21
“Screw Phil Maris. He was nobody,” Rich said. “His aunt wasn’t even anybody; she just happened to be the governor’s secretary. The bastard should have done it years ago. You were eleven for Christ’s sake.”
“He’s right, Dylan. I’m glad Mr. Maris worked this out but you don’t owe him anything.” This from the backseat of the car, where a man in a heavy wool suit was sitting. The man who’d come with Rich. Mr. Leonard from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Dylan tuned them both out and watched the fields pass by through the car’s window. He wasn’t shackled, he wasn’t behind a heavy mesh security screen, and there was a handle on the inside so he could open and close his door. He could get out any time he wanted.
He was free.
A sick sort of guilt lay in the pit of his stomach like a piece of rotten food. Why wasn’t he brimming over with gratitude toward Phil? No big house, no state pen. Freedom. Anybody else would be high, back slaps all around, telling stories of what they would do when they got to the nearest bar, or restaurant, or woman.
Dylan just felt scared. He wouldn’t admit it to Rich or the guy in the backseat-he wasn’t really even admitting it to himself, not in words-but mostly he wanted to go home, back to Drummond. Not really. He didn’t really want to be there. But in Drummond he knew the rules, knew who he was, how to act. What would happen outside when people found out he was the infamous Butcher Boy? Inside he had his pals; they watched each other’s back. Dylan had status; an old-timer in a short-time facility.
Outside would they beat the crap out of him? Keep their kids inside when he walked by? Set their dogs on him? His mom and dad had had a lot of friends. Would they try to get him put back inside? There was no place for the likes of him in the real world. He belonged behind bars. Rapists, thieves, wife beaters, murderers-they were his people.
“ Rochester ’s out,” he said suddenly. “ Minnesota is out.” He had no idea where he meant to go. Other than visiting California when he was four to see some cousin, he’d never been anywhere more exotic than Iowa.
Silence followed his announcement. The feeling of guilt spread like poison up Dylan’s esophagus. Maybe he was carsick, but he didn’t think so. The silence stretched. Miles slid by, fields green with summer air so clear and sweet the birds sang with it. Dylan was going to cry if he didn’t watch it. Like a little kid.
“I kept the house like it was,” Rich said finally. “I thought you’d want to come home.”
Why would anybody think he wanted to go home? Home is where the heart is.
Dylan pictured his heart, out of his body, lying in the bloody hallway beside the mutilated corpse of his sister. The vision was as brief as it was toxic. He shoved the picture back into the recesses of his mind. These were things he’d worked at not seeing for years, worked to keep Kowalski from dragging up. He’d gotten good at it.
He said nothing, just kept looking out of the window. Cows were grazing by the road. If he could choose a life, that would be the one he picked, the life of a cow munching grass never knowing one day it would be hamburger.
“I can see why you might not want to go back to Rochester, son,” the man in the backseat said carefully.
The “son” grated on Dylan. He was nobody’s son.
“Reentering life on the outside is hard. Lots of boys don’t acclimatize. Maybe even most boys. They end up back inside. I hope that’s not the case with you, but it could be.”
Dylan thought about that for a while. It wasn’t news. In his seven years in Drummond he’d seen the revolving door spinning, kids in, and out, and in again. Mostly, they came back boasting about the time they’d had outside, like they were sailors back on the ship bragging about their conquests during shore leave. He could do that-boost a car or get in a fist fight and get himself thrown back in jail. The state or federal pen this time. He was eighteen.
“Guaranteed,” Dylan said.
“Why? You’ve got no more family to do in but me,” Rich said. He laughed, but the words were sharp as knives. Dylan had hurt his feelings; he’d not appreciated what his brother had done for him, continued to do for him.
“Fistfights,” he said succinctly. “In Rochester I’ll be fighting all the time. Eventually, I’ll kill somebody.” There was no boast there; it was just fact. Dylan was big and he was strong. Hit somebody wrong, and they were dead.
Nobody argued with that.
After a time Rich said, “I got you enrolled in the junior college where I went. You don’t want to sling hash all your life do you?”
“You have to go to college, son,” said the brown suit from the backseat. “Phil Maris said you were one of the smartest kids he’d ever taught. You don’t want to waste that on fistfights and the like.”
College. The word rang through Dylan, reverberating like the morning bell at Drummond. Guys in Drummond didn’t go to college; guys bound for the pen at eighteen didn’t think about it any more than they thought about flying out the window on a magic carpet.
The one true, clean, linear joy he’d had in Drummond was Phil and math class.
Phil hadn’t bothered to say good-bye. He’d never even written.
For Dylan the peaceful order of planes, dimensions, numbers doing precisely what they should eventually returned. Phil Maris never did. Until now, Dylan figured he’d forgotten about him.
“College?” He said it so softly Mr. Leonard, in the backseat, didn’t hear him.
“Why not?” Rich said. “I can afford it.”
“They let guys like me do that?”
Mr. Leonard caught up with the flow of ideas. “It could be done,” he said slowly.
“Not in Rochester. Not in Minnesota,” Dylan insisted.
Richard laughed. It wasn’t the bitter laugh he often had; it was a good, fat laugh, like he’d thought of some grand scheme, something cool to do.
“Hey, the winters are too damned cold up here anyway,” he said.
LOUISIANA, 2007
Andrea Yates. Drowns five kids. I can’t condemn the woman. I can’t even get up a good steam of outrage. How can anybody blame her? She’s young, alone, depressed; her husband is off at his job but micromanages her life. She can’t send the kids to school. There’s no money for help. She’s supposed to be teaching them lessons. The whole religion thing is coming down on her.