by Beth Harden
If He Hollers, Let Him Go
A NOVEL
Beth Harden
Crawford Books 2015
Copyright 2015 Beth Harden
Author’s Note
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To my father, Richard
who was there to listen
to my first words
and to my husband, Josh
who will stay to hear my last.
Prologue
An old chest freezer stood in our woodshed with an iron anvil on top. Rust had splayed the hinges. Its lid sprung from a quarter-century of hands opening it up, reaching in, lifting out plucked roasters, bricks of stale banana bread and blueberries hard as marbles. That old appliance was like the life my mother laid out for us. All sentimentality stacked and stored for no good reason. Our history in no sensible order, nothing dated or logically placed. All the important things my mother should have told her only daughter, shelved on ice. And each fall, when we pulled the plug and chipped out all the yellowed, frozen condensation and pools of melt that had formed inside, we discovered there was very little left there worth keeping.
My mother’s presence was powerful in absentia; not the she was dead or gone. Her body walked around our lives, her time logged in with hours of ironing and mending alteration but she kept her silence. She occasionally told grandiose stories of dead relatives, but with a vision skewed from always looking over her shoulder at the past where things appeared larger than they were. I wanted to know the things she didn’t want to talk about. How she dreaded the idea of any us growing taller than her apron ties; and mourned over Polaroids of me and my five brothers standing sprawl-legged over the sprinkler or sitting on the porch floor spread with pages from the Down East American and the contents of the old ribbon candy jar dumped in our laps. Beach pottery, chips of cups and saucers lost in tea parties at sea and washed up on the banks of Frenchman’s Bay. Dinner service for the entire population of Gust Harbor, Maine if the flotsam of other people’s lives could be held together with thirty-minute epoxy. I miss my babies. Where have those little people gone? she’d say, even though we were there squabbling right in front of her.
In the end, my youth left me longing for the big picture, one that expanded far beyond a peek through the fringe of poplars and pines outside my farmhouse dormer. I fully realized the lack at the age of nine when I approached my mother and asked her why black people only lived on television. There was no Sesame Street where we lived. There was Maine and then there were the other forty-nine states. God’s country, I’d been told all my life; so I figured I was one of the lucky ones hand-picked to live at the end of the Earth. With pride I stood knee-deep in the dead cold sea water and saluted the summit of Mount Cadillac that loomed out of a liquid horizon. Every so often a beam of blinding light twinkled as the sun glinted off a bumper of another car wending its way up the incline. Tourists, those unfortunate souls whose stay in heaven was held by deposit and booked a year in advance. At sixteen, it all came clear when I was hired as a chamber maid to clean up summer cabins out on Acadia Island. While God’s people scrubbed lime stains off toilet bowls and soaked fried clams out of dirty sheets, the unlucky rest of the world played clay tennis and floated on lovely wooden sloops with names like Mary Todd. I asked myself, who would elect to go to paradise from Saturday afternoon to the following Saturday morning at eleven and spend the rest of the fifty-one weeks somewhere else? It wasn’t destiny at all; it was a decision. Turned out, God dwelt in Glen Ridge, New Jersey too. I left my pail of Murphy’s oil, ammonia and a pile of wet towels sitting on the sticky linoleum floor in Gull Cottage. It took me the rest of my five-hour shift to walk home past the deep green coves and beds of rock beach where the ocean rode high waving kelp and turning sea urchins over on their spineless backs. Miles of our land locked up and roped off from people like me. By the time I turned the stretch down the west side of the peninsula, fog had begun to wrap around the outlying islands that bristled like sleeping porcupines. Gulls swirled above the lone lobster boat that had lingered to pull its last traps and was rocking on the swells. In minutes the bay would be swamped in blindness. Nothing but gray that might last for a day, a few weeks or a lifetime. I knew then if I didn’t go I too would disappear into unending sameness.
In the mind of my mother Mel, my decision to go to college in Boston was a flagrant rejection of God’s good design. Crossing that bridge meant no turning back. She didn’t say that, but she didn’t have to. Mom turned a cold shoulder to the announcement and went to collect the faded beach towels that had blown clear off the clothesline. My father was beyond grieved. It showed in the drop of his shoulders like the luft and sag in a sail that has lost the tail wind and can no longer lead its craft. He took my hand in his palms worn rough from climbing utility poles and steering an oil truck all over Aroostook County just to keep his family tucked away. Safe from a world that regarded them through the binocular vision of the tower opticals up on Cadillac as merely specks of stubbornness in the way. But Russ Braum understood that his destiny was a choice he had made for the good of others. Just like mine would be. He wrapped me up in the scratch of his wool shirt and squeezed my cheek into a sleeve full of wood smoke, coffee and petroleum.
“Go! Run for your life. I want you to find all of what is waiting out there for you. Just be safe, sweetie.”
Sometimes we do what we have to, knowing that it is contrary to what others want. And the people who love us most, even those that have trouble saying so, know it has to happen too. We make false promises and tell true lies, believing that we’ll come back after a time and pick up where we left off. But they know differently, those that speak their reservations and those that give us their blessing. Because they are old enough to straddle the full landscape of life – the comings and the goings—like my mother who could only cling to the beginning and my father who sensed the end coming and sent me running towards it.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
William Faulkner
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1: LAWFUL RESTRAINT
A first step into the unit confirms the menu:—government-style chicken rationed, baked and floating in vats of grease. Still it’s the one day of the month that prisoners actually hurry to the chow hall. A sweet stench of sage ekes through broken glass and permeates the humid atmosphere. The Native American inmates are sweating out their sins in the lodge that was erected hastily in the muddy Rec yard. The entire compound is filled with the musky aroma of lust and longing.
I unclasp the padlock on the counselor’s mailbox, and reach in to gather the pile of plaintive stories. Per usual, it is stuffed to overflowing and as soon as the lid is raised, the stack catapults out onto the sticky floor. It takes several long minutes to assemble the strays into a manageable hold and then horror of horrors, stick my hand back into the depths of the box for the rest. Like the Halloween prank where some poor fool reaches through a blind hole in the card table to finger Jell-O made guts, there is always some tangible surprise at the bottom. Regurgitated gum, a porno picture, broken pencil stubs or worse. I manage to slip into the counselor’s office undetected where an assortment of written requests awaits my notice. Most of them are drafted on the appropriate form and wedged through the gaps between lintel and hinges. Others are scribbled on cardboard or the back of legal envelopes and come skidding under the jamb. Some are folded in intricate origami shapes or tattooed with flowing script and smiling faces. Each one vies for first read.
I’ve barely punched the power button on the monitor when Tommy Pisano's mug comes into view. He juts his Neanderthal jaw against the
pane and holds the pose. I ignore him. Next he points to the doorknob and snaps his thick fingers impatiently. I avoid eye contact and pull open the desk drawer to rearrange the money slips. My heart rate accelerates. Tommy flits out of view but returns moments later. A dark upside-down halo underscores his bulging eye sockets. This time he leans sideways against the door so there is no mistaking the profile, the shelf-like brow, bald sloping forehead, heavy nose and a sneer that wraps up his jowls like the Grinch who’s just realized the depth of conniving evil he is capable of. I hold up a finger, indicating that he needs to wait.
“Aww, c’mon!” comes the muffled protest. Small drops of spittle hit the glass. Though I shouldn’t, I give in to the pressure, get up, walk around the desk and release the door just an inch.
“I’m not ready yet,” I say, using my boot heel as a door stop, just in case.
“Will I be on the list today?” he demands. Pisano jerks his head back and to the side in a tic-like motion. He forces his bulk into the airless office and stands there, blocking my exit. Advantage inmate. A major trespass in our behavior management class taught at the Academy.
“You have to write me,” I repeat.
“You promised you’d see me,” he froths.
“Write me and I will,” I say calmly. The trick is to hold the voice steady, always fair, firm and consistent especially with people like Tommy who has no control switch. Just an itchy trigger.
“I did write you. Two day ago!” he shouts. I look around him, avoiding his gaze. There’s a lopsided New York Yankees logo painted on the cinder block wall behind him. On closer inspection, a preliminary pencil sketch of a pair of red socks bleeds out from under the cheap white acrylic. This place thrives on rivalries. Loyalties are perpetuated or punished.
“I collected all the requests and I didn’t see anything with your name on it.” It’s a risk, I know, to ask him to follow a system that displaces him as top seed at the doorway perch. I take my seat in the mangy, stained office chair that is set in the lowest position. I crank the lever on the side to bring myself back up to adult height.
“I need to make a legal call. It’s important.” Never mind that he has used up his two allotted calls and an extra off-the-record voicemail to his shrink just four days into the new month.
“You know this pisses me off,” he slobbers, his arms flinging out to the side. He pulls a visiting application from the bookshelf, flips it over, grabs the inmate pen from his side of the desk and scribbles in large ranting letters: I GOT TO SEE YOU. Then he slides the memo under my desk so it pops up at my feet.
“Mr. Pisano, the longer we stand here debating this, the longer it’s going to take me to get to everyone.”
“You know I don’t like to wait in line with the others! I know myself. Someone’s gonna push my buttons and I’m gonna catch another bid out there.”
“I’ll have the officer call you when I’m ready. Does that work?” I ask.
“I’ll be on my bunk,” he says in disgust, and is gone. The perspiration from thousands of confined sit-ups has pushed the dew point up a few notches in here. Guys are running in place, doing dips off the window sill and curling up to knees slung over bunk rails. A roomful of big boys held in for a year’s worth of recess due to inclement behavior.
To the left of the computer monitor, a metallic burgundy coffee cup has stood obscured in the rush of comers and goers for three days now. I never get more than a sip or two down before the cappuccino is set aside to brew curdled foam. My leather briefcase is a snarl of risk assessment forms, detainer notices and post-it reminders that have dropped out of order and nest in a heap of pens at the bottom. This week’s case notes have crimson stains like lip gloss spattered on them. There is little option other than dribbling Greek yogurt and raspberries over the sheaths of paperwork while I type in the quiet just before roll call sets the shift in motion. Once inside the housing unit, there is no stopping the outflow of a need so aching and overwhelming, you can feel it throbbing behind the walls and up the main corridor. Each man spends the night on his bunk with his mind’s eye focused on one thing: getting out. As the days boil down into vicious sameness, this distant mark on the calendar becomes a raving obsession. All eyes are fixed on the one egress that leads out to the real world. The fervent prayers of Muslims, Catholics and Native Americans alike begin and end with the same petition. Allah/Sweet Mary/ Mother Earth, please get me the fuck out of here.
The windowless office has absorbed the odor of four hundred damp Nikes. The one ancient desk fan putters to a palsied hum. The copy machine is broken.
“Fuck,” I say. I quickly reach under the blinds on the door and tape up today’s list in order of priority. One by one, they start lining up outside the door.
“Pardon my language,” I add for the benefit of the twenty peeping eyeballs that glare through the slats in the lowered blind. Why I say it, I don’t know. Fuck is just fine with them.
#
The morning is well underway with few snags in the sequence of men who file in empty-handed and back out with new parole dates, updated money accounts, pending warrants to serve or a care package of dwarfed toothpaste and bars of soap that smell like kerosene. Suddenly, the door flies open crashing its leaden weight against the back of the chair where Mr. Dwyer sits sorting the daily mail.
“I swear to God, I’m gonna beat the fuckin’ shit out of you, Mike!” Tommy is in high mania now. Saliva pools in the corner of his dry lips. Sweat clamps the front of his grayed tee shirt. A flame-red rash runs the width of his neck. Dwyer, the B-dorm block worker, whips to his feet and turns to face his bunkie. He says nothing, just hangs his head in the face of this tirade. Tommy’s anger has coagulated in visibly extended veins and stringy tendons. It’s not the kind of rage built from pumping push-ups but from getting pushed around. A lifetime of it. He continues to seethe, crowding all his ugliness into the other man’s space.
“Hold on, Tommy. Not now…” Dwyer stutters with his hands at his side, disarmed. I move between the two men and face the provoker.
“You need to step out, Mr. Pisano!” My right hand is just out of reach of the inmate receiver. If I jiggle it off the hook, then the signal will be sent to Control to send cops running this way.
“This kid is gonna get hisself killed, and it’ll be all your fault!” he yells at me, then turns his attention back to the submissive man who keeps mumbling, “C’mon Tommy, c’mon man” over and over.
“I know what you’re up to. You sit in here taking up all her time, you fucker!”
“Calm down. He works for me. You know that. I asked him to be in here,” I tell Pisano and move closer, creating more space behind me and less room for him to maneuver his fists into striking range.
“Yeah, and what you don’t know is, he’s been taking the envelopes you give him and selling them to the other guys. Plus you can’t trust him with the mail. He’s been reading my shit,” the bully shouts.
“I just do what I’m told,” says the sheepish Irish kid whose complexion has turned the color of week-old groats. His reaction denotes the all-too-familiar frequency of his neighbor’s irrational outbursts.
“Just go. I’ll meet with you tomorrow,” I tell the lesser man and usher him out. The situation is too volatile and the noise is beginning to draw attention from the other inmates.
“Take a seat,” I say harshly. Pisano slams his body down into the plastic chair. Instantly, the juice goes out of him like a circuit breaker that’s been tripped off.
“Can I call my lawyer now? I wrote you,” he says calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened. I pretend the tachycardia in my chest is imaginary and the cold pit of fear in the gut is only the natural pang of a mid-morning blood sugar drop.
“What’s the name of your lawyer?” I ask. Pisano beams and pulls out the business card to a Frank Solomon in Dorchester. The win goes in his column today. I dial up the number, wait on the line to identify the law firm and then signal for him to pick up the inmate
phone. I quietly replace the receiver and without making any sudden movement, turn back to the computer screen. As client and public defender converse, I pull up the inmate query system, making sure the monitor is tilted away from his line of vision. Inmate number 137113’s risk scores come up. Assaultive: 5 Severity of Violence: 5. Mental Health: 5. Paranoid. Suicidal.
“You never call me, man! You told me to cop to this plea and now here I sit…Bullshit! I’m the one doing time here…I can’t do shit in here…No programs…I can’t get a job. I want you off the case…I’ll handle it myself….just get me to trial.”
The receiver slams down so hard that a plastic splinter from the cradle flicks on top of the file cabinet. Tommy Pisano stands up, satisfied.
“Thank you,” he says politely.
I could very well write him a Class A ticket for Threatening and get him removed from General Population. But Tommy doesn’t have the tools to do anything differently. Never has. In primitive fashion, problems are solved by a barrage of flurried fists on chest, spit in his attorney’s face and a senseless beat-down of the irritating world that gets in his simple-minded way.
The bell rings for Rec time and the officers reluctantly stand and begin yelling orders. They amp up the decibel level with raunchy jokes, football stats and a general need to out-shout their captives. On Tuesdays, it’s bottom tier first. Once the rest of the men are settled in, I start to tour and distribute the mail, hoping selfishly that they’re napping with sheets pulled up over their heads and won’t notice the paper that comes spiraling onto the floor.
I’m a tier walker by trade with not a stitch of safety net but my own sixth sense, a far leap for the long-ago girl from Gust Harbor, Maine. White, wobble-kneed and bursting with life, she’s steady on her feet despite learning to walk on slimy kelp and sharp barnacle. Now, it’s a gamble. Every day, a jockey for survival on a walkway of concrete. My spotters are lazy and lean up against the desk with menus of double-stuffed pizzas in hand. They wear stately blue and parade around the perimeter with their eyes on the prize of their own fat retirement. Forget about the circus girl who takes center stage, dangling by her gums and guy-wires in a cellblock of two hundred violent men. Even on their wobbly rope, the Wallendas were more likely to fall among friends and survive.