Chapter 17
Seventeen
Van and Donna flew back to the panhandle on the Friday before Christmas. Allie was already gone, had left for Texas after
taking her last final in the middle of the week.
“Are you going to have Christmas with anyone?” Allie had wanted to know. Allie loved Christmas, had worn Christmas sweaters all month long, and attended choir practice
at the campus chapel like it was a full-time job. Arthur could see it horrified her, the thought that he’d spend the holiday
alone in his off-campus apartment.
“He’s going to spend it with me,” Colin said, putting an arm over Arthur’s shoulders. “We’re going to drink my granddad’s
oldest whiskey and I’m going to beat his ass at chess.”
“I’d have to drink quite a bit before I start losing to you, Colin,” Arthur said. He felt a glow of happy warmth spreading
through his chest, as if he had already had his first swallow of Scotch. It was the first he knew he was expected at The Briars
on Christmas morning, the first he knew he had something to look forward to.
He had made no firm plans beyond visiting his mother on Christmas Eve. He pointed the Christmobile toward Black Cricket early
on the morning of the twenty-fourth. The defroster labored on full but couldn’t keep up with the bitter cold outside. Arthur
didn’t see the Ranchero behind him until he was halfway to Black Cricket, and then he couldn’t stop glancing at it in the
rearview mirror.
The Ranchero rolled into an empty slot while he was walking toward the visitor’s entrance. He looked back, waiting for Jayne
and Ronnie to get out, but the truck just sat there. The sun glanced off the windshield in a dazzling blue glare, obscuring
everything behind it.
He scuffed into the waiting room and made his way to the security window.
“’S not happening today, kid,” said the CO behind the glass. “I’m real sorry. Your mother was moved to isolation this morning.
Fight in the cafeteria.”
“My mother . . . got in a fight?” Arthur said. “My mother is a pacifist.”
“Oh, yeah? That why she’s in here? Too much pacifism?”
“Has she been hurt?” In his mind’s eye he saw a close-up of someone pounding the shiv into the small of her back, once, twice,
a third time, thump, thump, thump.
“If she was hurt, she wouldn’t be in isolation, she’d be in the infirmary.”
He forced the vision of a lunch-hall knifing out of his head. “Ma’am, I drove three hours to see her. It’s Christmas tomorrow.”
“I hear you. I get it. You must be crushed. I would be too.” And she sounded like she meant it. “But there was an incident
in the cafeteria and your ma was right in the middle of it. A search of her cell produced contraband—”
“What contraband?” Arthur asked.
“I’m not free to share that information.”
“Please. What contraband?”
The guard tapped the clipboard against the edge of the desk. “A spoon with the handle sharpened to a blade.”
Arthur was aware of a bitter taste in his mouth, as if he had just bitten down on copper wire.
“I will tell you,” the guard said, “the fight is one thing, fights happen. A knife is another. It’s sure to come up in her
parole hearing. I’m real sorry.”
She was still talking when Arthur pivoted on his heel and headed for the exit. He punched through the Plexiglas doors and
plunged into the bitter, stinging cold. The Ranchero idled, a hundred feet away.
“You happy?” Arthur shouted.
The Ranchero began to creep forward. He stalked toward it, but it was already turning away from him in a slow U.
“You happy, motherfuckers?” he shouted again, but the Ranchero was accelerating now, back toward the security checkpoint and the state highway. He couldn’t read the no free rides bumper sticker—it was hidden under months of road filth—but it didn’t matter, he got the message all the same.