We Begin at the End

by Chris Whitaker

  “So does the outlaw have a name?”

  “Duchess Day Radley.”

  A look, not pity, but close. “I know your grandfather. I’m real sorry about your mother.”

  Duchess felt it in her chest then, a tightening, like she couldn’t breathe. She looked down at the street, locked on her sneakers, eyes too hot.

  Dolly stubbed out her cigarette, didn’t even take a single drag.

  “You didn’t smoke it.”

  Dolly smiled, neat, blinding white teeth. “Smoking is bad for you. Ask my Bill.”

  “So why then?”

  “My daddy caught me smoking once. Beat me something awful. But I kept it up, on the sly. I didn’t even like the taste. You must think I’m a mad old bat.”

  “Yes.”

  Duchess felt a hand on her shoulder. He stood, smiling wide, curls matted with sweat, dirt beneath his nails.

  “I’m Robin.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Robin. I’m Dolly.”

  “Like Parton?”

  “But without the tits,” Duchess added.

  “Mom liked Dolly Parton. She used to sing it, that song about working nine to five.”

  “Ironic, seeing as she never could hold down a job.”

  Dolly shook his hand and told him he was just about the most handsome boy she’d ever seen.

  Duchess saw Hal across the street, leaning on the hood of the old truck.

  “I’ll see you soon, I hope.” Dolly handed Robin a donut and left them, headed back down the street, nodding at Hal as she passed.

  “Grandpa was scared. Please don’t make trouble.”

  “I’m an outlaw, kid. Trouble finds me.”

  He stared up with sad eyes.

  “Try and eat that donut without licking your lips.”

  He looked at the donut. “Too easy.”

  “Go on then.”

  He took a bite and licked his lips right off.

  “You just licked them.”

  “Did not.”

  They walked back down the sidewalk, the sky covering over, those rolling clouds chasing the day so fast.

  “I miss her.”

  She squeezed his hand. She still hadn’t decided if she felt the same.

  * * *

  Thirty years in the same room, steel toilet and basin, walls dug out and scrawled. A door that slid open and closed at set times each day.

  Walk stood outside Fairmont County Correctional Facility and took in the sun, high and merciless no matter the month. He glanced up at the camera, watched men in the yard, the chain links turning them into puzzle pieces that did not fit anywhere at all.

  “I can never get used to the colors. Everything looks washed out.”

  Cuddy laughed. “Missing your blue, Walk.”

  Cuddy lit a cigarette, offered Walk one but he waved him off.

  “You ever smoke?”

  “Never even tried it.”

  They watched men shoot hoops, bare chests, sweating. A man fell, got up and squared off but caught sight of Cuddy and squashed it quick. The game went on, the ferocity, life or death and no room for the between.

  “It got to me, this one,” Cuddy said.

  Walk turned but Cuddy kept his eyes on the game.

  “But then I used to think some people weren’t meant for this place. When I started out, working the floor. I’d see them bring in a white collar, lawyer or banker or something and I’d think they don’t belong here. But then maybe there aren’t degrees of bad. Maybe it doesn’t matter by how much you cross the line.”

  “Most people get near. At least once in their life.”

  “Not you, Walk.”

  “There’s still time.”

  “Vincent crossed when he was fifteen. My father worked that night they brought him in. News crews were here. I remember the jury called it late.”

  Walk remembered, too.

  “My father said it, worst night of his life. And you can only imagine the things he saw. Booking in a kid. Watching the men, arms through bars, calling. A couple were alright, supportive even. But most, you know. Keep the noise up, welcome him that way.”

  Walk clutched the fence, fingers through the diamonds, the air beyond just as hard to breathe.

  “I was nineteen my first day here.” Cuddy stubbed out his cigarette and kept hold of the butt. “Four years older than Vincent. I worked his unit, on three. Shit, I used to look at him and see a kid, same as everyone. Maybe a kid from my school, maybe a little brother, whatever. I liked him right off.”

  Walk smiled.

  “I thought about him, at home, when I was on vacation, when I caught a movie with a girl I liked.”

  “Yeah?”

  “His life and mine. They aren’t all that different, save for a single mistake. And it was that. Child’s life … Jesus. Two children if you count Vincent. If he’s back here, if he came to nothing, it’s more tragic, right. More of a waste.”

  Walk had tried out those same ideas.

  “I was happy, when you came and got him. End one chapter, too long, start a new one. He had the time, Walk. We’re not all that old, you know.”

  “I know.” Walk thought of the disease, how it twisted him into someone he was not ready to be.

  “Sometimes people complained I favored him, said I gave him more time in the yard and shit. I did. I did all I could to give him it. Life … partial life, whatever. We’re not supposed to question guilt, we do our jobs, right?”

  “We do.”

  “I never ask this question. I never asked it, not once in thirty years here.”

  “He didn’t do it, Cuddy.”

  Cuddy breathed heavily, like he’d been holding that question a long time. And then he turned and opened the gate.

  “I got you a room.”

  “Thank you.” Walk had been dreading talking through the phones, easier to stay distant with plexiglass between them.

  Cuddy led him to an office, empty of everything but a metal table and two chairs. The place for lawyer and client, lines fed, appeal and hope and which circuit to exhaust next.

  Vincent filed in, Cuddy uncuffed him, looked over at Walk then left them.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Walk said.

  Vincent took the seat opposite and crossed his legs. “You’ve lost weight, Walk.”

  Another two pounds. He ate breakfast and nothing more, just drank coffee. He had a pain in his stomach, not sharp, just heavy and constant, like his body was turning in on him again. His new pills were still doing their job, helping him stay steady, helping him stand and walk and almost take both of those things for granted.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I sent you a letter.”

  “I got it. I’m sorry.”

  “I meant it.”

  “And everything else in there.”

  “I meant that too.”

  “I won’t put the house up. Maybe after the trial, once we know the future.”

  Vincent looked pained, like he’d called on a favor and found Walk all out. He’d been clear, the letter, his writing so graceful Walk read it twice. Sell the house. Take the offer, the million bucks from Dickie Darke.

  “I already have the check. I just need you to take care of the paperwork.”

  Walk shook his head. “Just wait and we’ll—”

  “You look like shit,” Vincent said.

  “I’m fine.”

  They settled back to silence.

  “Duchess and Ro … and the boy. The little boy.” He said the names quietly, like he wasn’t worthy of speaking them.

  “You need something, Vincent. We can talk about it, we can sort something out but I think you need to take some time on it.”

  “That’s something I do have.”

  Walk took a stick of gum from his pocket and offered one over.

  “Contraband,” Vincent said.

  “Right.”

  Walk stared at him, looking for something he couldn’t see. Not guilt, not rem
orse. He’d toyed with the idea that Vincent missed it, institutionalized. He didn’t buy it, it didn’t fit at all. Vincent looked away, all the time, never meeting his eye for longer than a blink.

  “I know, Vin.”

  “What do you know?”

  “That you didn’t do it.”

  “Guilt is decided long before the act is committed. People just don’t realize it. They think they have a choice. They look back, play it different, sliding doors, but they never really did.”

  “You won’t speak because you know I’ll tie you up. You can’t keep a consistent lie.”

  “That’s not—”

  “If you did it where’s the gun?”

  Vincent swallowed. “I do need you to instruct a lawyer for me.”

  Walk breathed out, smiled and tapped the table with the flat of his hand. “Yes, good. I know a couple of guys, good trial lawyers.”

  “I want Martha May.”

  Walk stopped tapping. “Excuse me?”

  “Martha May. I want her and no one else.”

  “She works family law.”

  “She’s the only lawyer I want.”

  Walk let it settle a while. “What’s your angle here?”

  Vincent kept his eyes down.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Thirty years I’ve been waiting for you.” Walk slammed the table with his hand. “Come on, Vincent. You weren’t … your life, it wasn’t the only one on hold.”

  “You think our lives have been close to the same?”

  “That’s not what I meant. It was hard on all of us. Star.”

  Vincent stood.

  “Wait.”

  “What is it, Walk? What do you need to say?”

  “Boyd and the D.A. They’re going for death.”

  The word hung there.

  “You tell Martha to come see me. I’ll sign papers.”

  “It’ll be a capital case. Jesus, Vincent. Think about what you’re doing.”

  Vincent knocked the door and signaled the guard. “I’ll see you, Walk.”

  That half smile again, the smile that took him back thirty years and kept Walk from giving up on his friend.

  14

  THEY SLEPT TILL EIGHT THAT first Sunday.

  Duchess woke first, her brother pressed close to her, his face washed gold. He caught the sun quick.

  She stepped from the bed into the bathroom and caught the shape of her face in the mirror. She’d lost weight, skinny to start, her cheeks now hollowed, collarbones proud. Each day she looked more like her mother, so much that Robin told her that she should eat something.

  As she walked out and into the hallway she saw it. A dress. Flowers on it, maybe daises. Beside was a hanger and on it a smart cotton shirt and dark slacks, the tags still on, size 4-5.

  She took the stairs slow, still learning the noises of the old house. At the kitchen door she stood and watched him. Shoes shined, tie, stiff collar. Though she was certain she made no sound he turned.

  “I left you a dress out. We go to church on a Sunday. Canyon View, we don’t miss it.”

  “Don’t say ‘we’ like you mean me and my brother.”

  “The kids like it at the church. They have cake after. I already told Robin and he was alright.”

  Robin, Judas, would do anything for cake.

  “You go to church. We’ll stay here.”

  “I can’t leave you alone.”

  “You have for thirteen years.”

  He took it.

  “You didn’t even buy the right size. Robin is six. You bought four to five, you don’t even know how old your own grandson is.”

  Hal swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  She walked over and poured herself coffee. “What makes you think there’s a God anyway?”

  He pointed in the direction of the window. She turned and looked out.

  “I don’t see nothing at all.”

  “You do, Duchess. You see it all. I know you do.”

  “I know what I do see.”

  He looked up, tensed a little, like he was more than ready for it.

  “I see the shell of a man who’s made a decent mess of his own life, who’s got no friends and no family and no one to give a shit when he drops dead.” She smiled, innocent. “Probably happen in his field, his special fucking land painted in God’s color. He’ll lay there till his skin is green, till the oil tank comes and the delivery guy sees the crows, a hundred crows amongst the wheat. The animals will have torn him up by then. But it won’t matter because they’ll stick him straight in the ground. No one to mourn.”

  She saw a slight tremble in his hand as he picked up his coffee. She wanted to go on, maybe she’d talk of her aunt, her darling beautiful aunt whose grave would’ve gone untended because her mother couldn’t face it and Hal had left her so totally alone. If it wasn’t for her, riding the hill, picking the wildflower, Sissy would have just rotted alone. But then she looked up and saw her brother at the door.

  Robin climbed up onto the chair opposite Hal. “I dreamed about cake.”

  Hal watched Duchess.

  “You’ll come to church, won’t you?” Robin stared at her, and she saw it in his eyes, that need for her. “Please, Duchess. Not for God, just for the cake.”

  She climbed the stairs and snatched the dress down from where it hung above the bedroom door, swinging on the frame. In the bathroom she opened the cabinet, fished through band-aids and soap and shampoo, found a pair of scissors and got to work.

  She cut it short, the daisies stopping high on her pale thighs. A couple of random slashes, showing her back, the top of her stomach. She didn’t run a brush through her hair, just tousled till it was wild. She dug her old sneakers out from beneath the bed and kicked the new sandals across the floor. She had a cut on her knee, grazes from crops that stood as tall as her, and a scar on her arm that she knew would not heal. If she’d had a bust she’d have cut the dress low in front.

  They were outside when she came down. Hal had washed the truck the day before, Robin helped him, the two of them soaping it up beneath falling sun, rinsing it off and wiping it down with a worn chamois.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Robin said when he saw her.

  Hal stopped, stared, took it, then climbed into the truck.

  They passed another farm, a line of transmission towers, white rusted brown, the steady hum of lines lost beneath the rattle of the engine. East a pipe rose from the land like a worm feeling the first drum of rain, it carried five hundred yards then buried.

  Ten minutes and they passed a lone sign hammered into the dirt, THE TREASURE STATE.

  “Did that say ‘treasure’?”

  She patted Robin’s knee. She read with him nightly, ten minutes. He was smart, already she could see that, too smart for her and Star. She worried he’d slip behind, old life tugging him back like vines around his feet.

  “Minerals.” Hal kept a hand on the wheel but turned once and raised his eyebrows at Robin. “Oro y Plata. Gold and silver.”

  Robin tried a whistle but never could get much of a sound.

  West was the Flathead, so far Duchess could not make out the buffalo. She could see prairies, hundreds of something, cattle maybe.

  “And the headwaters. That water that flows through the rest of the country starts out here.”

  Robin did not whistle at that.

  They turned. A sign told them it was Canyon View Baptist. The only view she could see was more browns.

  The church, vernacular, wood and white, the gable front splintering and the bell tower low enough to throw stones at.

  “You couldn’t find a shittier church?”

  There were cars and trucks in the small lot. Duchess climbed out into sunlight and stared around. Fifty miles out wind turbines spun.

  An old lady wandered over, smiled wide, liver spots and hanging skin, like the earth was calling the flesh to be buried but her brain was too stubborn to cede it.

  “Morning, Agnes,” Hal said. “This is Duchess and Robin.�
�

  Agnes extended a skeletal hand. Robin shook it with great care, like he worried it might come free and he’d be tasked with fixing the mess.

  “Oh my, that’s a pretty dress,” Agnes said.

  “This old rag. I thought it was a little short but Hal said the priest would enjoy it greatly.”

  Agnes kept her smile though confusion tried hard to replace it.

  Duchess led Robin off toward the church. There was a cluster of kids by the side window, neat hair, every one of them smiling.

  “Must be retarded,” Duchess said.

  “Can we go play with them?”

  “No. They’ll try and steal your soul.”

  Robin looked up at her, trying to search for a smile. She held firm.

  “How will they steal it?”

  “They’ll distract you with unrealistic ideals.”

  She fussed with his hair and pushed him toward them, nodding when he turned back.

  “Your sister’s dress is gross,” a little girl said. Duchess walked over, the kids all watching her careful. The girl looked past her and waved at a large lady wearing purple eye shadow.

  “Is that your mom?” The barb took form.

  The girl nodded.

  Robin looked up at her, pleading in his eyes.

  “We have to go inside now,” Duchess said, swallowing it down.

  Robin breathed again.

  They sat on a bench at the back of the church.

  Dolly strutted in, towering heels and a wave of perfume. She winked at Duchess.

  Robin sat between them and asked Hal questions about God that could not be answered by the living.

  The priest led them, spoke of places far, war and famine and the desecration of kindness. Duchess let it roll over her till he mentioned death and new beginning, the climax of a plan so vast we should not try to understand or question it. She watched Robin, rapt, knowing certain where his mind was.

  When they bowed their heads in prayer she found Star’s face behind her eyes, so clear and untroubled she wanted to cry out. She felt tears well so kept them locked tight. And when the old priest spoke again she stayed bowed, stayed locked to the gateway for fear she would lose that last image she was not yet ready to.

  She felt a hand on her, a big hand, reaching over her brother and trying to offer her comfort when she needed it least.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered. “Fuck all of you.”