VISITING ROOM read a big notice on all four walls.
No physical contact of any kind. No food or drink. Appropriate clothing must be worn at all times. No miniskirts, halter tops, tank tops, short shorts. No exchange of any objects whatsoever. Violators will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This room is under constant video surveillance.
“Take a seat,” said the supervisor. Two rows of plastic seats, each backed against a wall, the seats a little different from in the first room-farther apart, three feet or so, and each row bolted to the floor. There was no one else in the room. Wyatt sat in the middle of the row opposite the door he’d come in through. The supervisor went to a second door, used the keypad, and left. As the door swing shut, Wyatt caught a snatch of someone yelling in Spanish.
He waited. It occurred to him that he actually couldn’t get out of this room on his own. He glanced up, into the lens of a video camera. His heart rate speeded up. He took a deep breath, thought about getting up, maybe pacing around a bit. At that moment, the second door opened and a man dressed in inmate khaki entered, followed by a green-uniformed corrections officer, a big woman with short dreadlocks. They both looked at Wyatt. The CO sat in a corner. The man in khaki crossed the room, his movements slow, even halting, and approached Wyatt.
Wyatt rose, probably in a slow and halting way also, although he was barely aware of that. All he was really aware of were his beating heart and this fantastic resemblance. The genetic bond was impossible to miss. Father and son: what could be more obvious?
Sonny Racine stopped about a yard away. Was this a moment for handshaking? Wyatt didn’t know; and then he remembered the sign: No physical contact of any kind.
“Wyatt,” Sonny Racine said. “Thank you for coming.”
In his mind, Wyatt had rehearsed a few things he might say first, but now he couldn’t remember any of them. He just nodded.
Sonny smiled. He had a nice smile, his teeth big and white, none missing. Wyatt would have expected bad teeth in prison. Also: no visible tattoos or scars, no evasiveness in the way he looked at you, no tics or twitches.
“I know it’s not the most pleasant atmosphere,” Sonny said.
“That’s all right,” said Wyatt.
Sonny gestured toward the plastic seats. He had strong, well-shaped hands, very much like Wyatt’s but older-looking, maybe because one or two of the fingers weren’t perfectly straight. Sonny was strong and well shaped in general, Wyatt’s height to the inch, a little thicker in the chest and shoulders.
They sat in adjoining seats about three feet apart, each half turned to face the other. Wyatt was relieved to sit down: a sudden feeling of weightlessness had overcome him.
“My heart is beating pretty fast right now, I can tell you,” Sonny said. “But not your problem. First, I want to say how much I appreciate this visit.”
“That’s all right,” Wyatt said for the second time, feeling a little foolish about the inane repetition; but if it struck Sonny as foolish, he gave no sign.
“Second-I-” Sonny broke off, turned away, brushed the back of his hand over his eyes. When he turned back to Wyatt, his eyes were clear. “The natural thing is to say something about you being a fine-looking young man,” he said, “but it’s almost like giving myself a pat on the back.”
“Because of the resemblance?”
“Exactly. It’s…it’s uncanny.”
A silence fell over them, kind of awkward, at least for Wyatt, but he couldn’t think of what to say. He glanced at the CO with the dreads, seated in the corner. She was gazing off into space. Even sitting down, he felt weightless.
“You don’t have to stay,” Sonny said. “If this is too uncomfortable or anything.”
“No, no,” said Wyatt.
“But if it gets…,” Sonny began, then noticed a speck of dust on his knee and brushed it off. His khaki pants were spotless, with sharp creases down the fronts of both legs. He looked up at Wyatt and said, “Do you like the name?”
“What name?”
“Yours-Wyatt.”
“Yeah.” He did like his name, always had.
“Good,” said Sonny. “It was either that or Derek.”
“What do you mean?”
“In our discussions about what to name you,” Sonny said. “I’m talking about Linda. Your mom. We’d narrowed it down to those two, when…when…” His voice trailed off.
Derek? That was news to Wyatt. So was the whole idea of this man’s involvement in the choice of his name. Wyatt had always just assumed his mom had picked it on her own.
Sonny was watching him. “Hope that doesn’t bother you,” he said, as though reading Wyatt’s mind. “My being in on the naming and all. Obviously not my right, looking back from later events. Linda’s, but totally.”
“No,” said Wyatt. “It’s, uh…”
Another silence. Sonny rubbed his hands together, maybe trying to warm something up, like the room. “Is the Chuckwagon still around?” he said.
“Chuckwagon?”
“Guess not,” Sonny said. “It was a diner on Fremont Street, across from that little park.”
Wyatt knew the spot, back in East Canton. “A Laundromat’s there now,” he said.
“Yeah?” said Sonny. “I didn’t know that.” He turned back toward Wyatt. “It was tricked out to look like a covered wagon. Linda and I went there a lot. Does she still like BLTs, the bacon nice and crisp?”
“Yeah.”
“She ordered it every time, always with a chocolate shake.” Wyatt had never seen his mother drink a shake. “That’s where we had these name discussions,” Sonny went on, “at the Chuckwagon. Once-might have been the last time, now that I think about it-you kicked. I felt it, you know, in the womb. Linda kind of went still for a second, her mouth full of BLT. I can practically see it.” He shook his head. “But enough of that. You didn’t come all this way to hear an old guy get sentimental. Main point is-you like your name. Got a middle one, by the way?”
“Errol.” A name he didn’t like and never used, not even on official forms, like his license. Also: it was impossible to think of this man as an old guy, and Wyatt wouldn’t have minded hearing more about the Chuckwagon.
“Errol-that would be after Linda’s dad,” Sonny said. “How’s he doing?”
“He died a long time ago.” So long that Wyatt had no memories of him.
“Errol was a good guy,” Sonny said. “Loved baseball.”
“Did he go to any of your games?” Wyatt said, taking a guess.
“Yeah, he did. How’d you know I played?”
“Coach Bouchard told me.”
“What a character. Hope he’s doing all right.”
“They had to cut baseball, on account of the economy.”
“I heard. No economy in here-one of the silver linings.”
“What’s another one?” Wyatt said; a question that came blurting out, mostly on its own.
Sonny laughed. He had a nice laugh, low and musical. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said. He gave Wyatt a quick sideline look. Wyatt had seen Mr. Mannion give Dub a look just like that, one day back in middle school when Dub had surprised everyone by winning honorable mention at the science fair.
“You heard the baseball story from Greer?” Wyatt said.
Sonny nodded. “She says you’ve got a nice compact swing. Interesting a girl would notice something like that.”
“I was hitting at the cage,” Wyatt said.
“Even so,” Sonny said. “You miss it?”
“No,” Wyatt said. “A little.”
“What position?”
“Center field.”
“Meaning you can run.”
“A bit.”
“More than that, I’ll bet. Coach Bouchard always wanted a burner in center-doubt that changed over the years.” He took a deep breath. “I still love baseball.”
“Uh,” said Wyatt, “do you get to throw the ball around and stuff?”
Son
ny laughed again. Yes, a happy laugh. How was that happiness possible? “A baseball in the wrong hands is the kind of thing they try to avoid in here. But there’s a lounge with a TV. We’ve got a game pretty much every night during the season.” He smiled. “Not all the guys are baseball fans, of course, but we work it out.”
The visitors’ door opened and the heavy woman in the jogging suit came in with her two kids. They sat at the opposite wall, the baby in the woman’s lap, the little boy beside her but almost at once slumping down to the floor, then crawling under the seats.
“Hey,” said the CO with the dreads.
The heavy woman reached down, grabbed the boy by the pant leg, and pulled him out. The baby began to slide off the woman’s lap. She grabbed him, too. The baby started crying. The boy sat back down on the seat beside his mother, crossed his arms over his chest, looked angry. At that moment, the other door opened and an inmate in khaki entered, followed by another CO, this one white and male. The CO was big, but the inmate was even bigger, a huge guy with a shaved head, goatee, a tear tattoo under one eye, and another tattoo-Jesus on the cross-taking up most of the other side of his face.
He glanced at Sonny and gave him a curt nod. Sonny gave him one back. Then the huge guy walked toward the woman and the kids. The woman and the baby didn’t take their eyes off him, but the boy kept staring straight ahead. The woman said something in Spanish. The man shrugged. He took a seat next to the boy, who still had his arms folded across his chest.
“Hey, what’s wit’ you?” the man said to the boy. The boy didn’t answer. The man looked over him at the woman. “What’s wit’ him?” he said.
The woman answered in Spanish. She sounded annoyed.
“That’s not what he needs,” the man said. “I’ll tell you what he needs.” Wyatt noticed his hands: enormous, tattoo covered, half curled into fists.
Sonny saw where Wyatt was looking. “Best not to make eye contact with Hector,” he said. “Among other things, he doesn’t appreciate baseball.”
Wyatt looked quickly away.
18
More visitors came in, plus three inmates. It got a little noisier. Sonny Racine leaned forward so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. “How’s Linda?”
“Good,” Wyatt said, but the mention of his mother’s name suddenly took him back to Hilltop Breeze: Your mom was involved?
“What’s wrong?” Sonny said. “She’s not having difficulties?”
“No.”
“Is she sick?” Sonny said.
“No, nothing like that.”
“Money problems?”
“No.”
“What does she do?”
“Works in an insurance office.”
“Married?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the guy like?”
Wyatt shrugged. “I’ve got a half sister-Cameron, but we call her Cammy.”
“You get along with the guy all right?”
“No complaints.”
“So what’s wrong?” Sonny said. “I got the feeling you had some kind of bad thought back there.”
Wyatt shook his head, and as he did his gaze passed over the little groupings, Hector’s and the others, all giving off waves on tension, unhappiness, even desperation, and nobody touching anybody else. “It’s only,” he said, “that you seem kind of happy.”
Sonny’s face changed, didn’t become hard, just unreadable and still. “Is that a crime?” he said.
“No. Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Go on.”
Wyatt took a deep breath. What was the point of coming into this horrible place and not asking the big questions? He plunged ahead. “I never expected you’d be happy.”
“Wouldn’t push that too far, the happiness thing,” Sonny said. “I’m happy to see you, of course, but we’re still waiting for a day at the beach in here.”
“Yeah, but, um, speaking of crimes, any innocent person in here would be…” Wyatt searched for the word, couldn’t find it.
“Beside himself?” Sonny said.
“Yeah.”
Sonny was watching him carefully. “You’re getting at something, I can sense it,” he said. “Problem is these visiting sessions have a time limit.” He smiled; a nice smile, with the eyes joining in, no longer probing. And even as he spoke, the CO with the dreads was glancing at her watch.
Wyatt made himself look Sonny right in the eye; that had to be the way to deliver information that might be unpleasant. “The thing is, we saw Mr. Wertz. Me and Greer, I mean.”
Sonny sat back. “Morrie Wertz is still around? Hasn’t drunk himself to death by now?”
“He’s at Hillside Breeze.”
“What’s that?”
“A nursing home behind the hospital.”
“In Silver City?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t know Silver City.”
Wyatt thought about that. Sweetwater State Penitentiary was across the river but still within the town limit, so Sonny had actually been living in Silver City for seventeen years.
“What were you seeing old Morrie about?” Sonny said. “Not legal advice, I hope.”
“Greer told me that everyone in here thinks you’re innocent,” Wyatt said. “That’s why.”
Sonny smiled, shook his head. “And every one of them also thinks he’s innocent, too. They really wind up believing that, all of them.”
“No, but-”
Sonny raised his voice, not a lot, but it carried across the room, and all the other conversations went silent and the COs suddenly looked wide-awake. “Hey, Hector,” he said. “You innocent?”
Hector looked up, the light from the overhead fluorescent strips shining bright on his Jesus-on-the-cross tattoo. “Hundred percent.”
A few people laughed, including the CO with the dreads; a few people, but none of the visitors. Conversations started up again. Sonny turned to Wyatt, the smile not quite gone from his face. Wyatt found himself reddening, not so much from awkwardness or embarrassment-although there was some of that-but more from anger.
“So what are you saying?” he said. “You’re guilty? You did it?” The biggest question of all.
It didn’t seem to throw Sonny the slightest bit. “A jury of my peers said so.”
“But I’m asking you.”
“I know, and you have every right,” Sonny said. “What did Wertz say?”
“He thinks you were innocent,” Wyatt said. “That you were protecting someone else.”
Sonny lowered his voice. “Like who?”
“He didn’t say,” said Wyatt. “But-but was it Mom? My mother, I mean. Linda.”
“Did Wertz say that?”
“No, but I couldn’t think of-”
“Because if he did, he must be demented. A woman like Linda could never be involved in anything like that. Out of the question.”
Out of the question: the exact same expression that had risen up in Wyatt’s mind when Greer suggested the possibility. “So why did you get up on the stand when he told you not to?”
“He went into that?” Sonny said. “Funny how some people’s grudges stay strong when there’s almost nothing left of the rest of them-seen that more than once in here.”
“His grudge is because he thinks you blew the case?”
“Exactly. But it was pretty clear to me at the time that I had a drunk for a lawyer-and the person blowing the case was him.”
“What happened on the stand?”
For an instant, Sonny’s face twisted up, as though he’d tasted something bad. “The DA made a fool of me. Which is what DAs can do to a kid, guilty or innocent.”
The CO with the dreads checked her watch again, rose, and said, “Time’s up.”
Everyone started getting to their feet. “Which one were you?” Wyatt said.
“Guilty or innocent?” said Sonny. “It’s not that simple.”
“Let’s move it, people,” said another CO.
Wyatt talked fast. “But you d
idn’t pull the trigger, did you?”
“Makes no difference under the law.”
“But did you or not?”
Sonny gazed at Wyatt. Wyatt could feel him thinking.
“Hey, Racine!” called the big CO, the one who’d brought Hector in. All the inmates were lined up at the inmate door, all the visitors at the visitors’ door.
Sonny rose. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Don’t worry about me, whatever you do.” He gave Wyatt a little wave and joined the line. The inmates filed out and the door closed. From somewhere in the walls came a deep clanging sound, and then softer ones, fading away.
Greer was up early in the morning. Wyatt smelled coffee, opened his eyes.
“You awake?” she called from the kitchen, somehow knowing.
Wyatt sat up, suddenly very awake. He felt different today, different in a way that disoriented him for a moment or two before he realized what this feeling was. Wyatt felt older, more solid, somehow. Could that happen overnight? Being older seemed to be a physical feeling, hard to describe even to himself. Did becoming an adult, a man, just mean accepting one day that that was what you were, and getting on with life?
“Hey, Mister Deep Thoughts,” Greer said. She stood at the bedroom door, all dressed, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand.
He turned to her. She looked great, skin clear and glowing, eyes bright.
“Come here,” he said.
“You want coffee?”
“Soon.”
“Not too soon, I hope.”
Not too soon after that, they were at the kitchen table. Granola with banana slices on top, coffee. Whatever Greer put on the table was always so good.
“Now comes Mister Hungry,” she said.
Wyatt laughed, finished off his granola, plus half of hers.
“Know what we should do this weekend?” she said. He waited to hear. “Take a drive over to Millerville.”
Wyatt wiped his mouth on the paper napkin. “How about today?”
She shook her head. “School day.”
He rose. “Today.”
“Mister Bossman?” she said. “He’s new.”
Bullet Point Page 12