Moonrise

  I’m about to go into the diner,

  check everything’s OK,

  when,

  for no good reason,

  I slip the key into the ignition.

  And the car turns over.

  First time.

  No sputtering.

  Nothing but the colicky purr of an engine

  sucking on dregs of gas.

  ‘What the hell?’ I say aloud.

  Yesterday the crap heap wouldn’t hiss,

  now it’s purring?

  Was it the oil change? The battery?

  It doesn’t seem likely.

  But what does it matter?

  It’s fixed!

  Joy shoots through me

  cos now I’ve got a job

  and if Bob doesn’t mind,

  a car to see Ed in the afternoons

  instead of walking and

  baking my ass to a crisp.

  Nell comes running. ‘You got it working?’

  She pounds her fist on the hood, screams.

  ‘Sue, get out here! Sue!’

  Sue plods down the steps,

  stands next to Nell, hands on her hips.

  ‘I hope Bob still needs a delivery guy,’ she says,

  and winks,

  kidding,

  but it worries me

  because it’s been an age since

  Bob talked about the job

  and it’s not like I’ll be in town

  for much longer.

  Sue taps the licence plate with her toe,

  then heads back towards the diner.

  I watch her go, a slow, fragile step,

  but Sue’s not fragile.

  She’s tough,

  cunning.

  And I know she did this,

  fixed the car while I slept or

  got her boyfriend to do it.

  But I won’t ask anyone how it happened.

  I’ll accept it and pretend this miracle

  had something to do with me.

  GO HOME

  Sue is wiping tables with a grey dishrag.

  I scan the restaurant. ‘Where’s Nell?’

  I’ve poured a lug of gas into the car,

  hosed it down and cleaned it out.

  Despite the lumpy tyres and rattling exhaust,

  I’m taking the car for a ride. Nell too.

  ‘In the bathroom,’ Sue says.

  Her eyes are red. But they weren’t this morning.

  I take a step backwards.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Sue says.

  She picks a chocolate chip from a muffin,

  pops it into her mouth and

  slides the plate across the counter

  to me.

  ‘It’s my kid’s anniversary.

  He was a lifer at the farm.

  Got knifed in a fight.

  No one went down for it.

  All lifers in his block,

  so I guess it didn’t matter much.’

  She pulls out a packet of cigarettes,

  unpeels the cellophane.

  ‘Listen, Joe,

  you stay for as long as Ed needs you

  but then go home.

  I came here for Jason

  and I ain’t never left.

  Not even after he died,

  and now I’m going nowhere.

  They might as well have locked me up.

  It’s different for someone like Nell.

  Her family’s got a good reason to be here.’

  Just then Nell appears, wiping wet hands on her shorts.

  ‘Stupid hand dryer.

  When’s Bob gonna get a new one?’

  ‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ Sue says,

  and scuttles into the kitchen.

  Nell leans towards me.

  ‘So, you taking me for a ride?’

  A JOB

  The car lurches and grinds its way out of Wakeling.

  ‘You’re gonna spend half your time

  pushing this crap heap around,’ Nell says.

  But I don’t care.

  It’s a car.

  Wheels.

  I have a job.

  For a few weeks anyway.

  Until Ed no longer needs me

  in Texas.

  MARRY ME

  Ed uses his fingertips to flatten out his eyebrows.

  ‘I got another marriage proposal in the mail.

  Obviously on account of my looks.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Women think I’m the atom bomb, Joe.

  Didn’t you know?

  I’ve been propositioned twenty-eight times

  since I got locked up.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  He holds up his palms:

  I can see a mark in the middle of one,

  like the remnants of a cigarette burn.

  ‘Women are out of their sycamore trees.

  They love the idea of hooking up with a guy behind bars.

  No way I’m nailing her best friend if I’m

  in here, right?

  You know,

  Johnny Vinzano got a proposal and that guy

  did something so skanky it’d give

  Charles Manson nightmares.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I say.

  ‘No one gets it.

  But plenty of guys say yes.

  Pete Browne married a girl from Utah last year.

  She visits him every month.

  Thing is, everyone knows Pete’s gonna fry

  cos he’s full-blown guilty of

  murdering his mother-in-law.’

  ‘Do they get to … do the business?’ I ask.

  Ed bangs the table and laughs.

  ‘No sex in here, man.

  You’re not even allowed to do yourself,

  and that’s the truth!

  Guards catch you with your hands in your pants,

  you’re getting solitary.’

  He pauses.

  ‘You got a girl back home?’

  I shake my head, think of Nell,

  her face, clumpy walk,

  bossy voice and the way she kisses –

  slowly then quick,

  like she’s hungry.

  And I consider telling Ed about her,

  but pity stops me – or guilt.

  ‘I think that’s what I regret,’ he says.

  ‘That I never fell in love.

  Maybe I’ll marry that girl who wrote me after all.’

  We spend the rest of the time determining

  how we’d pick a wife,

  getting no further than talking about

  Catwoman.

  And at the end

  Ed, still laughing, says,

  ‘How many days left?

  I haven’t looked at the calendar.’

  It’s twenty days

  – twenty –

  but I pretend I don’t know either.

  ‘Time’s measured in moments, man,’ I say instead.

  MONMOUTH BEACH

  It was fall.

  The ocean was grey, not blue,

  waves cannonballing on to the beach.

  Mom, Angela and I were sitting on a blanket

  eating peanut-butter-and-jelly bagels.

  Ed was skimming stones into the sea,

  his back to us.

  Mom said,

  ‘Why the hell doesn’t he just sit down?’

  It wasn’t a question.

  She was irritated.

  Always irritated by Ed,

  like he was her annoying boyfriend

  and not a son she should love.

  I went to him,

  over the lumpy sand.

  ‘That’s Europe,’ Ed said, pointing to the horizon.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great to live over there?’

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘Across the ocean,’ Ed said.

  I looked down at the sand for stones

  to
skim

  but couldn’t see any,

  just washed-up water bottles,

  cigarette butts,

  candy wrappers.

  My sneakers had a hole in the toe.

  ‘Would you come with me?’ he asked.

  ‘If I got a job in London or Paris?

  It would be mad exciting.

  We could see Buckingham Palace

  or the Eiffel Tower.

  Europe has history, man.

  It’s got buildings older than this country!’

  I spotted a small coral-coloured shell and

  picked it up.

  ‘I’d go anywhere with you,’ I told him.

  And I meant it.

  But when the time came,

  he took off without me.

  And he never made it anywhere near Europe,

  never got across the Atlantic.

  Yet here I am,

  with him

  like I promised.

  DELIVERY BOY

  It isn’t hard to navigate Wakeling’s grid system,

  and after a couple days delivering

  grilled cheese sandwiches,

  I know my way around the whole town.

  And I drive by Nell’s house whenever I can:

  I slow

  and search the windows for light.

  I search for her.

  BOTCHED

  They botched an execution

  in Louisana last night.

  The guy on the gurney

  didn’t

  get the proper anaesthetic,

  wasn’t even out cold

  when they poisoned him

  with potassium chloride

  and he died of a massive heart attack.

  It took Anthony Cruz, forty-six years old,

  fifty-two minutes to die,

  a vein in his neck bulging like a golf ball

  where the nurse stuck in

  the IV.

  He was jerking, foaming from the mouth,

  looked so horrific

  they had to close the viewing gallery curtain

  to stop anyone witnessing it.

  That’s the second botched execution

  this month.

  Shouldn’t they let Ed live

  until they figure it out?

  The governor of Texas says

  he doesn’t think so.

  DAY TRIP

  ‘You wanna see some nature?’ Nell asks.

  She’s figured out the best route to the

  Davy Crockett National Forest.

  ‘I promise you’ll be at the prison by two.’

  ‘Only if you got a playlist put together

  for the ride,’ I say, my face serious.

  She waves her phone at me. ‘Oh, please.

  Think of this less as a drive,

  more as an education,

  or a musical cleansing, if you will.’

  She pinches my chin between her fingers,

  pecks my lips.

  ‘Go suck it,’ I say, pushing her away

  and putting the car into gear.

  MONKEY BABIES

  Nell strokes the nape of my neck.

  ‘You want me so bad,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  She withdraws her hand.

  ‘No. Keep it there,’ I beg.

  I take her wrist, make her limp hand paw my face.

  She snatches her hand back,

  hides it beneath her knee

  and suddenly

  I imagine Plexiglas between us.

  I push on the gas. The car jolts forward.

  The world outside smudges by.

  ‘You know, I can’t even shake Ed’s hand,’ I tell her.

  ‘It’s stupid.

  It’s not like I could smuggle in a rifle.’

  ‘A guy called Harlow did some study and

  figured out that when faced with

  a choice,

  monkey babies

  always chose comfort over food.

  We can survive without anything except …’

  She stares out at a passing truck,

  a mattress tied to its roof.

  ‘Love?’ I ask.

  She nods. ‘Apparently.

  We can survive without anything except love.’

  NIGHTMARES

  I’d wake up screaming or in a wet bed,

  and Ed never said, ‘Grow up, Joe,’

  or got cross about being woken.

  He’d pull back his blanket

  and let me sleep next to him.

  And when I did,

  the nightmares and bedwetting went away.

  THE LAKE

  We spread our sweaters on a rock

  overlooking a lake.

  It’s early. No one’s on the water yet.

  The sky is pink. The air smells of pine.

  Nell offers me some cranberry trail mix

  but I’m not hungry.

  ‘Isn’t it weird how two worlds

  can sit so close together?’ I say.

  Nell puts her head on my shoulder.

  ‘It’s people who build grey fortresses,’ she says,

  understanding me completely.

  ‘I wish there were a way –’ I say.

  A wet dog darts out of the forest,

  barks up at us on our rock.

  His tail wags.

  ‘Come on, Max!’ a voice calls,

  and the dog bounds back into the forest.

  A LITTLE WHILE

  We get back to Wakeling early and

  go to my apartment.

  Nell takes my face in her hands,

  kisses my cheeks.

  One.

  Then the other.

  ‘I’m gonna stay a little while,’ she says.

  MEANING IT

  Being with Nell knocks my head back,

  makes my bones thrum,

  my blood ring and boil up

  until we are

  reaching, grabbing, smothering

  each other.

  And skin to skin our aching bodies press

  to find a way in –

  and I mean pressing, pressing, pressing.

  And there’s teeth brawling, hands clutching,

  as we pour our way into each other

  until everything stops,

  gives way to soft kisses,

  quiet breaths of friendship,

  and I say,

  ‘Are you OK?’

  and actually fucking mean it.

  AFTERWARDS

  We share a tall glass of milk.

  And we doze.

  AN EMAIL FROM AL

  Dear Angela and Joe,

  Got good news:

  Supreme Court says ‘Let’s hear it!’

  so we’re going to DC August 15.

  Here’s hoping the federal judges

  will be smarter than the ones in Texas.

  We’re getting there.

  I’ll be in touch …

  Best,

  Al Mitchell

  THEY’LL HEAR IT

  So the date is set

  three days before the

  scheduled execution,

  which is cutting it a bit fine

  in my view.

  BE HAPPY

  I do my best to focus

  on Ed’s eyes,

  brain batting away images of Nell in her underwear.

  ‘The highest court in the country will hear us out.

  That’s gotta be good,’ he says.

  I give him two thumbs up.

  Ed squints. ‘You OK, little brother?’

  Be here, I tell myself.

  For God’s sake, be here while you still can.

  He raps on the Plexiglas with his knuckles,

  jiggles his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Oh, I know that look.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You in love, little brother?’

  I examine my hands.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Joe.

  Don’
t give up that stuff for me.

  Don’t give it up for anyone.

  If you need to go back to Arlington

  to see a girl,

  that’s what you should do.’

  ‘I don’t need to go anywhere,’ I say.

  I want to hold him,

  find out how he smells.

  I want to say thank you and sorry and

  Please don’t leave me again.

  ‘Be happy,’ Ed says.

  ‘It’s your duty to me, man.’

  THE WALKING DEAD

  We are on Nell’s sofa watching

  The Walking Dead,

  Nell insisting that Rick Grimes is the

  perfect man,

  clutching her heart whenever he comes on screen.

  ‘You know the actor’s English, right?

  And the English are horrible kissers,’ I say.

  She flutters her eyelashes.

  ‘Not in my experience.’

  A zombie rips out a girl’s throat and

  Nell screams,

  hides behind a cushion.

  ‘I can’t watch,’ she says,

  but then does,

  as a woman with a baseball bat

  bashes in the brains

  of a zombie.

  The woman’s face is spattered in blood.

  She drops the baseball bat,

  but looks totally unshaken by the massacre.

  And that’s when I start to cry.

  Nell takes my hand,

  strokes my fingers.

  I say,

  ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m not sad.’