Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

“Ran off,” I say, buying Beau more time.

  Hughes smiles. “They’re all mice at heart.” He looks down at Stevens. “What’s he saying?”

  I push through my dogs and crouch by Stevens’s head, my ear close to his mouth. His side is so different from Jennings’s, and I see clearly that he is dying. I know it by the sound and color. He won’t make nightfall. He won’t leave this spot of ground. He won’t pass Taylor’s horse a few miles back.

  “ ‘Lord.’ He’s just saying, ‘Lord,’ over and over.”

  I’m more scared of my proximity to it than of the death itself.

  Stevens is pale, the ground around him dark.

  Where the hell is Beau?

  My dogs don’t know what to do. They’re not so used to the smell of blood.

  “I can’t go back.” Hughes steps over the mess of Stevens.

  I move myself a few feet away from him, opening up a clean line for Beau to fire. He has to do it now.

  Don’t, I hear in a voice like Marie’s—she’s here again, among the trees.

  Hughes’s gun is back in its spot at his hip. “You best stay right there.”

  “They’re going to catch you.”

  “That may be, but for now, I’m going. That all right with you, Books?”

  I nod.

  “You hold those dogs back.”

  “All right.”

  He runs then, sprinting his long legs in the opposite direction of Beau’s hiding spot. The branches make a ruckus for a bit, snaps and shouts. He won’t make it far.

  “Beau!” I shout, but no sound answers me.

  Don’t you want him to escape? Marie asks, appearing now at my side.

  “No,” I tell her, realizing as I say it that it’s true. Though I know him and have never wished him ill, I want Hughes caught. I want to see him fail in his flight. This is the closest I can come to freedom within the world of my confinement—seeing another man’s freedom captured.

  This isn’t a great loss, Marie is saying of Stevens.

  “I know.” What does it say that I want Hughes apprehended and don’t so much mind Stevens’s harm? Have I finally and completely cast my lot with the prison, rather than the prisoners? Have I stitched my prison coat to my skin, the fibers fusing to my body, the two things blended so thoroughly they’ll never come free of each other?

  Where is Beau?

  “Marie, I’m scared.”

  Her face is sad, and our woods are full of noise. Sounds arrive from the way we came, pounding feet and shouting voices, horse hooves, more dogs. My own start whining.

  The warden himself makes our spot of land first, high up on his chestnut gelding, the handsomest of the prison herd. “Christ. Jesus Christ. What’s this, Martin?”

  Tell him it was you, Marie whispers.

  “Martin!” the warden shouts.

  Marie disappears, but I hear her words still, granting me guilt, handing me the burden of Stevens’s body on the ground. If I take it, I sever my ties with the warden and Taylor, Chaplain and Rash. I become worse than Reed and his knife, than Hicks and Boyd and Vincent, worse than Beau even. If I claim this, I walk myself to a single cell outside Yellow Mama’s room, and I wait to meet her.

  Is that where I should go, Marie?

  “Martin!” the warden shouts again. “Who the hell did this?”

  Me. I did. Though everyone would know I’m lying, know I have no gun, no motive, but still—it was me. Bind my wrists and walk me back to prison. Strap me to Ed’s chair. Bring me my electricity.

  I will the words to my mouth. Me. I did this. I’m working with Hughes. We had it planned. And then I say, “Hughes. He was hiding inside. The dogs led us here. Beau had Stevens go to the door.”

  Just as I say it, Beau rises from the brush, leaves clinging to the arms of his uniform. “Man turned his gun on me next, sir. It was all I could do to dive out of its range.”

  The dogs whine.

  “Hush your goddamned dogs,” the warden says to me, and I do.

  Beau has become a coward before us, shamed and disgraced.

  The warden kneels at Stevens’s white face. The man’s lips still move, but his body has grown quiet.

  “You’re not going to make this one,” the warden says. “Take your shirt off, Martin. Cover the man’s insides, at least.”

  I pull off my shirt and lay it flat over the shiny mess of Stevens’s stomach. The fabric soaks up the blood, and mosquitoes make quick for my exposed skin. The dog belt digs deeper into its rut in my back. My ribs show too much, my stomach a caved thing under its puckered scar. It feels disrespectful to be standing so naked in front of a dying man.

  Guards arrive, and Michaels, winded behind his leads. They stare at Stevens and the warden. They’re as lost as my dogs. Beau still stands half in his bushes.

  Taylor finally comes.

  “Lucky your horse tripped, old man,” the warden says. “Seeing as you like to deliver the knock, would’ve been you lying here.”

  Taylor must know the truth in this; Beau, too.

  “Let him lie here until he’s gone,” the warden says to the guards. “Then put him on a horse. It was Hughes that did this. Big fellow. You guys know him. Start that chase again, fellows. Martin, you and this other one”—the warden points to Michaels—“get those dogs back on the scent. I’ll be behind you.” He signals out a young guard. “Head on back to the grounds and let them know what’s going on. And fetch the chaplain, and a crew to take care of that horse.”

  “Sir,” the man says.

  My shirt has gone red.

  Beau comes closer. “I’ll go with the dogs, sir.”

  “You’ll stay with this man,” the warden booms. “And you’ll escort his body back to the prison, and then you’ll take a seat on one of those benches outside my office and wait as long as you have to until I’m done with this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Michaels and I step inside the shack to get the dogs’ noses on the smell again—there on that rag, here on the floor. They catch and bray, yipping and pulling.

  How is it I am running again? Stevens is dying or dead behind me, and Beau has been publicly shamed, but everything else is as it was. Men leave trails behind them. They run from dogs that only want a chase. Branches bend to our weight, sticks break under our boots. My legs ache and my back, yet I am still harnessed to these beasts, my own and Stevens’s, all five of them. I have lost my stomach and leg to scars, my arm to ruin, my collarbone to a permanent cave.

  No matter the changes in me, they will keep me running. Taylor will keep me searching through books for him. Rash will keep me shelving. Chaplain will keep me reading to his flock before their suppers. This place will take pieces of me, chunks and bites, until I am Stevens, filling someone else’s shirt with blood.

  IT’S dark by the time the dogs stop. They’ve led us to a weather-­beaten house on the Alabama River, right near its start—the state’s river flowing out of the marriage of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa. The house can’t hold more than a room or two. Lamplight glows from its square windows. The warden climbs down from his horse and guards stake out their positions in the surrounding brush. Michaels and I are told to keep our dogs quiet and out of the way. We separate to keep them calmer, and I find myself alone in the trees.

  The people inside must know we’re there, but they’re making no sign of it.

  The warden steps up on the tilting, craggy porch to deliver that great Alabama Department of Corrections knock on the door, followed by the boom of his great voice. “We know Henry Hughes is in there. You just send him out without a fuss.”

  Scuffling and shouts come from inside, then the door opens to a man even larger than Hughes. The warden has his rifle aimed, along with three or four other barrels out there in the dark. The large man has hold of Hughes’s arm, and he shoves him forward. Hughe
s trips on the threshold and goes down to his knees at the warden’s feet.

  “Oh, Henry,” a woman sobs, coming to stand next to the huge man. “You told us you was out.”

  “That’s not the case, ma’am,” the warden says.

  “Goddamned bastard,” the man in the door shouts. “Goddamn you for bringing this down on your mama. You folks take his sorry ass back to that prison and you lock him up tight, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” I’ve never before heard the warden call anyone sir.

  Hughes’s mama leans over him, tugging on his thick shoulders. “Why, Henry? Why’d you do this to us? You was s’pposed to do your time and come back home for good.”

  Hughes keeps his head low. “I was just so tired of it, Mama.”

  “You do your time and you come back home. To stay.”

  The warden doesn’t tell her he’s a murderer now, that this run will cost him the whole rest of his life. Hughes’s original sentence was for liquor and larceny, and his max time would’ve been ten years. He told me once about the money he’d made, the corn he’d stolen. His still is back there with Stevens, the remains of a shack in the dark.

  The warden lets him hug his mother before putting on the cuffs. The large man—Hughes’s father, I assume—has already gone back inside. I want to tell Hughes that I’ve been renounced in the same way, and that the only way to live with it is to hate the man who hates you, to believe you hated him first.

  There is a hand on my shoulder. Marie. You could’ve saved him.

  “Marie.”

  He’ll die now. You could’ve stopped that.

  I don’t know that I could have.

  Marie’s hand moves to my face, cupping my jaw. She’s so beautiful.

  “Why did you make me move?”

  She brings her young lips to my old ones, roughened and coarse. Why did you come? Her lovely head nods toward Hughes, the cuffs on his wrists, the tears on his mother’s face, the absence of his father. Own this. It’s yours.

  But I already own so much—our lost children and Wilson’s death in a coal mine and George Haskin and all the anger I’ve dealt. I can’t own this, too.

  “Martin!” the warden shouts. “Michaels! Keep your dogs on him.”

  We nudge them toward Hughes, and they pull their leads tight to get at his scent. I will him an escape, a tunnel the likes of which I willed for Jennings, something deep that leads to the sea. Ed will meet him there on the beach, and they’ll row back to London, banding together in their thievery. I was wrong to want him captured.

  If I could, I would apologize.

  A wagon arrives at dawn, and guards shepherd us into its bed. They encircle Hughes, and leave Michaels and me to settle our dogs. The eastern sky is a dusty pink, nearly orange, and the faint remains of a few stars are toward the west. I unhitch my belt, tell my dogs to lie down, then lie down myself.

  They can’t rouse me when we get back to Kilby, and I’m told that it only takes one tall guard to heave me over his shoulder and drop me on the cot in my cell.

  I sleep through the day and most of the night, waking to half dreams in the dark. The walls come in waves, like Ed’s ocean, and I can almost make him out on the other side of the bars.

  “What are you doing up so late, Ross?”

  “Hughes will get your chair for killing that boy.”

  “That’s not our concern.” He starts humming the ballad that the men have made up as a prayer to Yellow Mama. “ ‘I know I done wrong. I know I must pay. I sat in this jail one thousand days. The appeals run out. I will not win. I done did my time, and I’ve had my last feast. Yellow Mama have mercy on me.’ She’ll have mercy on Hughes, don’t you worry.”

  I hear Marie again, telling me to take Hughes’s place. “It’s such a quiet way to go,” she whispers. “All at once. They can’t take any more pieces out of you.”

  Now, every man in Kilby is singing to Yellow Mama, a great ocean choir, and there’s an organ, and Chaplain is up at the pulpit with his hands tented under his chin, and he’s praying to Yellow Mama right along with us, and angels are singing with the men in the fields, and Ed’s ocean crashes against Kilby’s shore.

  I don’t feel rested come morning, and Taylor says I look like hell when I arrive at the pens with the dog pail.

  “Shame,” he says. “The whole damn thing. Loss of a good man, and now Hughes is a damn murderer. At least we lost Beau, huh?”

  “Sir?”

  “Warden let him go as soon as he got back from the chase. Man’ll have a tough time working in corrections ever again, that’s for damn sure.” Taylor is breaking ranks to tell me this and he passes over it quick. “We’re going to do some close-in training on the pups today. Go easy on you, all right? Head over to their pen when you’re done with the feeding.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I wish for my young Marie.

  You best quit your ghosts, I hear my father saying. Focus on what’s here rather than what’s in your head. Do your damn work, Roscoe.

  “All right, Pa.”

  I respect his words just now, a truth in them I couldn’t catch before. Here in this barn with my hands bloodied by meat scraps and dusted with bonemeal, my nose stuffed up with the stink of it—here I can see why he took such comfort in those veins of coal. They were tangible, as were the coal cars and the mules and the men. They could be touched and moved, nothing like the slippery currents running through the wires I so admire. His coal was like the corn in the fields or the cows in the barn or the dogs in their pens—solid things we can feel with our hands and see with our eyes, smell and hear and taste. There’s relief in that sort of integrity.

  I’d like to tell him I understand.

  PART II

  I still see Kilby, all of it spread before me—the yard, the mess hall, the infirmary, the chapel, the toolshed, the dairy barn, the gates and wide stretches of wall, my own tar-black fingers. Then I see that truck in the dirt lot the day I walked free, its body a deep green like the leaves of the hackberry, wooden slats round its bed. It was a farm truck, a work truck, and I wanted Marie to be inside.

  Hughes was on his way to meet Yellow Mama, and I had finally gotten parole. Hughes gave it to me, too, that run of his. While I was sitting on that same bench outside the parole room, waiting on the board’s decision, the warden told me the news. “Hell of a run you did, carrying on after Hughes pulled that shotgun. We note that sort of thing in your file.” The warden offered me a cigarette. “You’ll be pleased with their call this time.”

  So I wasn’t surprised when the large man, who’d taken the bald man’s place, told me I was going free.

  Chaplain sought me out to lay his hand on my shoulder. He read to me from Isaiah, a passage about trees clapping their hands at my return, and he gave me a Bible.

  Rash gave me a dictionary and Hartley’s book about dogs. “Damn it, I’m glad you’ve gotten paroled, but I hate that you’re leaving.”

  I found Dean in the mess. “Keep going to the library. Even though I won’t be there.”

  “Hell, Books. It won’t be as good, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  That was as close as I came to saying good-bye to a friend within those walls.

  I sent one letter home, telling Marie the date of my release. Please collect me from the prison on April 10. I’ll be coming out the front doors around 3:00 p.m. If that letter went unanswered like all the others and no one came, I was sure I would never go back to the land. I would go to the ocean, and I would find myself a lighthouse.

  But a farm truck was in the parking lot, and I knew it was there for me. A rifle and fishing rod hung in the rear window, and they kept me from seeing the head of the driver.

  “Martin!” I heard from behind me, Taylor’s rough voice. “I got a send-off for you.”

  Maggie was at his side, her great nose to the sky, tryin
g to find what she should sniff out.

  “She’s tired, and I don’t think she’s got another litter in her. Makes her no good to me. Figure you could take her to pasture.” Taylor put a ratty length of rope in my hand, its other end tied to Maggie’s collar. He’d never part with one of his leather leads.

  “Thank you, sir.” We shook hands.

  “Best not see you back here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He tugged on one of Maggie’s ears, then gave her a swat on the butt. “Go on, old mutt.”

  She looked back only once at her old master. “Come on, girl.” I was grateful for the distraction, for something I could focus on rather than the hope of my real wife, there in the dirt lot of Kilby.

  When we were a few yards away, the driver’s door opened, and Marie did not step out.

  I stopped, and Maggie tensed at my side. Is this who I’m looking for? her body asked. Do you need me to point?

  “Wilson.” His hair was short, and a few more lines were round his eyes, but his face didn’t look much older than it had the last time I’d seen him. He walked toward me, coming round the back of the truck, and I saw his left arm then—gone from the elbow down.

  My right arm hung tucked in its bend against my body, but my hand was there, my forearm, and I made good use of them. I still do.

  Maggie growled.

  “No. Sit.”

  “Got yourself a dog, Ross?” Wilson held out his right hand, and I shook it just as I had Taylor’s a moment before. “Problem with your arm, there?”

  “Shoulder injury. I don’t have full use of it anymore.”

  Wilson raised the stump of his left arm. “Full use of what I have left.”

  “What happened?”

  “Plenty of time for that. There’s a meal cooking at home. Best get you back.”

  Maggie jumped in the truck bed with little prompting, and I tied her rope to one of the slats to keep her from diving out. I’d never ridden in a vehicle with Wilson. I’d never seen him drive, but he performed it with ease, his left limb propped against the wheel when his right needed to shift.