Take Me There (10 page)

“I don’t expect anything,” I said. “You’re safe with me.”

“I know. I don’t know how I know, but I do.” She smiled,
took my hand, and led me into her house.

Jess input a code on the security pad so we wouldn’t set off the house alarm. Then she locked the back door. She proceeded to walk through the entire first floor, turning on every light, looking in every corner, which is exactly what I would do if I’d been accosted by gangbangers the night before. “My room is upstairs,” she told me. “It used to be a separate flat, but my parents connected them.”

When we reached the staircase, Jess picked up a black trash bag filled with clothes. “Oh, maybe you could use these. I was supposed to take them to Goodwill for my father.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking down at my dirty work clothes, realizing I wouldn’t be going home to change.

When we reached the second floor, Jess said, “Home sweet home.” She pointed to a large room with a small kitchenette in the corner, set off by a bar and four stools. There was a small bathroom next to the kitchen, but everything else seemed to be in the one room, a futon facing a wide-screen television, a beanbag chair next to the futon, and a shelf filled with books and movies. There were piles of books and clothes everywhere.

A huge full moon was glowing through a plate-glass window in the wall behind the television. “I bet that’s one awesome view during the day,” I said, trying to make conversation. Not really sure what I was supposed to do next.

“You must think I’m a total wimp to ask you to babysit me.”

“Nope,” I said, turning back to her. “I think you’re alone … and scared.”

Jess wrapped her arms around herself and sat on the edge of the futon. Baby Face curled up on the carpet and laid her head on Jess’s feet, looking up at her as if to make sure she was okay.

I left the window and went to sit beside her. There was an afghan folded on the table next to a pair of pajamas. I unfolded it and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was cold on the beach after the sun went down. Farther inland the concrete soaked up the sun and never let it go, but here you could feel the temperature drop after the sun set.

“My parents are never here.”

“What do you mean?”

“After a month of haze and gloom my mother decided she didn’t like the beach—or my father. They both have separate apartments in the city now, close to their jobs. They’re always taking separate vacations. As soon as I graduate they’re going to sell this place and probably get a divorce.”

“Wow. Is that how the rich abandon their kids?”

“Yeah, with a credit card. I don’t mind. It’s better than having them here fighting all the time. But last night I thought every sound was an intruder.”

“So I’m filling in till Jason gets back.”

“It’s not like that. He doesn’t know about my parents. God, if he did he’d be trying to move in with me.”

I tried to wrap my mind around what she was saying. I wanted to ask her why she confided in me when she couldn’t talk to her boyfriend, but I didn’t.

“No wonder you look so tired,” I said, touching the dark circles under her eyes. “Don’t worry. I know just what to do.” I got up to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To my car. I’ll be right back.”

I walked down to Hermosa Avenue, got the Mustang, and parked it behind Jess’s house. Then I found my copy of
Poetry Through the Ages
in the trunk. By the time I returned, Jess was already in her pajamas—a pair of shorts and a tank top. She didn’t seem to have any idea how sexy she looked.

“I’ll read you to sleep,” I told her, looking hard at the book, trying to avoid looking at her body. “I do it for my mother all the time. She says my voice is a natural sedative.”

“It may not be that easy. I’m an incurable insomniac.”

“That’s okay. I know a lot of Yeats.”

“You like Yeats?”

“My mom used to read me a lot of poetry when I was little. What, I don’t strike you as the sensitive poetic type?”

“Not really.”

“I try to hide it.”

“You do a good job.” She was smiling again. God, I loved the way her mouth twisted up at the corner, like we were sharing a secret joke.

I had left my reading glasses at home, so I couldn’t keep up my old ruse, but I opened the book to page fourteen—to “The Mermaid”—another Yeats poem—and pretended to read anyway.

“A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own,

Pressed her body to his body,

Laughed; and plunging down,

Forgot in cruel happiness,

That even lovers drown.”

“I thought mermaids were supposed to
save
men.”

“They are,” I told her. “But sometimes a guy doesn’t mind drowning.”

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN WE’RE
L
OST?” I ASK
W
ADE
.

“Lost. L-O-S-T, lost. It’s what happens when you take the wrong damn road and end up in the middle of some godforsaken place called
Rankin
.” He points out the window to the vast fields of dead grass and oil pumps.

“You said to get on 87 headin’ out of Lubbock.”

“I said to take 84, but it don’t matter, ’cause we ain’t on either one.”

We had wound through an endless maze of country back roads, passing through nowhere towns with nowhere names like Needmore, Welch, and Punkin Center before Wade finally admitted he didn’t have any idea where we were.

We’ve been driving around like that for two hours, and both of our tempers are flaring.

“Can’t you find
Rankin
on the map and then figure out what road we’re on?” I ask.

“There’s hundreds of little piss-ass towns on this map. Why don’t
you
try to find it?” he says, tossing the map on the dashboard.
“I wanted to head for Colorado. Find some mountains where it was cool, but no, you insisted we had to go to Texas. Couldn’t even stop to see the damn Grand Canyon. I gotta be turnin’ yellow before you even stop to let me piss.”

“I told you, I need to find my father.”

“Why do you gotta find him now, after all these years, now that we’re on the run?”

“I got my reasons.”

“What reasons?”

My patience has reached its end. I am tired, angry, hungry, and shaking inside. I am dangling at the end of a frayed, worn rope, and I know I wouldn’t be running at all if it wasn’t for Wade, so who is he to question me?

“What reasons?” he says, as if I didn’t hear him the first time.

“Ask him stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like how I ended up on this friggin’ road out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with you, Wade. How I ended up lost in some Texas hellhole. How I ended up with you, goin’ nowhere, just when I thought I was goin’ somewhere. Just when I was getting my life together. Just when all the pieces were starting to fit.”

Wade stares at me for the longest time. He looks like he’s trying to hide the fact that I’ve hurt his feelings, but then I realize he’s suppressing a smile. “Well, shit, Dylan. If that’s all you wanted to know, you didn’t have to drive all the way to Texas. You could have just asked me. I can tell you the answer to that.”

“Really?” I say, white-knuckling the steering wheel so I don’t clock Wade. “Then please tell me. What’s the answer, Wade?”

“You can’t read.”

A slow panic starts settling over me. “What are you talking about?”

“It was sittin’ there, plain as day, when you were in the middle of blamin’ me for how sorry your life turned out.”

“What was sitting there?”

“The sign for San Angelo, you dumb shit. It’s comin’ up in about ninety miles.” He grabs the map from the dash and traces the highway with his finger. “From there we get back on 87. Take 87 to Fredericksburg, then 290 all the way through Austin until we hit Quincy, just north of Brenham.” He tosses the map back onto the dash. “You see, Dylan, that’s your problem. You’re so busy starin’ at the problem, you don’t see the solution. Look for trouble and you find trouble. Look for a solution and you find San Angelo.”

The irony is that signs are one of the few things I
can
read. I try to keep my hand from balling into a fist, afraid that if Wade tries to spout any more of his wisdom, I will kill him. I turn on the radio, hoping to drown him out, but all I get is static. I check my CD case, but all I have with me is Aerosmith and
West Side Story
, which I’m sick of.

“Want me to drive?” Wade asks. “I won’t take any detours.”

I slam on the brakes and come to a dead stop right in the middle of the road. “Sure. Why not? My life is one big fucking detour,” I yell. Then I bang my head on the steering wheel and I can’t help it. I start to cry.

“Dylan?”

I think of last Sunday, not even a week ago. I had woken up on the beanbag chair at Jess’s house. Found her and Baby Face curled up asleep on the futon. Put on her father’s clothes. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes, when she saw me cleaned up
and respectable … like I was somebody. I made her breakfast and thought about how easy it would be to pretend I fit into her life. Then I told her I had to go home to get some things.

Saw a car parked out in front of my house with Texas dealer plates.

Went inside to find my uncle Mitch sitting with my mother, holding her hand as she stared blankly at the wall, all the life gone from her eyes. I asked what was wrong, and he told me he’d brought her some bad news.

About my father.

“Dylan, you okay?” asks Wade as a gas truck passes us, blaring its horn.

“They’re gonna kill my father.”

“Who?”

“The State of Texas.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“They’re gonna kill my father by lethal injection in less than two weeks.”

“How can they do that?”

“He’s on death row somewhere in Texas. I don’t even know where.”

Wade gets real quiet. Doesn’t even comment when two pickups pass us.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how.”

Wade nods as if this makes perfect sense. “Want me to drive?”

“Yeah, maybe you should.”

THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE
By D.J. Dawson

I injured my back during the UT homecoming game my sophomore year and lost my football scholarship, along with my dream of going pro. Then I found out my girlfriend Mollie was pregnant, and we both quit school to get married. I needed to support my new family, so I took a job driving an eighteen-wheeler, delivering cattle feed from Texas to California.

I became addicted to painkillers. Then I began self-medicating with illegal drugs.

Soon after I agreed to start transporting cocaine for a Colombian drug cartel. I was convinced I could do five or six runs, get the money I needed to buy my own rig, and be done with the whole business. I thought I could quit anytime I wanted, but I was wrong.

I asked an old friend to help me get out. One thing led to another, and before I knew what was happening, I found myself in the middle of a drug raid with a dead cop. I did not pull the trigger, though that’s what I’m here for, but I wasn’t innocent, either. I was running drugs and as a result, a good man is dead. A woman was left without a husband. Children were left without a father, including my own son.

One day they will come for me, bind me in iron shackles, lock me in a white prison van,
and set me on the road to Huntsville. It is a journey of forty miles down a country highway that weaves through the Sam Houston National Forest. A road lined with pine trees and wildflowers. A road paved with desperation, hopelessness, and fear.

I know what’s at the end. It’s a redbrick fortress called the Walls. And one day soon that is where the prison van will take me to die.

I won’t offer you a tired admonition to avoid my path. I won’t advise you to stay on the straight and narrow. I won’t suggest that you make good choices. I won’t even tell you to do the right thing. You can get that kind of advice from teachers and parents and TV evangelists, and if you are like me, you wouldn’t listen anyway. I just make one suggestion.

Know what path you’re on.

M
Y UNCLE
M
ITCH TOOK ME OUT TO A LOW-RENT
b
AR THAT
didn’t check for IDs.

“Tuesday, July seventeenth. That’s the date set for the execution,” he told me, downing a tall glass of Budweiser. He was already on his third and didn’t even notice I hadn’t touched mine. If there was ever a good time to start drinking again, I was pretty sure this was it, but I’d promised Jess I’d come back that night, and I wasn’t about to show up at her house drunk.

“I want to see my father,” I told him.

“Bartender, get me a double,” my uncle yelled to the man behind the counter.

“I
need
to see my father.”

“I’ve always respected your mother’s wishes on that matter,” Mitch said, tapping the table, the diamond ring on his middle finger flashing. Mitch is a man who likes finery. Tailored suits and expensive shoes. Lots of gold.

“Where is he?”

“Like I said, I’ve always respected—”

“I got a right to know some things!” I yelled, pounding my fist on the table.

Mitch looked at me coolly, his eyes narrowing. “You’re on probation. You can’t just pick up and go to Texas.”

“Work it out so I can.” I knew my uncle was used to pulling strings when it came to getting what
he
wanted. He could at least try to help me. “You owe me.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your friend Jake Farmer, he’s the one who had me and Wade choppin’ cars. I served eight months in juvie because of him.”

“You tell anybody?” he asked me.

“No.”

“That’s good,” he said, and that’s when I realized Mitch had known all along what Jake Farmer was up to.

“I gotta get out of here,” I said, and I ran out of the darkened bar into the glaring daylight. It was so bright it took a full minute for my eyes to adjust before I could make out where I’d left my car. Light is funny that way. Too much of it can blind you.

TIME

Time

goes round and round

the spinning clock,