Twenty-Twenty shoved a wet wad of leaves with a straw broom, but the broom was old and the stick kept slipping out of the hole in the brush head. The third time it happened he scowled and picked up the brush head and punted it with his boot like a football. It didn't go far.
"We need some real tools, Wall," he said. "Shit. They got better tools in the big house."
"That so." Wally rested for a moment, planting his chin on the end of the pole of his broom. "You like it there so much then maybe you should just stay put in there."
They were in the cooler part of St. Peter's cemetery; two figures dwarfed by gnarled maples and oaks whose leafy roofs muffled the sun and threw shadows on the plots and on the winding roads. On their left was a field of tilting tombstones, some buried in the dirt, others aged and rickety, their letters obliterated by rain. To their right, the road followed the course of a garbage-clogged stream and beyond the stream, a path ran down a weedy slope and led to the railroad tracks. A cargo train scraped by on those tracks every day at three o'clock. From the cemetery road you could see the train go by. It reminded Wally of a bunch of shabby, slow-moving boxes.
"Why don't you call into the office on that walkie-talkie of yours and tell them to send us some new equipment," Twenty-Twenty said. "Or better yet, order us some beer. Saw a sign in a liquor store this morning: Don't drive drunk, get it delivered." He laughed at that, a thin laughter that rattled out of him, as though it had been drained of real joy and was just the bitter dregs of something he was spitting out.
Not a day went by without Twenty-Twenty making some snide reference to the walkie-talkie, an ancient one the size of a brick that sagged from Wally's belt. Wally was a former prisoner and he used the walkie-talkie to contact the head office, to tell them what plot they were headed to next, alert them to customer complaints--busted faucets, stolen statues--but the real reason, as Twenty-Twenty and he both knew, was for Wally to keep tabs on the prisoners.
"I got a better idea: why don't you pick up that brush and get back to work before Big Bill drives by and sees you standing there with a whole lot of nothing in your hands. You know him. You'll be back to scrubbing johns in no time, Roy."
Wally never called him Twenty-Twenty. That was his nickname, scrawled in pea-green numbers on his right shoulder in case you forgot.
The first day he had started he told Wally his name and Wally just stared at him, grinning. "How'd you get that name?"
"So what's it mean? You got really good sight or something?" Wally said.
"Means I can see through everything," Twenty-Twenty said, flicking his tongue over his chapped lips.
"Why don't you try to see through what landed you in the box," Wally said.
"Why don't you shut your trap, silver head?"
Because of their obvious fondness for each other, Big Bill, the foreman, thought it wise to pair them together for the rest of the week.
Twenty-Twenty held the naked pole in the palm of his hand like a spear, performed some martial arts maneuvers with it, laughed to himself, and then walked up to the brush head and fastened it to the ground with his boot and screwed the pole back into it. He came back, carrying the broom with one hand. With his other hand he grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and shook a cigarette loose and plucked it out of the package with his mouth. He lit it with a raddled pair of matches, spat on the ground, and then yawned loudly. His shirt was off, tied into a doo rag around his head.
"Say, Wall," he said, looking across the stream at the path that wended to the tracks. "Where you think that train goes?"
Painted on the side of every car of that train was "Providence-Worcester Railroad".
"What's the name of that line?" Wally said.
"Huh?" Twenty-Twenty looked confused.
"I said what's the name of it."
"Oh, yeah. Providence-Worcester railroad, right?"
"That's right," Wally said, squinting. "I'd wager it goes to one of those places."
Twenty laughed, exhaled a sequence of smoke rings. His every gesture was meant to impress: every move of his fat-muscled arms to show how in shape he was, every shake of his doo-rag clad head meant to show how young and careless. Barely a whisker sprouted from his bronzed chest. Tattoos of gargoyles and busty women in pink and green colors glowered from his arms and wrists. "Yeah, but you know where else that train goes? To every itty-bitty town in between. Towns you and me never even heard about."
"So," Twenty-Twenty sang. "A guy could disappear and never be found."
Wally laughed. "Impossible for you." He removed a Redman pouch from the back of his pocket, pinched out a wad and stuffed it in his cheek. Lanie didn't like him chewing, complained about the spittle-filled cups he left around the house, but it was his one luxury, so she allowed it. He'd quit smoking and drinking.
"Why's that?" Twenty said, pacing around, making Wally nervous. There was a fidgety, wild look in those narrow blue eyes. Wally had seen it before. Guys in the box had it, guys who'd lost hope or were too stupid to find it. He had little pity or compassion for those eyes, not if they were devoid of a soul. They usually were. It was Friday, Twenty-Twenty's fifth day on work furlough and Wally was impressed he'd made it this far. By the end of the first day most of them got drunk or copped out or took off, and they were taken back to the jail, their furloughs suspended. So far Twenty-Twenty had done okay, but Wally's verdict was still pending.
"'Cuz you can't shut your mouth," Wally said, spitting a black gout onto the road. "You'd start bragging about your big Houdini escape to some cheap whore in a bar and sure enough word would get around and they'd find you."
"Ah, that's a bunch of bullshit, man. You don't know me."
"So how long you been here, Wall?"
Wally looked at him, not sure whether he wanted to tell this kid anything about himself. The more they knew the more they could use it like a weapon against you. "About my second year."
"Your second year," Twenty repeated. "So you're a full-timer now. Don't you get bored of this shit?" Twenty-Twenty waved his hand, surveying the cemetery.
"It's a job," Wally said. He went back to his sweeping. They had to clear all the leaves coagulated in the gutter by the end of the day. It was a long stretch of road ahead.
"Not much of a job, is it? Digging holes. Sweeping leaves. Putting dead people in boxes in the dirt. I'd go crazy if I was stuck with this."
"Guess you'd rather be stuck in a cell, huh?" As he swept, Wally looked down at his long, mosquito-bitten arms. They were taut and still muscular, with faded tattoos from when he was stupid and drunk. The skin had gone blotchy and puckered in places, and liver spots covered the backs of his big hands. He was fifty-eight years old. Sweat made a dirty soup of his frost-colored hair and dripped like acid into his eyes. He grabbed an old hanky from his back pocket and padded his scalp with it. He looked over at Twenty-Twenty and saw him staring down at the bank by the stream.
Wally went over and looked. An elaborate line of scuttling black ants, thousands of them, moved like a freeway of cars. Some bore brush and sticks on their backs, others scurried in a frenzy to get somewhere. They climbed over and under each other. They never stopped moving. Twenty-Twenty followed the line about forty feet to a mini housing development of various dusty funnels rising out of the earth.
"This is where they live," he hollered. The ants rolled in and out of the holes. Wally watched one trying to maneuver a stick into the hole and it reminded him of a guy trying to fit a couch through a narrow doorway.
"Ain't that neat," Wally said, looking down. "If only people worked this hard. The world might be a decent place."
"You think they even know we're here?"
"Probably not," Wally said, still watching them. "They're working too hard to pay attention to us. Incredible."
"Watch this shit." Twenty-Twenty bent over and began dropping balls of spit down at the holes, watching with delight as the ants got caught and struggled in the syrupy glue. When he was bored with that, he swung the broom and began to plow through the miniscule homes like a bulldozer, making detonating noises with his mouth as he did so.
"What the hell you doing that for?" Wally said.
Twenty-Twenty cocked his head at him. "What's your problem, Wall?"
"That make you feel good? Make you feel like God or something?"
"Just ants. Not like I opened fire in the mall."
"They weren't bothering you, so what do you bother them for?"
"You're weird, Wall. They're ants."
"Man, you don't get nothing, do you? Just get back to work. I want us to reach that fence by the end of the day."
"Yes sir," Twenty-Twenty said.
For a while they worked in silence, sweeping the leaves in piles and then stowing them in garbage bags that they tossed in the side of the road to collect and take to the dump later. Later, a funeral procession chugged toward them, the sorriest line of shit-kickers and belching trucks and jerking jalopies and dented-up cars that Wally had ever seen. One guy was even on a sagging motorcycle. The mourners clambered out of their vehicles, fat women and sloppy-looking men, some of whom were obviously drunk, all of them smoking cigarettes. They didn't look dressed for any occasion but bar crawling. They wobbled as one crowd and made their way to a coffin that was barely a coffin, but a cheap kindling box, set before the tiniest stone, a damn cinder block. Some were snuffling, fluttering hankies at their noses. A few sharp-tongued mothers were yipping at their kids and the priest, a man as pale and thin as a leek, who looked embarrassed to be there, read a few closing blessings before the mourners dropped flowers on the box.
One of the men staggered over to where Wally and Twenty-Twenty were working. He wore a striped button down shirt with a big stain on the front of it and a loose tie and trousers that were too short for him. You could see his white ankles above his torn shoes.
"Good day, guys," he said. "Was wondering if I could bum a cigarette off one of yous?"
Twenty-Twenty stopped his sweeping and stared at him. "What do we get in return?"
"What's that?" He offered Twenty-Twenty an ear.
"I said what'll you do for us?"
The man, bemused, shrugged and smiled, but because he felt the need to respond, he said, "That's my brother over there." He pointed with his long-nailed finger to the coffin. "He was a good man."
Wally took out his Redman pouch and offered it to the man. He looked at it skeptically for a second and then just when he was about to take a pinch, Twenty-Twenty reached in his pocket and pulled his package of cigarettes and offered it to him with a slight frown on his face.
"I do welcome you," Twenty-Twenty said.
The man laughed uneasily. His swollen eyes looked like they had been crying, probably at a bar. The stink of booze came off him like bad perfume.
He seemed eager to linger, eager to talk.
"What happened to your brother?" Twenty-Twenty inquired.
Wally cut Twenty-Twenty a look, but he didn't notice.
"Oh, yeah. He was thirty-four. A good man. I don't know if he was queer or just one of those weird un-sexual types or something because he never left my mother's house. Until last week, of course. On a stretcher. He hung himself in the shed. Bastard." The guy sucked on his cigarette fiercely, releasing thick plumes of smoke through his nostrils. "I don't get why people do it like that. How bad can it really get, you know? What did he have to do? Take the mail in once in a while? Shove a TV dinner in the oven? Don't know what my mother's gonna do." The man shook his head, a fierce, dejected look on his face.
Wally touched the man tenderly on the back for a second. "Well, you have our sympathies," he said.
Twenty-Twenty said nothing, but just stared at the guy, the look on his face a mixture of disgust and pity.
The guy turned and noticed that the rest of his family was back in their cars.
"Gotta go, guys. Thanks for the butt. I appreciate it."
He staggered off, rejoined his family, and the entourage left the cemetery in their loud, spluttering vehicles.
Wally and Twenty-Twenty then watched as Charlie, the digger, steered his backhoe down the skinny aisle toward the lonely looking coffin and then jumped out of the backhoe and lowered the coffin into the hole with a nylon rope, then climbed back into the backhoe and swiveled the bucket and released a mountain of tumbling earth into the hole.
"That's it," Wally said. "End of the show."
Twenty-Twenty was quiet, just staring ahead. He said, after a while, "My old man's buried in here somewhere, you know. "
"Oh, I'd like to see his grave alright. So I could take a mighty shit on it."
"He's buried in here and you don't want to see it?"
"No, I don't. 'Cuz I don't give a shit."
"Sounds like true love. What'd he die of?"
"My brother got him. Stabbed him right in the neck. He's doing all day up at Concord for that one. If it wasn't him it would've been me that did him in. The shit he did to us. To my mother."
"Families can be tough," Wally said, not without sympathy. "Moms and dads, especially."
"He wasn't no dad. He was a drunk, a diddler, and a nasty motherfucker, but he wasn't no dad. Bullshit."
Twenty-Twenty didn't speak for a while, and Wally went to work. It was just about two o'clock. It was May, a week before Memorial Day, the only day that really mattered for the cemetery. There was a lot of work to be done before then: the shaggy plots had to be weed-whacked, the edges groomed, and the grass mowed, all the garbage lying in the road-side picked up. Smashed statues had to be replaced, kicked-over stones set upright. It wasn't a bad job. At first he thought the place gloomy and fearful, but after a while he found peace in the stone garden. It was nice to be outside, nice to be friendly to folks who were tending to the graves of their loved ones. In the winter, when the ground was rock hard, the crew performed basic operations, did funerals, shoveled snow, and most of the time was spent in the barn, a cement shack with a fireplace and an old television. They played poker and cribbage and told dirty jokes and lost themselves in the dirty magazines lying around. It was sort of like being in the box sometimes, and that's what Wally liked about it. He lived not far from the cemetery in a run-down little apartment on the second floor of a three-decker, and though it wasn't his own property, it felt like a home. His wife Lanie worked as a receptionist in an insurance office. She was his second wife, met her when he came out of the box three years ago. His first wife died, a heroin overdose, and she died where it seemed she had spent most of her life, by the side of the road. He had one child with her, Clyde, and he was doing time at Bridgewater State for selling meth. Wally went up and saw him every month, a long ride, and a long hassle through security gates and forms to sign and the brusque hands of the guards who searched him hard, not only because it was policy, but because they knew he was an ex-con. There was no hiding it, no trying to pretend, it was a stink and it followed you everywhere you went. He'd gotten used to the looks, at his tattoos, his work-mangled hands, his gouged face. And once you'd done serious time you were always prey. Every day was a threat. Like an addict, your mind always led you to cheap thoughts--to swipe something off that shelf, hot-wire that nice-looking car, pry open that flimsy back window and see just what was worth grabbing from that house. Wally had been clean of booze and crime for almost four years. And there were many things to be proud of: a loving wife, a job, a paycheck that you earned. Even little things: a remote control, a belly full of home-cooked food, the smell of the sky.
"Yo, Wall: got any bags left?"
Wally pulled one out of his back pocket and handed it to Twenty-Twenty.
"Hold it open," Twenty-Twenty said.
Wally spread the bag open with both hands. Twenty-Twenty bent down and scooped the leaves up, using both his hands and arms, dust and leaf debris speckling his arms and bare chest, and shoved them into the bag. Wally noticed that Twenty-Twenty never lost that look on his face: the disgust of a man doing an honest day's work.
"Say, Wall," Twenty-Twenty said, brushing the dirt off his arms. "Just suppose around three o'clock you were to turn around and you didn't see me standing here anymore. Like I was just gone, see? What would you do?" He squinted at Wally, gestured with his chin toward the train tracks.
Wally shrugged. "What would I do? Well, I suppose I would do my job, Roy: I'd call into the head office and tell them that a prisoner had bailed. Then they would call the jail, then the sheriff's office, and they'd have a posse out looking for you in about ten minutes."
"You would have to do that, huh? Snitch on a fella?"
"Not going back inside for you, bro. Much as I dislike you and all." Wally softened the jab with a chuckle.
"You couldn't twist a little lie out of it?"
"A little lie? Let me tell you something, Roy: nobody believes an ex-con. To them, every word out of our mouths is a lie. So no, a little lie isn't gonna do shit." Wally looked at Twenty-Twenty, pointed his finger at him. "It's those thoughts that get you right back inside. Ain't you smart enough to see that? I mean, do you like it in there?"
"Ten months and you're free and you want to screw it all up now?"
"But you can spend your days out here."
Twenty-Twenty was shaking his head, his face all scrunched up like he was smelling something foul.
"You keep your head down good, do your work, come out clean, and you'll make something of yourself," Wally told him.
Again, that brittle laughter. "Like you, Wall?"
Wally stared hard at Twenty-Twenty. "You could do worse, believe me, kid."
"Can you? I hope so. For your sake."
The walkie-talkie at Wally's waist crackled to life. It was Bill, the foreman, calling to check up. Wally picked it up, spoke into it, never quite comfortable with it. "We're doing fine. Getting there. Okay. Yep, sure thing. Over and out, boss."
Twenty-Twenty raised his thick eyebrows at him, a sneering smile on his face. "'Over and out, boss.' You crack me up. The big ex-con with the big walkie-talkie."
"I gotta question for you. You ever miss being on the inside?"
Wally studied him for a moment. It was a serious question. "There are things you miss, yeah," he said. "But it's tough to explain."
"I don't know. You miss a certain routine, I guess. A structure. The box and the bars give it to you. Makes you feel boxed in, but safe, I guess. You can get lost in all this space when you hit the bricks again. Takes a while to get used to it. Don't think I'm used to it yet and it's been three years."
"I hear that," Twenty-Twenty said. "Everything's so massive. Like it makes you crazy."
"Yeah," Wally said. "And scared sometimes. First time I got out," Wally began to laugh, "I had about a five hundred bucks, right? I'm planning on what I'm gonna wear, my first set of clothes, a suit and all, for my first new job out of the box. I'm all perked up about going to Bradlee's, and I take two buses that take me all the way down to where I remember it being and there's nothing there but a giant parking lot and a string of fast-food joints. I get confused, so I ask people, you know? 'Where the hell is Bradlee's, man?' Then a woman looks at me like I'm totally nuts and tells me that Bradlee's went bust years ago."
They both laughed at that, their laughter slowly dwindling to silence. Wind sifted down through the leafy trees and it quivered the little flags into life that flanked some of the tombstones. It was almost three o'clock. Quitting time was at three-thirty. Big Bill would gather the prisoners--there were about five them, including Twenty-Twenty, scattered about different sections of the sprawling cemetery--and drive them back in the van to the "correctional facility" every day. Wally noticed the look that Twenty-Twenty wore, and might wear for the rest of his life: that mean look of knowing exactly what he had to look forward to: his crack and balls searched, a meal of tasteless gristle, a sleepless night on a cracker-thin mattress.
"Well, shit. I know the first thing I'm gonna do when I hit the bricks," Twenty-Twenty broke the silence.
Twenty-Twenty roared with laughter as he savored the thought. "First thing I'm gonna do is get a bottle of Jack, a case of Bud, some really good weed, a good whore, and get drunk and high off of my ass while I'm getting blown. And I'm just starting."
Wally shook his head. "You know what you sound like right now?"
"Yeah, well that's what I am."
"Not really. But a man's gotta be what he is."
"You can always change, Roy. Ever think of that?"
"Man, you belong in a church, you know that? Everything out of your mouth is some lesson I gotta learn."
"Yeah, well, I can be that way sometimes. Don't mean to preach," Wally said softly. He changed the subject. "Look at that. We're almost there." Wally looked back and surveyed the line of leaves they'd left behind in the garbage bags that dotted the side of the road. "We did good today, despite all this jabbering."
Wally threw down his broom, lowered himself to a little roadside faucet and ran the tap and cupped some water with his hands and splashed his face with it. From beyond the screen of trees he heard the loud screeching of the approaching train. Must've been three o'clock. He stood up and turned toward the sound, and he saw Twenty-Twenty standing there, poised, the naked pole of the broom in his hands like a weapon.
"Don't let me hurt you, Wall," he said. "You got your job, but I got mine. Mine is to make that goddamned train."
"And where do you think you're gonna go?" Wally said.
"I got it planned. Buddy's meeting me and we're gonna scram."
"You'll get caught," Wally said.
"You've got ten months and you're gonna blow it like this? They'll tack on another year, Roy. Maybe more. Without parole. Without furlough."
"Maybe. Maybe not," Twenty-Twenty repeated, clutching the pole.
"I can't just let you go. I'll lose my job over this, Roy. It's the only job I've got and I want to keep it. I got bills, a wife, I'm trying to save for a car. I'm putting some money away for my lost son. I know somewhere inside you you can understand that. Don't you see they're gonna think I was in on this with you? Don't you get that? Now stop this bullshit and get back to work like you're supposed to do."
"Can't do that, Wall. Now you let me go or I'll have to bash your silver head in."
Wally shook his head. "You're giving me no choice, here, Roy. I don't want do this."
"This is for your own good, you'll see--" Wally's hand flinched for the walkie-talkie, but his eyes caught the swift movement of the pole flashing toward him like a piece of lightning. It landed on his head, sending birds dancing in his eyes, and he crashed to the pavement with a grunt. He looked up and saw the shape of Twenty-Twenty holding the pole in two hands, his mouth wrenched open, that feral look in his eyes.
"I tried to make it easy for you. I gotta make it to that train. And you're not gonna stop me."
Wally saw the pole rise again and it landed on a soft part of his head. The rest was a palpable darkness.
When he came to the walkie-talkie was crackling furiously somewhere near him, the voice of Big Bill, angry and concerned, telling Wally they were coming to get him. Though the train was long gone he still imagined the sounds of those wheels scraping around in his head, and Twenty-Twenty, clutching onto a side ladder and hoisting his way into an empty boxcar. Let him go, Wally thought, see what he found.
Wally lay on his back, his occipital lobe feeling like it was about to implode. The leaves of the overhanging maples made a mahogany canopy against the sun. He felt some ants crawling around in his hair and when he moved his head he heard the sticky sound of blood. He was scared, but he knew he wasn't going to die and it was comforting, for once, knowing where he would go. Soon they would find him and take him to the emergency ward and eventually, stitched and bandaged, he would go back home to his wife.
© 2006 by Micheal Leone. All rights reserved.