Joe (17 page)

Chapter
27

Eric

“Come
on, Jenny. I ain’t such a bad guy. I’m not gonna ruin her in two hours.”

Jenny had called about Monday. She was
worried that Eric might be a bad influence on their daughter, like he was going
to take her out for an ice cream and a shot of dope or something. Jenny hadn’t
expressed any such concern when he’d asked her two months ago, before his fat
parole officer had granted him permission to cross state lines to visit his
daughter. He realized now that she had figured Eric wouldn’t be able to get the
go-ahead. Jenny was still angry with him after all these years. Yes, he had
fucked up, but he was a better man now, and he thought deserved to see his
daughter. But Jenny had sole custody, so he had to play nice.

Always a fucking game. Always gotta play
someone’s
fucking
game.

“I didn’t say that you would ‘ruin’ her,
Eric,” Jenny replied. “But you need to understand that she doesn’t know who you
are. So I don’t want you to go telling her to call you daddy or anything and
confusing her. She calls Hank daddy…I hope you understand. I’m only looking out
for Ava.”

Oh, I understand, all right. I
understand that you’re a self-righteous bitch.

“I-I just want to see my daughter, Jen.”

A sigh. “I know, Eric. I know. What time
will you be here on Monday, then?”

“I plan to leave school and head
straight there. My last class lets out at noon and I should be able to reach
Lawrence by two, two-thirty. I only have permission to stay for a few hours, so
I won’t be in your hair for long.”

They hung up shortly after that. Eric
stuffed his cellphone in his pocket and went over to where he’d left his
trash-stabber and half-empty trash bag.

“What’d she say?” asked Toni.

Eric slanted a smile at his community
service comrade. “She’s still willing to let me see Ava, but she wanted to make
sure I wouldn’t tell her I’m her daddy. ‘Parently she’s married to that Hank
guy.” Eric’s shoulders slumped a little. “Ava calls him daddy now.”

Toni shook his head, clapping Eric on
the back in a consolatory gesture. “Well, hey, now ain’t that some shit? That’s
just how it be sometimes, brother. Don’t fret too much on it. You done your
time and you tryin’ to do right now. You ain’t a bad guy, man.”

Eric gave a small nod.
Yeah, but I’m
not a
good
guy either, am I? I killed a little girl about Ava’s age. Not
on purpose. No, not on purpose, but that don’t mean shit to that little girl’s
family.

“Hey,” Toni said, interrupting Eric’s
thoughts. “I mean it, man. You ain’t no bad guy. I met some real fuckers in the
state pen and you’s something like an angel when set next to them.”

It was true. Eric had met some
real
bad
guys in prison. Prison was chock full of psychopaths and sociopaths and rapists
and pedophiles, and no, he wasn’t like them. He could remember perfectly the
day that he got transferred from the holding facility in Kansas City to the
Federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. They’d brought him over in the
back of a windowless white van and pulled straight into the concrete room that
served as the loading dock for new prisoners. On the ride over Eric had been
scared out of his mind. He’d been to jail on a few short occasions in the past,
mostly just overnight stays for public intoxication. Prison was a whole
different beast.

But everything was okay. After the
delousing, fingerprinting, mug shots and
pull your pants down below your
knees, squat and cough,
he had been shown to his cell. He started to
believe that everything was going to keep on being okay—that he was going to
get through this. His first night at Leavenworth, he learned the foolishness of
that belief.

His roommate had been an enormous black
man who went by the name of Mad Marvin. Mad Marvin stood over six feet and had
Hulk-like muscles from his toes to his neck, wrapped under a firm layer of fat.
Marvin had laughed, hard, clutching his midsection when he saw Eric. After the
guard had closed the door to their cell, Marvin told Eric to
Take a seat,
little man, get cumferble. Name’s Mad Marvin. You can call me Marv. What they
call you?

Eric had felt a chill crawl up his spine
then, because despite Marvin’s gap-toothed grin and gentle giant façade, he
could see, or rather
sense
the sly beast lying in wait behind Marvin’s
eyes. Mad Marvin was not a good guy.

But, then, neither was Eric.

That first day had passed by without
much incident. The two things Eric had been worried about were the cafeteria
and the yard, where the prisoners were allowed to get some exercise. But things
went better than he could have hoped. He even made some acquaintances, all
black, of course—but he wasn’t stupid enough to think they were his friends—and
Marvin had even gone to the trouble of introducing him to a few people who
supposedly
had the hook-up on some shit you might want.

By the time “lights out” was issued on
his cell block, Eric felt even more confident that he could make it through
this god-awful experience alive, perhaps even unscathed. Mad Marvin had other
plans on his mind.

“Sleep tight, little man,” Marvin had
told him as the lights went out on the cellblock, from the bunk beneath Eric’s.
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” And then he had laughed again. The sound of it
was guttural and somehow ugly and dirty.

The feeling that had come over Eric was
so strong that he couldn’t convince himself to ignore it. Later, when Eric
reflected back over the whole thing, he would refer to the feeling as raw
survival instinct. Marvin was silent after that, his heavy breathing becoming
deeper and deeper. Instead of sleeping, Eric stared at the gray concrete
ceiling of the cell, waiting. He had no idea what he was waiting for, but he
was.

Eventually, he allowed his eyes to slip
closed, his own breathing to steady and lengthen. He was tired and ready for
sleep to take him, but sleep would not come. Instead, he listened to the quiet
of the prison cell block around him. And finally, as his insomnia was just
beginning to seriously irritate him, he heard it. Eric didn’t open his eyes,
but he was instantly alert, his heart a deep pounding drum in his chest.

Marvin was up. Eric could feel him
standing nearby, could hear the rasping air as it was pushed through the
giant’s nostrils and gap-toothed, open mouth. That moment was the only time in
Eric’s life he had come close to literally pissing his pants. In fact, if he
was being honest, a few drops had actually found their way out to roll down his
inner thigh like tiny warm, wet kisses. The fear he felt was so intense that it
was something akin to shock.
This is it,
Eric thought,
this is my
payback, karma or whatever, for what I’ve done.
With this thought came no
comfort, but he could see the poetic justice in it nonetheless.

He was surprised when his voice came out
flat and calm. “Don’t miss,” he said, and Mad Marvin’s breathing hitched and
quieted. “You’ll only get one shot.”

All was silent, as if the very air in
the room had paused to watch the show. For a moment Eric was too afraid to open
his eyes, too terrified to move.
Awful
feeling. So he just lay there,
with his eyes shut, face blank and hands still tucked behind his head, as if in
open invitation to his heart. It was a terribly vulnerable position, but that
night Eric came to the full understanding of the saying “scared stiff”. For
that eternal moment, he was.

It passed, as all things do, and he
peeled his eyes open slowly, squinting a little in the incomplete darkness of
the cell. And there Mad Marvin stood. Two feet from Eric’s face, Marvin’s big
bulk of a body seeming to tower over him despite the fact that Eric lay on the
top bunk of their metal bunk bed. Eric kept his hands behind his head, but they
were ready now. If the big man swung, Eric would do his best to fight back.
Yes, he was afraid of Marvin, but Eric would not think twice about killing him
to save himself if he got the opportunity. He turned his head on his flat
pillow, and looked into Marvin’s eyes for as long as he could manage. Then he
looked down to see the crudely-made shank clutched in his gorilla-like hand. He
brought his hands down slowly to his sides, clenched into tight fists.

When he looked back up, he saw that
Marvin had that same gap-toothed grin on his face. Eric raised an eyebrow,
still wary but now also confused. Marvin began to laugh. Then he laughed so
hard that he shook and bent over and coughed and clutched at his stomach. Eric
sat up and slid off the bed, eager to get out of that vulnerable position. Mad
Marvin continued laughing and laughing, until someone on the cellblock yelled,
“Yo! Shut the fuck up, you dumb fucking monkey! Some of us is tryin to sleep!”

Marvin stopped laughing all at once. He
was still only two feet from Eric, though at least Eric was no longer lying
down, but he had to force himself not to take a step back from the big man.
Marvin straightened up from his bent laughing position until he stood at his
full height. He was breathing heavily. So was Eric, but he was trying to stifle
it. Eric’s hands were still clenched into fists at his sides. Marvin’s face was
blank.

Then Eric did take a step back, but Mad
Marvin didn’t see it, because he had flung himself at the metal door, making an
enormous, metallic,
BANG!
that seemed to vibrate through the concrete
walls. He pressed his huge, black face against the extra strong plexi-glass
square in the door that the guards used to peek in at the prisoners, and he
screamed, “I’LL PUT YOU TO SLEEP YOU FUCKING CUNT! I’LL PUT YOU THE FUCK TO
SLEEP!”

Marvin began beating his huge fists
against the metal door and continued screaming. Nothing intelligible, just
bellows and war cries of hideous rage and
BANGBANGBANG BANG!
He kept
this up for what seemed to Eric like a long time, and even in the darkness of
the cell Eric could see blood flying from the big man’s fists and splattering
on the floor, on Marvin’s shoulders, running down the white metal door. Funny,
he sort of did look like a monkey. Whoever the protester was had not made
another comment. When Marvin finally stopped, he swung around to face Eric,
that gapped grin back on his blood-splattered face.

Eric said, “Can we sleep now?”

The big man laughed again, not as hard
as before, but loudly. No one expressed annoyance. When he got himself under
control he said, “Yeah, Little Man. We can sleep.”

They did. Marvin never tried to kill him
again.

Sometime later, when Eric had been
Marvin’s roommate for about three months and had finally just begun to sleep
decently at night, Eric asked him about that night. They were playing cards on
the floor of their cell.

“Hey, Marv?”

Marvin looked up, grinning, as always.
“S’up, Little Man?”

Eric considered the wisdom of asking the
question, but he had to know. “Remember that first night I got here?”

The big man nodded.

Eric set his cards down. “Well, I
thought you were gonna kill me.”

“I was.”

Eric nodded in return. He had known this.
“So why didn’t you?”

The grin slipped off of Marvin’s face,
and he set his cards down as well. He looked up at Eric. “Cuz I thought you was
one a them little pussies who come up in here an think they better’n everybody
else. Like they don’t belong here, like they ain’t fucked something up to be
here, too. But when you tole me I would only get one shot, and then you opened
your eyes and I saw you’s serious, I knew you was one a us.”

“A bad guy,” Eric mumbled, and then
realized he hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

Mad Marvin looked at him seriously, more
serious than Eric had ever seen him look, less
crazy
than Eric had ever
seen him look. And he nodded. “Yeah, brother. We all bad guys in here. You
gotta
be a bad guy in here.”

And that was the only conversation they
ever had about any of that.

Eric stabbed another piece of trash and
tossed it in the plastic bag. Quitting time had almost come around. He had to
head to his paying job after this, but that was okay. Keeping busy was a good
way to stay out of trouble. But maybe Marvin had been right. Maybe taking the
life of a four year-old little girl, whether by accident or otherwise, made you
rotten and evil. Sure it did. And maybe someday soon God would come down and
insist that he pay his debt to the universe. An eye for an eye. A life for a
life. Because at the end of the story, the bad guys
always
lose, right?

He could accept that. As long as he got
to see his little girl first.

And surely he could make it until
Monday.

Chapter
28

Mina

She
had to admit, she was really starting to like him. He was handsome, successful,
sweet, and—well, just a good guy. Even Dominic and Davis had taken to him
pretty well, and that was saying something. Russell had picked her and the kids
up this morning and now they were at the County Fair. He had bought more game
tickets than the kids could ever use in a lifetime, and the boys had all but
shouted with glee. He even made good on his promise to win her a teddy bear.

The day was a sweet one. Last night’s
storm had come and gone, taking with it the rain and gray, leaving a bright
blue sky and puffy white clouds. There were more people here than Mina had
expected, clustered in groups and scattered around the various rides and games.
She hadn’t come to the County Fair since she was a girl in high school. The
rides and booths set up here today looked as though they may very well be the
same
rides and booths as when she had come all those years ago. They sure looked old
enough. Despite the fact that the bolts and hinges holding the Ferris wheel
aloft looked rusted and rotten enough to break loose at any moment and roll off
like a human-hamster wheel, people were happily shelling out their money and
lining up to ride. The venders selling cotton candy and hot dogs and kettle
korn looked just like those people you would see as a child, when your mother
would clutch you close to her side and whisper,
Stay close, now.
As if
you had a choice with your head stuffed under her armpit. And Mother would ask,
What have I told you about strangers?
You would reply,
Don’t talk to
‘em, Don’t take stuff from ‘em, and if they try to grab me, scream.”
That’s
right . That’s a good girl.
These venders and carnies looked just like
those clutch-your-child-and-hurry-past people your mother had always warned
about, and yet everyone around was shoving clouds of cotton candy down their
throats, gobbling down dogs and joining the fun. Russell and Mina and her
children included.

And why? Mina knew why. It was because
there was a certain amount of
faith
one must have to be able to get
along in this world, maybe in any world. You had to have
faith
that the
food you bought, the water that poured so easily and thoughtlessly from your
faucets, the home you built around you was, well, good. The chicken breast you
picked up at the supermarket would not poison you. The water from the magical
faucets would not kill you. The walls and floors and ceilings you called home
would not suddenly collapse in on you and become a prison of your doom. When
you flicked a switch, the light would come on. When you arose in the morning,
the sun will have risen with you.
Faith.
County fairs, carnivals and
circuses always made Mina think of it. More so than any Bible study or sermon
had ever been able to.

However sometimes, too much faith can be
a deceptively dangerous thing.

“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

Mina looked down. Dominic was tugging at
the hem of her sundress. The look on his precious little face was one only a
child could fully accomplish; such wonder and innocence and…
faith?

Yes, faith. Faith that Mommy was holding
on to more game tickets. Mina smiled. “What’s up, baby?”

“You see that ride over there? The one
with the horsies and the dolphins and the lions going round and round in a
circle? Can I ride that, Mommy? Can I ride that? Can I ride that?” Dominic
asked, a grin stretching from earlobe to earlobe.

Mina pointed at the ride. “The
carousel?” she asked, although she knew good and well that he meant the
carousel.

Dominic was now hopping up and down, the
lights in his Iron Man tennis shoes flashing a dull red. “Yeah, that’s what I
said, the carrot sell. Can I ride the carrot sell, Mommy?”

Russell pulled a handful of ride tickets
from his jeans pocket and raised a questioning eyebrow at Mina, who nodded. He
held them out to Dominic, who snatched them and took off toward the line to the
carousel, shouting a thank you to Russell over his shoulder. Davis had seen a
few friends that he knew from school, and after their parents assured Mina they
would look after him (Davis protested this, he
was almost ten, Mom, so
don’t, like, embarrass him
). She consented to let him go with them on the
condition that he meet her at the Ferris wheel in two hours. She and Russ
watched Daniel as he chose a lion’s back to sit on, gripped for dear life the
pole rising out of its head, and waved like a fan in the background of a World
Series game
(Hi Mom!).

Russell chuckled and waved back. “He’s
an awful cute little thing, ain’t he?” he said, slanting a smile down at Mina.

Mina had to keep waving to Dominic every
time he circled back around on the carousel. She looked up at Russell for a
moment to admire just how beautiful a man he really was. Not beautiful in a
soft or pretty way, but in a hard masculine way that made her feel delicate and
womanly and also quite glad that she had made an effort to keep up her figure
after having given birth to two sons. Russ was not built in the hard, bulky
manner of a juiced gym-rat. He had a hard, natural way, as if each lean muscle
had been forged with real work and long days. His face was that of a man’s man
and
a woman’s man. Rare. He was intelligent, but small spoken. He watched and
listened and
saw
what went on around him. Mina could not deny the
attraction, few women would be able to. Even so, agreeing to this date with him
was something of an anomaly for her, especially agreeing to a date with him
while her boys came along–not that she ever had free time without them. She
didn’t like to bring strange men around her boys. They knew who their father
was—
shithead
that he was, though she never voiced this in front of the
boys–and that was enough. She had to be a good role model.

So this was the first time she had been
on a date since before either of the boys were born. The first man she had
dated since the boys’ father. Needless to say, she was nervous. Perhaps if he
were not so beautiful she would not have been. As a single mother of two, she
had to wonder why a man like Russ would even be interested in her. It was not
so much low self-esteem. She knew she was beautiful, exotic even, but even
pretty girls feel inadequate when they meet a man like him.

“I sure think so,” she returned, but
perhaps it had taken her too long to answer. Russell’s attention seemed to be
elsewhere. He was staring off in the distance at something and hadn’t even
heard her answer to his question or comment or whatever it had been.

Mina waved again as the carousel circled
back around to Dominic, who was still grinning and gripping for dear life. She
looked back up at Russ. “Hey, you okay?” she asked him. He was still staring
across the carousel at something.

The carousel’s circular motion began to
slow.

“Yeah, uh, where is the exit gate?” Russ
asked.

Mina furrowed her brow, looking around
the edges of the ride for the sign on the gate that read
EXIT.
They were
still standing at the entrance. Russell was already walking around the
carousel, moving fast. Mina had to jog to catch up with him. “What’s wrong,
Russ?” she asked, but even as she said it, she realized she hadn’t seen Dominic
get off the carousel. Growing more and more frantic, her eyes swept the lions
and dolphins and ostriches and horsies, her heartbeat instantly so rapid that
it seemed to be vibrating harshly in her chest. There was no Dominic. She
turned her eyes forward and found that Russell had left her behind; he was
almost at the exit gate now. Mina felt a nearly undeniable impulse to scream
out, to call her son’s name at the top of her lungs until her voice cracked,
but she did not. Not yet. She wasn’t even sure there was anything to worry
about.
God please let him be there let him be there on the other side he’s
on the other side right? He’s
got
to be on why had Russ looked like
that?

What happened next would weigh on her
mind like shame and horror and failure wrapped in a hard shell for the better
part of forever, she believed. The moment was awful enough. Hindsight was some
kind of all-seeing bitch. Truly.

She could see Russell, the back of his
shirt as he slipped and shoved his way past people. They had finally reached
the spot in the gate that held the exit to the carousel. Mina’s head whipped
back and forth in a way that would have been comical if not for the shocked and
terrified look on her face. Her eyes seemed to take in everything at once and
nothing at the same time. No Dominic. Dominic was not here.

The thought was too ugly for her mind to
grasp.

Then she heard a few people gasp, and up
ahead she saw people swerving around someone. Supposedly the same someone who had
incited the gasp. No, not someone, Russell. He had shoved some guy hard, and
Mina had looked up in time to see the guy stumbling back. Then a feeling that
can only be described as utter relief swept through her. She seemed able to
breathe again, though she had not known she’d ever stopped. Dominic was tucked
under Russ’ left arm. The boy had his two middle fingers in his mouth and his
right arm wrapped around the back of Russ’s knees. She skidded to a stop next
to them, scooping her little boy up into the safety of her arms.

“Whoa, what’s your problem, buddy?” The
man who Russell had shoved was saying. He was dark-skinned and dark-haired with
a mustache and a nondescript haircut. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and of
some Middle-Eastern descent. He only stood about five-three and probably only
weighed about one-hundred and forty-five pounds. He wore khakis and a
short-sleeve yellow shirt.

Mina’s hackles went up immediately, and
any questions she had about what had just transpired disappeared. This man was
bad news. It wasn’t any one thing about him, and yet, it was
everything
about
him. She squeezed her child to her chest and all but growled in sudden fury.
Vengeful thoughts raced through her head. This fucking piece of dirty shit had
intended to take her child from her. She knew it. She wanted very much at that
moment to shed the chains of civilization and hurt this man. Better yet,
kill
this sonofabitch for even entertaining such an idea. All in the space of a
hummingbird’s flail, she had gone from normal to homicidal. It felt good. It
dampened the horror of the potentials.

However, she didn’t even have to say
anything, because Russ was there. He looked just about as pissed as a poked
rattlesnake, which was just slightly less pissed than Ms. Mama Lion. Russell
grabbed the man by his shirt front and lifted him off of his feet into the air.
Russell shook the man, once, twice, and again.
Hard.
“You know what my
problem is,” said Russ, in a way that seemed to Mina to be difficultly but
clearly restrained. Mina thought Russ looked like he wanted to say much more,
doubtlessly obscenities and threats and things of that nature.

Russ threw the man then. He landed hard
on his tailbone, first crawling, then scrambling, then finally taking to his
feet and hobbling/running off. Despite the fact that she had just made a
serious parental fuck-up, and the horror of those awful
potentials
was
setting in harsher and deeper—even though she was holding her baby boy, whom
without life would mean nothing—Mina felt a little warmth weave into her
stomach. She was looking at Russell again.
Shame, shame, shame.

Russell put his arm around her shoulder
and they walked away. He didn’t say anything. Neither did Mina. Truth be told,
on top of all the other terrible emotions she was feeling, she was also
embarrassed.
Call it like it is, darling, you fucked-up big time. You
weren’t paying attention. Your child needed you to do the only thing in the
world you have to do: protect him. You failed. You failed and got lucky that
someone else was paying closer attention than you were. Yep, it’s the handsome,
thoughtful man who has his arm around your shoulder right now, the one who
looks like he wants to skin a small, brown, creepy creeper you should have noticed
first. But, hey, don’t be embarrassed. Don’t be uncomfortable. You fucked-up,
but it’s turned out okay now, that’s all. Could’ve been worse. Oh, yes, it
could’ve been much worse. You certainly fucked-up.

“Happens to the best of us,” Russell
said.

Mina looked up at him. He slanted her a
smile and ruffled Dominic’s soft hair. “You okay, kiddo?” he asked.

The boy nodded, and Mina looked down at
him for the first time since she had scooped him up. Subconsciously, she had
been too ashamed and horrified to look her child in the eye. Now what she saw
made her heart seem to literally swell in her chest, and she felt the first
stinging prickles of coming tears touch her eyes. She took a deep breath to
force them back, but it only seemed to inflate that muscle in her chest all the
more. Dominic was looking at Russ as if the man had just hung the stars and
moon and all the heavens. He was looking at him in the way only boys do when
they look at the man who should’ve been their father. It was a look of grateful
love and respect. She had never seen it on either of her sons’ faces before.

When Dominic held his arms out to Russ,
and Russ took the boy and held him close, Mina did cry, just a little. It was a
soundless cry that only the few tears that escaped their ducts gave voice to.
But it was one she felt all the way down to the pit of her soul, where the love
for her children was rooted and born. She came to him then, and he wrapped his
arms around her as well, Dominic in middle of the two of them and so utterly safe
that a few more tears found their way home. He kissed her forehead gently.