“Mr. Piper, would you and your client stand, please?”
We did that.
“Mr. Moss, you have anything you’d like to say to the court before sentence gets passed on you?” He said it without looking at us, scratching out something with a black pen on a little square of note paper.
“I got nothing to say because nothing I could say can change anything I done.”
Dewey sat up straighter where he was. He put the square of paper down in front of him and smoothed it out. He lifted his head and looked at me and there was more hurt in the look than I was easy with. Billy reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Wilbur Moss, you have pled to and been found guilty of murder in the death of one Fergus Blackthorne.” He took a breath and looked from the little square of paper and eye-locked hard on me. He started to fold the paper in half.
Days past I’d told myself I’d made nothing but peace about everything that could happen, that I’d found a way to accept the cloudburst or deal with the flood, and I was disappointed when my gut told me what a liar I had been, even lying to me myself, because as Dewey took a breath, I could feel my heartbeat start to hammer like a trapped miner, thudding against my ribs like I’d swallowed a hawk eating a butterfly.
He folded the half into quarters. “It’s the sentence of this court that you be—”
God. God. God.
He folded the quarter even smaller, then he pulled his coat away from his shirt and slid the tiny square of paper into the inside pocket where he put the tiny glasses. “—sentenced to serve life in prison in the State Prison at Cody, Wyoming.”
There were gasps and moans behind me and I heard Pearline start to cry. Billy put his hand on my shoulder and I hardly knew about any of it. All I knew was what I was looking at and that was Judge Dewey, who looked straight on back at me while he buttoned his coat up tight and got up from the chair.
I’d’a given a bunch a million dollars to know what was on that tiny fold of paper, but then I decided I could save all that money I didn’t really have. I knew full well what was on that sheet of paper. I knew full well.
XII
I been behind bars before, usually drunk and dumb, taking a swing at an even sloppier drunk than I was, or grabbing the curve and butt of a lady I’d forgotten to get introduced to, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have any experience at getting through the experience on my side. But those times before was all short-timers and those times before I was in what anyone would call a jail.
Now I was in a prison, and that’s a turtle different from a tortoise. Jail’s a place you get a cot and a plate of bad beans and you can handle the ride because you can see the top of the hill. Prison for an old man is just a pre-coffin and not much more. That’s a mattress with no soft place to put your rump. Doesn’t matter how you twist and which way you turn; it’s always going to be hard and that’s what you have to take in and soak up. If you can do that, there’s a little smooth place that gets created, but doing that can take more time than you got left to live because doing that means letting loose of tomorrow.
They put me in two places once I got paper-worked over. Most of the old waddies they kept inside and I was no exception. The first place I was sent to was the kitchen, which meant scrubbing with something they called soap but looked a lot like pig fat to me, but there was hot water sometimes and with winter coming, that might make it a good place to be, pig fat or not. Then, at the end of every week, when Dr. Nagle came by on Friday mornings, they’d send me to what they called the infirmary, which was really just a room with four cots that had thicker mattresses than the other cell cots had and blankets with some hopeful heft to them. There was a lot of coughing spitters there, which put me to mind of the girl killed at Honey’s, but Nagel dosed them dopey and when they left, they left without an abundance of harm and howl. I could help with some of the others, the ones who’d hammered their own foot with a sledge or snapped off something in their shoulder using a pick. Not that I could take over for Doc Nagle, but the time I spent with Billy, the time I spent watching Omar try to set things right, gave me a little working experience I could put to good use. No curses, just a few feel-betters for now.
The best thing about the infirmary was the window. All barred up proper, it was still big enough to look out over the road that led through the wall and on into the yard itself. On the other side of the road you could see that same road leading away to the foothills, and past the foothills, the mountains themselves, always capped in hard harsh white. I could stand up on a stool under that window and look out there for hours and know how clean the air at the top of that hard whiteness must be, how it must feel, how it must taste. Standing looking out of that window was the wrong thing for an old man to do. But that’s where I was standing when I heard it.
“Moss! You got visitors.”
Assistant Warden Brock was in the doorway. He was in his forties and bone lean. Brock never had a job that wasn’t tied to the prison. Just a different kinda lifer from me.
I stepped down off the stool, not getting all the way easy with what he said. There was one visiting day a month and that was ten days off. I said that to Brock.
“Professional courtesy,” he said. “These two come with a special official request from Marshal Ganeel in Salt Springs. You interested in seeing them or not?”
“Interested, Boss. Interested.”
Billy and Pearline were waiting in the corridor outside my cell. The other two men in my cell were young bucks, so they were outside hammering big into small. Assistant Warden Brock edged me in to the cell and slammed the door shut. “Warden Brock, is that really the way it’s got to be? I’m not going anywhere.”
“Moss, you’re new here. I don’t know why in the hell you’re getting special letters about getting visitors, but you’re right about one thing. You’re not going anywhere and that’s why the door’s closed. Ten minutes, no more.” He crammed the ring of keys back in to his coat pocket, then turned and went down around the corner of the block. There was a little metal clicking sound with each step he took.
“Hey, Wilbur.”
“Hey, Pearline. Hey, Billy.”
“Wilbur. You look good.”
“I only been here three weeks, Billy. Man can’t get turned inside out in three weeks, not even here.” For the first time, I noticed what they were wearing. It wasn’t that cold yet for what they were wearing. “Brock’s not a book learner, but sometimes he finds an acorn. Why did you get a special letter from Willard to come to see me?”
“Mr. Starett asked him,” Billy said.
“How come?”
“It’s part of a sort of a deal I made with Starett.”
“Billy,” Pearline said. “Tell it all. Tell him where we’re going and what’s going on in Salt Springs.” Her look was on him tight and she wasn’t turning loose.
“We’re going to Laramie,” Billy said.
“Going to Laramie for how long?”
His Adam’s apple worked while he chewed on some air. “For quite awhile, looks like.”
I looked at Pearline. “Billy isn’t the teacher there anymore,” she said. “Miz Starett got all ruffled about him.”
Billy shook his head. This wasn’t the first time they’d been having this conversation. “It wasn’t Miz Starett, Pearline.”
“That’s what Mr. Starett said.”
“That’s what he said, but I don’t think what he said was the real way it happened.” Billy looked at me and dove in, getting it all done with. “Starett said Miz Starett wanted her books back, all of them, and I told him I couldn’t teach the school without any books, and he went right on and said they’d been in touch with a lady teacher who could arrive with all the books that was needed, enough to open the school and get all the way through the year.”
“So you’re out.”
“Like the frosty side of the window.”
“Because you talked for me at the trial.”
“Got no proof. Just a buncha hu
nch.”
“Shit on a duck, Billy. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not all bad.”
“What’s the good part?”
Billy’s grin took time getting there, but it was good to see. “When Starett first talked to me about the job, I said we ought to have a paper between us and so he wrote one out.”
“That’s a contract,” Pearline said.
“So they got to pay you.”
“That’s how come me and Pearline get to go to Laramie.”
“To do what?” I looked over at Pearline. I never saw a person look that happy once they got past the age of four.
“They’re going to open a teachers college in Laramie. Two years. If I pass the entrance and get all the way through, I’ll be able to get a teaching paper. Teach anywhere in the whole state.”
“Laramie’s quite a way off,” I said.
Pearline moved closer to the bars. “Wilbur, we’ll be back to see you as soon as we get settled in. Swear it.”
“And, none of my business, but what are you going to be doing in Laramie, Pearline?” I didn’t like myself one bit for asking her that question.
“There are lots of silver mines in Laramie, Wilbur. That means a lot of rich people, and rich people always need cleaning ladies. I can do that; I know I can.”
I snuck a look at Billy.
“What you’re thinking won’t happen,” Billy said. “And if it does, Pearline and me will find a way to handle whatever needs handling.”
Pearline stretched her hand out between the bars, took mine in hers. “We’re going to be fine, Wilbur. That’s why we’re here. We wanted you to know we’re going to be all right and we’re not just moving on out of your life. We’ll be here to see you as soon as we’re settled in.”
“Pearline, back off of that a couple steps,” Billy said. “Winter comes and the pass closes, we can’t get here till the thaw.”
I was just looking down at Pearline’s hand on mine. I lifted my other hand and touched the top of hers as lightly as I knew how. My index finger petted the top of her hand.
“Wilbur?” she said kitten soft. “Wilbur?”
It took a time before I found my voice and managed to make any kind of sound that could get turned into a word. “I know it’s dumb and I know I’m dumb as well, but every time you hold out your hand, Pearline, it hits me like a hammer inside that this might be the very last time I ever feel a woman’s soft touch.”
“Oh, Wilbur.” Pearline reached out her hand and lifted the one I was touching till she was cupping each side of my face with one of her hands. I closed my eyes and put my hands over hers. Her hands were warm, soft as new snow, and smelled of lavender. My eyes squeezed shut and something inside me started to tear away and shred. It was part Pearline, and even more part Alma; and even more than both of them, the notion of every woman I ever touched or held or warmed in my life. More than anything, it was knowing how close sundown was and how cold the night was likely to be.
“Wilbur. Oh, Wilbur.”
When I finally pulled her hands away, they were shining wet on top. Don’t know where that came from. I looked over at Billy standing on the other side of the bars. His face had the young-and-old thing I saw before. His face was a map leading to hurt gully. “It’s late, Billy,” I said. “You and Pearline got a way to go. Sun’s moving; you better move, too.”
“We’ll stay till the man says we need to leave.”
“That time is now, Billy. That time is now.” I snuffed hard, wiped my nose.
“You saved my life, pardner,” he said.
“You to me, Billy. Me to you.”
We all heard the metal clink of Brock coming back down the corridor. “Wilbur,” said Pearline, “when we have a baby, we’re going to name it after you!”
I cackled. “Lord, Pearline, no. Don’t ever name a baby boy Wilbur! It’s kind of a curse; you can’t do that to your own flesh and blood!”
“Middle name then! Middle name!”
I tried some on for size. “Charles W. Piper. Robert W. Piper. Andrew W. Piper. Okay, yeah. You might try that. That’s a thing that might work.” The metal clinks said Brock was right around the corner.
Billy lifted up a hand. “Hey, Wilbur.”
“Hey, Billy.”
“We’ll see you in the spring.”
“I’ll be here.”
They turned and left before Brock came into view.
It wasn’t more than a few minutes later when I was back standing on the stool in the infirmary, looking out the big high window again. They were just going through the gate when I got there. Made me smile to see they were riding on Black Iodine, still a touch unaccountable, dancing left and right, neck a little arched, but still under Billy’s rein and doing well.
Pearline was mounted up behind Billy, her arms wrapped tight around his waist, her own personal sash on him. She had her face pressed hard into the valley between his shoulder blades, and even from this far off, I could see the Christmas morning smile on her face. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t sleepy.
They were out of sight when the gate shut behind them. Then they came into view a bit later when they were farther on down the road. I stayed on that stool for quite some time watching them go, the wantabe-teacher and the usetabe-whore. Wasn’t too long before they were small in the distance, and not long after that, they were downright tiny.
They weren’t really tiny, of course. They were big as always, big as they needed to be to get over the next rise and move on into the night.
Report: Deceased Prisoner Disposition
To: Warden T.G. Keppler
From: Assistant Warden Brock
Re: Prisoner #2679 Moss, Wilbur
Prisoner 2679 collapsed in the kitchen
scrub area 3/10/’73. Pronounced deceased
by Dr. Nagel on his next prison tour
3/14/’73. Cause of death was brain
bleeding per Nagel.
2679 remains interred in prison cemetery
3/15/’73. Reverend Calvin Parker of Sweet
Prayer Baptist Church will hold formal
burial on his arrival these premises
post thaw.
Per instructions #2679’s personals to be
shipped to:
Mr. and Mrs. William Piper
c/o Public School #2
Laramie, Wyoming
Submitted for your approval.
Sincerely,
Assistant Warden P.L. Brock
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2009 William Blinn
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3082-8
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