The Last Innocent Hour

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  “You want the top bunk? Or the bottom?” Dixie patted the top mattress that was neatly covered with a sheet and worn blanket.

  Charlie noticed an old book pushed against the wall on the other side of the flat pillow. It was missing its front cover, but spidery writing trailed across the flyleaf. “I'll take the bottom.”

  “It don't matter. You can say which one. All's I got in the world that I care about is that Bible. It was my mama's. She give it to me before she died.” Dixie reached for the book. “I read it ever' night before I go to sleep.”

  “Lower bunk's fine,” Charlie said. “In fact, I'd rather,” he added to convince him.

  Dixie sat on the lower bunk and planted his elbows on his knees. Charlie sat on the round stool that fronted the small desk. He heard singing, sounded like George Strait. Radio, he thought, and then he thought how weird it was, hearing music against all the racket of noise that banged off the walls.

  “He’s my all-time favorite singer,” Dixie said. “You like him? I’ll turn it off, if you don’t.”

  “No, no, I like him fine,” Charlie said, even though he wasn’t particularly familiar. He liked the old rock and roll bands. The Kinks, The Who, the Rolling Stones. Beth had taught him to like Billie Holiday.

  “Ever been in the joint before?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “I been in ten years already,” Dixie said. “I can tell you ever'thing you need to know. Like the chow in here is bad, ain't no exceptions, it's always bad. If you got someone on the outside you should get 'em to bring you somethin' to eat when it's visiting day. Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Have anybody to visit you?”

  Charlie said he didn’t, and closed his eyes wanting and not wanting Beth's and Chrissy's images to form.

  “Are you okay? I didn't mean to make you sad. Look, they got dominoes in the day room an' a color TV with cable. C'mon, Charlie, I didn't mean it.”

  Charlie forced a smile. “It's okay, buddy.”

  “You ain't mad?”

  “No.”

  Dixie still looked worried. “We can be friends? We can play dominoes?”

  Charlie said they could and in his mind now against his will, he saw Chrissy, running backwards, heard her taunting him: “Want to race, Daddy? I can beat you, Daddy. I can win.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, wanting to pinch the image, the sound of her, into inky black oblivion.

  “You get used to it,” Dixie said softly.

  o0o

  “Mexican Mafia runs most everything in here,” Dixie explained at chow later. “You don’t want to mess with them.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Charlie told him.

  Dixie lifted his chin. “You see Paco and Hector over there? They’re the ones was ridin' you earlier. They ain't taken their eyes off you since we sat down.”

  Charlie followed Dixie’s glance and as if that was some kind of cue, Paco started heckling the kid next to him, another new boot Charlie recognized from the bus. Paco took the kid’s food and when the kid made a grab for it, Paco caught his wrist, bending it back. The whole time he was grinning like a fiend. It looked to Charlie like an act, like it was staged for his benefit, to make a point. He started to get up, to go to the kid’s defense, but Dixie pulled him down and held him with a force that surprised Charlie.

  Now Chapa fixed his gaze on Charlie; he let a smile tweak one corner of his mouth, then, in one lightening flash, he whipped a shank out of seeming nowhere, and reaching across Sanchez, he stabbed the weapon into the back of the kid's hand. The kid let out a wounded bellow. Blood welled around the blade. Charlie shoved Dixie aside.

  And Dixie grabbed him again. “Sit down,” he ordered in a voice so rough it caught Charlie off guard. Dixie's grip was iron. “Don't you see? It's what Hector wants. He wants you to start something. Paco, too. He prob’ly wants it more on account of how he hates the gringos since it was a gringo that raped his mama and killed her. You gotta be careful, Charlie.”

  The kid jerked the crude weapon out of his hand with a yelp and dropped it to the table. The clatter went on for the longest time. That noise and the ragged heave of the kid’s breath, the sight of his blood were the only color, the only sounds in the room. Everything else was gray and as still as ice.

  “Why don't the CO's do something?” Charlie asked Dixie in a low voice. A bunch of them were standing against the cafeteria walls. Charlie recognized one of them was the guard named Brashear. Now, as if he’d been waiting for Charlie to notice him, he came over to the table. “Ain’t been in here twenty-four hours, and already you done pissed off the wrong people.”

  “What is it with you, Brashear? If you’ve got a beef with me, let’s hear it.”

  The guard bent his lips to Charlie's ear washing it in warm, stale breath. “Think you're tough 'cause you killed a woman? Think that gets you respect? Maybe you should get Dixie here to explain what Paco Sanchez likes to do to pussy killers like you.”

  “Back off,” Charlie said.

  The guard straightened and waggled his hands, lisping, “Oooh, I know I'm scared, you big bad boy. Pussy killer,” he repeated. He walked away, rolling his hips in an exaggerated fashion getting laughs out of the rest of the gray shirts like it was real comedy, like Brashear ought to pack up his act and take it on the road.

  “Why’d he call you that, Charlie?” Dixie wanted to know. “What’s he think you done?”

  Charlie shook his head. A guard escorted the kid out of the cafeteria. Sanchez picked up the shank, and while Charlie watched, he brought it to his mouth, and licked the kid’s blood from the blade, the point of his tongue flicking delicately, like a cat. He made a production of it, holding Charlie’s gaze until a couple of CO's came and grabbed it and then jerked him off the stool.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  In the nether space before reality intruded, Jane lay empty of everything except a prayer to recall every detail of what felt like a familiar dream. To recall--with crystal clarity, please--each image. But even as she chased them, the tantalizing glimmers of remembrance dissolved the way they always did, and she groaned in her frustration, flipped onto her back and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The tears were as useless as the anger. If only she would give up caring.

  She swung her feet over the bed’s edge and shivered when they encountered the cold tile floor. The heat in her apartment was unreliable. Tim had bought her a space heater, and plugging it in had suggested a more permanent remedy: that she could move in with him. She pulled on sweats and thick socks and slipped a heavy flannel shirt over her short satin gown. In the kitchen making coffee, she thought how it was getting harder and harder to resist Tim, harder to resist the pull of a new life.

  The windowsill over the sink held a collection of clay pots that she'd filled with herbal topiaries from the nursery and a small framed photograph of Belle. Jane picked it up and traced the rounded contours of her small face, the tiny pigtails that were like curled sprouts tied in pink bows. Her expression in the picture was unsmiling and too solemn, and it worried Jane; it wore on her, the sense that she should be there, that her place was with Belle. The photo had been taken on picture day at the pre-school where the Pearsons had enrolled her. Freida had given it to Sharon the last time she’d visited Belle. Jane wasn’t allowed to go to the Pearson’s anymore. Her presence caused too much turmoil.

  They wanted her to forget Belle. Freida was the only one who had said it to Jane’s face, but she knew Tim, Glenda and Sharon agreed. Jane set the photo back on the windowsill. They kept asking her to walk toward the future, to build a new life, and the urge to go on and do that very thing was strong, but something was holding her back. Some instinct warned her that she and Belle weren’t safe, and with every step away, Jane felt an ache inside, and her sense of unease grew.

  Not long ago she'd made a third trip out to the Lincoln County road where she and Belle had been found. Tim had taken her, and he’d stood with her while she
searched for a clue, a sign, something. But nothing had come. On their way home, Tim had asked for her promise not to return.

  “Enough is enough,” he said heading south on the interstate.

  “But what about Belle? The Pearson's are going to start adoption proceedings. What if Belle is mine? My daughter? And I lose her because I can't remember?”

  Tim took her hand. “Nothing so final can happen overnight.”

  Jane sensed he was referring to more than just legal tangles, and she was careful to keep her glance from his. His touch had ignited a warmth inside her, something more significant than simple friendship, and she didn’t feel entitled to it.

  He said, “Freida Pearson has to be dual licensed if she wants to adopt, and she isn’t. I checked.”

  Jane looked a question at him.

  “For foster care and adoption. And even if she gets that done, she still can't petition the court until your parental rights have been legally terminated.”

  “Would that come from the same court as the one that ordered Belle into foster care in the first place?”

  “Yes, but this is such an unusual case because of the way you were both found and your memory loss. Depending on who the judge is, he might want to wait a bit before agreeing to anything so permanent. Especially if the foster home where Belle is living is satisfactory.”

  Beth had laughed shortly and said as far as Freida Pearson was concerned, hers was the only home for Belle, and Frieda herself was the only worthy mother.

  Tim had taken Beth horseback riding later that afternoon. To get her mind off her troubles, he’d said. They’d been riding together a number of times since. Evidently Jane’s love of horses was another fact she knew about herself. They’d even gone so far as to discuss plans for a horseback riding trip in the hill country, one that would involve packing enough supplies for a long weekend, finding a campsite, and making a decision about sleeping arrangements. One sleeping bag or two?

  Jane sat sipping her coffee now. They were making too many plans. Weaving together the threads of their lives in ways that were hard to resist. Time kept moving forward, relentless in its disregard for the past. Sometimes it felt as if in the rush of days, she was drowning.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Charlie dumped an armload of towels from one dryer into the wheeled laundry cart, and moving to the next one in the row, he pulled out a second load of shirts and pants and piled those into the cart as well, then pushed it to one of the large tables against the wall. Doing the prison laundry was mindless work, but Dixie, who worked the same job, said it was better than working on the road gang.

  “I done that,” he told Charlie. “An’ I busted rock, an’ worked out in the field hoein' peas or cotton, an’ trust me, this is better.”

  Charlie was five weeks into his sixteen-year jolt, and as far as he could tell, “better” was a relative term in this place where men had no dignity. Dixie had ten years on him; he had the routine down. For him it was simple. “Ya gotta rack up good time,” he told Charlie. “Do what they say. Walk the line. Don't show your temper, and don't make no waves. For every day you serve like that, you get one good-time day. When you make trusty, you'll get two days for every one.”

  But Charlie was pissed, always pissed, and scared. And his sleep was troubled with dreams of Beth and Chrissy. He'd waken to feel his grief for their loss constricting his chest, a cry without sound. He’d wasted so much of his life, so much of his time with them, precious time. Methodically, he folded shirts and pants, then started on the dozens of towels. The washers and dryers worked, and the hum of machinery was hypnotic, letting him drift.

  He remembered the day he met Beth, how furious she’d been when he mistook her for a guy. She’d been working like a mule, mucking out a horse stall at the track, Calder in Miami, and he was in the paddock area nosing around for information on a horse he was thinking of betting when he spotted her. She’d had her hair tucked under a cap, and she’d been of such small stature, that seeing her from the back, he’d assumed she was a wannabe jockey trying to make an impression. He struck up a conversation, but she hardly responded and wouldn’t look at him, and he got impatient.

  “Look, man,” he said.

  She wheeled, whipping off her cap to reveal her hair--her dark halo of curls, that loosed from its constraint formed a rich and glossy helix around the heart shape of her face. “Do I look like a man to you?”

  Charlie was astonished, speechless. His senses were overloaded. It wasn’t only her hair or that she was so small and beautifully made, it was the tart flash in her green-gold eyes, too, and the stubborn jut of her chin. Offense flushed her cheeks, heaved the narrow cage of her ribs. His first coherent thought was that she was too small and too fine to be working so hard. He wanted to take the rake away from her and lead her out of the stall. He wanted to promise her she would never dirty her hands again, not as long as he had the breath and the means to take care of her.

  It had taken him fifteen minutes to talk her out of the rake, and by the time he’d rolled up his sleeves and finished cleaning the stall and laying in fresh hay, he’d talked her out of the winner for the sixth race too. They’d had dinner by the ocean. He’d brought a candle and buried it in the sand. He closed his eyes now and remembered the wind through his hair; he remembered the feel of her cheek in the cup of his palm, the salt sweet taste of her mouth. How she had said to him that night that she did not want to love him. He was a gambler and a sweet-talker, but then, weeks later, she’d confessed she was pregnant. He’d been crazy with joy; he’d sworn he would change; they’d settle down. He dropped the towel he was folding now and pressed his fingertips hard to his eyes. He had failed her and failed Chrissy so goddamned many times. . . .

  Dixie passed close to him wheeling a cartload of wet towels. “Heads up,” he said jerking his chin toward the laundry room doorway.

  Charlie followed Dixie’s glance and saw Lou Don Brashear slouched in the doorframe looking back at him like Charlie was the only guy in the place.

  “Watch yourself,” Dixie said. “I don't know why he's doggin' you, but don't let him rile you.”

  “Jesus. I don't need this,” Charlie muttered.

  “Just mind your temper. Don't give him a reason to write a case on you. It'll wreck your good time. It's what he wants.”

  “I know. But why?”

  “Don't matter. Just keep cool.” Dixie pushed his cart on by heading for the dryers.

  Brashear walked over, grinning, affable. “Laundry's women's work,” he said genially. “How's it feel makin' out like a woman?” The guard pumped his hands up and down in front of his chest as if he were hefting a heavy set of tits.

  “You been on my ass since I got here, Brashear. Why don't you just come out and tell me what you want?”

  “Oooh, I dunno.” Brashear settled one meaty haunch on the corner of the big work table, plied the ball of his thumb to his teeth. “What're you offerin', huh, killer?”

  Charlie picked up another towel, folded it in half.

  “You know, my friend Lance was tellin me 'bout your attitude. Problem like that in here can cost you. There's guys in here take exception to someone like yourself actin' all tough and like they don't give a shit. They li'ble to call you out, see can you walk the walk. You know, fight a man. Fight like a man. Or is all you can do is whip pussy?”

  “Who is this Lance guy you keep talking about?”

  “I'm surprised you don't remember. Lance Devers? Deputy hauled your ass to jail?”

  Now Charlie made the connection. “What’s his interest in me?”

  “Well, now, you're mighty interesting to several folks back in Wither Creek.”

  Charlie set the folded towel on the stack. “What do you mean? Interesting to who, besides your deputy friend?” He looked at the guard. “Tinker? Is that the 'who else' you're referring to? Jason Tinker? The sonofabitch who framed me?”

  Brashear snorted. “Framed. That's what they all say, ain't it, killer? T
o hear all you weenies tell it, ain't a one a you ever did the crime you're in here for. You're just a bunch of mother-lovin', god-humpin' altar boys more holy than Christ hisself. Jesus.” He shook his head. “Y’all make me sick.”

  Charlie felt the weight of Dixie's cautionary stare from across the room: Don't give him no shit, Charlie. It's what he wants, and with an effort, he dropped his glance, pulled another towel from the basket, concentrating on the warm rough feel of the terrycloth against his hands. But even so, his head felt large, too large, and like it was growing. His breath came in spasms, tiny gasps of fury.

  “What'sa matter, killer? Lost your nerve? Guess it's true, you only fight pussy.”

  “Shut up, you fat fuck, or so help me God you'll regret it.” Charlie said it low and without raising his gaze.

  Brashear brought his face in close enough that Charlie smelled last night’s beer on his breath. “Trust me,” the guard growled, “there’s nuthin’ I’d like better than to go a few rounds, nuthin’ I'd enjoy more than messin' up that pretty face of yours.” He straightened, doing the trademark waggle with his hands. “But much as I might like to, it ain't worth riskin' my job. ‘Sides, you got worse trouble.”

  Charlie looked at him.

  “I come by to tell you that ever since Hector Chapa stuck that kid with a shank at chow the other night, he's been talkin' about how you wanted to call him out for it. He says you got it in for him.”

  “That's bullshit,” Charlie stated matter-of-factly. “I don't have it in for him or anybody. Just want to do my time and get out. That's all.”

  Brashear clapped a hand to his heart. “You cut me, Cunningham. Cut me to the core.”

  Charlie didn’t answer.

  Brashear pushed off the table. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Guys like Chapa eat pussies like you for free, and they like it.”