“It’s okay,” I said. “Sal’s pizza is still worth the wait.” I looked at him only momentarily and then back with the eyes of a hunter towards Bambi. She had disappeared inside the truck. Ernie had seen her too. He was trying to hand me the white pizza box in his left hand with little success. I wanted to look at my future just a little longer first.
“Do you want the pizza or the pussy?” he half-whispered.
“What did you say?” I asked as I dug into my pocket for the pizza money with one hand and slapped him on top of the head with the other, knocking his cap off in the process and revealing a shock of black tangled curls roughly the texture of Ernie the puppet’s hair.
“I said, that will be eight dollars and eighty-nine cents,” he said as he handed me the box.
I was still feeling around in my pockets for the money when I decided to take one more glance at the truck. She was standing in the opening on the passenger’s side waving Ernie’s money in the air.
“This one’s on me, Preacher. I need the tax deduction,” she said.
“Thanks” was all I could say. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have had a very nice buzz going by this time of the day and I could have come up with a better response than “thanks.” I always found that I had plenty to say once liquor had removed my inhibitions. I used to be able to charm the pants right off of them, although not this one I suspect. Recovery has its disadvantages too.
Ernie ran down the driveway and across the road to her truck and got the money faster than I thought possible. They exchanged a few words, laughed, and then she drove off. I was instantly jealous. As Ernie crossed over the road again, I walked down the driveway to meet him at his car.
Well I was born in a small town. And I can breathe in a small town.
Gonna die in this small town. And that’s prob’ly where they’ll bury me.
“Please tell me you know who that was,” I said, sounding a little more desperate than I would have liked.
“Sure, that’s Laura Matthers. Her sister Kim and me are on the homecoming court together Friday night.”
“This Friday night, as in day after tomorrow?”
“Uh huh.”
“Thanks, Ernie.”
“She’s got a boyfriend,” he said unaware of the damage that those words would do to me.
“They almost always do, Ernie.”
“Uh huh.”
I stood for a while in the middle of my driveway after Ernie drove away. The sun was setting, its fiery bite replaced by a glorious orange and pink beauty. To the east, toward Tallahassee, the Apalachicola River snaked around the corner of the Prairie Palm property. Its banks were lined with pines, cypresses, and a seemingly infinite number of other trees and plants so unique and beautiful that Elvry E. Callaway seemed justified in believing this to be the site of the original Garden of Eden.
As I walked back up the driveway toward my little tin home, I thought how appropriate that the little tin man lived here, but I also thought that a woman that beautiful who drives a one-ton FedEx truck had to have had a tragic life. We were perfect for each other. And though I still couldn’t shake the image of those lifeless black eyes from my mind, I also had the feeling that things were heating up in the small town.
Chapter 3
The following morning, I stood in the chapel office of Potter Correctional Institution. A stack of mail and the package that housed my new computer lay on the desk before me. I moved the unopened mail to one side of my desk and set the box in the center. The box took up so little space on my small desk that I felt justified in having mistaken it for a pizza. Opening the package and extracting the computer inside released a flurry of small packing peanuts into my office, many of which were scattered abroad by the small fan oscillating on my file cabinet.
The dull gray walls surrounding me added to the illusion of a snowstorm. Watching the flying peanuts sail through the vacant room inspired a troubling thought. If as a pastor of a prestigious church in north Atlanta my ornate office had been an expression of who I was trying to be, maybe my current empty and sterile surroundings were an expression of who I really was. My office had nothing personal save three pictures that inspire me hanging on one walclass="underline" Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham, for obvious reasons, and Jimmy Carter, to remind me that the best man was not always the best man for the job. A portrait of Jesus weeping sat on the right corner of my desk, his dark eyes drinking in the sorrow and suffering of the world. Daily I read his words, “I was in prison and you visited me.”
At the height of the peanuts’ performance, Superintendent Stone walked in without knocking. I felt every muscle in my body grow tense: an instinctive reaction-like braking at the sight of a Highway Patrol car.
“Chaplain Jordan, may I speak with you for a moment?” Mr. Stone said as he closed my office door. He made no attempt to hide his annoyance at the floating Styrofoam swirling around him.
“Of course. Please have a seat.” I motioned him to the blue vinyl chair opposite my desk that inmates used when they had spiritual and some not-so-spiritual problems. He paused before sitting and removed two handfuls of packing peanuts from it, ever diligent to care for his expensive suit. Had he been aware of the sweaty, soiled inmate uniforms that normally occupied the seat, he probably would have left the peanuts in place.
As I sat down, the envelope on top of my lopsided stack of mail slid off, revealing an inmate request form from Ike Johnson. I was stunned. Quickly, I opened my center drawer and placed it inside.
Before he started talking, Edward (not Ed) Stone paused to clean his charcoal, wire-rimmed glasses. Like everything he owned, they looked expensive. As he removed them carefully from his face and wiped them with the spotless white silk handkerchief bearing his initials in bold black block letters, he treated them like they were costly jewels. I suddenly realized that the glasses, like everything he owned, seemed so expensive because he treated them that way. As he made these exact, intentional motions, I had a chance to really look at him for the first time. He was much leaner than I had thought. I had seen skin that was darker than his, but not by much. He had all the African features of a man from Nigeria. His nearly hairless skin was smooth and had a slight sheen about it. His movements were slow-not hesitant, but deliberate and economic. He knew exactly what he was doing and the precise amount of energy required to do it. He did everything as if it were the most important thing he would do that day.
Edward Stone’s minimalist actions and conservative policies reminded me of the effects poverty has on people. No matter how successful they become, they always keep plenty in reserve for fear they will have to do without again. My grandmother, a child during the Great Depression, was the same way. It was apparent that Edward Stone and I came from different eras, mine a result of his.
“How are you doing” he asked, paused, then added, “you know . . . with what happened yesterday?”
“I’m okay. I appreciate the time yesterday afternoon to pull everything together.”
“That was a bad thing you had to see. You’d have to be an idiot to try to escape, but to try it in that manner, you’d have to be suicidal.”
“Perhaps he was,” I said with a slight shrug.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s what I want to find out. The thing is, his name came up in another matter that we were considering investigating.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I had not put much stock in the earlier reports, but now . . . I am not so sure.”
“I can see how this would give the investigation a new priority,” I said sarcastically, but only slightly, and he didn’t seem to catch it.
“You can? Then you’ll probably understand what I am about to ask.”