Unconditional (13 page)

Prison?
When had Joe been in prison? I looked at the boys, but none of their faces registered surprise. The fact of Joe's having been incarcerated—when and for what, notwithstanding—was not news to them.

“Oh, I gotta hear about this,” Macon said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“Y'all don't wanna hear none-a that.”

The boys looked at each other, eyes wide with want. But before they could say anything, I spoke.

“Oh, yes we would.”

Joe looked me in the eye. He reached over to the pan of cornbread, picked up the knife, and sliced a corner piece before bringing it to his mouth and biting into it. “Well,” he said around the crumbs, “the first thing you learn in prison is to always,
always
. . .”

Chapter Twelve

“. . . mind your
own business.

“It was my first day in. I was nearly twenty-three years old. Ole Samurai Joe was in good shape, and I'd need to be for what I was about to come up against. Not that I understood that at the time.

“It was lunch break. If for no other reason, my men, the food is why you don't
ever
want to go to prison. That day was green beans out of a tin can that must have sucked all the flavor right out of 'em.”

The boys giggled, but Joe's expression told them he wasn't kidding.

“Mashed potatoes. And I don't mean your grandma's mashed potatoes. I'm talking about dried flakes they add watered-down milk to so they can
call
it mashed potatoes.”

“Eww,” Snuffy said.

Bernard sauntered over. “Whatch y'all talking about?”

“About when Papa Joe was in prison,” Snuffy answered.

I leaned against the Home Depot locker, Billy's jacket pressed beneath my shoulder. For the briefest of moments, the scent of his old cologne wafted around me.

“And meatloaf,” Joe continued. “Or what they
called
meatloaf. I promise you, it wasn't anything you'd want to eat. But they had this cornbread, see. And the cornbread wasn't half bad.” Joe raised the slice of my cornbread and took another bite. His eyebrows rose.

“So I got my tray of food and started looking for a place to sit. I noticed this old man—a white dude—sitting all by himself at one of the tables. I was used to sitting with white dudes, not that it made no never-mind to me what color a man was. A place to sit was a place to sit. I walked over and sat down across from the old man. His name was Pauly. I didn't know that then. I found out later.

“Soon as I sat down, Pauly looked up at me and said, ‘Keep on walkin', young buck.' Pauly's hands were shaking, he was so old. He had long, stringy gray hair, and he wore a knit cap to keep his head warm. Pauly looked just like a homeless man who's seen better days. Well, I decided right then and there that I liked Pauly. I said, ‘No sir. Think I'm doing just fine right here.'

“Then I took a bite of the beans. Did I mention how nasty they were?”

The boys nodded. I crossed my arms over my middle, wanting him to get on with his story. Wanting to know why he was in prison, much less sampling the food there.

“Pauly said, ‘Got rules here. That's why you gotta move it. Now scat 'fore I get angry.' But I didn't flinch. Didn't move a muscle except to eat. Pauly sighed—he realized I wasn't going anywhere. That I was born stubborn, like my grandma used to say. So he said, ‘You gonna eat that cornbread?' That was Pauly's way of saying we were okay. And as good of friends as we could be, given where we were. I wanted the cornbread, oh yes, I did. It was the only decent thing on the plate. But I wanted Pauly to have it more. So I handed him my cornbread. Just then I felt this powerful presence come up behind me, and I heard a booming voice say, ‘Take a walk.'

“I glanced over my shoulder. Now, this brother was huge. ‘You talkin' to me, tubby?' Pauly asked him, and he kinda smiled. But then his smile disappeared and his eyes moved down a little. I turned again. ‘Tubby' had a shank in his hand, half hidden under the front of his shirt.

“I know you all know what a shank is. And Pauly knew too. He picked up his tray and slid out from his seat. ‘Yes sir,' he said. ‘I was just leaving.' Pauly didn't even turn around and look at me when he walked away.

“The big dude—his name was Big Mac—now this was one mean man. Built like a defensive lineman. He walked over and sat down where Pauly had been. Looked me dead in the eye. His entourage—his bunch of thug backups—stood around him, peering down on me like I was a mosquito that needed to be swatted.

“Big Mac pointed to something that had caught his attention, something behind me. He said, ‘See that?' And I turned to look . . .”

“What was it, Papa Joe?” Bernard asked.

“Y'all know who Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was, right?”

Everyone nodded. I looked over to Denise, who was taking care of the other children with Brick. She glanced over and smiled.

“Dr. King was killed by a man named James Earl Ray. What Big Mac was pointing to was an old, shackled prisoner being brought into the cafeteria by two armed guards. ‘That old man there,' Big Mac said. ‘That's James Earl Ray. Man who shot Dr. King. Every time I see his face, it reminds me there
cain't
be no peace between us and them, you got me? Dr. King was fool enough to dream it. And look where it got him.' Big Mac shook his head. He stood up. And then he leaned over, putting both of his giant hands flat down on the table. ‘You new here,' he said to me, ‘so I'm gonna let you off with a warnin'. Stay with yo' own kind, sheep. Or Big Mac's gonna have to put his hands on somebody.'”

“What did
you
say?” Macon asked, his voice quieter, more subdued than I'd ever heard it.

I knew how he felt. I was barely breathing at this point.

“I didn't say nothin', Macon,” Joe continued. “There's a time to talk and a time to keep your mouth shut. That was the time to keep my mouth shut.”

“Was there ever a time to talk?” Darren asked.

“Sort of.”

“What does
that
mean?” Macon asked, crossing his arms, leaning back against the table with the record player on top. I started to reach out, to protect it from getting knocked over, but I didn't want to interrupt Joe.

“It means, there was a time to
sing
. See, me and another prisoner—a brother named Grady—were in our cell block atrium. All the other prisoners were in their cells, blacks on one side, whites on the other, except Grady and me. Know why?”

“'Cause you were cool?” Macon asked.

I rolled my eyes.

“No. Because Grady and I had to mop the whole cell block. Upstairs. Downstairs. The guards were playing this hillbilly music . . .” He pointed to the album cover still in his hand. “. . . on a record player just like this one. Sitting on a table. Big speakers on either side. Grady
hated
this kind of music. And, I guess, he'd gotten a little tired of it. A little cranky. He said, ‘I can't listen to this trash no more! Can't a brotha get some r-e-s-p-e-c-t?'

“I looked up to where the guard tower was. It had a solid glass wall so they could watch our every move. Those two guards were snickering at Grady, and I could smell trouble. ‘Shut up, man,' I told him. ‘Just mop.'

“About that time one of the white prisoners—guy named Wesley—pressed his face up against the bars of his cell.”

Joe's face changed as he spoke. His words became whisper soft. It pained him to say these things. I understood. There were things about Billy, about his death, that I couldn't tell another living soul. Somehow Joe had managed to not only come to this point, but he was effectively sharing it with children. I couldn't imagine what he was about to say, but whatever it was, it carried more than just a bad memory; it carried a bad feeling.

“Wesley's head was shaved, and he had a big tattoo of a spider over his right ear. He liked chewing tobacco. That day he had a mouthful of chaw in his gums. He spit it between the bars, and it landed right where Grady had just mopped. ‘Hey,' he said to Grady. ‘You missed a spot.' Well, that did it for Grady. He dropped his mop and headed straight for that record player.

“‘Don't do it, man,' I told him.

“But Grady picked the needle up off the record player, anyway, scratching the record as he did.

“He shouted, ‘Take this, crackers!'”

Joe shook his head. He took in a deep breath through his nostrils, then blew it out his mouth. “That whole cell block went quiet, until one of the white prisoners started shaking the bars of his cell. Then another. And another. All of a sudden I hear the buzzer sound. Cell doors start opening. Only the white prisoners' cells, though. I looked back up to the tower. The guards had set to amusing themselves, and Grady and I were going to be the entertainment.”

I swallowed hard, wondering where this story was leading.

“Big scary tattooed white men. Shuffling toward Grady and me. The brothers were rattling the doors to their cells now. Shouting to get out. To protect their fellow brothers. Grady reached down and picked up his mop.” Joe chuckled. “Like that was gonna help. Some weapon a mop handle was against these guys. No more use against them than a rattlesnake. We started backing up.

“I said to Grady, ‘If we live through this, remind me to
kill
you later.' Then I took a deep breath and stepped toward the record player, real casual-like. Held up my hand like this . . .” Joe demonstrated a slight wave of the hand, as though he were saying, “Give me a minute here.”

“I put the needle back on the record. Put it on the second song and started singing along.
Darlin', I'm breakin' outta here today
. . .” Joe laughed. “Those white dudes didn't know what to think. How was it this brother knew the lyrics to a country song? But what they didn't know was about me and Miss Sam, you see. Country's all Sam and my other friends from childhood would listen to. Must-a heard that tune a thousand times.

“Next thing I know, I hear another man singing, and he's doing it even louder than me. It was Pauly.” Joe smiled. “He walked up next to me, and we sang a duet for our audience. Pauly got a little excited, though. He slammed his hand down on the table, the needle jumped off the record, and the whole thing shut down.

“Now Pauly and me are standing there—one white dude and one black brother—breathin' heavy and waitin' for someone to make the next move.”

I spoke without thinking, “Who did?” I blinked several times, my own voice bringing me back to the barn. I'd been so totally immersed in Joe's story, I hadn't noticed that all the children had joined us and were sitting at Joe's feet, listening. Denise and Brick stood close by, both nodding their approval.

Joe smiled at me. “Wesley. He steps up to me, sizes me up one side and down the other, and says, ‘Know any Hank Williams?'

“‘Know 'em all,' I told him. ‘Which one we doin'?'”

“Wesley was impressed. White dudes are laughing now. They're happy, and Grady is relieved to know he's going to live to see another day. Then the guards shouted, ‘Okay, ladies. That's enough. Back to your cells.' They'd had their entertainment, and the show was over.”

I turned to look inside the locker, to flip through some of Billy's old LPs, knowing somehow that it was time. Time to do what I hadn't been able to do for three years: put another record on the turntable.

I wrapped my fingers around the top of one of the albums, looked over at Joe, and found him looking straight at me.

“Maybe Miss Sam saved my life twice, come to think of it.”

I rolled my eyes while the children laughed.

I pulled the album from the stack and handed it slowly toward him. Doing this—allowing him to take the record—meant he'd want to play it as soon as he saw whose it was. He'd take the last record Billy had played and replace it with this one. I'd be letting go. Right here, with the children around me. And Denise and Brick and Joe. They'd have no idea, of course. No clue what it meant to me, doing this. What courage it would take.

“No way,” Joe said, taking the album from my hand.

As I expected, he slid the album from the cover and the sleeve, then carefully replaced the one from Billy's last evening in the barn.

I took in a sharp breath. Closed my eyes. Like removing a Band-Aid, in one quick moment, it was over.

“We gonna blow it
up
with this one here,” Joe said.

The children laughed loudly. I opened my eyes. Joe's fingers lightly dropped the needle to the vinyl. He turned up the volume, filling the barn with music.

“Yeah! C'mon, y'all!” Joe started wiggling around, popping himself on his hip like a bronco riding a wild horse. In no time the kids, Brick, and Denise were up and joining in, doing the same. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Fifteen black children, two black adults, and one white bus driver doing what might could have passed for the Virginia Reel. I brought my hands up to my lips. My fingertips rested on a smile I'd not realized had formed.

I started laughing then. Slowly at first, then with everything I had in me. Denise and Joe do-si-doed, surrounded by the children. Even quiet Keisha was jumping up and down, joining in the play without reservation.

Just then I heard my cell phone ring from the recesses of my coat pocket. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID.

Detective Miller.

He was calling me back.

Chapter Thirteen

I stepped outside
of the barn as quickly as I could, flipping my phone open as soon as I was away from the noise.

“Detective Miller?”

“Mrs. Crawford, I got your message concerning Anthony Jones . . .”

I took in a deep breath. This was it. I could tell by the tone of his voice he had something important to tell me. “So you ran the name?”