So where is Susan, the Prisoner’s sister? Why isn’t she coming to be there for him, to be the last face he looks at before he dies? To be family? The Chaplain can’t remember what he read in the files about Susan – she didn’t seem important when he was cramming. He focused more on the crime the Prisoner is on death row for. And he doesn’t want to ask the Prisoner about her.
“You got any advice, Chaplain?” the Prisoner finally asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Advice. You guys always give advice.”
“We ‘guys’?”
“Men of God.”
“Oh, religious advice?” The Chaplain sits up straighter, tries to stop slumping. He rubs his eyes.
“I don’t know. Just advice. Any kind of advice.”
“Seems to me,” he says, “that you don’t need advice now.”
“True.” The Prisoner laughs. “I could’ve used your advice ten years ago when I committed the crime, right?”
“I think you could have used advice from the very beginning. From the day you met Dwight or from the day you stole the watch from your father’s shop.”
“Wasn’t really surrounded by advice-givers,” the Prisoner says.
“I give my niece and nephew advice all the time,” the Chaplain says. “And if I think about it, it doesn’t help at all. Advice is probably overrated. I think that maybe a kid will do what a kid wants to do and will hopefully learn from the consequences. And from example. Someone telling you to do something or not to do something won’t make you learn, right?”
“No one ever give you good advice, Chaplain?” The Prisoner rolls onto his side, fetal position, his hands tucked between his thighs. He looks over at the Chaplain, his eyes red from crying.
“I guess my father and mother did. My sister did. But sometimes I’d listen and sometimes I wouldn’t and it didn’t seem to matter either way. One way or another, I learned from my behaviour. Or from their behaviour around me.”
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me, then? I never learned from my behaviour.”
“Yes, maybe. I don’t know.”
“I got better, though.”
“Sorry?” The Chaplain notes that the COs are moving out in the hallway. He can see the light from the outside window being blocked and then coming full into the cell over and over. “I don’t understand. You got better at what?”
“I got better at the stuff I was good at. So I did learn. I just didn’t learn the right things.”
“You seem awfully proud of your crimes,” the Chaplain says.
The Prisoner sits up. “Yeah, well, fuck. I was good at what I did.”
“Until you killed people.”
“That was a mistake. That should never have happened.”
Settle down, the Chaplain thinks. The COs are looking into the cell again. He waves them off. It’s a volatile situation here now, with time running out. As if suddenly a pulley was tightened and the Prisoner’s nerves stretched to the breaking point. He’s brushed aside the final murders, thinking now only of the bank ones – the ones that happened “by accident.” The Prisoner will eventually get to the final murders, the Chaplain is sure of it. He will talk about them before he dies. And I will forgive him. I will forgive him. No matter what Miranda thinks of me being here.
“Do the victims’ families have a chaplain visiting with them?” Miranda asked last Sunday night. Two bottles of wine in. The candles burning low. Pot roast on the counter, sticking to the pan. Richard upstairs with the kids – he and Miranda could hear water running and laughter and footsteps rushing back and forth down the hallway. “Who’s helping them, Jim?”
And who helped the victims themselves, as they were murdered senselessly? Who helped them? Who listened to their fears, their worries, their remorse, their goodbyes? Who listened to the history of their lives?
No one.
“Tell me about Susan,” the Chaplain says, clutching his fists together, popping his knuckles. “Tell me where she is. What happened to her.”
Jack
Susan is in the bathroom, has locked herself in with her cellphone, as her ex-boyfriend tries to kick the door down. Susan calls Larry, who is coming up the front walk now, gun in his jacket pocket.
“Get out of the house,” Susan screams. “Get out.”
The ex keeps kicking.
“Larry’s coming,” Susan says. “He’ll hurt you. Get out.”
“That little fag?” The ex laughs.
And Larry comes up the stairs, two stairs at a time, his leather boots thumping solidly.
“Hey,” he says to the ex.
The ex turns and as he does, Larry takes the gun out of his pocket and uses it to knock out the ex’s teeth.
The kids are screaming. They have some friends over and there are a shitload of kids in the house. One kid is screaming, “Daddy.” Too many exes, too many kids. Larry can’t keep them straight. All the exes beat Susan, eventually. They all look the same – big men with bellies and beards. This ex holds onto his mouth, holds onto the blood that is pouring out into his hands. He starts to holler.
“Too much noise,” Larry says. “Keep it down.”
Susan opens the latch on the bathroom door. Peeks out. She is still holding her cellphone in her hand. She takes notice of the blood everywhere, of her ex clutching at his mouth, of her kids screaming and running around crazily. She takes note of Larry, standing there, holding the gun limply at his side.
“Oh God,” Susan says. “What happened to us?”
Larry sees, down the hall, behind the crazy bleeding ex, his old bedroom, now full of Susan’s kids’ stuff. He sees the blue walls and the sticky un-glowing stars and dim planets, and suddenly the force of the situation comes full at him like he’s been kicked in the stomach. What did happen to them?
Their mother fed them sandwiches at lunch every day. White bread. She did their laundry, tidied their rooms, paid the housekeeper, kept them dry and clean and fed. She smiled at them when they told a joke. Clapped when they learned to walk. Protected them from their angry father.
Susan pushes past the men and her kids and thumps down the stairs and out of the house. The ex makes his way out behind her, holding his mouth. The kids stop screaming and turn on the screen. One kid puts an old sweatshirt on top of the blood stains and steps over it. And Larry turns from his old bedroom, from the images in his mind of his mother folding soft, sweet-smelling laundry, whistling, ruffling his hair, cutting his peanut butter sandwich in half. He turns from this and walks down the stairs and out of the house. Leaves the kids to themselves.
Jack.
This is now all he can think.
Jack.
Jack did this to them. Not his mother, not his alcoholic father. Not Susan. Jack. His mother left not with Jack but because of him. She was protecting Larry from his brother, protecting Susan. One too many concussions? One too many beatings? That must have been it. Why else would she have taken Jack? It couldn’t have been just their father that made her want to leave – he was a drunk all through their marriage. It was Jack. He was too much like their father.
Why didn’t Larry realize this earlier?
One thing Larry is good at is getting things done, and now his focus is on Jack. Larry has a gun now. Jack can’t scare him anymore.
Larry is twenty-six. He hasn’t been caught once. Not even once. Dwight has been in and out of jail. Paroled several times. Samantha is in jail now. Drug charges. Prostitution. Becky, the hairdresser, was slapped on the wrist for selling drugs. Even Susan has seen the system. Her kids get arrested all the time. She herself was in for soliciting prostitution, even though she says she was just asking the guy to pay for a couple drinks, at least, if she was going to fuck him. Who knew he was a plainclothes cop? And what happened to chivalry, Susan says. What happened to paying for a lady’s drink?
But Larry. He has never done time. He has never seen the inside of a jail cell. He has never needed bail money or been inside a cour
thouse other than to pick up a niece or nephew once in a while.
“I’ve obviously got the brains in this family,” he tells Susan again and again. “I’ve never been arrested. It’s obvious. I should have stayed in school.”
She laughs. “If you are considered smart then I’m afraid for this world.”
“I don’t get caught. Everyone gets caught. I don’t.”
“That’s luck. Not smarts.”
Larry takes a drag of Susan’s cigarette.
“Get your own smokes, asshole,” Susan says.
“I bought you that cigarette.”
Larry thinks, later, on death row, that it’s a shame the seriousness of his offense outweighed the fact that he was a first-time offender in the eyes of the law. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been given the death penalty.
Susan looks down at her hands resting on the kitchen table. Worn, rubbed raw by dishwashing in the diner where she works. No manicure here. No fancy nails. Ripped cuticles, jagged skin bleeding. She clears her throat. “Listen, Larry. I wanted to tell you.”
Larry looks at her, his sister. “What?” He can hear something in her voice he’s never heard before. Usually she’s flippant and annoying. Right now, she seems scared. “Another fucking boyfriend?”
“No. No, not that. I,” Susan pauses. Breathes deeply. “Well.”
“What?” Larry takes another drag of her cigarette.
“I’m trying to tell you. Stop interrupting.”
Larry leans back in his chair.
“I saw Jack.”
Larry is closing the store up for the last time. He’s locking the door and is going to take the keys over to Mr. Mallone, the guy next door who owns the shoe repair shop and wants to expand. Mr. Mallone gave Larry and Susan a good deal and they’ve divided the money in three and put Jack’s third away, according to advice from the lawyers.
Larry thinks it’s kind of funny how much time he’s spent with lawyers lately, considering all the crimes he commits. He turns the lock on the door, last time, looks into the glass at the empty store, at his father’s drunk ghost slumped at the counter, at the non-existent grandfather clocks and all the tools, now sold, that it took to make them work. The sound of the store will stay with him forever, the ever-present tick-tock, tick-tock that made his skin crawl when he was a kid. A countdown of life. Always. No wonder his father drank himself to death. No wonder Larry does the things he does – the constant reminder that time is running out.
“Lawrence.” A voice, behind him in the dusk. Larry sees the reflection of a man on the glass of the empty store. He turns.
Jack.
Twenty-eight years old. A slight beard. He’s taller than Larry. And wider. Chunky, almost fat. His stomach protrudes. He’s missing some teeth, and his hair and beard are reddish-brown, stained looking. His eyes are hollow, drugged. Jack is holding a cigarette in his hand but he doesn’t take a drag. Wearing a hunting jacket, camouflage, and army pants with pockets everywhere. Big boots. Biker boots. Larry wouldn’t even know him if it weren’t for the way Jack said his name. Lawrence. The same way he used to say it before he would hurt Larry. He can feel it’s Jack, even if he doesn’t recognize him.
“Jack.”
They look at each other. Awkward. Larry, nervously, glances down at the ground first. The old emotions creep up in him, he can almost feel the concussions, the beatings, on his skin, in his head. Larry remembers what it was like to be four years old to Jack’s six. To be seven to Jack’s nine. Always one step ahead – two years bigger, better, smarter, meaner, taller, and one step more dangerous.
Jack. His brother.
“So.” Jack stares at Larry. “What can I say?”
“Closing the store for good,” Larry says, looking up at the darkened sign that reads Gallo’s Precision Repair – soon to be replaced by Mallone’s Shoe Shop. Larry added the money Mr. Mallone gave him to his coffee tins. Lots of them now, quite the collection. Larry feels safe with money. Money takes care of him. And he knows he can always get more. But there is something in Jack’s behaviour, in his stance, that makes him suddenly think about his coffee tins and worry. Worry about his safety in general. All the old demons and fears emerge, and Larry’s head suddenly aches.
“I hear Dad died,” Jack says. No emotion.
“You call him ‘Dad,’ do you?”
“What else should I call him? He was my fucking dad.”
Larry turns and begins to walk away. Jack follows. They say nothing. Larry turns into Mallone’s store and hands over the keys to the girl behind the counter. “Enjoy,” he says.
“Yeah, we have a shitload of packing and moving to do, and the wall needs to come out, and –” she’s snapping gum as she rambles.
“Enjoy.” Larry says again and leaves the store. Walks out mid-sentence.
“See you around,” the girl calls out expectantly. “Keep in touch, Larry.”
“One fuck and they think they own you,” Jack says to Larry and laughs. A gruff laugh. A guffaw. Short, sharp. A bark.
Jack walks quickly to keep pace with Larry. He breathes deeply, out of shape. “Let’s go get drunk and talk all this over,” he says. “Susan tells me I’ve got some money coming? She says she’s told you nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Not like her to keep her mouth shut.”
“And what would you know about Susan?”
“That’s fair,” Jack says. “I remember she was a shithead when she was younger. Always thought she was right.”
Larry and Jack walk into Borough Pub. They sit in a booth by the bathroom and order two pitchers of beer. The waitress brings over a bowl of peanuts in shells and Jack begins to crack and eat as if he’s starving to death. Larry sips his beer slowly, preferring to stay in the moment, to stay in control. His hands shake slightly. His older brother makes him nervous, brings up all the old fears, the unfairness and hurt and pain of a life with Jack.
Turns out, after another pitcher of beer, that Jack has been just as lucky as Larry. No jail time. Except Jack’s crimes aren’t like Larry’s, they are more violent and meant to cause pain and suffering. Sort of like when he would push Larry down the stairs, or trip him when he wandered past. Jack’s crimes are complicated and involve bike gangs and hunting rifles and drugs and knives. They involve broken arms and legs and trash barrels dumped into lakes or empty wells. Larry feels good that he’s his own man, his own boss, while Jack seems to take direction from others. But it worries him immediately that, no matter if they were brought up by their father or their mother, everyone in this family turned out fucked up and a criminal. There must be something in the blood, Larry thinks. In our veins. Coursing through us. Look at Susan’s brats too. It never ends.
“So I left her when I was sixteen,” Jack says. “Spent seven years with her. We moved a lot. She was always trying to keep ahead of him.”
“He didn’t try to find her. I know that.”
“Sure he did, asshole. Of course he did. Wanted to kill her, Dad did.”
“No.”
“Yes. He found us a couple of times. Took it out on her. Bruised her. Beat her. But she never gave in, she never went back.”
Larry is astonished. All that time he was growing up without a mother, his father knew where she was. He found her? He beat her? He never told them anything, never even mentioned her.
“Why didn’t she come back for me and Susan?”
“She could barely keep it together for me,” Jack says. “Let alone take care of you two.”
But she picked you, Larry wants to shout. She picked you. Why you?
“She finally settled. Met this guy. Moved in with him. Took his name. Dad stopped coming around, stopped finding her. This guy, Eric, he was big man. Large. Like this,” Jack spreads his arms wide. “Fucking kill you if you so much as looked at him. But he kept mom safe from Dad, and he kept her in booze money and nice dresses.”
“Eric.”
“You a parrot, Lawrence?”
“Don’
t call me that.”
Jack smirks. “Anyway, he died years ago and I was gone so she drank.” Jack looks nervous suddenly. Guilty. “I found her at the bottom of her stairs one day. I hadn’t visited in about four months. I was busy. She’d been dead a couple of weeks. Her fucking cat was eating her.”
Larry swallows his beer hard. It comes up. He coughs.
“Don’t puke on me, man.” Jack stands up. Wipes the regurgitated beer from the front of his coat. “Jesus.”
“Sorry.” Larry takes a napkin and mops up the rest of the beer that came out of his mouth. His whistling mother, the one who painted his world blue, died alone at the bottom of her stairs. Drunk. Life sucks, Larry thinks. All the things he’d imagined for her – death even – were nothing compared to the reality of what happened to her. Sure, he wanted her to hurt, wanted her to suffer because she had made him and Susan suffer, but he didn’t really expect that that’s what would happen. That her life was for nothing. Larry wants to believe that she tried to save him from Jack, but now he isn’t so sure. After all, Jack is here now. She saved him from nothing. She gave birth to Susan and to Larry and to Jack, but her life amounted to nothing else. Look at all of them now. Three criminals. Larry swigs back more beer. His glass is empty. He refills. Gets up to take a leak. Stumbles slightly.
“Can’t hold your booze, can you? You were always a skinny little guy,” Jack laughs. “We must not be related.”
“Fuck off.” Larry sways towards the bathroom and leans on the wall while pissing into a urinal. When he comes out, Jack is gone and has left him with the bill. Larry wonders if, maybe, he imagined his brother. Maybe the whole thing was a nightmare.
The Prisoner and the Chaplain Page 11