Desperation Road(8)

This was the world that Russell thought of as he sat with his head leaning against the bus window. Getting up early and driving his daddy’s truck out Highway 98 and turning toward the Bogue Chitto River and then driving onto a gravel road that ran alongside the thin river until the road simply ended. Getting out of the truck and taking the .22 rifle from behind the seat and walking half a mile until the ground became soft and then soggy and then stepping high to keep from bogging down and making it to the one-man boat tied to a willow tree. Muddy to his knees and climbing in and paddling out into the swamp and listening and watching and feeling like a part of what was happening. Sitting through the break of dawn and the light gaining strength and burning through the early haze and the air alive with the calls of birds and the hungry things searching for food. The .22 across his lap. Shot less and less with each visit as he had come to feel like a violator. The unnatural ring of his shot, which scattered the small and unknowing things and added blood to the water and he eventually only carried it with him in case of an alligator or some other fantastic creature rising from the black and starving for skin and bone. This was the world that filled his thoughts as the bus headed south on I-55. The world he remembered being part of as a younger man. As a boy.

It was a straight shot eighty miles south down the interstate and there had been enough rain during this last week of June to keep the countryside green but light shades of brown appeared in patches and suggested a drying out was in store if there wasn’t some relief. Babies cried off and on and an old man snored in the seat behind him and the bus smelled of exhaust and he was taken away from thoughts of his youth and forced into thoughts of the man he had been when he was taken away. He had told himself he wasn’t going to do it. Wasn’t going to stare out the window and lament what he had lost, like some hapless guy in some hapless moment but he wasn’t able to resist. There she was. Brown hair and filling her young woman body in young woman ways, excited about a wedding, dancing with him late into the night, lying close against him in the dark. He listened to the babies cry several seats behind him and he wondered about the kids they might have. About the house they might live in. About the backyard that might be at that house and about them sitting in wrought-iron chairs and drinking bottled beer and watching those kids run around the yard chasing fireflies. The bus charged on, a great rectangular mass of metal and glass and he imagined himself returning from a long trip to that woman and those kids who would be waiting on the front porch of that house and then the old man who had been snoring snapped awake with a shout and startled Russell and freed him from these images. He arched his back and stretched. Looked down at his hands and rubbed his thumbs across the small scars that were scattered across his knuckles and the tops of his hands. Scars that hadn’t been there when he left.

He had spent his first week of freedom in a mandatory seminar for ex-cons that attempted to reacquaint them with the real world. He and six others wore street clothes without shackles and were driven in a van from the gates of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in the Delta to a Motel 6 on the back end of a truck stop off I-55 on the south side of Jackson. He had been unable to sleep. The room too quiet. The air conditioner too cold. Concern that the guy he was sharing a room with might do something. Anything. After doughnuts and coffee in the mornings they would go into a big room at the end of the hallway on the first floor and sit around a sprawling wooden table and listen to Mildred Day. She referred to herself as a reentry counselor. Somebody you only want to see once. Somebody you want to forget. A no-frills middle-aged woman with thick wrists and thick ankles and a thick waist. She educated them on finding work and maintaining contact with parole officers. She explained the differences in the price of living. What a gallon of milk cost. What car insurance cost. How much you make at minimum wage.

After three days of this, with the lure of the free world just outside their door and evidently too much to bear, two of the ex-cons skipped out around midnight and headed to Jimmy’s, a south Jackson strip club with pink neon women shining over the front door and highdollar drinks inside. Mildred Day had warned them and the next morning when they didn’t show up for breakfast she made a phone call and then went on about her business with her remaining students. At lunch she announced that the two stragglers had been picked up smoking cigarettes outside a convenience store and that they were currently on their way back to Parchman for another six months. She then said if any of you would like to join your buddies, Jimmy’s has no cover charge until nine o’clock and drinks are half price until ten. Russell looked around at the other four men and they all shook their heads though visions of naked girls danced in their thoughts and one of the cons remarked to Mildred that those must have been some damn fine titties if they was worth another six months.

The remaining days passed with less excitement. She took them to the mall and the grocery store. She had them practice filling out job applications and identifying themselves as ex-cons. With certain eyes she stood in front of them and said out of the seven original members of the group, four of you will wind up back in prison. Two of you are already there. It’s up to you. When the week was up each man had gate money and a manila folder tucked under his arm filled with everything the Mississippi Department of Corrections believed he needed to become a functioning member of society.

In the van on the way to the bus stop where the five men would go their separate ways three of them threw the folders out the window, a cloud of letter-size paper scattering across I-55. Busy people in their busy cars swerving and giving them the bird as they passed the laughing ex-cons. An hour later he was sitting on the bus. A free man. Staring out the window. Closing in on the place and people he hadn’t seen in eleven years.