My voice seemed to penetrate at last. Jason made no sudden move, but took his foot from the gas and let the car coast. The bus pulled away, and I saw movement in the back—a convict, the smiling one. He stared at Tyra, then licked the glass. She didn’t see it happen. She dropped into the seat, adjusting her top. “That was hilarious.” The car slowed further, wind noise dropping. No one responded to the comment, and she looked around, surprised. “What? Come on. Did you see those guys?”
Jason steered the car onto the verge and stopped. “That was stupid, Tyra.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Stupid and fucked up and cruel.”
“Jesus. Why are you being such a baby?”
“I need a minute.”
Getting out, Jason walked along the road for thirty feet or so, then stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the horizon and the last far, faint twinkle of sunlight on glass.
“You guys wait here.”
I said it with rare authority, and followed the dusty road to where it met my brother’s boots. He turned at the sound of my steps, then closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the sun. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
It was not the answer I expected—too honest and, again, too human. “That was bullshit, man. Tyra knows you did time.”
“Maybe she forgot,” he said.
“Maybe she doesn’t care.”
Jason lifted his shoulders, noncommittal. Far away, the bus glinted once more, then disappeared. It was quiet on the road. He was still paler than usual.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s like a slow bleed, is all.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Prison, I supposed. The memories. He put a hand on my shoulder; faked a smile. “Did you have fun today?”
“Until Tyra. You know.”
“Tyra. Yeah.” He looked at the car, and we saw the same things: Tyra impatient and flushed, Sara in the back. “I might have to do something about that.”
“You want me to drive?”
“Nah.”
“Home, then?”
“Sure, yeah. Why not? But you ride up front with me.”
Tyra didn’t like it. No one cared. She collapsed into the back seat like an angry child, drank herself into a sullen stupor, and slapped Jason’s hand when he tried to get her out of the car. “Sara?” he said.
“Tyra. We’re home. Let’s go.”
She blinked at the condos, the trees, the setting sun on clean glass. “I can do it myself.”
She made it to the door without looking back, then stumbled inside. For an instant, I was alone with Sara, but the mood was gone for her, too. She kissed my cheek, said, “Bye for now,” and walked up the same stairs.
That night in bed, I tried to hold on to the good parts: the meadow, the taste of Sara’s mouth. I played the day like a tape, but the tape kept breaking. I saw the beatdown on the bus, the batons that rose and fell and slung blood like red paint. That was the loop, over and over: Tyra half-naked and teasing, Jason strangely frozen. I saw all those men—the lust and rage—but in my dreams, the loop tightened and drew smaller. I saw one face, a single man. He stood at the back of the bus, damp-eyed and staring; and that’s what I remembered when I woke.
His tongue on filthy glass.
That terrible, awful smile.
5
It took a long time for things to settle on the bus, and that made sense. The guards liked beatings; prisoners liked a riot. A guard went down. Clubs rose and fell, blood all over the floor. One prisoner stayed clear of it; he always stayed clear. Part of that was choice, and part was his age. After seventy-three hard years on God’s good earth, he was too withered and thin for most convicts to care about or even notice. Fifty-two years. That’s how long he’d been inside. Half a century for the rape and murder of twin sisters all the way back in 1920. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the day it happened, the narrow girls on a red-dirt road, all that emptiness and time, the wildflowers they’d tucked behind their ears.
But that was then …
Watching the violence on the bus, the old prisoner kept his back to the window, and ran the odds in his head. Four guards and a driver. Seventeen other convicts. The convicts were chained, but chains could be weapons. Point in fact: Justin Youngblood, a guard in his fourth year. Three men had him down, a chain between his jaws, teeth cracking as he screamed.
The old prisoner thought: Sixty-forty, guards.
But the bus was steady on the road now, the driver in control of himself, radio close to his mouth as he shouted to make himself heard. “Highway 23! Six miles west of the crossroads! Request immediate assistance!”
A mesh wall kept the driver safe. No keys on this side.
Eighty-twenty, then.
He heard it like he saw it. Shinbones. Faces. Kneecaps.
That was the thing about batons.
When the last convict was beaten into bloody submission, the old prisoner looked again for the car, but didn’t see it. He remembered the faces, though, and every gesture. If he lived to a hundred, he would know the girls, and the men, too. That was his thing. He never forgot a face or an injury or a reason for anger. The way she’d exposed herself, taunting. He’d dream of the brunette for whatever years he had left alive. Dark fantasies. Violent ones.
But it was the car’s driver who really mattered, and the old prisoner pictured him as he had been in those final seconds: the sweat and over-pale skin, his hands on the wheel, and how he’d barely moved. He’d been an inmate at Lanesworth, the old man remembered, and there was a prisoner there, now, who’d pay dearly for a description of what had just happened. He’d want the nuance of every moment. How was the light? Tell me about the road, the wind, the grass on the edge of the road. He’d ask about the girls and the younger man, but only as reflections of the driver. The old prisoner could deliver all of that: the clothes they wore and how each had behaved, the hair colors and skin tones and breast size. The younger man was only a boy, but the prisoner at Lanesworth would want those details as well. In the end, though, it would come back to the driver. How did he seem? How did he look? Before it was over, they’d talk about the car. That was the rubber on the road; and the old prisoner would play the old games. He’d hold out for money and special favors, but in the end, he’d give it all. Letters and numbers came easily, too.
XRQ-741.
That was the plate.
6
The next day passed in a blur. I cut grass, spread mulch, joked with the old man. He didn’t ask about my day with Jason, but at times I caught him staring at me as if some vision might appear in the air between us. Monday was a school day like any other, but people wanted to talk about Jason, the dive, the darker stories. I ignored it all as best I could. That worked for everyone but Chance.
“Do you think he wants to die?”
We were in the courtyard at school. Bagged lunches. A group of girls close by. “The hell are you talking about, Chance?”
“The way he dove, man. Like he didn’t think about it, like he didn’t even care. They say war can mess a man up. Dark places, you know.”