Читать книгу Drifting South - Charles Davis, Charles Davis B. - Страница 6

Chapter 2

I was still inside the fence but outside the walls, and the air already tasted different. I guess most of all, it just tasted clean. The prison control room popped the first gate, and I walked through it by myself and stopped before the second gate, doing just what the loudspeaker told me to do. Once the first gate closed, the other one chugged open, and I didn’t need any instructions on what to do next. I’d always figured I’d hurry at such a moment, but I didn’t. I took a firm step at a time, cleared the last gate and, as I’d suspected, there wasn’t nobody who I knew outside to greet me. I thought of the people who could have been there but weren’t.

Remembering what that assistant warden had said about somebody wanting me dead, I took a scan at the tree line about a half mile away in case somebody with a scoped rifle who had dying business with me may have found out my release date got moved up.

“Take care of yourself, Henry, yep,” the guard in charge of the beef squad said. I turned around to look at Dollinger. He was twenty yards behind the first gate, and he was nodding at me with his stick smacking into one hand that was as big as a ball glove.

“You’re getting a little slow with that thing. Bad thing for a man with your responsibilities,” I said.

“We’ll keep the light on for you if things don’t work out, yep,” he said.

He didn’t smile or wave or nothing like that and I didn’t, either. But out of all of the guards, he always did seem fairest to me and as that goes, I didn’t wish bad on any of those fellers who worked there. Well, a couple I did, but you just got tired of it all, and they were part of it all.

A van sat in front of me with the middle doors open. I knew it was my ride out of there. It felt strange getting in a vehicle without being all shackled up the way I could move so easy.

I slid into the backseat and sat my paper sack beside me. Except for looking to see if the driver had a gun on him anywhere—and I didn’t see one poking out in the usual places—I never took my eyes off of his. He was a mountain of a black man, almost as tall as Dollinger and twice as wide, but he looked gimped-up in his neck and right side the way he sat off-kilter and had a hard time turning his head. I sensed he was a former guard or soldier or police officer of some kind who’d gotten out on some kind of medical. Could be a stroke or car wreck, or he almost got beat to death by a prisoner or shot up, something that messed him up bad.

He didn’t say anything after we locked eyes so long in his rearview mirror. I didn’t have nothing to say to him and I don’t think he had much to say to me, either, at first. I was enjoying the quiet. There was always some sort of loud in prison, breaking the still. Always. Even at night, there’d be the sounds of loud ugly. Men pissed off at somebody or another, or just mad at the whole goddamned world, even in their sleep.

I rolled down my window and, besides the humming noise coming from the van and the nice sound of tires on gravel, all I could hear was the sounds of a country evening. It’d been a long time since I’d listened to such a peaceful thing.

But after we got held up for a few minutes at a train crossing, he started talking. His voice sounded nervous, but I knew sometimes folks just talk that way even when they were calm, so I noted it but didn’t pay much mind to it.

“Want to hear some music?” he asked loud.

I shook my head.

“Well, good thing,’ cause the radio don’t work.” He laughed a little and turned toward me all bent-up looking. His grin faded and he turned back around. “Wished it did, though. Sometimes wished it did.”

The train started hitting its whistle every five or ten seconds. Listening to it brought me closer to home, recalling the late-night sounds Norfolk and Southern trains made on the other side of the Big Walker across from Shady Hollow.

“How long were you in?”

I was suddenly back in that van, not sharing a bed with my brothers listening to a faraway coal train across a river.

“What?”

“I say how long were you in for?”

I liked him better before he got so windy with so many things working in me at that moment. He turned with a sack full of green apples and offered me one. I shook my head.

He pulled out a lock-blade knife careful and looked at me in his mirror quick before he grabbed one and started peeling it.

“A long time,” I said.

“Big day for you then,” he said, looking at me and smiling again like we were big buddies. “How long is that, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I’ve been locked up in one place or another since I was a boy.”

I figured he’d pulled out that knife and was asking questions about how much time I’d pulled to figure out how bad a person he was sitting there with in the dark, stuck at a train crossing way out in the countryside. Peeling an apple was just an excuse to have some kind of weapon out if he needed one. Never know what something wild just let out of pen was apt to do, I figured was what he was thinking. I’d probably do the same thing if I was half-crippled and driving the van and was hauling somebody who looked like me. You’d ask the time first, not the crime. You’d maybe ask that later if the conversation got off on the right foot.

“Where you heading?” he asked, after a few moments and a dozen more train cars passed by.

“Home.”

“By your accent I’d guess that’s down South somewhere.”

I nodded, looking all around us again to see if we had any bad company. I wouldn’t feel safe until I was a long way from that prison. At least I knew the driver wasn’t a threat. He had the knife but not the eyes to use it.

“So where you heading?”

“Why?”

“What you say?”

“What’s it to you where I’m heading?” I said.

“Just talking…”

“You talk too much.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then said, “Always had a friendly nature, I guess. No harm meant.”

I leaned back in my seat, remembering how I used to have the same easy friendly nature and used to enjoy conversation. I didn’t just enjoy it, I was good at it. Ma used to tell me that talking was my one true gift of many. I was the only person she’d ever known who could “outtalk a mockingbird,” she’d say on many an occasion with an ending to that always of “Let’s hush now, child.”

Anyway, after a while I finally said to the driver, “Gonna stay with my ma for a while. She lives in Virginia.”

His head was still and then he nodded and nodded like we’d made up and he peeped at me again in his mirror. “I used to take my family to Virginia Beach until the kids got older and my wife passed. She passed last year. Emphysema took her last breath. That’s when I started eating all the time and got fat. I smoked more than she did and she made me swear off of them before she died. Almost killed me quitting them. Probably eating will kill me now. Get rid of one bad thing, you just pick up another. You quit bad things but the hole the bad thing was filling never goes away is what it amounts to. Just end up filling it with something else no good.”

I blew out a deep breath, wore-out with his stories already, and I looked as far down the tracks as I could. That had to be the longest train I’d ever seen.

“Heard the place is all built-up now.”

“What is?”

“Virginia Beach. Probably wouldn’t even know it if I saw it.”

I didn’t say anything, but just hoped he’d still himself or I was gonna have to tell him to. I’d never seen a beach and I didn’t care to comment about it or his wife passing. I didn’t want to get ugly with him being as mangled up as he was and he seemed like an all right feller, so I figured me not saying nothing back would work to let him know finally that I wasn’t definitely in the mood for talk. But it didn’t.

“What you gonna do with yourself once you get settled in back home? Got you a girl to go see?”

“Had one a long time ago. How far’s the bus station from here?”

“Few miles. I say, what you gonna do once you get back home and settled in? Gonna go see that girl?”

I wasn’t going to talk about the only girl I’d ever had that I would ever call “my girl.” I wished I hadn’t brought the thought of her into that van. She wasn’t the kind of girl to be spoken of in such ways in such conversations in such places. But I knew he didn’t mean no harm even though it bothered me in a dark way and I said, “Have quite a few things to do,” louder and faster than was necessary.

“Like what?”

By that point, I figured he was one of those folks who couldn’t help himself to shut up even if he really tried. If he wanted to know what I was gonna do after I got home, I’d tell him a few things for him to ponder on, because I’d been pondering on them a long time.

“First thing I’m gonna do once I get settled home is find out why a man tried to kill me when I was seventeen years old for no reason I can figure.”

The driver’s voice dropped. “I see. You gonna go looking for him?”

“He’s dead. I got some other people I need to find and have some serious business about it. Gonna go see a preacher, too.”

The driver set his sack of apples to the side careful. “The preacher help you through your trials and tribulations?” His voice had gotten shakier.

“Not quite like that. He helped get me into my trials and tribulations. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna kill him over it. Been leaning that way heavy for a long time. Gonna go see a sheriff after that. I owe him a visit, too, just like that preacher. He might survive my coming. I haven’t made my mind up about him.”

The driver dropped his knife on the floor and reached down to get it back in a hurry, just before he turned around to where he could barely get a wide eyeball on me. Then he turned around quick and we both sat in the stillness for a good five more minutes until the train passed. After ten more minutes, he dropped me off at the bus station, pulling right up front.

He didn’t wish me good luck or offer me any more of his apples or nothing else, but he nodded after I thanked him for the ride. Both of us knew I was dead serious about the business I’d spoken of. It was the same business I’d figured that assistant warden didn’t have any business knowing a few hours before when he’d asked what my plans were when I got out. Assistant Warden Theodore Donald O’Neil the Third had seen it in my eyes though, sure enough.

Her head turned sideways and then almost upside down, which made a big mop of red curls fall over her face. She was leaning so far out of her bus seat that when she took one hand to move her hair, she fell into the aisle. Her mother and baby brother didn’t notice the commotion, or her holler, as they kept sleeping while she climbed back up, situating herself for more room. It worked and she got a little bit. Her ma put an arm around her again, I guess out of instinct the way she looked sound asleep when doing it. The little girl soon moved it again without much notice.

Looking out the bus window, I kept feeling a strange peacefulness trying to come on me as I stared at a landscape that went on in all directions to the sky and that had no fences, or at least they were ones a man could jump over without effort. I hoped the busy little girl would soon find something else interesting to help pass the miles…besides me. We were the only two people awake on the bus. I kept seeing her out of the corner of my eye leaning toward me, even after I cleared my throat loud to wake her momma.

She’d been studying on me for some time. Something about my hands had caught her attention not long after the last stop, and even after I moved them to where she might study on something else, she kept trying to get a good look at them.

I finally closed my eyes, and my mind was still drifting south to thoughts of home when I felt the bus seat move a little and felt a small finger touch my left hand. I pulled it away.

“You get on back to your seat now,” I said.

She looked up at me and smiled. “What’s that on the back of your hand?” she said.

“None of your business,” I said. “Now go on back with your momma.”

“My name is Grace.”

I turned to look out my window.

“What’s yours?”

I tried to give her a hard look and then said, “It don’t matter none is what my name is.”

“‘It don’t matter none’ isn’t a name, silly goose.” She started to laugh at her joke but stopped. “My dad used to have an ink drawing on the back of his hand.”

“Grace, leave me be like I’m telling you.”

“Momma likes men with tattoos. Frank doesn’t have one on his hand like Daddy did, but he has one on his arm.” She grabbed one sleeve and pulled it up to her elbow and pointed at the place Frank has a tattoo. “He’s meeting us at the bus station. We’re moving in with him. He’s got a house and a car but it doesn’t run right now.”

“Hopefully he’ll get it running soon. Go on, now. I need some sleep.”

“You haven’t been sleeping like everybody else, just watching what everybody is doing and looking out your window like me.”

I grabbed her by a shoulder easy as I could to move her toward her ma when she turned back toward me. “I just want to know what that picture is on your hand.”

I cleared my throat again loud, this time waking the old woman up in front of me, who turned around shaky with a scared sneer, and then I decided I best show my hand to the little girl if I was to get back my quiet. I turned it the right way so she could tell what it was and said, “It’s a big oak in the middle of a field.”

“Why do you have it there?”

“Something nice to look at from time to time, I reckon.”

“Frank is a war hero. His is an army picture of a parachute with wings. Momma said Dad was a drunk. He had Momma’s name on his hand, though.”

“Frank sounds like a fine feller and sorry about your daddy. Now go on. I need the rest.”

She slid down and as she took a step across the aisle and jumped back on the seat beside her ma, she said, “He’s not nice but Momma keeps saying he’s got a job and a house with a big yard and a dog, and lots of other stuff.”

I looked at her ma, who was still sleeping while trying to hold on to a baby boy on her lap through the whole conversation. She looked like a woman who could use a house and a big yard, and especially a lot of other stuff, minus Frank most likely, as her daughter pulled out a pad of paper and coloring sticks from a sack.

For a good while the girl kept asking me questions and telling me things about her and her ma and brother and her dead daddy and Frank, and drawing pictures and wanting to show them to me. I kept playing possum with my eyes closed through all of it. I didn’t want them closed, I wanted them open to see what I’d been missing all of those years out that window. But I did feel safe that I could close them without worry of harm, because I’d studied every set of eyes at every stop that bus made and never saw a threat. And I could always tell the blazing look trying to be too still, or almost always.

I did notice, watching everyone on that bus earlier that evening, that I was different in ways I hadn’t figured on, even when so many seemed not to be much more prosperous than I was, like that little girl and her family. But not so different. So much had changed, but some things surely hadn’t.

I guess Frank was waiting for Grace and her family in Carlisle because that’s where they all got off in a hurry, but not before she laid a picture on the seat next to me. It was a nice colored drawing of a green tree in a yellow field. I ignored it at first but then gave it a good look over after they got off, and then I put it careful in the paper sack with the rest of my things.

With no more commotion beside me, I was able to not pretend I was asleep anymore. On the half-hour stops in Hagerstown and Chambersburg, I did a lot of walking around and spent over five dollars buying Coca-Colas and Zagnut candy bars. Things I hadn’t tasted in quite a while and they tasted so good I couldn’t get enough of them.

Between the stops and just looking out my window and trying to figure how I was gonna fit in any of it, I had a lot of time to think about Shady while watching the quiet miles of highway go by and drinking my odd-looking bottles of Coca-Cola. The pop tasted the same, maybe even better, at least to me, but the bottles and machines they came out of were a lot different.

For some reason all of the new around me made me not think about what was to come and all of the things I was gonna do; it made me do a lot of remembering on being a young’un and growing up in Shady Hollow, and the bad that happened there on a nice Sunday evening, September 28, 1959.

September 28,1959 was the last day before my life ended, and I never saw it was coming.

Ma did, though.