Dirt Road Home (8 page)

I had to show for the fight. And my only chance against Jack was with the shiv. Unless I just let him beat me to a pulp. Unless he had a shiv too. Either way, I’d end up like Chase.

“Caboose?”

No answer.

“Caboose?”

“Quiet down there!” the floorwalker boomed.

Saturday. They left me alone during breakfast. It seemed the dining hall was quieter than usual. After the buzzer sounded I returned my tray, walked out into the hall, and leaned against the wall while the boys passed me like I wasn’t there.

“You’ve got a visitor,” a guard said to me.

There were a couple of other boys talking to their relatives when I walked into the room. I could tell by Daddy’s sallow face that he was still on the wagon. He smiled to me as I crossed the floor, and I managed my own smile at the edge of my mouth. He hugged me and beat his rough palm on my back a couple of times while I rested my chin on his shoulder and closed my eyes.

We sat across from each other at a table off in the corner and I locked my hands together and studied my fingers.

“Come on now,” he said. “You can’t feel as bad as I do.”

I looked up at him. “I’m all right,” I said. “You didn’t bring Carla this time?”

“You told me not to.”

“I know.”

“What happened to your face?”

I looked down and shook my head.

“Don’t tell me another basketball hit you.”

“I’m in trouble, Daddy,” I mumbled.

“What’d you do?”

“I tried to stay out of it. I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll work it out, son. Tell me what happened.”

I shook my head.

“You can’t quit on me now.”

I looked up. “All I’ve tried to do is stay out of fights. But you can’t get respect in here unless you fight. And if you don’t get respect, they come after you.”

“You need to tell the staff. Tell ’em what’s goin’ on.”

“They won’t listen to me.”

Daddy pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll talk to the boss. Where is he?”

“Sit down, Daddy. You can’t talk to him. He don’t give a damn about me and he don’t give a damn about you.”

“Where’s his office?”

“Come on. This place ain’t about fair. The guards turn their backs on us. You’re just gonna make things worse for me.”

Daddy looked around the room like he might get some answers. Then he took a deep breath and sat down again. “I feel so dad-gum helpless.”

“Listen,” I said. “I gotta work it out. I just want you to know that I tried hard if anything happens to me.”

“Anything happens to you I’m gonna start whippin’ some ass around here. Wait’ll they see what a log chain and a grub hoe have to say. I’ll—”

“You ain’t doin’ none of that. You need to drive over to Mr. Wellington’s place and tell him hurry up with things.”

“I been goin’ up to the Laundromat and callin’ him every day. He’s doin’ all he can.”

“Go see him. He’s gotta do more.”

“All right,” he said. “I will.”

I pushed back from the table and stood. “I gotta go.”

“Why you gotta go?”

“I need to think. And I don’t like you seein’ me like this. Maybe you can bring Carla by next weekend.”

Daddy nodded to me. I didn’t want to hug him this time. I was too ashamed of myself. I turned and walked away.

When I stepped onto the yard, no one paid attention to me. I crossed the dusty ground and leaned against the fence without even looking at Caboose. I took a deep breath and slid down the wire and rested my forehead on my knees. I tried to think but I couldn’t.

Before supper I stuck the shiv in my sock and walked to the dining hall in a daze. I got my tray and let the serving woman put food onto it and went to my seat. The noise of the boys’ normal chatter ran together and pressed into my ears like a sound underwater. I sat and bent over my tray but left my hands on either side of it. I didn’t feel like eating.

When the buzzer went off I returned my tray and stepped out into the hall and stopped. The boys in front of me continued toward the rec room and the ones behind me began to pass.

“Follow me,” I heard Preston say.

I fell in behind him. He turned into the confessional where Paco and I usually met. I followed and the door shut behind us. There was another boy at the sink. He had a scar
around his wrist. He finished washing his hands and looked at us and left without speaking. Then we were alone.

“I’m gonna show you how to get down there,” Preston said. “Jack will come five minutes later.”

I nodded. Preston smiled at me.

“One of these days, Preston,” I said.

“Yeah, you wish.”

“You think you got friends in here? I try to get to the end of how stupid you are, but I just can’t make it that far.”

Preston began to flush with irritation. “You’re the one that’s stupid, Hal! You asked for all of this. I told you what to do when you got here, but you think you’re tougher than everybody else.”

“What are we waitin’ on, Preston?”

“We have to make sure the hall is empty.”

“You think there’s enough time for me to bloody you up a little? I mean, what have I got to lose now, right?”

Preston took a step back and his hands began to tremble. “That’s against the rules,” he said. “This is Jack’s fight.”

“That’s right. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t want to come between you and your friend Jack. I’ll bet one day when you two are out of here he’s gonna invite you over to his house for dinner just about every night. Heck, I bet he names his first child after you.”

Preston didn’t answer. He stepped wide around me and peered out the door. After a moment he motioned for me to follow.

We continued down the hall toward the rec room, where I heard the normal commotion of the boys playing pool and watching television. We hadn’t gone far when
Preston stopped before the door to a maintenance closet. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door and motioned for me to go inside. I stepped past him and he shut the door behind us and locked it and turned on the light. I could see that the room was really not a closet at all, but a long, narrow passageway lined with shelves of supplies. It must have gone back at least fifty feet.

“Turn around and put your arms in the air,” Preston said.

I faced him. “Like hell.”

“I’ve gotta pat you down.”

“You touch me and I’ll knock your teeth out.”

Preston didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally he said, “You don’t have any weapons on you, do you?”

“Where would I get a weapon?”

He studied me. “Okay,” he finally said. “Start walkin’.”

I turned and started toward the back of the room. When we reached the wall there was another passageway that opened to my right. The ceiling was lined with water pipes and electrical conduit.

“Keep goin’,” Preston said.

I kept on through the narrow passage for another fifty feet until I came to cement stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was darkness that flickered a pale blue like heat lightning. In its depths machinery hissed and groaned. The boiler room. I started down.

Preston told me there would be a light switch on the wall at the bottom. At the base of the stairs I faced the flickering light and felt my shoes slap into a puddle. The sweet
smell of damp rust and propane fell over me. I found the light switch and flipped it on, and the boiler room was before me. It was a giant, wet basement that must have extended under most of Hellenweiler. Pipes and wires covered most of the low ceiling. Steel columns were spaced throughout the room, supporting the ceiling. Giant hot water heaters sat against one wall, rusty and fired with blue gas flames that caused the room to flicker. Several other machines groaned and clanked at the far end of the room where the light didn’t reach. Suddenly the fear I’d been holding back seeped into my gut and I felt sick.

I took a few steps, faced Preston, and drew a deep breath. I knew I probably looked scared but I didn’t have it in me to look any other way.

“No turnin’ back now,” he said.

“I guess not. Let’s get this over with.”

Preston turned and started back up the stairs.

For a minute I just stared at the cement steps leading out of the boiler room. My mind was blank and the sounds of the machinery had turned to a steady thrumming in my ears. Then I took another deep breath through my nose and turned and studied the room. I walked about fifteen feet farther and looked for anything that might help me, but it was all a tangle of wires and pipes and darkness and rust and confusion. No one would hear what happened down here. And who knew how long it would take for a person to be found. I suddenly remembered the shiv and bent down and pulled it from my sock and stuck it in my back pocket.
You can’t use it,
I said to myself.
What are you thinking? You’re just going to have to fist-fight him. He can’t kill you. You can live through broken bones.

I heard him coming down the steps. It didn’t seem like it had been five minutes, but there was no way to tell. I saw his feet and then the rest of him, step by step, until his shoes slapped onto the wet floor. His face was twitching with excitement, but he wasn’t smiling. I could imagine the hornets buzzing in his head.

“Hey, Jack,” I said.

He didn’t answer me.

“Listen, I—”

“Shut up.”

He took another step toward me and cracked his knuckles. “You know what happened to the last guy I met down here?”

“No.”

“They found him curled up over by that wall.”

“I bet you’re a lot of talk too.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“What’s it gonna prove—you fightin’ a new boy?”

“I’ll fight anybody that disrespects me.”

“What about Paco? You think he respects you? He thinks you’re a coward.”

“Hell with Paco.”

“I wanna see you say that to his face.”

“I don’t have to deal with Paco. I don’t have to deal with lots of things. You see, I know how Hellenweiler works. Not just the gangs, but the guards too. I’ve bought dirt on this place. I’ll do just enough time to get by and they’ll let me out. If they don’t, I got people on the outside that’ll speed things up. But you’re gonna have to rot in this dog kennel.”

“Yeah, what kinda dirt you got?”

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I would.”

“Let’s just say I can hurt you all I want and nobody outside of Hellenweiler will ever know a thing.”

“You’re that special, huh?”

“Oh, it has nothin’ to do with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you stop stallin’ and take this like a man?”

I felt my temper rising, and for once I was glad to feel it again. It welled up from my chest and smothered away any
fear I’d had. This whole situation seemed like the biggest waste of anger and time and life I could imagine.

“I’ve never known people like you that didn’t have it comin’,” I said. “Sooner or later. Maybe I don’t bring it, but somebody will.”

“I spit on people like you.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t have a damn bit of respect for you either. Let’s get this over with so I can curl up against that wall and get my ride out of here. I got people on the outside too. And I guarantee they can get drunker and meaner than your people. And their spit smells worse.”

Jack took a step toward me. “Come on,” he said. “You’re not just gonna lay down on me, are you?”

“I ain’t layin’ down. I’m gonna make you earn every bit of this.”

“Come on, then.”

“Waitin’ on you.”

Then I saw his eyes go deep and calm. This was something he was savoring. He reached into his back pocket and his hand came away with a screwdriver. He held it low and put one foot before the other and rocked back and forth like someone about to sprint.

“Put it up,” I said.

But I could tell in his eyes he was committed. Then I saw his arms tense and I knew it was coming. Without thinking about it, I went for the shiv just as he launched toward me.

When the lights went out, I was diving sideways. I felt the brush of Jack’s body against me and heard him stumble and slide across the floor. I quickly got to my knees and
searched the darkness for him. The blue light flickered and I saw him sitting up and staring at the staircase.

“What the—?” he said.

But there was no one there. Whoever had flipped off the lights had done it from somewhere else.

Jack stood and took a step toward the stairs. “Who’s there?” he said.

But there was no reply. Just the sounds of the machines.

I tightened my grip on the shiv and started to stand. Before I could rise, another figure slipped out of the darkness behind Jack and pulled him to the floor. The room was suddenly filled with screaming. I backed against the cement wall in confusion. The blue flickering of the gas flames occasionally lit up the room enough for me to see the two dark shapes struggling not far from me. The sound of the machinery droned on and the two figures rose and fell and rolled like something displayed in a weak strobe light. The only human sounds were coming from Jack and they were nothing I could make out, only grunting and an occasional whimper of pain.

Then, after a few seconds of darkness, there was only one body left on the floor. I leaped up and ran for the stairs, feeling every hair on my neck standing at the thought of what was behind me. Whoever—whatever had attacked Jack. I took the steps two at a time and never looked back. When I got to the top, I threw the shiv on the floor and kept running. When I came to the door leading into the hall, I stopped and spun around and looked behind me. There was nothing. “Paco, you crazy Mexican,” I said aloud.

*   *   *

I stood leaning with my forehead against the maintenance room door, catching my breath. The hall beyond was silent. I heard the boys in the rec room through the walls to my right and the faint plinking of dishes coming from the kitchen on my left. After a few minutes I opened the door and stepped out.

The hall seemed empty. Then I looked down at the entrance to the rec room and Preston stared at me with horror on his face. I locked eyes with him until he stepped out of sight. I shut the maintenance closet door and made for my bunk.