The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (8 page)

thirteen

iris

The Arkansas Valley Correctional
Facility loomed on the horizon. About fifty miles east of Pueblo on State Highway 96, it was suitably isolated, rising from the prairie like a pop-up against the flat pages of a children’s book. With the sun almost directly overhead, it cast no shadow, enhancing the two-dimensional effect. Iris hadn’t known what to expect—the closest she’d ever been to prison was the overnight stay at the Baton Rouge jail when she’d been picked up for shoplifting—but she’d anticipated something more sinister, more
Shawshank Redemption
, than these rectangular buildings with flags. It looked like a community college campus or the headquarters for a mid-sized, light industrial corporation that got a tax break to locate in this barren county. If the corporation needed double twelve-foot fences topped with concertina wire to keep its employees in.

Only a handful of visitors suffered through the check-in procedures in the small reception area, a space about the size of Iris’s bedroom. They were a motley lot ranging from an octogenarian trailing an oxygen tank to a wailing two-year-old. Most of them seemed to know the drill. Iris tried not to think about how depressing it would be to see your son, brother, or husband only in this environment. When she’d filled out the paperwork, listing Neil Asher as the “offender” she was there to see, Iris waited her turn in the inspection line run by a slender Hispanic guard. A class ring with a central peridot winked from his pinky. He made her open her mouth and curl up her tongue—what weapon did he think she could hide there?—and fan her long hair. Even though she was only a visitor, could walk away whenever she wanted, she found herself tensing her muscles until her stomach ached. The search was a violation, an indignity. She’d never complain about TSA again.

Once siphoned through double gates that made her think of the airlocks in sci-fi films, Iris found herself on a 200-foot-long path through a sea of rock studded here and there with lonely cacti and other plants. The open air was a huge relief after the claustrophobia-inducing reception area. An ornamental bridge, weathered and with a railing, arched over a faux creek of round river stones. It seemed like the bridge to nowhere, an ironic statement about the facility, and Iris wondered if it was intentional. Probably not.

O
nce she handed her paperwork to the corrections officers in what looked like a command center, Iris found herself in an L-shaped room ringed with vending machines, waiting for a guard to fetch her father. A young couple sat as close as they could without touching, the girl weeping softly. The family with the crying toddler occupied the table next to Iris’s.
Tears seem to be the theme of the day.
She resolved not to add to the waterworks. It wasn’t until the muscles in her forearms started to ache that she realized she was clenching and unclenching her hands. Consciously stretching her fingers wide, she inhaled the room’s pine cleaner odor.

She hadn’t found out about her father’s imprisonment until a year after she left. She’d been almost seventeen by then and living in Virginia. When she’d left Lone Pine, she’d made a clean break, foresworn contact with her family and former friends. They’d all believed Pastor Matt, so she was through with them. Even her parents. Especially her parents. Then she’d learned from an old
USA Today
article that her father had been convicted of aggravated mayhem against Matthew Brozek and of felony murder in the death of his wife, Glynnis Brozek, who suffered a fatal heart attack upon witnessing the assault. Iris had zeroed in on her father’s name, on the news that he’d beaten Pastor Matt so brutally he was still in a coma. She’d read the paragraph three times before she took in the fact that her father was going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

He’d believed her after all, even though he hadn’t stood up to her mother, or spoken out against the reckoning stones. Tears had pricked her eyelids. The surprise of it had left her unsettled, unsure if she should try to contact him. She’d found the name of the prison easily enough, but didn’t know if he was allowed phone calls or if she could stand to hear his voice. Finally, after two days of thinking about it, she’d mailed him a one-word note—“Thanks”—and immediately moved to a new state for fear someone might trace her.

Now, she didn’t know what to feel. She was nervous, her palms sweaty, but maybe that was because she was trapped behind bars and razor wire with murderers, rapists, and violent offenders who would as soon carve your heart out with a spoon as pass you by. She felt guilty that she hadn’t tried to get in touch with her father after that one-word note. She’d denied his existence for more than two decades. And, she realized, she was still angry. Pissed off that he hadn’t proclaimed his belief in her, saved her from the reckoning stones and the scorn of the whole community. Pacing two hasty strides in each direction, she caught the guard’s eye and made herself sit down. Sure, he’d pummeled Pastor Matt after the fact, but that hadn’t done her much good, had it? She didn’t hear the door open, but a change in the air made her turn.

Her father stood on the threshold, blinking like a bear just awakened from its winter hibernation. She jumped up as if goosed and looked at him. He’d been tall and on the thin side when Iris left home; he’d packed on both muscle and fat in prison, managing to look bigger and yet softer. The skin on his face sagged to jowls, and his fleshy ears seemed more prominent against his bald head. The green uniform of trousers and a short-sleeved pullover turned his skin sallow. The sad smile she remembered split his face, showing coffee-stained teeth. He made his way to the table she’d been assigned.

“Mercy? God has returned you to me, Mercy.” He held out his arms tentatively, as if afraid of a rebuff, and Iris hugged him awkwardly, and then with fervor. Years of missing him formed tears that she refused to let fall. He felt frail, despite his seeming bulk, like a puff pastry. He smelled of soap, and fabric burned in an industrial dryer, and sausage.

She tried to say, “Dad,” but couldn’t force words or air through her closed throat.

“Let’s sit.” He pulled out one of the chairs. She sank down, but held onto his hand for a moment before releasing it. Choosing a chair across from her, her father stared as if trying to memorize her every pore and eyebrow hair. “You’ve grown up beautiful. I see a lot of your mom in you.”

“Only on the outside.”

Her father pulled back at the sharpness in her voice and Iris regretted letting the bitter words out. She didn’t know what to say. The possibilities seemed either too flip—“What have you been up to?”—or, strangely, too personal. He might be her father, but they hadn’t communicated in more than two decades. She finally said, “I’ve missed you,” realizing that it was true.

“I’ve thought about you and prayed for you every day of these last twenty-three years.”

“I’m sorry.” What a pitiful, inadequate phrase.

Her father took a moment to absorb the words and finally accepted them with a tiny nod. “Your going was hard on your mother.”

She should have believed me, taken my side.
Iris didn’t want to argue with her father within minutes of seeing him again, so she said nothing and his words hung between them until her father leaned forward to scratch behind his knee. The movement brought on a cough that wracked him for almost a minute. When it was over, he slumped in the chair, breathing cautiously, looking exhausted. He shook his head when she asked if she could get him some water. “Had the flu at the end of February and I haven’t been able to shake this cough.”

“What’s it like?”

“This? Prison?”

She regretted the question. What could he say? Prison had to suck.

“I’ve adjusted. I won’t deny it was hard early on, when I was in Bent County, partly because I could see my being a convict was hard on Marian. Partly because …” He paused and scratched behind his ear. “I can’t explain prison to you. Some of the men are animals—truly evil and I’ve witnessed things … Enough of that. Most are lost, confused—they’ve got substance abuse problems, or were abused as kids, and they made mistakes, sometimes horrible mistakes, and those mistakes will define them forever, in or out of prison. And it’s boring. You can’t imagine how boring, how draining and demoralizing that boredom is. Prisons are full of hopeless people, for the most part, just taking up space.”

Iris listened in growing horror. The thought that her gentle father was trapped here forever was like bees buzzing inside her head.

“Since they moved me here …” He twiddled a shirt button. “I make cubicles. You know, for offices. Fitting, right, that inmates make the prison walls for corporate jails? That’s what we say, anyway.” His gaze strayed to the window. Iris could see nothing through it except light. “I get three squares a day, and plenty of time to read my Bible. Jesus is a lot more present to me here than he ever was on the outside. It is in our weakness that God’s strength is made plain, and nowhere is that truer than here.”

The Jesus-words smothered Iris, who had long ago thrown off the illusory comfort of her childhood beliefs. Right about the time the Community saw fit to punish her for speaking the truth. Despite the way his words slid under her skin and made her itch, she didn’t want to argue with her father, to undermine whatever comfort he might have found.

As she searched for something neutral to say, he touched her hand lightly. “Tell me about you. Where did you go that night?”

“Kansas.” The single word loosed a torrent of memories and Iris found herself telling her father about dying her hair in the bus station and choosing her new name. “Iris” because she’d always loved the lavender flowers that grew alongside their house, and “Dashwood” from a Jane Austen paperback someone had left on the bus. She told him about drifting from town to town and working odd jobs or stealing to feed herself, avoiding the pimps who hung about bus stations, looking for runaways, who would have prostituted her. She skipped some of the harder and more sordid episodes, not wanting to re-live them or inflict them on her father. Fetching them each damp, plastic-tasting sandwiches from the vending machine, she told him about meeting Lassie, who introduced her to his godmother, Jane Ogden, when he saw her sketchbook one night, and how Jane had given her a job at the gallery, awarded her “scholarships” for art classes, and introduced her to a goldsmith who took her on as an apprentice.

“She saved my life,” Iris said. “She helped me discover that I was meant to design and make jewelry. She suggested I take self-defense classes so I’d feel safer. Without her—” She choked to a stop. Clearing her throat, she said, “I do pretty well. People like my designs. I’ll bring you some photos next time I come, if they’ll let me.” She nodded sideways toward a guard. The words “next time” had slipped out unconsciously, but she knew she’d visit her father again. She could afford to fly back a few times a year.
I can’t make up for lost time, but I can damn sure be here for him now. He’s only in here because of me.
The thought made her swallow hard.

“You always were artistic,” he said. “We were so proud when your painting won the ribbon at the state fair that time. Remember?”

Ice wormed its way down Iris’s spine. She remembered what that prize had led to. “I decided I preferred stones and metal to paint,” she said. Noticing with surprise that the clock was ticking its way toward the end of visiting hours, Iris reached for her father’s hand. “Look, Dad, I always wanted to say … thanks.”

“You sent me a note.”

“You got it?”

He nodded. “Made it worth it.”

Iris folded her lips in and blinked back tears. “You don’t know what it meant to me,” she said, “to realize you believed me. When Mom accused me of lying, and the whole Community … Well, when you didn’t stop it, I figured you didn’t believe me either. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when I saw the article about your sentencing, that I knew you’d believed me after all. You punished Pastor Matt for—”

“What?” His brow wrinkled, pulling his ears slightly forward.

The young couple were hugging goodbye within earshot. “You beat up Pastor Matt,” she whispered. “You beat him into a coma. For what he did to me.”

His mouth dropped open and he snapped it closed, a look Iris couldn’t interpret settling on his features. “I didn’t attack Matthew Brozek, Mercy,” he said finally. “I told the police I did so they wouldn’t go after you.”

“You—” Iris stared at him. His words didn’t make sense.

“I thought you did it.” He looked as stunned as she felt.

“C’mon, Asher,” a corrections officer said, putting a heavy hand on her father’s shoulder. Another coughing fit seized him.

“Can we have a couple more—” Iris started, desperate to continue the conversation, to seek clarity. Surely her father hadn’t meant—. Did he mean he hadn’t done it, hadn’t beaten Pastor Matt, that his confession was a lie? No way. The impossible thoughts whirling in her head weighted her down like a lead apron, rooting her to the chair.

“Sorry, miss. Time’s up.” He started to lead her father away. He went easily, accustomed to following the rules, acceding to the guards’ authority, not drawing attention.

Iris wrenched herself out of the chair and ran after them. A beefy guard blocked her way, expression stern. “Settle down, miss—”

She craned her neck to see around the officer’s bulk, getting a sour whiff of chewing tobacco as he breathed open-mouthed. Her father paused at the door, looking back at her over his shoulder, his expression equal parts confusion, desperation and hope. “I don’t belong here, Mercy. I’m not—. Get me out.”

“Dad—” But he was gone.

At least he hadn’t said “God works in mysterious ways,” Iris thought savagely, pushing the rental car past ninety miles an hour as she drove away from the prison. Dun-colored prairie flashed past. A pronghorn bounded away. Traffic was light. The inside of the car felt too warm, like a mohair blanket wrapped around her, and Iris rolled down the window, preferring the slash of cool air against her face and bare arms. He hadn’t believed her, after all. No one had believed her. Tears pricked behind her eyelids. Talk about ironic, or a comedy of errors. One of the Greek playwrights must have written something like this. A man takes the blame for something he didn’t do, thinking he’s saving his daughter, while the daughter makes a hero of the man for doing the thing he didn’t really do. Iris shook her head violently to clear the confusing thoughts, and the car swerved onto the shoulder. The wheels juddered over fractured asphalt and weed clumps before she swung the car back on the pavement. The speedometer inched toward one hundred.