if you don’t follow the rules. Poe being the example. He just looked at the floor of the truck, it was lined with rubber for easy cleanup. There was a bump as the ferry touched the other bank, and then they were driving again.
“Why are we going this way,” Poe asked. “Uniontown is on the other side of the river.” He said it and got a faint hope that maybe Harris was going to help him escape, let him out at the West Virginia border.
“I figured taking the scenic route might give us more time to talk,” said Harris. “Not to mention this might be your final chance to see this stuff before you turn fifty. Or at all.”
Poe felt his stomach sink.
“I already told you everything,” he said.
Harris shrugged.
Heading west away from the Mon it was more rolling hills, ancient barns and silos, it was farming and not industry. They were really taking the long way to Uniontown—they would have to cross back over the river again. The land changed quickly as you got away from the river, the old stone farmhouses, it reminded you people had been living here two, three hundred years, there were houses that old. His father claimed that was how long their people had been in the Valley, three hundred years, original founders, but it was more like the original drunkards. In the armpit of history there was always a horse thief Those were the Poes. He wished they had taken the shorter route. Then it occurred to him: this really is your last chance to see all this. That’s how serious this is.
Maybe the bum, it occurred to him now it must be Murray, the one who’d recognized him from the football team. Maybe he wouldn’t pick Poe out of the lineup but Christ what were the odds of that, he’d known him on a chance meeting and now that he thought Poe had killed his buddy he’d recognize him for sure. Not to mention Poe had given him a good ass- kicking—there was nothing like payback. Murray was going to pay him back that was for goddamn sure and when Poe thought about it that way he was in no hurry to get there at all, he was glad Harris had taken the long drive. He tried to look at every tree, memorize it all. He wondered what the bail would be, it would be steep, he was sure of that, they’d make sure it was too high to pay. They passed a yard where someone had a collection of tractors, forty or fifty of them on a big lawn in front of a little house, he would remember that, and then they came into a town. They must have crossed the river again without him noticing. How long had he been in the back of the truck? They were in Union-town already, it was about to be over, his final ride.
A few people in the street stared until they saw him staring back. There was a man, clearly crazy, walking down the street talking to someone who wasn’t there. Let me switch places with him, he’ll get three meals a day and a place to sleep. I’ll fend for myself, wear animal skins. He wondered where Isaac was. On the road somewhere. He thought maybe Isaac should be here for a while, too, not the whole time, just share a few minutes. Maybe they were even. He had saved Isaac and then Isaac had saved him. Were he and Isaac even or not? Harris opened the partition and passed back the bracelets.
“Make em tight so it looks like I did it,” he said.
A few minutes later they stopped behind a big brick building like the old police station in Buell. Harris led him inside.
There was a tall desk and a cop behind it and some other cops loitering, talking to a man in a suit, a short good- looking young man with a full head of blond hair, he carried himself like a politician. He looked Poe over carefully, as if Poe was a car he was thinking of buying. Poe nodded but if the man noticed he didn’t react at all.
Poe was put in a holding cell with two benches; there was a middle-aged man lying on one of them, his hair mussed, wearing khakis and a golf shirt. He smelled like he’d been sweating booze for a long time, he had circles under his eyes and he’d thrown up on himself at some point in the recent past and he smelled of that, too. He glanced briefly at Poe and must have decided Poe wasn’t a threat because he closed his eyes again. Poe felt slightly insulted.
After a time Poe was taken out and stood in a room against a wall with five other men who were approximately his age and height. One of the other men standing with Poe was a cop who’d been in the lobby when Poe came in; now he wore streetclothes. They all faced a mirrored window. After a few minutes, Poe was led back to the cell. Eventually Harris came to the cell and knocked on the bars so Poe would look up.
“Well,” said Poe.
Harris shook his head. “Didn’t take him long.”
“I guess that’s it, then.” He shrugged.
“There’s one good public defender around here. I’m trying to get her to take your case.”
“I appreciate it,” said Poe.
“I’ll be seeing you.”
“Wait,” said Poe. “Where are they sending me?”
“Fayette.”
“Not the jail?”
“Bail’s too high for the regular jail. Least that’s what our friend the district attorney is saying.”
“That’s great.”
“I’ll keep your mother informed.”
Poe shrugged.
“Stay out of trouble if you can,” said Harris. “If you can’t, just make sure the other guy gets it worse. First day’s always the hardest.”
After Harris left, the man in the golf shirt sat up and looked at Poe.
“Who do you have to blow to get that kind of treatment,” he said. “None of those fuckers has said a single goddamn word to me.”
“I doubt it’s the kind of treatment you want,” said Poe.
“I’m on my second DUI,” the man said.
“Well, I’m sure they’ll let you go again.”
“I dunno. I said some dumb things to the cop.”
“They got bigger things to worry about than you.”
The man sat back down on the bench.
“Christ,” he said. “I’ve got tenure committee next week.”
“What does that mean?”
The man looked at Poe. “I’m a professor. Actually I’m a poet.”
“At CU?”
The man shook his head.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Poe said. “It ain’t like I’m going there.”
“Why are you here anyway” the man said.
“Don’t worry yourself.”
“C’mon, man. I don’t care.”
“Supposedly I killed someone,” said Poe. “Except I didn’t.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Jesus,” said the man. But his mood seemed to brighten after that. He went to the sink and washed his face and lay down on the bench and closed his eyes.
Poe felt himself getting angry, he thought you should belt this guy in the face, consoling himself on your situation. Except he was done with that behavior. No that wasn’t true. Where he was going, most likely he was not done with that behavior at all. He watched the professor, smelling like puke but resting easily.
Finally a cop came and took Poe to a garage where they put him in a van with a cage in the back of it. He waited there a long time, the cage was like a cage for large animals, bear dogs or something, he closed his eyes. He doubted it was past two in the afternoon but it felt like a long time since he’d been home. He didn’t know how long he’d been in the van when he heard the driver’s door open and close and then the garage opened and they drove out into the light. The driver didn’t say a word and Poe didn’t feel like waking up anyway, he was thinking about Lee, the last night, it was hard to figure her out. They’d gone to a motel and done it until morning, but there was something off about her. A married woman, what did you expect? He could see it clearly in his mind, her face in the dark, it was as clear as looking at a picture, that was how you remembered things, by thinking about them over and over, only sometimes you’d begin to remember them differently. He began to feel carsick with all the narrow swooping roads; it was an old van. He had no idea where they were, woods and fields, fields and woods, a never-
