by Rilla Askew
I said, “Can we go out to the farm in the morning?”
“We’ll see.”
“Don’t I need clothes to wear to church?”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet to go to church.”
I cut my eyes over. I never knew Aunt Sweet to just purposefully miss church. Maybe she don’t want to go because she feels bad about missing Mr. Bledsoe’s funeral. They had it at First Baptist. I know that because the preacher came by real late the night we got home from Watonga and told that to Aunt Sweet. He said it was a nice turnout, and Uncle Terry and Carl Albert seemed to hold up real well. Aunt Sweet said she was glad to hear it, but she still didn’t ask him to come in. He stood under the porch light smoothing his hair over the top of his head with his hand. After a minute, he said, “Well, if you need anything,” and she said, “We’ll be fine. But thank you. For everything. Really. I can’t thank you enough.” The preacher sort of craned his neck then to see around her. “You doing all right, buddy?” he said. “Good,” I said. “Well, we’re all . . . real glad to see you home.” He kept standing there like he still wanted to say something. Then he blinked a couple of times and went back down off the steps, and Aunt Sweet shut the front door and turned off the porch light and she hasn’t opened the front door any more since.
The reason Aunt Sweet didn’t get to go to Mr. Bledsoe’s funeral is because she had to be at family court in Watonga with me. That human sources lady was there, too, the one that drove me over from the hospital. The lady kept trying to talk to me, she said she was on my side, she was just there to help me, and I guess she was nice and all, except she really frowned when the judge said I could go home with Aunt Sweet. That’s why I don’t trust her. I was worried she might be at the Wilburton courthouse, too, when we went up there for Señor Celayo’s hearing on Thursday, but she turned out not to be. The preacher was there though. He’s the one who came in and told us what happened at Grandpa’s hearing.
They had all three hearings in Wilburton last Thursday, for Brother Jesus and my grandpa and Señor Celayo, but me and Aunt Sweet didn’t get to see Grandpa then because I had to be a witness at Señor Celayo’s hearing, and the district attorney said witnesses aren’t allowed to come in until it’s time for them to talk, so he made me stay in his office at the end of the hall. Aunt Sweet stayed with me. She wanted to go in and watch Grandpa’s preliminary, but it got finished too fast. Before we hardly knew it, Brother Oren was standing at the office door saying they were letting Brother Jesus go, but they were keeping my grandpa, and Aunt Sweet got really upset. “What for?” she said, and the preacher said, “Well, felony assault,” and Aunt Sweet said, “Are you kidding me?” and the preacher said, “Well, no.” So then Aunt Sweet went out to talk to the district attorney and Brother Oren stayed with me and we played tic-tac-toe on a piece of paper the secretary gave us until Aunt Sweet came back.
“Is Brother Oren going to the jail with us tomorrow?” I said.
“Not that I know of. You want something to drink?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer, just got up and went to the kitchen. I heard the icebox door open. Then the dishwasher started. Aunt Sweet says we’ll get on a regular schedule about eating after I start back to school. I don’t know when she’s going to make me do that. I didn’t ask her yet. I sort of don’t want to bring the subject up. In a minute she came in with two Dr Peppers. She popped the rings on both cans, took a drink of hers, and set it down next to her popcorn bowl. I keep thinking how lonesome she’s going to be when Grandpa gets out and me and him go back to live at the farm. But maybe if I could get the bike back, Carl Albert might come home and not be mad, and maybe even Uncle Terry, and then everything will go back to being how it’s supposed to be.
The trouble is, I don’t know where that mountain bike’s at. I remember riding it away from the ditch after the truck boiled over. Señor Celayo pumped the pedals and I rode on the seat with my feet out to keep them from getting caught in the spokes. After I got sick, though, I don’t remember everything. I remember we stopped and camped in the nighttime. I remember my throat hurt and Señor Celayo tried to get me to drink some water and the sky was really black. I remember my mom being there. That’s the best thing I remember. Sometimes I could hear her, like when I used to listen at the cemetery, but after a while it wasn’t her voice anymore but just a feeling like she was sitting beside me, watchful, like an angel, except not white and with wings and glowing like you see in the pictures but more dark and soft, like a shadow, but I don’t mean something bad by shadow, just something good and nice and warm. Like sleeping in the bed next to her when I was a little kid.
“Dustin,” Aunt Sweet said. “Please leave that alone.” I quit rolling the doily and smoothed it out flat. My chest was hurting. I had that feeling again, like I was waiting for something. Aunt Sweet leaned over and set the Bible on top of the doily. “Finish your popcorn now and then go get in the shower,” she said. “I want you to wash your hair this evening. Can you do that with your arm?”
“I think so.”
“Here,” she said, and took my arm and unwrapped the stretchy bandage and rolled it up and laid it on the coffee table so it wouldn’t get wet. She pressed a little on the top of my wrist. “Swelling’s about gone. How does it feel?”
“Okay.”
“Then go get your shower and come in the kitchen when you finish. I’m going to trim that shaggy mop.” I didn’t move. “You want to see your grandpa tomorrow?” she said. I nodded. Aunt Sweet tugged my hair at the back where it’s been getting long. “Well, you’re not going up there with this mess.” I stood up to take my bowl and pop can to the kitchen. “Rinse your head good!” she called after me. “Put on one of Carl Albert’s old T-shirts!”
So I went and took a shower and thought about everything. I thought about my cousin. If he’s at the jail fence tomorrow, he’s going to jump me for wearing his clothes, I know it. I’d rather just go out to the farm in the morning and get my own. Not to mention what he’s going to do when he finds out I stole his bike and his new backpack. I could tell him I only meant to borrow them, not steal them, but I don’t think that’ll do any good. Maybe I could ask Aunt Sweet not to tell him it was me that took them. But then that would be like trying to get her to lie, too. All the lying I been doing, that’s the main thing I’m dreading about tomorrow. I want to see my grandpa, I feel like I can’t hardly wait to see him, but it still makes me kind of sick to think about.
I tried telling the truth. I told it to the sheriff in his office the night me and Aunt Sweet got home from Watonga. I told him it was my idea to go to Tulsa. I said I was the one that swiped the food and the preacher’s knife and the map and the coin jar, but he just stomped around and cussed worse than I ever heard a grown man cuss, and then he stuck a pad of yellow paper in front of me and started telling me stuff to write down that never actually happened. So I figured if the sheriff wouldn’t believe me, nobody else would either, including the judge at the Wilburton courthouse when we went up there for Señor Celayo’s hearing. I’ve been trying to tell myself it wasn’t real true lying I did, or maybe it was just a little white lie, but I can hear it in my mind anyway, my grandpa’s voice in the jail yard tomorrow: You know that don’t make any difference, son. There’s no such thing as a white lie or a little sin.
Saturday | March 8, 2008 | 7:00 P.M.
Garvin County Immigration Detention Center
Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
There are holes in the wall near the floor where the rats run. The room is crowded, dark, the stink bad. But Luis will be here only a few days more, the woman lawyer has told him. Only until the deportation papers are completed; then he will be put on the bus back to Mexico. Luis hopes she is correct. Though the sadness is strong in him, because he has not been able to see his sons, nevertheless, to return to Arroyo Seco will be better than to stay in this place. The stench here
is very bad—more bad than the first jail, where the officers in the tan uniforms first put him. More bad even than the second jail, where the police drove many hours to deliver him. They took Luis from the van in handcuffs and delivered him to the gringo sheriff, who walked him along a midnight blue hallway and locked him in a concrete cell alone.
The second jail was where the woman lawyer first came to talk with him. She said that Luis must go to the court the next day and stand before a judge—not for the crime of entering the United States illegally, she said, but for kidnapping the boy and stealing the old truck. Luis asked her what would be the punishment for such crimes. For stealing the truck, she said in her clumsy spanish, many years in the prison. For stealing the boy, maybe the whole of your life. She shrugged, her shoulders large, her face calm. But first it must be determined that a crime has been committed. This is the purpose of the preliminary hearing. I will see you in the courtroom tomorrow. Luis protested then, telling her that he had no money to pay her. No worries, she said. In this country, the law is the law. Then she left him before Luis could think to ask her about the boy, if he was well, if he was still in the hospital.
In the courtroom the next day, the lawyer talked quietly, continuously, in his ear, making all the translations, and Luis could find no good opportunity to ask about the boy. Her spanish was thick, harshly accented, but clear enough for Luis to understand that the testimony did not go well for him. One police sat in the chair beside the judge and told of finding the truck of the grandfather in the arroyo. Another officer told of arresting Luis in the hospital room where the boy lay very sick. The woman indian doctor told how the boy arrived at the clinic with so much sickness it was necessary to carry him to the hospital. The boy suffered from pneumonia, the doctor said, a bad throat infection, insufficient food, insufficient water, too much cold, an injured wrist. Yes, she repeated each time the large man asked the question: Yes, the defendant, Mister Celayo, was present in the hospital room with the boy.
Luis remembers his confusion when all the people in the courtroom turned their heads at the same moment, and so Luis also turned to look, and there, beside the door, stood the boy, with the aunt beside him, her hand upon his shoulder. The boy appeared so small and thin, his clothes too large for him, his hair combed to the side and slicked down. The boy walked alone across the sunlit floor, cradling his bandaged arm. Luis had felt a little sad, but also fearful, because the boy would not look at him as he stood beside the judge with his good hand raised, swearing to tell the truth, all the truth, and only the truth, with the help of God.
Then the large man in the gray suit with the great mane of gray hair stood in front of the boy. He spoke very kindly, asking the simple questions: What is your name? How many years have you? Where do you live? All this the lawyer translated for Luis. The gray man asked the boy where he had been on the night of february twenty this year.
I dont know, the boy answered.
¿Do you remember that night? the gray man asked.
I dont know, the boy said.
It was a wednesday. Two weeks ago. The twenty of february. ¿Do you remember now?
I think so.
¿What happened to you that night?
Nothing. You mean my arm?
Well, yes, all right, we can start with your arm. ¿What happened to your arm?
I hurt it.
How?
I fell off the bike.
The gray man frowned, walked over to his table, looked down at some papers. ¿And what happened after you fell off your bike? he said.
It was not my bike, it belongs to my cousin.
All right. And what happened after you fell off the bike of your cousin?
I decided to drive the truck of my grandfather to Tulsa.
Then the gray man really frowned. He looked again at the papers, moved them around on the table. His voice, when he spoke again, was not so sympathetic: ¿Did you make a report to the sheriff about the events of that night?
I guess, the boy said. He was asking me questions.
The gray man carried to the boy a piece of paper. Is this your signature?
Yes.
Ask that the record reflect the witness has identified his own signature on the Latimer County Sheriff Report.
The record so reflect, the clerk said.
¿And what did you tell the sheriff about what happened that night? the gray man asked
Luis remembers how the boy sat without moving, and still he would not look at Luis, and his voice when he answered was so soft that the judge said he must speak more loudly. In a high clear voice then, the boy said, I dont remember.
¿Did you tell the sheriff that you rode in the truck with someone?
I might have said a person rode with me.
All right. ¿Who rode in the truck with you?
Mister Celayo.
¿And is Mister Celayo in the room today?
Yes.
¿Could you show the court which person he is?
The boy lifted his good arm and pointed at Luis. There, he said.
Ask that the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant.
The record so reflect.
Then the man in the gray suit asked another question, but Luis was not able to know the question because beside him the woman lawyer jumped up quickly, very red in the face, her hair brown, her shoulders big. The woman called out many rapid words in english. There was a quick, sharp conversation between her and the man in gray and also the judge, until finally the lawyer sat down. She was not happy with what the gray man said, what the judge said. She no longer translated for Luis but stood again and again to say Ob-jeck-shun! Ob-jeck-shun! But the man in the gray suit continued, and the judge did not stop him. Then the woman lawyer began once again to tell Luis in her flat american voice what the boy was saying—but not in whispers; she said the words very loud:
Yes, this was my own idea, she said the boy said. I am the person who drove the truck to Tulsa. I am also the person who drove the truck into the arroyo when the radiator broke. Yes, sir, I am the person. I am not lying. I know how to drive. I have been driving the truck of my grandfather for many years. Yes, sir, I know what it means to swear on the Bible. But I tell you the truth. If someone must be charged with stealing the truck of my grandfather, this should be me.
The judge was frowning. The man in the gray suit was frowning. All around the crowded courtroom many people were frowning. The man in the gray suit returned to the table, grabbed up a paper, waved it at the boy. He said in a cold voice, ¿What did you declare to the sheriff in this signed affidavit about where the defendant took you?
¿The defendant?
Mister Celayo.
The defendant didnt take me. This was my own idea. To transport the illegal mexican man myself.
The face of the gray man became very red. You transported the illegal alien yourself, he repeated, looking not at the boy but all around the courtroom, as if he could not believe such crazy words. Then he came close to the boy, stood over him, very large and sweating, his face red, his voice loud. ¿And just how was this smuggling operation of yours financed, little boy?
I stole the money from my aunt.
¡You stole—! ¿Your Honor, may I approach?
Then the woman lawyer too was standing in front of the judge with the man in gray;
they were talking, talking, and the boy remained very quiet in the chair beside them, very somber, staring straight ahead with his face that was too old for such a young boy. No one was nearby to translate for Luis. He sat at the table inside the bell of silence of one who does not understand the words being spoken around him. Then the boy turned his gaze. The english voices went on chittering and clicking very loud, but Luis and the boy greeted each other in silence. No expression passed between them, no smile or nod or gesture, but the silent greeting leaped across the sun-swept room, from the boy to Luis, and back again: Hello, friend. It is well. No problem. Okay.
Saturday | March 8, 2008 | 7:30 P.M.
Sweet’s house | Cedar
Sweet checked the fridge again. Whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to go to the store. They’d been living on canned tuna and frozen pizza and macaroni and cheese all week, but now they were out of almost everything. Well, she’d go tomorrow, after they visited Daddy. Oh, she dreaded it, though—the thought of people’s eyes watching her in the aisles at Roy’s as she pushed the cart. Watching Dustin. Coming over and trying to get him to talk. But maybe they wouldn’t. People around here were mostly decent that way. Or maybe she could just let him wait in the car. But she couldn’t keep him protected forever, they couldn’t stay cooped up in this house together forever. They had to live in the world. She listened a moment toward the hall. The shower was still running. Well. Maybe they could get by a few days more. She went to the pantry to see if she had powdered milk and cornbread mix. The phone rang. After seven o’clock on a Saturday evening, who could be calling except a reporter, or . . . She rushed to the counter to grab the phone.