the brink of freedom before they took him down. He kept his eyes forward, arms loose at his sides. They’d uncuffed him for the walk back to the building. They knew it was
hard for a man his size to walk with his arms cuffed. They didn’t want the work of getting him up if he fell down. Back in his cell, he’d finally have the quiet. No more of the cocky little bastard yammering on about how bad he could be. Fat Mack grinned. Couldn’t they ever learn to keep their mouths shut? Couldn’t they ever see from his stare that he just wanted them to shut up? He looked down at the dirt path. So devil boy’s blood had splattered into the dirt like any man’s. He thought,
You ain’t no devil, Jesse Hollowfield. You just another dead man like anyone else
.

One of the guards stepped up to walk beside him. It was the blue-eyed guard, Unger. He had little shiny blue eyes like pinpoints. He’d been the one to make the shot. Fat Mack figured if he was going to give a guard a chance to kill a man, it’d be this prick. He liked to hurt, had probably been the kind of boy who tortured bugs and drowned cats. If he weren’t a prison guard, he’d probably be out there getting in knife fights, beating up whatever got in reach, fucking up whatever he could until he ended up on the inside of a locked cell. Of all the guards, he was the one you wanted on your side. He was the one Fat Mack had offered to draw faces on the bagged flower heads for. They’d had a bond after that. He jabbed Fat Mack’s arm, grinned. “That was something, Mack.”

Fat Mack nodded at the dirt. “Felt good, huh.”

“Yeah. That wasn’t no flower head I popped back there.”

“Practice pays,” Fat Mack said.

“Damn right.” The guard walked beside him. Fat Mack knew he was aching to talk, to say something more about letting the man run in the heat, getting smacked and cut by the leaves, thinking he was running free while the whole time he was in sight. Fat Mack was puffing from the long walk in the heat. He made the sound harder than he needed to, paused a little to catch his breath, glanced up at the guard like he was really struggling. The guard stopped, motioned the
other guard to go ahead. “Go on,” he said. “I’ve got Mack here. He’s cuffed. He ain’t running.”

The other guard, a pasty, dough-faced kid, spat his chew to the ground at Fat Mack’s feet. “Nah, he ain’t likely to go anywhere but the food line.”

Fat Mack gave a grin to the doughboy, who looked away. His name tag said, “Watson.” Fat Mack would remember that. He kept his eyes on the doughboy, who kept his eyes on Unger.

“You go on,” Unger said again. “We’ll take it slow. I’ll get Mack in.”

Watson gave a nod and hurried up to the rest. Fat Mack watched him run, ass already going fat. He glanced at Unger. “How long you think that little prick gonna last?”

Unger shook his head. “You tell me.”

“That ain’t for me to say,” Fat Mack said and moved on toward the building.

Unger slipped a wad of Skoal into his mouth, offered Fat Mack the can. Fat Mack shook his head, kept moving. “We got no hurry,” Unger said. “You know how that line backs up at the door. Might as well stand back here a while.” He stood there chewing and grinning. Fat Mack studied his face. A pretty-boy face, good jawline, a James Dean kind of curve to his lips, and those blue, blue eyes. Probably got every piece of ass that walked by. Especially with that cocky, king-of-the-world way he had. Girls liked those cocky kings of the world. Like Hollowfield. And now he was dead, head splattered in the dirt.

Fat Mack could see Unger was thinking about that. “So you like your job, huh?”

“Hell, yeah,” Unger said, grinning. “Days like this, like coming fifty times. That’s what it’s all about, man. You know I’ve been waiting for a runner. Told you I can shoot. Wild Bill Hickok, that’s me.”

Fat Mack nodded, thought it best not to remind Unger that Wild Bill had died after being shot in the back. He watched the line of men stalled at the door of the building. “Gonna be nice to have quiet again.”

The guard smiled. “I guess you mean it when you say you hate having a cellmate.”

“I mean everything I say,” Fat Mack said.

Unger gave him a wink. Fat Mack hated to have a man wink at him, as if they shared some little secret. Fat Mack didn’t share a goddamned thing. He just kept his eyes on the guard, watched his mouth work the chew until he slowed, stopped, leaned to Fat Mack. “You’ll be getting that private cell next week. The nice one in the new wing. It’s yours.”

Fat Mack nodded, kept his eyes on the guard’s face as he went back to chewing. “And the television,” he said.

Unger paused. “And the television. I’ll get you the television. But you’ll have to keep quiet about that.”

“I’m always quiet. It’s these other fuckers can’t quit running their mouths.”

Unger nodded, chewed. “There’ll be hell to pay if word gets out.”

Fat Mack looked at the guard, grinned the grin that made men look sick around the eyes. He’d practiced that grin in the mirror. He knew that with half his face frozen from the stroke, when he grinned it looked like a dead man coming to life, or was it a live man going dead? Either way, nobody liked to look at his face when it moved.

The guard gave a little laugh. Nervous, faking. “Ah, hell, Mack, I knew we worked a good deal. I got my man, and you’ll get your television and that private cell you want. I’m just saying—”

Fat Mack moved forward in that quick, hard way no one expected. Unger stepped back. Mack gave him that quick smile again. “There’s always hell to pay.”

The Mean Little World

Mike sat in the interrogation room and kept his eyes on his hands. He knew if he looked at the detective, it would just get the man started:
You piece of shit, what you looking at
. He’d learned back in juvy never to look a guard in the eye; it was just like looking at a dog just waiting for you to make the little motion that would get him running to chase you as far down the road as he thought you should be.

He was a criminal now. Not a kid anymore but a man charged with manslaughter, second degree. It made him sound like something as bad as Jesse. But he was nothing like Jesse. He’d be doing three years instead of the ten he’d thought he’d get, could have gotten worse. Maybe it was his granny’s prayers. Still, there’d be three years of concrete cells, lockdowns, having to watch his back, having to watch his everything around him every minute. But that was all right. In a way he’d always feel free now; at least he’d be a little more free now that Jesse was dead. He blinked, looked at the dry skin around his fingertips, the dirt under his nails. He’d never thought he’d live to see Jesse dead. But it was true. Jesse was dead. Or there’d be no way in hell he’d be sitting here willing to tell about the blue-truck girl. “Katy,” she had said. “My name is Katy. You need to know my name.”

The detective pulled himself a little closer. There was a guard watching him from the corner of the room while another guard was walking two new people in: some chick and a cop, not a city cop. Mike figured him for county. Mike saw the badge; it looked to be a sheriff’s badge. Probably from the county out by the lake where they’d dumped the truck. Yeah, he’d get a right to be here. But Mike couldn’t figure the chick. She was hot in a rough kind of way. Tight jeans, boots. Definitely not a reporter. She was a little, hard-looking woman, something in her face worn out. She looked too young to look so old, a tight body but these big eyes, and curly hair like a kid. She probably looked better on a good day. The guard led her to a chair across the room. She grabbed a notepad and pen from her purse. She gave Mike a glance, not a fuck-you-punk look like everyone else was giving him these days. Maybe she was a reporter. But she didn’t look hungry and nervous, the way reporters did. She glanced over him quickly, but curious, as if he were some creature she’d never seen before. Then she looked to the sheriff guy, who sat beside her, and they talked like they knew each other. Maybe she was undercover.

Mike lowered his head a little, said, “What they doing here?”

“That isn’t your concern, Carter.” The detective spoke like he was so pissed off, Mike could almost feel the smack in his voice. “You just sit there while we get this ready. You sit there and remember every little mile you drove, every little place you saw, every tree, fence, highway sign. Don’t you give me this I-don’t-know shit. You were the driver. You tell us every damn thing you saw the day you killed Katy Connor.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Mike said. “Jesse did it. You know Jesse did it.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to talk. I want you to just sit there and think about what you did.”

Same as his granny’s words. She always said that when he screwed up and she caught him. It could have been something like
breaking into a house and boosting some old lady’s TV. Or it could have been something as simple as drinking the last Coke in the refrigerator without asking.

She was in a nursing home now, had had some kind of breakdown because of him. He was a criminal, just like his daddy. He wondered if what Jesse said about meanness being in the blood was true. Maybe he’d gotten that from his daddy, the same way he’d gotten that soft, round face, pale as an underdone biscuit. Yeah, he was like his daddy. He had made his granny cry those deep, sobbing sounds like everything in her was gonna come out. He stood on her porch, cuffed, with the cops right beside him, and wondered if she could die from crying like that. When she heard the words they charged him with, the murder of Katherine Connor, she just dropped to the floor and made a wailing noise that still sent shivers up his spine.