And she told him about her Guatemalan girlfriends, Marina and Luzia, bathing in the
temescale
, a sauna made of adobe and mud, behind her house and talking like girls everywhere, about boys, who they liked and their plans for the future.
“One time, Luzia asked me if I thought Guatemalan boys were handsome and would I ever have a Guatemalan boyfriend? I said no, but it had nothing to do with their looks, it was because our cultures were so different. I said I could never go out
with someone I had to ask permission to leave the house.
“Marina said, but if you really loved him, and he wanted you to ask, wouldn’t you do it? I said, in our culture, if my boyfriend or husband loved me, he would trust me. I said I didn’t need a man to take care of me. I told them I had a boyfriend named Jack back in Michigan and I couldn’t imagine asking him for permission to do anything. He’d think I was crazy.
“Luzia said she liked asking permission. Marina did too. They both said they’d feel strange not asking. While we talked, we were eating roasted cow udder.”
Owen said, “Hang on a minute—roasted cow udder? What’d it taste like?”
“Chicken.” She liked the way he grinned and liked it when he reached over and touched her hand.
And then she told him about Marina, who, in a town full of thick-bodied Mayan women, had the trim shapely figure of a
Ladino
. “She was the most beautiful girl in town.”
Owen grinned at her and said, “She’d have to go a long way to beat you.”
Kate said, “You want to hear this?”
Owen said, “I’m sorry, I’ll stop giving you compliments.”
“Marina was married,” Kate said, “but her husband Benigno had been in New Jersey for a year cutting grass and shoveling snow, trying to save enough money to build their own house and start a family. Marina lived with her mother, a
muchacha
, a maid, in a small house with a tin roof that leaked.
“She came over early one morning carrying an old beat-up suitcase and said she had to leave San Pedro right away. She was crying and very upset. I asked her what happened and she wouldn’t tell me at first and then started speaking in rapid-fire Cakchiquel and then slower in Spanish, saying that Captain Emiliano Garza, head of the National Police and a respected member of the community, had forced himself on her. She was going to New Jersey to be with Benigno. I said, ‘How are you going to get there?’ She said, ‘
Mojado
.’”
Owen said, “What’s that?”
“It means wet, the literal translation, but it really meant illegally. How else was she going to get there without a passport and visa?
“I said to her, ‘Who is going to take care of Ysabel?’ Her mother. She said she didn’t know, but had to leave right away because Captain Garza was coming back that night. Of all the girls in town he had chosen Marina and she should feel honored.
“I was there at her house when the captain came calling. He was a short compact man, a
Ladino
in a crisp blue uniform and well-shined black boots that brought him up to about five six, a little bull with a neatly trimmed black mustache and dark serious eyes. I could see him studying me from across the room, taking his time, a man used to being in control. I was thinking he looked like a doorman at a nice hotel. I pictured him in a different uniform, one with epaulets and gold buttons.
“He wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there with Marina and I could see he wasn’t sure what to do. He asked Marina who I was and she said, ‘A friend.’
“I said to him, ‘If you touch her again I’m going to contact the American consulate and take whatever measures are necessary to have you prosecuted. That’s who I am.’
“He smiled at Marina in a shy formal way and said, ‘Do you agree with this?’
“Marina looked down at the floor and said, ‘Yes.’ Captain Garza said he understood. That was it. He walked out and got in his Jeep and drove away. Marina cried and we hugged.”
“That took nerve,” Owen said, “standing up to a cop in a foreign country. Was that the end of it?”
“Not exactly,” Kate said. “I’ll tell you another
time.” It wasn’t the kind of story you told someone on the first date. Kate looked around. They were the only two people in the restaurant. She hadn’t noticed before.
Owen paid the bill and drove her home. He walked her up to the front door and kissed her on the cheek and said, “Can I call you?”
Kate said, “You better.”
Owen said, “What happened in Guatemala, you didn’t want to talk about? You can tell me now. You can tell me anything.”
They were at 220 Merrill, sitting at a table in the bar, Kate drinking a glass of chardonnay and Owen a Heineken from the bottle. It was crowded, as always on a Friday night. Kate felt close to him, trusted him after only a few dates. She said, “I went to my friend Marina’s and met Captain Garza. Remember that?”
Owen said, “The little guy in the uniform, right?”
Kate nodded.
“That night,” she said, “I was in bed, sound asleep, when they came in the room. I remember opening my eyes as they lifted me off the bed, wondering what was going on. Was I dreaming or was it really happening? There were two of them. But it was dark. I couldn’t see their faces. They cuffed my hands behind my back and wrapped tape around my
mouth and eyes. It was hot, the air thick and wet and it was difficult to breathe through my nose.”
Kate picked up her wineglass by the stem and took a sip.
“They took me out to a Jeep and strapped a seat belt around me in back and drove out of town toward the jungle.”
Owen said, “Who’d you think they were?”
“Garza’s men,” Kate said.
Owen said, “The one who hit on your friend.”
“He didn’t hit on her,” Kate said. “He raped her. I thought he was paying me back for standing up to him, offending his Latin sense of honor. It was the only thing that made sense. I thought they were doing it to scare me. I didn’t think they were going to hurt me. I worked for the US government. They weren’t that crazy, I told myself, but I was wrong.
“We drove for a while—fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe—and the Jeep slowed down and stopped and they pulled me out and took me into the jungle and one of them whispered: ‘
Tu vas a morir
.’”
Owen said, “What’s that mean?”
“You’re going to die,” Kate said.
“Jesus,” Owen said.
“I could feel the slash of wet branches across the front of my T-shirt and shorts and the mosquitoes
were relentless, feasting on my neck and face. I remember the sounds: birds cawing and the low hum of locusts and the loud high-pitched clack of the tree frogs. I remember the smoke from their cigarettes mixing with the dense earthy smell of the jungle, trying to breathe that heavy humid air through my nose.
“We walked for some time—ten minutes, at least—and then stopped and they passed a bottle back and forth. I could hear the liquid splashing to the neck and back. They were drunk. I could hear the sound of their boots, feet unsteady, taking steps to keep their balance. They were speaking Spanish, talking about who’d go first with me, and then flipping a coin to settle it.
“They cut my T-shirt off with a knife. I could feel the blade pulling the fabric before slicing through it. Then they were mauling me. They pulled my shorts down and cut off my panties. One of them let go of me and I heard the jiggle of a belt buckle and the sound of a zipper unzipping. The other one started humping me from behind and I turned and brought my knee up into him and he grunted and let go.
“Then I was tackled, taken down hard and they were trying to spread my legs apart. I tried to fight them and they beat the hell out of me.”
Owen picked up his beer and took a long drink. He said, “Jesus Christ, this is unbelievable.”
Kate sipped her wine. “You want to hear the rest of it?”
Owen said, “I want to go to Guatemala, get those bastards.”
Kate said, “I woke up trying to breathe through the one nostril that wasn’t swollen shut. I started to panic, thinking I was going to suffocate. I knew I had to get the tape off my mouth fast. I could hear them close by, snoring. I rolled on my back and stretched my arms and brought the handcuffs over my hips to the back of my knees and then slid my legs through. I ripped the tape off my mouth, taking in gulps of air. I found the seam and pulled the tape from my eyes. It was early, the sun was just starting to rise. I was naked and put on what was left of my T-shirt, the back slit open, and found my shorts and sandals.
“Then I studied the men who were sleeping fifteen feet away, two
Ladinos
in blue
policia
uniforms. I moved to the closest one who was thin, slightly built like a lightweight fighter, and slid the gun out of his holster. It was a Beretta. I released the safety, and racked a round into the chamber. The second cop wasn’t wearing a gun but had a knife in a sheath on
his belt. He was a bigger man with a fat stomach—on his back snoring.
“I aimed the gun at the skinny cop and kicked him in the ribs with the wooden toe of my sandal. He opened his eyes and looked at me and grinned. I told him to give me the key to the handcuffs or I’d blow his head off.
“He said, ‘
Cálmese. Yo la tengo
.’ He patted the outside of his pocket and slid his hand in his blue uniform pants and brought out the key, holding it up, showing it to me. ‘See, I have it right here.’ He grinned again and said they were having fun with me, that’s all—like what’s the problem? I wanted to walk over and put the gun in his mouth, see how much fun he thought that was.
“I pulled the hammer back on the Beretta and he tossed the key in the grass in front of me. I went down on one knee, searching for it and then seeing it partially concealed. When I looked up again, the fat cop was on his feet, the knife in his hand, charging me—up so fast I couldn’t believe it.
“I raised the Beretta and fired twice. I remember how loud it was and birds squawking into the sky. I hit him both times, center chest, but he kept coming, the momentum of his body driving him into me, knocking me over. He landed next to me, and as I sat
up, the skinny cop grabbed the barrel of the Beretta, trying to take it out of my hand, and I pulled the trigger. The round hit him in his left shoulder and he let go of the gun and fell back. The second time, I aimed higher and shot him in the forehead. He went down, fell on his back and didn’t move.”
Owen drank his beer, never taking his eyes off her.
“I unlocked the handcuffs and followed the trail through the jungle back to the Jeep that said
Policia
on the side in white letters.
“I drove back to the outskirts of San Pedro and ditched it in heavy ground cover and walked into town. I knew I was on my own. The Peace Corps couldn’t help me now. No one could. I went home and got money and my passport. I had seven hundred US dollars and another hundred in quetzals. I took a final look at my house that I loved, knowing I’d never see it again and went to Marina’s. We took a bus to Guatemala City and from there, flew back to Michigan.”
He said, “Jesus.”
They stared at each other.
Owen said, “They rape you?”
Kate said, “Does it matter?”
He reached over and held her hand.
“I think they were too drunk,” Kate said. “Angry
’cause they couldn’t get it up, I guess and beat the hell out of me.”
“I think you got even,” Owen said.
“I don’t look at it that way,” Kate said. “It was them or me.”
Owen said, “Where’d you learn to shoot, or are you a natural?”
“My dad liked guns. He used to take me to the Metamora Gun Club and teach me how to shoot. He had a Walther PPK and a .45 Colt and a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.”
Owen finished his beer and looked across the table at her.
He said, “What’d the Peace Corps do?”
“Asked me why I left.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“Guatemala was weird and crazy. I couldn’t handle it.”
“They find the cops?”
“Marina’s mother sent the newspaper from San Pedro, describing the execution of two
policia
, kidnapped and taken into the jungle and shot.”
“That’s how they spun it, huh? Incredible.”
Kate said, “Now what do you think of me?”
“I like you even more,” Owen said.
Kate and Owen got married five months later. Her
only regret was giving up her name—Morgan—for McCall. She liked Morgan better, but McCall wasn’t bad. Kate’s dad asked why they were getting married so fast, what’s the damn hurry?
Kate gave birth to Luke four months later, answering his question.
“Conned the parole board, didn’t you? Well, you ain’t going to con me. Found religion, my ass.” T.J. Hughes grinned, his thin weathered face partially hidden in the shadow of his Stetson, lower lip protruding behind a knot of chaw. T.J. arcing a brown stream of tobacco juice into a waste can next to his desk. “Been one way your whole life, found the Lord in the last two months. That sound about right?” He turned his head, spit again. “What were you doing, sucking the chaplain’s cock? That get you parole consideration?”
“I think God worked a miracle for me,” Jack said. He tried to gesture with his hands, forgetting they were still cuffed to the bellychain.
“He did, huh?” T.J. grinned and spit.
“He said, ‘Jack, I need your help. I need you to turn your life around and make something of yourself.’” These were the chaplain’s preachy lines Jack had memorized and now delivered with his own inspired conviction.
“He come down from on high, appear in your cell, or’d you just hear his voice?”
“All I know is,” Jack said, “with the help of Almighty God, I can do it.”
“Well, dude, you got six months to keep your nose clean, and I don’t think you can.”
“Thanks for your support,” Jack said. “I appreciate your faith in me, Mr. Hughes.”
“You getting smart with me, boy?”
Jack furrowed his brow, gave him a look of Christian innocence. Who, me?
“God, I hope not. That would be a mistake, I guarantee it.”
He talked tough sitting behind a desk in an office building. Jack wondering how this wrinkled prune of an ex-cowboy—who must’ve been close to fifty— would handle the outlaw bikers in Central Unit. He’d like to see that. “No, sir. What I was trying to say— with the Lord’s help, I have been able to banish that evil part of me.”
“Let me tell you the way it’s going to be,” T.J. said, “so there’s no misunderstanding.”
He pushed the brim of his hat up, and for the first time Jack could see his dark, beady little eyes.
“I’m going to be checking up on you when you
least expect it. I’ll want to see your pay stubs. You don’t have ’em, you’re going back to Judy.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger.
“I’m going to be asking for u-rine samples. You give me a hot UA, you’re going back to Judy. You know your warden’s a lady, right? Judy L. Frigo. Got a degree in ball busting, I understand. What tickles me, a little girl’s in charge of keeping all you hard-asses in line. That’s a good one.”
T.J. was a wiry 170-pounder in lizard-skin boots, tight Levis and a western shirt with pearl buttons and piping around the pockets.
“Eighty-two percent of you assholes revoke,” T.J. said. “What’s called recidivism, the return to crime after a criminal conviction. You going to beat the odds, Jack? It’s a real crapshoot out there.”
“The portents of doom aren’t going to deter me,” Jack said. “If that’s what you’re asking.”
T.J. got up, hooking his thumbs on the inside edges of his belt buckle, a heavy brass number with a star embossed on it. “Portents of doom, huh? Where’d you come up with that one? That’s some big words for a convict.”
* * *
Jack was a spectacle when he’d arrived an hour earlier to the parole supervision of Mr. T.J. Hughes—legs chained, making short hopping moves, getting used to how far he could step, hands cuffed to a belly chain, people staring at him as he got out of the van and was escorted into the Regional Reentry Center in Tucson after serving thirty-eight months for armed robbery at the Arizona State Penitentiary in Florence.
Under oath, in a court of law, he told the judge he didn’t know the names of his two accomplices. He said, “Your Honor, ever see the movie
Reservoir
Dogs
?”
The judge said, “This better be relevant.”
Jack’s court-appointed attorney, Joe Mitchell, said “Your Honor, in the film, five strangers are hired by a crime broker to rob a bank. They meet for the first time and don’t know anything about each other. No names are used. Each one is given a color. Mr. Blue. Mr. Green. Mr. Brown. Like that.”
“Life imitates art, is that what you’re telling me, Counselor?”
Joe Mitchell said, “That’s right, Your Honor.” Assuming the judge got it.
“I saw the movie,” the judge said, “thought it was preposterous.”
Jack got the maximum for a class-two felony—five years. His unexpected parole, the result of befriending the prison chaplain who stopped by his cell one day and said, “Will you come and visit me? I’d like to talk to you about joining our Bible study program, part of my Prisoners of Christ ministry.”
Jack grinned ’cause it sounded funny and was about to say, “You got the wrong guy.” But paused, looking at the future, seeing eighteen more months of mind-numbing sameness, and started to panic—when a lightbulb went on in his head. Wait a minute. Maybe this was his way out.
The chaplain was a tall thin hawk-faced man named Ulrich Jonen. His prison ministry program was called New Beginnings.
“What’s done is done,” Uli said. “You cannot change your past transgressions, but you can start anew and you can do it today. God enables us to have a second chance, and more, if necessary. We’re all human beings and human beings make mistakes.”
Jack could relate. Jesus, nobody’s perfect.
Jack told the chaplain what he wanted to hear and even let the chaplain hug him on occasion, Uli displaying some homo tendencies, but it never got out of hand.
After two months of studying scripture, Uli
referred Jack to the parole board as a man, he felt, really wanted to make a change. “I see goodness in Jack Curran.” Uli urged the “board” to at least meet him. “What’s the harm in that? If you don’t believe as I do, he’s a changed man, he stays and maxes out his sentence.”
The parole board interviewed Jack and agreed with the chaplain, giving him early conditional release—what they called discretionary parole, with a list of rules he had to follow.
As he was leaving the penitentiary, Uli said, “Jack, have faith, son. The next few weeks are going to be a critical time. There’s going to be a lot of chaos in your world. My advice: ‘Press on. Nothing in this life can take the place of persistence.’ Know who authored those words?”
Jack said, “You?”
“Mr. Ray Kroc, who started a little fast-food franchise called McDonald’s.”
T.J. unlocked the cuffs and chains in his office and said, “I got the authority to detain you, arrest you and send you back if I have cause. Boy, I get even an inkling you’re violating parole, you’re going to be in a whole heap lot of trouble.”
Jack rubbed his wrists. There were red marks from the handcuffs. He looked across the desk at T.J. and said, “I could use a little time to find my footing.”
“Is that right? Well, you got ten working days to get a permanent job, and I expect you to work labor to meet expenses.”
“How am I going to find a job if I’m working all day?”
“Talk to your buddy, Jesus, now that you’re on a first-name basis—ask him. They’re going to charge you $105 a week for rent at the house. And another $200 for an alcohol-and drug-counseling program.”
Jack reminded T.J. he’d been arrested for armed robbery, not booze or drugs.
T.J. said, “I’m just looking out for you, buddy,” and grinned. “But on the plus side, you don’t have any restitution fees or back child-support payments.”
What pissed Jack off, what seemed like pure bureaucratic lunacy, he had to have a phone location where he could be reached at all times. No cell phones. That eliminated a lot of better-paying jobs right off the bat. They really stacked the deck against you.
There were framed photographs of T.J. on the wall from another time: T.J. the rodeo honcho, roping a calf in one, riding a bull in another one.
“You were in the rodeo, huh? What was it like to be on the back of a two-thousand-pound Brahma bull?”
“It beat the hell out of keeping track of losers like you,” he said, holding Jack in his gaze.
It took Jack a while to get used to life on the outside. The world seemed big at first, after spending eighteen hours a day in a six-by-ten-foot cell with no windows. It was also tough being around people, thinking everyone who came toward him wanted to kill him, walking with his back toward the shelves in a grocery store, seeing suburban moms and old folks and realizing he was overreacting, the survival instincts he learned in prison difficult to let go. He didn’t need his “prison face” now. He didn’t have to look mad and bad.
The clothes he was wearing on February 28, 2002, the day he went in, no longer fit, so he bought gray khaki pants and a shirt from the prison store, first deducting it from his hundred dollars of release money, leaving him fifty-two dollars till he could find a job. He thought he looked like a janitor in his new khaki outfit, but it was stylish compared to the red jumpsuit he’d worn for three and a half years.
Jack had read that most cons who were released were scared ’cause they didn’t want to make a mistake but were too dumb or too unprepared to make it outside and got arrested and sent back after a couple weeks. T.J. said it was due to “gate fever,” a malady that caused fear, anxiety and grouchiness in the hapless convict.
A lot of guys Jack met inside actually liked the “life.” Three squares a day, no worries about getting a job and paying bills, no responsibilities at all. And they liked their prison friends better than their friends back home.
Jack lived on baked beans and canned spaghetti the first couple weeks in the halfway house, spicing up both with salt, pepper and Tabasco in the small kitchen, while he tried to find a job, interviewing at construction sites and trying to preserve his capital—now down to eight dollars and seventy-three cents.
Nobody was hiring ex-cons on parole and he was close to desperate, thinking he’d have to revert to crime to make ends meet, when he saw a want ad and got a job at a place in South Tucson, building modular homes. The company was Eldorado Estates. A sign in the warehouse said: “Making the American Dream a Reality.” Jack wondering who in their right
mind thought living in a trailer was attaining the American dream.
Hank Bain, one of the owners, told Jack the job paid ten dollars an hour, but when he found out Jack was on parole, offered him seven, Hank saying, “You don’t like it, come over here, I’ve got a little spot on my ass you can kiss.”
Jack cleared $205 a week after taxes and, after paying for his room at the halfway house, had a hundred dollars for food and entertainment. A line on the bottom of his paycheck said: “Eldorado Estates, built on family values of trust and loyalty.” Jack liked that. Everything was a lie.
Hank’s son Donny was the crew chief, a skinny effeminate heroin addict who was trying to kick the habit and trying to get by on weed. Donny’d twist one on the way to lunch and offer it to Jack, Jack saying, “I’m on parole, man, I give ’em a hot urinalysis, they’re going to send me right back.”
Donny said, “Fuck ’em, they can’t do that.”
Jack said, “They can do anything they want.”
And did, T.J. stopping by at the factory checking up on him while he installed windows in prefab walls, rousting him in his room in the middle of the night, waking him up and making him piss in a plastic bottle. Standing behind him while he did
it. Jack saying it’s hard “to go” when someone’s watching you.
“Come on, wake up, sleepyhead,” T.J.’ d say. “Let’s find out what kind of fun you’ve been having.”
But Jack beat the odds, got through parole without screwing up and six months later was on a bus back to Detroit with a fresh outlook and the intent of staying out of prison. T.J. said he had to have a forwarding address and Jack gave him his sister Jodie’s.
From the Greyhound station downtown, he took a cab to Sterling Heights, hoping Jodie would be there. He knocked on her front door, his only sister, he hadn’t seen in four years. She opened it, looking at him through the screen and said, “Oh … my … God.” Stretching it out like it was one word. “I do not believe it. What’d you do, escape?”
Jack said, “I found Jesus.”
“Yeah, right.”
Jack said, “The parole board believes I am a changed man.”
She grinned. “Well, they obviously don’t know you very well.”
He and Jodie had always gotten along, had always been close, closer after the death of their parents twelve years earlier when a fire broke out in their East Detroit home.
Jack said, “Can I stay with you for a few days?”
“I don’t know that I’d be comfortable living in the same house with a criminal.” She smiled now to show him she was kidding and opened the door.
Jack stepped over the threshold and she put her arms around him, hugged him and held on. She kissed his cheek and said, “Jackie, it’s so good to see you. You can stay as long as you like. You’re welcome anytime, you know that.”
She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcée with short spiked hair, dyed red and long fingernails that were light blue with flecks of color on them.
“When’d you change your hair?” Last time he saw Jodie, she was blond.
“Couple weeks ago. It’s an Emo style.”
“Emo, huh?”
“Stands for emotional punk movement.”
“I can see it,” Jack said.
“Listen, I’m in the business—I have to look the look. Did you know coloring your hair dates back to the ancient Romans?”
“I guess it’s okay then,” Jack said.
They went in the kitchen and Jodie made them each a vodka and tonic.
She said, “I’ll bet you’d like a home-cooked meal
after all that time being incarcerated. I could whip us up some tuna noodle hot dish.”
It was a joke between them. Hot dish was a casserole their mother from Minnesota used to make. She’d start with a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and put in tuna and noodles or ham and lima beans, whatever she had handy.
They had another drink and Jodie made hamburgers on a gas grill and they ate on TV tables in the living room, watching
Jeopardy
.
At one point Jack said, “You still selling cosmetics?” Jodie had worked for Revlon and made good money, selling to high-end stores in malls around Detroit.