Kirk’s idea had been to throw Mindy’s body in the Dumpster behind the Pink Pony. In retrospect, that might have been a wiser choice than my scheme to leave her lying on the ground by the Blue Ridge Parkway. What can I say? I was much more sentimental back then. Fresh mountain air. Towering pine trees. Deer. Rabbits. Truckers who would look out the window of their cab, see a dead body on the road, and immediately call in the state troopers.
Kirk and I had separate lawyers during our trials, separate defense cases during which we blamed each other for the murder. Was Kirk solely responsible for what happened to poor Mindy Connor? Being honest, I really can’t say. The forensic evidence was compelling. My hands had left bloody fingerprints on her back. Was that because I had helped carry her body or because I had prevented her from escaping while Kirk’s fist pummeled her face like a windmill? The rape wasn’t really rape, but a transaction that took place before the deed went down. This is hardly the kind of defense you can put up when the dead woman’s mother and father are sitting in the front row behind the prosecutor. Neither Kirk nor I even tried—him, because it would make him look even worse, and me because my sperm is genetically no different from Kirk’s.
We were neither of us arguing innocence. We were arguing levels of complicity. In the end, Kirk was right. The state couldn’t sentence one of us to death row without sending the other.
Six months have passed since Kirk’s conviction, six and a half since mine. We haven’t talked to each other since Detective Peter Jensen put us in the back of his police car.
“Tell him she attacked us!” Kirk hissed while Jensen walked around to the driver’s side of the car. “We were defending ourselves!”
“Shut up,” I said. “You freak.”
That was it. Kirk wouldn’t speak to me after that. Wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t help me tie my shoe or straighten my belt. Not that our lack of vocal communication mattered. I knew Kirk’s excuses before they came out of his mouth. This wasn’t like our previous brush with the law where he could play the conjoined card and get away with it. Beating up a barfly with a gold tooth and a diamond earring was not the same as brutally murdering a woman and dumping her on the side of the road.
Which is what we had done. There was no getting around that. We had committed a violent act against another human being. A mother. A sister. A daughter. A child.
“We sinned against this woman,” I told my prison Bible study class. “Our only option is to repent and hope that God forgives us.”
Beside me, Kirk snorted, but otherwise kept his mouth shut.
“She was a prostitute,” I told the class. “She was a fallen woman. But that was because of the scourge of drugs. Her addiction gave her no choice. We—” and here I looked at Kirk—“had a choice. We could’ve done the right thing, but we chose not to.”
“Amen,” a few mumbled. Others just stared openly. They always stared. Even after six months, they still could not stop staring.
I always helped stack chairs after the meeting. It was a difficult task with one hand, but Kirk stubbornly refused to do anything to assist me, even if it was more expedient. That wasn’t all he’d given up on. Forget flossing. He’d stopped brushing his teeth. His beard had grown in. His eyebrows were dangerously close to meeting in the middle. I’d tried to shave them back just the other day, but he’d growled at me. We looked like we were auditioning for the Georgia prison system’s inaugural performance of Jekyll and Hyde.
There was usually a spring in my step after my Bible study class. Kirk, of course, quashed the spring with his woeful drag. So it was that we were scraping along like Lear when I finally stopped and turned my head to him.
“Kirk, we’re going to be in here the rest of our lives. We have to make the best of it.”
“Go screw yourself.” He scratched his beard, and I heard him mumble, “Not that you’ve got the equipment to do it.”
I gritted my teeth as I walked toward our cell. “We deserve what we got. We killed that girl.”
“Your bloody fingerprints were on her.”
“Your sperm was inside her.”
“I paid for that!”
His words echoed through the prison block. The other inmates eyed us curiously.
I lowered my voice. “She was an innocent.”
“I’ve heard your holy roller Jesus bullshit enough for today.” He stopped our progress. “Enough for the rest of my life, actually.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re going to do about it.”
An inmate, Big Tiny, passed us. I don’t know why they called him that. I suppose it was ironic. He was around five-five, skin and bones. Still, he gave Kirk the angry eye.
Kirk eyeballed him back. “You got somethin’ to say?”
Big Tiny held up his hand, kept walking.
“This is stupid.” I started to leave, but Kirk stopped me.
“You hit her, too, Wayne. You were just as mad as I was.”
“You were jealous,” I shot back. “And for nothing. Nothing at all.”
“I know she touched you.”
I shook my head and started walking again.
He stopped me. “Just tell me the truth. She touched you.”
“What does it matter?”
He threw his hand into the air. “It matters!”
So, this was how he wanted it to be. I gritted my teeth, braced myself to finally say what had never been said. “You’ve always been so damn jealous of me.” Even as I said the words, I realized they were true. “You make such a big show about being the dominant one, having all the good equipment, making all the right moves, but I see it now, Kirk. I see it loud and clear.”
“What do you see?”
“That you need me more than I need you.”
“Bullshit,” he mumbled. “Freakin’ parasite. That’s all you’ll ever be.”
“You think you’d be running IBM by now? Shit, you’d be in the same place as we are now, except you’d be alone.”
“Shut your face.”
“Who helped you with your SATs?” I demanded. “Who made sure you passed Spanish so you could graduate?”
“I know Spanish.”
“¿Cómo se llama usted?”
He looked nervous. “I said shut up.”
“Who got us that job at Dixie?”
“I was top salesman for—”
“After I was!” I screamed. “You wouldn’t’ve even been able to drive there except for me! You would’ve been on the bus! You would’ve been—”
“Free!” he screamed. “I woulda been free, dammit!” Spittle flew from his mouth. “I should’ve let you die in that fire.”
My mouth opened in shock.
“I could’ve let you die, Wayne. Smoke inhalation. You were almost blue by the time I shook you awake. Ang lived for three hours after Chang died. They could’ve cut you off me like they were slicing off a wart. I have the heart. I have the intestines. You’re nothing but a colostomy bag with a bad attitude.”
My lips moved wordlessly. I didn’t know what to say.
“That’s what I thought.” He pulled me down the hall. I followed him, my foot dragging as his words echoed in my ears. We went up the stairs, past the empty showers. Finally, I found my voice.