The Deluge, page 77
The winds from the east carry the smell of the new petrochemical plant. If a headache had a scent, it would be this.
“I ain’t eating dog.”
“Then eat the oatmeal,” she snaps back.
“Toby’s in there with a sandwich right now.”
Raquel unhooks the dog to lay it on the ground. The butcher knife lies on a sheet of newspaper nearby.
“And what about tomorrow? And the next day?”
“Casey Wheeler and I are going hunting this weekend. There’ll be venison after that.”
“Oh sure, Casey. That country goat.”
She picks up the butcher knife and wags it in the air as she talks.
“You been to the store. We can’t afford to be paying that much for canned soups and beans and SpaghettiOs. The food bank is tapped out every time I go. People stealing all day at work, and the franchisees is expected to pay for armed security now. God forbid I lift a box of nuggets home! Well, I found a solution, so I’ll be putting that solution to work. You got a problem with it, Keeper, you can fuck off back to jail.”
Rather than argue, you stalk around to the front steps. You take a seat on the stoop and wish you had a beer. You can hear Toby has turned on the TV, and for whatever reason he’s watching the news. Across the river, the petrochemical plant glows green and purple and orange from the variety of lights within its guts, a fortress of steel and piping with a winking smokestack rising skyward. It’s uncommonly beautiful even though the smell probably has something to do with Toby’s asthma. You went looking for a job there, of course. “Keeper, they ain’t gonna hire the guy who took the fall for a terrorist attack,” Raquel said, rolling her eyes in that way you hate. You also hate that word. In the end, all you got charged with was trespassing, possession, and trafficking narcotics.
From inside, you hear the heat and timbre of The Pastor’s unmistakable voice rise over the babble.
“… The socialist media calls Love a tyrant, but I call him a coward. Lists are not enough. Walls are not enough. Drones are not enough. Land mines in the desert are a start, but we have to be willing to exert the ultimate punishment for lawbreakers. I’m talking about biblical law. We are witnessing God’s judgment on a sinful world. He has given us the tools, the means, now we must seize these tools and bring about His glory…”
“Toby, turn that shit off!” you yell but then remember he can’t hear you unless you’re beside him. You go inside the trailer, find Toby playing with a toy superhero, not really watching. You take the remote from his hand. He cries out, groping his small fingers for it and babbling in his private language. On the screen, The Pastor rocks on, and the crowd is going bonkers.
“They tell you this is their country, but I’m telling you right now my friends, they are wrong.”
A young woman weeps as she tries to reach out and touch The Pastor’s pant cuff on the stage. He holds his hand high and allows the fury of the rally to swell.
“This is OUR country. And I am your president already.”
You change the channel, and this sends Toby into a tantrum you cannot understand.
* * *
You’ve been looking for work since you got out, and the pickings have been slim. First off, you weren’t even sure Raquel would want you to come home. She got evicted from the rental house and couldn’t afford anything but the double-wide at the “nasty end of the lot.” After you were paroled, you went back to Kroger to beg Julian for your old job, which was humiliating and pointless. You struck out at an auto shop, the drive-throughs, every fast-food joint—Raquel couldn’t even get you in at her McDonald’s. Ex-felon, minor celeb around town because you made the national news for a day. You felt like you had both this big scarlet letter on you and nobody could care less about you.
You’d spent the entire first year in prison not believing that you ended up back there, this time for a stint you couldn’t just sleep through. Fifteen years was a different beast. The new correctional facility in Chillicothe looked state-of-the-art, but it was the same as when you were in Marion, maybe with a better coat of paint. On the grounds there were the squat cement boxes, a few annex trailers, and sheds with corrugated metal roofs; two wraparound chain-link fences topped with razor wire, and beyond those, the fields and tough industry in every direction. In the distance, you could see the peak of a chapel. Inside, nice white walls, orange-tiled floors, and the Prion corporate logo on everything. You sank into the day-to-day routine, learning how to avoid trouble in the yard, how much money it took to get anything decent from the canteen or send a message with JPay, how to stitch an ammunition belt for the US Army, which is what they had you doing in the garment factory. Cliques determined by race, geography, and severity of punishment. You kept your head down. You didn’t make friends. Five months in, another inmate on your cell block cut his wrists open with a coil of bedspring he’d somehow jimmied free. The guy survived and was transferred to a psych unit. His lesson taunted you, especially when you passed his cell with the carnal, salty scent of lingering blood. Raquel brought Toby to visit once to tell you he was hearing impaired. Not to mention the asthma. How he panicked when he couldn’t breathe. You wanted to be strong because your boy is so fragile. You first had to convince yourself you were even capable of such a thing. So when the opportunity to reduce your sentence came along you had to take it. You had to.
* * *
Casey has gone porky and bald since you went away. He wears little crosses as earrings now and doesn’t like making it known that he hangs out with you. He and Levi Bassett are still tight, and Levi wants to put your head through a wall because of what you did to him outside the bowling alley. For you and Casey, hunting trips into the forests south of town make the most sense. Together you ride on his rumbling Arctic Cat. It seems unlikely you’ll sneak up on many deer with the Cat coughing gas, but you’re outdoors and the air tastes clean. As the good reverend says, “At least you’re alive and got all four limbs.”
At the end of a trail, you and Casey leave the Cat and make your way into the cold winter woods. The snow has mostly melted, and it’s slushy business going forward. Casey has a new Remington and lends you his old Mossberg for the afternoon. You sit in the box stand for twenty minutes and get bored. Then you walk for an hour, not saying much, and not seeing anything bigger than a squirrel.
“Gotta be better than dog,” says Casey. “That’s some fucked up Korean shit Rocky’s doing to you.” Rocky is, for some reason, what Casey has taken to calling Raquel.
“This is worthless,” you say.
“Yeah, I told you these woods was empty. Everyone with the same idea. Best we’ll get is a raccoon or opossum.”
“My feet are fucking soaked.”
Both boots have holes. You come to a felled tree not far from a small lake and stop to sit on it, leaning the rifle on a tree, and tearing off your boot and sock to rub warmth into your right foot. Then the left.
“How hard up are you?” Casey asks.
“Pretty fucking hard up.”
“You got that gig with the church.”
“That’s about a hundred bucks a week, Casey. Ain’t enough but to make me feel like I’m starving my kid. Plus, I can’t do nothing but under the table or those fuckers’ll just take the wages right out of the check.” You explain how you still owe Prion Security Solutions thousands for your own incarceration, including shoes, uniform, your PRCC gear, phone calls, even the electricity you used.
“Least you wanna work. I’ll tell you, if a man refuses to work, let him starve. Government’s giving away food to Haiti or wherever and there’s nothing left for anyone else.” Casey appears to consider something, and though you don’t dare let yourself hope, you can tell he has some kind of idea. “You remember Dick Underwood, of course.” He drapes his rifle over his shoulder and removes a glove to blow into his fist. “He’s gotten deep into this Patriot League stuff. You know they got a compound up by Sugarcreek?”
You’ve heard this. Underwood and his butt buddies playing like they’re going to start the next American Revolution. Overthrow the government. Not enough of them had seen what the government could do if it got real with you.
“They’re always looking for recruits. Guys to work. Get trained up and all that.”
“Ain’t it all volunteer?”
“Nah, they got money coming in now. A lot of it, I guess.”
“Not really into politics.”
“Hey, it’d be a job, though. Part of one, at least. Don’t tell Rocky, obviously.”
You were going to point into the woods to change the subject, but a small mammal materializes, like you conjured it into being. It’s an opossum scuttling through the soggy muck, whipping its scaly tail. Casey takes up his rifle, aims.
The crack of the bullet echoes, sharper and clearer because the snow and ice don’t absorb the sound. It chews into the dirt beside the animal, just enough to scare it and send it scampering into the forest.
“Goddamnit.” Neither of you has the energy to give chase. “Don’t want to eat opossum anyhow,” Casey mutters.
* * *
By the time you trudge out of the woods, dusk has fallen. Casey drops you in town, after a white lie about why you aren’t going home yet. With the five dollars in your wallet you buy a fistful of candy from the gas station. All you’ve had to eat in the last twenty-four hours is a ham and cheese sandwich, an apple, oatmeal, and now the candy. At least in prison you were never hungry.
You notice how many homes on Cassingham Hollow are empty now. Abandoned. Roofs caved in, windows boarded up. Feral cats roam the lawns. While you were busy pulling people out of debris during the Great Eastern Flood, the Muskingum River had topped its banks and soaked and splintered dozens of homes. But there’s one with the lights on. That old Queen Anne. Gray with dull pink trim that hasn’t been touched up in a generation. Battered chairs on the porch and the table with a dirty coffee mug. That mug packed with dead cigarettes.
When Tawrny shows up at the door, it’s a little bit shocking. He’s lost a lot of weight. He’d always been a big dude, barrel-chested and beer-gutted. He still has the gut, but it’s dwindled to a sad fleshy pouch that rides ahead of him, stretching the fabric of his long johns. He still has the salt goatee, but the flowing white hair is not so flowing anymore. There’s a brittle quality to it. Like his head would be crisp to the touch.
“Come on in, Keeper.”
He offers you hot chocolate, and you sit at the kitchen table, which is burdened with the weight of dirty dishes and unopened mail. You recognize what a bill from a collections agency looks like. Stained long johns hang from a lamp.
“Your wife home?”
He looks up from the stove, where he sets a pot of water to boil. “Betsy passed. Two years ago now.”
“Ah, T. Sorry to hear that.”
“For the best.” He reaches a frail arm to the cupboard where he snatches two mugs and empties a packet of hot chocolate powder into each. You can see his collarbone suddenly sharp against the weathered skin. “She was in agony at the end. Couldn’t bear to watch it.”
“Real sorry,” you repeat, and abruptly you’re thinking of Raquel. How she met you at the prison with Toby, a balloon tied to his wrist that said WELCOME HOME. Never in your life had you seen two more beautiful people, and you wanted to run back into your cell all the same.
“You finding any work?” Tawrny asks. He lights a cigarette. Spirals of smoke drift to the ceiling and collect in the room.
“Nope. Casey just tried to get me to go see the APL affiliate up in Sugarcreek.”
“Buncha crazy fucking rednecks, you best stay well away from them.”
“What I figured.”
“You don’t know the half. The League’s been terrorizing folks. Claim they’re cleaning up the streets, but they put an old Mexican in the hospital. Beat him half to death. Cops won’t do nothing about it.”
“So is this about product you need moved?”
He raises a dandruffy eyebrow. “You using again?”
“No,” you say quickly. “Course not. But I can work.”
The pot begins to whistle and Tawrny removes it, dumping steaming water over chocolate powder.
“Maybe you can, but I’ve moved on from that business. Got way too hot after Tuscarawas.” He finishes pouring and looks at you. “Can’t thank you enough for staying strong on that one.”
You say quietly, “Of course, T.”
“You just never know who’s gonna snitch and who’s gonna stand tall. Thing was, I never would’ve pegged you for the latter. You showed a lotta courage doing that time, boy.”
You say nothing, accept the compliment. In truth, when they arrested you, you were eager to make a deal. Anything to get yourself out of trouble. Point the finger right at Tawrny and let them sweat him for whoever paid the money to get access to the plant—those greeniacs and their lunatic bomb makers. You’d never even heard of them before an FBI agent was barking at you about the terrorism enhancement. Then a lawyer walks in, who, surprisingly, says he’s your lawyer. A little twit hotshot from Philadelphia. He claimed he was taking your case pro bono because he thought you were getting done wrong by the government. This didn’t quite sit with you. He got you aside and said, Here is your story: You went to the spot out by the access gate to get high, and that’s it. You tested the waters with him about flipping, and he told you no, that’s only going to make your situation worse. The government will do what it will do, but if you stay strong, you’ll be walking out in no time, he promised. Confess to any material support for terrorism, and there’s no flipping that’ll save you. The federal prosecutors want these people caught. Best to take a simple lie and ride it. Still, the Feds had been convinced you had a connection to the greeniacs, so they’d thrown the book at you. Fifteen-year sentence in the hopes that you’d spill. But you stood in the courtroom as the sentence came down, chewing your cheek to shit and repeating to yourself what your lawyer had said: You’d never serve all that. After the trial the guy vanished. You never heard from him again, and a part of you knew you’d been played. That the lawyer was hired by somebody, not to help you but to keep you quiet. In the end, all you got charged with was trespassing and possession. From minor celebrity to just some numbnuts who’d shot up by a fence and left his DNA on a padlock. You lopped off most of the time by signing up for the Prion Rescue and Conservation Corps (PRCC, or the “Prick” as it was known).
“Sorry, don’t got no marshmallows.” Tawrny sets the steaming mug down in front of you. It has a picture of the sun peeking over green hills and reads WELCOME TO COSHOCTON, HEART OF GOD’S COUNTRY. You sip, and the chocolate is so delicious. Finally, Tawrny gets to it.
“Reason I wanted you to come by, Keep, is, like I was saying, I gave up moving product. That’s a young man’s game. Money’s tight, though, so I been working with the folks from before. From Tuscarawas.”
You feel a permanent unease. It rides with you always.
“Didn’t really work out for me last time, did it?”
“No, I admit, that was not ideal. But they did right by you, didn’t they? Got you out in five years—”
“I got myself out,” you correct him.
“They got more opportunities. And they took note of you. You stayed a soldier.”
Though it once would have terrified you to show this man anger, it’s been too hard a road, and he looks too weak. You lean forward and jab the table with your index finger like you’re trying to puncture it.
“I got myself out. And why do you care anyway? You’re some greeniac now? Blow some more power plants up? What do you care about these people?”
Tawrny meets your gaze, demonstrates he still has no fear of you. You’ll always be a tweaker to him.
“I got no horse in their race, boy. But I’ll tell you something, these greeniacs, as you call ’em—they pay. And they’re smart something fierce. This lady I’m talking to asked about you specific. And, Keeper, there is some serious money involved. I’m talking a bag. You want to hear her out.”
With a scrape of wood on wood, you push back from the table and stand. You hate leaving the hot chocolate behind.
“Ain’t never wanted to hear someone out less.”
“Give it some thought, Keeper,” Tawrny says, blowing on the steam and sipping delicately. “Opportunities like this, you shouldn’t sneeze at ’em.”
“They can keep their money, trust me.” You leave Tawrny and storm into a night beneath cold stars. It takes you an hour to walk home.
* * *
At church the next evening, you walk your mom across the parking lot while Toby holds Raquel’s hand. He bounces in front of you in his small winter jacket and tiny tie, ready to shoot out of himself like a lawn sprinkler. Your mom moves slower every time you see her, and she insists on holding your arm. A fear of ice. Other churchgoers pull in in their SUVs and pickups. Hair is combed, shirts tucked, and the women’s shoes are the finest in the closet. Ahead, Toby and Raquel are working through an excited conversation, Toby’s mumbling facilitated by the rapid splashing of his hands as he signs. Raquel signs back patiently, each move of her fingers and fists like she’s conjuring a spell. You still don’t know much more than the basics. You could’ve learned that first year inside but you didn’t. You didn’t do much of anything.
“Careful on these stairs,” your mom says, more to herself. She’s dyed her hair an assaulting reddish color that doesn’t look remotely natural. Every part of her sags. She clutches your arm and steps gingerly like she’s crossing broken glass. You have an urge to slam your hip into her and send her sprawling.
