Deep in the Heart of Me (31 page)

It’s a silly thing, that sidecar. When I ride in it, the wind tries to tear the hair off my head. That's one thing about Illinois, the wind. When I take the goggles off, my face is a little dirty around them and burned quite red, and I look like a raccoon with all the blood shut off from around my eyes. So I'm glad we travel to Springfield in my father's Ford.

We leave the night before. Miss Rivers handles everything. I am not used to this…to trust. My father took care of things before that. But I didn't trust. I couldn't.

He garnered sympathy. I…garnered sympathy. We were the Job story. A man who lost his wife and had his daughter taken away. I don't want to be that story now, that sad girl that makes people talk behind their hands.

When Tonio leaves the farm, I make myself get up, and I wash and comb my ruined hair.

"It will grow again," Miss Rivers says. She is still surprised I chopped it off. As surprised as me. She works to make it even. I pull the cap back over my head.

That night before we see the judge we sleep in a hotel and in the morning we are quiet as I sit in the dining room with Miss Rivers, and she sips coffee, and I look out the window and think of Tonio and how brave he is, and how he must go free and live his life in his grand way with me or without. He must go free.

He's good inside—Antonio. He's a good heart.

I would say that when I was a child, lining up my toy knights for toy battle. The Good Hearts against the Black Hearts.

Tonio is a good heart all the way through.

"Sobe," she says, "I was wondering...I could speak to the judge about proceedings to be your guardian."

I look at her. She has a long face, and hair, shorter than mine, a neat side part and the bottoms of her ears show and inside she is kind, very organized, but so terribly lonely. Lonelier than me, I think, as lonely as my mother was…before.

It feels like a weight. "I…don't have any money," I say. Whatever my father had was eaten up a long time ago.

She laughs. "I have money. I told you that. I'm not rich, but comfortable. I'm very comfortable."

"Thank you," I whisper. But I don't know yet. I just don't know.

I don't think she's ever been in love. And if she has…not like this…like me. I don't think she'll understand. I can't take a deep breath until I know he's free.

The judge in Springfield has a black heart inside of him. He knew of my father, his distinguished career, his change after the kidnapping, the thing that broke him and made him crawl away.

He is also from Ohio. He is angry for my father’s ‘murder.’

I try to tell him how it was, but I don't matter on my own. So Tonio doesn't matter. Just my father matters. Just him.

He is stern when he questions me. I tell him everything. How my father grew confused and thought I was my mother.

He says I couldn't know that. That a daughter saying that against her father is very serious, very slanderous.

Miss Rivers tries to help, and he makes her sit in the back, against the wall.

"I had my first kiss from my father," I say. "Like he'd kiss my mother if she…if he could have."

He moves in his chair. "We are talking about this case, and you'll not try to use all kinds of subterfuge in your defense young woman." He is angry and stern.

I tell him how Dad found me the evening he died, how he knew I was going on an outing with Tonio. How Tonio came to the station in search of me because he knew my dad wasn't right.

The judge tries to turn it around. He asks if Tonio was angry. Was it a showdown?

"My father had locked me up," I say.

"Well," the judge says, "you were his minor daughter trying to run away…or be coerced. You'd already been taken once. Now two ruffians barge into the jail, one with a weapon. Your father was only doing what any good father would do."

"But he shot Pat on sight," I say.

But it travels back to the same idea that Pat was trying to help take me when I know Pat testified differently.

I argue my story. I tell it firmly and in detail, how he shot Pat, and that's when Tonio drew his gun and held Dad off, and we begged Dad to put down the gun, and Tonio shot him, to stop him, and how they struggled and struggled so terribly and the gun went off, but it wasn't an attempt to kill. How my father wanted to die. How my father used Tonio…to die.

"If Antonio Clannan was on the up, he shouldn't have been sneaking around trying to lure away a man's daughter and he sure as Christmas shouldn't have been armed," the judge says.

"But if Tonio had not been armed he would have died," I say. "I knew that. He would have died…we would have died. Dad had already decided that. I felt that decision in him when he locked me up."

"You don't know that," the judge said.

"I had been taken. Held for days in a stinking dark room. My mother shot before my eyes," I say. "Didn't you know? Dad had decided to kill. That's why he shot Pat. He wasn't going to be around for punishment. He'd already decided to die. He would take us with him. Anyone who got in his way. Didn't you know when someone decides to kill you, you feel it?"

He stares at me. The judge stares.

"Then you weren't in the room when they decided to kill my mother. You don't know how it feels, that's all. Growing up in prison, you learn. My father said that he said to listen to your instincts. He told that to my mother, and he told that to me."

"Did your instincts tell you to deceive your father, to try and run off with a boy who wasn't afraid to use a gun on him?"

"That's not how it was. I always felt safe with Tonio," I say. "If you punish him then punish me. We only wanted to live. He fought a man who wanted to kill himself and take others with him, innocent others. If it weren't for Tonio, I would be dead. Pat would be dead because Tonio would also be dead. You have to understand. You have to listen to me. My father was sick."

"Your father is dead," he says.

When men in authority don't want to hear, you know that. I have felt that too, with my father, with the men who kidnapped my mother and me, and now with this judge.

I leave the room knowing this man will be hard on Tonio. Maybe I have done some good in letting him know there was no intention on Tonio's part to kill. But he isn't going to let him walk away when a lawman is dead. It hits too close. I know that. It hits too close.

We walk out of the office, and Tonio is standing in the hall.

Love fills me. And fear. And sorrow.

I want to yell, "Run."

I see his father. They are alike. Strong and…hopeful. Good Hearts.

We touch like butterflies. I feel him being taken away. I feel that the nails are not yet driven through his hands and feet. I know he will pay for being close to me, a girl so poisonous, a girl who keeps escaping death as death comes to all around her.

Don't love me, Tonio, my Tonio, my love. Don't love a girl like me. Don't love me Tonio.

But if you don't…I will die.

Things clang here and pump and whirr. It's gotten so cold outside, and snow has fallen. In here it is dusty and too hot when they fill the stove or freezing when the fire burns down.

We wear our second pair of socks over our shoes and our first pair of socks. We wear gloves with the fingers cut off so we can move the material when we sew. We keep caps on our heads and tie knit scarves around our throats.

In the Great War, Dad said they lived outside. I remember him tying a scarf around my neck and telling me this when I was young. "If you keep your neck warm, and the top of your head, if you do that, you can live at the North Pole, boyo."

I was young enough to ask him if Santa wore a scarf. I remember his laugh.

I haven't seen him, not since that first day. I can't think too much on him. It doesn't serve me here.

I have been here a week, and my shirts are improving. Boss says they are the best, but he says it mean to stir the others, to provoke them. See, that's how they do it around here, they try and pit us against each other. So right off I see the trouble.

And I keep my mouth shut in the classroom. The teacher seems to read for his own amusement. I think he's found a way to try and stand the job he's signed up for. We're on part nine of Ulysses, but I'm getting sucked in. I have questions, especially since I missed so much, but I won't ask them. Not in a million years.

Far as I can tell, Ass-brain is top of the small heap. Small heap being the boys. He's the ceiling over this pile, and he's strong, and he rules. I've no wish to replace him. I want no part of him or his kingdom.

But comes to making shirts, I don't hold back. First week I go from side seams to front seams. I turn the folded piece that runs down the front of the shirt and sew it precisely.

Boss likes it so much I learn how to set sleeves. I'm telling you, it's not hard. Not for me.

Ass-brains doesn't show me the sleeve. Boss says, and he says it directly to him, that he can't sew for shit. He has a younger boy show me, a frail boy Clifford Jones.

I catch on quick. "Look at that," Boss goads Ass.

Ass is really called Shad. I think it's short for Shadrach, but I'm just guessing. Shadow, maybe. Boss's shadow.

First off Boss watches over my shoulder and leaves things to Ass-brain when he wants to go for a walk. I don't know where he can walk in three feet of snow, but he goes off pretty regular, more to take a nap is my guess.

So I'm sewing away when I get hit back of the head. I'm not expecting it, but I'm kind of holding myself stiff cause I'm still learning but even so my head moves forward, and pain shoots up my neck.

I look at Shad, but I don't say anything to him. He'd go at me now if he could get by with it. They got a place here, a place they lock you up by yourself called solitary. Boys who fight without permission go there. They got a time for fighting, that's what I hear. Boys can get permission for it and go. But you do it on work time the guards have a go at you.

"Fucker," Shad says, and he goes on by. I know that look. I know hate. He wants revenge. I know it's coming.

I been in a couple weeks and we're up against the first Sunday of December—visiting day. I'm trying not to expect anything because I know that's best. Wanting things, that can get you in trouble, and so far I'm making it okay. But I'm hungry. I'm not used to it like some of the others. I drink lots of water and coffee sometimes, but it's a treat so we don't always get some. But if I do, coffee kills my appetite for a spell.

So this night I'm tired as heck. I help milk on weekends. They had us muck out, called all of us to it, moving cattle, too.

I ain't thinking beyond one day. Dad says they got through the war that way. That day, that moment even, it's all that mattered. One meal to the next, one piss to the next, one shut-eye to the next. I always hit the bed tired. That's what I know.

I hear it. I don't know what it is at first. Well, they mess around at night. Ass-brains is in another bunkhouse. In here it's mostly younger boys, a year or two younger than me. They're curious about where I came from and if I saw the Cardinals play. They talk ballgames forever. They lie and brag. They tell horrible stories of what they've been through, but you never know.

So I hear it, the moving around and then I feel it coming my way, and I roll over because my back is to it.

But I get grabbed before I can turn.

I get grabbed and dragged. I fight hard at first, throw three of them off. It's him and his, that Shad.

I don't ask. I'm just staring, and they pause for a minute.

Shad says, "Get him." And they do, but I don't make it easy. But they are four, two big as me. I see some of the others, boys I bunk here with. Their eyes are big, but they don't help. They're scared.

They drag me into the shower room. They get me on the floor there, and the slick boards that don't dry out, but freeze some until the hot water hits them if the pipes aren't frozen.

I hold up my head to keep my face off the scum. There's a knee in my back, and I'm held everywhere. Someone rubs soap in my mouth so I turn my head and spit but those big hands are there too, and more soap.

"You think you're better than me?" Shad says, and I realize he's doing the smearing over my mouth.

I bite the shit out of one of his fat fingers, and he grabs my hair and side of my face against the floor, someone pushing on my neck, I don't leave off, and his blood is in my mouth. And he's cursing, and I got my eyes closed, and I'm getting hit from everywhere, and I bite, I bite.

I wake up with a couple of the boys from around here pulling on me. They've turned the water on me too, and I get on my feet and see red running in the drain. I spit, and a chunk of something lands on the drain. I'd been holding that in my mouth. I touch it with my toe and…it's skin? And I get sick to my stomach, and I retch a few times, and I stay under that freezing cold water and let it hit the back of my neck and roll through my hair. I don't know what I've done exactly.

Boss and a couple of others come for me. They are none too happy at all. They say I bit off Shad's finger, and I'm not saying anything. They take me into where my bed is, and my long johns are dripping, and I have to stick my feet in my boots.

One of them throws my coat at me, and I put it on, and I grab my clothes and follow them out, and they march me across the grounds in fresh snow falling pretty thick. I go in that building the others told me about. They pull a heavy metal door, and we go down to the cellar, and there are three or four doors along the wall, and they pull one, and it's a solid door with a tiny window they can slide open.

I get in that cell I heard so much about, and the door closes after, and I'm standing there, sore and wet and cold. I'm gasping, and there's a cot there and a blanket.

I sit on the cot and pull my feet out of my boots and wrap the blanket around me. I'm shivering so badly I can barely sit still.

Tomorrow is first Sunday of the month, and I thought they might come…someone.

Who did I want to see? All of them. None of them here. None of them. I don't want these others to even know they exist—my family—my Sobe.

I close my eyes, and I think of the farm, me and Sobe under the Pecan trees, and I pick up some nuts lying on the ground, and I roll them together and give her the meats like that one time. I think of her face, not just like in the picture but in real. I swear I can see her so clear, her soft, smooth skin and her eyes, so deep, and her lips…she's smiling. For me. I just hold her, the image so real, I hold her… and I float…and I swear she's holding onto me.