Dirt Road Home Read online

  I wanted to ask Paco why Caboose defended me, but I still wasn’t sure what he knew.

  “What if I’m not gone before Jack walks onto this yard again?”

  “What do you do when you go to cut down a tree?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Here we go again.”

  “You study it. You see how it leans, what it might fall on. Where the knots are. Then you cut it down.”

  “That really helps, Paco.”

  “You can’t control the adults, but you can manipulate the boys. You need to stop thinking about getting out and continue to learn about staying in. Study the boys. Learn what makes them fall. Anticipate the effect their fall will have on the things around you.”

  The buzzer sounded and Paco sighed and got to his feet. “Another day in paradise, my friend.”

  I got up. “Yeah. Hopefully there won’t be many more.”

  After classes on Friday I waited for Paco. He mingled with the Hounds for a few minutes and then strolled over to me. This time he didn’t lean against the fence. “I’m afraid our meetings must come to an end,” he said. “The dogs are getting suspicious. They are starting to talk.”

  “All right.”

  “I think the boys will leave you alone for a while. And your secret is safe with me.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “There is a standing invitation for you to join the Hounds, but I know you will not accept it. Therefore, I wish you well. You understand I have an investment to protect?”

  “Yeah, I get it. So that’s it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “See you around then.”

  Paco stared at me for a moment, then turned and left. I watched him cross the yard and fall in with the Hounds. Then I was alone again.

  22

  Daddy came to see me on Saturday. Carla wasn’t with him.

  “Her daddy wouldn’t let her come, would he?” I said.

  “I just didn’t have time to pick her up.”

  “That’s a lie. She’s too good for me and everybody knows it.”

  “I’m about to whop you on the head, boy.”

  “Go ahead, it won’t hurt me.”

  Daddy stared at me for a second.

  “What?” I finally said.

  A big goofy grin spread across his face. “Mr. Wellington said he thinks you’ll be out real soon. The judge looked at everything and thinks we’ve held up our end of the deal.”

  I sat up in my chair. “Bull!”

  “Keep it down, son. You wanna get hauled out of here?”

  “You go see him?”

  “Yeah. He’d already talked to Judge Mackin, and the only thing left to do is get your paperwork from Hellenweiler. He’s already put in the call.”

  “I been clean since the day I got here.”

  “He don’t see any problems. Says Judge Mackin never really wanted you to come here in the first place. Said you proved to be a real man when you turned yourself in after the escape.”

  “Then why’d he even send me? Hell.”

  “A judge has to follow the law, son. You want me to get onto him about it?”

  I smiled and looked down at the tabletop. “No. Man, I just wanna go fishin’, Daddy. I just wanna get in the truck and take some dirt road somewhere. Maybe go down to Uncle Tom’s lake. Take Carla with me.”

  Daddy listened and nodded.

  “Just start all over and do it right,” I said.

  “Where is everybody, today? This place is dead quiet.”

  “There was a big fight between a couple of gangs about a week ago. It’s been pretty slow around here since then.”

  “You did good to stay out of it.”

  “You don’t even know. I’ll be glad to get away from all of this.”

  Daddy stood to go. “I wish we could visit more today. Things have picked up at the clay pit and I can’t stay gone long.”

  I stood. “All right,” I said.

  Daddy grabbed my hand and we shook. “Hang in there, boy. We’re almost done.”

  Dear Carla,

  Daddy came by and saw me today. He said my lawyer might have me home in a week. I’m going to be straight as a preacher when I get out. I doubt I’ll be driving the truck on the blacktop again until I’m sixteen, but I figure I can get Daddy to bring me by your house. Maybe you could get your sister to take us out sometime. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I’m coming home.

  Love,

  Hal

  I addressed the envelope and sealed it and set it aside. I heard someone enter the bunk room and looked up to see Leroy coming toward me. I lay back and waited for him.

  “Hey, Hal,” he said sheepishly.

  “Hey, Leroy.”

  He stopped before my bunk and looked around to make sure we were alone. “You doin’ okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Real good. I’m gettin’ out of here next week. I just wrote Carla about it.”

  Leroy looked at the floor. His forehead still had a bruise on it from the gang fight.

  “What’d she say to you when she sent you that letter, anyway?”

  Leroy shook his head.

  “Better not have been any kind of love note,” I said.

  “She said to make sure you didn’t get in trouble.”

  I smiled. “After you already kicked my ass.”

  Leroy nodded. “I wanted to tell you I was sorry about that. About all of it.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. This place makes you do crazy things.”

  “I wish you were our leader. If it’s not you, it’s going to be Preston.”

  I didn’t answer him. He looked up at me again. “Preston doesn’t believe you beat up Jack in the basement. He’s tryin’ to tell us it was all a trick.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t care. Most of the boys are tired of all the fightin’. I just want it to stop.”

  “It ain’t gonna stop. Preston thinks he’s got somethin’ to prove. And the guards won’t help you.”

  “You wanna go out on the play yard with me?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You don’t need to be seen with me.”

  “I don’t think I care anymore.”

  “I’m gonna be out of Hellenweiler soon anyway. Maybe one day when both of us are on the other side of that fence things’ll be different.”

  “Will you write to me?”

  “Sure.”

  Leroy looked at his feet again and nodded.

  “Go ahead,” I said again. “I’ll be out there in a little while.”

  23

  After Moon and I turned ourselves in, Judge Mackin gave me one last week of freedom before they sent me off to Hellenweiler. Moon went down to Mobile to live with his new family and I was left alone at the clay pit with Daddy. I’d been outside the fence for three months, mud-riding, shooting guns, chewing tobacco, and doing pretty much whatever I wanted. I had the time of my life. But the morning after Moon left, I woke up feeling pretty empty and worthless.

  Daddy wasn’t much for doing laundry, so I decided to make myself useful and take our dirty clothes and bedsheets up the road to the Laundromat. We had our own washer and dryer at the clay pit, but they were lying in the backyard, gutted and rusted and tipped over for doghouses.

  I was leaning against the wall, waiting for a load to dry, when I first saw Carla. She came in with her sister, Rhonda, and they shook their laundry into one of the machines and sat down in the chairs to wait. She was the best-looking girl I’d ever seen and I couldn’t stop watching her.

  After a few minutes Rhonda got up and went to the service station next door to get a Coke. Carla grabbed a magazine from the chair next to her and started to flip through it. I tried to find excuses for why I shouldn’t talk to her, but I knew that this might be my last chance until I was eighteen.

  I made like I was looking for something and walked her way. I didn’t know why I was nervous. My hands were shaking so much I had to jam them down in my pockets. I felt my mouth drying u
p and hoped I’d be able to talk without sounding like a frog.

  “You seen any blue jeans lyin’ around?” I asked her.

  She looked up from the magazine and shook her head. I tried to think of something else to say. “What’s your name?”

  She gave me a funny look. “Carla,” she said.

  “I’m Hal. That’s my truck outside the window.”

  She turned and looked at it. Then she did this thing with her eyes where she crinkles them up and almost laughs. “You’re not old enough to drive,” she said.

  “Well, you see it out there, don’t you?”

  “I bet your daddy’s next door.”

  “You watch this,” I said.

  I walked outside, got in the truck, cranked it, and revved it a couple of times so she could hear my muffler I’d drilled a few holes in. Then I threw it in reverse and peeled out backward onto the blacktop. I looked at her and she was still watching me. I worked the column shifter and popped the clutch and squalled the tires for twenty feet before they caught and shot me down the highway. After I’d gone about a hundred yards I turned around in the ditch and came back and parked right in front of her again. She was laughing behind the window glass. I didn’t expect that.

  When I stepped inside again, she had tears in her eyes. “You’re crazy,” she said.

  I didn’t like her laughing at me. “You still wanna bet on my daddy?”

  She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “No,” she laughed. “I believe you.”

  “You wanna go for a ride?”

  She dropped her mouth open like it was the craziest idea she’d ever heard. “Not with you!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t have a license!”

  I took a deep breath and looked out the window, hoping Rhonda wouldn’t come out.

  “What if I get my daddy to take us on a date?”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  She was making me mad. “Hal,” I said.

  She laughed again.

  “Look, I ain’t got but a week before I go off to school. Maybe we could just go fishin’ or somethin’.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Really?”

  “Sure. My daddy’s Gant Hartley. He’s in the phone book.”

  I told Daddy I’d met a girl I wanted to take out and he offered to drive us to the dirt track races on Saturday night. I’d never been to the dirt track and I’d never been on a real date. I put on my best jeans and a Waylon Jennings T-shirt and slicked my hair back and even dabbed on a little Canoe aftershave that I found in Daddy’s dresser drawer.

  “Lady-killer,” he said.

  “Shut up.”

  We drove to Carla’s house and I went inside and talked to her parents and figured I made a pretty good impression. They didn’t know anything about where I’d been and where I was headed and I wasn’t about to tell them. Finally Carla came out from a back room like they’d been keeping her until I passed inspection. She looked even better than I remembered.

  I don’t know if it was the race cars or the girl or both, but that night got to me like a place I never wanted to leave. Carla sat close to me and leaned into my shoulder whenever the noise of the race car engines got too loud. And they were loud. Their vibrations came up through the cement bleachers and shook your bones. Carla clung to me and I couldn’t keep my eyes off what was going on. For the first time in my life, I knew what I wanted to be if I could ever get untangled from the law.

  “I wanna race those late models one day,” I told her.

  “I’ll bet you’d be good.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The rest of that week was hard. It was tough to see Daddy look at me like he did—for a long time, like every time was the last. But mostly it was hard to see all the things I wanted that I couldn’t have. Things that were just going to go away like they never were. Like Daddy. Like Carla. Like becoming a dirt-track racer.

  I drove to Carla’s house a couple of nights during the week and parked down the road. She snuck out of her window and met me. We’d sit on the tailgate and talk. Sometimes I’d play the truck radio low and she’d get up behind me and put her hands in my back jeans pockets and we’d rock back and forth. Daddy cared for me, but I knew this was a whole different kind of thing. Carla liked me and she was proud of me and she believed in me. But she still didn’t know the truth.

  The night before I left, we sat on the tailgate swinging our legs and listening to country music and drinking a couple of hot Budweisers I’d found in the toolbox. We didn’t talk much at first. I felt sick over everything she didn’t know about me. I knew I had to come clean.

  “I ain’t really goin’ off to school tomorrow,” I finally said. “Not regular school anyway.”

  She pulled away from me and studied my face.

  “I gotta go away to juve.”

  “Like jail?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Stole some bikes a long time ago. Skipped school. Gave Momma a hard time.”

  She asked me a lot of questions and I stared at my shoes and just about told her my whole life story. And it felt good to tell somebody besides Daddy about it all. Because there were some things I couldn’t talk to him about. Like how I didn’t really think he could stop drinking and how bad I’d treated my mother.

  “I don’t care,” she finally said.

  I stopped swinging my feet and looked away from my shoes. Her face was right there and I leaned into her and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were soft and tasted like cherry ChapStick. I’d been thinking about that kiss ever since.

  * * *

  The next morning Officer Pete came to pick me up at the clay pit. He waited outside in his cruiser while I sat on the kitchen counter feeling gut-shot.

  “I can’t do this, Daddy.”

  “Yeah you can. It’s just for a little while. You remember what Mr. Wellington told us. You and me keep it between the lines and he’ll spring you loose.”

  “You gotta do it, Daddy. You got to.”

  “I know. Soon as you leave here I’m gonna clean this trailer of every bottle of whiskey, empty or full, and throw ’em in that clay pit.”

  I looked at the floor, nodded, and slid off the counter.

  “Look at me, son.”

  I did. He put his arm around me and pulled me close and squeezed me hard. “Let’s walk on out there,” he said.

  24

  Saturday afternoon Mr. Pratt came for me on the play yard. “Mr. Fraley wants to see you,” he said.

  I followed him to the door leading into the administrative offices. He opened it and ushered me inside. “You know where to go,” he said.

  I went to Mr. Fraley’s office and knocked and waited until he told me to enter. When I opened the door, he sat behind his desk with his feet up and his hands crossed in his lap.

  “Henry Mitchell,” he said like he’d been thinking about me. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He motioned me closer. I stepped up to the red line and stopped.

  “Did you enjoy visiting with your father?”

  There was something menacing about the way he spoke to me. I nodded slightly.

  “You know, I had a call from your lawyer yesterday. He tells me the judge is considering letting him regain custody of you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “The judge wants me to send him your conduct report.”

  I nodded.

  “All of that is fine and good. Just part of the system.”

  He took his feet down and swiveled in his chair so that he faced the wall of books. “You may recall our conversation when you first arrived here,” he continued. “I’m afraid I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. I spoke to you about the uselessness of teaching and reforming the dogs. But that is only the problem. The solution is what I am paid for. You know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

 
“Well, let me create a picture for you. When somebody leaves the garbage at the end of their driveway to be picked up, they have been told that it will go into a nice landfill. And over time this landfill will be manipulated and transformed into something pleasing. It will be smothered with fresh dirt and green grass will grow on the top. Soon it will become a beautiful golf course. The problem will go away. You see, this is what they tell you. This is what you want to hear. Well, the garbagemen know this is not true. And deep down, you know it is not true. The garbage will always be there. You cannot get rid of it. You can only hide it. And you can be glad that the fine, dedicated public servants that take away your trash continue to do what they do. You see, I am such a public servant. A servant with the thankless job of keeping our streets clean. Free of the stray dogs. The people really want nothing more. They do not want the details.”

  “I’m not like I used to be,” I said.

  “Is that so?”

  I nodded.

  Mr. Fraley reached into his desk and pulled out the shiv Paco gave me and I felt the blood rush to my face. He held it up before me. “Did you make this?”

  “Nossir.”

  Mr. Fraley studied me for what seemed like a full minute. Then he set the shiv on his desk and opened my jacket and wrote something in it.

  “What’d you write?” I asked him.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I didn’t make it. I haven’t fought anybody.”

  “No?”

  I shook my head.

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his lap. “I have all kinds of boys here. White, black, Mexican, young, and old. They are all in here for different reasons. But you know what every one of them has in common?”

  I didn’t respond. My mouth felt dry and I was feeling light-headed.

  “They are liars. Every one of them. The first thing they will tell me when accused of something is that they didn’t do it. But you see, that’s just part of the whole process. It is expected. Then I have to investigate, which is fine. I’m paid for it.”

  “I’m not a liar.”