we all live in one kind of prison or another. Mine was my head.
Following the Google map I’d printed earlier in the week, I drove my white Toyota Corolla down the Riverside Freeway and caught the 15 headed north, cursing at the trucks when they barreled down my tailpipe or pushed me to the shoulder. But the hour drive with all of its hazards didn’t distract me from a larger reality pressing in on me.
I’d just ground up a finger and rinsed it down the drain. Maybe Danny’s finger.
It’s difficult to express just how much I loved him. He was my rock, my adviser, my lover in better times. I leaned on him for everything and he seemed to return the favor.
Take my job, or lack thereof. At twenty-seven years old I ought to have had a decent job, and believe me, I’d given it a shot. Not because I needed the money—Danny had given me enough to buy the two-bedroom condo in a quiet corner of an upscale complex and live without working for seven years. I needed a job because we both knew I had to find a way to enter a thriving social context if I didn’t want to go nuts.
During one of my weekly visits to Ironwood, Danny suggested I try something that didn’t require too much interaction with complaining customers, and ease into the workplace that way.
“Like what?” I asked.
He shrugged across the table and gave me one of his crazy, blue-eyed grins. “Like a night watchman. Put your skills to good use.”
I sat up. “Seriously?”
His grin faded. “No, not seriously. It was a joke.”
“But I could do that!”
“You couldn’t do that. I was just having fun.”
“No, I could. The only people I would have to worry about would be the ones looking down my barrel.”
Now his face was flat, that determined expression he uses when he wants to cut to the chase. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re tiny. The first thug that comes along weighing three hundred pounds would smash you flat.”
“You’re saying I don’t have what it takes?”
“I’m only saying that you’d be putting yourself in the way of danger. Please, Renee, do not consider this. For my sake if not for yours.”
See, I liked that Danny tried to care for me even while locked up. And while a part of me loved the idea of going up against a three-hundred-pound thug who might crush me if he tripped in my direction, the thought of using a gun again did bother me some. And I was a bit small to do any real business with a nightstick, if that was all they gave me.
“Then what else could I do at night?” I asked.
“Anything, I suppose. Drive a truck.”
“You’re serious?”
“No, not really. Just trying to—”
“That’s it! I could drive a truck. Right? One of those big 18-wheelers.”
“I think that’s pretty heavy work, don’t you?”
“Are you kidding? It’s all lifting gizmos and electric power stuff. It’s mostly listening to the radio and steering down a long road, right?”
“Hydraulic lifts.”
“What?”
“They’re called hydraulic lifts. The lifting gizmos.”
“Oh. Right.”
“So then try it,” he said.
And I had. The instructor thought I was a bit nuts at first, but he quickly learned that my mind wasn’t quite as frail as my body. I think it was during those few months trying the whole truck-driver thing that I first entertained the thought that I was too skinny. A lot of the best drivers have at least a few extra pounds of fat and muscle. Frankly, I was a bit jealous.
But here’s the thing about being a truck driver: once you get out of school and get to working for a real company (General Electric in my case, which was why I had GE appliances) you realize that you spend a lot of time with men in dirty warehouses. And too many of them don’t mind putting their filthy paws on your shoulder, your arm, your thigh, or your butt. Not a bad thing if you’re interested in them and their hands are clean, but I wasn’t and these weren’t.
I also tried selling magazine subscriptions from home, but the continual abuse was inhuman and I found myself fighting the urge to help ungrateful customers see their way to a better life despite repenting for my previous indiscretions.
All the while, my neurosis seemed to get worse, and after two years of periodic trials and failures I finally gave up. Point is, Danny supported my decision. He always did. I had been through a nightmare, he said. I just had to take some time and find myself.
Tears came to my eyes as I drove north, praying that Danny was still alive and had all of his fingers. My emotions ran a ragged edge, from rage to remorse to abject fear. I should never have listened to his nonsense about finding myself another, suitable man. The thought of living without him seemed profane now.
I still remembered every word of that conversation. It was on another one of my regular visits to Ironwood State Prison that Danny stared me in the eye and brought up the unthinkable. I knew he was working up to something critical in his mind because he gave me that long, I’m-sorry-for-what-I’m-about-to-say look and took my hand.
“Now listen to me, Renee. Please, you have to listen very carefully.”
Already, I didn’t like it. “I am listening, Danny.”
“We’ve been over this before.”
“Over what?”
“You know that I’m going to be in here fifty years.”
“Paroled in twenty-five,” I said. “Twenty-five years.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I do.” The fact that he had escaped death row, which at first I was so sure would be his fate, emboldened me. If he could cut such a deal with the DA, what else might be possible? A twenty-five-year parole, of course.
He glanced at the door. “What happens to me isn’t really in my control, Renee, you know that. It’s a war zone in here. Things happen.”
“They can’t hurt you, Danny,” I said. “Look at you!” He had been a powerful man before his incarceration but had gained thirty pounds since, all of it muscle. “You could take any of those thugs one-handed, show them who you are! Have any of them been through a real war?”
“Prison
“You’ve managed this far,” I said. “Right? Just defend yourself.”
“It’s not that simple. Defending yourself means defending your people, and that means resorting to violence. I can’t do that. But really, that’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“Fifty years is too long.”
“No, Danny, it’s not. No, you have the will of a bull!” Guilt was swamping me. He was in prison and I was free. I clung to his hand as if it were my last lifeline. “You have to do whatever you need to stay alive.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about, Renee.”
“It’s me? You want me to confess?”
“No! Please, no!”
“You want me to break you out?”
“Renee. My love. You’re missing the point.”
“Then what
Danny stared at me for a moment, then lowered his gaze. He was never one to cry easily, but when he looked back, I saw that tears had filled his eyes. He swallowed hard, took a breath, and made it clear. “The point is that you can’t wait for me, Renee.”
“Of course I can. And I will.”
