Nell sighs.
‘Thanks, Sue.’
She turns to me.
‘Look, I’ve no interest in making fast friends.’
‘Me neither,’ I tell her.
And I mean it.
‘I’m in Texas for Ed.’
‘See you around,’ she says.
And she’s gone.
A SODA
‘I got a soda
with the money you put into the account,’ Ed says.
‘I didn’t send it,’ I admit,
wondering if Angela managed to find funds
after I told her Karen had been sending Ed money
every month
but had stopped.
‘Well, whatever, man.
God, it was sweet. Best soda ever.’
His eyes well up
and I want to reach through the Plexiglas,
grab him, shake him,
tell him to get a grip;
it’s just a soda.
Jesus, Ed, it’s just a fucking soda.
But it isn’t.
It isn’t just a soda at all.
PEOPLE HERE
I’m on Main Street minding my own business
when a woman
with a poodle under one arm
murmurs something.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your brother killed a police officer,’ she says
and shakes a newspaper at me,
noses the air.
So the journalist published a piece and pointed to me.
And here we go again – guilt by association,
strangers scared of my dangerous DNA.
‘He isn’t guilty,’ I tell her.
I seem to be saying this a lot
when I’ve no idea how true it is.
‘People around here hope he fries,’ she spits,
just like that,
straight into my face.
I take a deep breath.
‘They don’t use the chair any more.
So no one’s getting fried. Sorry.’
I pat the poodle
and continue along the street.
WITHOUT THE CONS
Sue brews me tea and
pushes a large jelly doughnut
across the counter.
‘That old witch don’t talk for the rest of us, Joe.
Wakeling wouldn’t last a day without the cons.
Whole damn town is financed by the farm.’
I bite into the doughnut. It’s still warm.
‘Can I have a tenderloin
with peppercorn sauce for lunch?’ I ask.
Sue laughs.
‘You can have a substandard burger and cold fries.’
‘Is that all you think I’m worth?’
I’m trying to make Sue smile
but she scrutinises me.
‘Real question is what you think
you’re worth, hun.’
DAD
It’s not like they all ran away.
Dad was different.
I’ve seen pictures of him rocking me
with cheaply tattooed arms,
face furrowed from years of unemployment lines
and dealing crystal meth to junkies
who’d have cut him
rather than let him leave
without their hit.
But he died before I was a year old,
got himself killed:
billiard ball hidden in a sock
to the back of the head,
like a real hero.
And the guy who did it?
Claimed it was an accident,
served four and a half years on Rikers Island,
which seems,
I don’t know,
a fucking disgrace
after everything that’s happened to Ed.
NELL SENDS A MESSAGE
Come over to my house later.
I don’t know how she got my number,
probably from Sue,
but it doesn’t matter.
She wants to see me.
ASK HIM
We are in Nell’s swimming pool again.
She scatters shreds of weed on top of the tobacco.
‘You look like a hillbilly hen farmer.
Wear some sunscreen.’
My arms are peeling red.
My face must be worse.
‘I got a kind of a life.’
She lights the tip of the roll-up and inhales,
passes the joint.
‘Sue said your brother killed a cop.
I looked him up.
He was young when it happened.
Like, our age.’
I breathe in the bud, cough,
and she smacks my back.
She takes the joint from me,
pinches the butt between her fingers,
doesn’t put the paper to her mouth.
‘Did he do it?’
‘No!’
My voice is sharper, louder than I intend.
She hesitates.
‘But he’s still got appeals and stuff, right?
I mean …’
‘He’s got the Supreme Court,
if they agree to hear the case.
And the governor as a very last resort.’
‘So what happened?
Why’d they lock him up?’
‘He confessed to it,’ I tell her.
‘But if he didn’t do it,
why’d he say he did?’
‘I dunno.’
And I’ve never
asked Ed outright,
not even since I started visiting.
Why is that?
What is it about Ed’s story
that makes me doubt him?
Nell reads my mind.
‘I’d wanna know exactly what happened
so I could get it neat in my head.’
She’s right.
I need the truth,
whatever shape it comes in.
I need to know Ed trusts me,
that we have no secrets between us,
no bullshit
now we’re so close to the end.
We were always good friends.
I want him to tell me everything.
‘Ask him,’ Nell says.
ED CONFESSED TO THE CRIME
Back when it happened,
Ed signed a sworn statement confessing
to shooting Frank Pheelan.
He told Mom on the phone
the cops forced him to sign
and he was too tired and confused to argue.
Little else links him to the crime.
This is all I know.
POINTLESS
The walls are sweating.
It must be a hundred and ten degrees
in the visiting room.
‘I’m learning Spanish,’ Ed says, in greeting.
‘Huh?’
‘Spanish.
I figure I’m from New York
and I’ve been in Texas
for ten years so
there’s no excuse.
Half the guys here speak it,
but to get good you gotta study.
Anyway, now I got Al
I can give up the law stuff.
Gotta fill my time somehow, right?’
I’m not sure what to say,
but I’m careful not to blurt out,
What’s the point?
Ed counts to ten in Spanish,
tells me his name and where he lives.
I listen and eventually Ed simmers down.
‘Do you speak another language?’
He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.
My throat is chalk dry.
I shake my head. ‘I hardly speak English.’
He laughs and there is a lull,
a conspicuous
gap in the conversation,
a space for a question
.
‘Ed, I have something to ask.’
He pulls his chair closer,
like that makes a difference.
‘I’m right here, man.’
His eyes are wide, waiting to give me advice,
be a big brother.
It’s always so damn hot here.
And they never set out water
or put a fan in the room.
‘Joe?’ Ed looks concerned.
I mean, the irony of it –
he looks concerned for me.
‘I gotta ask …’ I try.
But I can’t.
I stare at him.
And he stares right back.
For a long time.
Time:
the very thing we don’t have to waste.
DID YOU DO IT?
‘Did you kill that cop?’
WRONG
Ed removes the receiver from his ear and
squints at it like something might be
wrong with the prison equipment.
AGAIN
‘What happened back then?’
My voice is tinny.
I should shut up and let Ed answer,
but quickly new questions come and
I spit them at him.
‘Why did you confess?
Why didn’t the old lawyer do the talking?
Wasn’t there DNA to prove you never did it?’
Ed taps the table with his fingertips.
‘You really gonna ask me that?’
I grit my teeth.
‘I have to know one hundred per cent, Ed.’
‘You’re really asking me this stuff?’
He drops the phone.
The sound splinters my eardrum.
Then he stands and
before I can do anything about it
is shackled and shuffling away.
‘Ed. Talk to me!’ I shout.
‘Why can’t we just talk about it?’
But it’s too late.
He’s gone.
Again.
IN ME
Before Ed got arrested,
Angela never stopped believing
he would come back
of his own accord
once he quit being mad with Mom.
I knew better.
Ed was stubborn.
I knew better.
I had more Ed in me than
I’ve ever admitted.
THE WARDEN
What I definitely do not need
as I leave
is Philip Miller waiting for me.
‘You got two seconds, son?’
I don’t know where he gets off
flashing that big, bogus smile
when he’s the one who’ll
put Ed down in the end.
In his office
we face one another,
a bulky desk between us
piled high with books
and paper cups.
‘We haven’t spoken.
My name’s Philip Miller,
though I figure you already know that.’
He pauses,
like maybe I’m meant to
acknowledge his power.
I clench my jaw,
turn my hands into fists.
On his desk is a photograph of a girl in roller skates,
yellow dungarees,
her hair held up in lopsided bunches.
‘It can’t be easy,’ he says.
‘No,’ I admit,
‘but at least I’m not organising the injection.’
He straightens his tie,
dabs his clammy forehead with a Kleenex.
‘I’m doing my job, Joseph,’ he says,
like that’s an excuse,
like that isn’t what the prosecutor says,
the judge, the jury, the guards.
‘I guess the Nazis claimed the same thing,’ I say.
I don’t know a lot about history,
but I do understand that all it takes
is a whole bunch of bystanders
and people just doing their jobs
for ugly things to happen.
His smile fades.
‘I wanted to introduce myself and reassure
you that my staff will be respectful
throughout this process.
I understand you committed no crime, after all.
Is there anything the prison can help with?’
He’s trying to be considerate,
smooth over his guilt with bullshit benefits.
‘You got a crucifix on the wall,’ I say.
He nods;
he knows what’s coming
and doesn’t try to stop me.
‘I wonder what Jesus would do
if he were here for a day.’
Philip Miller stands.
The meeting is over.
‘Come see me if you need anything,’ he says.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Nell is perched on the kerb
near the gas station,
a book balanced on her knees.
Her plimsolls rest on a beaten-up skateboard
covered in oversized stickers.
‘You been waiting long?’ I ask.
She holds up her book: Brave New World.
‘I’ve read fifty-four pages of this tripe,
so yeah, pretty much been here a lifetime.’
She stands and dusts herself off.
‘Wanna go for a lemonade?’
‘A what?’
The last thing I want is a soft drink.
I need to get numb.
‘Lemonade, Joe.
It’s a drink for quenching a thing called thirst.’
She punches me full force in the thigh,
folds over the book and stuffs it into the
back pocket of her shorts.
‘Come on.’
A DECENT MAN
A fancy street,
lawns decorated in rockeries
and a small stand where giddy girls
sell homemade lemonade
for fifty cents a pop.
Nell pays with a balled-up dollar bill
and we sit on the wall outside the girls’ house.
‘Did you see him?’ she asks.
I sip, slurp, gulp.
‘I’ve screwed everything up.’
She puts a hand on my arm.
I fix my eyes on her fingers,
the broken, unpolished nails.
‘But it got me thinking,’ I go on.
‘Why wouldn’t he answer?’
She sighs
like she might understand,
but she can’t know how much I need Ed
to tell me he didn’t do it – could never do it –
that evil isn’t threaded through our genes
like everyone thinks.
What I need is for Ed to say
that I have a fighting chance
of becoming a decent man
someday.
ED WON’T SEE ME
So I trudge back to town
in the pot-roast heat
and work on the junker.
AND THE NEXT DAY
It is the same.
NOT DRIVING
Nell and I share a booth and drink Oreo milkshakes.
She’s almost finished Brave New World,
turns the pages so violently
she’s in danger of ripping them.
‘Quit reading it,’ I tell her.
‘I want to have an opinion,’ she says.
‘What? I got opinions on a ton of stuff
I know nothing about.
Like … oysters.’
‘Oysters?’
‘Yeah – I’ve never eaten one but they’re gross.
And surfing. It’s stupid. Arrogant.
Also, New Jersey.
Armpit of the universe.
I mean, who’d live in Hoboken?’
She thumps my leg.
‘You’re a genuine jackass.’
‘I know,’ I say,
and look out the window.
Her fingers tap my arm.
‘I’m sure he’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says.
THE THIRD DAY
‘He has to see me,’ I say.
The marine-guard is back.
He shrugs and
makes a not-much-I-can-do face.
‘Fine. Pass on a message.
Tell Ed from me that he’s a prick.’
HALLOWEEN
I was a werewolf
howling into the October sky,
fake fur fastened to my face.
Angela took me trick-or-treating
and we filled two buckets with candy.
At home, Ed laughed at my costume:
‘Are you meant to be a scary beaver?’
I got so irate I stormed down to our room
and refused to come out.
Ed said it was a joke,
wouldn’t apologise.
And even though we both
sulked for a few days,
by the end of it we were
friends
and couldn’t
remember why it had got us all