by Odie Lindsey
Though grateful for everyone’s advice, and their affiliated assurances that all would be perfect, the uncertainty of new parenting shoved the couple into panic. Either Derby or Colleen were constantly on the phone, begging counsel. If one of the twins bawled ceaselessly or somehow felt off, temperature- or temperament-wise, Derby would call the doctor, then the doctor’s receptionist, then the doctor’s answering service, and then Colleen’s folks. Colleen’s own consults were largely provided care of Deana, who knew to wipe a newborn’s eyelids clean with a damp cotton ball, or who assured her that the rashes on the back of Sarah’s head were just “angel kisses,” and that the skin coming off of the babies was simply that: excess skin. Alongside phone-line guidance, Deana was ever ready to rush over and help, porting frozen casseroles or boxes of diapers from the Dollar Store.
History seemed to have surrendered to the moment. For Derby and Colleen, for the first time in forever, everything was focused on the unfolding of new life.
Also, they were exhausted.
They grew united in scorn for the displeasing evolution of bowel movements, and the sour odor of cradle cap (though somehow the stained and crusted umbilical stumps were “cute”). They fretted over the way that Derby Jr.’s off-center nose was mashed against his face . . . then gave praise when it gained proper protrusion, like the rebounding of a soft-rubber toy. The final passage of meconium from each twin was cause for celebration: a couple of beers, alongside some take-out jerk chicken from the reggae-themed restaurant in town.
From the pinhead red bumps on Sarah’s sensitive skin to the downy hair covering both of the twins’ foreheads, the experience conjoined Colleen and Derby to the breadth of humanity, while simultaneously making them feel as if they were the World’s First-Ever Parents. Childcare had been done before, sure. But nobody else on the planet knew, or could ever possibly know, the details Colleen and Derby possessed about these particular infants. They felt spiritually enlightened, physically extinguished, and awash in the conceptual promise of opportunity.
When the phone rang one morning, Colleen read aloud the caller ID display:
“Mississippi Department of Corrections. It’s Hare.”
Derby took in his wife, and now, his children. “Give it here. Let’s get this shit over with for good.”
Despite years of his skirting, of his denying all confrontation, this sole issuance from Derby seemed to abolish Colleen’s frustration. She beamed at him, taking her own, enlightened look around the room. Everything that mattered—anything that mattered—was lodged safe between the walls of that cozy, cluttered den. Uncomplicated. Untangled. Untouchable.
“Naw.” She smiled. “Let the machine tackle this one. We’ll pretend it never rang.”
Every cell of those babies was a symphony. Every wiggle and flaw and facial goon, gospel.
TRIAL
1
On the morning that two men found a pig in a tree on the postcard side of Pitchlynn, Mississippi, on the other side of town, the side whose proximal houses were standardized, squat postwar bricks, and whose distal addresses marked tidy, slabbed modulars on oversized yards, a still-youngish man wielding a Bump Fighter razor, towel wrapped around his waist, stared into a bathroom mirror . . . and psyched himself up.
He rinsed the excess shaving cream from his cheeks. Walked into the small bedroom, and the crosscurrent of ceiling, box, and AC window-unit fans. (The latter appliance held only a near-memory of coolant, yet it was early enough that the morning air brought a welcome shiver.) He sat on the side of the bed and stared into the mirrored closet doors. Doc had thickened a bit since notching his thirtieth birthday, though his occupation called for a decent workout regimen. If he flexed, he could still catch a glimpse of high school linebacker physique.
“You got this,” Doc told himself. “Not a problem.”
He heard his wife come home through the front door, having delivered the kids to the school bus pickup. He stood, pulled his uniform off the clothes rack, and laid it on the made bed. Dressed in anticipation of the gripes and growls to come, as if he had any control of the detail to which he’d been assigned at work.
Sure enough, Jessica walked in grumbling, as much to Doc as to herself. “I can’t believe you’re goin’ to be in the same room with that man. I tell you what, Doc, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back. I just can’t believe.”
She was coming off of a twelve-hour shift, though her plum-colored scrubs still looked sharp. He admired the way they canvassed her body, conveying her authority, her ability, while contouring her in a way that he dared not acknowledge on this morning. Earnest as he felt about it, she was in no mood for compliments.
“We are not gonna be in the same room, Jess,” he said.
She watched him button up his Department of Corrections uniform blouse. “Say, Doc, maybe you and I should switch outfits. You think I could pull it off, impersonating big bad you? Hitch up with your baton, then sneak my way into Hare’s cell?”
Doc grinned. “I’m afraid they wouldn’t buy it. You’re just a little too soft.”
“Soft?” she replied.
“I mean round. Curved. Perfectly curved.”
“You think I’m soft, Doc? Give me two minutes, and I’ll take care of my business. Of our business. In fact, you’re such a diplomat, I’m worried you’re not gonna—”
“Hold up, I—”
“—not gonna hold fast in the presence of that snake. I’m worried you’re not gonna let him know. Make him understand what he did to the family.”
“Jess?”
“So tell me, please, are you gonna do that, Doc? You gonna make him understand?”
“I can’t say a word to the man. I am only there to serve.”
“Whatever, Doc. You have got to make him hurt for what he took.”
Doc moved toward the dresser, then clipped his badge onto his breast pocket. “My job is to do my job, okay? To pay strict attention to process and protocol. The more emotional I get, the more mistakes creep up. You know that, babe.”
“Fine. Don’t get emotional. Get clinical, Doc. Get surgical on him.”
“Jess, the whole point of the retrial is to figure out what’s up.” Doc paced into the small, carpeted living room to the adjoined kitchen counter, and the coffee. “He wouldn’t be locked up if the system weren’t at work.”
Jessica marched in right behind him. “What do you mean by that? Actually, you know what? It doesn’t even matter. The man is vile, and he’s guilty—whether he killed Gabe or not. Lord, Doc. Do I have to explain how ‘the system’ functions?”
“You can’t,” Doc said. “At least, not now. Besides, I am the system. Also . . . I’m late. So I gotta fly, Jess. Love you.” He opened the door and started to step out, but froze when he caught Jessica’s stare.
“Doc,” she said. “I do not like feeling this way.”
“I know.”
She wiped away a tear. “I am a trained health-care giver. A mother. A gardener, goodness gracious.”
“I know it, Jess. You’re s’posed to be the Steady Eddie.”
“But this gets me all kinds of furious. And I don’t want it to get me so furious anymore.”
“I hear you. I gotta go. Sorry.”
“I love you, Doc. But you had better get in there and make that man understand. Make him feel what it’s like to be denied.”
2
Hare Hobbs was slow to rise from his knees, and had to push up from the bunk just to stand. Once righted from genuflection, he let out a wheezy breath and tugged at the waistline of his blaze-orange coveralls.
“You start to pray more at this point,” he said.
Doc stared at the polished cement floor, said nothing. He sat alone in the paste-gray hallway, his metal folding chair cocked away from the cell.
“Yeah, buddy,” Hare continued. “You spend most of your life not even knowin’ you have a body. Never even aware of it, until somethin’ breaks or gives out. Or leaks.” He snickered. “Now, I ain�
�t gonna lie. It takes somethin’ out of your manhood and mortality when you start needin’ diapers!”
No response.
“I don’t piss myself too much or nothin’—yet.”
Doc scoffed, though he didn’t mean to. He’d been briefed on protocol, and was determined to stare at the floor, at the wall, or at the row of empty cells beside them. Whatever got him through his shift. To do anything more would provoke trouble, reprimand, or both. An entire corridor had been cleared to sequester the inmate, to keep him from riling the gen-pop. For the duration of the workday, and the many to follow before the trial, it was and would be just the two of them, Doc and Hare, their every shuffle and sigh amplified by the cavity of cinder block, steel, and cement.
“You just get to prayin’,” Hare repeated. He picked up a fresh bar of soap from the metal sink rim, then sat on his bunk and started to carve it with his long thumbnail. Ivory flakes sprinkled over his hands. He carved with the nail, then rubbed the soap smooth with his thumb pad. Now and again he blew the shavings to the floor.
Soap figurines lined every edge of the cell. White soap rabbits, oak trees, and politicos populated the sink basin and the small window inlet. A platoon of soldiers stood in formation along the floor of the back wall. There were mules and combines and suckling pigs, their fragrance porting the homelike, drowsy scent of fresh laundry. In the month since incarceration, several papers and a national art magazine had inquired about a feature story. Gallerists had called to offer representation.
“What’s my subject here?” Hare asked, motioning to the soap. “An ostrich, maybe? I always wanted to make me an ostrich.”
The guard did not reply.
“No. I guess I’ve never seen an ostrich in real life. And I hate to make a thing I hadn’t seen.”
Doc pivoted slightly, the chair legs squeaking on cement. He, too, was fascinated with the figurines, and the hypnotic rhythm of the carving: saw then rub, thumbnail to pad; saw then rub, shavings blown to the floor.
Hare glanced up long enough to realize he’d won an audience. “You only wanna carve the things you know—you know? Things you’ve lived. Otherwise, the art ain’t real. It’s more craft or gimmick than discipline.”
At last, Doc looked at the man.
Hare held the soap up. “Picked this habit up in the war.”
“Army?”
“Yup.”
“Vietnam? Korea?”
“Dubya-Dubya-Two! Lied about my age to enlist. I wadn’t yet fifteen at the Battle of the Bulge—you believe that?”
Nothing.
“Crazy, right?” Hare continued. “I started in to whittlin’ on soap bars, because I couldn’t stand the waitin’ around. To die, or to kill—or both.” He clapped the soap into his palm. “So, yeah, buddy. This is me, waitin’.”
“What kinda soap you find at a war?”
“I’m Hare.”
“I know.”
The old man stared at Doc for a second, then, “What kind? Hell. All these interviews with them art people, and I ain’t never been asked that. Good for you. I guess it was always pretty much Fels-Naptha, though you sure can’t get that stuff in here.”
“Huh?”
“Fels-Naptha?”
Doc shook his head, shrugged.
“Good lord.” Hare chuckled. “Ast your grandmamma. Your mama. There wasn’t never a better soap. Got a good strong lye base. Yella as butter, but it makes everythin’ white.”
“And that’s the best kind to use? Fels?”
“Naptha. Oh yeah, man. Though your fingers gotta get used to it. It’ll give you a rash if you mess with it too long.”
“What’s the first one you made, anyhow?”
“The first statue?”
Doc nodded in the affirmative.
“Well.” Hare grinned. “I’ll let you guess. But before you answer, think about it.”
The young man didn’t need to think. “A woman.”
Hare smiled, his teeth rimmed by dull silver. “A woman.” He palmed back the thin strands of his gray hair. “Always is, idn’it?”
Doc caught himself grinning, then looked to the floor.
“Yup,” Hare said, blowing off the soap splinters. He stood up, walked to the front of the cell, and held out the figurine. It was a sculpture of Doc, sitting in his chair. Every detail was hairline-precise: white baton dangling off of white belt, against white chair legs. All of him had turned white.
“You kiddin’ me?” Doc asked, his eyes wide.
“Go on,” Hare said, wagging the figure through the bars.
“Can’t.”
“Y’all pass all kinds of worse stuff in and out of here. You know it and I know it. Now, come on.” Hare stared straight at the other, stared as if looking through him. Doc’s eyes cut to the floor, but a moment later he got up from the chair. He stepped over and snatched the figure as if clenching bait from a trap.
Doc traced his fingers over the warm, grease-smooth soap, then groused a bit. “What, you can’t make a black one?”
Hare grinned. “Now, wouldn’t that be somethin’ to give the papers! Say, man. What do folks call you ’round here, anyway?”
“ ’Round here,” the guard replied, “they call me Doc.”
“And what’s that short for? Dominic?”
Doc caught himself again, and got his game face back on. “Far as you need to know, it stands for Department of Corrections.”
“Copy that,” Hare said. “ ‘Doc’ it is.”
“YOU DO it?” Doc asked, toward the end of his shift.
“Do what?”
“You know what.”
Hare snorted. “Doc, you already have the answer. I was acquitted fair and square, man. In 1965, by a court-appointed jury. So, no. I didn’t kill nobody. This retrial ain’t nothin’ but a show.”
“Uh-huh,” Doc replied.
“What do you mean, ‘uh-huh’?”
“Well, for one thing, you wasn’t acquitted. That’s just not true. You caught a hung jury, and the prosecutor chose to let it go instead of pursuin’ a new trial. You think I don’t pay attention? Think I don’t read up?”
“The prosecutor let it go because the jury deadlocked at one-to-eleven.” Hare stood up from the cot. “I am only here now because some people got nothin’ better to do than stir up the past.”
“So you sayin’ this is all about someone else? You sayin’ you never—”
“Think about it, man,” Hare interrupted. “Some people—and them people’s always either got power, or they want it—are gonter kick the dust up. Lawyers, politicians, journalists, activists. When they need a lightning rod? When they’re runnin’ for office, or lookin’ for funding, or prestige? They find someone like me to make ’em shine. And there ain’t nothin’ nastier than an old white trash, uneducated racist. Ain’t nothin’ easier to point the finger at, neither. Now tell me I’m wrong.”
“From what I know, you’ve earned plenty of it, hadn’t you?”
“In the papers, on teevee. Me, and me again. I’m the devil, right? I’m what’s wrong with Mississippi. With America. Have mercy! Throw me down and step on my back while you make a sanctified speech about redemption, reconciliation. But the thing is, Doc, I was freed decades ago, by a jury of my peers, one-to-eleven. Ain’t nobody wants to broadcast that truth, man.”
Doc stared back at the floor, considered whether or not to shut the old man up.
“Or, how many times have you read that I’m a grandfather? How many times you read about how hard it is to be elderly or sick in this state? Or how an eighty-somethin’-year-old veteran has to can veg every year, just to get by? How about that, Doc? You read about that? Nobody wants to read about neglect, Doc. The media only crave the takedown. And when somebody needs a lamb for that altar, well.”
“You?”
Hare spat on the concrete floor, then ground the saliva under his flip-flop. “Say, Doc, you rich?
“Me?” the guard snorted. “Ha!”
“Exactl
y. I don’t know many folks who is. And the ones I do know with money mostly come across’t as no-good pieces of puck. Real old families, or pretend like they is. Old houses. Old ways. Know the type?”
“Well.”
“Yeah. You know ’em,” Hare said. “They’s the people that framed me up in the first place. Wallises, and the like.” He walked closer, resting his lank, hairless forearms on the steel crossbar, before sizing Doc up. “But you? You obviously ain’t one of them! And you ain’t never gonna be, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Nope,” Hare echoed. He rattled through a series of conspiracy-minded points, insisting the retrial was a collusion between a Jackson newspaper magnate and the sitting lieutenant governor, in an effort to boost the latter man’s election profile. Hare claimed that he was being held illegally, unconstitutionally, asking Doc if he’d ever heard of anyone else, anywhere, who’d been yanked out of his bed, television cameras already cocked and lit in the driveway, decades after he’d already been found innocent.
“I am eighty-some-odd years old now, Doc,” he stated. “Do I threaten you?”
Ultimately, Hare even raised the procedural question about how and why it was he could be held in Pitchlynn, and accused in Pitchlynn . . . but that the state had worked its ass off to make sure the trial itself would take place in Jackson: the site with the most cameras, most coverage, and most careers to be made.
“This ain’t nothin’ but a show,” he said.
Doc smirked. “Sure. And you and every other inmate in here is innocent. Thing is, your claim’s got no nuance, man. For one thing, rich people ain’t all the same. Hell, back in high school I worked at the club, the Pitchlynn CC. Plenty of those folks were nice. Generous. In fact, I wouldn’t mind someday if my wife and me—”