Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 51

October

THE HUGE REDBRICK Fishkill Correctional Facility sits on a hill surrounded by green lawns and double rows of tall chain-link fencing laced with razor wire. To enter you go through a metal detector and then several sets of thick doors, some made of reinforced steel and shatterproof glass, others made from heavy steel bars.
Inside, you are in a world of sharp right angles and hard flat walls. There is no softness in prison. No comfort. Sounds echo and amplify. The click of footsteps on hard concrete, the clack of locks opening and closing, the clank of barred doors banging shut.
Inside is only the smell of body odor. There is no sweetness or perfume.
Inside, now, are my brother and Slade.
As I walk down the hall to the visiting room, I find it almost impossible to believe that this has happened. Until Sebastian attacked my father, no one in our family had ever been sent to prison. No one we knew had ever spent time in jail. We were just everyday people with everyday jobs and everyday interests. Living in an everyday town.
Here the visiting room is a series of heavy reinforced windows with partitions between them. You sit on a stool that is bolted into the floor. You pick up a phone. You look through the thick glass at the person on the other side.
For the last two years, I’ve come here once a week to visit Sebastian on the other side of that glass. I’ve grown used to that. Today, for the first time, it’s Slade I’m here to see. Mr. Lamont couldn’t afford his bail, so Slade will have to stay here until his trial.
When I see him through the window, my insides churn and I can’t help bursting into tears. Slade’s face is drawn and his jaw is covered with stubble. He presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes, as if to stem his own tears. We talk about what it’s like inside. He tells me he’s seen Sebastian in the cafeteria, but they haven’t yet had a chance to speak. We talk about what’s going on in Soundview. But the more we talk, the more I’m aware of what we’re not talking about. Finally I have to bring her up.
“Dakota’s parents sent her away to a private boarding school in Europe,” I tell him. She’s been charged with a felony—reckless endangerment—but unlike Slade’s dad, her parents were able to afford the bail that guarantees she’ll return for her trial.
When I tell Slade about Dakota’s going away, he nods and stares down at the counter on his side of the window.
“Slade?”
He looks up, his eyes sad, his face etched with regret.
“That story you told me, about how Dakota hit on one of the workers doing construction in her kitchen?”
He nods. “It was me.”
“And you didn’t tell me because she was supposed to be my friend? Or at least we were in the same crowd?”
Again he nods. “It was back when you were still happy about being with them.”
“And then, when you came back from Guard training …” There’s no reason to state the obvious—that Dakota was waiting to tell him that I was seeing someone else, but that she was there for him, and that her mother could help him get a deferment so he wouldn’t be deployed. Slade stares down at the counter again and I can only blame myself. I’d broken his heart and he’d come home feeling hopeless and in agony, and there was Dakota, sending him naked photos of herself, offering her version of comfort.
“You stopped doing your knee exercises when you found out your unit was going to be deployed?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I stopped way before that. Like, from the moment I told Dad I’d go into the Guard. First I was hoping I’d fail the entrance physical. I mean, if I did, Dad couldn’t blame me, right? But the doctors okayed me. Then I hoped the knee would blow out during training. I could feel it getting weaker, but it didn’t give. And then, when they told us we were being deployed, I really freaked.”
“And that’s when Dakota said her mother could help you get the deferment from the medical review board?”
“Yeah.”
The next part is difficult for me to put into words: “After the kegger, why didn’t you turn yourself in right away?”
He looks away. “I felt like … like it was all everyone else’s fault. Like it was Katherine’s fault for making you break up with me. And it was Dakota’s fault for lying about you having another boyfriend. And it was your fault, Cal, for doing what Katherine wanted you to do. Because that’s what started it all in the first place. Like you and them and everyone else were the reason I lost control with Katherine. Like you and them were to blame for everything that happened. And then I thought about my dad and what it would do to him. I mean, me being arrested for murder. I knew it would kill him. And then, instead of having one death on my head, I’d have two.”
“And then you found out what Dakota meant by taking care of it?”
“Yeah, by putting the blame on you. And then you called and told me you still loved me and it was like … like I realized we were in it together. Like, how could I blame you for what Katherine got you to do when I thought about what Dakota had gotten me to do? You know? It was like we’d both been totally manipulated. Completely outclassed. Like we were two little kids making sand castles with plastic toys and along came Katherine and Dakota with a backhoe and a bulldozer. We never stood a chance.”
“And then you helped me because you didn’t want me to be blamed for killing Katherine any more than you wanted to take the blame yourself?” I ask.
His head bobs up and down as he practically radiates regret.
“But you had to know that by doing that, you’d also be forcing the police to look for someone else, and that you’d be one of the suspects,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “I thought you’d go for the self-defense thing. And that would have been the end of it right there. Case closed. And then, when you said you wouldn’t agree to that, I was hoping that maybe it would be neither of us. The cops would figure out that you couldn’t have done it and they wouldn’t know where else to look. I mean, the only other person who knew what really happened was Dakota, and I was certain she’d be the last one to tell.”
“Guess she surprised us both,” I say.
He nods. “I knew something was up when they impounded my truck and asked me to come down to the station for fingerprints and a DNA test. And that’s when I grabbed a bunch of clothes, got some money, and took the train to Montauk.”
He looks up, his eyes red-rimmed and watery. “I know what you’re thinking, Cal. I left you. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved and I still took off. But I wasn’t going to stay away that long. I knew I’d eventually come back and turn myself in. There’s no way I could have lived with myself knowing what I did. I just”—a strange, sad, ironic smile appears on his lips—“I just … wanted to spend some time as a commercial fisherman first.”
My eyes are also filled with tears. “We both made mistakes, Slade. Big ones.”
On the other side of the window, he wipes the tears from his eyes. “Can you forgive me?”
“Can you forgive me?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He places his hand against the glass.
I press my hand against the other side. “I love you, Slade.”
“I love you, Shrimp.”
Our visit ends. Slade is taken back to his cell, and I leave the facility. It is a bright, clear October day and the sky is blue. In the distance the hillsides are covered with green and here and there a splotch of yellow or red, the first signs of fall. Once I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to wait for Slade for twelve months. Now I may have to wait for years. But I feel like I can. I have seen and experienced more terrible things in the first seventeen years of my life than most people see and experience in a lifetime. If there is anyone who has the right to give up or take the easy way out, it is me. And yet I persist. I will do whatever has to be done. I will wait as long as I must.