Dirt Road Home Read online

  After supper I went into the confessional. There were already two Ministers talking and using the urinals. They glanced at me and got quiet as I walked behind them. I stood against the wall until they left.

  I heard the door open a few minutes later and Paco entered. He pointed to the door and I went behind him and put my foot against it.

  “It sure does take you a long time to make a decision,” I said.

  “Sometimes,” he replied, moving toward the sink.

  I waited for Paco to continue, but he didn’t. He turned on the water and began washing his hands, considering something.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” I finally said.

  “I asked myself why I find friendship with a new boy. And I think, maybe I am still like a new boy myself. Although my body may be bigger, I stopped growing inside myself the day I walked in here. I have learned only how to be a thug. And I will take that away from this place. I will never be a forester. I will never go back to school. It’s too late. I am finished.”

  “Come on, man, you—”

  “It is true. I have failed. But you, my friend, have something strong inside that I haven’t seen here before. I don’t know if it is ignorance, stupidity, or courage, but you have it. And they have not been able to extinguish this thing in you yet, but they will. I don’t want to see that happen.”

  “So you’ll help me?”

  Paco reached in his pocket and pulled out a key. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do what I can. Which is not much. Are you ready?”

  “Of course I’m ready. Can’t you ever just get to the point?”

  31

  After we made sure the hall was clear, Paco let me into the utility closet. Once inside, he closed the door and locked it behind us. Then he flipped on the light and we started toward the back.

  “My father used to read to me,” Paco said as he strolled along.

  “Read what?”

  “Stories. James Carlos Blake, Gabriel García Márquez, John Steinbeck.”

  “I never heard of any of those guys.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “That how you got to be so smart?”

  “It is not how smart you are, it is what you learn that matters. Outside of this place I have only made-up stories in my head.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?”

  “I told you, I don’t even remember the truth.”

  “Like hell.”

  “I was this boy and then I was someone else.”

  “Whatever, man.”

  We turned the corner and started down the corridor to the boiler room stairs. About halfway, Paco stopped and reached above the overhead pipes. His hand came away with a flashlight. He switched it on, saw that it worked, and continued.

  We were soon descending the stairs into the strange blue flicker and the breathing and wheezing of machinery. I thought back to the terror of the place the last time I’d seen it. I waited for the fear to grip me, but with Paco I wasn’t scared.

  We stepped into the water pooled at the base of the stairs. I began to feel the wall for the switch and Paco grabbed my arm. “No,” he said. “There are places in this building where you can see the light down here. Remember that.”

  “Preston turned it on.”

  “Preston’s a fool,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He flipped on the flashlight. “You must use this. Follow me.”

  We made our way across the floor, Paco occasionally shining the light back so I could see my way through the machinery and pipes overhead. We traveled deep into the room until the blue flickering was behind us. Finally we came to another set of stairs. Paco turned to me.

  “No talking past this point. We are close.”

  “Can you bust out of Hellenweiler from here?” I asked.

  “No. But these stairs will lead you into another utility corridor similar to the one you saw before. Open the door at the end of it and you will be three steps from the infirmary. To your right will be the offices and the visiting room. As you know, there is another set of locked doors beyond that.”

  “Why don’t you just get a key to those too?”

  “I should tell you the story of the keys sometime.”

  “Sure. I guess whenever you decide to tell me about how you got sent to Hellenweiler.”

  Paco got the key from his pocket and gave it to me. “You have what you need now. If you get caught, the guards will finish you off in solitary. Your first stay was easy. A week in there will suck you dry of any spirit you have left. There will be no more hope for you.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  Paco turned to go. “It’s only truth. Let’s get out of here before we’re missed.”

  All I needed was another initiation. I was sure my plan would work. It had to work. It was all I had left.

  Every time I stepped into the bunk room, I studied the bunks in no-man’s-land to see if they’d been recently made. But the days slipped by without any sign of a new boy. I went about my routine—breakfast, school, lunch, school again, play yard, bunk room. No one talked to me, no one watched me. Occasionally I glanced at Paco and Caboose, and even though they ignored me, I let myself believe they were my friends, acting out their own strange games of survival in this place.

  The blue skies and heat of an Alabama summer were starting to burn away the cool spring weather. The play yard became dry and dusty and smelled of burnt rubber. I sat with my face against the fence, watching meadowlarks in the field, no longer concerned with what was behind me. Sometimes a man on a tractor would pull a disk across the field to kill any young sprouts that tried to grow there. The dirt was always kept bare and loose, waiting to record the footprints of anyone that tried to cross it.

  One afternoon I studied the far trees where frenzied blackbirds flocked in the top of a giant live oak. I didn’t have long before the buzzer called us in to supper. There was no way to tell time, but I’d developed a strange sick feeling that rose in my chest—some kind of internal clock that anticipated that awful sound.

  I saw a car moving slowly in and out of shadow along the turn row at the far end of the field. The car looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. When it approached the live oak, the blackbirds lifted from the tree. I watched them until the last one disappeared into the depths of the forest. Then their calls were lost to me and I returned my focus to the car. It parked under the shade of the oak. After a moment I heard two doors slam.

  “Hey, Hal!” someone shouted.

  I sat up straight and strained my eyes. Carla took a step into the field and waved at me. My heart leaped and I stood and clenched the wire with my hands. I looked over at Caboose. He was turned and watching.

  Carla’s older sister, Rhonda, stepped up behind her.

  “Your daddy said to tell you he misses you!” Carla yelled.

  I squeezed the wire. She looked so good and fresh it made me want to cry.

  “I’ll be waitin’ for you!” she yelled.

  A Hellenweiler maintenance truck was coming up fast behind them. Rhonda gave Carla a tug on the arm, but she didn’t move. I felt a knot swelling in my throat.

  “I miss you too!” I yelled.

  She blew me a kiss. “Don’t do that,” I mumbled.

  The truck stopped and a guard got out.

  “Thanks for comin’!” I yelled.

  The guard said something to Rhonda and gestured angrily for them to leave. I waved helplessly as Rhonda tugged at Carla’s arm. Then I felt someone grab my shoulder and spin me around. Mr. Pratt shoved me away from the fence so hard I almost lost my balance.

  “What in hell you think you’re doin’!” he yelled.

  I tried to get one last look across the field, but he shoved me toward the building again. “Get inside! You pull that again and you’ll be in solitary for a week!”

  I started across the play yard just as the buzzer sounded. I smiled. I’d trade a week in solitary any day to see her again.

/>   32

  A week passed with no sign of a new boy. I kept watch over the field, hoping that somehow Carla would come back, but I knew it wouldn’t happen.

  That evening I lay on my bunk after supper. I heard someone enter and looked over to see Caboose. He lumbered down the aisle and settled into his bed.

  “What are you doin’ in here?” I asked.

  “Paco’s actin’ strange,” he said.

  I glanced across the aisle at him. He stared at the underside of the mattress above him. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe he would’ve told you.”

  “No. He hardly talks to me anymore.”

  “Me neither,” Caboose said.

  “I don’t get when the two of you would talk anyway. I never see you together.”

  “The boiler room.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “I get out in eight days.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “That your eighteenth birthday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You still serious about what you wanna do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me all that. Maybe you should talk to your daddy or somebody first.”

  Caboose made a grunting sound that was about as close as he came to a laugh. “Dad? There’s nobody left. They all moved away.”

  “Where you gonna go?”

  “Grandaddy left me and my brother his old salvage yard full of cars before he died. There’s a little house on it. We were always gonna fix it up.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Outside a town called Clinton.”

  “I know where that place is! I used to go by there and get parts for our truck. That’s crazy!”

  Caboose didn’t seem surprised.

  “There’s still tons of cars,” I said. “Cars and trucks and just about everything.”

  “I stole cars,” he said. “You could hide ’em easy in that place. My little brother just wanted to be like me.”

  I heard someone enter the room and glanced over to see the floorwalker. He studied us for a moment and then stepped out again.

  “I have this weird thought sometimes,” I said. “It’s kind of good and bad. Maybe after people die they can really know what you think. Like it’s really hard for me to tell my daddy that I love him, but I think one day after he’s gone, he’ll be able to know my thoughts. But he’s also gonna know about all the bad stuff I did too . . . But that’s fine. I just want him to hear me think about him.”

  “I want my brother to know I got revenge for him.”

  “I don’t think he’d want it. What good’s it gonna do him?”

  Caboose didn’t answer me.

  “And what good’s it gonna do you? It ain’t gonna make you feel any better. And I still don’t see how Paco fits into any of that. He ain’t gonna hang out with a killer.”

  “I can’t believe I’m layin’ here talkin’ to you,” he said.

  “I’m glad you did. I’m lonely as hell, Caboose. I gotta get out of here. You saw that girl, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I saw her.”

  “Curled your toes up, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “She’s fine, is what she is. You think I can keep from jumpin’ that fence with somebody like that out there? Hell.”

  “How’s the plan comin’?”

  “I just need an initiation. I need somebody to go to the infirmary. Then I’m gonna see about those records.”

  Caboose sighed. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

  Daddy always told me that bad luck came in threes. But at Hellenweiler it never stopped.

  On Thursday, Leroy stepped up behind me in the lunch line. I was eating late and he was coming for seconds. “Jack’s back,” he said over my shoulder. The words hit me like a fist to my gut. I nodded slowly without turning around.

  “I saw him walk into Mr. Fraley’s office a few minutes ago.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Watch out, Hal.”

  “Thanks.”

  I got my food and took it to no-man’s-land. I sat next to Caboose.

  “Looks like I’ll be the next person in the infirmary,” I said.

  Caboose didn’t look at me. “What are you talkin’ about?” he said.

  “Jack’s back.”

  He stopped chewing and turned to look at the Ministers’ table.

  “He’s not in here yet,” I said. “Leroy saw him go into Mr. Fraley’s office.”

  Caboose turned back to his food. “Don’t go into the confessional,” he said. “If he comes toward you in the yard, come stand next to me.”

  “How about I stand with you all the time?”

  “We’re not a gang.”

  “Man, you’re gonna be out of here in a week.”

  “And let’s hope you get an initiation before I leave.”

  “I guess I’m just gonna have to fight him on the play yard. That’s all there is to it. I’m gonna have to get it over with and move on. He can’t hurt me too bad out there. I might even get in a few good punches before he cleans my clock.”

  “You’d be better off joinin’ up with Paco before that happens.”

  I took a bite of food and considered it. After a few seconds of working all the angles, I realized he was right. Strategically, joining Paco’s gang would be my best move. But there were so many pieces to the twisted game that my mind was getting tangled.

  “You got me covered for a week, right?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  “Good. I’ll see you on the yard after class.”

  “You don’t seem very worried.”

  “I’ve already fought Jack in my head so much I figure I’m ready.”

  33

  I waited on the yard, watching the admin door. I was surprised when Paco casually stepped away from the Hounds and started toward me. The basketballs went silent on both ends of the court and all eyes were upon him. He stopped next to me and slid down the fence to sit like the time when we were generals.

  “Things didn’t quite work out like you thought, did they?”

  I sat down next to him. “What are you doin’, man? The whole yard’s lookin’ at you.”

  “Yes, well.”

  “Well, what?”

  “First of all, I want to tell you about the story of the keys. It is really a very simple story.”

  “The keys?”

  “Yes. You see—”

  “I don’t care about the damn keys. Jack’s about to stroll out here to kick my ass and I gotta get next to Caboose.”

  Paco held a finger up for silence. “You see, Jack blackmailed a guard for two sets about six months ago. He can get those kinds of things. It was his idea that both gangs would have a private place to settle disputes one-on-one.”

  “Great. Now I know about the keys. Are we done with your story of the day?”

  “No. There is one more. My father is a rocket scientist for NASA. I had—”

  “A rocket scientist!”

  “Yes, I had—”

  “That’s crazy!”

  He looked over the play yard again. “I had a nice brick house in an upscale neighborhood. I had a mother who loved me and a young sister who is very pretty. I went to the best school in Huntsville. I was captain of the chess team and held the number two spot on the scholars’ bowl team. But you know what?”

  I shook my head.

  “I could not walk into a classroom without someone calling me a name or throwing something at me. They called me the stump. They called me the grease face. And I sat in the back row and said nothing while they whispered and looked at me and laughed. In the halls they thumped the back of my head and taped notes to my shirt. I said nothing. I did nothing. They stole my clothes during PE and I said nothing and did nothing. I never understood why these things were done to me. I was ashamed to talk to my parents about it. I had no friends to talk to.”<
br />
  I didn’t know what to say.

  “For a while, I was able to block the comments out so that they existed like static around me. I could sit at my desk and listen to the teacher through the static. My body became nothing more than a wrapper for one who lives totally in his mind. The thumps and prods fell on this soft wrapper without my feeling anything. I was still alive deep inside my head. And it was like that for a while. And I thought that was how it was going to be. It was just my brain and what it absorbed through the static. But one day I began to hear a tiny, distant ringing noise. Like a mosquito. And this mosquito got louder and louder. Then it separated into strands of noise and became the jeers and mumbling and ridicule of the students, only an amplified, torturous version of it. I felt their pokes and prods magnified, like my skin had grown supersensitive.”

  Paco paused and looked across the field and drew a deep breath through his nose. Then he let out the breath and left his eyes on the far trees.

  “I snapped,” he finally said. “I began picking up desks and throwing them at students from the back of the room. They screamed and ran for the door. They tried to get out, but they couldn’t all fit through. All I had to do was throw the desks at the cluster of them.”

  “Christ, Paco.”

  “I hurt a lot of kids that day.”

  I heard the admin door slam. I glanced up and saw Jack looking over the play yard. Mr. Pratt was gone.

  “I’m about to have to stand up, Paco.”

  “Give me a moment, my friend.”

  Jack rested his eyes on me and studied the strange scene of me and Paco against the fence. Then he turned and walked over to the Ministers. Preston backed away while the others went to meet him.

  “I don’t know if I have a moment,” I said.

  “You see,” Paco continued, “I began as an acne-faced egghead. Who would know a kid like me had the potential to be such a violent youth? But it was there. It is in all of us when you strip away dignity and hope. I brought that rage with me to Hellenweiler. And I used it again on the boy I beat with a rock.”

  I listened to Paco while Jack talked to Preston and the rest of the Ministers.