T—
When Sister came to see me today, she brought a box of Eddie’s stuff—his basketball, a couple of books. Then she handed me a letter.
“Eddie wanted to say good-bye,” she said.
Once Sister left, I stared at that letter like it might blow up. I don’t get any mail here because Mom pretty much gave up, and Annie . . . well, I’m not going to hold anything against Annie. She tried, especially in the beginning. But they pressed her pretty hard. And she knew I was coming for Jimmy. So when they asked, she told them.
Three people, man.
I’m pretty sure nobody cared about Bo or Jimmy, but taking out Val—that’s what sunk me. They called her an innocent. And while I don’t know if that’s true, she didn’t deserve what she got. What I did to her.
Anyway, I was sitting here staring at Eddie’s letter, trying to figure out what it might say. Trying to figure out what I would write to somebody in the last few hours of my life. Who would I write to?
The twins. Mom. You.
The other day, when Sister asked if I was still writing these letters, I tried to play it off—I tried to be like, Sometimes. When I feel like it. You know.
All that hard-ass shit is getting so old, T.
The Sister didn’t call me on it. Instead she was like, “Well, why did you keep writing?”
I sat there, searching for the answer—searching long after she left. But I think I’ve always known, even from that very first letter.
Man, I just want to be close to you again.
If I could have anything—anything in the world—it wouldn’t be money. It wouldn’t even be to get out of jail.
It would be more time.
Just you and me. Messing around in the woods, driving that crazy-ass car of yours down the back roads. Stopping at Wilco for some drinks. Snacks. Doing everything we could to find enough change to pay for it. Living long and getting old. Day after day until we were those dudes sitting around Hardee’s for hours and hours solving all the world’s problems over some shitty coffee.
Goddamn, T. Do you know what I would do to make that happen?
Later I walked into the yard for the first time since Eddie’s execution. I brought his ball and was spinning it again and again in my palm—closing my eyes and lifting my head to smell the air. His letter, unopened in my pocket.
The sun is out, the sky is clear, and I’ve got my head pointed to the sky, letting that sun just shine on my face. I sat like that for ten minutes before I heard it. The plane was yellow, a fixed-wing somebody must’ve restored. The propeller was spinning invisibly in front of it, and then, like it was nothing, it made a lazy loop above us.
I looked around, but nobody was paying any attention.
The plane flipped.
It turned, diving to the ground, impossibly fast.
At the last second, it pulled up, shooting back up to the sky until it disappeared behind the only cloud in the sky.
Just like that, it was gone.
I sat there searching for that plane, trying to hear it. But it was like it never had even been there. The rest of the yard could care less too. Everybody was doing their own thing.
Lifting. Hooping. Talking.
I stood there for a minute, feeling like maybe I’d seen a ghost. And then one of the dudes on the court started yelling, asking me if I was going to play or not.
Everybody lost it as I walked onto the court.
Luke
Author’s Note
Fifteen years ago, I was a press witness to an execution. I saw a man put to death. Since then, I’ve searched for some way to express my shame and to understand the injustice of that experience. The pursuit took me to seminary. It pushed me to read every book I could find about capital punishment and mass incarceration. I attended vigils and protested at public forums. I taught classes at prisons and juvenile correctional facilities. And ultimately I befriended death-row inmates (that’s the real work) and wrote letters until my hand cramped. All of it to make sense of/run away from/finally process what happened in that tiny, triangular room.
When I started We’ll Fly Away, I always called it my “death-penalty book.” It was shorthand, a way to talk about it before I had a working title. But the more I worked on Luke and Toby’s story, the more I realized that “death-penalty book” no longer sufficiently covered the scope of it. Yes, it is a book about the death penalty. But it’s also a book about friendship. It’s about growing up hard, in a way that forces you to make choices you’d otherwise not make. It’s a book about wanting to escape. It’s about love and loyalty. It’s about people who care, even when you don’t. And maybe most importantly, it’s a book that invites readers to ask the question: do I believe a person can ever be beyond redemption?
My hope is that, after reading We’ll Fly Away, the only answer can be: “no.”
About the Author
BRYAN BLISS is the author of Meet Me Here and No Parking at the End Times. He holds master’s degrees in theology and fiction and works as a curriculum designer and developer. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and two children.
www.bryanbliss.com
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Books by Bryan Bliss
No Parking at the End Times
Meet Me Here
We’ll Fly Away
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This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
WE’LL FLY AWAY. Copyright © 2018 by Bryan Bliss. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Front cover art © 2018 by Matt Roeser
Cover photographs © 2018 by bango/Shutterstock and John Henkelr/Shutterstock
Cover design by Matt Roeser and Paul Zakris
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Digital Edition MAY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-249429-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-249427-6 (hardback)
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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