Dirt Road Home Read online

  Mr. Fraley ignored me and continued. “So you see, I ask Caboose who stabbed him, and of course he says nothing. And then the guards find Jack in the basement and I think I have the answer. But these things are not always as they seem. I know that. And I go to investigate the situation myself. I find this weapon in the utility corridor. Then I walk down into the basement and I find where Jack was lying in his blood. And leading out the back is another blood trail. So I ask myself, if Jack lies on the floor and there is a blood trail leading out the back, how did this weapon come to be in the utility corridor?”

  He studied me. I didn’t answer him. Finally he reached in his desk again and pulled out a key and set it beside the shiv. It could have been any key, but I knew exactly which one it was and my vision blurred over it. “We’ll go to question two,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding far away. “Did you steal the key that I found in your locker? The one that opens the maintenance closet where I found the shiv?”

  I felt my knees growing weak. “Nossir.”

  He wrote something else down. “What’d you write?” I asked him again. But he ignored me.

  “I didn’t fight anybody,” I said. “I didn’t make the shiv. I didn’t steal the key. I’ve tried to go by the rules.”

  Mr. Fraley looked at the sheet of paper on his desk. “But that’s not what this conduct report says.”

  “You can’t do that!” I yelled.

  He twitched slightly in his chair, but his empty expression was set in stone. Then I heard the door open behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I knew it was a guard. Mr. Fraley’s hand came up and signaled him back.

  “Mr. Pratt tells me the boys are quite fond of you now. That’s good. You should think of them as your brothers.”

  “The hell I will! This ain’t my family!”

  “Take him to solitary, Mr. Pratt.”

  I felt the hand on my shoulder. I tried to twist away and the fingers dug clawlike into my collarbone and pain shot up my neck. Then I was hit hard from behind and I went to my knees with the room spinning. I winced as Mr. Pratt twisted one of my arms behind my back and pulled up against it. “You understand what I’m sayin’ to you, boy?” Mr. Pratt said.

  I rose with my shoulder feeling like it would dislocate at any second. “That’s right,” he said. “Real easy now.”

  I took one last glance at Mr. Fraley. He was already looking back at his desk.

  Mr. Pratt turned me over to one of the other guards and I was led down the hall. My mind was numb and blank. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. He took me past the rec room and then right and paused to unlock the big black doors. Then we entered another short hall and across from us were eight single doors with slots in the center. He led me to one of them and unlocked it and shoved me inside.

  The seg cells were no bigger than closets. The only things in them were a stainless steel toilet, sink, and mattress on the floor. The air smelled of pee and puke and the cinder-block walls were smeared and finger-wiped with food and snot. Fluorescent lights hummed and flickered overhead.

  The door clanged shut behind me and locked.

  I lay on the mattress with panic pulsing in my temples and pounding away my ability to think straight. It was like I’d been climbing this cliff ever since I’d come to Hellenweiler, and just when I was about to reach the top, someone had kicked me off the ledge. Now I lay at the bottom and I didn’t think I had the strength to try again.

  25

  There was no way to tell how much time had passed. The lights never went out and they needled my ears with their electric humming. Sometimes I heard coughing in the room next to me. Once, I heard the outside door unlock, and the sound and shadow of footsteps passed before the small crack at the base of my cell door. Then the guard left and the door locked behind him.

  At some point I slept and then woke to the clattering of a food tray being shoved into the slot. I got up and pulled it the rest of the way through. I took off the cover and saw breakfast.

  I sat on the floor and ate while I listened to the guard continue down the short hall. I heard him unlock the door of the cell next to me and enter it. “You want it?” he said.

  There was no reply. The door closed and locked again and the guard left. I chewed slowly and listened. Nothing.

  I put the empty food tray back in the slot and lay down again. After a while the guard came back, took it away, and left again without stopping at the other cell.

  After a few minutes I heard a scratching sound outside my door. I sat up and stared at the crack near the floor. A small, broken piece of mirror tied to a thread was lying just inside the room. I got up and went to it and untied it and studied it. Then I remembered what Paco had told me about using the plastic to talk to the person next to you. I stuck it out the food slot and focused it down the hall. There was a large arm sticking from the slot in the cell next to me. The arm held the other half of my broken mirror.

  “Caboose?” I said.

  His meaty face stared back at me.

  “I thought you were in the hospital,” I said to the mirror.

  “It takes more than a stab wound to leave this place,” he mumbled. It was strange to hear words coming from his mouth. He spoke softer than I imagined.

  “Why’d you help me?”

  “You wouldn’t have made it.”

  “Now you’re in trouble.”

  “I was already in trouble. There’s no tellin’ what they’ve put in my jacket.”

  “Why don’t you say anything out there?”

  “Because it won’t help. You might as well lay down and let them make you what they want.”

  “Paco tells me the same thing. And I think it’s crap.”

  “Paco’s smart. Smarter than anybody in here.”

  “What did he do?”

  Caboose coughed. Finally he said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “They’ve messed with my file too. I’m in here for all kinds of stuff now. I don’t think they’re gonna let me out.”

  “You’re right. They won’t.”

  “How can they do this?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The hell it doesn’t!”

  Caboose watched me in the mirror for a moment and then I saw his arm pull away and the corridor was empty.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “To lay down.”

  “Man, I just got you talkin’. Don’t go layin’ down on me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Fine,” I said. “Talk to me without the mirror. How long will they keep us in solitary?”

  “I’ll be here until this stab wound gets better. They’ll prob’ly let you out tomorrow.”

  “This place ain’t so bad. If I wasn’t so pissed, I’d kick back and relax for once. Why does everybody throw a hissy fit back here?”

  “Sometimes they leave you in for days. People go crazy. Get sick on the floor. The guards don’t clean it up.”

  “To me it’s all the same inside the fence. They can keep me in a cardboard box for all I care. I just gotta get home, Caboose. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “It’s like a nightmare.”

  “When you have the same nightmare over and over it’s not so scary anymore. I gotta rest.”

  “All right. But when we get out of here, you gotta stop clammin’ up on me in the yard. I know you can talk now.”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “None of this lookin’ at your feet,” I said. “I know they stink, but starin’ at ’em ain’t gonna do any good.”

  After the guards delivered lunch and left, I listened to Caboose scraping his plate.

  “You must be feelin’ better,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me.

  “You lookin’ at your feet again?”

  “You talk too much.”

  “Somebody’s gotta start talkin’. We gotta figure somethin’ out, Caboose.”

 
; Caboose was silent.

  “What would you do if you could get out of here?”

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “I don’t want you to talk to me anymore. I need to rest.”

  “What about when we get out in the play yard again?”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I ain’t takin’ this crap!”

  26

  I lay on my mattress that afternoon, staring at the dirty walls, trying to think through the anger running hot in my head. I told myself that I was going to work things out. I just needed to see Daddy and Mr. Wellington. I needed to tell them what Mr. Fraley was doing to me. But after a while the anger melted into a feeling of helplessness that seeped through me like poison. Who was I to think that I could get around the system here when everyone else had failed? I’d never been the smartest kid in any group. I didn’t have money. Maybe Caboose and Paco were right. It was all hopeless. There was nothing else to do but wait until you were eighteen. I rolled over, hugged my knees to my chest, and stared at the wall. Images of Jack standing in the strange light of the boiler room flashed through my head. The evil in his eyes and the confidence on his face. And I kept hearing the words he spoke: I can hurt you all I want and nobody outside of Hellenweiler will ever know a thing. I closed my eyes and tried to forget it all.

  I dreamt of being lost in the boiler room. This time it was a blue flickering maze as big as a football field with the machinery screaming in my ears. I was running, trying to find my way out. Jack was somewhere behind me. I could hear his feet slapping the water on the floor. Whenever I looked over my shoulder I caught the glint of a kitchen knife in his hands. But I couldn’t find my way out. Every turn I took there were more of the screaming machines. And he was getting closer. And closer.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the overhead lights. My breathing was heavy and my mind raced with the fading memory of the nightmare. I waited until my head cleared and the other nightmare, the real one, sat on me like a carcass.

  “Caboose,” I said.

  No response. I started to call his name again, but didn’t. He wouldn’t have any answers. It was just me now. There had only been one other time in my life when I’d felt so alone.

  The Talladega National Forest seemed an endless expanse of rolling green hills. Two of us followed Moon Blake miles into the thick of it after we escaped from Pinson. We were going to use Moon’s survival skills to live in the wild and be free again.

  Kit was a sick kid that knew he didn’t have long to live. I was just looking for another way to trouble the system. But once we were living on our own there wasn’t anybody or anything left for me to fight. I started thinking less about what others wanted of me and more of what I wanted of myself. For the first time in years I was rid of all the junk in my head and the adults in my face. And I wanted to see Daddy.

  Moon didn’t want me to leave them, but he understood why I had to do it. His dad was dead and he missed him every day. I set out one morning with two bloodhounds that were with us, and I headed home to the clay pit.

  I faced a cold, wet forest that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. Moon had told me to follow water and I would eventually get to a road. I fought briars and tangles of kudzu, sometimes crawling on my stomach. The dogs never seemed to tire and were always up ahead waiting patiently for me, encouraging me to keep on. At one point I slipped down the bank and plunged into the creek and swirled in its blurry depths. I thought it was all over for me. The icy water gripped me like a cold fist while I struggled to find my footing. Finally I broke the surface and thrashed my way to the bank where I snatched at roots and tree limbs until I could finally pull myself out.

  I didn’t know how to make a fire, so I kept moving behind the dogs to stay warm. The forest loomed over me, darker and crueler than ever. My mind was numb to everything except following the dogs and fighting my way through the tangle of the creek bottom.

  Late afternoon I came to a deep ravine and there was no way to follow the water except from above. I climbed out and caught up with the dogs and lay down in the pine needles to rest. I stared at the sky and wondered how much farther I had to go and if I had it in me to make it. Then I wondered if I was even going in the right direction. The weight of these thoughts sat on me until I was so confused and lonely that I wanted to turn around and find my friends again. But the woods were growing dark and settling into an eerie twilight stillness. I felt like the forest creatures were crouched and watching me with yellow eyes. I was too scared to move. I backed against a tree and pulled the dogs close to me and cried. I hadn’t cried since the day Daddy drove away from Momma’s house with his stuff stacked up in back of the truck.

  Night set in and I lay with my eyes open, balled tightly in my damp clothes, feeling the warmth of the dogs breathing against me. Even if I hadn’t been cold and wet and hungry, fear would have kept me awake. I stared up through the pine canopy at the clear night sky and a sliver of moon. I might as well have been standing up there, as alone as I felt. Every part of me knew this was no place I was meant to be.

  My eyes were still open when the forest purpled with daybreak. I felt my courage build as each dark shape revealed itself in the light. Finally I stood and the dogs rose and stretched beside me. “I don’t guess anybody’s comin’ to carry me out of here,” I said to them. “Hell with this place.”

  I didn’t take but a few steps before I broke out onto an old tram road that ran the high ground above the creek. I’d stumbled upon a path out of the forest. I wished I’d found it earlier, but there it was.

  I still had those dogs waiting on me at the clay pit. They’d done all they could to help me. But it had always been up to me. I was the only help I had.

  27

  I rolled off the mattress and got to my feet.

  “Caboose!” I yelled.

  No answer.

  I searched for the mirror, found it, and stuck it out the slot. The corridor was empty and quiet. Then I heard him say, “What?”

  “Stick the mirror out and talk to me.”

  After a minute I saw Caboose’s arm appear from the slot. Then I saw his face in the mirror.

  “I gotta get out,” I said. “I gotta go home. I came too far for this.”

  “I can’t keep gettin’ up. The stab wound bleeds when I move too much.”

  “They lied about me! They can’t do this to me!”

  Caboose didn’t reply.

  “They’re stealin’ my life! I’ll be damned if I’m gonna play by anybody’s rules when the guards let me out of this dog box.”

  Caboose’s arm withdrew.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go ahead and lay down. I’m gonna get my own dirt on these people if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I pulled my arm back in and sat on the floor. “This ain’t happenin’. No way in hell. They ain’t seen trouble until they’ve seen what I can bring ’em.”

  * * *

  A guard came for me late Monday morning. He escorted me by the arm from solitary, and we stepped into the hall again and the familiar smell of disinfectant and bleach rushed into me.

  “How’d you like seg?” he sneered.

  “I don’t know what all the yellin’s about. You’re gonna have to do better than that if you wanna impress me.”

  He stopped and looked down at me. “You wanna be a smart-ass?”

  “I don’t see what difference it’d make.”

  He let go of my arm and hit me across the back of the head. I took a step forward and got my balance. Then I turned and looked up at him and locked eyes. I thought he would hit me again, but a smile slowly spread across his face. “Thata boy,” he said. “Now Mr. Pratt’s really gonna have a good time with you. Get out of here. Stay in the bunk room until lunch.”

  I lay on my bed until I heard the others file into the hall when class let out at noon. After they passed and everything was quiet, I slid off my bunk and went after them.

&
nbsp; The mess room was louder than I remembered. Things were getting back to normal since the gang fight. Preston was sitting in Jack’s old chair at the Ministers’ table and he glanced at me a few times as I got my food. Leroy gave me a half smile and I nodded at him.

  I faced the Hounds while I ate. Paco tipped his fork at me discreetly and I raised my cup and twitched it in response. “That’s right, you crazy Mexican,” I mumbled. “I’m back. I’m back and pissed off.”

  * * *

  Preston approached me on the play yard the next day. He was eating a candy bar from the canteen. I remained leaning against the fence and watched him until he stopped before me. “What do you want?” I said.

  “You know the Ministers need a leader?”

  “I don’t care what they need.”

  “They want me to be their leader if you won’t do it.”

  “Fine. Be their leader.”

  He studied me for a second. “I’d like to hear Jack’s side of what happened down there.”

  “What’s your point, Preston?”

  “I just don’t know how you did it. He’s bigger and meaner than you.”

  “You want me to show you?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Then go on over there and be the leader and play your stupid little game.”

  “We’ll be strong again. We’ve got some tough guys.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “They’ll forget about what you did after a while.”

  “Maybe I’ll come kick your ass and remind ’em.”

  Preston started to say something, but didn’t. He shifted his feet nervously, then turned and started walking back.

  “And the next time you get in my face,” I said after him, “I’m gonna lay you out.”

  He kept walking like he didn’t hear me.

  “Yeah, you heard right, you little wuss. Just try me. I don’t have anything to lose anymore.”

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