Do Not Pass Go (15 page)

“Not really. But I don't say anything. I just do what they say. I know I'll be grown up in a few years. But Billy would fight them all the way. He called them hypocrites.”

Deet scowled, trying to imagine Sheena's life.

“What are
your
folks like?” she asked.

Deet could see one of those Christmas pictures Dad took every year. A little out of focus, but nice just the same. He looked at the table before he answered, afraid he was going to say something stupid.

“I used to think they were like kids, kind of disorganized and all. Well, they
are
like that. But they're good-natured. And happy. And they really like kids.”

Sheena looked at him sadly. “I thought so,” she said. “Your dad looks so kind.” Deet noticed that Sheena's face was smooth and calm, but she hardly ever smiled. Her smile was a widening of the eyes, a tightening around the forehead. Maybe she'd better learn to smile before it was too late.

“How much time did they give him?”

“You have to wait for the sentencing to know that. He'll be sentenced in a month or two.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Deet. “I forgot. That's a long time to wait to see what's going to happen to you.”

He had a sudden suspicion. “You didn't go to the trial, did you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I took the day off from school.”

Deet felt ashamed. Sheena was the bravest person he'd ever known. He'd been afraid to go to the jail. He'd never be able to go to Dad's trial.

Deet crumpled up his napkin and thrust it into the paper bag. “What was it like?” he asked, finally.

“They brought him in in handcuffs. And shackles. On his legs.”

Deet looked at his bag. “I saw Dad like that too. They were taking him out of the prison van.” He tried to get that picture out of his mind as soon as it popped in. “Did your folks—”

“No,” Sheena interrupted. “They would never. The worst part was when the lawyer and the judge talked about him as if he was this low, disgusting person. I felt like jumping up and saying, You don't even know him. You don't know how funny and good he can be. You don't know what he was like before.”

She looked at Deet with such sorrow that his throat ached.

She stood up and gathered her books together. “See you later,” she said.

That afternoon, when he and Sheena were waiting for Rhonda to let them in, they watched two little kids playing jail. “I'm having a contact visit,” said one, and the other searched her all over just like a guard.

“Little kids,” said Sheena. “Nothing bothers them.
Like kids you see on TV, like in a war zone. Playing around all those tanks and things. Soldiers with guns.”

“My sisters,” said Deet. “They didn't miss a beat. They miss my dad, but they didn't go into overdrive or anything. All the little kids who come in here to visit are like that. I guess you have to be as old as us to be ashamed.” He thought a minute. Of course it helped that no one at school had ever said anything to the girls—little kids probably wouldn't know anything, anyway—and because P. J. and Jam still bought the story about the headlight.

Deet pointed out the old black man who always laughed and joked with his daughter.

“I like his face,” said Deet. “George Orwell said at fifty you have the face you deserve.” Sheena gave him a look, so he told her about Mr. Hodges's class and the quotations. He showed her his quotations notebook.

Sheena flipped through the pages and finally looked up. “This is so great,” she said. “Can I take this and read it?” He looked at her, startled, and she said quickly, “Well, maybe it's too personal. I understand.”

“No,” said Deet. “No. I'd like to have you read it.
Mr. Hodges writes a lot of neat stuff. He used to work in this jail.”

“You write about
jail?
”

“Well, yeah. It's kind of on my mind right now.”

“That's so cool. I don't have anyone to talk to about it.” She paused a minute. Then she said, “Except you.”

Sheena was popular, had always had a lot of friends around her. “What about those girls you hang out with?” Sheena ran her hands through her hair, her face suddenly hard. “They stop talking when I come into the bathroom. Throw little looks at each other, talk in this fakey-sweet voice. They
enjoy
people's troubles.” Deet knew how that would be. He was glad he was a loner.

“You know how they have this group for kids whose parents are alcoholics?” said Sheena. “They should have something like that for kids with someone in jail. So they'd have someone to talk to too.”

“Yeah,” said Deet. It was a good idea.

The visiting room was crowded that day: Meghan and Ian and their grandma, the old couple Deet had seen on the first day, visiting the Eskimo boy, Michael
and his mom, the old black man, and Big Henry's enormous family. They were like old friends now to Sheena and Deet.

Dad was looking better these days, now that he'd gone to work. Not so pinched. Deet asked him about the laundry job, and then they talked about the book Dad was reading,
The Grapes of Wrath
. Deet hadn't read it yet. In that book the hero goes to jail for killing someone. Dad thought it was great.

Deet could hardly believe he was talking to Dad about books.

Just before it was time to go, one of the prisoners passing by the back window stopped and waved at Deet. Dad turned around to see what Deet was looking at.

Dad smiled. “That's Ronny,” he said to Deet. Ronny mimed shuffling cards for Dad, and Dad gave Ronny the thumbs-up sign. “He's saying we'll have a game of cards before dinner tonight,” Dad explained.

Deet stared hard at Ronny, he'd wanted so long to see him. A short guy with curly dark hair falling in his face and a brilliant, happy smile. Ronny waved good-bye and Deet waved back before the guard made
Ronny move past the window. Deet and Dad stared for a minute at the window where Ronny had been, both smiling. It was true what Dad had said. Ronny had a sort of cheering effect on people. Somehow he made you feel good.

“Doesn't he ever have any visitors?”

“Not a one,” said Dad.

Some days everything seemed
to go wrong. The washing machine developed a leak and spewed suds all over the floor, the damper on the wood stove was wobbly and nearly smoked them out sometimes, the water pipes had to be thawed with a hair dryer a few times because they didn't know how to baby them the way Dad did when it was cold.

Dad went nearly frantic when things were going wrong at the house, so Deet and his mom agreed that they just wouldn't tell him about any problems that came up. That was hard to do, because they needed to ask questions about how to do this or that, but as soon as they did Dad would nearly jump out of his skin at having to talk about how to do something, instead of just doing it.

But one morning the car wouldn't start. Bingo and
all the guys at the shop had said they'd look after things, just call, but so far Deet and his mom hadn't done that.

First of all, they were kind of ashamed to, because after all, it wasn't as if Dad were sick. And second of all, they knew it would make Dad feel bad if they got the guys to help them, especially if they had to take time out from work.

But Mom had to get to work, and they sure couldn't afford to pay the wrecker to take it to the shop, so Mom called Bingo to come and look at it.

Bingo said he'd be over at noon, so Mom called Sally to ask for a ride to work. Deet decided he'd stay home from school that morning to give Bingo a hand.

When Deet opened the door for Bingo he felt a surge of happiness, just like he was a little kid again, when he'd go to the shop and Bingo would take a candy bar out of his toolbox, or stick him up in a car that was going up on the lift. There was Bingo on the porch, undiminished, carrying his huge toolbox. His very bulk was comforting, all the rings of fat over his belt, the pads of flesh under his eyes. Deet was smiling so hard his cheeks felt funny.

Deet followed Bingo into the kitchen. “Mom said to give you coffee before you started.”

“That's a good woman,” said Bingo. “She knows how important coffee is.”

Bingo hung his parka on one of the hooks by the door, then sat down at the kitchen table. He watched Deet pour the coffee.

“Hey,” said Bingo, “we really miss you down at the shop.”

“Yeah, I miss coming, too,” said Deet.

“Well, this will all be over pretty soon, and things can go back to normal,” Bingo said.

“Yeah,” said Deet.

“You're looking kind of skinny,” said Bingo.

Deet smiled. “Well, I'm doing the cooking now, and I don't eat as much when I cook as when Mom does.”

Bingo made a horrified face. “I guess I'd get skinny on my own cooking too! Good thing Mary does all that.”

He took a big slug out of his cup and asked for an ashtray. When he'd lit his cigarette he asked, “How's Charley doing?”

“Okay. He's got a job in the laundry.”

Bingo brooded over his coffee. “I'd go crazy if they locked me up.”

“Maybe it's not as bad as you think.”

Bingo made a
yeah, right
face.

“You should see how people laugh and all. It's not like everyone's all miserable and depressed all the time.”

“That's just how people are,” said Bingo. “When I went to Vietnam I was scared to death at first, and I couldn't get over how everyone else acted. Laughing all the time. It took me a while to figure out they were just as scared as I was. But people anywhere make fun of their situation. Gallows humor, they call it. Guy making jokes on the way to his hanging.”

He exhaled noisily and squinted at Deet through the smoke.

“You mad at him?”

No one had asked Deet that before. He felt a jolt of shame, remembering the rage he'd felt when Mom had first told him.

Deet wiped his hands on his pants as if he was
getting rid of that memory. He didn't want to tell the truth, but you couldn't lie to Bingo.

“I was at first. I was ashamed. You know, the papers and all.”

Bingo nodded.

“Then I just started feeling sorry for him and scared for him. Like he was going to be in with a lot of bad guys and get beat up and all that. And that was crazy. It's not like that, not like the movies. But what you find out is that it's so easy to get in trouble. Just one day something goes wrong and there you are. Now it seems to me like it could happen to anyone. I know there are some really bad people, you know, people who torture some guy because he's black or gay or something, and Dad says some of the younger guys like to act real tough, but I think most people in jail are just—unlucky, I guess.”

Bingo reached over and ruffled Deet's hair, something he hadn't done since Deet was a little kid. “You know, you're an all right kid,” he said.

After Bingo had the car up and running, Deet went to his desk and tried to find something in the quotation
book that could describe someone like Bingo. He couldn't find exactly what he had in mind, but he found this one:

Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.

Lots of times when something bad happens, people say the wrong thing. Things like, Oh well, it could have been worse, or things will look brighter in a few days, or something like that. That's not what you want to hear. You want to hear them say that's the most horrible thing I ever heard of! I don't know how you can stand it.

—CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Or maybe they will lecture you like, you shouldn't have done that, or that was really stupid, or something like that. If you've done something stupid you already know it, and you don't need anyone else telling you that.

But we are really lucky. Most of the things people say to us about Dad being in jail are not
like that. Like Bingo, who doesn't try to act like what Dad's going through is nothing, to make you feel better. He says right out that he'd go crazy if he was locked up in jail. You might not think that would make you feel better, but it does, because you know Bingo is really feeling for Dad. Nearly everyone we know is like that. They say the right things.

When Mom got home from seeing Dad on Sunday, she was full of the stuff she'd seen and heard in the jail that day. When Deet thought how she'd hated the place at first, he had to laugh. Now it was her favorite social scene. She had friends, and she knew the stories of nearly all the people who had been there for a while.

She'd done her grocery shopping after she'd visited Dad and was dashing about the kitchen, putting things away while she told him the jail news.

“Ronny got out today. Dad says he'll miss him, but he's really glad for him. He'll be on parole for a year, but he already has a job waiting for him, and he's going to take his little girl out of foster care and start to live like a real person.”