American Rust

1. Grace

Harris had arrested Billy that morning and when Grace came home from work all the lights were off in the trailer, everything was just as she’d left it. Billy was not home, was not coming home. Maybe not ever again. She ought to get a fire going in case it got colder that night but she couldn’t bring herself. Couldn’t bring herself to get up from the chair. At first she’d been sure nothing would happen to him—blind mother hope all that was. An inability to face the truth. She would have to get used to this new feeling. Thought you were making big compromises but that was nothing compared to what’s coming.

She had always thought—she didn’t know why but her whole life she had thought that eventually, someone would come along and look after her the way she had looked after other people: her own mother, Virgil, Billy. So far that had not happened. It did not look to be happening anytime soon. Seemed that she had made this one bad decision out of love, she had been unwilling to give up Virgil, been unwilling to move away from him, to a place her son might have become a different person, and the consequence was that she had now lost Billy.

All for Virgil. Billy ending up this way, her bad choices all around. Your three semesters of college—how long was it before you stopped reminding people of that? That was dropped for him as well—Virgil—he couldn’t make the bills on his own. And resented you for going to school, always asking when it would pay off. Even that early sign you ignored. I was twenty- two, she thought. With a young child and the Valley in a depression. It was a miracle I was able to do any of that at all. Looking back she thought she had been a braver person then. Another thing that had been chipped away. All the things you needed to know in life—you didn’t learn them until you’d already made your decisions. For better and worse you were shaped by the people around you. Virgil had undercut her, a gradual erosion, the way the river undercut its banks. He had convinced her to stop educating herself, he’d convinced her to take a job she hated, because at some point he had realized that his wife might be manipulated into supporting his life of ease. A minor miracle given their surroundings, but he had pulled it off, at the cost of his wife and now his son. All it took was lying nearly daily about looking for work and, in the periods in which he did work, cashing his paycheck himself rather than bringing the entire thing home. She always remembered being stunned at tax time by how much money Virgil made on paper—very little of it ever seemed to come back to the family.

It made her sick now to think about it. The fault rested squarely on her shoulders, she couldn’t push it off on Virgil. She should have seen through him. It just hadn’t occurred to her that anyone could be so manipulative.

And there was Harris. He had offered himself numerous times and she had lost interest and, now that he wasn’t interested, she was sick over Harris again. She didn’t want to admit those things but they were true, it was some rule of human nature—you want most whatever you can’t have. Virgil had always kept her unsure about his feelings, always inserting some sliver of doubt, she had always been the one chasing. Bud Harris had simply made his feelings clear.

She felt sick to her stomach thinking about it. She had done this to herself, to Billy. Deep breath. Of course it wasn’t fair. Your entire life’s work, that child. But she was not that old. She could expect another thirty, thirty- five years. It was all your outlook. She needed to have her own goals again. She would have to stop living for others. Since Billy making his choice to stick around Buell she’d spent most of her free time worried sick about him and in those years she’d forgotten to look after herself. It really had been her downfall. Other mothers had sons as well, they managed. Maybe it was just the rollercoaster Billy had put her on. Up and down and up again. Now down. But he didn’t do it on purpose. It was just who he was.

She needed to collect herself. You could not live for other people. Christ, she thought, I shouldn’t be thinking these things right now. But there was no choice. Billy had done what he’d done, and nothing could change it. She would have to go on living.

There was orange juice and a bottle of vodka and she made a tall screwdriver. She could not afford a lawyer, not any of the good ones. If she stopped making payments on the house it was possible but it would take her several months to save the money. By then it would be too late. She would have to trust Harris. The public defender. She shook her head. She would stop making payments anyway. Bank the money. Lose the place if she had to but you couldn’t leave your son to the public defender. You might as well just skip the trial if you did that.

Don’t make decisions before you have to, she thought. She went out to the back porch, taking the bottle of vodka and the orange juice with her, watched the sky get darker and sipped her drink. How long had it been—three years—it seemed like yesterday, she’d been talking to Harriet, the director of the shelter, about what you had to do to get a job as a counselor. Or social worker, she wasn’t sure. They’d sat down, the two of them, and written it all down. School, that was what it came down to. It was a hurdle and you had to jump it. It’s simple, Harriet told her, you get some letters after your name. BA, MA, whatever. Until then, you’ll be scratching in the dirt. A master’s especially. She must have seen the look on Grace’s face because she smiled and shrugged. Hey, we get old whether we do these things or not. Either way, we get old.

Time for a refill. The sky was dark and the stars were coming out, one by one. She remembered Virgil turning to her, it was Billy’s senior year during a football game, Billy had just scored for the Eagles. We did a good job raising him, didn’t we? That was what Virgil had said. That was when her eyes began to be opened—there had been no we involved in raising Billy. She had borne the burden from day one and until that moment at the football stadium, she had presumed that Virgil understood that—throwing a football to your kid an hour a week did not count as raising him. At any rate, that moment in the bleachers, that was when she’d begun to fall out of love with Virgil, though it had taken three more years to fully resolve. It gave her some satisfaction that Billy now hated his father. You can be a small person sometimes, she thought.

Where would you be if you’d taken Bud Harris up on his offer—six years into a government job, guaranteed retirement, health, pension. Billy would have grown up in the city, away from all this. No, she thought, you couldn’t. Not when it was handed to you like that, you couldn’t take it.

You got your hopes too high. Not for yourself, but for Billy. Thought he could be something he is not. But of course it was always like that. Love always blocked your view of the truth. And now…

Whatever happens, she thought. You are going to do your best and that’s all. She sat there like that and cried for a while. Enough, she finally thought. Get up. No more drinking. She pitched the vodka bottle over the porch railing and into the yard.

A truck came up the road then, she saw the headlights and then it pulled into the driveway, wondered who it was and stumbled over the step going back into the house. Harris was standing there out front, in his uniform.

He saw she’d been crying and he opened his arms and she leaned into him.

“You want to come inside?”

“I thought I better tell you some things first.”

She closed her eyes and knew it would be bad.

“It’s standard procedure in big cases like this but they took him to Fayette. Also I made him shave and get cleaned up for the mugshot but most likely his picture will be in the paper tomorrow.”

“How does it look?”

“It’s not in our favor. Not unless he starts telling us what happened.”

“Fayette is the new one,” she said. She forced herself to say it: “The one where all those guards got stabbed.”

“Billy knows how to take care of himself. He’s a big boy and they won’t mess with him much, even in a place like that.”

“Can we get him out of there?”

“The DA has all the say in where he goes, given the charge.”

“I wish I’d voted for Cecil Small now.”

“Me, too,” said Harris.

“It’s all a big game to them, isn’t it? They’ve got no idea what they really do to people.”

“No,” said Harris. “I don’t think any of them do.”

She’d set her drink down on the porch rail and she picked it up and finished it.

“This isn’t your fault. You did more than anyone could.”

She shrugged. “I made one bad decision but I made it every day.”

“Some people go their whole lives like that.”

“I guess.”

“What are you drinking,” he said.

“Screwdriver.”

It was quiet for a second.

“Do you want one?” she said.

“Do you have anything for grownups?”

“Not really.”

“In that case I’ll have one.”

“I have to find the bottle. I just tossed it into the yard.”

“I’ll get it,” he said, laughing. They went into the house and Harris took out his flashlight and went out back and returned a few seconds later with the bottle. Then he stood looking out the back window, or maybe just looking at their reflections, as she made the drinks.

“Get your tomatoes in yet?”

She nodded.

“I’ll get mine in soon, I hope.”

She nodded and looked at him. He took a sip of his drink and smiled at her. He was average height, average everything, he looked small standing there in the kitchen in his uniform. But that was not the impression he gave to others, in a room full of people everyone gave him a berth, it was a way he’d learned to act. But right now, even wearing his gunbelt, he was just himself. That was the thing about Harris—he was happy to drop his act. It was the difference between him and Virgil, who was always judging things, sizing you up, even when he was smiling. That was another thing which had never occurred to her before.

“I feel like an idiot for all those things I said yesterday,” she said. “I was upset but I know it doesn’t excuse them.”

“I feel like that every morning.” He grinned. “We can sit down.” They went into the living room to the couch, she sat down on one end and he sat somewhere near the middle.

“You can slide over here if you want.”

He did and they sat quietly for a while and held hands. He adjusted his gunbelt so it wasn’t pressing into her and closed his eyes and laid his head on her shoulder. His body went slack as if they had just made love. It was dark but they didn’t turn on the lights. She had looked at him. A good- looking man in his way, his long face that changed expressions so easily. He might have made a good clown, he could exaggerate the shape of his face that way, he was a funny person. She ran her hand over the smooth top of his head, the short soft hair on the sides and back. Plenty of men his age would have grown it long, combed it over to hide their bald spot. He trimmed it himself once a week with clippers. As if he had nothing to hide. She’d once suggested he shave it all off, like the cop on that cable show, but he’d dismissed that as vanity.

Maybe it’s just your body telling you to do this, knowing you need someone to take care of you. Just the body being practical. Not the heart. But that was not the way it felt. Her neck was tingling where his breath touched it and the feeling was running down her body. She put her hand on his belt but he lifted it away.

“Because you’re on the clock?” she said.

“I’m still waiting to be convinced why it should work now when it’s never worked before.”

“You came over, though.”

“I seem to be here.”

“We can try again.”

She put her hand on his lap a second time.

“I wonder sometimes if you know you’re not being fair.”

“I don’t mean it.”

“I know. That doesn’t make it any better.”

He gently slid away from her, then stood up in the dark trailer. She found herself looking at his pants, just beneath his belt, and he noticed her looking.

“Christ, Grace,” he said. He started laughing.

“I’m unstoppable.”

“Maybe.” He looked around at things, but mostly out the windows. He cleared his throat. “Let’s just give it a couple days or something. Let you take it easy awhile.”

“Alright,” she said.

“I’ll see you.” He leaned and kissed her forehead and then walked out.

She listened to him go, his light steps across the porch, then the sound of him driving away. She knew she should turn on the light but she didn’t want to, she was content just lying there like that in the dark, she could still smell his aftershave lotion in the room, feel where he’d touched her. It seemed the first time in weeks, no months, that she’d really felt hope.

2. Poe

His cell it was a very small place, a narrow rectangle, the front side was open but there were bars. Like a dog cage. A horizontal slit for a window, too small to squeeze through, he tried to figure out what direction it was, where he was facing in relation to the river and his mother’s trailer, to Lee’s bed or the couch on her porch. Except no. It would only depress him further, those things—they did not really exist for him anymore. He wondered if Lee would come to his trial, even that he couldn’t be sure of and Christ this thin mattress he couldn’t sleep, he didn’t even have a magazine, eventually his mind would turn in on itself. Inevitable as tides. A turning in. A padded cell, smearing himself with excrement.

He would make a belt for his pants. He sat up and after a minute he was able to tear a long strip from his bedsheet, thread it through the loops of his pants, it would be serviceable, a good belt, like a pirate. Then he was done and once more there was nothing to do.

It was noisy in the cellblock, the televisions were off but there was music playing from every direction, little radios, people banging on metal, conversations shouted across the cellblock, he listened to them they were completely pointless such as Yo Dee what up?, the reply inevitable: Coolin or A’ight. Things that did not need to be said. Talk for the sake of talk. He had always hated that, there could be silence it was golden. Or had he? He didn’t know. But he hated it now it was under his skin he was very irritated, physically, by the noise. Only it gave him something to focus on, the noise, it was good, annoying but good, he crushed his thin pillow onto his face to make it quieter. He would mind his business. He would suffocate himself. He took the pillow off his face. That would be his rule he would mind his own business, there could be a murder going on and he would mind his business. He was a big man and they would leave him alone.

It began to die down around midnight, though it might have been ten at night or three in the morning, he didn’t know. They’d taken his watch. Finally a small amount of morning light came in and he heard footsteps and keys jangling and then his door clicked open. He saw the face of another young CO, a young face with a sparse mustache, trying to look hard.

“They serve breakfast for an hour,” the guard told him. “If you wanna eat you better get your ass moving.”

He had forgotten he had been hungry all night and now he realized he had no idea where breakfast would be served. He knew better than to ask, he would have to find it himself He got up and dressed quickly. That was good making the belt last night, he thought, that was good preparation, from the cell next to him came the sound of a person noisily moving his bowels, it did not sound healthy. Everyone crapped basically in plain view, there was a small curtain you could draw but that was it.

Get to breakfast, he thought.

His cell was on the second floor, along a cement catwalk that ran down the length of the tier. There were steps at the end. It was high enough on the tier, fifteen or twenty feet maybe, you would not want to get thrown off. He wondered why they hadn’t put a bigger railing up. But then it was probably a help if they got rid of a convict that way, it was all about numbers, available spaces, for instance they had reopened the old prison near Pittsburgh, the one they had closed after they opened this one. They’d decided they wanted to lock up more people so they reopened the old prison and started to use it again, and now they had two.

Down on the main floor of the cellblock he followed the general direction of traffic. They were all looking at him but no one said anything, maybe it was too early for comments. In the wide main corridor the people poured in from the different cellblocks and there was a traffic jam of bodies, a backup. He stared straight ahead, up at the glaring fluorescent lights, he stared at the brightly polished linoleum, anywhere there was not a pair of eyes staring back. There was the smell of food and it was not good, it smelled like school lunches only worse.

He reached the cafeteria where it sounded like a riot had broken out, pandemonium was the word for it, whoever wasn’t shouting was talking in their loudest voice, hundreds of inmates, thousands maybe, and not a single guard. But there was no riot. It was business as usual. It was not a good place. It was a place you could get away with anything. He would have to find another spot to eat only it was not like that, there was not a prison restaurant where you could order a steak and have your booth.

There were long institutional tables with the benches attached, most likely so they could not be used as weapons. As for the room itself it was segregated by race, blacks in one area of the room, Hispanics in another, the voices of young men shouting over each other. The whites were visibly a minority, a quieter group, they appeared to be older as well.

In the white area three men were sitting alone at one end of a long table, they were clearly running things, they varied in size but they were all big men and equally sleeved with tattoos. One had a shaved head but a sort of open friendly look about him, another had a black watch cap pulled down to his eyes, the third had a blond pompadour he must have gotten up early to work on. Making a general survey, Poe figured fewer than half the people appeared unusually strong, the others were skinny or pudgy with stringy hair and unhealthy looks, meth- heads, your standard trailer trash. There were plenty of old men as well, just regular-looking old men, men of every age, really. Technically he was trailer trash himself, only he wasn’t. He guessed he would naturally fit in with the better half, the only problem being he had only a football tattoo on one pectoral, over his heart, and another tattoo of his player number on his calf, he wondered about that now, how that would look to the others, he had not known he was going to prison when he’d gotten them. A picture of a knife would have been a better choice, a smoking gun. Or, judging from the tattoos the shotcallers had, something that indicated white power, an eagle, the Nazi SS sign was popular, there was one of Adolf Hitler but you could only tell by the mustache, other than that it could have been anyone, it was one of the stupidest- looking tattoos he had ever seen and the guy would have it the rest of his life.

He picked up a tray and got in line, feeling at ease. He held out his tray and was served two pieces of white bread, eggs from a powder mix, sausage, and green Jell-O, he tried to move the tray to the side but they put the Jell-O right on top of his other food. He took a cup of orange Kool- Aid to wash it down.

Carrying his tray he worried someone might try to trip him but no one did, he found a seat in the white area, at the end of a table by himself. A thin shaggy- haired man smiled and made eye contact with him several times, one of the speed freaks, half his teeth were missing. Poe didn’t acknowledge him. A few others were sitting at the other end of the table, he nodded to the toughest-looking of the group but was ignored.

A black man about Poe’s age came and sat down next to him, he had short dreadlocks, sweatpants, flip- flops, and a torn T-shirt, he might have just come from a workout, he looked like someone you’d see in the gym. He didn’t seem worried about anything. He had crossed the invisible line that denoted the white area of the room so maybe there were exceptions, the three white shotcallers took note but continued their conversation as before.

“ ’Sup,” he said.

“What’s up,” said Poe.

“First day’s a bitch, huh?”

“It’s alright.”

“Dion,” he said. He held his fist out and Poe bumped it and introduced himself

“They probably got a freeze on your account so you won’t be able to get no commissary today, no deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, anything like that.”

Poe immediately got the sense he was about to be hustled. “I don’t need that shit,” he said.

“You like being dirty, huh?”

Poe didn’t say anything.

“Alright, Dirty. You look me up you need anything.” He smiled and held out his fist to be bumped again but Poe knew he’d just been insulted, he went back to his eggs. The whites at the other end of the table looked at Poe as if they expected him to respond and the man looked back as he walked away but Poe didn’t say anything. He began to shovel the food into his mouth, he was getting a feeling, he began to eat as quickly as he could. Everyone smirked and went back to whatever they were doing, and Poe knew that what had happened was very bad, he had just been marked, quick as that.

Another black man came up, crossed the invisible barrier, he was tall and very thick with a scar across his nose and forehead like a pink caterpillar, tattoos all over his arms though Poe could not make them out against his dark skin.

“ ’Sup, Dirty.”

Poe didn’t say anything. There were still no guards in the room. More people were beginning to pay attention.

“Yo, Dirty, gimme one of them sausages.”

Poe moved the tray so the newcomer couldn’t reach it.

“Why thank you,” said the man.

He stood up and reached for Poe’s food tray but Poe slid it farther away. Then he put his face in Poe’s and laughed loud so his spit went all over Poe’s skin.

“You got a problem, Wood? Don’t want no niggas touchin your food?”

He was talking in a voice so the other side of the room could hear him, the din was quieting down some.

“I got no problem,” said Poe.

It was definitely much quieter, the atmosphere in the room had changed, he was the center of attention. He would have to do something. He was not feeling strong.

“I hope you came up to join your homies in here, baby.”

Poe stared at his plate.

“Oh you don’t know no one, huh? Not a single motherfuckin soul up in this place?”

Poe knew he should hit him but there was a definite racial feeling, the other blacks would jump him, there was no question about it. But he had no choice. He didn’t want to fight, he could feel how scared he was, he had never wanted to fight less in his entire life.

“You know I’ll take care of you,” the man was saying, he softly stroked Poe’s arm and the other side of the room erupted in laughter, even some of the whites were laughing and grinning, the man looked toward his friends to bask in his glory and Poe grabbed him in a headlock and rolled them both to the floor, rolled them so the back of the man’s head hit the cement with the weight of their two bodies behind it.

The man was limp long enough for Poe to lock an arm around him and start punching him with his free hand, he didn’t know how many times he hit him, he wasn’t getting good leverage but it was enough, people were shouting a general encouragement, not for Poe but for the fight itself, he was leaning back and bending the man’s head back with him, the man was punching awkwardly at Poe’s face but it was too late, he had a very strong grip. He had a feeling he could break the neck if he wanted, he smelled sweat and hair oil, he was warm and he felt his strength coming back, the man was completely limp, maybe he’d been limp for a long time, and then someone kicked Poe in the ribs.

It was one of the white guys.

“Get up,” he said.

Poe stood up. There was a crowd of men standing around, black and white only there were more of the black. He thought he’d get rushed but that wasn’t their purpose.

“Fair fight,” one of the white shotcallers was saying.

“Fuck that sucker- punch- ass bullshit,” someone from the black side said. Poe started to get the shakes. It was just from adrenaline and he put his hands in his pockets so no one would see. There was a long awkward moment standing there. All of the white men in that area of the cafeteria were on their feet and finally one of the shotcallers seemed to make a decision, he nodded his head slightly in Poe’s direction and Poe knew he was supposed to follow him. He felt the relief washing over him, it was like a bucket of warm water pouring down him. About a half dozen of the whites, the ones in charge, were headed toward the exit and he fell in step behind them. Then they were heading down the broad corridor between the cellblocks, they went to the end and turned, there was a metal detector ahead of them and metal doors, the men he was following gave a hand signal to some guards behind a Plexiglas window and the doors popped and they were all suddenly outside, in the rec yard in the bright sunshine, and he heard the doors slam shut behind them.

It was warm outside, the sky was very blue and his eyes hurt. There was dirt under his feet. He continued to follow the tall skinhead until they were near the weight pile. The others from the table had followed them. It was very bright and his eyes were still adjusting, through the fences he could see the greenness of the Valley rolling away from him and, in the distance, not quite the river itself but the far bank of it rising up.

They stopped when they reached the weight pile.

“For a second we thought you were gonna get turned out,” said one of them, the one with the shaved head and broad open face, he winked at Poe, the first friendly gesture Poe had felt in days.

The man with the blond pompadour, the leader, added: “You sure took your fuckin time thinking about it.”

The others laughed and Poe wasn’t sure what to do.

“You’ll be alright,” said the blond one. “You got it taken care of.” He grinned. “I’m Larry,” he said, “known also as Black Larry. Call me Black Larry, Larry, I don’t give a fuck, really.”

The other two introduced themselves. Dwayne, the friendly- looking one with the shaved head, and Clovis, who had the hat pulled down over his eyes. Clovis was substantially wider than Poe, he probably weighed three hundred pounds.

Poe looked back to see if they were being followed. The doors to the main building were still closed and there was no one else in the rec yard.

“Do those guys back there run the place?” Poe said.

“Clovis,” said Black Larry, “did our young friend just ask if our black brethren ran this place?”

Clovis made an imperceptible adjustment to his watch cap and said, “Believe he did.”

Black Larry sighed loudly.

“In the first place,” said Clovis, “do you see those little punks anymore, or are they still locked in behind that fuckin door there? In the second place, don’t ask any more stupid fuckin fish questions.”

“Sorry,” said Poe. “I just got here.”

“We fuckin know that,” said Clovis.

“I haven’t even had my trial yet.”

“Listen to this guy,” said Clovis.

“That isn’t something you want to go around telling people,” said Dwayne. “Other than us.”

“Sorry,” Poe said again. He felt like he was screwing up, he was not sure what he should say. He would be quiet.

“It’s fine,” Black Larry said. “You’re among friends.”

“But you need to buck the hell up,” said Clovis. “Everyone’s gonna be heart- checkin you until you get rid of that mopey- dope fuckin face. It doesn’t matter how you fight if you walk around looking like a goddamn clown.”

The other two nodded.

“Alright,” said Poe. “I hear you.”

“He hears us,” said Clovis.

“He does,” said Poe. “Loud and clear.” He grinned and the others smiled, except for Clovis, who shook his head.

“Me and him need to take a walk,” said Dwayne, “so he can get his hands washed. That one’s got the fuckin ninja.”

“Little Man does?” said Black Larry.

“For sure.”

“Who’s Little Man?”

“The one you hit. He’s got the bug.”

Poe must have had a look.

“AIDS,” said Dwayne. He motioned for Poe to hold his hands out and he held them almost tenderly and looked at them, they were cut and there was blood drying but he couldn’t tell whose it was.

“You got any soap,” said Dwayne.

“No.”

“I’ll give you some from my cell.”

Black Larry said: “After that he needs to keep his head down a while. Least till we get this worked out with the DCs.”

Dwayne nodded. He started walking but Poe was standing rigidly, he was not going to follow an enormous tattooed skinhead back to a prison cell and all the men burst out laughing.

“Don’t fuckin worry,” Dwayne said. “I ain’t tryin to stick anything up yer butt.”

Dwayne had a cell to himself, three rugs on the floor, and a blue curtain with a design of the Virgin Mary. It was on the end of the block so there was light from the window in the cell and light from the big window in the corridor.

“Got that out of the hospice,” he said about the curtain.

As Poe washed his hands he smelled lavender. It was not prison soap. It smelled like a soap Lee might use and he washed his hands a second time. “How’s all this shit get in here.”

“About ten million ways,” said Dwayne. “Visitors, COs, they leave and come back at least once a day.”

Poe must have made a face because Dwayne continued:

“They make eighteen grand a year. Offer them a couple thousand to bring something in, there ain’t many that’s gonna turn that down.”

“Except if they get caught it comes back on you.”

“I’m doing life three times,” Dwayne said. “What are they gonna do to me?”

Later that afternoon he was back in his own cell. They had told him to stay in it until they came and got him the next morning, so he would sleep with his feet to the bars and head by the toilet where it was safe, where no one could reach and put a cord around his neck. A meager light came into the cell, the window was made of the same cheap plastic as the one in the police station, clouded yellow by the sun, the parts ordered and built by the same contractor, probably, getting rich hand over fist. Somewhere there were barons of prisons as there had once been barons of steel.

Down on the main floor of the cellblock it was Jerry Springer on the televisions again, aunts who screw nephews, something like that, maybe not exactly but that’s why people watched those shows, for the hope of it, he’d watched them himself but now they seemed distasteful. The inmates were shouting encouragement. He noticed he’d started not to hear it, the noise. His stomach was torn up, he was probably hungry again, even the little bit of breakfast he’d eaten had disagreed with him violently. He was glad he’d been alone when it happened. Even eating the food he’d known it would happen, it would make him sick, come out before its time at one end or the other. But what choice did he have—he had to eat. That was his problem he had pampered himself His whole life he had taken it easy, it was his problem and downfall, the opportunities he’d had, he always took the easy way, and now this, even his picki-ness over food, even this was going to hurt him, he needed energy he would have to eat. He would need a shower soon as well, he was not looking forward to it, the shower room. It was not possible that it could be a good place. Except he still smelled like Lee, he would be washing that off as well, he wondered if he could save it somehow but there was no way, smells they came and went you could not save them, it was not like a picture you could make in your mind that you could refer to over and over.

Dwayne had said someone would bring him food from the commissary, he knew it cost money. They had not asked him for money but he was not stupid, it would not be free whatever they gave him. He did not have any choice about it. As far as he knew he had every gang in the prison after him. Dwayne and Black Larry said they would settle things up for him, they would make peace, they just needed him out of the way while they did it. Backdoor agreements, he couldn’t tell, he would have to trust them. The week he’d done in the county jail, it was not the same, it was guys in for DUI, small things, it was people going back to their regular lives but not here, these people lived here, it was their world.

But that attitude did not help anything. It was not how you won games or fights, it was not how you won anything. It was another problem of his, his outlook. He was doing just fine. Thriving, practically. It would all work out, there was no reason to be pessimistic, he was not even here for good, he would get out, this was only the prosecutor trying to break him, he was not here for good, he was sure of it. It would be an interlude, a story he would tell in the bars. He was not the same as these people, it would all be figured out, there was no point in thinking otherwise.

3. Isaac

He had no idea how long he’d been on the train, he’d watched the powerlines hurdling up and down until the motion made him sick. Several times they’d pulled over, sat waiting on stub lines as other trains passed, hours, it seemed, he was restless and bored but there was no point to getting off—it was days trying to get on.

Later they were alongside a highway and going fast, the train passing cars. There were so many noises he couldn’t separate them, the hammering of the tracks and banging of the couplers and the rushing wind and then the brakes were grating, deafening, the car behind him lurched forward, it would crush him, then all the cars were bouncing and recoiling and the shock nearly jolted him off the platform, under the wheels.

Pay attention. Nearly got lulled to pieces. The ride’s either pleasant or miserable. No, it’s mostly boring. Nice in the wide open, see a long way out over the hills, other times just a cut through the trees, wall of green in front of your face, claustrophobic. Tunnels the worst.

Think about Poe, what’s he doing now? Probably screwing your sister. Or passed out drunk somewhere. Still, he came into the river after you—you can’t change that. And he came along on your little caper. Right, and then he started that fight. Would have been better off alone.

He shifted positions again, the platform was very small and not long enough for his legs, it seemed there wasn’t any part of him that wasn’t cramped or bruised. He climbed the ladder and sat on top of the mound of coal, it was a good view, highest point on the train, he could see the Baron up there as well, seven or eight cars ahead, sitting on a coal pile and watching the scenery. A good feeling. Cold though. Be better in summer. After a time he went back down the ladder and crawled into the narrow slot in the back of the car, where there was no wind. It was a small triangular space between the inside angle of the hopper and the outside shell of the car. It was filthy and he could feel the grit everywhere but he was warm again. Look like a coal miner, probably. Wrap the sleeping bag around you. Safest sleep there is—can’t get you on a moving train. Last time your head was clear? Months. Eat some. He opened a tin of Vienna sausages and ate them, spitting the grit that stuck to his fingers. He wasn’t sure if he felt better or not and he drank more water.

He woke up sometime later. Sore. No room to stretch. Getting dark now, been on this train an entire day. Could be anywhere, just trees going by. England France or Germany. Imagine it’s that instead of… Ohio probably. Unless we’re to Michigan by now. No way to know until we get there—everything you’re seeing is new. Appreciate that while it lasts.

Sleeping or awake, no difference. Gray area between them. Dull blue light from the porthole and the view of the car behind you. Noise of the train, vibration, you’re a part of it, rattling. Meat tenderizing. Forgive us our daily softness. Pitch black again—another tunnel. Make you deaf— plug your ears. Pray it ends soon—the fumes. Long enough tunnel you’ll suffocate. Short tunnel, please. The fumes got worse and worse yet and his eyes began to burn. He put his head outside the porthole, over the platform—worst yet. Pass out here and you don’t wake up. Suicide gas breather. Make sure if you fall asleep you stay away from the wheels. Safer in here.

Then, suddenly, it was bright again and quiet. Get outside before… He hung his head out the portal, the wall of green passing next to the train, breathed the clean air and vomited. What is that? A dollar fifty in sausage. Dog food. And you ate that on purpose.

Curling up with his head at the edge of the porthole, he rested on his pack so he could see the trees going by outside. Much darker now, ten minutes till night. The life they all live. Alternative must not be good. What the Swede came from, reason they were so angry when they found you in that old building. Their simple pleasures being taken away.

That’s right, he thought, more guilt. Take a lesson from the old man: don’t admit you might have been wrong. Lie to yourself and discover true happiness. Lee and Poe the same. An addiction, really, needs its own hotline. No, he thought, the kid should take note. There’s gold in them hills. The original business model. Offer forgiveness. Lie cheat and steal and the kid will forgive you. All welcome at the Church of the Kid. Follow his instructions to get to the afterlife. Sixteen virgins and a harpsichord. Your felonies pardoned whether man woman or child. Faith the only requirement—believers go forth and commit. Find forgiveness in reflection. Shine of the collection plate.

He thought about the Swede again. I’m not worried about that anymore, he told himself. Give me water and light and I’ll knock down a temple. Jesus Christ? No, a hayseed. Light life and love. The old man who said he never liked my name—sounded Jewish. My mother the one who insisted. I am the Truth and the Light. I am the truth in a knife. Trajectory of a thrown object across level ground: y-axis 9.8 meters per second squared, x-axis zero, initial velocity twenty- five meters per second, release angle fifteen degrees. Presuming no air resistance. Presuming flight uninterrupted by a man’s head.

You are going crazy, he thought. Young man you have plugged Science into the hole left by God. Your mother had the opposite problem: plugged God into a hole left by… Except she took the secret with her. Chose the next world over this one. A slight flaw in her plan—where is she now? Just darkness. If that is what nonexistence is.

He stayed like that for a long time, looking out at the trees rushing past, afraid to touch his eyes and get dirt into them. Keep going, he thought, wash your eyes out. Outside now it was fully dark.

4. Harris

He’d gotten the call from Glen Patacki at lunchtime. Bud, Glen Patacki here, long time no see. Why don’t we have a drink on my boat this afternoon?

Glen was twenty years older than Harris, the local justice of the peace, the one who’d put in a word for Billy Poe last time. He’d been chief for much of the time Harris was a sergeant, one of the first people Harris met when he moved to Buell. This was the first social call in eight or nine months. The timing is no accident, thought Harris.

Driving up and down the steep hills, all woods and farmers’ fields, the sudden ravines and valleys, so much hidden away, you could get to the highest promenade around and still not be able to see half of what was in front of you, the land was so tucked in on itself. Everything green, swamps in the lowlands.

Ho had dropped the morning paper on his desk, Billy Poe’s picture on the front page, a story made for newspapers, football star turns murderer. It was the sort of story people couldn’t help wanting to read. By tonight, he guessed, there would be few people in Buell, or maybe the entire Mon Valley, who hadn’t seen or heard about it.

He downshifted into third gear coming down the long hill so as not to overheat his brakes. He could remember clearly when he’d had ten years left till his pension kicked in but now he was down to eighteen months. Counting down the end of your life. Hoping things will go by faster. He wondered if everyone was like that, he wondered if, say, doctors or lawyers thought the same things. He was fifty- four now, forty when he’d made chief, the youngest in the history of the town, the youngest in the whole Valley, it was Don Cunko who got him voted in, along with a big push from folks such as Glen Patacki. At the time they’d had fourteen full- time guys and maybe six part- timers. Now those numbers were reversed.

Harris was nineteen when he’d joined the marines, put down law enforcement as his preferred MOS and now, thirty- five years later, here he was, riding out a decision he’d made as a kid. I enjoy my life, he thought. It is work to be happy about things. She is the one who taught you that. Maybe the fact that you had to work at being happy meant it wasn’t the natural condition. But he had no excuse. If you had a certain level of comfort, which he did, you just had to decide every morning. Will today be a happy day or a sad day? Listen to that shit, he thought. The only one you’d ever say that to is Fur.

He could imagine himself following Grace until he was old with wandering, he knew he would be comfortable with that. Never close enough to get really burned, or to lose anything. Keeping her just over the next hill. The feeling for her preventing him from finding anyone else. In her own way, she was his even keel.

It was not her fault, to have someone like Billy Poe dependent on her; it had really taken a toll. Don’t get too sympathetic, he thought. But it was true. He got worried sick about Fur if the dog was gone too long on one of his runs.

He saw the sign for the marina and went down a long green road under a tunnel of trees. How long had he lived here? Twenty- three years. Before that it was six years with the Philadelphia PD and four as an MP in the marines. He had not planned any of it, he’d enlisted because it was better than getting drafted and the number he pulled made being drafted a certainty. Someone told him MPs were less likely to get sent out on suicide missions by shitbag second lieutenants, not to mention you’d end up coming out, if indeed you came out, with a skill you could actually use.

Coming into the parking lot there was Glen Patacki’s black Lincoln, a judge’s car, freshly waxed. There were those who waxed their cars and those who didn’t. Below that, there were those who washed their cars and those who didn’t. Harris being the latter.

Glen was waiting on his boat, he waved from a distance as soon as he saw Harris come out onto the green by the water. A thirty- eight- foot Carver, twin 454 Crusaders. A yacht, as river boats went. Harris had his own slot but his boat, a nineteen- foot Valiant, had been out of the water three years now. One of these days he would sell it. Owning a boat was like having a second dog, except a boat didn’t love you for sinking half your paycheck into it.

“Christ what a day, isn’t it?” said Glen. He waved his arm, indicating their surroundings. “Couple miles upriver, you’d never know it.”

It was a different world. As wooded as Buell was, the southern Mon Valley was beyond the reach of industry. Just trees, branches hanging low over the water and the slow muddy river itself. Quiet, the occasional passing boat, sometimes a tow of barges.

Harris climbed onto the boat. Glen motioned him to sit.

“Bud, to cut the bullshit, the reason I asked you out here is I got the guy from the Valley Independent sniffing around, asking about any warrants.”

“On what?”

“Anything we might have forgotten to file the seal order on. He’s sniffing around, is the point, on anything that might look even worse on this Billy Poe murder.”

“There isn’t anything to find. If that’s the only reason you dragged me all the way out to Millsboro.”

“I missed you, baby,” said Glen. “You know that’s the real reason.”

“I know.”

“The other thing that’s been crossing my mind recently is that I’m not much longer for this job. I thought we might discuss that.”

Harris looked at him.

“I’m fine,” said Patacki. “It’s only that I’ve made my nut and I was thinking that when I retire, you might consider running for my spot. It’d be a good thing for you.”

“Never thought about it.”

“Never?”

“Not really.”

“That’s the beautiful thing about you, Bud. I could have told ten different people that same thing and all of them would be sucking my dick right now.”

“I better have a drink first.”

“Sure. You know where they’re kept.”

Harris reached next to him into the cooler and found a High Life.

“From a professional advice standpoint, and, in having a few years on you, I wonder if it might be better if you stayed clear of Billy Poe vis-à-vis this thing in the newspaper,” said Patacki. “Which includes his mother as well.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, you fat prick.”

“The only thing that gives me any hope is I hear that the case against him is airtight.”

“I did those things for his mother, not him. I always knew he was a lost cause.”

Patacki grinned. “You know you made it harder on yourself, not marrying. People want their public servants to act normal. Not have any vices. Like me.”

“I hear you,” said Harris. “You know I appreciate you going out of your way for me last year. Sorry it’s coming back to bite you.”

“No, Bud, you’re doing alright, I’m just an old drunk and I got worried, not to mention I had a martini powwow with that pussy Huck Cramer and he got me all in a lather.”

Huck Cramer was the mayor of Buell, and, like Don Cunko, he was caught up in the town’s sewer- bidding problem. “Cramer might have other things he ought to be worrying about.”

“Keep in mind that your job is an appointed position, Bud. You end up taking your pension down there in Daniel Boone County, I give you a year before you eat your gun. You’re a social animal same as the rest of us.”

Harris shrugged.

“I don’t envy you, I know that. I heard about the goddamn budget, which I know means more of these part- time fucks.”

“It’s the benefits,” said Harris.

“I can’t even get your guys to write tickets anymore, half of them are working twenty- four hours straight, they pull a shift in Charleroi, head down to Buell, then finish up in Brownsville. Meanwhile they live in Greene County. No clue as far as the communities they’re policing.”

“They’re not supposed to work more than twelve straight.”

“To be honest I don’t care what they do,” said Patacki. “As long as they write goddamn tickets. Even ten years ago I did six thousand cases a year, now I’m down to forty- three hundred. My office takes in four hundred and fifty thousand dollars where it used to take in over eight hundred. There’s your budget cut right there. Hell, we used to take in one hundred thousand a year just from parking tickets, but now the girl we got working the meters, she’s hardly ever out there.”

“It’s all just symptoms anyway.”

Patacki nodded and checked his watch. “Late for my shot,” he said. “You mind?” He pulled his briefcase over and opened it and found a small syringe, then lifted his shirt and gave himself an injection into the pale skin on his belly. He smiled at Harris, slightly embarrassed. “They told me all this booze is probably what brought on the diabetes, but…”

“How’s a man supposed to live?”

“My sentiments exactly.” He took another sip of his drink. “Let me give you a scenario I’ve been turning over in my head. What if, before all those properties got bought up and turned into HUD, we’d just burned them down, say around 1985, every vacant house in the city had been razed before all those people moved in. If you think about it, by now half the city would be all back to woods. The tax base would be exactly the same but with half as many people and none of the new problems.”

“Those HUD properties bought Danny Carroll his condos in Colorado and Miami. Without him…” Harris shrugged. “There’s your problem right there.”

Patacki nodded. “A fact I find convenient to ignore, obviously.”

“Which is not how I meant it.”

“No offense taken.” He put up his hand. “Everyone knows you’re a good man, Bud. Most of the guys running things are like John Dietz, skimming quarters off the video poker machines. But you,” he said.

“That’s not my angle.”

“Your angle is Grace Poe. That’s your slippery slope.”

“Not this again.”

“Do you still see her?”

Harris looked away, out over the river. It suddenly occurred to him that the Fayette prison, where they were holding Billy Poe, was in La Belle, just on the other side of the water. Less than a mile, probably.

“You should have been here for the seventies, Bud. The department was buying new cruisers with Corvette engines maybe every three years. And then came the eighties, and then it wasn’t just that we lost all those jobs, it was that people didn’t have anything to be good at anymore.” He shrugged. “There’s only so good you can be about pushing a mop or emptying a bedpan. We’re trending backwards as a nation, probably for the first time in history, and it’s not the kids with the green hair and the bones through their noses. Personally I don’t care for it, but those things are inevitable. The real problem is the average citizen does not have a job he can be good at. You lose that, you lose the country.”

“Did the wife stop talking to you or something?”

“I’m old and fat,” said Patacki. “I speculate and theorize.”

“You ought to drink more,” said Harris. “Or get an intern.”

“I do. And I should.”

It was quiet for a minute. There were other people sitting on their boats, watching the quiet scene, the shorelines and the sun coming off the water, drinking like Patacki and Harris. Many of the boats never left the dock—gas was too expensive. People drove to the marina to sit and drink on their boats, then went home without ever starting them up.

“Who’s getting the axe?” said Patacki.

“Haggerton. Also Miller and Borkowski.”

“The new guy?”

“He does more policework than the rest of the department put together.”

“Except Miller and Borkowski are lieutenants.”

“Just Miller,” said Harris. “Borkowski keeps failing the exam. Not to mention the new guy does half his work off the clock.”

“You’ll have problems with the union.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“This the Chinese guy?”

Harris nodded.

“I can tell you like him,” said Patacki. “That’s a good thing.”

“I guess.”

“Permit me a final indulgence, Bud.”

“How final?”

“I would like to tell you about the best job I ever worked.”

“Why do I suspect that it’s Magisterial District Eight?”

“Not even close. It was the Sealtest Dairy making ice cream. Sixty-four to sixty- seven, before I became a cop. This big building, it could have been a mill or something, only you would punch in and change into fresh clothes, then walk under a blue light before you were allowed to touch anything. You were never allowed to get dirty. Big buckets of pistachios and fresh fruit, peaches, cherries, anything you could imagine, mixing it up in the machines. You’ve probably never seen ice cream before it gets frozen, but I promise you there isn’t anything like it.” Patacki sipped his drink. “It really was like heaven, just being in there. You’d finish each batch and then take the barrels into the hardener to stack and sometimes, because of the humidity from the door always opening and closing, it would be snowing in the hardening room, ice cream stacked to the ceiling and it would be snowing down on you in the middle of the summer. You’re making ice cream, it’s snowing on you, and you look outside and it’s ninety degrees and sunny. I’d take that job again right now if they offered it. It really was like heaven.”

Patacki reached into the cooler and took a handful of ice and refreshed his glass. Then he splashed more gin into it. “Have you seen that lime?”

“I never would have known,” said Harris. He handed Patacki a lime quarter.

“I’m worried that you’re going down a road, was my point, where maybe you better think if you got one of those jobs you wouldn’t mind going back to. Unless it’s already worse than I’ve heard.”

“It’s not worse,” said Harris.

“No?”

But he knew. Patacki could see right through him. He nodded but it was only kindness.

“It will always get worse, old friend. Good deeds will not go unpunished.”

5. Poe

On his third day he walked out to the yard following Dwayne, it was full of convicts, alone, in small and large groups, pacing in circles, all with something different on their minds, planning how to improve their positions in life, all that could be gotten had to be taken from another. Nonetheless the DC Blacks stuck to their side and Poe was happy to stay on his. The sun was high and the guards looked down from their towers, M16s against their hips or some other rifle, he wasn’t sure, no it was M16s, it would be a massacre if they ever wanted it, they could turn it on like water. Beyond the double forty-foot fences and razor wire the Valley was still there in all its greenness but he no longer knew what to make of it, it was a different place to him now.

There was a hierarchy at the weight pile, the shotcallers and their lieutenants pumping out squats and dips and hanging out against the fences while a few dozen yard rats, the meth- heads and assorted trailer folk, they maintained a sort of perimeter, ran errands, occasionally stood close together so as to block a happening from the view of the guards. Poe was in the inner circle with Black Larry and the others, there were maybe seven or eight other men. But his position was tenuous, he could tell he was on a trial run, that was all, he was careful to laugh along with the others and get angry when they did. Once in a while a person who was not part of the group would come in to use the weight pile and one of the lieutenants would take their name down on a piece of paper.

“Nonmembers pay ten a day” said Clovis.

Poe looked at him.

“Least they got an option,” Clovis said. “The ones over there—” He pointed to the weight pile run by the DC Blacks. “You go anywhere near there they’ll start tossing weights at you, they brained a fuckin fish a few months back, a thirty- pounder right in the temple.”

“Bunch of Olympians,” said Poe.

“That’s about all they are,” said Clovis. He tapped his head.

They worked out on and off the entire day, they worked out more than Poe ever had when he played football. With the exception of Poe, everyone in the inner circle was covered with tattoos, full sleeves on both arms and assorted larger tattoos across backs and chests, vultures or eagles or some imaginary bird Poe couldn’t make out. Clovis’s triceps said white on one arm and power on the other. Dwayne had an eagle like many of the others, the wings spanning his shoulderblades. Black Larry had a pair of jokers on his chest and there was a good deal of writing on his abdomen that Poe didn’t feel comfortable looking at closely enough to make out. Most had thick ropy scars scattered randomly. Most of the men were ten or fifteen years older than he was but he was not going to ask, it was not a place where asking questions was rewarded.

One of the yard rats gave him a handrolled cigarette, he smoked it and it was disgusting, it was salvaged half- smoked tobacco. Dwayne saw him smoking it and shook his head and offered him a cigarette from a package. Poe gave the rollie back to the peckerwood, who brushed at it carefully and then finished smoking it. There was a general flow of people paying respects, a group of Latinos who seemed aligned with the Brotherhood, their leader and Black Larry went off and talked alone for a long time. Occasionally, a visitor would surreptitiously let something fall to the dirt. Later, the item would be retrieved.

Black Larry turned to Poe, who had just finished another set of curls and was sitting on the bench eating a candy bar and drinking a soda.

“We need to get you out of those state- issued trousers,” said Black Larry. He sized Poe up. “Look at them curly locks. One handsome, David Hasselhoff-lookin motherfucker, ain’t he?”

The others nodded their agreement though a few of the younger lieutenants were clearly only doing so out of respect for Black Larry, they were not particularly happy about Poe’s existence.

“Him and Dwayne can fight it out for king stud.”

Dwayne grinned.

“Dwayne there got caught banging one of the English teachers, a cute little college girl. They wouldn’t let her come back.”

“But she still writes me,” said Dwayne.

“Anyway young Poe, you got a lot of catching up to do. Though we have confidence.”

In the afternoon a new pair of Dickies work pants appeared for Poe, he gave his old ones to one of the yard rats. It was hot and people were sitting on the benches or against the wall, sweating in the sun and watching the yard. Poe stood with his shirt off like the rest of them, they looked like a bunch of construction workers on lunch break, or firemen, regular guys they were not monsters or supermen, it was no different than anyplace else, no different than outside, that was what he had to focus on. A few hours later they were still in the same spot, he was hot and dehydrated and sunburned, the others didn’t seem to notice it, just sitting in the low sun getting burned like that, he was very thirsty but he hadn’t wanted to drink any more sodas, it seemed he’d had more than his share already. He was tired but he fought to keep his eyes open, a few of the lieutenants had wandered off but it was not an option for him, he had to stay near Dwayne and Black Larry. Dinnertime came but no one thought it was a good idea to bring Poe back to the messhall yet.

“You need anything?” said Black Larry. “Skittles, cigarettes? Pruno?”

“I could use some real food,” said Poe, “but I don’t have any money.”

“They got smoked packaged salmon at the commissary. Someone’ll bring you some. Couple bags of Fritos, too.”

Dwayne walked him back to the cell. There was a laundry bag on top of Poe’s bunk, full of items from the commissary, deodorant, Snickers bars, four packages of vacuum- sealed salmon, and some saltine crackers.

“You makin out?” said Dwayne. They bumped and tapped fists. “I’m good,” Poe said.

“Your cellie is getting back tonight. He’s been locked down six months so when he gets back give him a little elbow room.”

“No problem,” said Poe.

“He’ll be alright. He’ll want to talk your ear off is all.”

After he was alone he ate two of the packages of salmon and the crackers, the first good food he’d had in he didn’t know, days. He settled back on the bed, the sleepy full feeling, he was going to be fine. At first he couldn’t help grinning to himself and then there was the other feeling, they would be wanting something for this. That was fine. He would take it day by day.

Downstairs on the floor of the cellblock they were listening to rap videos on television, cheering along. He closed his eyes and lay on the bunk awhile, couldn’t sleep, his hands were sore and he looked at them, they were healing slowly. His blood had definitely mixed with the other one’s, with Little Man’s. He got up and washed his hands again, he knew it wouldn’t do any good, he would have to be more careful, he didn’t know, he would have to get something, a lock or some batteries to put in a sock. He was not going to worry about it. AIDS was probably the least of his worries. What would kill him was a knife in the neck, he’d be eating a grilled cheese sandwich in the messhall. Clovis had shown him a nine- inch shank, a bone- crusher he’d called it, and if Clovis had one then the other side did as well. So at the moment worrying about AIDS was like worrying the world would be struck by a comet. He wondered if he was fighting a fight he’d already lost, completely lost only somehow he was still standing. When he was a kid he’d watched Virgil shoot a small buck with his compound bow, the buck jumped a little and then had gone back to eating ryegrass like nothing happened. A few seconds later he toppled over, the arrow had cut right through both sides, severed the aorta, his fatal blow he had barely felt it. And here Poe was congratulating himself when there was nothing good happening, the only thing he could be sure of was the situation was getting worse, it was a trend in his life.

He had not asked for it. He had not asked to go to that machine shop in a rainstorm, a place guaranteed to be a squatter haven. It was because of Isaac they had gone there, because of Isaac that they were sitting in a leaky building in a rainstorm instead of back on Poe’s porch looking out over the fields and drinking beer. Poe, he could not afford to be in those situations but that did not bother Isaac, it was a different kind of judgment Poe had, his mind moved differently, he could not just get up and move when a few dripping wet bums came and insulted him, he had pride, he had human dignity, whereas you could say anything to Isaac and he would get up and walk away. And Isaac had gotten them into just that situation and had then wanted to get up and disappear. But Poe was not like that. It was a thing called self- respect and he possessed it and Isaac did not.

He sat up. Nothing had changed, he was in a cell with a yellow window he could not see through, cement and iron bars, downstairs a commercial for car insurance blared on the television, they didn’t even bother to turn it down, a thing none of them had any use for. He opened the third package of salmon and ate it, it was greasy and salty, he licked his fingers, a beer would be perfect, it was not bad being here, in this cell, it was safe. But he could not stay in the cell all day and night. The black man he’d choked out was a higher- up, a captain. Poe had gotten lucky, taking him down like that. But it was not some movie where you beat the biggest guy and they left you alone. That was not how things worked. They would have to pay him back and it could not be a beating, payback meant you had to escalate, he knew that from personal experience. You had to get the guy worse than he got you.

He noticed he was breathing hard and his entire body was rigid. His neck was sore from tension and he tried to relax. I’ll be fine, he thought. Sort it out. Sort it out fine only you didn’t do anything to get here. That dead one Otto was not killed by you. All you did was get your balls crushed and your head nearly cut off from your body. Why are you here for that, he thought. You are here and it is only getting worse, tomorrow you may turn a corner and wham, five guys are on you and that’s your end but Isaac is still out there. Walking around free.

6. Isaac

All through the night the train kept pulling over, hours would pass waiting on secondary tracks, he’d sit out on the platform, go back into the porthole, climb the ladder and sit with his feet in the mound of coal, looking at the stars. He guessed it was two A.M. If you’d thought to bring your star chart, you’d know. Or put a new battery in your watch. He shuffled his feet in the bed of coke, felt the cold metal wall of the hopper car in his hands. Close your eyes and sense the rotation of the earth. Stars always moving. Change every hour. Big Dipper starting to turn over—springtime. Ursa Major, technically. Makes more sense as the Dipper. Polaris, temporary as all polestars. Used to be Thuban. Eventually it’ll be Alderamin. Then Deneb. Ptolemy’s full catalog A.D. 150. Namer of stars—a good legacy. Even if no one knows. Learned it from the Babylonians, but all the records lost, burned at Alexandria. Julius Caesar the culprit. More knowledge lost than you’ll ever know.

He scanned the rest of the sky. Cancer and Leo. Probably Gemini disappearing. Should have brought something to read. No, should have brought penlight batteries. Stupid to have forgotten. He looked at the ground below him. The temptation was strong to climb down, the train would not start moving immediately. No—in the dark you’ll never be able to find this car again, you’ll lose your pack. Not to mention you’ve got no idea where you are. By next week you’ll be in Berkeley and you won’t remember any of this.

He climbed down and back into the porthole, into his sleeping bag, his head outside where he got a small view of the sky. Try to sleep.

Morning came, hours passed, he rode on the platform as much as possible, up in the air on top until it got too cold. Your clothes all filthy. Probably your face as well.

They were going along a big river, much wider than the Mon, in the distance he could see a factory that resolved itself into an enormous steelmill, dozens of long buildings, blast furnaces, steam rising everywhere. The place had a modern look, the buildings were being repaired. There was a sign: U.S. STEEL, GREAT LAKES WORKS. That is Michigan, he thought. One of the mills they kept open. Parking lot of cars, the way Buell used to look, there’s the town behind it. Never seen land so flat.

The brakes grated as they wound through an enormous trainyard, plug your ears, time to get off. They’ll dump the coke here and you’ll get seen. Get packed. Cramming his things into the bag again he was back out on the platform, crouching down thinking don’t wait for full stop. They were near the end of the trainyard and the train was crawling along, he was hanging his head off the side and he saw the Baron climb down a few cars ahead of him. He swung himself down to the ground and the Baron caught up to him.

It was the first time he’d seen the Baron in daylight, his face was red and swollen and deeply creased and his skin looked hard and thick, his nose was bent and one eye hung much lower than the other, bones that had broken and never been fixed properly. The whole structure of his face was crooked and he was covered in coal dust; he gave off the impression of something pulled from a fire.

“Goddamn,” said the Baron, staring at him equally, “someone had their way with you, didn’t they?”

Isaac just looked at him.

“Your face got whomped on pretty good, is what I mean. You got a matched pair of shiners.”

“It was four guys,” said Isaac.

They began crossing the other tracks toward the town, dodging quickly to get out of the way of a blue locomotive coming toward them.

“Keep your eye out,” said the Baron. “Won’t believe how quiet they roll, I had a partner get cut in half once. Nothing you can do when that happens.”

They crossed more tracks and then climbed down and up through a drainage ditch. They were standing on a small road.

“We in the right spot?”

“Yeah,” said the Baron. “It’s called Ekkers. There’s your unloading spot for the coke up there.”

“Thought you said we’d be in Detroit.”

“Don’t get picky on me. It’s only ten goddamn miles up the road.”

As they walked the industrial buildings gradually gave way to a town, they passed a field of tall white storage tanks with the grass around them neatly clipped, then they were on a residential street. There was a big sign that said ECORSE. Ekkers. The name of the town. The houses were larger than the typical millhouse in Buell but most looked just as rundown. This is progress, he reminded himself. You just got six, seven hundred miles closer to California. Won’t be wine and roses the whole way.

“Spot me dinner if I find us a place?” said the Baron.

Need to get rid of him first thing, he thought, but he said: “Sure. I’ve got to get going south soon, though.”

“You will. We passed another yard back there. All we gotta do is follow those tracks back to where we split from the main line. Then you’ll find your train.”

They continued down the street, the houses getting better, then worse, then better again. A group of black men were sitting on a porch playing dice in puffy down jackets. They stared at the Baron and Isaac as they passed.

“Get a fuckin shower,” one of them said, and the others burst out laughing. Isaac prepared to take off running, but the men went back to their dice.

“We do have to find a Laundromat,” said the Baron. “Stash our packs and get cleaned up. We can get cleaned up where we get food, though.”

“I want to find that yard soon.”

“Rushin around don’t help anything. We eat, we get cleaned up, find a place to sack out. I can tell you’re tired, and running around trainyards zonked out of your head don’t lead to nothing but getting run over. I seen it happen, too, those trains roll right over you without noticing, same way you’d step on an ant.”

You already said that, Isaac thought, but didn’t say anything. After walking a while longer, they found a fried chicken place. They took turns washing in the bathroom. The Baron went first and took forever and when Isaac went in the place reeked of feces and the sink was splashed with black grit. Isaac used the toilet and cleaned up as well, his face and hands and coat were filthy. When he came out he looked more respectable but still. These clothes ought to be thrown out.

Back at the counter the Baron ordered a bucket of fried chicken with several sides and Isaac was immediately sorry they’d come, the bill was over twenty dollars and he got out his wallet to pay but only had a single dollar bill. The Baron was looking at him.

“You got this or no?” he said.

The people at the counter stared at them and waited. Isaac turned away and unzipped his pocket with the money and tried to carefully slip a bill from the envelope, but it wouldn’t come, it was awkward getting at the envelope and he had to lift it slightly out of his pocket to get at it. The Baron saw it and then looked the other way. It was a fifty- dollar bill that Isaac handed the clerk, and she held it up to the light and checked it with a felt-tip pen.

“Glad you had something else,” said the Baron. He picked up the food and carried it out as Isaac zipped his pocket back up.

“Tells you we’re near Detroit,” said the Baron. “They love fried chicken.”

They sat on the curb and ate. Isaac bit into a drumstick, there was a hard thin crust, it was peppery and salty and the juice from the meat dripped down to the curb. He ate it as quickly as he could, the crunchi-ness of the skin and the tenderness of the meat underneath, stuffing it into his mouth, it tasted like the best food he’d ever eaten, there was an entire bucket. He was beginning to get an easy feeling about everything. Every time you eat, now. The kid is a simple animal. World’s Best Fried Chicken. The kid agrees with that claim, gives his highest endorsement. Diddy Curtin’s chicken. He will remember.

They ate until they couldn’t force any more food down, then wrapped the remaining pieces in napkins and put them in their packs. Isaac lay back on the sidewalk, he looked around, he didn’t think anyone would bother them for a minute. He closed his eyes. For the first time in several days he didn’t notice the bruises on his hips and shoulders, the aches from sleeping in hard places.

“We lie here like this we’re going to catch trouble,” the Baron said. “What we ought to do is get a motel, sleep in a real bed, do our laundry, maybe watch some movies even.”

“Nah,” Isaac said, without opening his eyes. It occurred to him: you can ditch this guy easily The next time they were separated, used the bathroom, anything, he would take off. He began to feel even better about things.

“I been riding rails all my life. You got to take the little luxuries when you can afford em. Keeps you sane. You can always make more money.”

“Well, you can pay for it if you want.”

“At least how bout we get something to drink,” he said. “Can you spare that?”

“Fine. Gimme a minute to rest here.”

When Isaac noticed someone watching them through the window of the fried chicken place they sat up and got walking. There were houses and then businesses and then houses again, the road passed over a broad canal, then under a freeway, then dead- ended into a large boulevard. Everything was so flat, you didn’t know if you were coming or going. Isaac realized he’d been expecting the houses to end and give way to woods but they just continued, the town went on forever. It had been gray all day and they’d been out of sight of the river for a long time, it was the same low buildings everwhere, he had no idea what direction they were headed, he guessed they’d come two miles since the steelmill. People would know where that was, if he had to ask someone. On the other side of the street they saw a Laundromat, it had a handwritten sign stating WE NOW HAVE HOT WATER, but it was closed. “Our luck,” said the Baron. “But look.”

Farther down there was a liquor store. “You old enough to buy,” said the Baron.

“No.”

“Then give me ten and I’ll make sure we’re well taken care of.”

Isaac thought for a second. He gave the Baron a bill. “Here’s twenty,” he said. “Take your time.”

The Baron went in and Isaac was already walking down the street when the Baron caught up to him. He was carrying a handle of whiskey.

“Keep going,” he said. “The clerk was in the back.”

“What?”

“Go go go.”

They began to walk more quickly down the street. When it was safe, the Baron held up his trophy again. “Goddamn Jack Daniel’s. Just saved us thirty-four bucks.”

Isaac nodded.

“Let’s find our spot for the night,” the Baron continued. “Now that I think about it we should have either rode that train longer or not as long. We got no resources around here.”

“I just want to get back to that other trainyard.”

“One thing I been thinking about,” he said, “is that with sixty, eighty bucks, I could get to see my sister in Canada. They got free clinics up there.”

“You got twenty already.”

“I’ll get our next meal,” said the Baron. “You know I had to ask. I’ve never been good at saving money myself. I respect that about you.”

“It’s fine.”

“In a lot of ways I have a million- dollar mind, which basically runs in my family. My father had his own business. Only I saw what happened to him and all these people, too.” He waved his arms around. “They’re trapped by all this shit. We own it as much as them. It’ll be around after they’re all gone—what does that tell you? You build a cage for yourself. You don’t ever own anything, really, that thing just owns you.”

Isaac nodded. They continued to walk.

He guessed they were close when they came to another small canal with a park alongside it. There were trees and mown grass. On one side of the canal there was an upscale trailer park and a small office complex, on the other side a nicer neighborhood, single- family homes with fenced yards.

“There’s our spot,” said the Baron. “We don’t gotta spend a nickel.”

Walking the edge of the canal they found a suitably large cluster of bushes and trees and made their way to the center of it. Isaac could hear cars passing on the road a hundred yards away and it was comforting. Tomorrow you get a train south, wake up before him.

He was at the end of one thing and the beginning of another. Tomorrow you will head south. He wondered if a warrant from Pennsylvania would transfer to Michigan, or if there was a warrant yet, and he could feel himself getting depressed. Best not to think about it, he decided.

In a small clearing they both unrolled their sleeping bags. There was music coming from the trailer park and people laughing. Isaac was extremely tired but he did not want to fall asleep.

“Well, good night,” said the Baron.

“Night to you.”

He tried to zip his sleeping bag up but something was wrong with the zipper, it had come apart and it was too dark to fix. Better this way anyway, he thought. Keep my boots on. He pulled the sleeping bag around him like a comforter and found a position where his hand could stay close to his knife as he slept. Then he thought about the dew settling overnight and got up again in the dark and crawled partway under a fallen tree. He took the knife out of the sheath.

After a few hours he woke up, he could still see the Baron sleeping twenty feet away, he hadn’t moved. You should get up and get going now, he thought, but he was too tired, he couldn’t move his legs. He woke up again later, heard leaves rustling, looked for a long time in the darkness before deciding it was just an animal. The Baron was still right where he’d gone to sleep.

He knew he ought to get up but he couldn’t. It seemed like he could sleep forever.

7. Lee

She made lunch for her father, risotto with a starter of insalata caprese, French bread she’d bought at the Keystone Bakery in Monessen. She rarely got time to cook at home, as Simon preferred to eat out. Which was fine. Another reason to enjoy coming back. Afterward they sat at the dining- room table quietly drinking coffee, Henry reading his paper while she sat there, chin in hand, staring out over the long sloping lawn, the low brick walls around the property. The walls were ornamental, an unbelievable indulgence now, enough brick to build another large house. Like everything else, they were crumbling.

Her father was making his way through the Post- Gazette, the sun was coming strongly into the window, she let her mind wander, decided to cancel the interviews with the nurses that afternoon. She wondered if maybe Poe had made everything up, the reasons being obvious. That would be the easy thing to believe. But she was sure that Poe was telling the truth. She wasn’t sure how, but she knew.

Poe’s picture had been on the front page of the Valley Independent, under the headline FOOTBALL STAR CHARGED IN KILLING. She’d hidden the paper before her father had a chance to see it. It hadn’t mattered. Last night, the chief of police had come around looking for Isaac. A thin, balding, pleasant- looking man, obviously thoughtful. She had liked him right away and wanted to hear what he thought but he only wanted to speak to her father. She realized it was out of respect, but still. She was able to get the gist of it—Poe was being charged with the killing of the man in the factory Isaac was most likely a witness but, at this point, not a suspect.

This morning, her father had looked haggard. He was sliding. In fact he’d gotten worse since she’d gotten here. How long? She counted: Saturday through today, Thursday. Six days. It felt much longer than that. Her father hadn’t shaved in two days now and his white hair was tangled and flat on his scalp, his shoulders dusted with dandruff. The look of a heavy drinker—cheeks and nose mottled with burst capillaries—though he barely touched the stuff. Watery eyes. His clock running down.

They ate in the dining room, the old walnut furniture, an antique china cabinet and credenza, the waterstained wallpaper around the windows. A large room with a tall ceiling and a glass chandelier. It occurred to her that maybe her father had bought this house because of her mother, because he’d wanted to impress her. It was difficult to know.

They still hadn’t talked about the visit from the police officer. There was something extraordinary about their desire to avoid conflict. But it would have to be discussed. She got up and decided to do the dishes.

“You finished?” she said to him.

“I got a couple years yet.”

She smiled but couldn’t bring herself to laugh. She took his plate to the kitchen and ran the water until it was steaming hot, found the rubber gloves and began to scrub the dishes. When she was done she wiped down the stove and countertop, though they weren’t dirty; she’d cleaned them that morning as well. At the apartment in New Haven of course they had a dishwasher, they also had a maid service once a week, she’d protested against that at first but Simon had looked at her like she was crazy. Normal people had maid service.

A feeling of loneliness came over her, this place wasn’t home and neither was the other, she stood with the hot water running over her hands and then she thought: you don’t deserve to feel sorry for yourself. You have to go in and talk to him.

Instead she looked for something else to clean. She would sweep the back porch. It was one in the afternoon and the deer had come out to graze in the yard among the old apple trees. The porch was filthy and she saw the stain on the couch where she’d slept with Poe. She swept. It was pleasant, sunny and green with the deer and the trees and distant hills but that was all there was, all this place had to offer. She didn’t understand why her mother had come here. She didn’t understand why her mother had married Henry English.

Of course she herself was making compromises but it wasn’t the same as her mother. Married rich and early. When she thought of it that way it was like being punched in the stomach. She didn’t want to go to law school, either, she was probably more the art school type, more the comp lit type, but she’d never let herself run with those crowds, it was out of the question given the family situation. It would have been equally nice to join the Peace Corps and just see where she landed, let the wind take her instead of having such a trajectory. Like Siddhartha— the stone falling through water. In a few years she’d have a law degree, an insurance policy—even if things went bad with Simon, her father and Isaac would be taken care of. She had a good plan and a good backup. Nothing was perfect but she went to bed happy.

Given that, how she’d arranged her life, it was baffling what had happened to her mother. Somehow she’d decided that Henry English was her best option. You are a bitch for thinking that, she decided, you are a terrible person. But the fact remained. It had been much harder for her, Lee thought. Thirty- one, unmarried, no family in the country. Henry English sits down next to her in a dive bar, a stable, predictable, honest man. A man who is proud of her, who would never leave her, who knows she’s more than he deserves. Then everything in the Valley falls apart and he loses his job and there goes the stability and on top of it there are two kids. He’s out of work for two years and then lives in Indiana for three years, sending money back until his accident.

Then you get into college and things begin to change. Her moods get deeper—higher highs and lower lows. Sunday after graduation, everyone goes to church and that afternoon she disappears. Two months later you leave for New Haven.

Before her father, she knew, her mother had been engaged to another man, a student in the music department at CMU, but he’d broken off the engagement at the last minute. Long before that, her mother had split from her family in Mexico, she’d come from money but been too proud to return to it, and by the time she died she hadn’t spoken to them in twenty- five years. Lee wondered about this side of her family occasionally, but her interest was only theoretical. Meeting them would not unlock any secrets that she needed unlocked. She suspected it would only depress her.

In the end it was impossible to know. Her mother must have felt some sense of desperation, or loneliness, or time creeping in on her, if she had married Henry English. A beautiful woman with a master’s degree in music composition. But she was also thirty- one, living in a country that was not her own, no family to speak of, little support structure, and here was a man who would never leave her, a man with a good job, a man who wanted to take care of her. Knowing how her position might be worse if she married a wealthy man. Or maybe Mary English, née María Salinas, had the same notions as Lee’s Marxist friends at Yale— solidarity, noble workers, an impending revolution. She had wanted to marry a worker, a final rejection of her family. There were certainly people like that in the Valley, Mr. Painter, the history teacher at Buell High who’d written Lee’s letter of recommendation, he told Lee he’d moved to the Valley to bring socialism to the mills, he’d been a steelworker for ten years, lost his job and become a teacher. Graduated from Cornell and became a steelworker. There were lots of us, he’d told her. Reds working right alongside the good old boys. But there had never been any revolution, not anything close, a hundred and fifty thousand people lost their jobs but they had all gone quietly. It was obvious there were people responsible, there were living breathing men who’d made those decisions to put the entire Valley out of work, they had vacation homes in Aspen, they sent their kids to Yale, their portfolios went up when the mills shut down. But, aside from a few ministers who’d famously snuck into a white- glove church and thrown skunk oil on the wealthy pastor, no one lifted a hand in protest. There was something particularly American about it—blaming yourself for bad luck—that resistance to seeing your life as affected by social forces, a tendency to attribute larger problems to individual behavior. The ugly reverse of the American Dream. In France, she thought, they would have shut down the country. They would have stopped the mills from closing. But of course you couldn’t say that in public, especially not to her father.

The porch was swept. There was no point in putting it off further. Lee went back into the house, through the kitchen, and into the dining room, where her father was still sitting.

“Dad?” she said.

“That’s me.” He looked up reluctantly. He knew what was coming.

“What did the police chief talk to you about?”

“Isaac’s friend Billy,” he said. “They locked him up for killing someone.”

He went back to his paper and she could tell he was uncomfortable. She wondered how much he knew. It seemed much warmer in the room all of a sudden.

“I don’t think he did it.”

“I guess that’s possible, but it’s not worth speculating over. They’ll get it figured out in court.”

“Maybe what I’m getting at is I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it.”

“Maybe your view of him is skewed.”

It was quiet for a few seconds; she felt her face get hot. Her father wanted to drop the conversation and she did also but she forced herself to keep talking: “He told me that Isaac is the one who killed that guy.”

“Lee,” he said, without missing a beat, “Billy Poe nearly killed someone last year, beat the guy’s head in with a baseball bat, and the only reason he didn’t get locked up for that is that Bud Harris, the police officer who came by yesterday, is friends with Billy’s mother. Friends, if you know what I mean. Which is something that now they’re all going to have to deal with, now that he’s done this other thing.”

“I know all that,” she said. But she hadn’t known it—that was not exactly how she’d heard the story.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you. What Bud Harris told me is that he thinks Isaac was there, but that it’s better if Isaac stays out of it. He doesn’t think Isaac should get involved unless it’s absolutely necessary, which is fine with me.”

“If there’s a trial, you can be sure Isaac will get involved.”

“I know that. I’ve been up all night thinking about who I know who’s a lawyer around here.”

“It doesn’t bother you that Isaac saw those things?”

“I feel guilty about it, if that’s what you mean.”

“That wasn’t what I was getting at.” She didn’t know, though. Maybe it was. She went and stood next to him and he reached up to squeeze her hand.

“I already told Simon. He said we can use the family checkbook.”

“We’ll be fine on our own,” he said. He squeezed her hand again. “That was smart, though. That was good thinking.”

She was struck by the absurdity of what was happening: you’ve both just admitted you’ve been hiding something from each other, that the police chief thinks Isaac witnessed a murder, that Poe thinks that Isaac was involved in the murder, but you’re going to keep on acting like everything’s normal.

“What else should we be doing?”

He shrugged. “It sounds like you already took care of it. In any case, I think it’s pretty safe not to trust what Billy Poe tells you.” He looked up briefly from the newspaper. “Goes without saying that you’re married now.”

She could feel her face flushing even more and she looked around the room, she knew if she said anything else she would start crying. Henry rattled the paper and cleared his throat and made a show of being interested in something.

“Your friend Hillary Clinton is making more speeches.”

She nodded. Let him change the subject. She looked out the window and then she felt him take her hand again.

“You’re a good kid,” he said.

“I’m not sure.”

“I mean it. You’re a good kid and I’m proud as hell of you.”

She nodded and cleared her throat again and smiled at him and he smiled back sympathetically.

“I think I need some air.”

“Alright.”

Outside, she sat against the brick wall that wrapped down around the lawn, field, whatever it was, down toward the ravine, out over the empty woods and hills, the long high ridge in the distance. The old man knew about her and Poe, it wasn’t that surprising. He forgave her—she was surprised by that, of course she was. But maybe those were the things her mother had seen in him.

She wondered what he really thought about Simon, and her new life, and the fact that she never came home. He was not a simple man, he only acted that way when it was convenient. He wanted peace with her at all costs. Only he was wrong about Poe. She thought about that. She thought about Simon’s accident, the feeling had begun to nag her—what if he hadn’t been trapped in the car? What if he could have walked away, left that girl pinned there?

That was the thing about Simon and all the others, so pleasant on the surface, always knowing what to say, but underneath there was something else, they were not the kind to sacrifice themselves—they’d all been taught they had too much to lose. No more verdicts, she told herself. But there was John Bolton, caught in Manhattan with all that cocaine—charges dropped—and later you find out there was another man with Bolton when he was arrested, but everyone knows better than to ask what happened to him. Meanwhile Poe goes to jail for something he didn’t do. For your brother.

She wondered where Isaac was now. California, Poe had said. It didn’t make any sense. She could hire a private investigator or something to follow him, he would have left a trail, airline tickets, bus tickets, something—four thousand dollars is what her father said he’d taken—that would be more than enough to pay for his trip and leave plenty of seed money to settle down, Isaac was happy to live on macaroni and cheese. How had he reached this level of desperation? But she knew it was simple. Not hard to understand at all. You simply chose not to. Always knew his life wouldn’t be easy, he didn’t know how to relate to people. No ability to conduct small talk, thinks he should speak his mind honestly at all times, expects others should do the same. Nothing he ever said was tied up in what are they going to think of me? It made her both admire him more than anyone else she knew and feel enormously sad for him. To her, that seemed like the smallest part of human communication.

Maybe all people with minds like Isaac’s were the same. She knew he would make a much larger contribution than she ever would—he cared only about things much bigger than his own life. Ideas, truths, the reasons things were. As if he himself, his own existence, was somehow incidental. At Yale, her friends had accepted him immediately—there Isaac was a personality type everyone was familiar with. But not here.

And now he’d killed that man. She squeezed her forehead. She knew he’d done it. He’d gone back in there to rescue his friend, he hadn’t hesitated. There couldn’t be anyone less suited for a task like that, but that had not stopped him, he’d done the only thing he could do, if those men had been strong enough to overpower Poe, the risk to Isaac would have been enormous, he would have been scared. And of course he’d gone back in there anyway. It was the right thing to do and he’d done it.

And you? She felt weak and she let herself ease farther into the tall grass, the sun and wind would cut through her, wear her to nothing, she would sink into the earth. I’m not supposed to feel guilty, she thought. I’m supposed to be proud of myself. But even thinking that brought on an incredible isolation, a suspicion she’d always had that she didn’t belong anywhere, she was going to outlive everyone she knew. She was going to be alone, the same as her mother. Her mother who had tried to reinvent herself and it had killed her. Lee tried again to figure the probabilities that she herself was free from blame. There was Dad’s accident and Mom dying and now this, there was no logic, there was only the most important piece of evidence: you’re the only one still in one piece.

She would have to find him. She couldn’t wait anymore. Hire the lawyer, a private investigator, this is not going to take care of itself. She stood up and brushed the grass off her, looking out over the trees and rolling fields, the ravine where she and Isaac had played, lain on their backs on the warm rocks and looked up at the narrow corridor of sky above them, Isaac watching for birds, he loved birds and hawks, he loved knowing the names of things, she was content just to watch, most memories she had of being happy in childhood involved only her and Isaac; the rest of the time she was just waiting to get older.

Lawyer and a private investigator. She would have to tell Simon the entire story, his parents would have to know as well. Easy to make a case for Isaac—1560 on his SATs, something they’ll understand. But she did not want to have to say that. They would decide to help Isaac because he was her brother. They either would or they wouldn’t, and she would know. Alright, she thought, it’s better to know. You’ve got plenty of credit cards, with or without them you’ll figure something out. Start by calling Simon and asking him to figure out the lawyer. He’ll be happy to have a mission.

8. Harris

After work he cleaned up and took a quick shower and called the dog in. Fur came back slowly and reluctantly, knowing what it meant. He came over to Harris and leaned against his leg.

“Sorry buddy” said Harris. “Company calling.”

He thought about leaving Fur out to run, but the coyotes were getting bigger, they’d nearly doubled in size in the last twenty years, and there were more of them. Plenty of the neighbors took potshots at them and Harris had a .22-250 that would reach four hundred yards, but he would not shoot a coyote. They were noble animals, is why. They had a will—they made other animals take them into consideration. Mountain lions, wolves, it was all the same. You could not kill an animal like that unless you were very sure of your motives.

“Your pick, meathead. Stay in or fend for yourself.”

But of course he would not really give his dog that choice. Maybe that was contradictory. Still. He nudged Fur gently inside, away from the door, and closed it.

Ten minutes later he was on a paved road, heading toward Grace’s house, and not exactly sure why he was doing it. As he’d gotten dressed he’d looked at himself in the mirror and thought the next time you get undressed it will be with her but now, headed toward her house, he was not sure. Amazing coincidence, calling you right when her son gets pinched. He shook his head. It was fine. He presumed those things about people, forgave the ones he liked in advance. Grace was forgiven. Her son, though, doing wrong ever since he was old enough. Harris had done all that was possible. He had talked Glen Patacki and Cecil Small into a lenient plea agreement. He had talked Cecil Small into a slap on the wrist and then Billy had gone out and murdered someone.

It was protection, she expected him to work magic but it was too late now, the wheels were turning and Billy was caught. He felt himself getting angry, he nearly stabbed the brake pedal and wheeled the truck around, it was a fine life he’d made for himself, a levelness he worked hard at, he could feel it being upset. He made himself keep driving and the anger passed quickly. Most everything you feel passes quickly. What the hell, he told the steering wheel. I’m bored.

Then there was the Virgil question. He felt his anger coming on again, anger and hurt, but it was no mark of shame, it was just the way things went. Virgil Poe couldn’t keep a job, was as mean and dumb as they made them, a born liar. Still Grace had chased after him nearly twenty years. Twice Harris had helped the game warden arrest Virgil’s father, it ran in the family. And the incident with the stolen copper. Everyone understood Virgil. Except Grace. But look whose son you’ve been protecting. Yes, he thought, he’s got you beat. Why didn’t you lock him up? Once he’d run Virgil in the computer, two outstanding warrants, all it would have taken was a phone call. But that was not the kind of person Bud Harris was.

Passing through the town, past the old police station and the new one, he’d seen the Fall, the shuttering of the mills, and the Great Migration that followed. Migration to nowhere—thousands of people moved to Texas, tens of thousands, probably, hoping for jobs on oil rigs, but there weren’t many of those jobs to be had. So those people had ended up worse off than they started, broke and jobless in a place they didn’t know anyone. The rest had just disappeared. And you would never know it. He’d watched guys go from making thirty dollars an hour to four-fifteen, a big steelworker bagging his groceries, stone- faced, there was no easy way for anyone to deal with it. He’d moved out here to have an easy life, be a small- town cop instead of cracking heads in Philadelphia, but the job had changed quickly once the mills went under—it was head-cracking time all over again. It wasn’t naturally in him but he’d learned, made it a science, learned to watch a man’s face as he did it. It had been a mistake to spare Virgil. He had done that out of pride.

It felt different with Grace this time, he didn’t know why, it really seemed the hillbilly was no longer in the picture. The spare tire comes out. The spare tire is you. He was not sure about any of it. There were people who were meant to die alone, maybe he was one of them. You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, he thought.

He turned up the clay road that led to her trailer. There was still time to turn around—it would be a clear cold night, he had a humidor full of cigars, a nice bottle of scotch, the dog would be happy to see him. The deck chairs were set up, he could sit out tonight, he’d splurged at Christmas and replaced his old sleeping bag with a pricey down model made by a company in Colorado, all winter he had sat out looking over the mountains at night, no matter how cold it got, he’d sat out after ice storms, nothing moving for miles, total silence except the ice cracking in the cold, the warmth in the sleeping bag. A feeling of being the only one on earth. One of these days he needed to buy a telescope. Next Christmas, maybe.

Ahead of him the road ended in a dirt bank and he pulled in next to Grace’s trailer. She was already on the porch waiting for him and he handed her the bottle of wine he’d brought and kissed her lightly on the lips, she was made up, a faint perfume smell.

As he followed her inside he felt as if he was looking at himself from a height, the different parts of him coming out, competing with each other, he decided he would watch and see which one ended up on top— Even Keel or horny old cop. It was warm and he could smell fresh fish cooking, sautéed garlic, bread. Instead of commenting on it, he said:

“I don’t know anything more about Billy.” He wasn’t sure why he said it. Self- preservation. Even Keel.

She frowned. “I thought we didn’t have to talk about that.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s on your mind.”

“It is, but…” She smiled at him, forgiving. “Glass of wine?”

In the kitchen he watched her move around, took a piece of Italian bread she’d heated up, buttered it. The outside was crisp and the inside soft and he sat there chewing and happy, feeling himself relax. Then Even Keel started in again:

“I went to visit Isaac English last night, just in case the DA somehow figures out he was with Billy. He’s gone, though.”

She looked at him and cocked her head a little. She wasn’t sure what to say, she looked like she really didn’t want to talk about it.

“He took off Sunday morning and his family hasn’t heard from him since.”

“Bud,” she said. “Please?”

“Alright. I’m sorry.”

“Eat some more bread.”

He took another piece and felt guilty, playing games with her, he thought, a game for you but it’s not for her. Another part of him said no, she’s the one playing games, but he ignored it. He stared at her rear end when she turned around to look for the corkscrew, it was shapely, she’d put on weight but she carried it well, her freckles and delicate skin and gray- blond hair, she looked younger than she was, he decided.

“I can’t find the opener,” she said. “Do you want some bourbon?”

He nodded and sat down at the small table and she poured them each two fingers. Doomed. Even Keel takes a torpedo.

“Let’s sip at this,” he said.

She put it down in a gulp. “You turning into some kind of pussy, Bud Harris?”

“She’s sassy for not even being drunk yet.”

“She is.” But then she sat looking at the empty glass and he knew he’d ruined it. Six minutes. About par, he thought.

“Who is it,” she said.

“Who’s what?”

“The one who got him arrested.”

Telling her wouldn’t make it any better and he thought about saying he didn’t know. Maybe he could still save it. Then he thought no it’s better now than later. Go home and start a fire and cuddle up with the dog.

“He’s no one, really, unemployed car mechanic. In and out of jail. He gave two addresses in Brownsville.”

She put her head in her hands. “Jesus, Bud. I don’t know why that matters, but it does.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’ll have another,” she said. “You can pour it a little heavier.”

He pushed the bottle away from both of them.

“They cut his throat, Bud. They were trying to kill him and he was defending himself.”

“He’s not talking, Grace, that’s the problem.”

“It was Isaac English,” she said. “That’s the only reason Billy wouldn’t be saying anything.”

“Billy’s never walked away from a fight in his life and the English kid is a hundred ten pounds. The man who died was six foot eight.”

“That’s what they all think, isn’t it?”

“People are worried about what this place is turning into. They’re worried we’ll get as bad as Donora or Republic.” He stopped himself. “Until he talks to a lawyer we’re just speculating, anyway. We can start worrying about it then.”

It was quiet for a time. He heard the oven ticking, wondered if the fish was burning, wondered if he would end up eating any of it. Grace was staring at the Formica table like he wasn’t there.

“There’s no point to caring about it because he’s basically gone already. It’s pointless even worrying about it, right? That’s what you’re telling me.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I’m telling you at all.”

He watched her start crying and he touched her but she didn’t respond, she just sat there and cried, Harris looked at her across the table for a long time and couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands, he had a sense of something lurking close and then his ears started ringing and he felt shaky. Part of him was trying to make the other part stand up and walk out of the house. Instead he reached and took her face in both hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

“It’s early in the game.”

“This is going to wreck me.”

“You shouldn’t be thinking those things yet, he hasn’t even talked to a lawyer.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’m not just trying to get your hopes up.”

“It’s too late for us, too, I know that.”

He kissed her and she pulled back for a second.

“Don’t just do it to make me feel better.”

“I’m not,” he said.

She let herself be kissed again.

“Be patient for a couple of days. It’ll all change with a lawyer.”

“Okay,” she said.

She took his hands across the table and then came over and sat on his lap and hugged him around the waist and kissed him on the neck. He didn’t move, let himself sit there just feeling it. She kissed him more. He touched her hair. He felt her heart speed up or it might have been his, he had a prickly rushing feeling in his throat that spread all over.

“I should powder my nose,” she told him.

She went into the bathroom and he made no move to leave. When she came back she sat on his lap again, she grabbed his belt loops as a child might grab her father and pulled herself tight against his chest, he kissed the top of her head and they sat like that. When she looked up her face was shining for him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t think about it when you were here.”

She smiled and squirmed purposefully in his lap.

“Christ I feel like a teenager. Horny and then crying and then horny again.”

“I think you should make me a nice dinner first. So I don’t feel like a slut.” Then he said: “That was a joke.”

“Ha- ha.”

“Ha.”

He got up and slid his pistol and holster from their spot in the small of his back, stood up and put it on top of the refrigerator.

“You bring that in for a reason?”

“I live alone, I guess.”

“You used to leave it in the car.”

He shrugged. “Times are changing. What’s for dinner?”

“Trout.”

“From the river?”

“I might live in a trailer,” she said, “but…”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Sit.”

“I’ll work on the wine.” After a minute of trying he got the cork out with a knife and a pair of pliers. He decided to do the other bottle while he was at it.

They ate, the fish was tender and the skin crispy with salt and she’d made a sweet cream sauce to go with it, something French. He wiped the sauce up with the bread and they ate the fish down to the bones. He thought about eating the cheeks, as Ho had shown him, but decided to leave it.

“That’s probably the best fish I ever ate.”

“Food Network,” she said. “God’s gift to men, indirectly.”

When they’d finished wiping up the sauce and put down the second bottle of wine she said: “Can I ask one more question?”

He nodded.

“Who’s the public defender you were talking about?”

“She’s good and I think I can get her to take the case instead of one of the idiots. She’s probably got a real career waiting for her somewhere, but for now she’s putting her time in, serve the community type of thing. Hopefully she’ll embarrass the lifers into working a little harder.”

“She’s a woman.”

He nodded.

“I like that,” she said.

“Thought you might.”

They looked at each other for a long time.

“I’m sorry I brought that up.”

“You’re his mother. We can talk about it all you want.”

“Do you want to open that third bottle?”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. But he did.

They sat on the edge of the bed and they were kissing again, touching each other everywhere and his body felt very light and he felt the heaviness between his legs. There was no trouble. Not that it was a surprise. A slight surprise. Once in a while with the pills he wasn’t sure. He would throw the pills away, he thought, and grinned.

“Happy?” she said.

He nodded.

“Me too.”

She knelt down in front of him, he stroked her hair and thought look at you old man, your life is not so bad. Then he rolled on top of her, sped up quickly, they still knew each other’s timing. The sounds she made— same noises you hear in your own head and you could keep to yourself but she shares them, lets you know how good you’re making her feel.

An hour later they lay on top of the covers and she ran her fingernails up and down his back. She got up to refill their wine glasses and they sat next to each other against the headboard, he looked down at himself, getting thinner and his hair gone gray but still he had muscle on his chest and stomach, a few years back he’d developed a beer gut but quickly gotten rid of it. Why, he hadn’t been sure. Now he knew.

“Have you been with other people?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. But the truth was he hadn’t.

In the night he woke up and she was watching him. She ran her hands along the soft hair at the sides of his head.

“Shhhhhhh,” she said.

He opened his eyes all the way.

“I like looking at you.”

“I like looking at you, too.”

She pulled the covers down. She had beautiful shoulders, the lines of the bones around her neck, the softness of her just right. She was a beautiful woman, he could barely bring himself to touch her. He felt full and happy, it seemed amazing his skin could hold it all, it seemed he had never felt this way in his life. No, he thought, it’s only that this is something you can’t store away, you can only feel in the minute.

He didn’t know how much longer he looked at her like that, touching her lightly with his fingertips. He could feel her skin getting warmer. She parted her legs. He put his finger there and she opened them farther and looked at him.

“I thought it might have been the wine before.”

She shook her head. Then she smiled and said, “So you’re saying you got me drunk on purpose?”

“Basically.”

“Next time I’ll be a cheaper date.”

They rolled on their sides and she wrapped one leg around him, moving very slowly with their eyes focused. It was right what they said about sex, it did just keep getting better, all of this, his supposedly worn- out body. He’d nearly turned it down. He felt light, no awareness of lying on the bed, they could have been anywhere, the feeling he usually had of things passing quickly, of fading, why had he ever felt that? I can feel this, touching her, and then his thoughts turned into something else and didn’t make any sense at all.

9. Isaac

In the dream he was with his mother and sister in the backyard, looking out at the distant hills behind the house. They were all waiting for Isaac’s father—he was coming home for Easter, driving from Indiana. Something felt wrong about the dream; he and his sister were too old— high school age. By then his father had already had the accident. His mother and sister were sitting on the porch rocker, kicking their feet, laughing about something, and Isaac was in the garden, digging a hole. Isaac keep away from the roses, said his mother. But his sister stuck up for him. Then they were in the kitchen, his mother was putting dinner back into the refrigerator because his father was still not home yet, he was hungry and everyone was feeling let down, but Lee kept goosing his neck. Then she was joking around with his clothes, untucking his shirt. Very funny, he said.

Something was wrong. Wake up. Where am I? In the clearing. Morning now. What is he doing? The Baron was squatting over him. He was removing his hand from the pocket of Isaac’s cargo pants, very gentle, he had the envelope with Isaac’s money.

Isaac had the knife in one hand, he had slept like that all night, he could feel himself tensing his grip, getting ready to use the knife. No, he thought, there is no way He let go of the knife and grabbed at the Baron’s coat with both hands and tried to roll on top of him. But the Baron easily shook loose and then he was up and running.

Isaac seemed to float up and onto his feet and then he was moving as well. He could not believe how fast the Baron was covering the ground, the white envelope flashing in his hand, Isaac was running as fast as he could, the trees were a blur. The knife was in his left hand and he switched it to his right. You need to catch him, he thought. The woods ended and they passed the trailer park, they were in the open now, a parking lot, they reached a four- lane road with traffic going both directions.

The Baron turned onto the sidewalk and kept running, past a line of stopped traffic, startled faces. After a block Isaac began to gain on him. What if I catch him? Use the knife. He’s stronger than you and you’ll have to use it. I can’t do that, he thought. Then catch him anyway. He’ll be tired and you might have a chance. He was only a few steps behind the Baron now. They were right out in the open, he had a feeling everyone was watching them, they had passed several dozen cars now. There were spots in his vision and his lungs were burning but it didn’t matter. He’d never run this fast in his life. He could run forever. There was a tall chain-link fence to the left and the sidewalk they were running on and then the road to the right. When you tackle him drop the knife. You’ll cut yourself. A white car passed in the other direction and out of the corner of his eye Isaac saw blue lights flashing as the car pulled a U-turn, he was nearly close enough to touch the Baron and then there was a siren and the blue lights again. No, he thought, he could see the envelope pumping up and down in the Baron’s hand, you can almost touch him, then the cop car jerked across three lanes of traffic and jumped up the curb thirty feet in front of them, the cop was out quickly, he was behind the door, Isaac couldn’t see his hand but he knew: drawing his gun.

Stop stop stop he heard, it’s the knife, he thought, get rid of the knife, there was the tall fence to his left and before he could think he’d leapt up and rolled over it, pivoting on his chest over the top, ripping his coat open and landing on his hands and knees. Stay down stay down the cop was screaming, the knife had flown off somewhere into the dirt. Everything was in slow motion now, he wanted to stand up but the cop had his gun trained on him, does he see you dropped the knife? Get up. Get up get up get up. He might shoot me. No get up. Focus on your legs. He was running again. Do not shoot if he shoots you will feel it before you hear it, it won’t feel like anything, he glanced back again, he had a quick impression of the cop, an older black man, talking into the radio on his collar, the Baron must have stopped running because now the cop was pointing the gun in a different direction, away from Isaac.

Entire areas of his vision were blurred out but he forced himself to keep running, across a parking lot between two small office buildings, he plunged through a row of bushes, going back in the direction he’d come.

10. Poe

The next morning, he waited in his cell for several hours to get an escort out to the yard. His cellmate had still not come back. A guard came by to tell him that his lawyer would be visiting tomorrow, but Poe did not want to think about the lawyer. Finally Clovis banged on the bars. “Dwayne busy?” Poe said.

Clovis didn’t answer, so Poe followed behind him, down to the end of the tier, down the stairs, through the cellblock, there was dust floating in the light from the windows, close your eyes and you’d think it was any locker room, stinking like socks and toilet stalls and moldy cement, people talking too loud, everyone saying stupid shit. He followed Clovis into the main corridor and then out through the metal detectors into the yard, open air, sand and sunshine, blue sky. Practically like the beach in summertime. Pretend the towers are lifeguards.

Clovis still hadn’t said a word and everyone took notice when Poe arrived at the weight pile, either smiling in a way he didn’t like or turning so they didn’t have to talk to him. He got nervous immediately but he found a place against the fence and acted like he didn’t notice. Black Larry came over.

“Young Poe,” he said, “we’ve been having some discussions about your future.”

Poe nodded.

“I’ll give you the straight dope. The consensus is we need to have a little papers party. Take a look at your charge sheets. Satisfy our own curiosity if you’re amenable.”

“Whatever y’all want. I don’t give a fuck.” Poe shrugged.

“I wouldn’t be so fuckin smug if I were you,” said Clovis. “Half the people in here are after you.”

“Well, I know for a fact there’s one of them who ain’t after me, at least until he gets out of the fuckin infirmary.”

“Little Man ain’t shit and I guaran- fuckin- tee you the minute you’re out of our circle they’ll find your fuckin corpse in a laundry tub. You’re part of the minority in here, if you ain’t noticed, and every single one of them niggers been lacin up since the minute they fuckin saw you.”

“Clovis,” said Dwayne.

“Young Poe understands,” Black Larry said to Dwayne. He looked at Poe. “Sunshine, Young Poe. The best disinfectant.”

“Alright,” said Poe.

“Go with him, Dwayne.”

“Yo Dwayne,” Clovis said.

Dwayne turned back to look.

“Bring em all back so the rest of us can get a look.”

“No fuckin shit,” Dwayne said.

They passed through the metal detectors. The detector went off but Dwayne nodded to the guard and kept walking.

“You worried, bud?” said Dwayne. “ ’Cause if you are, you might as well catch it from me as opposed to them.”

“I’m cool,” said Poe. “I ain’t causin no problems.”

“That’s good to hear, bud. There was a racketeering case against Black Larry, so he’s got good reason to be suspicious. They charged me, too.”

“What about Clovis?”

Dwayne was silent and they continued down the cellblock. When they were out of earshot of anyone, he said: “At the moment, Clovis has his own reasons.”

After retrieving the folder, Poe and Dwayne went back to the yard. Black Larry took the folder and looked through it carefully, then passed it around.

“Francis.”

“Yeah,” said Poe.

“What’s that?” Clovis said.

“William Francis Poe,” said Black Larry. “That’s his name.”

“This is still bullshit,” said Clovis. “A charge is just a fuckin charge.”

“Murder One,” said Dwayne.

“Is there anyone to roll over on, Young Poe?”

“No,” Poe said quickly. “It’s on me.”

“Well that still don’t mean shit.”

“It’ll do for now,” said Black Larry. He reached behind him and pulled out a jug of pruno and they all drank from it. The mood lightened, they drank the rest of the pruno, Poe sat against the bench and everyone relaxed. The rest of the day went like normal, there were the usual comings and goings only Poe got drunk, he sat quietly with the sun in his face, he was feeling good, there was a strong breeze, he was feeling easy about things and then he was thinking of Lee, it was the last time he’d been drunk. He thought about calling her. It was too embarrassing. He’d called his mother and she wasn’t home, they would have to work out a schedule, the phones only worked collect. His lawyer would be coming, sometime tomorrow, the lawyer would only want one thing from him.

He was thinking about that, there was a hawk high up over the yard, hovering, it was hovering in the breeze like someone had it on a string, he watched it there for a long time.

“Wake up,” said Dwayne.

The only others left at the weight pile were Black Larry, Dwayne, and Clovis. Everyone else was gone.

“I’m awake.”

“Need you to pay attention to something,” said Black Larry.

Poe got up from the bench and Black Larry sat down, ran his fingers through his blond pompadour, picked up a dumbbell and began curling it, he might have been a surfer lifting weights on the beach in California, the one they always showed on television. A good- looking guy, Black Larry, he had an easy way about him, a juror had once fallen in love with him. Dwayne and Clovis looked relaxed, they could have been talking about football, but with the faintest nod of his chin, Dwayne indicated a guard on the other side of the yard, pacing near the fence.

“See that toad? The skinny little fucker that’s been avoiding looking over here?”

“Him?”

“Don’t fuckin point,” said Clovis. He slapped Poe’s hand down. “Jesus fuckin Christ this guy.”

“Clovis,” said Black Larry. “Why don’t we just stay on message?” He looked up from his bench and dropped the dumbbell into the sand.

Clovis said: “That guy over there is gonna be lookin for Black Larry tomorrow morning, the hallway between the showers and the laundry room. It’s a quiet place where people can have a talk. In case you can’t see him from here, he’s a skinny fucker with a goatee, looks like a fuckin tweaker because he is one.”

Poe knew what they were about to ask and he got cold all over, the hair on his neck and arms stood up. He hoped it didn’t show.

“His name is Fisher,” said Dwayne quietly. “He’s got kind of a rat face. But his name will be on the shirt.”

“Fisher,” said Poe distantly.

“There won’t be anyone else there. You just do what you do, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“The fuckin questions,” said Clovis.

Black Larry raised a hand as if in surrender. “Reasonable enough, Young Poe. The answer is that Mr. Fisher over there owes us, there being some items we paid him to procure that he claims were confiscated. Mr. Fisher being a fresh hand at this game, he believes that his position allows him to rip us off.”

“I’m still waitin for my trial,” said Poe. “I don’t want to be hitting a fuckin guard.”

“Mr. Fisher isn’t one of these straight- and- narrow types who’s working this job to feed his family. He’s a drug dealer. And even worse,” Black Larry said, “he’s a drug dealer who steals from his business partners. If that makes you feel better.”

Poe shook his head and looked down the fence, wondered what would happen if he just started climbing. They would shoot him. That was the whole point of this place.

“Young Poe.” Black Larry walked over close to him and lifted his face up, the way a father would, or a coach. “There are people on the outside who really do not like you. If you are here already it means this is your new home, and will be, most likely, for a very long time. Do you follow what I’m telling you?”

“Still,” Poe said. Black Larry kept holding Poe’s face and Poe didn’t know what to do with his hands, he let them hang limply by his sides. He could smell Black Larry’s breath, sweet from pruno, the sunburned smell of his skin, he had heavy blond eyebrows and stubble. He had soft blue eyes, he was a fair man, he wanted the best for everyone, that was the feeling he gave off.

“You’ve caused some trouble with our black brothers over there, but at the moment they know that if they lay a finger on you, every single one of us goes into full combat mode. Doesn’t matter whether it’s twenty niggers or twenty toads. Usually there’s a much longer probationary period, but you’ve been put on the fast track.” Black Larry was looking for something in Poe’s face but it seemed he didn’t find it. He let go suddenly and Poe just stood there.

Clovis said, “You ain’t even getting asked that much. Reason your cellmate’s been on lockdown six months is for putting a knife in a toad’s back, maybe you read about it in the paper, three guards and twelve inmates went to the hospital.”

“No,” said Poe.

“He doesn’t read the newspaper,” said Clovis.

Dwayne held up his hand. “Bud, you got lucky and you didn’t. You got one of their upper guys you embarrassed the shit out of in front of the whole fuckin place and a lot of them would put a knife in you to get on his good side, not to mention you kicked open some old scabs between us and the DC Blacks. Causing us a good deal of hassle over matters we’d worked hard to settle.”

“So I got to hit this guard.”

“Not too many times,” Black Larry told him. “We want him to be alive to pay us.” He grinned.

“I understand the situation,” said Poe. “I just need to think about it some.”

Black Larry looked down at the ground and Clovis was shaking his head. “I told you guys the first fuckin time I laid eyes on this douchebag, when he first walked in the fuckin messhall.”

“There’s a spot for you right here,” said Black Larry. He indicated the weight bench. “Or there’s a spot for you out there.” He jabbed his thumb at the yard, at the men on the other side, at everything. “Band of brothers, Young Poe. It’s all pretty simple.”

He nodded to Clovis and the two of them turned away. They walked, ambled really, slowly toward the other end of the yard. Black Larry stretched and yawned. He and Clovis approached a large group of black men who parted for them as they passed, nodded to the DC Blacks at their weight pile, then joined a group of Hispanic prisoners standing in the shade of the building; Poe could see the men gathering around to pay respect.

“This ain’t the kind of thing that gets asked twice, bud. To be honest, you’re kind of fucking up more than you realize right now.”

It was just him and Dwayne. Poe looked across the yard at the black men gathered on the far side, by the other weight pile, there might have been two hundred of them. There was nothing he could say. He would agree to do it and then he would figure something out. He would agree to it and get himself a few hours to think. No, he thought. You will agree to it and you will do it.

“Alright,” he said to Dwayne. “I’m in.”

Dwayne’s face had no expression.

“Whatever else, too. You want me to stab the guy, whatever. Sometimes it just takes me a while to think.”

“I was the same way,” Dwayne said. “Took me a while to accept what was happening.”

“You think Larry’ll be good with me.”

“He knows,” said Dwayne. “Don’t think for a second he doesn’t. We were all in the same spot as you when we came in. Especially bigmouth Clovis.” He walked over to the dirt by the fence and kicked his foot into it.

There was something there and Poe picked it up, a sock full of D-cell batteries.

“Separate it out,” said Dwayne. “Put the batteries in your pocket. When the detector goes off you show them what you have and they’ll let you pass.”