Take Me There (16 page)

“Wade ain’t goin’ with you,” Ajax said.

“You still letting me tatt up?” Wade asked.

Ajax set the tattoo gun on a bench and pinned Wade’s arms behind his back. “Not a punk-ass lying piece of shit like you.”

Spider reared back and gave Wade such a punch to the gut that he doubled over and couldn’t breathe. Then he grabbed Wade by the hair and forced him to look at Eight Ball. “We had an agreement, and you didn’t follow through,” said Eight Ball. “Now we gotta teach you a lesson. Two Tone, take care of him.”

Spider helped Ajax hold Wade while Two Tone took a switchblade out of his pocket, beaming at the opportunity.

“No, please,” said Wade, starting to cry as Two Tone tossed the blade from hand to hand, smiling.

My mind went back to juvie. To one night when I was in the shower and all of a sudden I looked around and no one else was there except three guys with swastika tattoos. They grabbed me and threw me on the floor, and the next thing I knew, Wade came into the bathroom carrying a shank he’d made from a
tin can lid stolen from his job in the commissary. He was like a crazy man, cutting and slashing at them. Screaming at them to leave me alone. Then one of them pulled a pipe off the sink and started swinging.

I had run, thinking Wade was right behind me, and didn’t slow down until a guard stopped me and asked me what had happened to my clothes. I looked back and realized Wade wasn’t there.

“Leave him alone,” I yelled at Eight Ball.

“I told
you
to go,” Eight Ball said. “Don’t push me.”

Two Tone lunged playfully at Wade, laughing when he winced. Then his eyes turned ice-cold as he held the blade against Wade’s throat.

“Stop!” I grabbed Two Tone from behind, spun him around to face me, and gave him an uppercut to the jaw.

One blow. It wasn’t even that hard, because I was still aching from the bruised ribs. It was the way Two Tone fell. Slow motion. His head hitting the park bench. Neck twisting awkwardly. A look of realization in his eyes just before they closed.

Eight Ball fell to his knees beside his brother, followed by Ajax and Spider. I grabbed Wade and pulled him toward the Mustang. Eight Ball felt for a pulse. Began weeping. Cradling his brother in his arms. “No!” he screamed. “No, no, no.” Then Eight Ball looked at me, eyes smoldering in hate. “You killed him.”

He grabbed the blade from Two Tone’s limp hand and came after us, but I was already slamming on the gas.

I got on the 710 and headed north. Got off in South Gate. Took side streets till I found the 5. Got on and off of highways going north and south, east and west. Every time I had the
chance to merge onto another highway, I did. No rhyme or reason. No plan. Just trying to make sure we weren’t followed.

I knew I couldn’t go back home. Couldn’t go to the garage. Couldn’t go to Jess, even though she was still waiting for me. It wasn’t until we were just north of San Bernardino and Wade asked, “Where are we going?” that I knew.

“We’re going to Texas.”

THE HEART OF TEXAS

In the heart of Texas, there’s a town,

a sleepy town nine prisons strong.

Commit a crime and you’ll go down

to Huntsville, where the days are longer,

steel bars strong there, hope all gone

there. Huntsville, where they right the wrongs

done in the heart of Texas.

F
IRST THING
M
ONDAY MORNING I HEAD OUT FOR
Livingston. I don’t know if they will let me in to see my father, but I have to try. After I get to Huntsville, I stop to ask for directions. Then I take highway 190 through Dodge and Point Blank. Can’t believe the names of these Texas towns.

The Polunsky Unit sits outside Livingston in a big clearing surrounded by chain link and barbed wire. I approach the parking lot and am stopped by a guard in a polo shirt, who gets out of a pickup when he sees me coming. Not very official-looking. There isn’t even a guard hut at the entrance. Just a picnic table. I’m guessing the guy stays in his truck because it has air-conditioning.

He asks for my ID, and I hold my breath as I imagine an all-points bulletin with my name in flashing red letters, and hope the legal system doesn’t work that efficiently. I don’t really know if the law is after me or not. Maybe the liquor store clerk didn’t get my license plate number, and maybe Eight Ball won’t tell the cops how his brother died.

As I sit in Levida’s pickup, waiting, I watch the guards standing in their towers with their rifles and imagine how hot they are going to be in a few hours. I’m already sweating, and it’s only ten o’clock in the morning.

The man in the polo shirt gives me back my license, asks me to sign a visitor’s log, and lets me into the lot. I drive up to a concrete building and park. Then I go inside, passing through a metal detector before I reach the guard behind the window at the counter.

“Hello, my name is Dylan Dawson Junior. I’m here to visit my father, Dylan Dawson Senior.”

“I’ll need to see some ID,” she tells me.

I give her my license, which she looks at briefly and returns to me before thumbing through a notebook. “Dylan Dawson Junior. Yep, there you are,” she says.

“I’m on the list?”

“Yes. Is the prisoner expecting you?” she asks.

“No,” I say, but then I wonder, how long ago did my father put my name on that list? How many years has he been waiting for me to show up?

Another guard arrives to escort me to the visitation area. We walk outside through an automatic door to another, larger concrete building. The main part of the prison, which we are now entering, is surrounded by rolls of razor wire, and I wonder if I’ll end up in a place like this for killing Two Tone. I wasn’t trying to kill him, just trying to protect my friend, but the law doesn’t always see things the way I do. My whole body is trembling uncontrollably, and I pray it doesn’t show. This place is three times the size of juvie, and I know the men inside have had a lot more years of hard time.

We enter the unit and walk down a long hallway until we arrive at the visitation area. “Enjoy your visit,” the man says, like he’s some kind of Disney tour guide. Then he returns to the front of the prison. I enter the room, tell my name to the gray-haired guard inside. “I’ll have them bring the prisoner,” he says, and then he picks up a phone and says my father’s name.

There is a row of brown plastic chairs facing a wall of glass, divided into little cubicles. Visitors sit in the chairs talking over telephones to prisoners perched on metal stools on the other side.

One of the visitors is a tall man in a polyester suit and alligator boots, who reminds me of my uncle Mitch. I look through the glass to the man across from him and instantly recognize the pale blue eyes from the photographs at Levida’s house. His hair is different, a crew cut, and the face has been worn by the years, but I know instantly who he is.

“He’s already up here,” the guard tells me, but I’m already walking toward the man in the boots, who looks up at me as I approach. “Can I help you, young man?”

“I’m here to see Dylan Dawson.”

The man on the other side watches me through the glass.

“I’m his lawyer, Buster Cartwright. Who are you?” the man asks me.

I hear my father’s voice faintly, over the telephone, answering for me in a soft drawl. “He’s my son.” He reaches out his hand, pressing it against the glass, as if trying to touch me. He smiles, and I see a tear making its way down his cheek.

“Well, I’ll be,” says the lawyer, sizing me up. “You’re the spittin’ image.”

I press my hand up against my father’s, and I’m suddenly
close enough to the glass to see my reflection, blurred by the tears now filling my eyes. I wipe them away with my fist and take a good look at my father. He’s bigger than I thought he’d be, even larger than in his football pictures. His chest is huge, and his biceps strain against the white cotton prison shirt. A massive presence of a man. Even so, there is nothing hard or cold about him; in fact, he radiates a warmth that I can feel through the glass.

“I been waitin’ a long time to talk to you.” I hear his voice coming over the phone in the lawyer’s hand.

I pick up the second of the two phones on my side of the glass, hanging on the partition separating the cubicles. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” I say.

“It’s okay. You’re here now. That’s all that matters.” He gives me a smile as deep and wide as the Pacific Ocean.

I sit down, and before long we’re talking to each other as if I’ve just stopped by to visit any old divorced parent and not a man awaiting execution. He asks me about school.

“Not much to say,” I tell him over the red telephone. I still can’t believe I’m sitting here across from him, after all this time. It’s like we’ve never been apart.

“Do ya get good grades?” he asks. His Texas drawl isn’t harsh and crude like Levida’s, but smooth as apple butter.

“I quit school a while back,” I confess. He nods in understanding, but the lawyer, who has made no move to leave, raises a disapproving eyebrow.

“Do ya have a girl?” my father asks me.

“Yeah,” I say, thinking about Jess, picturing her sitting by the plate-glass window, looking out at the ocean, waiting for me. I know I should call her, but what would I say? She’s got to
be steaming mad by now. Maybe that’s for the best, for her to hate me, and then forget me.

“Tell me about her,” my father says.

I tell him how I first met Jess in the church choir and how we were in school together at Downey High until I dropped out.

“Go on,” my father encourages.

Before long I’m telling him all about Jessica Jameson, describing her eyes, her smile, her incredible voice. I thought it would hurt, talking about her, but it actually helps ease the pain, as if, somehow, she’s not so far away anymore.

When I get to the part about Jess kissing me on the Fourth of July and taking me to her beach house, I look at my father and wonder what it is like, seeing people only through a wall of glass. Never touching them. I wonder if anyone besides his lawyer comes to see him, and I can’t even imagine how lonely he has been all these years.

“Well, don’t stop in the middle of the story, boy,” says the lawyer, who I’ve forgotten is still there. “Tell us what happened next.”

I look at my father. “Her boyfriend called to tell her he was coming over, and I left.”

“Damn!” says the lawyer.

“That’s too bad.” My father shakes his head.

“Tough break, kid,” says a third voice softly, over a microphone, and I turn to see the gray-haired guard, who has obviously listened to the entire conversation.

“Not much privacy in here,” my father says.

After that intrusion I stick to neutral topics that I don’t mind everyone overhearing. I talk about my friendship with Wade, my job at Gomez & Sons, my car—carefully avoiding
subjects like the time I served in juvie, the fact I’m violating my probation, how I’ve become an accessory to armed robbery and accidentally killed someone.

“Mechanicking is a good trade and a respectable occupation,” my father tells me. “But what about the girl? That can’t be the end of the story.”

“She came by the shop last Thursday.”

“Yeah.”

“To tell me she broke up with her boyfriend.”

“Then what?” says the lawyer, who is really starting to annoy me. He’s wearing some kind of sweet cologne that smells like cheap wine, and as it mixes with his body sweat, the odor becomes nearly unbearable, like the rotting fruit from a distillery.

“She said she wants to be with me.”

“Attaboy,” the lawyer says, slapping me on the back.

“Good goin’,” the guard chimes in.

Only my father seems to notice I’m not smiling. He lowers his voice to almost a whisper. “Are you okay, son?”

Son
. That single word turns me inside out.
Why did you have to be here, Dad,
I want to ask him,
when I needed you so badly at home?

I bite my lip, hoping the tears I feel gathering behind my eyes will stay there and not spill all over my face. I want to tell my father everything. Know he’s the one person in all the world who would understand, but I can’t say anything with the guard listening to our every word. All I can do is shake my head ever so slightly and hope the gesture doesn’t reveal too much.

“Mr. Cartwright,” my father says to the lawyer, “why don’t you give my boy your number, in case he needs to contact you for
any
reason?”

“Contact me?” the lawyer replies, looking from me to my father. “Oh,” he says. “Yes, let me give you my card.” Mr. Cartwright opens his briefcase, pulls out a card, and hands it to me.

“I think I’ll make a couple of phone calls while the two of you catch up,” Mr. Cartwright tells us, closing his briefcase, and then he leaves. Finally.

“You’ve got ten more minutes,” the guard informs me over the microphone.

“Ten more minutes,” I say. “It’s hard to believe two hours have passed.”

“Where are you stayin’?” my father asks.

“Levida’s place.”

“With your grandmother?”

“Is that okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?” He rubs his chin, avoiding my eyes.

“Why doesn’t she ever come to visit you?” I ask.

My father glances at the guard. “She has her reasons.”

I nod, knowing he can’t say any more, but wondering what reasons she could possibly have.

“She put you to work yet?”

“She has me and Wade tearing down the barn.”

“Tearin’ down the barn! Why?” he asks.

“She uses the wood to make signs she sells at the church.”

“Is that the reason?” His voice is tighter than a hangman’s knot.

“I think she might be looking for something,” I say.

My father takes a long, slow breath. “She won’t like it if she finds it.”

“In that case, if I find anything, I’ll just keep it to myself.”

“Good.”

“Time’s up,” says the guard.

“Promise me you’ll come back tomorrow,” says my father.

A tornado couldn’t stop me from being at the prison first thing in the morning, but all I can manage to say is, “I’ll try.” I’ve learned how easy it is for plans to turn out different from what you expect.