In truth, she couldn’t give any one explanation to Eddings or anyone else. There wasn’t one thing that was keeping her away from Roscoe—while he was in jail, at his trial, and now on his trip to prison. It wasn’t one thing, but everything. All things. The things he’d been unfortunate enough to inherit when he married her, the things he’d brought along himself, his unremitting love of electricity, its stubborn practice, the laziness of the first year on the farm, the lies about the power, the exploitation of Wilson. All that ugliness, but somehow, too, the beauty she’d once seen in him—the strength to defy his own lineage, the circuits of his brain in their understanding of something so new and foreign as harnessed power, the cut of his face, the roughness of his hands, even the man he’d been in their bedroom, both tender and ardent. Every piece hurt. Every piece made her again that little girl standing outside her mother’s sickroom, inert, meager, inconsequential. No, she could not ride with him in a car to the prison that would keep him for years and years. He was already gone.
CHAPTER 12 / ROSCOE
Yellow Mama is the new subject of myths swapped in the mess hall, the storytellers saying that something in the oak and maple Ed used, something about that wood, feeds off the electric current, breathing and swelling until those yellow legs grow strong enough to break from their metal stands and lumber away. The storytellers mimic the stomp of her wood-soled shoes in the open cell corridors at night. “She can climb stairs,” they say. “She can slip keys from the belts of the guards. She can open cell doors without making a sound.”
They say she speaks to you before she takes you away, and that her voice has a foreign accent like Ed’s. I imagine he’d enjoy these stories.
The four other men left in my cell skirt by me in brooding silence. They resent Ed’s freedom, and they turn their looks of anger and betrayal toward me now that he’s gone. Ed was a trustee, which granted him the warden’s protection. He knew the only thing keeping our cellmates from killing him in his sleep was the punishment they’d face come morning. Now, it’s just me they have to despise, and my faults are too ridiculous for these men to act upon—the letters I write, the readings I give for Chaplain, the books I keep stacked near my bunk, the Fridays I spend in the library. They call me Books.
“All that reading didn’t do you much good, now did it, Books?”
“Got you stuck right in here with us folks. Hell, I even got a shorter sentence.”
“Hey, Books, go on and read us something.”
“Yeah, Books—what new stories you got?”
Even when they ask me to read, derision is in their voices.
I don’t think of myself as above these men. That’s a hierarchy they’ve imposed.
Ed enjoyed his books, too, all those descriptions of ships read again and again.
It’s hot in the cell house this evening, and I rise from my bunk to go to the window. It’s impossible to see outside through the screen and bars, so it’s only my reflection I take in. My face in the glass is abbreviated, shorn of its chin and mouth in one pane, my forehead gone in the next. This is a place of fragments.
I think about Marie out there, and Gerald. They may be sitting on the front porch, staving off the heat with a bit of breeze. They may have just finished dinner. Gerald is thirteen now, a year younger than I was when I went to work in my father’s mines, but I see him as that seven-year-old he was when we first moved to the farm, a quiet boy in the corner with a book from his grandfather’s library.
I see the other fights we had before the one that sent me to fields, fights between him and Marie and me, always the same—my explosive anger and their quiet victimhood.
I stayed away until morning, that night I dreamed up the transformers.
“What the hell you doing over there, Books? You’re giving me the goddamned creeps.” This is Fred Hicks talking.
Gil Boyd adds, “You pining for your husband, Books? Missing his arms round you in the warm night?”
The others laugh and Reed pats his bunk. “You want to crawl in here with me, pretty?”
This gets them going all the more. Our fourth cellmate, Vincent, lost his hearing in a mine explosion the same day he stabbed his overseer in the side. He loves to join in, but tonight he’s facing the wall in his upper bunk, oblivious of the talk.
Ed was better at defending himself than I am.
“I’m missing my wife and boy,” I tell these men, looking over my shoulder, “like you’re missing your whores and bastards.”
Reed is up on his feet. “What’s that, Books? Your husband ain’t here to protect you no more. Best not start trouble.”
I know full well that Reed is married. I know he left his wife with four children to raise on her own. He’s in on assault and sex crimes, and the words that go round this place say his children took the brunt of it.
Hicks and Boyd aren’t moving, but the grins on their faces show their thirst for my injury.
I am tired of this place, so I say to Reed, “You’re right. I have no business insulting your wife, being smart and strong enough to marry the likes of you. Brilliant woman I’m sure.” I know that he will attack me, and I want him to be unmerciful, so I say, “Those kids though—they couldn’t possibly be yours, so I stand by the bastard comment, if you take my meaning.”
Hicks and Boyd both laugh—they find Reed as disgusting as I do and Ed did—but that doesn’t forgive me my place inside this prison. They will always side against me.
Reed turns his back, and I think for just a moment that I’ve won this conflict, but he turns back fast, a knife in his hand, something homemade and ragged up to its point. There is no handle, just this great triangle of metal, and I don’t even have the time to yell or turn or block before he drives it deep into my thigh.
The pain is a shard the same thickness as the blade, just as ragged and grubby. It doubles in width when he pulls the metal free.
Boyd is shouting and so is Hicks, and I see them clambering from their bunks, but before either of them gets to Reed, he’s buried the metal in my stomach, and I am vaguely aware of the popping sound the point makes as it goes through my skin. Other sounds come from every direction—more yelling, running footsteps, the ever-present jangle of keys, clubs on bars, the demands of guards, and I’m on the floor of my cell, the cool concrete under me—how is it cool in this heat?
A man is leaning over me, and I hear the words he’s saying, but part of my mind sticks in dreams, peculiar scenes that feel tilted and waffly.
I am in a pasture fighting with a man who’s killed my grandchildren. He shot them in the chest, and I’m showing Marie their bodies. She looks at them indifferently before saying, “They never meant much to me.” The man jumps between us. We both have rifles, but we fight with them as though they are swords. He pushes me away and fires in Marie’s direction.
“Mr. Martin?”
Marie is gone, and the man is surrounded by small beasts with smashed, toothy muzzles and the ears of hounds. He points at me. “Put him back to sleep.”
CONSCIOUSNESS breaks in briefly, coinciding most often with visits from Chaplain. I see him in patches of fog, a wavering crow there by my bed, flapping his black wings. He reads to me from Job. “We’re all tested in different ways, Roscoe,” but I am not Job. I may even deserve the infection that’s taken over the bandaged wounds on my leg and stomach, pitching me into a fever this warm and prickly. I don’t know whether this is Chaplain sitting at my side or, indeed, a big crow, set to devour me. His voice is a raspy caw, his mouth peaked and pointed.
He pecks at my sheets and then my arm, nipping at my clammy skin, then he opens a book with his black wings and reads, “ ‘And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband.’ Where is your wife, Roscoe?”
I don’t know which of us is asking this question.
“Listen, Roscoe.” The crow reads m
ore from his book. He reads, and the words eddy and swirl like the Coosa. They break and pitch like Ed’s ocean. They are birdsong and wind, a field of corn, a bricked powerhouse. They are lines and insulators and poles. They are the branching veins of George Haskin.
“Is there a storm?”
“No.”
“The wind,” I say. “It’s so loud, and the rain.”
“It’s a beautiful, sunny day.”
“You brought the ocean, didn’t you, Ed? Brought it right into Kilby like I thought you would. How’d the warden take it?”
“Nurse,” the crow says. “Nurse.”
And there is my nurse. Here she is.
“Is it raining?” I ask.
She turns to the man. “It may be time for a rest, Chaplain.”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you hear it?”
“Mr. Martin,” the nurse coos. “Open your eyes—it’s a beautiful day.”
She whispers something to the man who’s now standing by my bed, but I cannot hear it. The man is wearing black. His face is familiar.
“Have we met?” I ask him, and I don’t know why his face looks so desperate and caught. “I’m hot, and sick of lying on my back. Will you roll me over?”
But the man is gone and in his place is Nurse Hannah, this woman tells me, the prettiest little bird in her fluted hat. I have forgotten how lovely women are. Look at her: almond eyes and a tiny nose, and lips that would never peck or bite. They squeeze together, those lips, and then they say, “You can’t roll over, Mr. Martin. Not onto your stomach. But we can arrange you on your left side, if you’d like.”
“Yes,” I croak, and I let my body fall into her hands—there at my knees, and again at my hips, and again at my ribs and back, and finally, here at my face. Her hands cradle it, one tiny palm against each of my rough cheeks, and I am sure that she will kiss me. I have never lived on Marie’s father’s land, or in his home vacated by his death. I never ran power lines that stretch across this state and out into the country and all the way to the sea. I have only ever been here, in this white bed, with this small bird’s hands on my horrible face.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Martin?” she asks.
“Does God not live high in the heavens?” Chaplain responds. Has he returned?
“Mr. Martin?”
“Roscoe?”
“Chaplain?” I whisper back.
“No, Roscoe, it’s me.”
And, again, I open my eyes to a stranger.
“Marie?”
She puts her hands on my right arm, where the nurse left it angling over my chest as though it were broken. “The doctors say you’re mending.”
I cannot focus my eyes on her face.
“You’ll be all right. I spoke to the doctor, and he says you’ll be just fine.” Her hand is heavy on my arm, pushing through the muscle and tendons, deep into the bone.
Her voice is the same, and she’s put something in my hand—one of her fingers to grip? I am an infant curling my fist round the pointer of my mother. The slight effort awakens something rigid in my stomach.
“Right here, dear Roscoe,” and I am happy to be here with her, to hold this small bit of her. Where has she been?
Then Nurse Hannah is back, and I can see Marie there with her clearly, and the nurse is angry, viciously so, and Marie’s finger in my grasp is gone, though her other hand remains on my arm.
My nurse bird squawks, and Marie screeches back. I try to understand, but there’s only noise in the room, a strange chorus of sound, truncated and taut. The voices are clotted things, and they’re all I hear.
Now, Marie is standing. Her hand is leaving the bone of my arm. The muscle and veins close the gap, stitching themselves back together. I reach for her, trying to sit up, but she’s so far away already, down there by the sad iron foot of my bed, and I am stopped by the desperate torment in my stomach. The pain guts me, scoops a voice I don’t know I have from the depths of my lungs, shoots it dark and gruesome into the air, where it strikes Marie full in her nearly familiar face.
Does she tell me she’s sorry? Is that what I hear?
The nurse switches her tone, comforting now. “Oh, Mr. Martin. No, no, no. It’s too early to sit up.” I wait for Marie to say something more, but she is gone. There is only my nurse, this lovely thing. Marie’s words feel as light and shifty as her presence did, her apology hanging there in the sick breath of this hospital wing.
“Everything in time, Mr. Martin,” Nurse Hannah is saying. “Are you all right?”
Put your hands on my face, again. There. Like that. Keep talking. I am Gerald, quite possibly, a boy, under the hands of my mother.
My nurse is a full bird now, shiny jewel white, her fingers a feathery touch on my skin. In her bird voice, she speaks of forces and affinity, attraction and change.
We are in the pasture, standing over our dead grandchildren. The bird says, “They never meant much to me.”
But she must be lying.
“THE warden’s been asking after you,” Nurse Hannah tells me one morning. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this bed, but I know it’s more comfortable than the cot in my cell. I appreciate the pillow.
“Was my wife here?”
“Shush, now. Don’t make yourself upset. You’re finally getting past that infection. Goodness knows we don’t need another fever.”
I have not yet seen my stomach or leg.
“We’ll have you out of here soon enough.” Hannah’s checking on the solutions that drip slowly into my arm. Her voice reminds me of Marie’s.
“My wife.”
The nurse cuts me off with a curt shake of her head. “You realize how special you are, don’t you, Mr. Martin? What with the warden asking after you himself? He told me you work with Deputy Taylor on the dogs.”
I don’t work the dogs, I want to tell her. That isn’t my job. I collect milk and shelve books. Don’t think of me as one of Taylor’s boys.
“I visit them sometimes, the dogs.” Her thin fingers slide something up the tube that connects to the needle in my arm. “Deputy Taylor scolds me for being out there alone, but he always seems to be there when I come round, so I’m never actually on my own. It’s such a short distance to the village from there.”
This information shifts my attention, and instead of correcting her about my prison employment, I ask, “You live in the village?”
“Oh, I’m talking too much. You rest, and I’ll be back in a bit to change those bandages. The doctor will be round shortly.”
I am in a long room full of beds. Most of them are empty, except for a few men—one with a plastered leg up in a sling, another looking near dead against his pillow, another with a bandage round his forehead. That one whistles as Nurse Hannah walks by.
“Hush,” she says.
“But I’m in pain, Miss Hannah.”
“Don’t be a pest, Mr. Daniels.”
I don’t know how many hours and minutes pass before a tall man arrives with Hannah alongside him.
“Well, well, well. Mr. Martin. Awake for the first time.”
“I was awake before.”
“I’m sure it felt that way. Now, let’s have a look.”
The man’s hands go to my stomach, lifting the loose gown, peeling back the cloth tape. I raise my head to catch a glimpse, but Nurse Hannah sets a hand on my shoulder to hold me down. “It’s not good for you to engage those muscles, yet. You’ll be able to see it in a moment.”
I feel the air on my skin, a cool shock of pain.
“Now, this is more like it,” the doctor says. “Well done, Mr. Martin. We might actually be able to let you go someday.”
“How long have I been here?”
The doctor smiles. “About two weeks, I believe. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”
She flips a few pages o
n her clipboard. “Yes, Doctor, it’s been fifteen days.”
“Going into week three, then.” He turns to the nurse. “Let’s bring the man’s head up. See how he does with some elevation.”
Nurse Hannah turns a crank on the left side of my bed, and I see my wound for the first time. The stomach I see does not fit with the stomach I know to be my own. A great swollen line is down the center, midrib to pelvis, and I can’t make out the indention of the navel. It is lost in stitches and flesh. The skin seems puckered and weak, both red and yellow, something like decay, like a carcass, sour and putrid. This can’t be the look of healing.
I feel the doctor’s eyes on me. “We had to do some exploratory surgery to address the internal bleeding. And we had to open you up again when the infection got severe.”
Again?
“The blade that your assailant used wasn’t very sharp, you see. And wounds from dull instruments cause much more damage. This”—the doctor nods toward my stomach—“was more of a tear than a cut.” He seems pleased with his analysis. “It’s quite remarkable that you’ve recovered.”
“You’re very lucky,” Nurse Hannah adds, “to have such an accomplished doctor.”
I stare at the great mess my belly has become, at this mark I will surely carry forever.
“What about my leg?”
“Ah!” the doctor shouts. “The leg was nothing. It got infected, too, of course, but, hell—there’s only muscle and tendons in your thigh. Easy enough to stitch up.”
He pulls the sheets down, exposing my nakedness—the tube I haven’t felt yet that must drain my bladder—and points at a rough, thick line on my left leg. “The stitches just came out. That’ll heal nicely.”
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