Authors: Alicia Scott
The attendant stared at his screen for a
minute, then braved another direct glance at Cain. "We have one room,
nonsmoking, two queen-size beds overlooking the river."
"The river? Perfect."
The attendant rattled off the price and Cain
began peeling off bills. He needed some sleep. A long, hot shower, and a deep,
deep slumber.
"Look," he said five minutes later with forced bravado, "two
beds, just like the man said."
Maggie nodded with the stricken expression of a
woman dancing on a tightrope. She half walked, half tiptoed into the
blue-and-beige-colored room, looking like a skittish colt and careful to keep
at least five feet between them at any given time.
Taking a deep breath, he sat down on the edge
of the bed closest to the door. That made her dance back five more steps.
"Maggie," he said at last, his tone a bit dry, "I'm a murderer,
not a rapist."
"Oh goody. I'd forgotten."
"Are you becoming hysterical?"
"Why would I do a thing like that?"
She was definitely becoming hysterical.
There was no good way of doing this. If he'd
been a compassionate man, he would have just let her go. But he couldn't do that.
Not just yet. Sooner or later, when Ham was closer, the decisions would become
more difficult. For now, the immediate danger was the police, and she was his
only bargaining chip. In chess, maneuvering was critical, but so was the
strategic sacrifice of key pieces.
He rose off the bed and picked up the
handcuffs. Her blue eyes widened. "What are you going to do?"
"Don't worry, it's only for a short
bit."
"Wh-what?" She was already too late. He
slipped the handcuff over her wrist, then with one deft move, attached the
other end to the bedpost.
"I have to go run some errands," he
said calmly. "I'll try to be back as soon as possible."
"You can't just leave me like this!"
He picked up the remote control and handed it
to her. "Entertainment." His lips twisted. "Welcome to prison
life."
She simply stared at him. "You are so
cold."
"Yes. What would you like for dinner,
fried chicken, pizza or hamburger? You can choose." He tried smiling, but
it felt weak and dispirited on his face.
"Dinner?" she whispered. "You
handcuff me to the bed and then you ask me about dinner?"
He couldn't help himself. He reached out and
touched her cheek with his thumb. She cringed instantly and he accepted that.
It was the least he deserved.
"I'll be back in one hour."
"Is that a promise or a threat?" she
cried miserably. Her eyes were accusing. He understood that. One hour before,
she'd been telling him the stories of her family. He'd even told her some of
the stories of his family. For a woman like her, that had probably seemed like
something. Friendship, maybe. A mutual understanding. She'd lost her father,
he'd lost his mother. Both came from families where they didn't feel they
belonged. When he was still a boy, he used to lie in bed at night and wonder
why his father hated him so much. He used to wonder, if he was smarter, a
better chess player, a faster shot, would that make the difference. By the time
his mother died, he'd come to terms with the fact he and his father would never
bridge the gap. He'd even chosen his own path, as a boy must to become a man.
But sometimes, he still remembered those nights and the hollowness in his
stomach, the rusty taste of despair.
He'd never told anyone that—that little Cain
had once honestly loved his father and wished that his father would love him
back.
He thought if he told that to Maggie now, she
would understand. More than anyone, she would understand.
Stop it, Cain. You're growing maudlin, and
you're never maudlin. You are exhausted and under incredible stress. You're not
thinking clearly. She is the hostage. You are the escaped felon. Now get out of
this room and attend to matters before Ham does it for you.
"I'll bring you dinner," he said
quietly and turned away from the image of her sinking down on the edge of the
bed, shoulders hunched and face forlorn.
He picked up the baseball cap on his way out
and was very careful not to look back. She didn't make a sound as he closed the
door, but he could feel her betrayed gaze on his back anyway.
It was still daylight. Cool, with the wind blowing off the mountains, but the
sun was warm on his face and the clear blue sky endless. Cain stopped without
really meaning to, standing like an idiot in the middle of the parking lot and
simply inhaling deeply. The air tasted better than the finest wine or the
sweetest woman. His lungs seemed to expand fully for the first time in six
years.
In the beginning, he'd been allowed out into
the prison yard with the general population. In medium security, inmates
received both a morning and afternoon break. But the Aryan Brotherhood agent
hadn't lied to Cain. Prisoners comprised four gangs—the Bloods for the blacks,
the Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia for Hispanics, and the Aryan Brotherhood
for the whites. The invitation process was mandatory. Unless you were deranged,
weak or a religious fruitcake, the gangs
demanded
your participation.
Once Cain made his rejection clear, life began
to quickly unravel. First there were the drugs found in a hole punched in his
wall and plastered over with toothpaste. The first guard who'd followed
procedure and skimmed the wall with his fingertips had found the stash and
disciplined Cain. Then there were the razor blades slipped into his pillowcase.
Finally, the antifreeze added to his coffee. Cain hadn't drunk the whole cup,
but he'd consumed enough to spend five days in the infirmary wishing that he
had died.
After that, the prison officials agreed his
life was in jeopardy. They moved him to protective custody, where the rapists,
child molesters and prison narcs were kept. The "snitches and
bitches" section, they called it. Cain got a new room with a roommate
serving fifteen years for touching small children.
Cain didn't like that arrangement much. After
careful analysis of his situation, he'd seen only one option. He became a
discipline problem, a true big-D problem. He put razor blades beneath his bunk
so that the first guard stupid enough to check the bed rim for drugs with his
fingertips and not a mirror got his fingers sliced up. Then he missed roll call
and stopped observing lights-out. One day in a stroke of pure genius, he'd
added plaster of Paris from the infirmary to the morning pancakes. The prison
warden had so loved pancakes.
Cain got what he wanted—solitary confinement.
The Discipline Board reviewed his case and put him in solitary. Cast in the
maximum-security wing, he finally had his own cell where no one came in and no
one could touch him. He roomed alone, he ate alone, he lived alone, a mountain
man reduced to a six-by-eight-foot existence—concrete, concrete, concrete. In
the beginning, he thought he might go nuts. His one hour outside came and went
so fast, five minutes lost just to the luxury of showering. He had to learn to
forget the mountains of Idaho and the waterfront of Portland. He had to learn
to forget the misty mornings, lying in the trail, bone cold and
hunting-focused, inhaling the grass, inhaling the mist. Sinking into the ground
and becoming part of the forest, squeezing down his breathing and heartbeat
until he was no more than a blade of grass, lying on the ground, waiting for
the deer to appear.
He gave up all that. He learned to live in his
mind. He learned to play chess in the black and white spaces of his memory. He
learned to be the trapped animal and not gnaw off his own limb to ease the
pain.
So much he'd learned, forced himself to
understand. And now he was in the big vast open again, the sky bluer than he'd
realized, the dirt redder, the air sweeter. God, it was good and it was overwhelming.
He wanted to spread his arms and embrace it. He wanted to wrap his arms around
his head and curl up in a ball because outside was so big and suddenly he felt
so small.
Prison did strange things to a man. Made it so
he didn't even know himself anymore.
Cain shrugged away the sensation, the vague
fear. He had to know himself. Certainly no one else ever had.
He forced his feet to move and willed the
agoraphobia away.
He drove the truck to the cinema a few blocks
away from the hotel. There, he parked the big blue machine in the middle of the
other vehicles, toward the front. It blended in nicely, as Bend boasted almost
more trucks than people. Since it was toward the front, maybe late at night the
police would assume it belonged to someone working in the theater.
That mission accomplished, Cain found a
drugstore for supplies. One heavy-duty flashlight, one roll of duct tape and
one bungee cord, because those things always came in handy. Next he bought a water
canteen, a pack of small chocolate pieces for instant energy, then a backpack
for everything to go in. He spent fifteen minutes contemplating hair dyes, had
a beautiful young salesclerk offer him blushing advice and then gave up on the
whole dyeing concept. He bought disposable razors and shaving cream instead.
Then he visited a gun and ammunition store.
Bend saw its fair share of hunters and the
rifle selection made him pause. But you had to have a license and a permit to
buy a gun, so Cain settled for simply buying more ammunition for the .357
Magnum tucked in the waistband of his jeans. The .357 wouldn't be enough if
Abraham found him, but it was all he had to work with.
Next, he cashed in five dollars for change at
the pharmacy. Then he began plugging the pay phone. His father's cabin didn't
used to have a phone. But then a cell site was installed in the area. The other
hunters started carrying cell phones in case of emergency. Zechariah decided
maybe he should have one, too. In case of trouble, in case anyone ever ambushed
his place. Lines of communication were important in war.
The phone started ringing. Was it sitting on
the old, hand-carved table? Suddenly Cain could picture the cabin of his
childhood too clearly. The receiver trembled in his hands.
"I knew you would call."
Cain paused. For a minute, his knuckles
whitened on the phone and his mouth went dry and he felt a little dizzy. Nearly
ten years since he'd heard that voice. Ten years of wanting to forget and not
quite being able to. Ten years of trying to figure out where that voice ended
and Cain began, what beliefs that voice had that Cain could accept, and what
beliefs that voice had that Cain must reject.
"Hello, Zechariah," Cain said at last
to his father. He raised his wrist and glanced at his watch. No more than sixty
seconds, for the call might be traced.
Remain in control, Cain.
"You brought them here," Zech
accused, his rusty voice low and vehement. "The hills and the valley are
crawling with state troopers and federal sheriffs like the locusts in Egypt.
Years they've been waiting for any sort of excuse to invade our land. And you
gave it to them.
You
gave it to them!"
Cain felt his lips twist in spite of himself.
Cool Cain. Rational Cain. Don't get lost in the hatred. He's never understood
your beliefs any more than you've understood his hate. Cain said anyway,
"Happy to be of service."
And his father hissed with outrage in his ear.
"Has Ham left already?" Cain
continued levelly, trying to get the conversation back on line, though the
shortened name generally raised his family's hackles. Ham's full name was
Abraham, but Cain had nicknamed his white supremacist brother Ham after one of
Noah's sons—the one biblical scholars believed was the forefather of the black
race.
"You are a traitor."
"And Kathy? What sin had Kathy committed
to deserve the slaughter?" He wanted to recall the words the moment they
were spoken. He didn't have time for accusations and emotion. He knew why
Abraham had killed Kathy. Dear God, he knew. And found himself stating from
someplace deep inside his gut, "I don't want to kill him … Dad. He is my
brother. But he murdered her and if it comes down to that … if it comes down to
that then I guess I'm no better than either of you after all, because I will
pull the trigger."
"When God asked Abraham to take his only
son, Isaac, to the mountains of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt
offering, did Abraham ask why?" Zechariah sermonized in a vibrant
baritone. "Did Abraham say, 'Why should I believe in you, Lord? Why should
I accept your command and why should I do as you bid?' Did Abraham say, 'But it
isn't logical'? You have no faith, Cain. You have no belief—"
"I only asked for a reason to hate—"
Forty-five seconds.
"But your brother has faith," Zechariah
continued as if he hadn't heard his youngest son. "Abraham accepts God's
bidding and the Lord shall guide his hand."
Five seconds remaining. Cain said quietly,
"Then I hope Mom will guide mine."
He hung up the phone, cutting off his father's
outraged gasp. Cain stood there for a moment, his forehead pressed against the
cold metal pay phone, the sun hammering down on his back. Somewhere inside
himself, he felt like a little kid again, standing on the mountain, being told
God had created such beauty, but only for the chosen few to enjoy. By right of
birth, Cain was one of those chosen.