by John Hart
“I see that you two are getting along.”
It was my brother, and he was close. Sara pulled away, but slowly. She squeezed my hand with hers, and then withdrew. “He’s nice,” she said. “I like him.”
“I thought you might.”
She turned in my lap, settling a shoulder against my chest, and resting there. At the water’s edge, Tyra was getting dressed. She saw us looking, and waved. “Nice swim?” I asked.
Jason called over his shoulder. “Tyra, baby? Nice swim?”
“The best!”
She came through the flowers, grinning. Jason pulled her tight, and lifted an eyebrow. “Anybody hungry?”
* * *
Hours later, we were back in the car, yellow light in the trees, the sky above impossibly blue. Jason took us back to hard pavement and the world beyond the trees, driving in a pattern that made little sense to me: north and then east and then north again. I’d never seen this part of the state before, the miles of forest and farmland, the worn pavement and small towns, like beads on a string. I rode in the back with Sara, who watched the world much as I did, silently and content, her eyes hidden behind round glasses with rose-colored lenses. She had a hand at her throat, another on my leg. In front, Tyra was the talker.
“Where are you taking us?”
Jason lifted his wide shoulders. “Just driving.”
“Can you go faster?”
Jason accelerated, blowing dust off the blacktop and litter off the verge. “Fast enough?”
“Only if you kiss me, too.”
He kissed her well, one eye on the road. When the kiss broke, Tyra laughed wildly and pushed her arms above the windshield, into the rush of hot air. “Faster!” Jason nudged the gas, and the car leaped forward again. Eighty-five. Ninety-five. “Yes! Yes!” The speed energized her. She bounced twice on the leather seat, finished the wine, and slipstreamed the bottle. It shattered on the road behind us—a starburst—and when I looked at Sara, she raised her own narrow shoulder.
“It’s just Tyra.”
The day soured a little after that. I didn’t care about Tyra one way or another, but Sara’s easy attitude cheapened her a little.
“We need more booze!”
Tyra shouted over the roar of wind, and Jason high-fived her open hand. Twenty minutes later, we stopped on the main block of a narrow downtown street, angling in where piebald tarmac met the façade of a run-down ABC store Jason claimed to have shopped in once.
“Won’t take a minute.”
“What town is this?” I asked.
It was a dusty place made of two-lane roads and blinking lights and low buildings. I saw kids on bikes, old men, a tractor at a feedstore.
“Does it matter?” Jason asked.
It didn’t matter to the girls. They spoke across the seat as Jason disappeared inside, and I watched him through the glass. At the feedstore, the tractor started up, pulled onto a side street, and disappeared. I smelled pollen, pine resin, and hot pavement. Sara tucked a strand of hair behind an ear, and I saw the pulse at her throat, the flush of her cheek.
“Gibby, hey. I’m talking to you.”
My eyes shifted up from Sara’s skin. Tyra was leaning over the seat, a cigarette between two fingers. Lipstick made a rim on the filter. Virginia Slims. Menthol. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
She rose up on her knees and leaned farther over the seat. “Is it true what they say about your brother?”
“Tyra, this is uncool…”
“Zip it, Sara. I’m talking to Gibby.” Sara tried again to turn the conversation, but a strange, hungry glint had kindled in Tyra’s eyes. She leaned even closer, the seat back in her ribs. “They say he killed a lot of people.”
“Do they?” I asked.
“In the war, they say. Maybe even in prison.”
“I don’t really know about that.”
“But you’re brothers, right?”
“Tyra…”
“It’s hot, Sara. Okay. The scars. The stories. I know you see it.”
“I don’t think it’s hot at all. If it’s true, it’s sad. If it’s not true, then you’re being really stupid.”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t screw him.”
Sara took off the glasses and showed me her eyes. “I’m sorry, Gibby. She gets stubborn when she’s drunk.” She looked back to Tyra. “Stubborn and ridiculous.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Drop it, Tyra.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Tyra spun around and slumped in the seat, reaching for the radio and moving it up the dial, passing John Denver and the Hollies before settling on Eric Clapton and turning it up. I wasn’t surprised by her feelings for my brother. I’d seen similar things in one form or another. Fascination. Loathing. Jason understood the effect, but paid little attention. He kept the dark glasses on, kept the silence.
Back at the car, he picked up on the tension. “What?”
He slid into the driver’s seat, and Tyra shook her head, arms crossed. Sara tried to smooth it over. “Party slows down without you. That’s all.”
“Well, I’m back.” He rustled around in a paper bag. “No wine, but I got these.” He handed a pint of vodka to Sara and another to Tyra, who twisted off the top and took a pull.
Sara touched her friend on the shoulder. “We all good now?”
Tyra drank again, and spoke to Jason. “Let’s drive, all right?”
Jason did as he was asked, backing away from the curb and making a slow roll through the little town. The kids watched us pass, and so did the old men. In the empty lanes beyond, the day was just as clear and bright, but the mood had shifted. Tyra sulked and drank. She put her hand in Jason’s lap, and looked at Sara as if offering a challenge no one understood or cared about.
“Here.” Sara passed the bottle, but I had little use for straight vodka. “You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
She took the bottle back, drank small sips, and trailed a hand in the hot, hard air. After that, no one really spoke. The radio played. The sun beat down. I watched the countryside, liking how large certain trees grew when they stood alone in empty fields. Around four o’clock, we came to a crossroads and a right turn that took us deeper into the countryside. Jason took his first pull on the bottle, gesturing at pine forest, shimmer, and sandy verge. “This is the edge of the sandhills. Another hour or so, then we turn back west. Everybody happy?”
Strangely, I was, and it was only in part because of Sara. Her hand was back on my leg, yes, but Jason was being very cool, and Tyra had settled into the kind of quiet resentment that was easy to ignore. I thought the day had found its second breath, that everyone was good.
I was wrong about that.
The first sign came when Tyra took another giant pull on the bottle, and Jason said, “You might want to slow down.”
She took another swallow instead, turning the radio louder.
“Do you mind?” I asked. “They’re new speakers.”
She turned them even louder. Jason studied her from the corner of his eye, then said to me, “I’ll buy you new ones if she blows them.”
“Damn right.” Tyra said it loudly, and turned her face to the wind.
After that, Jason took us south. At first, we had the road to ourselves, but we passed a pickup, an old sedan. They fell away, far behind, and the car was steady at seventy miles an hour when we crested a small hill and saw the bus a mile or two ahead. We dropped off the slope, and heat devils shimmered far out on the blacktop. Beyond the distortion, the bus seemed half-real and half-mirage, a white shape that floated above the road and solidified as Jason took us up to seventy-five and then eighty, the road perfectly straight as it cut through a world of wind and sunlight and scrub. The bus swelled as we raced up behind it, and I could feel the speed building.
“Shit.”
Jason’s foot came off the gas as we closed the gap. The car fell back, fifty yards behind the bus, then a hundred. “What’s
wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Reflex.”
I looked from my brother to the bus, and understood, at least a little. Tall, black letters stretched across the back of the bus.
LANESWORTH PRISON
INMATE TRANSFER
I saw the windows next: the wire mesh in steel frames. I saw the prisoners, too.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah, man. No problem.”
It was the first time I’d known anything about prison to affect my brother. At trial, he’d been calm and cool, even as the verdict came down, guilty. He’d looked at me for a slow moment, then held out his hands for the bailiffs and their cuffs. I’d visited prison once, and he’d been sanguine then, too. You’re too young for this, he’d said. I’ll see you in a couple years. It was a rule of childhood that Jason was unlike the rest of us, and it was strange, now, to see him so human.
“What’s the problem, pretty boy? Let’s go.”
Tyra was impatient and drunk and speed-addicted. She moved to the music, half-dancing. Jason frowned, but accelerated until the gap closed and I could see the bus better. It was half-full, maybe fifteen inmates, their clothing as black and white as the bus. We hung on their tail for a full minute, and no one but me noticed that Jason was sweating. Tyra was lost in the music, and then suddenly not.
“Whoa, hey! Convicts!”
She sounded callous and cruel, the kind of voyeur that would watch a good friend fail, and smile on the inside. Maybe that was unfair, but it bothered me to see such ugliness in such a beautiful woman.
From the rear of the bus, two men stared at us through dirty glass. Tyra clapped and grinned, bouncing where she sat. “Pull up beside them! Pull up!” Jason moved on automatic, his right hand tight on the wheel. “Yeah, like that. Right alongside them.” He eased into the left lane, and Tyra turned in her seat to watch the bus slide up beside us. We were alone on the road—us, the bus, and a second lake of shimmer, far out in the flatness. “Not too fast,” Tyra said. “Right there.”
“This is not cool.”
Jason spoke quietly, and Tyra ignored him. Men were watching now, their fingers curled in the mesh. Tyra rose to her knees, her left hand on the top edge of the windshield as she waved and mocked them, pushing out her breasts and blowing kisses.
“Tyra…”
Jason spoke in that same lost tone. His eyes were locked on the road ahead, as if no part of him could bear to look right. He was paler now than when I’d seen him yesterday.
“Jason, just go around.” I leaned forward.
Tyra’s hand found his shoulder. “Don’t you fucking move.”
His hesitation lasted a few seconds, but that’s all it took. Tyra lifted her top, exposing herself and laughing. Her breasts were large and pale, but I watched the convicts instead. If she’d meant to give pleasure, she’d failed. The faces I saw were angry or bitter or sad. Only one man smiled, and it was the kind of smile I hoped to never see again.
“Tyra, that’s enough.” I turned to Sara for help, but she was looking away, her head shaking in small movements. In the bus, men began to stand, seven or eight crossing from the other side, their fingers, too, in the mesh.
Tyra said, “Watch this.”
She touched herself below the waist, grinding her hips, her breasts still exposed. A prisoner beat on the mesh; another did the same. Behind them, a guard was moving down the aisle, pushing, shouting. Men began to yell, most of them on their feet. The guard pulled a prisoner from the window, then another. A third prisoner pushed back, and the bus swerved across the dotted line, forcing Jason onto the road’s edge, tires in the gravel as the car shimmied, straightened. I said, “Jesus, Tyra!” But she was excited, oblivious. Another guard appeared, his baton rising and falling. It was a riot, a beatdown. Blood flecked the glass. “Jason, let’s go!”
My voice seemed to penetrate at last. Jason made no sudden move, but took his foot from the gas and let the car coast. The bus pulled away, and I saw movement in the back—a convict, the smiling one. He stared at Tyra, then licked the glass. She didn’t see it happen. She dropped into the seat, adjusting her top. “That was hilarious.” The car slowed further, wind noise dropping. No one responded to the comment, and she looked around, surprised. “What? Come on. Did you see those guys?”
Jason steered the car onto the verge and stopped. “That was stupid, Tyra.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Stupid and fucked up and cruel.”
“Jesus. Why are you being such a baby?”
“I need a minute.”
Getting out, Jason walked along the road for thirty feet or so, then stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the horizon and the last far, faint twinkle of sunlight on glass.
“You guys wait here.”
I said it with rare authority, and followed the dusty road to where it met my brother’s boots. He turned at the sound of my steps, then closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the sun. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
It was not the answer I expected—too honest and, again, too human. “That was bullshit, man. Tyra knows you did time.”
“Maybe she forgot,” he said.
“Maybe she doesn’t care.”
Jason lifted his shoulders, noncommittal. Far away, the bus glinted once more, then disappeared. It was quiet on the road. He was still paler than usual.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s like a slow bleed, is all.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Prison, I supposed. The memories. He put a hand on my shoulder; faked a smile. “Did you have fun today?”
“Until Tyra. You know.”
“Tyra. Yeah.” He looked at the car, and we saw the same things: Tyra impatient and flushed, Sara in the back. “I might have to do something about that.”
“You want me to drive?”
“Nah.”
“Home, then?”
“Sure, yeah. Why not? But you ride up front with me.”
Tyra didn’t like it. No one cared. She collapsed into the back seat like an angry child, drank herself into a sullen stupor, and slapped Jason’s hand when he tried to get her out of the car. “Sara?” he said.
“Tyra. We’re home. Let’s go.”
She blinked at the condos, the trees, the setting sun on clean glass. “I can do it myself.”
She made it to the door without looking back, then stumbled inside. For an instant, I was alone with Sara, but the mood was gone for her, too. She kissed my cheek, said, “Bye for now,” and walked up the same stairs.
That night in bed, I tried to hold on to the good parts: the meadow, the taste of Sara’s mouth. I played the day like a tape, but the tape kept breaking. I saw the beatdown on the bus, the batons that rose and fell and slung blood like red paint. That was the loop, over and over: Tyra half-naked and teasing, Jason strangely frozen. I saw all those men—the lust and rage—but in my dreams, the loop tightened and drew smaller. I saw one face, a single man. He stood at the back of the bus, damp-eyed and staring; and that’s what I remembered when I woke.
His tongue on filthy glass.
That terrible, awful smile.
5
It took a long time for things to settle on the bus, and that made sense. The guards liked beatings; prisoners liked a riot. A guard went down. Clubs rose and fell, blood all over the floor. One prisoner stayed clear of it; he always stayed clear. Part of that was choice, and part was his age. After seventy-three hard years on God’s good earth, he was too withered and thin for most convicts to care about or even notice. Fifty-two years. That’s how long he’d been inside. Half a century for the rape and murder of twin sisters all the way back in 1920. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the day it happened, the narrow girls on a red-dirt road, all that emptiness and time, the wildflowers they’d tucked behind their ears.
But that was then …
; Watching the violence on the bus, the old prisoner kept his back to the window, and ran the odds in his head. Four guards and a driver. Seventeen other convicts. The convicts were chained, but chains could be weapons. Point in fact: Justin Youngblood, a guard in his fourth year. Three men had him down, a chain between his jaws, teeth cracking as he screamed.
The old prisoner thought: Sixty-forty, guards.
But the bus was steady on the road now, the driver in control of himself, radio close to his mouth as he shouted to make himself heard. “Highway 23! Six miles west of the crossroads! Request immediate assistance!”
A mesh wall kept the driver safe. No keys on this side.
Eighty-twenty, then.
He heard it like he saw it. Shinbones. Faces. Kneecaps.
That was the thing about batons.
When the last convict was beaten into bloody submission, the old prisoner looked again for the car, but didn’t see it. He remembered the faces, though, and every gesture. If he lived to a hundred, he would know the girls, and the men, too. That was his thing. He never forgot a face or an injury or a reason for anger. The way she’d exposed herself, taunting. He’d dream of the brunette for whatever years he had left alive. Dark fantasies. Violent ones.
But it was the car’s driver who really mattered, and the old prisoner pictured him as he had been in those final seconds: the sweat and over-pale skin, his hands on the wheel, and how he’d barely moved. He’d been an inmate at Lanesworth, the old man remembered, and there was a prisoner there, now, who’d pay dearly for a description of what had just happened. He’d want the nuance of every moment. How was the light? Tell me about the road, the wind, the grass on the edge of the road. He’d ask about the girls and the younger man, but only as reflections of the driver. The old prisoner could deliver all of that: the clothes they wore and how each had behaved, the hair colors and skin tones and breast size. The younger man was only a boy, but the prisoner at Lanesworth would want those details as well. In the end, though, it would come back to the driver. How did he seem? How did he look? Before it was over, they’d talk about the car. That was the rubber on the road; and the old prisoner would play the old games. He’d hold out for money and special favors, but in the end, he’d give it all. Letters and numbers came easily, too.