her. “That job offer in Philadelphia. Put my neck out and gave you and Billy a chance and you threw it in my face.”
“That wasn’t what I was doing.”
He was on the verge of saying something more and she stood there, bracing herself. Instead he started the truck. “Well,” he said. “That’s probably enough for tonight.” She stepped up onto the running board and reached through the open window and put her arm over his.
“I didn’t want it to go here,” she said. “This isn’t why I wanted you to come over.”
“I know Virgil’s back.” He seemed frozen in the seat, looking straight ahead out the windshield.
“He’s out. He’s gone, it didn’t even last a day. It’s over for good.”
Harris was quiet.
“I want us to go back to the way it was.”
“Not possible,” said Harris.
“We could just try being friends again.”
“Grace.”
“I know how it looks. I don’t care.”
“You’re definitely right about how it looks.”
“I’ll call you.”
He shook his head and lifted her hand off his arm and she stepped off the running board. He turned his truck around and she watched as he disappeared slowly down the road.
8. Poe
It 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 Jesus 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, Jesus, 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.
