As Night Falls

by Jenny Milchman

  “We got blacktopping on a bridge,” the guard said. “You’ll work in teams of two.”

  Information inside was strictly on a need-to-know. You had to qualify to earn a stint on the outs—even just for a two- or three-hour job—and that had taken Nick a while. The first job he could’ve worked had been scheduled in August, and that timing would’ve been a whole lot better considering what he had planned. But the job kept getting postponed—cutbacks probably—until a day sheet stuck between the bars told Nick he’d be riding out today. Nick didn’t tend to be a take-what-he-could-get kind of guy, but he had learned a thing or two since going inside. A better chance might not come along.

  It had cost him two packs and four shots to get details on the job. He tended to be well supplied, but that trade had wiped him out. If he went back in, he’d be jittery as hell, with a mean clamp of a headache, out of smokes and juice for a week.

  He wasn’t going back in.

  “All you got to do is set down cones,” the guard continued. He reached up to scrub the gray spikes of his crew cut. “Simple as that. Start a quarter mile before the bridge, go a quarter mile after it lets out. Make a nice, generous curve to guide ’em along. We don’t want anybody not knowing they don’t got two lanes.”

  Nick saw Harlan’s brow furrowing; he wasn’t great with anything beyond simple instructions. And he didn’t like guards, especially the older, more experienced ones. Harlan’s fists would roll into masses the size of wasp nests, his blank eyes would smolder, whenever he was confronted by a guard.

  Before coming up with this idea, Nick had considered simply ordering Harlan to take out the guards who stood in their way; escaping by brute force. But, in addition to the relatively slim chance of that working, it wouldn’t have got them where they needed to be.

  The driver lurched the bus into gear, rolled out of the lot, and through the gates. Then they were on the road—a real road again, smooth as a woman’s ass—and headed north.

  —

  They reached old Route 9. Setup looked just about like he’d pictured it. Nick blew out a breath of relief. The intel he’d stripped his stash for had been right.

  The bus lumbered over to the side of the road. Cresting it was a hump of hill that let out onto a bridge, only one lane of which was open. The other was newly paved, shiny as sealskin.

  A temporary stoplight flared red in the low afternoon light, making sure that cars didn’t meet coming over the single lane of the impaired bridge. Visible through the bus window was a pickup parked at a sharp angle. The truck’s bed held nested stacks of orange cones.

  Harlan began straining to get a look, misting Nick’s face with his breath.

  “Cut it out,” Nick said, and Harlan lowered his big body back down, biting his lip with piano key teeth.

  “Ready?” the guard asked, unease still alive in his tone. “Out of your seats.”

  The convict in front of Nick stood up. Small—by prison measures anyway—and dark-skinned, with wiry white coils of hair receding on his scalp.

  He took a look through the window at the road.

  This particular inmate was of the old school variety, locked up before Nick was even born. Old-School was a rampart, a foundation of the prison who helped keep eight hundred men from battering it apart. Prison lore had it that he was the one who’d helped with the escape more than fifty years ago, but Nick had never been able to buy that. The story had the feel of a tall tale. Why wouldn’t Old-School have gotten out himself?

  The newer guys used the fathomless measures of time inside to beef up, Nick included, but Old-School had long since passed that mark, allowing himself to shrink and shrivel over the years. Still, he had a commanding dignity about him. The twitchy alertness new guys wore, always on the watch, looking out, had been worn away, smudged like the charcoal of Old-School’s skin. He still took everything in—you didn’t survive inside if you stopped paying attention—but Old-School did it with a studied breed of acceptance. Even this has its limits, he said with every slow blink of his eyes. Everything does.

  “We going to have trouble with that light?” Old-School asked, his eyes still on the road. “Cars barreling through, hitting our cones?”

  “We’re not going to have trouble so long as you don’t make any,” the guard said.

  Nick watched the square off, monitoring it for signs of combustion. He’d been planning for too long to let anything go wrong now. Figuring out what was likely to bring them down, coming up with work-arounds. Learning how the world had changed since he’d gone in. And, of course, securing this stint on the outs. That had been the toughest part. To everyone else, Nick probably seemed like just another jailhouse convert, finally come to see the light and the error of his ways. In fact, the good behavior had nearly killed him—holding himself in check whenever anybody crossed him or tried to piss him off. For Harlan, good behavior came easy; he was slow to act on his own volition. But Nick had earned every oxygen-rich breath he took out here, and no wizened old con was going to mess with the scenario he was banking on.

  A blink. “You don’t got to worry about me,” Old-School said.

  Nick took another deep, heady breath.

  The guard handed out jerseys, slick with orange reflective tape. “Then get off the bus.”

  Harlan’s girth caused each step to heave as Nick followed him down. A chill sun shone through the naked spires of trees. In concert he and Harlan approached the pickup, so in sync they glided. Harlan hoisted up a batch of cones, taking the bulky rubber tower into his arms as if it were a toddler. Old-School and the other inmate wrestled their own stack down.

  A sick, eerie light descended, and Nick looked up to see the temporary stoplight turn green. A late model sedan shot across the bridge, its driver clearly pissed off by the delay.

  Timing was going to be key.

  Old-School and the other inmate made it to the far end of the bridge, probably thinking that haste had bought them the choice position, farthest away from the guard and the bus. But Nick was glad again to be last. He watched both men walk on—a quarter mile looked about right—before Old-School took the first cone out of the other inmate’s arms and set it down, his placement as precise as if decided by instrument.

  The guard jerked his chin toward Nick and Harlan, indicating that they should get a move on. The guard’s gaze was targeted and direct, switching back and forth between the woods, the adjacent fields, the thin skin of the river itself. Only last did he scan the long, empty road, where a body would be seen instantly, a fool’s choice of escape.

  Nick led Harlan along the asphalt, gauging the distance till they’d gone about fifteen hundred feet, just like the guard had specified. Then Nick held up a barricading hand, stopping Harlan, and reached for a cone. Harlan had to stoop way down for Nick to take it.

  Nick placed the orange dunce cap on the road, then took a few steps in the direction of the bridge. Harlan trod after him, and they repeated the sequence.

  Nick touched a spot on his leg before tackling the next cone. Weather coming in. He could feel it, even if the sky was still clear, and for a second the privilege he’d fought so hard to win turned nasty, useless, something to stomp into the ground. Bring inmates in at the tail end of the day so the fewest number of cars would be coming over that bridge. It wasn’t like there was rush hour out here. Schedule the job in November instead of the summer due to someone’s budgetary screwup. Nick felt a dagger of resentment toward the powers that be, not to mention the citizens who were able not only to drive around freely, but be protected as they did it.

  Harlan began shifting his burden of cones from one arm to the other while Nick tried to wrestle his anger down. It was a trick he’d learned in mandated counseling, to picture a mental scabbard and thrust his fury into it. Nick had dutifully attended one idiotic session each week all year. Now he breathed in air so fresh it tasted like menthol. Never again was he going to take a whiff of the stale, recirculated air inside. The sensation in his leg was sometimes mis
leading, and in this case, it’d better be.

  A car streaked by, its cloud of exhaust smelling like freedom. The light changed to red, and Nick stilled with a cone in his arms.

  He began to count.

  The car cooled its wheels, forced to wait at the bridge. It occurred to Nick that these drivers weren’t so free themselves, and he felt a swell of satisfaction build.

  He swiveled to share it with Harlan, then scowled. Nick had been keeping track of how long the light stayed red, maintaining a beat in his head. But he could see Harlan’s lips visibly moving, expelling white puffs into the frigid air. If the guard were any closer—and could lip-read—he might’ve seen that Harlan was counting.

  “Quit it!” Nick ordered, low.

  The stack of cones Harlan was hugging to his chest pitched sideways, off balance.

  Nick reached over to steady them, cuffing Harlan on his coat sleeve as he did.

  It was like hitting a girder.

  The light changed and the car moved on across the bridge. The driver gave Old-School and the other inmate a wide berth on the opposite side.

  Harlan’s mouth stilled and so did the count in Nick’s head.

  He’d gotten to ninety. A minute and a half.

  They would enter at the seventy-five-second mark. That would give them fifteen seconds more for maneuvering, the inevitable balking and surprise.

  The road behind them was empty now, a faded gray strand in contrast to the new lane they were approaching on the bridge. Nick didn’t want to risk looking too long in this direction—the guard was headed back their way—but he would’ve felt a whole lot better if he could’ve seen another car. This road was supposed to be decently trafficked for these parts, but here was that end-of-the-day thing again, poking up its ugly snout.

  The light went through another cycle with no car appearing. Harlan struggled with his armful of cones, and Nick reached for a few more, lightening Harlan’s load. They were getting close to the bridge.

  A car sped by, braking hard when the stoplight flashed red.

  Nick and Harlan weren’t ready for it. They weren’t quite there yet; maybe five or six more cones to go. Nick juggled possibilities. He could speed up to ensure they made the next red—although getting Harlan to move faster was like shoving water—but if a car wasn’t there for that light change, then they would have to change course and find a way to stall. Nick supposed they could literally reverse, walk back up the road and make sure their cones formed the nice, smooth curve the guard had asked for. But even though Nick tended to like things tidy since his I’m-a-changed-man conversion inside, straightening cones at a work site might look a bit suspicious.

  On the opposite side of the bridge, Old-School and the other inmate were moving slowly, enjoying their freedom. Nick focused so hard, it felt like a string was about to snap in his head. He tried to match Old-School and the other inmate’s pace.

  The light switched to green, and the waiting car drove off.

  Nick eased a cone out of Harlan’s arms, lining it up with the one that’d come before.

  The guard reached Nick and Harlan’s side of the bridge, nodding at them and pivoting before crossing back over the creek that swelled beneath.

  No car.

  The long, waving road was empty.

  Everything inside Nick seized up. His lungs felt like a solid mass of concrete, his veins a web of cement. The thick orange rubber of the cone buckled in his grip.

  And then, as if he’d willed them into existence, two cars appeared over the rise.

  Nick kept his gaze aimed down. If either driver saw him as they passed, they would read the glee in his eyes. Everything always worked out for Nick. Things fell into place where he was concerned as if they’d been ordained, as if he’d been ordained.

  Harlan was regarding both vehicles with interest. Did Harlan remember what they were doing here? That would be something—Harlan’s memory was usually for shit. For a second it occurred to Nick to wonder whether Harlan even wanted to live on the outs. Or could he just not stand to go back inside if Nick wasn’t there? Nick needed Harlan for obvious reasons. His size, his ability to intimidate. But in a way, Harlan seemed to need him, too. The awareness gave Nick a strange feeling; that and the presence of the cars made him send Harlan a brief, approving nod.

  Harlan’s broad brow creased.

  Nick drew as close as he dared to the temporary light. It was a metal thing on stalks, like some kind of massive heron or stork.

  Harlan trudged over beside him, his shoes throwing up clods of dirt.

  Nick stooped to set a cone down, at the same time taking a quick glance through the window of the first car. Its driver was young, his head bobbing back and forth, although Nick couldn’t hear any music playing.

  Perfect.

  A teenager who didn’t know anything, and would be overpowered in a cinch.

  The light hadn’t changed—by Nick’s mental timer, it still had forty-five seconds to go—but the kid was already pulling forward, like choking up on a bat. He was trying to shave seconds off his waiting time without having any idea what that would do to Nick.

  Then the kid turned his head sideways, and his eyes caught Nick’s.

  The guard began making his return trip over the bridge. His usual militaristic march had come back, firm and in control. “Jesus,” he said as he drew near. “He looks even bigger out in the open, don’t he?”

  Harlan’s cheeks stained red, a wide swath of terrain. His golf ball–sized Adam’s apple gave a jump, propelled by a rumble too low to hear.

  The second car—a big, fancy SUV—remained in place, not rolling forward like the other one. Through the windshield, Nick spied a lone female driver, looking down, studying her nails.

  The light was going to go green in thirty seconds.

  The kid’s impatience could be an asset: he would be gone by the time Nick forced the woman in the second car to drive off.

  Nick started to assemble a smile for the guard. “Yessir.”

  The guard aimed a crisp gaze at him. “Don’t ‘sir’ me,” he said, that earlier hum of nerves erased from his voice.

  Nick crushed his smile.

  Twenty-five seconds.

  The light glowed like a ruddy burn, SUV stalled just before it, first car already moving on. Lucky there were no traffic cops out here, Nick thought, quashing another grin. He hoped the kid did jump the red.

  Old-School crossed back over the bridge, coming up behind them. “We all done on our half of the bridge. Want us to get started here?”

  The guard rotated slowly. “You questioning my instructions?”

  “No, I am not,” Old-School said, standing there in his dignified way.

  The other inmate walked across the bridge, joining them.

  The guard let out a scoff of dismissal. “Back on the bus. You two—” He swung around in Nick and Harlan’s direction. “—finish up this section. And make it fast.”

  Old-School let the other inmate head off first.

  The SUV inched forward, readying itself for the light change.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sandy didn’t recognize the SUV that had pulled up in their drive. She tried to get a glimpse inside, but couldn’t see through the tinted windows. She wasn’t even sure whether it was a girl at the wheel, or a boy. She made a mental note to ask Ivy later who her chauffeur had been.

  The passenger door nudged open a few more notches—they made them so heavy these days, and designed to swing back—and Sandy watched her daughter climb out.

  Ivy had an August birthday and thus was the youngest in her class. Most of her classmates had begun driving already. Sandy and Ben had discussed the idea of keeping Ivy out of her friends’ cars, but it proved contentious. The kids were moving on, entering that fuzzy realm between childhood and maturity, and holding Ivy back would only make her rebel. It wasn’t her fault that she was fifteen to everyone else’s sixteen or seventeen.

  Whoever the friend had been began to execute a
careful exit, taking the SUV around the half-moon of gravel, then driving off at a reasonable pace.

  Sandy watched her daughter flounce up the wide stone steps, newly rounded hips twitching. Probably a boy in the car, then. Mac stepped forward and Ivy graced him with a pat. Mac panted, his tongue lolling out, and Ivy pinched the tiny bud of her nose. How pretty her daughter had become—transformed from merely cute—seemingly overnight.

  “Your breath stinks, Mackie,” Ivy said.

  The dog’s regal shoulders sloped. He turned around in a circle, sticking close to Ivy. Sandy reached out and touched Ivy’s arm as the girl went by. Ivy glanced back in passing.

  “No hello?” Sandy asked lightly.

  “Hello,” Ivy said.

  These days, her daughter could make obedience sound like defiance.

  Sandy made sure the porch lantern was turned on against the waning light. How had the rest of the afternoon slipped away? Not only Ivy: Ben too was late today.

  Sandy drew the front door shut, listening for the catch of the handle—firm, somehow reassuring, although of course nobody locked their doors way out here—then looked over her shoulder. Ivy had already disappeared into the house.

  Banging in the kitchen beckoned. Sandy followed the sounds to the center island, where Ivy was arranging a motley array of condiments: mayonnaise, mustard, something spicy in a jar that had probably expired months ago.

  “I made dinner,” Sandy informed her daughter. “Spaghetti and tomato sauce. No meat.”

  Ivy slapped two pieces of bread onto the bare counter and added cheese.

  Here’s where you say, But you prefer Bolognese, Mom, and I reply, It’s no problem, I’m happy to accommodate. Sandy went on, conversing with Ivy in her head, which is where the two of them seemed to have their best discussions these days, when she realized that Ivy had also placed a piece of paper down on the counter, a greasy slick of mayo now staining it.

  Sandy looked while Ivy raised her sloppy sandwich to her mouth and took a bite.