“We finished the last of the pot,” Trixie said, offering each of them the bottle. Trixie looked just like Joan Baez now that she’d straightened her hair.
“How much do I take?” Gaylen asked, shaking the bottle.
“It’s just gonna make us sleepy,” someone said. “My mother hasn’t been fully awake since the Kennedy assassination.”
“The ones your mother gives you don’t do anything at all,” Trixie sang.
“Hey, Grace Slick,” the boy with the bare feet said.
“Well, duh,” she answered.
Gaylen was on this bus heading south, and Nick was asleep on the seat beside her, propped against the window, his breath fogging the glass. The ghostly image of a name—was it Bonnie?—lurked behind his smudges.
She’d never seen him asleep before, and it was not an attractive sight. His mouth lolled open and a patch of unshaven skin bore the remnants of the strawberry frappe he had at a HoJo’s in Boston. Was this the boy who could sink a basketball from half-court? Was it Nick who made the girls squeal when he danced at a coffeehouse in Peabody? This guy with the pink moustache?
Stuff like that had faded into insignificance already. It was funny how things that looked cool on campus could look dorky once you reentered the real world. Being a good dancer hardly qualified him as a decent traveling companion. She could hear her father asking what his grades were like, who his parents were, where they went to church. She had no idea. Five weeks ago, Gaylen and Nick were only on a nodding basis, recognizing each other from glimpses across the quad, or due to the proximity of their seats in chapel. They hadn’t even had sex, for the record. Even their kisses were chaster than she was used to.
Though this was a religious school, which should be above such things, the high school photos of incoming girls were stuck on a wall somewhere and Nick claimed to have noticed her back last spring. At first, this seemed like a compliment, but looking around her in assembly, it became clear that the most Christian girls worked hard at being plain. Her roommate, for instance, had grown her hair down to her butt because her church didn’t allow women to cut it. This might have been attractive on some girls, but Ruth braided her hair in tight coils. The first time they met, Ruth was on her knees, hands pressed together. So it was no wonder Gaylin stood out. You only had to try the least little bit.
They were at a party last night and issues like the war, bourgeoisie values, civil rights, and university investments in the war machine led to the idea of taking off. All of them were in on it at first—escaping from this institution. Each had been urged, if not forced by fearful parents or their church, to enroll here. And what did they know of the place, living across the country like they mostly did? The photos in the brochure had been overly influential with Gaylen. Boston, only an hour away, made the school seemed glamorous. They must have used a whole different group of kids in those shots, she thinks, remembering the photos of the homecoming court and the autumn hayride. The hayride, two weeks ago now, featured the reading of favorite Bible verses as entertainment. Coming home, they sang hymns. Her attempt to include This Land is Your Land was pushed aside for a third rendition of The Old Rugged Cross.
It was the late sixties and restlessness was effortlessly evoked. All the wrong things were influencing her group of friends according to the sermons they heard in chapel every day. Church, Family, Country—that was the ideal. Strangely enough, the chaplain never mentioned school. Not even as an afterthought.
So the bunch of them had worked out their positions last night, war, no; drugs, some; sex, probably; racism, no, (but there were no black people on campus except for that one kid from the Dominican Republic to test their liberalism); women’s rights, perhaps. There were disagreements over some issues, but even the Port Huron Statement had supposedly involved compromises, someone pointed out. The thing was that everyone seemed to be more informed than Gaylin. It was too bad she hadn’t read some of the books they were waving around or gone to one of the endless rallies in Harvard Square. Or read the stack of Boston Globes that lay on tables in the foyer.
After this lengthy session—and she was exhausted by her attempt to understand the references the other kids seemed to effortlessly make—everyone else went off to class, whereas Nick and she remained in a druggy discussion over what she now saw was a meaningless gesture—ditching school and seeing what was happening out there—out in the streets. The streets of Norfolk, apparently, for Nick. It wasn’t even really about those issues they’d just spent hours hammering out. They both wanted out for whatever reasons you cared to list.
“So do you wanna just blow this place?” she or perhaps Nick had said. They were both pretty high by then. She thought of her dreary dorm room where Ruth would probably be praying for her safe return, her long white nightgown threatening to trip her when she rose.
Each morning, Gaylin found a Bible verse on her desk. Yesterday’s had been “They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” She brought this scrap of paper with her as inspiration.
She pictured her empty chair in Psychology 1, imagining the TA marking her absent. Would she ever return to her dorm room or classes? Perhaps this bus trip constituted her life from here on.
When was the last time she ate? While Nick drank his frappe and ate a burger, she had nothing, having blown her allowance. She knew from his wardrobe he had plenty of dough, but so far none had been spent on her. Maybe she needed to get behind that women’s lib stuff so men couldn’t get away with treating her like that.
She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, and as she began to let go of the lighter’s flame, a hand from the seat in front grabbed her wrist. No—grabbed was too strong a word—he encircled it with his fingers. In the light, she could see he had a full beard, long hair, blue eyes. Next to him, a guitar case rested, neck up.
“Gotta light?” Smiling slightly, he held on to her wrist. She nodded and pressed the thumbwheel.
Simultaneously, they exhaled a stream of smoke
“Sleeping Beauty,” he whispered, looking over at Nick. Nick seemed ridiculous to her now. Where was his beard, his long hair?
She must have showed her displeasure because the guy said, “Don’t want to claim him now that he’s drooling all over your coat?” Then he smiled.
Alarmed, Gaylen looked down. Her coat was a recent purchase from Filene’s Basement, and basement or not, it had cost a lot. Nick shifted uneasily beside her, sensing disapproval. She put a finger to her lips.
“Hey, come up here, where we can talk.” Standing, he moved the guitar case to the rack above. It seemed impolite not to take him up on it. The bearded man took up more room than the boy called Nick. Nick, who was running home to his parents in Norfolk.
“Where you headed?”
“End of the route,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Norfolk.”
“Miami’s the end of the line, sweetie.”
She was startled, not knowing the bus went all the way to Miami. “How old are you anyway?” she asked. Maybe this guy was too old to mess around with. She had her limits. Probably twenty-five was it.
“Twenty-four. Pretty old, huh?” He looked at her closely. “Know what I just did?” She shook her head. “Took a bus from Baltimore to the Canadian border and then chickened out.”
She frowned, not getting it. There it was again. Where had she been when all this information had been doled out?
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, turning on the overhead light when she squinted.
“Draft notice,” he said, poking at it with his index finger. “I’m in deep shit now. Be wading through rice paddies in a couple months.”
His name was Robert Gottlieb. But before she could read the birth date, he had squirreled it away.
“You should’ve gone through with it, Bob.”
Her
voice sounded adamant, sure of itself, but she didn’t know why. This was also how she got into trouble, pretending knowledge when she had almost none. She knew he was talking about Vietnam, of course—the war there— but not much more.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m thinking of getting off this bus and heading back up north. Got the address of a place to go in Canada. A dodger shelter.” He pulled another paper out of his pocket. “Not sure how to get there from the border, and I can’t ask them—the border guards, I mean. You’re on your own till you get by them. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.” He sighed. “It’s all a trick.”
“I guess so,” she said, not sure why this was true. “But you’ll figure it out. Maybe get on another bus once you get inside Canada.”
There was something very appealing about this idea. Maybe both of them could ride buses forever. She remembered seeing a movie in high school about how people used to ride on trains without paying. Scramble onto a boxcar as it pulled out of the station. Cook dinner over a tin barrel. But on a bus, the driver sat right up front, so this was probably not possible. She figured she had enough money for a cheap dinner and not much else. Certainly not another bus ticket.
“I could come with you,” she said suddenly. Maybe her company would be worth the price of her ticket to him. He looked like he needed a friend. She sure did now that things with Nick had gone sour.
He laughed, but then saw she was serious. “Why would you wanna to do that? Haven’t you and this fine gentleman here some plans of your own?” They both looked over the seatback at the sleeping Nick. Had he gotten his hands on more phenobarbital? “Didn’t you have evening plans in Norfolk?”
She paused, trying to put it into words. “I’m not going anywhere really. This was just a way to leave…where I was.” She hated college, hated the people in Salem, Massachusetts, hated her parents—maybe even her country. “Maybe Canada will be better.”
“I really couldn’t promise you that. But at least they’re not in a war.”
For a minute, she couldn’t remember his name—the boy she’d come with. “Nick,” she said suddenly. “He’s the one going home to Norfolk. Not me. His parents will probably kick me out if I turn up. Maybe even call my folks.” And this was true. Why would they welcome a runaway into their home? “Hey, isn’t William Shatner from Canada?”
“William who?”
“Captain Kirk on Star Trek,” she said. “You know—the TV show.”
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty lame.”
“Hey, the bus is stopping,” he said suddenly, peering out the window. “We’re in Wilmington, I think. Delaware,” he clarified, seeing the blank look on her face. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Stepping past her, he removed his guitar case and a knapsack from the overhead rack? “You coming? You don’t have to…” He actually looked worried she would.
“Gaylen,” she told him hurriedly. She stood up too, looking behind her. “Live long and prosper, Nick.” Nick didn’t move. What a stiff. She picked up her knapsack and prepared to go.
But when Bob had moved on toward the front of the bus, she stepped back, turned quickly, and removed the protruding wallet from Nick’s bag. Nick’s eyes fluttered for a minute but he quickly settled back into his deep sleep. She looked up as Bob stepped onto the street outside, watched as he looked back warily. Was he losing interest already?
“Hey, Bob Gottlieb. Wait for me.” She flashed him a boob through the bug-splattered window.
Tossing the wallet into her purse and hooking the strap of the bag over her shoulder, she ran for the door.
As she passed the bus driver, he looked at her and said, “This isn’t Norfolk, you know. You got a ways to go.”
“Yeah, but I’m with him now,” she said, nodding toward Bob as she flew down the steps. “That guy with the guitar.”
“Are You Going to Take Care of This Guy or Not”
“It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken from you.”
Lou’s last meal at Jackson was on the night of the first debate between Cheney and the Jewish guy. He’d barely scarfed down the food, shoved through the port, when the guard came back and yanked it away. He was being fed in his cell to avoid last minute altercations, standard Jackson protocol for cons who were short-time.
The guards herded the most docile prisoners into a common room where the monitors were tuned to the debate.
“Can’t we watch the poker channel instead?” someone joked, getting his head clipped in response.
“Porn, porn!”
It didn’t have to be a good joke to evoke laughter, and the noise level rose.
“Shut the fuck up,” a kid said. “I’m trying to hear the old dudes.” This brought another round of guffaws.
“Not that any of you can vote, but you might learn somethin’,” a guard said. “Be a test when it’s over—for the ones of youse who can write.” It was the guards chortling now.
Lou returned to his cell later, impressed with the two candidates. All the—whadya call them—commentators—agreed. Grandfatherly types, they called ’em. Kind of man he should become if he didn’t want to end things with a backdoor parole—the way he’d always expected to leave here. He was gonna change his ways, make his girl proud. Take his grandson, Jason, outside and toss some balls. He looked at his tank, remembering there’d be none of that. Did kids still play Uno?
He’d put a lot of mileage between himself and the past. Shove a stick up his ass and be upright. Be a Cheney and Joe What’s His Name kind of guy.
“Except for the occasional heart attack, I’ve never been better.”
The parole came through once he went on oxygen twenty-four seven—a special handling case, pain in the butt. Prison croaker put in the word after he got the cords to his tank tangled in a geezer’s wheelchair for the umpteenth time. Cons spending most of their lives in prisons usually ran out of housing options. Relatives died, drifted, got displaced. But he had his daughter, Marcie.
Marcie set him up in the back room—the one used for sewing projects, storing junk, laundry. Air smelled of spray starch, fabric, moth balls. Her iron board and sewing machine loomed over him. When he woke and saw the shadow of the plank on the wall, he thought someone was coming to shive him. He’d learned to sleep on his back watching the door a long time ago.
Jason was sixteen now, too old for Uno. Looked at his grandfather like he carried a filthy disease. His son-in-law, Stuart, watched the machine sucking air out of the room like his own lungs provided it, like the tank was debiting money directly from his bank account. Winced every time Lou’s cords tripped someone, when he had to use his inhaler, when he didn’t stay out of the way, when he did his old-man business in the toilet, when he ate too much.
“I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.”
Time passed. A lot of time. He was watching TV most of the day, following the news on CNN.
“Not even a beer when I get out of here?” he’d asked the croaker.
“You gotta stay on your toes,” the guy had said, patting his shoulder. For what, he wanted to ask?
Terrorists, Halliburton, friends getting shot in the face, boys spending years in places he couldn’t find on a map. WMD—that was the term Cheney liked to throw around. Old Dick didn’t look so grandfatherly anymore—spent most of his time in some unnamed bunker watching George’s back. Using that phrase over and over. WMD.
Lou’s life had been ruined in Nam—that’s where he’d learned to smoke, drink, take dope, kill, steal. Men like Cheney sent him there. Grandfathers, lethal ones, sitting on his draft board like a panel of executioners.
Soon Jason might be in a war too.
“Go f*** yourself.”
One day the call came. Marcie’d bought him his own cell phone, pr
obably so he didn’t have to vacate his roost. Bought a second TV, had it installed on his wall. His situation was like the prison break room, but smaller and more humid. She’d begun bringing his dinner in on a tray. He’d love to live on his own—even Jackson looked kinda good. He and Cheney had that much in common—holed up in a goddamned bunker.
He’d no idea how Willie Sandy got his number.
“So they sprung you?” Willie said. Eleven years since they’d pulled the job—the one that got Lou thrown in the slammer. A jewelry store where Sandy’s niece once worked. She’d told them about a slim skylight over the backroom, and a few weeks later they were removing the glass, sliding in around two a.m.
“No one knows about it,” she’d insisted, thinking of her part of the take. “Hidden by a chimney and crappy tarp.”
Inside, they smashed through the glass cases with a hammer. Then it happened. Lou cut his finger. Left a fuckin’ bloody print behind. Cops picked him up within hours. Recovered the jewels in the trunk of his car. He swore he’d done the job alone. Since he’d mostly worked alone in the past, they bought it.
“Sharky still has the diamonds from that other job—the month before,” Sandy told Lou on the cell. “Been sitting on those rocks all these years. Just fenced the gold.”
“That don’t seem right,” Lou said. But why would Sandy lie?
Lou’d never been convinced the two men weren’t in cahoots back then—that they weren’t living it up while he festered in Jackson. Maybe they’d even engineered the bloody print on the counter after the alarm went off. These were the paranoid fantasies that years beyond bars put in your head. Fixating on revenge can make you nuts.
“Are you kiddin’ me?” he said now. “You’ve had the last five years to run him down. Why you calling me after all this time?”
“Diabetes,” Willie Sandy said. “Lost my feet a few years back. Some of that money sure would help me out.”
And me too, Lou thought, but didn’t say it. “How the hell can I track him down?” he said, looking at his tank. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Willie about it. Seemed too pathetic—even to a man with no feet.
I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression Page 16