The Journey Back (2 page)

It was my one and only chance and my heart beat double time because I knew that if I went ahead with the plan, there was no turning back and plenty of risk along the way. But I was ready. And the way my life was going, I figured I had nothing to lose, so there was no stopping me.

A
harsh metal screech tore through the air. I knew the sound well: bad brakes. And those particular brakes belonged to the garbage truck making its way down the steep gravel driveway from the main road to the prison.

From the sounds of it, the truck hadn't made its first pickup behind the gym, so I knew I had at least a couple minutes. But I panicked anyway. In my rush, I tripped over a curb and fell, scraping my hands. Pushing myself back up, I sprinted downhill behind the dining hall to the Dumpster and dropped to my knees, reaching underneath for the shovel I'd hidden there under some leaves. Pulling the shovel out, I quickly knocked the leaves and junk off of it, then tossed it into the Dumpster where it landed on the garbage with a soft knocking sound. Nothing very loud, thank goodness.

I whirled around once to see if anyone was watching, then reached for the handle of that side door of the Dumpster, the one you open to throw in trash. But the door didn't open. I tried it again, both hands tugging with all my might, but it was locked up tight. With no time to lose, I took the only other choice I had, which was to jump and grab onto the edge of the Dumpster. I was lucky the container didn't have a cover. Using all my strength, I hoisted myself up. After I got one leg over the top, it was easy. I simply rolled over the edge and plopped down onto the trash.

The fall inside wasn't bad. The Dumpster was half full, so there were plenty of big, black plastic bags full of junk as well as a bunch of cardboard that made for a soft landing. I saw the shovel and reached over to grab it, then sat there, keeping my fingers crossed that I'd survive getting dumped into the garbage truck. If anything went wrong, I could be compacted to death, no question. My dad drove a front-end loader for a while, so I knew how they operated. A set of arms on the garbage truck would pick up the Dumpster, lift it up over the cab, and dump everything into an opening over the cargo bay of the truck. Next, this big compacting panel with a blade at the bottom would start pushing the trash— squeezing and
compacting
it—toward the back. That's what I needed the shovel for—to jam the compacting blade so I didn't get crushed to death. When the garbage truck got to the landfill, or the dump, or wherever it went, the back would open up and I could slip out and make a run for it. I'd hide out for a while, then try to find that highway that brung me out here and follow it back east. That was my plan anyway.

Two minutes seemed like an eternity. I could hear—and feel—the vibrations of the truck rumbling down the steep gravel driveway.

“Come on, come
on!
” I whispered urgently. “Let's go!” I needed things to click along fast. Pretty soon, Mr. R. would be wondering why I wasn't showing up for class. Couldn't take that long to throw a bag of garbage into the Dumpster, he'd be thinking.

Funny how I could picture so clearly everyone in the class where I should have been at that moment. A sea of blue sweatshirts and blue pants, our boring uniform. Half of them boys would be sprawled over their desks with their heads buried in their arms 'cause class hadn't quite started and no one was wide awake. Me, I was always in a half-awake state on account of the fact that I never really slept, but I never put my head down like that. Someone could take advantage if you had your head down.

So I'd be sitting there in class watching Dontaye doodle. Dontaye, who slept in the bed beside mine in the dorm, also sat beside me in most of my classes, and every day I'd watch him illustrate the sides of his paper. Always the same thing: pointed stars and weird letters that were code for his gang back in Baltimore. Seemed like most of those guys—black, white, Hispanic, all of them—had some kind of gang they were connected to back home. Dontaye talked to me about his gang a couple times, like maybe he even wanted me to join it. Wouldn't that be something? If a white guy showed up with Dontaye? Heck, maybe they wouldn't care. I have to say that deep down, parts of that gang stuff appealed to me. Like the reason Dontaye joined his gang is because he didn't have any family taking care of him, which is kind of like me.

Suddenly, the garbage truck was pulling up to the Dumpster, interrupting my thoughts. The metal arms, which screeched like a giant's fingernail scraping down a big chalkboard, knocked and locked onto the Dumpster, like a monster hug. A jolt sent me forward, then back. Grabbing a bag of trash, I dug myself down deeper as the Dumpster got lifted. I tried to brace myself for what was next, but there was no way to prepare for it because all at once everything got flipped over. Bags of garbage, cardboard, pieces of wood, a broken milk crate—and me. I got knocked around pretty good in the process, lost track of the shovel, and landed facedown with my feet up, squeezed between a bunch of garbage bags like a piece of baloney in a stinking sandwich. And boy, did it stink. If I didn't die from the compactor, I was thinking, I might die from the putrid smell.

Plus it was dark in there. When the cover over the top of the truck slid shut with a bang, I couldn't see a thing. Pitch black. But mostly, I couldn't get over how bad it stunk. It made me want to gag. I struggled to right myself and blindly started rooting around for that shovel. I couldn't find it right off, but what I did run into was a ripped-open bag of garbage, 'cause next thing I knew globs of something slimy and granular spilled out over my hands. I swore and cussed out loud. I knew those guys in the cab couldn't hear over the truck noise, so I cussed even louder a second time.

A different motor started whirring and an ear-piercing, scraping sound began. The compactor was moving! It was pushing all that garbage—and
me—
toward the back. I had to find the shovel fast or I was going to end up like a lousy pancake. Ignoring the crap on my hands, I groped around for the shovel but could not find it. And man, I needed it—
fast
.

I felt the gears shift and grind as the truck made its way back out of the prison yard, up the hill. The whirring of the compactor grew faster and louder as everything got slowly pushed toward the back. I kept digging myself in between bags, trying to find the handle of that shovel, but I wasn't having any luck.

The truck moved on, faster, smoother. I figured we were outside the prison grounds at that point, maybe on the road down the mountain. I wondered where the truck would stop next and whether Mr. R. would put two and two together back in the classroom and guess that I'd gone out with the trash. I could just see him, taking a big sip of coffee out of that thermos cup of his, maybe peeling back the cupcake wrapper on one of those nice muffins his wife made, and then setting it down quick when it suddenly dawned on him. He'd step outside the classroom to make a call down to the office, and instantly all the boys would be on to it. Even Dontaye would stop doodling and crack a smile.

The boys would be guessing how I did it, like did I hide out in the back of someone's pickup the way this kid did a year ago? He hid there at the end of the day and rode all the way to Cumberland to a staffer's house where he slipped out and hijacked a car. Amazing, but he got about a half hour down the interstate before they caught him. Hopefully, they'd be checking all the vehicles in the parking lot first, but Mr. R. might be insisting on the garbage truck theory. Which meant there could be police cars waiting at the landfill. Or maybe the cops would stop the truck on the highway and poke around, looking for me. Anything could happen.

Like a big bug, I crawled over the bags of garbage and kept searching for that shovel. At the same time I had a flash vision of what would happen to me if I couldn't find it. Maybe it would be justice after all. For what I did to be in prison, maybe I deserved to get squished to death like a dumb insect and buried under a bunch of trash. Maybe I was nothing but trash myself. Heck, my father had been telling me that for years!

But my poor mom. She'd cry her eyes out when she heard how I died. It's true that sometimes I got mad at her for not stopping things. But other times, my throat got tight thinking about her, like how she had driven all those hours in that piece of junk truck just to see me on Visiting Day a week ago. She brought that plastic bag of broken-up chocolate chip cookies from the kids and kept trying to tell me about Hank's new third-grade teacher and the front tooth LeeAnn lost, but all I could see was that cheap makeup caked on her face. It wasn't even the same color as her skin and I knew she was covering up another bruise, which meant it was still going on.

If I got snuffed out, then I wouldn't be there to help her. Or protect Hank and LeeAnn! And that made me think about my father. . . . He'd be laughing his head off when he heard I got crushed to death in a garbage truck. Yup. Laugh his fat, bald head off 'cause he'd get a real kick out of it.
I always said that kid was no good. A knucklehead with no brains.
I could just hear him, slurring his words and slapping the table. It made me mad, thinking of my father getting the last laugh. And that got me fired up all over again. I shook all those distracting thoughts out of my head and scrambled like a cockroach when the lights got turned on looking for that shovel.

Finally, my hand touched metal. Was it the shovel? Yes! I grabbed the handle and started wiggling something fierce so I could get down to the bottom of the truck and jam that thing under the blade. I had to move a couple bags around and wouldn't you know it? Another one broke and a bunch of disgusting stuff spewed out like puke. Rotten oranges, eggshells, coffee grounds, soggy paper towels. I just plowed through it, tossing handfuls of gunk aside, until I felt the floor of the truck under my feet. I pulled the shovel down beside me and managed to get it on the floor where I could push it with my feet.

The truck stopped again, so I did, too. I waited and was quiet, listening. Couldn't hear anything though. Then all of a sudden the top pulled back and sunlight poured in. They were making another pickup, and I had to brace myself for the onslaught of more trash that came pouring down on top of me. I put my hands up to stop stuff from hitting my head. Lucky for me, there wasn't a ton of it that time.

The top slid shut.
Bang!
Darkness again. The truck jerked forward and the compactor whirred. I had to force myself to breathe it smelled so bad, and it seemed like there was less and less oxygen or something. I couldn't get a full breath. I kept breathing and pushing the shovel with my feet until I heard a loud
ker-chunk
and the whirring stopped. I couldn't move the shovel anymore. Had it jammed the blade?

All I could do then was breathe. Shallow breaths because of the smell. Breathe and wait. Wait and breathe.

A few minutes later, the truck came to another stop. I heard voices and the banging sounds of someone climbing up the side. I had a pretty good idea what was happening. The compactor had jammed all right, just like I wanted it to. But a light in the cab was flashing—orange light if I remembered—so the guys up in the cab would be coming out to take a look.

The top slid open and light seeped through the bags of garbage and trash.

“I don't know!” a guy hollered. “I don't see nothin'. Not from here!”

A long moment passed. No conversation. No movement. If they started rooting through the trash, it was over.

Suddenly, the top slammed shut again and total darkness surrounded me as the whirring, grinding compactor started up again. I closed my eyes tight, hoping the shovel would hold, but almost immediately, I heard a loud
crack!
and felt the handle of that shovel snap in two under my feet.

Everything—including me—was slowly shoved toward the rear of the truck. There wasn't anything I could do to stop it. My whole body got squeezed so hard I couldn't move my legs or my arms, and my face got smashed into a slime-covered garbage bag. Some of that crap actually got in my mouth and made me want to throw up. Then my arm got caught and was pushed up behind my back. I struggled to take more shallow breaths and could feel my face and hands sweat. I never cry—
never
—I stopped cryin' years ago. But I think there were tears in my eyes. I figured this was the end for me.

In that moment, I realized I wasn't ready to die. Maybe I had thought there was nothing to lose, but suddenly I knew how much I wanted to live. I wanted to be with my mom and LeeAnn and Hank again. I wanted to see my grandfather before he died. I wanted a chance for a good life—like maybe I could go back to school and graduate and make something of myself. I once dreamed of joining the Marines.

All these thoughts kind of flashed through my mind. Then, like somebody blew a fuse, everything stopped. No light. No sound. No putrid smell. No vibrations under my feet. Nothing . . . 'cause I must've blacked out.

D
id you ever wake up in the morning and not know what day it was? That's what it was like for me, except I had a lot more to figure out than just the day. I didn't know
where
I was, or, at first, even
who
I was! All I knew is that it was dark, I was running out of oxygen, it smelled bad, and something smooshed against my face. Did I fall down a black hole to Hell? Was I buried alive? What?

Slowly, it dawned on me. Then, like the faucet suddenly got turned on, my whole life gushed out. I was Michael Griswald, only everyone called me Digger. I had a mom, and a little brother and sister back home who I loved a lot. I also had a father who drank and got mean. We lived in the country in a small yellow house with a toilet that didn't work and a lot of junk in the front yard—old tires and parts of the trucks that my father drove. I was thirteen—no, fourteen—years old and I was in prison because I played a practical joke on the rich neighbor who bought my grampa's farm. My grampa is in a nursing home now, but it used to be, when things were bad at home, I could escape to Grampa's. That's why I hated Mr. DiAngelo so much. He was the snooty guy who bought Grampa's farm, tore the house down, then built a mansion there so he could show off how much money he had. One day, he even kicked me and my friends off his property. So I played a joke on the a-hole, only the joke went sour and his little boy died. . . .

For a minute there, the memories stopped. It was like hitting a wall. Everything stopped for me when I thought back on what I done. Which is why I tried not to think back on it. What good did it do? I couldn't undo the past.

I went to prison for my crime, but now I needed to get home, so I escaped in a garbage truck, which is how I came to be squashed beneath a ton of garbage.

The sound of a distant siren pierced the air. I knew if I didn't crawl out of that garbage and disappear, I'd be right back where I came from with even more time ahead of me. I made a huge push with everything I had and created a tiny space with enough room to wiggle my toes—that was good. Next, I moved my feet up and down, then I started clawing at those slimy bags with my bare hands and slowly inched my way upward. I was like a lowlife worm crawling out of that garbage.

Pushing, wriggling, clawing, and kicking, I kept at it until my head popped through into the air and sunlight hit my face. I groaned from the force of one more all-out effort and, breathless, tumbled out and down a huge slide chute of slick garbage bags. When I landed at the bottom of that trash mountain, I took a minute to suck in big gulps of air, so much that I thought I'd crack my ribs. It wasn't exactly fresh air, but let me tell you, it was better than anything at the bottom of that pile.

The siren sound grew louder. Definitely time to get going. The sun was bright and directly overhead, so I figured it must've been around noon. Surely they were on to me now 'cause I had split just after breakfast.

Looking around, I didn't see anyone else at the landfill. Dense woods surrounded the place, but I spotted a gravel road that led in and out. The best thing, I decided, was stick to the woods, but parallel the road so I didn't get totally lost. My legs were cramped up from being crushed by all that garbage, but I hobbled away and as soon as I got the kinks worked out of my muscles, I started running. My boots weren't exactly great for cross-country, but I ignored the heaviness and ran like a jackrabbit until I was deep in the forest.

I stopped once to take off my sweatshirt 'cause I was sweating buckets. Tied the sweatshirt around my waist and kept going. I jumped over logs, plunged full force through briars, sprinted uphill, and sidestepped quickly down a rocky hillside like a mountain goat. I could feel a stone in my left boot, but I didn't stop to get it out. I trotted on through a patch of pine trees where the needles made a soft carpet, slogged through a muddy swamp that tried to suck my boots right off, then jogged through a high-grass meadow until I came upon a shallow stream.

The water looked clean, so I lay down on the ground and took a long cold drink. While I had my face in the water it dawned on me that the police might try to track me on land and that I might do better by walking up the stream. It was right then—before I plunged my foot in the stream—that I heard the helicopter overhead.

Thumpathumpathumpathumpathump.

That would be the state police looking for me!

Glancing around, I spotted a bunch of juniper bushes nearby, then dashed up the hillside and threw myself beneath the prickly branches.

I knew a little bit about those helicopters 'cause my old friend Brady had a cousin Carl, who was a paramedic. Carl took us with him one day to the state police barracks in Centreville to see a state chopper that was parked there. It was a twin engine Dauphine Europcopter and we actually got to sit inside. This guy, this pilot who actually flew choppers in Vietnam, explained all the controls and showed us that special camera underneath the helicopter nose. It was called FLIR, which stands for Forward Looking Infrared. I never forgot that because that camera was so cool. What it did, it could tell temperature differences on the ground and things would show up black and white on this little screen in the cockpit. Like a human body? It's warm, right? So the camera would pick up that a warm body was on the ground and flash an image to the pilot. Even if it was dark out, the camera could do this.

I dug myself in best I could, hoping that camera couldn't get a picture of me if I was curled up in a tight little ball beneath the thick bushes. That or else they'd figure I was an animal or something.

Lying there, making myself as small as possible by hugging my arms and legs, I listened as the chopper noise grew louder and louder, finally passing directly overhead. I lay still, barely breathing, until the helicopter's sound grew fainter, like a distant heartbeat in the sky.

I didn't want to take the chance of getting spotted, so I decided to hide out for a while. Hidden by the bushes, I sat up and took off one boot to shake a stone out. Then I took off the other boot, too, and peeled off both socks so they could dry out a little. Everything was wet and muddy from sloshing through that swamp. I saw big blisters on my feet, but there wasn't anything I could do for them so after a while I put my damp socks back on in case I had to leave in a hurry.

About that time, I realized how hungry I was and felt for the box of Cocoroos in my pocket. But I decided I'd better save them for when I was
really
starving. In my other pocket, I found a balled-up Kleenex and my white card.

I took the card out and was getting ready to flick it into the water down below, but then I realized that the card could float downstream and become a clue. I held it in my hand and looked at it. They give us that card the first day we signed in at Cliffside. It was about four inches by four inches and laminated so we could keep it in our pocket all the time. We were told to memorize it, all the tiny print, front and back. Like we had to recite the twelve problem areas us boys fall into and the four most common thinking errors we make, plus a whole lot of other stuff so we could change our ways.

I knew the whole thing. Memorized it the first week just for something to do. With my eyes closed, I could repeat the entire card, starting top left with those twelve problem areas: low self-image, easily angered, inconsiderate to others, aggravates others, authority problem, alcohol or drug problem, stealing, lying, etc.

Yup. I must have gone over that list a dozen times with Miss Laurie, my mental health counselor. I liked Miss Laurie. She was pretty, with long dark hair she pulled back into a ponytail. She wore pink fingernail polish and interesting earrings, always something dangly. And she smelled good, too. First two days I was in her office I didn't say a thing, and she didn't care. She said it was okay to just sit there if I wanted. She offered me candy from her jar and I took a piece, a little Hershey bar. I sat there eating chocolate and watching the angelfish swim around in their tank for a full hour.

“Anything we talk about in here stays here,” Miss Laurie told me. “I don't report back to juvenile detention.”

But still I didn't talk. She did paperwork while I watched the fish and picked at a hangnail.

Along about the third or fourth time, Miss Laurie played a game of cards with me and talked about her little boy, Harrison, and how he painted himself with Magic Markers. I couldn't help it. Her story reminded me of my little brother, Hank, and how he drew pictures all over himself with an ink pen so he'd look like my tattooed uncle Chip. I cracked up remembering that. Guess that's when I started talking to her some. Mostly about Hank and LeeAnn at first, then my mom and finally, my dad. We also talked about the twelve problem areas.

My response was always the same. I told Miss Laurie I was only guilty of three of those areas. Easily angered, no question. And I did occasionally aggravate others, but only after they aggravated me. And yes, I told her, I was guilty of misleading others. No question how I led my friend J.T. down the wrong path, which landed both of us in prison. I told J.T. I was sorry and that it wasn't his fault. I told the judge that, too, in court. I spoke up and said J.T. didn't do nothing, that I did everything myself. But the judge, she wasn't even looking at me when I said all that. She was busy writing in her folders. When she was done, she took off her glasses and stared at me. She said J.T. stood guard, which helped me commit the crime, so he was guilty, too.

There wasn't anything I could say or do to change her mind. Me and J.T., we were put in this white prison van, just the two of us in the back separated from the driver by a big wire grate. We had these heavy shackles on our feet, and handcuffs on, too. But neither one of us was gonna try to escape or anything. We were like stunned that day we were convicted and rode quiet all the way out to western Maryland in that van.

It took nearly four hours to get to Cliffside. There wasn't any music or anything to listen to. The driver had his radio on low, but it was just talk radio, religious stuff, and we couldn't really hear it anyway except for an occasional “praise the Lord” or “the Bible tells us . . .” Wasn't a whole lot to look at neither. You couldn't look straight through that grate between us and the driver or you'd go cross-eyed, so all we could do was look out the side windows. I hadn't ever been all the way out to western Maryland before and I would have to say, the countryside was nice, especially the hills. There weren't many hills I knew of on the Eastern Shore.

A couple hours into the trip, the van climbed up this mountainside so steep my ears popped. Then we passed through this big slice in the top where huge cliffs rose up above on either side of us.

“Ain't it something?” the driver called back to us while he drove between those multicolored cliffs. He turned his radio down. “It's called Sideling Hill.”

Neither one of us answered, but I did look out the window.

“See that black layer toward the bottom?”

Again, we didn't say anything, but the driver continued: “I heard that black layer has got marine fossils in it, which means this here area was underwater—a huge sea at one time. Yup. From eastern Ohio all the way to western Maryland. Imagine that!”

I did try to imagine that. Why not? I didn't have anything else to do. I wondered how come the sea disappeared, and how the floor of it ended up on top of a mountain! I looked at all the multicolored layers in those cliffs and wondered what stories each one had. Kind of wished the driver would say some more, but once we were through that pass and headed down the other side, he went back to chewing his tobacco and turned up his radio.

I kept glancing at J.T., who was sitting across from me, but he never once looked up. Not even at the cliffs on Sideling Hill. He just stared at the floor the whole time, which was incredibly depressing. I had really ruined his life.

At one point, a big tractor-trailer full of logs roared past us, and I remember thinking I was just like one of those cut-down trees strapped onto the back of that truck, with no power over my life anymore. Then we came across some guys in bright green neon vests who were picking up trash in the median strip, and I saw a van parked alongside the road that had the words I
NMATE
L
ABOR
on it. I wondered if that was my future. Would that be me one day? Picking up trash by the road while other people drove by and stared? I dropped my head. I sure didn't want that for a future.

Suddenly, there wasn't time to be thinking of my life or that sad trip out to western Maryland because the sound of barking dogs brought me back to the present right quick. Instead of tossing that white card in the bushes, I slipped it back in my pocket and reached for my boots.