Anyone could have guessed.
We were kind of expecting it.
And not expecting it at all.
Aunt Karen had been at some of the short trial,
came home and
told us things weren’t going Ed’s way –
for starters, there was his confession
the day after he got arrested.
She said that if she’d been on the jury,
she’d have locked him up and
thrown away the key herself.
‘He didn’t do it,’ Angela told her.
‘I don’t know any more,’ Aunt Karen said.
‘He looked pretty guilty to me.’
And the day that second call came,
I was the only other person at home,
alone again with Mom in the house
and
I didn’t know what to do.
I mean,
Mom was always freaking out, but not like that:
an animal caught in wire.
I went to her,
tried to get her to stand,
but
she wouldn’t.
She couldn’t.
Mom stayed
down for a
really
long
time.
AUNT KAREN
Three hours after the bad news
our Aunt Karen came to stay.
‘I’m all you’ve got,’ she told us.
She stared at the ketchup stains on my white T-shirt,
like that was proof our family
couldn’t take care of itself.
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand
and she flinched.
‘We don’t have space,’ Angela explained.
Aunt Karen scratched her nose with her
thumbnail.
‘I’ll take your room. You can share with Joe
for a while.
Ed’s old bed is still in there.’
Angela stood up as tall as she could.
‘I need my privacy,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well,’ Mom mumbled, cradling a gin.
‘But I have exams,’ Angela tried again.
‘I know you do,’ Aunt Karen said.
‘And you’ll pass them. I won’t have you go down
the same road as Ed.’
It didn’t matter how hard we stamped our feet,
Aunt Karen had made up her mind
and Mom was in no state to argue:
Aunt Karen was staying and
we would start going to church,
not just on Sundays but after school too.
TV was
out
and Bible study was
in.
Karen knew how to save our souls
from falling into the darkness
that had carried off our brother,
and the first part of her plan was
to never mention Ed again.
HOW MOM HANDLED IT
Mom stopped going out.
She littered the house with empty pill bottles.
She watched infomercials,
shopped through the TV,
said she was waiting until people forgot,
that she’d get her act together and
go back to work
once the worst blew over.
But
she never returned to work and
when she finally ventured out,
she didn’t come back.
AUTO SHOP
When I told Reed’s uncle at the auto shop last week
that I was headed to Texas for the whole summer,
he didn’t take it well either.
‘I don’t know if I can keep your job open, Joe,’
he said.
‘I got guys queuing up to apprentice here
and you’re taking off?’
I hadn’t explained to anyone apart from Reed
the real reason I’d be gone.
I was ashamed and Reed must have guessed it.
‘Give him a break, Uncle Sammy.
Joe’s got some girl knocked up
and needs to get out of Arlington
before her brothers do him in,’ Reed said.
Sammy rubbed his greasy hands against
his blue overalls and frowned.
‘You’re lyin’.’
‘He’s lyin’,’ I said.
‘But I gotta go.
I’ll be back though.’
Sammy sighed. ‘OK. OK.
You’re a hell of a lot better than
Reed at getting dirty under a hood
anyway,
I’ll give you that.’
Reed grunted and reached for a wrench.
‘I prefer to get dirty in other ways.’
Sammy watched me.
‘You’re still standing there, Joe.
What do you want?’
I didn’t like to ask.
It felt like begging.
‘I’m owed two weekends.’
Reed snickered.
Sammy rolled his eyes, reached into
his pocket and pulled out a roll
of twenties.
‘How much?’ he asked.
TEAM WRONG
Back at the motel, I call Angela.
Her voice is high pitched and
something is buzzing in the background.
‘I can’t hear you, Ange!’ I shout.
The buzzing stops.
‘I’m at the bar making mojitos,’ she says. ‘You OK?’
I want to tell the truth, say,
No, I’m not OK.
It’s hot.
I haven’t any more money for food.
I’m solo doing this,
which isn’t how it should be.
I’m seventeen years old, for Christ’s sake.
Why aren’t you here?
Why isn’t Aunt Karen? Mom?
‘I found an apartment,’ I say,
leaving out the bit about the bugs.
‘Will the cash have cleared in my account yet?’
She coughs into the phone.
‘Should have,’ she says.
‘But then that’s it.
The boss won’t give me an advance
so it’ll be next month before I’ve got
cash to come down there.’
‘Aunt Karen?’ I ask hopefully.
‘No way. She’s still super pissed.
She picked up more stuff,
said she isn’t moving back in.
I don’t even know how we’ll make the rent
unless she changes her mind.
And how the hell are you gonna eat?’
‘I’m looking for work.’
‘I wish I could get more cash, Joe.’
I half-laugh.
How exactly?
Ask strangers for handouts?
We could never get away with that –
begging for loans to be with our brother.
See, we aren’t the people anyone pities.
No one cares whether or not we get to be with
Ed at the end,
how poor or hungry we are.
The cop’s widow though?
If she set up a crowd-funding account
to buy a black dress and matching hat,
you’d have people donating
big time.
The widow of a murdered guy?
Do you take Mastercard?
But we aren’t her – we’re not the victims here.
Instead we’re on the other side of right –
players for Team Wrong.
‘Have you seen Ed?’ Angela whispers.
I go to the bathroom,
run cold water into the shower.
‘No,’ I admit.
I haven’t even tried.
CHICKEN SHIT
Ed wrote to me last month
asking for help.
I’m the one he thought he could rely on.
/> He probably imagined his baby brother
had grown into a
man.
But I’m too chicken shit
to even call the prison
and enquire about visits,
let alone
drag my sorry ass
up to the gates
and try to get in.
LETTER FROM ED
Hey Joe,
How you doing man?
You best be studying hard or I’ll kick your ass!
Nah, I’m just playing.
Thing is,
I didn’t write Angela this week.
Tell her it’s my bad,
but
I need you to break something to her.
I got my date through.
Guys here telling me it’s nothing to panic about.
Just a date.
But if I’m honest
it makes me rattle like old bones,
cos it means they
made up their minds
and wanna do me in.
And for what?
For nothing.
For something I never did.
The date they settled on is August 18, Joe,
but I got another appeal to go in the state courts
before then
and
we could go to federal for a couple more
I think.
Also there’s a chance the governor will stop it
(or the president!)
so August 18’s what they’re planning on –
but if I convince them of the truth,
it might come and go
and I’ll still be standing, you know.
Thing is,
I got no lawyer to advise me
and explain how everything works,
cos the state don’t pay for lawyers until
eternity, right?
Anyway the prison’s priest is doing
some detective work
and finding out what’s what for me.
Thing is,
I’m wondering if you could come visit.
Father Matthew says that even though
you’re not eighteen
they might let you come if Angela can’t,
on special request.
I wrote the warden, and I’m waiting to hear.
In the nine years I been locked up in Wakeling
I only seen him a handful of times on the row.
No one comes down to see
us deadbeats unless they have to, I guess.
But
he seems like a regular kind of guy.
Worth asking.
Anyway,
I’ll mail this now and write again when I know more.
Don’t freak out, OK?
Let me do the sweating.
I got plenty of time for it.
Be cool, little brother,
Ed x
WHAT IT MEANT
I got that letter two weeks ago,
read it
then
threw it on the floor.
I couldn’t touch it.
Those words.
What they meant.
What I guessed they meant,
cos even Ed didn’t seem too sure.
I was standing in my bedroom and
when I looked up
Angela was in the doorway,
purse under her arm.
She pointed at the rug,
the letter lying
face up,
Ed’s scrawl all over it.
‘How is he?’ she asked.
I wanted to tell her everything
but couldn’t figure out what I knew.
‘He’s busy,’ I said,
which was stupid – he’s in prison –
how busy could it get?
‘Did he like my card?’
She smiled,
scratched her belly.
‘He didn’t mention it.’
But he did mention an execution date.
He said I shouldn’t worry,
but for the first time in ten years
Ed asked to see me,
sort of said he needed me,
which he’d never done before –
he’d always known the deal with Karen,
didn’t want to mess up
things for Angela or me in Arlington.
‘You guys get on with your lives,’
he said in a letter once.
So we tried.
We tried really hard to pretend Ed was OK –
that his death sentence was mythical
and not something that would ever really happen.
I closed my eyes. Rubbed my face.
‘What time did you get in last night?’ Angela asked.
‘About one,’ Karen snapped, appearing behind her.
‘If you want to graduate next year, Joe,
you have to study.
Where were you?’
‘The year’s almost over, Karen,’ I told her.
I wasn’t going to admit I was with Reed,
smoking weed,
figuring out how to cheat on our Spanish test
the next day instead
of just studying for it.
I closed the door on both of them and
picked up the letter.
I read it again just to be sure.
And I was.
It was true:
my only brother would be dead within two months,
and there was
nothing
I could say or
do to
stop it.
A DECISION
When I finally told Angela,
she shook and twitched,
wouldn’t eat the eggs I’d scrambled.
She said she’d go to the bank
for a loan, get him a lawyer,
said she wanted to go down to Wakeling
to help.
But then Aunt Karen got home
from her night shift at the hospital
and tried to shake sense into my sister.
‘There’s nothing you can do,
and I won’t have you
wasting your money or your life
fighting for someone
who’s not even sorry.’
‘Without a lawyer, he has no chance,’ Angela argued.
‘That isn’t our fault,’ Aunt Karen snapped back.
‘He’s my brother.’
‘But not a good one.’
I stood between them.
‘I’m going to Wakeling,’ I announced,
not knowing before the words
were out
whether or not I really wanted to see Ed.
But someone has to be here.
Angela’s got a full-time job,
Aunt Karen hates him,
and no one knows where the hell Mom is.
That was decided two weeks ago
and nothing’s changed except one thing:
Ed now has even less time to live.
MUGSHOT
The only TV channel in the motel that isn’t pure static
is the early morning local news.
I watch the muted screen,
pulling on my sneakers,
when Ed’s mugshot pops up.
He looks mean:
chin raised,
eyes small,
face bruised.
I stare,
scared.
What if Ed’s like the guy
in that mugshot
and my memories of him aren’t real at all?
And then his picture vanishes
and photos of Frank Pheelan flash up –
blue-eyed on a beach somewhere,
sand in his toes,
another of him in police uniform,
and then a family portrait with his wife and kids,
strawberry blonds, all of them,
with ripening smiles.
I’ve seen these faces before: br />
newscasters love revealing the beauty of the victims –
like they’re the only ones who got slammed.
Reporters don’t give a damn about our family.
We’re not a story. We’re dirt.
Although,
I guess that’s a lot easier than having to admit
that by killing our brother
they’re just pummelling more people.
The feature about Ed’s looming execution ends
and a weather map replaces it.
Texas is covered in blazing yellow suns.
I lace up my sneakers;
I’m going for a run regardless.
MORNING RUN
The traffic lights click and change,
though Wakeling’s streets are still mostly empty of cars.
I run fast,
measuring my splits on my watch.
I’m slower than usual.
I run and run,
try to get my speed up
and don’t see anyone, which
is exactly why I go out first thing –
for the quiet,
the feeling of being the only person alive.
I pound the sidewalks,
my heart beating a million miles an hour,
and all I can focus on is breathing,
on not keeling over.
Which suits me.
Suits me just fine.
IN WALMART
Mr Porter stopped me in Walmart.
He had his son in the cart,
brown goo around the kid’s mouth.
‘Joe.
I saw Reed last night at training.
He told me you ain’t going to the track and field