by Chris Fabry
One day I heard Mama talking with a lady who came over just to sit on the couch and drink coffee. Mama wasn’t bawling or nothing. She was talking like she’d talk about what kind of meat she was going to cook for dinner or who was getting married or getting a divorce.
I swear, sometimes I forget and start worrying about how we’ll send them to college, she said. And then it’ll hit me fresh. It’s all I can do not to bust out crying when I see a school bus. All the kids in their classes are growing up and having parties, and it’s like my kids are stuck in time, their faces never changing. She was holding Karla’s picture in her lap, rubbing her face with a thumb.
Maybe you should move away from here, the other woman said. I can’t remember her name. Put some distance between you and the memories.
Sometimes I think that’s a good idea. I really do. But then I think that there’s not a place on earth where I could get away from the memories. There’s no island far enough away that I could forget my kids and what happened.
Maybe it would help your marriage.
There’re some things that can’t be helped. They just are. You either live with them or you don’t. Simple as that.
There’s nothing simple about it.
You got that right. You certainly got that right.
Karin
Slowly, over time, I told my story to Ruthie. I did not reveal the conglomeration of boys I had known too well but the one boy, who seemed so right and so wrong. Ruthie said the tongue held the power of life and death, and it felt like if I didn’t tell all, I would die.
“Tell it, then,” Ruthie said.
It was a scene that came back all too often—a scene I would rather forget, but it does show Will. In my mind were images and bits of conversation from the high school homecoming dance. Junior year. I wore a billowy, pink dress with lace above my cleavage. Not that there was much but just above what there was. My mother had helped pick it out, thrilled I was going with Eddie Buret, the son of the police chief and a respected family in our community.
Eddie stood next to me in front of our fireplace, both sets of parents clicking cameras, lights flashing.
Eddie’s mother smiled and shook her head. “She looks so much like you, Cecilia.”
“Do something funny,” Eddie’s dad said.
“Kiss her,” my father said.
Everyone laughed when Eddie did. Everyone but me. On the outside I smiled, but on the inside something died. I did not want to ride in the same car with him, let alone kiss him. I cursed myself for agreeing to go, but I was a good girl and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
Things didn’t get better at the dance. Eddie kept getting too close, dancing faster and with more intensity, sweating, looking at me knowingly, like we both wanted the same thing. I was glad when he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Our gymnasium was an oven of hormones. I wanted to go home, but I settled for a stroll.
Eddie went to get us drinks and Will appeared.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I said.
“Student Council has to set up and take down,” he said, smiling. “Thought I might as well have some punch.”
He had let his hair grow longer. He wore an old black-as-night suit that could have been his father’s or brother’s. Shoes a little big, probably his father’s. His tie was out of style by at least ten years, and he wore a little too much cologne.
“You want to dance?” he said.
“I just want to go home.” I glanced around for Eddie. “I’m with this creep who thinks—”
“Ready, Karin?” Eddie said, coming up behind Will and bumping his shoulder. “Sorry about that. Clumsy me. Didn’t realize you’d been let off the farm. Git all yore chores dun in time fer the big dayunce?” He snickered.
Will smiled, as if the words were toothpicks thrown by a two-year-old.
Then Eddie squinted and turned up his nose. “Do you guys smell something?” He looked down. “Hey, Will, you better check your shoes and make sure you didn’t step in some cow pies on the way over.”
By now others had gathered. A few girls who worshiped Eddie stared at me like I was the luckiest person on the planet.
“Come on, Karin. Let’s get out of here,” Eddie said. “The smell’s getting to me.”
Water rippled in the river by the baseball field, and the moon was a crescent shadow above. We walked in the muted light along the line of parked cars, Eddie waving at some football buddies who catcalled and whistled.
“Go get her, Eddie!”
“You kids be careful now.”
“Be good or be good at it.”
Eddie put his arm around me and guided me toward the covered bridge, a historic structure the town had placed on postcards for visitors, as if anyone in their right mind would sightsee here. Eddie was oblivious to my feelings, perhaps thinking geography could change the unease I felt inside.
He held my hand and pulled me onto the walkway attached to the bridge, overlooking the water. The handrail was rickety and looked as if any pressure would splinter it. This was a favorite spot of couples sneaking away for privacy during school hours, and I was surprised we were the only ones here.
Eddie spun me around and held me an arm’s length away, gazing at me as if I were a steak smothered in barbecue sauce. “Karin, you’re the most beautiful thing in the gym tonight. Do you know that?”
I tried to smile, tried to push my feelings down, but they kept coming up, like the gorge in my stomach. I rubbed my arms. “Can we go back? It’s getting chilly.”
“I can warm you up. Come here.” He drew me to himself and kissed me for the second time that night. This was not the polite kiss at my house in front of our families; it was the kiss of an untamed tongue on an altar I had never knelt at before. His hands moved over me, and he shoved me against the bridge, his tongue inside my mouth.
I struggled to breathe. I tried to push him off, but his two-a-day practices over the summer and weight training in the fall had made his arms rock hard. “Stop!” I managed to mumble as he reached for the bottom of my dress.
A pair of headlights turned away from the road, and I realized why it was so quiet. Eddie had orchestrated the whole thing. His friends were keeping watch, turning people away so we could be alone.
I felt like a cornered animal, like a snake in one of the minnow traps we’d set in the creek. Bobby Ray and I would put pieces of bread inside, submerge the trap in a slow-moving part of the water, and come back a day later to pull up the fluttering, flicking minnows. But several times we found a snake inside the trap. It had eaten all the minnows and suffocated by its inability to escape.
“I’ll tell your parents,” I said, struggling.
“Hey, your dad wanted me to kiss you. I’m just obeying my authorities.” He leaned in again, pressing me hard against the wooden slats, wedging a leg between both of mine.
A shard of wood pierced my dress and the skin underneath. I focused on that pain, shutting out the rest. Why had I gone with Eddie? I didn’t even like him.
I tried to bring my knee up in a last, desperate attempt to get a point across. He locked his legs, and I wondered if this was a move his coach taught in the locker room.
“Feisty,” he said, a guttural, earthy sound to his voice. “I didn’t know you liked to play rough.”
I struggled, telling him that God was watching us and trying to remember some verse to say that would get him to stop. Before I could, a shadow passed and Eddie fell back against the bridge. I caught my balance and turned away before hearing a sickening, bone-crunching sound. Then came a thump on the rickety boards.
I ran, hobbling on the asphalt with one shoe, one broken heel trailing.
When I reached his friends, they looked surprised. “Where’s Eddie? What did you do?”
I kept running toward the gym and looked back to see guys on the bridge, gathered around a body. They helped Eddie up, like they were carrying him off the field after a broken play.
I opened the d
oor and noticed a silhouetted figure on the hill overlooking the bridge. Clouds swept over him as he turned and walked into the night.
“Did you tell your parents?” Ruthie asked when I finished the story.
“I didn’t tell anybody. I got a ride home from a girlfriend. Told her I didn’t feel well.”
“You had to see Eddie the next week.”
I nodded. “He acted like nothing happened, although he had a hard time explaining the missing tooth and the bruises to his coach.”
“Did you ever figure out who it was? Did Eddie figure it out?”
I turned from her, a wave of memories washing over me.
Ruthie put a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know what happened, Karin. I don’t know the things you’ve seen, the roads you’ve stumbled down, but I do know God has brought you here and he’s given you a desire. The old adage is to write what you know, and what you know seems pretty painful. Well, if that’s what you’ve been given . . .”
“The memories take me places I don’t think I can go. Things Richard doesn’t even know. I could never tell.”
“You have to face them at some point. Otherwise you’ll be running the rest of your life. Is that what you want to do?”
“What if he finds out?”
“The preacher?”
“Yes. And what if—what if he comes back? Will. If I write the things I know, it might bring him back, and if that happens . . . Oh, Ruthie, I don’t think I can look at him.”
My body shook. We’d hit something subterranean with only one memory, and if this happened with each new chapter, I was going to die paragraph by paragraph.
“You need to stop worrying about everyone else and how they’re going to react. You have to get that demon off your shoulder that’s telling you what’s safe and okay. Just open a vein. Let it spill out and we’ll be the judge of it.”
I remembered the quote by Nietzsche that I’d found in my closet, the one about looking into the abyss. I did not count on my memories being the monsters. I did not want them looking back at me.
I spent that night sobbing into my pillow, trying to muffle the anguish, unattended by my husband. Could he begin to understand? Would he have it within him to walk through this valley? Some people weep for things they don’t understand. I weep for things I do and wish I didn’t.
Will
I was staring at the clock in the visitors’ room, watching the second hand glide along, but I was somewhere else. Funny how prison can confine you but can’t make you live there. I’ve read Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption fifteen times if I’ve read it once, and each time I cry. Not for myself or Andy Dufresne but for the lack of dreams in here. People live day to day, counting time until it’s the only thing to count. Most people outside these walls live the same way. They wait for something to happen, something that tips them over the edge so they can start living. “When I finish school . . .” “When I get a new job . . .” “When I get a little more money . . .” The goals are endless. School. Marriage. Children. You can wait your entire life for something and when it finally comes forget why you wanted it.
It took time to adjust, but once I saw the possibilities and embraced Clarkston, I tried not just to exist but to thrive. Some saw it in me. Others resented the life in my eyes. The guards called me Will instead of by my last name like the other inmates.
A black guard with a thick African accent once said to me, “You seem freer in here than half the people I know out there.”
Now the air felt stagnant and hot. Spring was on us and the sun baked the room. It would be several weeks before the warden relented and turned the air-conditioning on in the newer part of the jail, and the men would complain and sweat and thrash against the unwritten rule that it wasn’t turned on until mid-June.
Some men count the days until their release. I don’t waste my time crossing squares off a calendar. I have an internal sense that things are changing. Soon I’ll have paid my debt, and other than my mother, there’s only one person I know I have to see.
You’re going to be a great mom to your children when that time comes, I had written Karin in the first week. Whoever marries you is going to be the most fortunate man on the face of the earth, and I can only hope that you’ll wait for me. I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same way. I release you from any promise you’ve made, any unspoken desire, anything said in haste or in an unguarded moment. It sounds trite, but I will truly be happy if you find happiness. If you decide to wait for me, my joy will be doubled. If not, I’ll still pray your husband treats you with gentleness and respect and will always realize that you are a treasure.
My face burned when I thought of her reading those words. I wanted to crumple the paper and write something else, something about her counting the days until I was free. But that wouldn’t be fair to either of us, and I knew, like with the farm kittens I held as a child, the more you cling to an animal, the more it wants its freedom. I have claw marks in my memory to prove that.
So I released her. Not as a calculated plot or ploy, not because it was the only way to get her to return, but because it was my true heart’s desire that she be happy, fulfilled, and loved.
I reached an understanding there on that bed, listening to the sounds of men in the night. Like a burning campfire, I was either in or out. I would be either her passionate lover or nothing. I could not settle for some platonic friendship that danced at the edge of the truth. If I had to love her from a distance, I would. But if she allowed me in, I would love her wholly, with every fiber.
I clung to a dream—a vision of Karin, wind flying through her hair, her pale, freckled face upturned to the moonlight. Deep in the still West Virginia night, with the crickets chirping and fireflies rising from the earth, beacons to a new season of life, one night came back to me when we had been close.
She had unlocked a door and defenses had fallen. Maybe because she was so vulnerable and fragile? Whatever the reason, I held on to it as if it were life itself. Her laughter, her voice singing along with the radio, songs I would always associate with her, the hum of tires, the rush of wind, a touch. Lips pressing. Eyes closed. The soft hint of wine on her breath. The smallness of her back and shoulders—I had never known anything could feel so delicate, so alive.
My dream, my vision, ended there. I never received a reply to the letters. They dropped into a void, a bottomless pit, and never returned. Writing those letters was my first act of release, the first of many, ridding myself of the feelings and passion. It was my first act of love toward her. I hoped it would not be my last.
Karin
Palms sweating, I walked behind Ruthie through the metal detector. She had to put her cane through the machine and hold on to the sides. The machine beeped, and the guard made her go through again. When the alarm didn’t stop, he used the wand and centered on a spot at Ruthie’s side near her waist.
“You have anything under your dress, ma’am?” the guard said.
Ruthie had an attitude, and I was concerned she might say something we’d both regret.
She gave me a playful look, which was not a good sign. She looked straight at the guard and said, “I had my hip replaced a few years ago, young man. My doctor said there’s a good chance it would drive security people crazy if I ever started traveling. Guess he didn’t take prison into account.”
“I’m going to need to frisk you, ma’am, just to be sure.” The guard said it apologetically, like it was something he really didn’t want to do.
Ruthie held up her arms, and soon we were both through.
“Do you need a wheelchair, ma’am?” the guard said.
“I’ll let my feet do the walking, thank you,” Ruthie said, but when we were at the other end of the hall, she looked like she wished she would have said yes.
Another guard led us to the visitors’ room, but Ruthie couldn’t keep up with him. Finally the guard just pointed. “Take a seat inside there. Your party will be on the other side of the glass.”
“Is he there?” Ruthie said.
“Waiting on you, ma’am.”
I took Ruthie’s free arm and walked with her. Having her close gave me comfort, and I wasn’t sure who was steadying whom as we walked.
We were halfway there when Ruthie spoke. “Been thinking it might be time you know my interpretation. Of the dream. You and the baby and your parents.”
“Here? Now?”
“Good a time as any, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think so. I’m about to see someone I haven’t seen in more than a decade who changed the life of our town forever, who took my heart, my very life with him as he walked into this prison, and you pick now to . . .
“I guess so,” I said.
Ruthie stopped and looked at her watch. It was a minute before eleven according to the gray clocks in the hall above us, but Ruthie ran on her own time.
“There’s a reason your mother isn’t in the dream,” she began. “You and your mother are close; it would cloud things. But your father is more aloof in your life, so the fact that he’s there for you and inviting makes it easier to see.”
“Easier? What part of this is easy?”
“Have you ever seen the baby’s face?”
I thought for a moment. “No. I can hear it. It coos and giggles and makes baby noises, but it’s covered with a blanket when I’m holding it, and when it’s on the floor, I never see its face.”
She nodded. “It’s not your child. Not one of your children or one of your future children.”
“How do you know?”
Ruthie skirted the question. “It’s just a theory, mind you, so I’m not saying—”
“Would you just tell me?”