For Jimmy Fox
Contents
THE FIRST CALL
SLUM LANDLORD
TEXTS
BOB’S DINER
NO SHORE
THE SECOND CALL
AUNT KAREN
HOW MOM HANDLED IT
AUTO SHOP
TEAM WRONG
CHICKEN SHIT
LETTER FROM ED
WHAT IT MEANT
A DECISION
MUGSHOT
MORNING RUN
IN WALMART
HOME SWEET HOME
LITTLE MURDERS
NO REPLY
STAR WARS
WHEN THE COP GOT SHOT
ICE AND FLAME
MIRACLES
THE FARM
THE JUNKER
INSIDE OUT
ED NEVER CAME BACK
WHY HE LEFT …
NELL
A PRIZE
THE CHECKLIST
POOR JUSTICE
DISTRACTION
WHO IS EDWARD MOON?
PARENT–TEACHER CONFERENCE
SECTION A
THE VISITING ROOM
NOT A HOSPITAL
IT’S ED
COCO
THE PRISONER
MARINER’S MARSHES
THE FIRST VISIT
UP AGAINST A COOKIE JAR
EVERYONE WALKED
THE GAS STATION
SCRATCH CARD
UNLUCKY FOR SOME
GOLD
A DIFFERENCE
PHILIP MILLER
THAT’S WHO
NIGHT RUN
TAILGATING
JUST NO
SUPERHERO
BEFORE THE SUN RISES
COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS
BREAKFAST BAGEL
FATHER MATTHEW
PUBLIC RELATIONS
THE WALL
A JOKE
MY LIFE NOW
THE PROSECUTOR
THE COST
WHERE IT ENDS
MY VERSION
INNOCENT
THE TIP JAR
BAD NEWS
A SODA
PEOPLE HERE
WITHOUT THE CONS
DAD
NELL SENDS A MESSAGE
ASK HIM
ED CONFESSED TO THE CRIME
POINTLESS
DID YOU DO IT?
WRONG
AGAIN
IN ME
THE WARDEN
BRAVE NEW WORLD
A DECENT MAN
ED WON’T SEE ME
AND THE NEXT DAY
NOT DRIVING
THE THIRD DAY
HALLOWEEN
CHARITY
ANOTHER LETTER
NO LIES
RESPONSIBLE
WITH NELL
WE DON’T KISS
THE CEILING FAN
ROUTINE
ANGELA CALLS
USA
IF
THIRTY MINUTES
AUNT KAREN CALLS
STRICT
THE WORST THING
POSSIBLE
TOM HANKS
BROKEN
THE APARTMENT
LIKE HELLFIRE
KISSING
TURN OVER
GO HOME
A JOB
MARRY ME
MONMOUTH BEACH
DELIVERY BOY
BOTCHED
DAY TRIP
MONKEY BABIES
NIGHTMARES
THE LAKE
A LITTLE WHILE
MEANING IT
AFTERWARDS
AN EMAIL FROM AL
THEY’LL HEAR IT
BE HAPPY
THE WALKING DEAD
GRILLED CHEESE
DUEL
ANOTHER PICTURE MESSAGE
A REMINDER
FIREWORKS
A MISTAKE
I DON’T KNOW WHY
NO REHEARSAL
POKER
SID SIPS
SPECIAL PROVISIONS
LIGHTENING
DRAFT
LUGGAGE
CLOSER TO HOME
NOW
EVA
A HOLDING BAY
ANGELA’S FIRST VISIT
REAL
THE LAVENDER ROOM
MAJOR-GENERAL
OUTSIDE THE PRISON
HEALING
PREPARATION
NOT FAIR
THE GALLERY
THE RETURN
A MISTAKE
WHAT CAN WE FORGIVE?
TOO LATE
LAND OF THE FREE
HOW DO YOU SAY GOODBYE?
REMOVAL
PLANNING
A CHANCE
HOPE
THE WRIT
GET OUT
MORNING RUN
HUDDLE
NOSY PEPPERS
JOKES
THE VIGIL
WHEN YOU KNOW BETTER
I DREAM
LAST DAY
NEED
READY
AMAZING GRACE
THE LAST SUPPER
LIBERTY STATE PARK
SIX O’CLOCK
IRREGULAR
TEN O’CLOCK
WITNESS
BELIEF
IN THE DARKNESS
A MINUTE BEFORE MIDNIGHT
MIDNIGHT
IT IS DONE
TIME TRAVEL ME
DRIVING HOME
BODY CURLED UP
ANOTHER NEXT MONTH
THE NEWS REPORTS
BELONGINGS
WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND
THE LAST LETTER
THE PAIN
REMEMBERING
RELEASED
TO HOUSTON
BACK IN ARLINGTON
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE FIRST CALL
The green phone
on the wall in the hall
hardly ever rang.
Anyone who wanted to speak to Mom called her cell.
Same with Angela.
I listened to the jangle for a few seconds
before picking it up.
‘Hello?’
‘Joe?’ It was Ed.
He hadn’t been in touch for weeks.
I’d started to worry,
wondered if he was ever coming home.
‘Is Angela there?’ he asked.
He was breathing fast
as though someone were chasing him.
In the background
hard voices,
a door slamming.
‘Angela’s at soccer practice,’ I said.
‘And Mom?’
‘No idea.
Hey, Ed,
I found a baseball glove at the park.
Will you be back soon to play?’
Ed sighed heavily. ‘I dunno, Joe.’
‘Oh.’ I picked at some peeling paint on the wall.
Another sigh from my big brother.
‘I got arrested, Joe.
They think I done something real bad.’
I pressed the receiver tight
against my ear.
‘What do they think you done?’
‘They think I hurt someone.
But I didn’t. You hear?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean it. You hear me?
Cos people are gonna be telling you
all kinds of lies.
I need you to know the truth.’
The front door opened and Mom stormed in
carrying a bag of groceries
for my sister to conjure into dinner.
‘The police got Ed!’ I shouted.
I held out the phone.
She snatched it from me,
dropping the bag.
A tangerine rolled across the rug.
I picked it up,
the skin cold and rough.
‘Ed? What’s going on? …
But how can they make that sort of mistake? …
Don’t shout at me, I’m just …
No, I know, but …
I don’t have the money for …
Ed, stay calm …
I’ll call Karen. I said I’ll call Karen …
Stop shouting at me …
Ed, for Christ’s sake …
I’m just not able to … Ed? Ed?’
She held the phone away
from her ear and scowled
like it had bitten her.
‘The cops are charging him with murder,’ she said.
I was seven.
I didn’t know what that meant.
Did he owe someone money?
We hadn’t any cash to pay the electricity bill.
My sneakers were so small
they made the tips of my toes white.
‘Can I call him back?’ I asked.
The tangerine was still in my hand.
I wanted to throw it in Mom’s face and hurt her.
‘No,’ she said.
‘And don’t expect to speak to him for a long time.’
I didn’t believe her.
I thought Ed would call.
I thought he’d come home.
But he never did.
SLUM LANDLORD
Aunt Karen told me not to come here.
She said Ed didn’t deserve an entourage
after the pain he’d caused our family.
Even after ten long years
she blames him for everything.
She points to Ed and says,
‘See what he did to us.’
And maybe she’s right.
Everything turned to shit
when Ed got put away;
nothing worked any more.
So maybe this is a stupid idea.
I’m already pining for home, Staten Island,
anything that isn’t Wakeling, Texas,
in the broiling heat.
It’s not as if I want to be here,
checking out some slummy apartment.
But I can’t afford to keep staying at
the Wakeling Motorstop Motel,
not for the whole time I’m in Texas anyway.
‘Six hundred for the month,’ the landlord croaks,
coughing up something wet and
spitting it into a Kleenex.
Judging by the dishes in the sink,
the apartment hasn’t been lived in for months and
he’d be lucky to get a dime for this hole –
roaches in the closets,
rodents in the kitchen.
‘I need it until mid-August.
I’ll give you four hundred,’ I say.
He snorts. ‘Five hundred. Cash.’
And I can tell by the way he’s
backing out of the apartment
that it’s as low as he’ll go.
Well, I guess he’s the one with the keys;
he can afford to play hardball.
‘If I find out you been selling weed,
I’ll send my men round.
You don’t wanna meet my men.’
But his men don’t bother me.
I got bigger worries
than getting bashed in with a baseball bat
by his hired goons.
I got Ed to worry about.
Ed.
So here I am.
Stuck.
And it’s going to be the worst time of my life.
The worst time of everyone’s lives.
For those who get to live.
TEXTS
In the parking lot of my motel
a gang of bikers are slugging booze from paper bags,
hellfire rock music filling up the lot.
As I pass them, my cell phone pings in my
back pocket.
I don’t bother checking the message.
I know it’s Angela pestering me:
Where r u?
Did u go 2 the prison?
U seen Ed??
Hows Ed???
Karens still srsly pissed off.
Eds new lawyer emailed. He seems smart.
Where R U???
I have to call my sister.
And I will.
Later.
Right now, I’m starving.
And I have to get away from this music.
BOB’S DINER
The diner is all beat up outside,
paint crumbling, half the neon sign unlit,
and inside it’s the same:
broken floor tiles,
posters pale and torn.
A middle-aged waitress in a
pink bowling shirt smiles.
Her name – Sue – is embroidered into
her front pocket,
the black thread unravelling itself,
snaking down the shirt like a
little vine.
‘You OK, hun?’ she asks,
dragging on a cigarette right there
behind the counter
like it’s totally normal –
a waitress smoking in a restaurant.
And it might be. Around here.
I pull out my remaining cash and wave it at her.
‘What would four bucks buy me?’ I say.
‘I guess you could get a bacon roll
and a coffee.
Would that work, hun?’
‘Great,’ I say, inhaling the
tail of her cigarette smoke.
She shouts my order through a swing door,
turns back to slosh coffee into a stained mug
and pushes it across the counter.
It’s thick and bitter, nothing like you get in
New York,
but I don’t complain.
I tear open a Splenda,
tip it in to disguise the taste.
‘Any jobs going?’ I ask.
‘Wait there, hun.’
Sue vanishes
through the
swing doors.
I grab a muffin in plastic wrap from a basket
on the counter, stuff it into my bag before
a man appears,
a thick moustache hiding his mouth,
a belly that bulges over his waistband.
He reaches across the counter, shakes my hand.
‘I’m Bob. I believe you’re lookin’ for work.’
His accent is drawn out and totally Texan.
‘Joe Moon,’ I say.
He nods.
‘I need a delivery guy.
Someone with a car, cos the junker
out back won’t run.
Or someone real fast on a bike.
The fast person would also need a bike.’
‘I fix cars,’ I say quickly.
‘If I get it to go, could I have the job?’
Sue has reappeared, a fresh cigarette limp
between her twiggy fingers.
She spits bits of tobacco on to the floor.
‘Just so’s you know, hun, my boyfriend Lenny’s
good with motors. Even he couldn’t get that
crap heap to turn over.’
She uses a sour rag
to wipe coffee stains from the countertop.
‘I could try,’ I say,
not wanting to sound too desperate.
‘OK. You can try,’ Bob says.
He reaches into the basket and
hands me a blueberry muffin.
‘Dessert’s on me, son,’ he says.
NO SHORE
All last week
Reed tried to cheer me up.
Sitting in his car drinking warm beer,
he tried to make me believe Ed would get off,
that I’d be back in Arli
ngton before
the track and field holiday programme
began.
‘I’ll win bronze for steeple chase,
you’ll get a gold for five thousand metres.
Then we’ll go to the shore
and show off our medals.
We can stay at my cousin’s beach house
as long as we want.
We’ll get tans,
smoke dope,
hit on hot girls.
So many hot girls at the shore.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said,
knowing it was never gonna happen,
knowing I’d miss out on my entire
summer,
including the New York City
track and field programme.
It was the one thing that had kept me going
in school –
knowing that at the end of the year,
no matter how low my grades were,
I’d have the programme to prove
I wasn’t some layabout loser.
But instead of running,
I was coming to Texas
to count down the days until
my brother’s execution;
trying to make me feel better about that
was pointless.
THE SECOND CALL
I liked cheese sandwiches with a truckload of ketchup
and had a plate of them in my lap.
I was watching Spiderman on TV,
cross-legged on the carpet
wearing scuffed-up sneakers –
laces undone, feet sticky inside them.
I was eight by then,
a year after that first call which had turned
everything
inside out.
Mom shouted at me, as she always did.
‘Turn the goddamn TV down!’
She had her cell to her ear,
was squinting like she was trying to see
whatever it was she was being told.
And then,
like a rock into a river,
she fell
and began to howl.
It wasn’t like you see in movies,
someone collapsing but so beautiful
and
tragic.
She was a person possessed,
smashing into pieces,
and I was afraid to get too close.
‘No!’ she screamed.
I knew right away the words she was hearing.