American rust (17 page)

8. Poe

I
t was daylight the next morning when Lee dropped Poe off at his mother's trailer, they said good- bye but he already felt distracted, he walked quickly to his room and changed into his work boots. After that he went down to the field carrying the sneakers he'd been wearing the night the Swede died, the box they'd come in, a can of gasoline. He doused the shoes and set them on fire. Maybe somewhere there was a receipt for them but no, he didn't save those sorts of things. Not that any of it would make any difference, if they had an eyewitness. He wondered if it was Jesús or the other one. There was no point thinking about it, he'd know soon enough.

He stood in the green field, waist- high in the goldenrod, looking out over things. The falling- down gray barn, way off on the far hill, he'd seen an old man go in it a few times, even glassed him through binocs once, but he'd never found out who the old man was. The man would be dead, probably, by the time Poe got out of prison, he would never see that old man again. He didn't even know the man, but it felt like a loss from his life. He wouldn't see the barn in the distance or these rolling hills either because if he went away any length of time his mother would sell the trailer and move. Things were changing right in front of his eyes, it would all stop existing, as far as he was concerned. He hadn't thought about it that way before. If they gave him the full sentence, he'd be older than his mother when he got out, twenty- five years from now anything could happen, civilizations on the moon, the prime of his life. Only the dregs left over and he had to be honest with himself, from what he'd seen the dregs were not good. No one then or now would want a forty- six-year- old man who'd spent half his life locked up. He would be alone. Of no use to anyone or himself Not to mention how quickly things happened these days, twenty- five years it would be like coming out of a timewarp, like the movie where they resurrect the caveman. Nothing would make any sense. That was if they didn't get the capital penalty. The injection. He didn't know. He needed to be clear with himself— going in for this, for the killing of the Swede, he was giving up his entire life. Those words, he thought, they sound just like other words, but you cannot even understand what they mean—giving up your life, there should be some other thing besides words that would describe it. A machine that would plug into your mind and give you the feeling. But it would be too much. No one would be able to handle it. You could only handle it little by little, you could not truly understand what that meant.

I am giving up my life, he said out loud. But still the words brought nothing to his mind, no description, only a very faint feeling, he might have been saying I would like a glass of milk.

He was not even the one that had killed the Swede. And the Swede had not even been doing anything, just standing there. If Isaac had killed the Mexican one, sure, maybe Poe could do time for that. But the Swede was just standing doing nothing. Except that was a lie. He was lying to himself. He was lying to himself so as not to go to prison, he knew that if Isaac hadn't killed the Swede then the other one, Jesús, would have cut his throat. There was no point pretending he didn't remember their names. It had come down to him or the Swede. Billy Poe or Otto Carson, a dead rotting body. Otto Carson's end being a necessary factor to his own continuation. Necessary condition, he thought. Meaning it is not on Isaac. It seemed hard to follow but it wasn't. He understood it better than he could say it. The words were no good; if anything, the more he thought about it, the more he talked with himself, the more he'd justify his way out of it. The truth, the truth that mattered, was that he, Poe, was responsible for killing the Swede. There were other truths too, things that were just as true, but this was the one that mattered.

He wanted to sit down awhile, memorize the view from the field, he had never quite seen things well enough, he was not like Isaac, and now time was short. He went back up to the house. He knocked on the door of his mother's bedroom. The room smelled of sleep and whiskey, she was lying on the bed in her nightgown, her thick legs slightly spread, the blankets twisted all around her. He rearranged the sheets to cover her more and then sat down next to her.

“Come here,” she mumbled. He lay down in the bed and turned his back to her and she hugged him like that. You're acting like a little kid, he thought. He didn't care. Then he must have fallen asleep because there was an insistent hammering sound that he didn't want to think about and finally someone pushed the bedroom door open. Poe opened his eyes and it was Bud Harris. He was leaning over the bed, he put his hand on Poe's shoulder and Poe flinched away from his touch.

“Come on, buddy,” said Harris. “Time to go.”

He could see Harris looking at his mother and he sat up immediately, then stood up so Harris had to move back and his view of Poe's mother was blocked.

“I've been knocking out there five minutes,” said Harris.

“Alright,” Poe told him. “I'll be out.”

He heard Harris go outside, the front door slamming, and he sat up and put his boots back on. There was no point in preparing—whatever he brought they would take. Maybe he should have taken a shower, probably be the last time he could shower alone, but there was Lee's smell still on him, he'd heard stories about men in prison, a guy's wife visiting and sticking her fingers down there and then offering the fingers to her husband to smell, or something like that, the closest the husband could get. He'd always thought those stories were exaggerated but now he could imagine that very clearly.

“You need to be getting ready,” said his mother. She was sitting up now in her oversize T-shirt. “You need to help him.”

“I will,” he said to her.

Outside, he found Harris was waiting by the Explorer.

“I'm ready.” But they couldn't leave until his mother came out and said good- bye, and he wanted to be gone, in the truck and moving, get it over as quickly as possible, he did not want to look at this place any longer, it would only make things worse, it seemed as if he might start crying at any minute and he didn't want Harris to see him that way. He tried to get into the truck but Harris said:

“Wait for your mother to come and see you off properly.”

He stood there, he tried closing his eyes but it didn't make it any better. Finally his mother came out in sweatpants and a coat and hugged him again and he closed his eyes to try to dry them.

“Listen to him,” his mother said to Poe. “Do what he says.”

Poe nodded and choked something down. Harris fumbled with something inside the truck, pretended not to notice.

“Take care of him,” his mother told Harris.

“Call me tonight, Grace,” Harris said.

Poe watched his mother look at Harris, something passing between them.

Then Harris motioned him into the front seat. They were nearly to the main road when he pulled the truck over.

“You'll have to ride in the back,” he said. “I didn't want her to see you like that but the staties might be waiting when we get to the station so I'll need to cuff you, too.”

Poe let himself be handcuffed and put in the passenger area of the truck, behind the partition. Somehow it calmed him down.

“You know how serious this is, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did that English boy have anything to do with what happened? I went over there this morning and his father told me he took off two days ago and they haven't seen him since.”

“Nah,” said Poe.

Harris shook his head. “This DA is gonna eat you up. Knows what you'll say before the words come out of your mouth.”

“I ain't dumb.”

“Actually” said Harris. “You are dumb. You need to remember that before this gets any worse, if that's even possible.”

“Whatever you say.”

“You should have come to me. None of this would be happening.”

He could see that Harris was angry. Then he was angry at Harris.

“I see you looking at me,” said Harris, “but if this witness gets you out of the lineup, and it sounds like he will, you're up shit's creek. Twenty- five years if you're lucky but like I said this DA is hot for a capital case to get his career moving and he's betting you might be his ticket. I'm not saying he'll get it, it'll be a hard sell to a jury but he'll push for it. Just so you know, this is a very smart man who's going to be working his ass off to get you into the death chamber.” He paused a minute. “You,” he said again. “Not someone else, but you. Billy Poe.”

“What's the witness saying?”

“That the little guy, who I presume is Isaac English, saw a fight brewing and took off. That you stuck around and started a fight and smashed the witness in the head and when he woke up you'd smashed his friend Otto Carson in the head, too, only a lot harder. His friend who is now dead.”

“What about the third one, who was holding the knife to me?”

“There wasn't any talk about a knife. And if there's a third one, he's probably in Kansas by now because there's not many people dumb enough to get mixed up in this.”

“His name was Jesús. Like I said, he put a knife to my neck.”

“Well that ain't what the witness saw.”

“Well what the witness is saying isn't what happened but I guess it's settled then.”

“For your mother's sake you need to talk to me, because that's the only way we're going to have a chance.”

Poe was quiet and he thought all you'd be telling him is the truth but then he reminded himself that it would not be the truth.

They went along the river road, the glare coming off the water made it too much to look at, greenness everywhere there was so much growing, there was a person out trawling, a small boat, a retired person in his years of ease.

Harris continued: “You know I got her a job in Philadelphia. Senior executive assistant at the State's Attorney's Office. Which is kind of ironic, given your situation, but either way she would have gotten thirty-four thousand a year, pension, I got the job lined up for her but you were doing good playing ball and she wasn't ready to separate you from your father. I tried to use logic on her, point out you could play ball anywhere and as for your father he's made about two child support payments in his life. That was six years ago, when you were a freshman. She'd said she'd leave when you went to college but then you were still living at home, sponging off her, couldn't even keep your hours as a stockboy”

“The owner laid everyone off,” Poe said. He was numb to Harris. They were coming into town. He didn't want to be getting a lecture now, he wanted Harris to tell him what to say to the state police.

“Your mother is a good woman,” said Harris. “You got no idea how many chances you've gotten because of her.”

“My mother is married.”

“Please,” said Harris. “Your father's diddled half the girls in town. Miracle you don't have twenty brothers and sisters.”

“You're a real piece of shit, you know that?”

They pulled into the police station parking lot but Harris didn't move to get out. He said, “Billy, do you remember all those times you and your football buddies got arrested for public consumption?”

Poe snorted. “I never got busted for that,” he said.

“Huh. I wonder. What about the time one of my guys pulled you over doing seventy in a thirty, too drunk to even remember to throw your empties out the window? Or even, let me see if I remember this correctly—you hit a young man in the head with a baseball bat, after he'd already gone down and was no longer a threat to you or anyone else, but still you got off with probation.”

Poe didn't say anything.

“Thought you were just that lucky, huh?”

“I don't need to hear this right now.”

“You aren't lucky. You're spoiled and you're stupid and I've been bending over backwards the last seven or eight years to keep you in one piece.”

“You're just trying to make yourself feel better.”

“You got too much of your father in you. And that is a goddamn shame for all of us, especially your mother.”

“You're lucky I'm back here,” said Poe. “You're lucky there's a fuckin wall right now.”

“Save that shit for the lockup,” Harris told him. “I'll pretty much guarantee you'll need it.”

Harris got out of the truck and opened Poe's door and led him into the building. The fat cop, Ho, was sitting at the same desk, as if he hadn't moved in the last twenty- four hours.

“The staties here?”

“No,” Ho said. “Their chief dickhead called and they want us to drive him to Uniontown.”

“Get his picture and prints,” said Harris, motioning to Poe.

Harris disappeared and the other cop led Poe into a small white room with a waist- high shelf. Poe expected the short Chinese cop to be rough but he wasn't.

“Make your hands loose and let me roll your fingers. If you smear them I'll just have to do it again.”

“I ain't smearing them.”

Harris stuck his head in.

“Before you get this asshole's picture send him to the bathroom to shave and get cleaned up. The other asshole's gonna plaster it all over the newspapers, guaranteed.”

Harris looked at Poe: “From here on out if anyone tries to ask you anything, you say
‘Lawyer.’
They ask you if the sky is blue, you don't say yes, you say
lawyer.
They ask you who the president is, you know what you say?”

“Lawyer.”

The deputy stood outside the bathroom while Poe shaved and then they took four sets of mugshots until Harris was satisfied with the picture. There's the schoolboy look, he said. Then they got back into Harris's truck and headed to Uniontown, the county seat. At least this time Harris didn't make him wear handcuffs. They didn't talk; he guessed Harris was doing him a favor now, taking the long way because he wouldn't see any of it again. The valley got a little flatter as they got south of Brownsville, when they got to the ferry in Fredericktown the river was nearly clear instead of brown, it was strange seeing the Mon that color. Usually the ferry driver made you wait until there was a full boat, six cars, but they just drove Harris across, there was only one other car on the boat and the ferry driver looked Poe over, ignorant fucking hick he was just staring at him, he looked about seventeen or so Poe wanted to get out and beat his skull in but he noticed the people in the other car staring at him too, it was a father and some little kid, Poe could tell that the kid was probably getting a lecture from his old man about what happens if you don't follow the rules. Poe being the example. He just looked at the floor of the truck, it was lined with rubber for easy cleanup. There was a bump as the ferry touched the other bank, and then they were driving again.