The Prisoner and the Chaplain

by Michelle Berry

  Larry catches Mona crying occasionally.

  He benefits from her anger as she comes at him in his storage-unit office. But this lovemaking isn’t what he wants. Her frustrations taken out on him.

  One day she sits up and looks at him. Naked. Her hair falling down her back, sweat on her temples.

  “What’s in the coffee cans?” Mona asks. This is the only thing she has ever asked him about himself and it makes Larry feel unbalanced. Naked beside her, he is off-guard.

  “Money,” he says. He can’t help himself.

  And she laughs. Dresses. Leaves.

  He isn’t sure if she believes him.

  But that is all that is ever said about the cans.

  Larry studies his cuts and bruises then. His bite marks. Sometimes she is more dangerous than other times. Today she was almost gentle. He wonders if she might be feeling something for him. There is no way he can tell.

  That night he visits Susan. It has been almost a year since he last saw her, and the change in her, in the house, in her kids, takes Larry by surprise.

  “What the fuck?” Larry kicks the door open wide enough to slide through. The hallway is full of things. Garbage, shoes, coats, backpacks, boxes, flats of pop and cases of beer both empty and full. Larry enters the kitchen and Susan is sitting at the table, the table they sat at years ago when their mother fed them their sandwiches at lunch. When Jack pushed Larry off the chair because of the bike lock. Larry can’t believe the change that has taken place. Susan’s face is skeletal; her jaw hangs open as if it’s on a rusty hinge. She is yellow in colour and her eyes are so bloodshot Larry can’t see the brown of the irises. Susan’s hair is lank and greasy and falls over her face. Unwashed. She smells horrible. Her nails are long and her cuticles are bleeding and her hands move back and forth on their own, across the top of the table. She is actually drooling. She has meth face. Cavernous mouth, no teeth.

  “Holy shit, Susan. What happened to you?”

  “You got money?” Susan blinks up at Larry.

  A few of Susan’s kids, and some kids Larry doesn’t recognize, walk through the kitchen and head out the back door into the night. Larry takes note of their gang colours. One of the oldest boys is holding a knife. All of them are smoking.

  “Meth,” Larry says. “You said you’d never do meth.”

  “Jack,” Susan says. “He gives me stuff. I do what he gives me. Do you have money? Can you give me some stuff?”

  Larry wants more than anything to turn and leave and never come back. This isn’t his problem. She’s too far gone. There’s nothing he can do. And why should he? Who the hell cares? It’s not like they are close. They have nothing in common. He’s a go-getter, she’s a lazy bitch. Larry wants to smack her around. How dare she do this to him. To herself. To her kids.

  Larry roots around in the cupboards for coffee. He finds instant and puts the kettle on.

  Susan looks up from the table. “You got money?”

  “Jesus, Susan.”

  The milk in the fridge is thick and lumpy.

  He tries to sober her up. This is what he eventually tells anyone who asks – the judges, the caseworkers, the correction officers – when they attempt to use her as a character witness. He does try. But she doesn’t want his help, only his money. Larry leaves her then, to Jack, to her life. There is nothing else he can do. There is really nothing else he wants to do if he’s honest with himself. Like his mother did to him and Susan many years ago, he turns his back on her. And gives up.

  Larry doesn’t know why it happens this night. Ten years in his cell, alone, and he still hasn’t figured it out. He doesn’t understand it. Why this night? For several years he thought it had something to do with his concussions. Blacking out. Rage. Seeing Susan over the top, maybe that triggered something? He isn’t sure.

  Why this night?

  This night, Larry catches Jack picking the lock on his roll-up door at the storage facility. It is late, dark, wet, raining. A hot summer rain, it doesn’t cool him off. Larry, terrified, approaches Jack from behind and grabs his arm and takes him down into the mud. He wishes he had his gun. Jack is surprised but slippery and tough. They wrestle and fight. Throw punches.

  “What did you do to Susan?” Larry screams.

  Jack laughs. He laughs and hits and scrabbles for footing in the mud.

  Jack comes out worse for wear because he is drugged out and sloppy. But he manages to hit Larry hard on the head and it feels to Larry as if his brain explodes. He can feel his brain move slightly, as if it has shifted. Another concussion, perhaps, or an old one come back.

  He is dizzy, disoriented.

  There is a car in the distance, by the woods, and Larry sees the flash of headlights. A signal. Who is waiting for Jack? Susan?

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” Larry shouts, holding his head, as Jack takes off, covered in mud, holding his ribs. Jack’s nose is swollen and bleeding, and his cheek has been ripped by a pebble in the mud. Larry wipes himself off and tries to stand, breathing heavily, wobbly. There is blood from a cut on his eyebrow. It leaks into his eyes, mixes with the rain. He watches Jack get into the distant car. The car sits there in the dark; it doesn’t move. Larry’s eyes go in and out of focus. He can’t see, everything is fuzzy.

  And then the car starts up, lights on, moves off down the road past the strip mall, past the woods. Slowly, like Jack has all the time in the world.

  Jack must know about his money.

  Jack must also know that Larry will move his money, so he will come back. Soon.

  Tonight. This night.

  Why this night? Why suddenly is everything happening?

  Larry rolls open his door and looks around. His coffee cans are all lined up nicely. His desk is clean except for the laptop and the figurine of the boy fishing, leaning on a log. Larry hasn’t committed any burglaries in months; he has lived off his coffee cans, the amount dwindling rapidly. Since he began seeing Mona, he’s done nothing but surf the Internet and drink at bars and eat and sleep and think of Mona. Larry pauses in his thoughts and hears that groaning coming from the storage unit the next aisle over. It’s late. It’s raining. Who the hell is groaning? Sighing? Crying? And why? What are they doing?

  He swipes at his eyes as if clearing them, but then realizes the fog is in his head. His vision is wavering, as if he’s looking through black liquid.

  Larry has no time to contemplate all of this – Jack, the groaning asshole, his money. Mona. He has to move, get moving, get going. He has to get rid of his money. Hide it away. Keep it safe from Jack. His head aches. He is shaky, worried about Jack, afraid for his life, his money.

  The groaning continues.

  Larry grabs a coffee can, two cans, three cans, as many as he can hold. He looks around. What will he do with them? Where will he put them? In his car first and then move them into his apartment? Or a bank? He stops, laughs slightly. A bank. That’s funny. Open an account with the money he stole from banks. Larry makes one quick trip to his car, just where he left it when he saw Jack, down the aisle, hidden slightly, and he makes sure to take note of everything around him. Pay attention. In case Jack sneaks up on him. His vision is clouding but he doesn’t see any other cars. He hears nothing. No car engines. The groaning has stopped.

  Jack was out of it, might even forget to come back, might go home to nurse his wounds. High on meth, Larry supposes. Maybe he’ll come back another time? Larry may have that – some time. Or he may not. He wants to sleep but knows he can’t. He may never wake up if he goes to sleep now. This must be another concussion. His brain feels loose. Jingling in his skull. A piercing ache.

  He dumps the cans in his car and heads back to his open storage unit to get more. For some reason it doesn’t occur to him to move the car closer.

  And then, on this night, on this particular night, just when she shouldn’t be, Mona is there. What is she doing there at night? She is never at the Storage Mart at night. She is standing inside his unit, by his desk. She
is wet, her long hair dripping down her back. As if she’s been out in the rain for hours. She is looking at his coffee cans, holding one in her hand, staring at the money inside.

  “What are you doing here?” Larry asks. “It’s late.”

  “I forgot my purse in the office so I came back,” she says. Her voice is flat. “I saw your door open.” She stares at the coffee can in her hand. “Where did you get all of this money? What are you? What do you do? What happened to your face?” Her hands, Larry notices, are shaking. “I thought you were joking about money in the cans. I thought –”

  “I have to go. Now,” Larry says. “What are you doing here? Where are the boys?”

  “The kids are waiting in the car. I saw your door open. What happened to you? What happened to your face?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I have to leave. Now.”

  “Larry, I’m calling the police. I don’t know what you are doing in here, but I know it’s not legal and I want nothing to do with it.” Mona reaches for her cellphone and Larry comes at her. He twists her arm and grabs the phone. Doesn’t she know how important time is right now? “No,” she shouts. “Stop. Give me back my phone.”

  “Listen, you just have to let me go now. I’ll explain later.”

  “No.” She is furious. She tries to grab for the phone and Larry pushes her. Mona lands on her knees on the rug. Her eyes suddenly shift and she is looking behind him, outside the unit, into the aisle. Suddenly she gasps and drops the coffee tin she is still holding. Money spews out. Her hand goes to her mouth. “No.”

  Larry turns. He sees nothing. There is no one there.

  “What?”

  “I thought I saw someone.”

  “I’ll be back. Just wait here and we can figure this out together. Just wait. I’m sorry –”

  He takes the coffee cans and rushes out of the storage shelter and down towards his car. His eyes aren’t working anymore – it’s as if he is wearing sunglasses in the night. Everything is dark. Shadows, shapes. The pounding in his head is a noise now. Sloshing. He can hear it all around him. Blood rushing around his brain. A black world. A quick white world. He’s dizzy and stumbles and falls. Time seems to pass fast and then slowly.

  Larry rights himself and heads back to the storage unit. He walks like a drunk man, swaying, weaving. He doesn’t see that the boys are there until after. He didn’t see them go in. He saw nothing. Larry’s mind is a mess of misfiring wires. He remembers nothing more than this – going towards his storage unit for one more haul of coffee cans. Hearing Mona shouting, “No.” At him? To him? Feeling angry. He remembers feeling incredibly angry. At Jack? At Mona? How dare she threaten him. How dare she try to call the police. How dare she look in his coffee tins. He wants her but she wants nothing to do with him. He is furious. And then nothing. He remembers nothing.

  But when he regains consciousness he sees them. The boys. Mona.

  He is lying on his stomach in the entranceway to his storage unit, to his office, in the mud.

  Everything has ended so quickly. Twenty minutes since his fight with Jack. In and out of the storage unit with his cans – waking, falling, drifting. Larry isn’t in control of his body, his eyes. He rolls onto his back. He can see nothing until he sees everything.

  So much blood.

  Larry retches. Vomits. Blacks out again.

  Comes to. Sees it again. And again.

  So much blood. Thick and black. The smell like fish and rust, metallic and sour. Everything is sticky, covered in blood.

  He is covered in blood.

  His blood?

  Their blood?

  Larry can’t get the picture of them lying there, splayed, out of his mind. He sees it over and over and over, it is burned across his mind. Ten years it’s been there behind his lids when he closes his eyes at night.

  Mona is over by the desk. Still on her knees where he left her, but now she has sunken down, almost sitting cross-legged, her legs at an awkward angle under her skirt. As if broken. She looks like a doll, skewed angles, limbs twisted. She is leaning slightly on the desk. Her eyes are open and staring right at him. Her mouth is wide, caught in the midst of a scream. There is blood in her hair, on her blouse, in her hands. She holds her hands out, placed upright on her twisted thighs, and there is blood pooled into them. As if she’s keeping a cup of blood for each of her sons.

  The boys are lumped together just near the entrance to the storage unit. One on top of the other. Frankie. Bennie. Larry is not sure which is which. There are gashes through their arms, legs, torsos, heads. Thick gashes. Their eyes are closed but their hands reach out towards their mother. Reach out to defend themselves. Blood everywhere. Larry is covered in it.

  This is what the jury focuses on. The twins. The innocents. Multiple stab wounds. Larry heard nothing but “No.”

  They focus on Larry’s head injuries, the multiple concussions which, surely, must have led to this kind of intense anger – the fact that he was concussed that night, barely conscious. She was going to call the police on him. She threatened him. The children came in while he was killing her – of course he killed them too.

  These are such violent deaths. It amazes Larry that they took so little time. The autopsy states that they did not fight back. Mona did not fight back. One minute they are there, the next minute they are dead.

  Larry tells the judge, “I didn’t mean to kill them. I don’t remember much. I don’t remember anything.”

  10:01 a.m.

  “I did it,” the Prisoner tells the Chaplain. “I killed Mona and her two sons. She was going to take my money. She was there to steal my money and so I killed her. The kids got in the way. It’s obvious. All the police reports say this. It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember it. I was covered in her blood.”

  “This makes no sense to me,” the Chaplain says. He is standing, pacing. “After your whole story. After everything I know about you now. This makes no sense.”

  “You read the files. I had years of concussions from Jack. And that night. I don’t remember anything. But when I came to, they were dead. I did it. There was no one else there.”

  The mood in the cell is anxious, thick, worried. The Chaplain can feel it in the stifling air. The Prisoner is avoiding eye contact, looking everywhere but at the Chaplain. “Why would you kill Mona? You were falling in love with her. Just because she found your coffee cans? For money? This makes no sense. You didn’t care about the money. You said so yourself. And why suddenly like that? She hadn’t called the police yet. You could have talked her out of it easily. And why the boys? And when did you get a knife in your hand? You were carrying the cans to the car, you were hurt, you didn’t have a knife. This makes absolutely no sense.”

  “She got in the way. I always carried a knife.”

  “But not the knife. They never found the knife. This is not possible. You are protecting him, aren’t you? Jack. It was Jack. He came back. He did it. You saw him do it.”

  “They caught me. Get over it. They caught me with blood on my hands.”

  “But you didn’t do it. They never found the knife. I know you didn’t do it. It makes absolutely no sense. The whole story you’ve told me doesn’t lead to this. It doesn’t . . . It was Jack, wasn’t it? Why are you protecting him? Why would you even want to protect him after what he did to Susan, to you?”

  “Everything I did in my life led up to this moment,” the Prisoner says quietly. “My mother left me and I became this. I murdered that bank manager and the teller.” He holds his hands out wide, Jesus on the cross. He is standing by the cot. And suddenly he looks larger, more ominous, frightening rather than frightened.

  The Chaplain stands at the door. “Officers,” he shouts, rattling the door. “Officers. Let me out.”

  But the Prisoner is fast and he corners the Chaplain up against the door before the COs can get into the cell. He holds the Chaplain’s neck between his two strong hands and squeezes so hard that the Chaplain feels as if his windpipe will collapse.
The bump on the Prisoner’s head, the bruise purple and black, looks to him as if it’s pulsing.

  “I fucking killed them, don’t you say I didn’t. Do you know how many years this has been argued back and fucking forth, appealed back and forth? I’m sick of it. I killed them. All three of them. Because they wanted my money. Because my mother left me. Because Jack was taken, she took Jack, to protect me, don’t you see –” the Prisoner lets go and sinks to the floor, sobbing.

  The COs break through and wrench the Prisoner up and hold him down on the cot on his stomach. They bind his arms, his wrists with ties.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” CO2 asks. “You got two more hours, asshole, and then you’re dead. So stop acting like a tough man. Act like a man going to his death. Act remorseful maybe. Or something. Jesus.”

  The Chaplain rubs his neck. Another CO guides him out into the hallway, where he perches on the edge of a chair.

  “You okay?”

  The Chaplain nods. Catches his breath. “He’s not guilty,” he says. “He didn’t do it.”

  “What are you talking about? Hey, listen to this.” The COs gather around him.

  The Chaplain tells them what he thinks. He says, “I think it was his brother, Jack, who killed the woman and her children. I think Jack came back to the storage place and knifed them and the Prisoner took the blame. Maybe he took the blame because he was afraid of Jack. Or maybe because he had blacked out and just didn’t remember anything. I don’t know, I don’t get it, it doesn’t make any logical sense, but he didn’t do it.” The Chaplain relates the story quickly but the COs shake their heads, look confused, look sympathetically at him. “Why aren’t you doing anything? We have to stop the process.”

  One of the COs is on the phone.