“I thought you might run. Seeing your life story and all.”
No, I thought. If I was going to run, I would have done it back in Oakdale. It’s what Deanna said to do — Let’s run, and I said, Okay, but if we run, we will have to keep running. For all time. So maybe we shouldn’t. So I’d taken a leave of absence and we’d come here.
“You have something of mine, Larry, ” he said.
“Some of it was mine first.”
Vasquez smiled. “You think this is a fucking negotiation? You think I’m bargaining with you? You’re fucked. It’s your role in life. Accept it. Get down on your knees and open your mouth and say please, Daddy. I want my money. ”
Someone was shouting in the pharmacy: “The doc says I need this shit, understand?”
“You’re in prison,” I said.
“So are you. You’re locked up. You’re doing time. You think you’re safe out there? Think again, motherfucker. I can turn you in—I can tell them, Here's Charley . If you’re lucky I could. ’Cause I might send someone to your house to fuck your wife instead. I might. How old’s your daughter now — ready to get stuck with something else now, huh?”
I went for him.
Reflex simply took over my body and said: Listen up — we’re going to stop this man, we’re going to shut this man up forever. We are. But when I lunged at him, when I went for his throat, his knee came up and caught me in the stomach. I went down to my knees. He stepped behind me and slipped his arm around my neck and squeezed. He whispered in my ear.
“That’s it, Charley. That’s right. Got you mad, huh? Here’s the thing. How lucky was it that you showed up in Bennington? Forty miles from here. In my own fucking backyard? And then, if that isn’t lucky enough, you walk in the goddamn door and start teaching here. How lucky is that? Is that lucky or what? Or is that like, too lucky? What do you think, Charley? You think that’s too lucky? I don’t know. You got something for me, Charley, do you?” He reached his hand down and patted my right pocket. He felt it there — the gat, the one I’d taken from the COs museum. “You got something you want to stick me with? Huh, Charley?” He took it out of my pocket — he showed it to me.
“You ought to know me better by now, Chuck. Sure I’ll meet you by the river. Sure I’ll come alone. Sure. But I met your mail boy at the river first, huh? Took his head off, huh, Charley? Who the fuck you think you’re dealing with here? You think this is punk central?” He put the knife against my throat. He pressed it against my jugular. Then he smiled and pushed me to the floor. I could smell something acrid — urine and ammonia.
I wanted to answer him now.
To tell him yes, I did know who I was dealing with. To tell him that that was why I’d waited six months in Bennington before applying for the teaching job here. Why I’d made sure he’d found me there first, living in Bennington and teaching in high school, so that it would just seem like some kind of fortunate coincidence that I’d later taken a teaching job here. In the very prison he was incarcerated in. And I wanted to tell him that’s why I’d purposely left my keys in my pocket that day I walked through the metal detector—to see if it would be possible to smuggle in a weapon. A gun. And that when I learned it wasn't possible to smuggle in a gun, how I’d started making visits to the COs lounge because I’d heard they had a kind of museum there.
I wanted to tell him that it was true — I hadn’t known who I was dealing with when I sat with Winston by the river, and later back in the Fairfax Hotel — even then I hadn’t. But that I did now. That I’d learned.
And one last thing. One very last thing. How when I stood there in the COs museum with my back to Fat Tommy, I'd whispered this thing I’d learned to myself. Like a prayer to the God of screwed plans. Because I’d learned if you want to make God laugh, that’s what you do — you make a plan; but if you want to make him smile, you make two.
Two.
I reached into my left pocket. I took out the spring-loaded gun made of soapwood and tin that I’d carefully loaded in the COs lounge.
I shot Vasquez directly between both surprised eyes.
Times Union
Prisoner killed in Attica attack
by Brent Harding
Raul Vasquez, 34, an Attica prisoner, was killed yesterday when his intended victim managed to wrest a prison-made gun away from him and fatally wound him. Lawrence Widdoes, 47, who teaches English to Attica prisoners two nights a week, was assaulted by Mr. Vasquez near the prison pharmacy. A witness who works in the pharmacy saw Mr. Vasquez physically attack Mr. Widdoes. “He was choking him good . . .” Claude Weathers, an Attica prisoner, stated. “Then pop — Vasquez goes down.” Mr. Widdoes, who suffered a bruised neck, is unsure what provoked the attack, but believes it might be related to some negative criticism he leveled at a student who is the cellmate of Mr. Vasquez. Mr. Widdoes, whose teaching duties are ending due to state budget cuts, is simply glad to be alive. “I feel like I’ve been given a second chance,” Mr. Widdoes said.
FIFTY-THREE
I came home.
Kim came rushing out of the kitchen and stopped and stared. As if I were an apparition.
I nodded at her, I whispered, “Yes.”
She slowly walked toward me and curled herself around my body like a blanket.
It’s okay, she was saying, you can rest now.
Alex came running down the stairs, crying, “Daddy’s home.” He tugged at my shirt until I picked him up and held him. His cheek was sticky with chocolate.
“Where’s Jamie?” I asked Kim.
“Doing her dialysis,” she said.
I kissed her on the top of her head. I put Alex down. I went upstairs to Jamie’s bedroom.
She was hooked up to the portable dialysis machine. I sat on the bed next to her.
“We’ll be going back to Oakdale soon,” I said. “Back to your friends, okay?”
She nodded.
She did this three days a week now.
There was some talk of getting her on a list for a kidney-pancreas transplant — the newest hope for diabetics like her. But then there would be antirejection drugs to worry about the rest of her life, so it was hard to know if it would really be better for her. As for now, we hooked her veins up to this terrible machine three days a week, and I sat there by her bed and listened to its whir and hum as it pumped blood through her failing body.
Sometimes I drift off to this sound, and Anna is suddenly four years old again and I’m back at the zoo with her on that long-ago Sunday morning. Feeding the elephants. I lift her up into my arms, and I can feel her tiny heart running to greet me. There’s a soft chill in the air, and the leaves are drifting down from a swaying canopy of dark russet. Just Anna and her dad, walking hand in hand together in search of memories.
And I know I will sit here forever.
I will sit here as long as it takes.
THE END
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