The Journey Back Page 14

  “You never told me, but what did you do to land yourself in prison?”

  When I didn’t answer, Nora stopped drawing. She tilted her head as she peered over at me and arched her eyebrows. “You didn’t kill anybody, did you?”

  Could she see the blood drain out of my face?

  I couldn’t help it. Tears sprang into my eyes. It had been such a long time since I felt myself cry that I touched my face to see if it was really happening. Embarrassed, I turned away from Nora, hoping she couldn’t see.

  She dropped the stick and put a hand on my shoulder. “Digger?”

  I sniffed.

  “Are you crying because I asked about what you did? Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s just me, dumb ole Nora asking stupid questions.” She put her entire arm around my shoulders.

  “It’s complicated,” I mumbled.

  And that was the truth. A lot of stuff about me was complicated and some of it for reasons I didn’t even understand. But this I knew: there was a ton of heavy guilt for what I done to end the life of three-year-old Benjamin DiAngelo. Even if I didn’t mean to hurt that little boy, I did. I took his life away from him and it left me with a heaviness that I carried around with me, day and night, like a solid iron brick. I tried not to think about it, but it was always there, every day, everywhere I went. When I got up in the morning, when I sat down to eat, when I lay down to sleep, when I squatted in the woods—and especially, when I looked up at the night sky.

  Like I said before, I didn’t have religion like J.T. and Abdul. That was something for normal kids in regular families that eat dinner together and take vacations and go to the mall for school clothes. But there were times looking up at those stars at night that I wished deep in my heart that there really was something spiritual, some everlasting life somewhere so that little Ben lived on.

  “Maybe it would help if you talked about it,” Nora urged gently.

  I nodded and my throat got tight. She was probably right. It would probably help me to talk about it. But I wasn’t the type to talk about stuff. Miss Laurie had to work for days to drag a couple things out of me. It didn’t mean I wasn’t suffering though. I suffered plenty whenever I thought about Ben and what I done. And not only that, but I thought about what I lost because of it. When I sabotaged the red kayak and Ben died, I also lost my two best friends. And the cold, hard truth is that I didn’t think I could ever get them back. Not even in ten years.

  “Digger?”

  I felt tears run down my cheeks.

  “Hey, come on, Dig, are you okay?”

  I had a hand over my eyes, but I used it to wipe the tears off.

  “Really, you don’t have to say anything,” Nora insisted.

  But I guess I did want to say something because the words finally rose up and came out of my mouth. “I’ve made some unbelievably bad choices in my life, too,” I said.

  Then, bit by bit, I ended up telling Nora the whole story of what I done. I described how I had drilled holes in a red kayak to make it sink so I could get back at my snooty neighbor. How I forced my friend J.T. to help me by standing guard, which is why he got sent away to prison, too. And sadly, how I had no idea my neighbor’s wife and their little boy would be the ones to take that boat out for a ride one morning in early April, not knowing it would spring a leak and sink.

  “The Chesapeake Bay is still really cold in April,” I had to explain to Nora. “After the kayak took on water . . . a little kid . . . water in his lungs . . . they tried to save him but it was too late . . .”

  Then I told her how my other best friend Brady found out what I done. And how I begged him not to tell, but how he went to the police anyway, which was really the right thing to do. I also told Nora how I stood up in court and insisted to everyone it wasn’t J.T.’s fault and how nobody should hold anything against Brady either, even if he did plant the idea in my head a long time ago.

  “Nine months at the juvenile jail place was the punishment. So that’s it. That’s what I done. That’s why I’m supposed to be at Cliffside.”

  There was a long pause after I finished talking. Nora was stone quiet. I snuck a glance at her. She had taken her arm away, but wasn’t drawing in the dirt anymore. She was just sitting there, hugging her knees.

  “I don’t get it,” she finally said. “I mean, it’s so awful what happened, and you’re so sorry. Why aren’t you out there serving time for what you did?”

  A good question. An excellent question! Nora was right. She was right, too, about the world needing police and courts and all that. I knew I should be serving my time. Absolutely. Let justice be done!

  I shifted position and turned slightly away from her because I didn’t want to have to tell her about my mother and my brother and sister. How I needed to protect them from my father. Those things were important, too, but it seemed like that was offering up a layer way too deep, and way too personal.

  “I got my reasons,” I told her.

  “I hope they’re good ones, Digger,” Nora replied. “Because, like what gives you the right to take the law into your own hands?”

  “What do you mean?” I heard my voice get loud and felt my right hand automatically form a fist.

  Nora didn’t seem to notice the anger. “When you ran away from that juvenile detention center, you broke the law. Maybe you had a reason, but still, you broke the law. You did it again when you stole that big truck—”

  I wheeled all the way around to face her. “You thought that was pretty cool, me stealing that truck!”

  She nodded, but she looked pained. “Yeah, I did, I know. But that doesn’t make it right.”

  Nora was pissing me off with her questions. She didn’t understand why I busted out and ran away. I had to run. I had to run to survive! I needed to get home and fix things!

  But which was it? Survive? Fix things? Fix things how?

  The questions made my head hurt. I didn’t have the answers. What’s done was done, I decided. I wasn’t sorry I broke out of prison. I wasn’t sorry I stole that truck—or that bike—or that canoe! To hell with those people! All of them had far more stuff than I would ever have! As for my father . . . he would get what he deserved someday. Every time I thought about him it made my blood boil.

  I got up, confused—and angry.

  “Digger?”

  “I got my reasons!” I yelled at her. Then I stormed away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  * * *

  TRUE HAPPINESS

  By the end of October a lot of little things started to change. The days got cooler and nights downright cold. I needed an extra blanket when I slept and had to start wearing that dang Redskins sweatshirt all the time, even when we sat around the fire after dinner. Other things happened, too, things I never noticed before I lived in a tent. Like all the acorns that thumped on the roof and how the crickets got loud and how geese flew overhead making long, wavering checkmarks in the sky. In the mornings, there was dew on the grass. It was dark when Luke left for school. And, as Nora liked to point out, the poison ivy leaves had turned red.

  I couldn’t stay mad at Nora for long. I told her I was sorry for stomping off and she said not to worry about it. But after that, she didn’t ask me any more questions about my past, or why I run away from prison, and I didn’t ask her anything about her personal life. We both had screwed-up families and lives. In a weird way, it gave us a bond.

  Anyway, the little changes at the end of October hinted that bigger changes—like winter—were on the way. Some people at the campground had already left for the South to pick oranges. Nora, upset one night, said her mom was thinking of moving to Las Vegas with her boyfriend. Even Woody mentioned something about working on bridge construction in Florida. I knew I’d have to make a big decision of my own pretty soon. All of which was unsettling. So I pla
yed a lot of basketball to get my mind off stuff.

  Thump, thump, thump—clang! Thump, thump, thump, whoosh!

  I loved the sound of a basketball swishing through the rim, all net. Ever since my ankle had healed up Luke and me had been regulars on the campground court, practicing foul shots and layups with the basketball Woody bought.

  “Luke, stop! If you’re coming toward me and I’m defending the basket, then switch the ball over to your other hand. Keep your body between me and the ball!”

  “Got it!” he hollered back, but he had a hard enough time dribbling with his right hand, much less his left.

  Nora got in on some of the basketball, too, and I have to say, she was a pretty good shooter. I felt bad she might be moving to Las Vegas, but I didn’t say anything, and I tried not to think about it.

  A month had passed since I ran away from Cliffside. A whole week since I hid from police across the river. Buddy and I spent that night sleeping in the volunteers’ room at the horse farm, like Nora suggested, and it wasn’t that bad. I had a couch to sleep on, a bathroom, and a bunch of snacks. Nora took care of Luke for me until Woody got home that night, and Buddy and I were back in the morning before Luke had to go to school so it wasn’t ever a problem.

  I continued working at the farm a lot and one day, I offered to build some shelves for Mrs. Crawford in the tack room where they keep all the bridles and saddles. She had a couple nice pieces of pine and a table saw in a toolshed. She said her husband was going to make her some shelves about five years ago, but then he up and had a heart attack and died on her. Funny—not about him dying—but the fact that I actually learned in wood shop at the prison how to cut, plane, and build wooden shelves. Before I took off, us boys in shop made a slew of shelves for New Germany State Park.

  While I was in the toolshed working, I hid both a hammer and a hacksaw. But the next day I put them back on the wall over the bench ’cause I could get a hammer at home. And a hacksaw was just too big and clumsy to carry. Besides that, realistically, how the heck was I going to use a hacksaw for protection?

  Anyway, after the shelves got done, Mrs. Crawford started giving me more hours of work and different jobs. Like one day she asked me to put fly spray on the horses. She also taught me how to turn my back to a horse, lift its foot, and clean out under the hoof with a pick. Bet you didn’t know stuff could rot under there. That not only smelled bad, but could cause a painful crack in the hoof, too.

  One weekend, I even sat in on a session with Nora and the volunteers to hear a talk about emergency situations. Like if a horse got loose or the barn caught fire or—and this is wild—if some crazy horse owner showed up at the farm wanting to steal back the horse that had been taken away. We learned how to size people up quickly. Do they look you in the eye? Are they impatient? Do they keep asking about a particular horse and want to see it?

  I loved being at the farm with Nora on the weekends. She was happy around those horses and knew all their names, their personalities, everything. Like how you couldn’t put Mozart next to Prince. And how Pegasus had to be the first one in the gate to eat. And how Tork stood at the rail and chewed on the wood, which is called cribbing, which is a bad habit like biting your nails, only worse.

  She had a soft spot for that crazy stallion, Fuego, and even brought out handfuls of Cinnamon Cheerios from the volunteers’ room and left them on his paddock door for a treat. She talked sweet to him and one day—it blew me away— I saw that horse come over and let her pet his nose. “It’s like velvet,” she said softly. “Here, come touch it. Go ahead. Isn’t it amazing?”

  Nora taught me a lot about horses. Like the hair that hung over Fuego’s eyes? That was his forelock. I watched Nora straighten out his forelock so he could see. Then she gave him a good hard scratch under that forelock and it must’ve felt good ’cause he closed his eyes.

  So the farm was working out, but I still hadn’t found anything that would make a good weapon or give me any idea of how I was going to protect my mom and the kids. And that was beginning to worry me.

  Meanwhile, I was making money, most of which I saved. The only money I spent was for dog food. Plus I gave Woody some cash one time to buy me a couple plastic razors. My dad had grown a beard recently and I didn’t want to start looking anything like him. So I had almost five hundred dollars saved up and stuffed into a sock with the white card from Cliffside. I kept the sock deep inside my pillowcase in the pup tent.

  At the campsite, things were pretty good, too.

  One evening after dinner, me, Luke, Woody, and Nora took this rusty, paint-chipped set of silver and gold horseshoes Woody had and walked down to the playground where they had two sandy pits staked out under the trees.

  “I want Nora!” Luke cried out. And I thought, darn, ’cause I wanted Nora, too. She was looking mighty cute with her hair in braids and a snug black T-shirt she’d worn once before that said: I DID THE MATH: HORSES > BOYS. Which made me wonder all over again if she felt that way.

  Luke’s a little kid so we all shrugged and let him have his way and paired off. We even let Nora and Luke go first.

  “Do you need glasses?” I asked Nora when her horseshoe missed the stake by about five feet.

  She slapped me on the arm and then watched me throw a perfect ringer.

  Luke was next and his throw was terrible. It didn’t land anywhere near the pit.

  “Try again,” I heard Woody tell him. “That was your practice shot.”

  But Luke’s second try wasn’t any better, and I could see this game was going to be a slaughter. Nora was taking it in good humor, shrugging like who cares? But Luke was already getting pouty and sad.

  My partner, Woody, was next. But before he took his turn, he caught my eye and kind of nodded before sending his horseshoe a whopping twelve feet off the mark.

  Now, it’s not my nature to let somebody else win if I can help it, no way, but I could tell Woody wanted me to play along. He was doing it so Luke and Nora would win, so Luke wouldn’t feel bad. I understood all that, but I also thought it was kind of teaching Luke to be a crybaby so he’d get his way.

  “Go ahead! Aim careful there, boy!” Woody called out when it was my turn again.

  I held the horseshoe in front of my face and squinted my eyes as I took aim.

  “Whoa!” I hollered when my horseshoe overshot the pit and landed in the bushes.

  Luke laughed. “What happened to you?”

  So basically me and Woody, we let them win. Luke went running to his dad, who picked him up high in the air and gave him a big hug.

  And you know what? It didn’t bother me a lick that I gave in ’cause it was so nice, seeing that kid and his dad look so happy.

  —

  Nights, I was sharing Buddy with Luke. Like one night the dog would sleep in the big tent, and one night he’d sleep with me. I didn’t care too much about it. I worked hard and was tired at night. No television in the pup tent, but Woody did give me an old radio and a couple times I turned it on. I couldn’t find a Ravens game, so I listened to music and some of the World Series games.

  Funny, but I didn’t even miss TV, and it had always been like this really big part of my life. Back home, even though we didn’t have a flush toilet in our house, we had three televisions. I watched cartoons like SpongeBob and Dora with Hank and LeeAnn and then all kinds of crazy stuff at night. My parents didn’t care. Even at prison, us boys could watch television. If you didn’t have kitchen duty, you could go to the “40-seater,” this big room off the dining hall where a TV was rigged up to a satellite box. No cable television out there in the boonies! Problem with the satellite setup though was that the control box was in the office so we couldn’t change the station. They kept it on ESPN for sports, so that’s all we saw: football, basketball, baseball, golf, poker, whatever was on. Sometimes, we got to see a movie, but nothing ever R-rated. Other t
han The Mummy all those boys ever wanted to see was more sports. I think if I had to watch Remember the Titans or Hoosiers one more time I would’ve puked.

  Without TV, I had a lot of “think time” in that tent. Funny how when you’re by yourself and it’s quiet, you see things more clearly. For example, while listening to Luke and his dad read that dog story every night I noticed how Luke always started with Chapter One. Then, at some point, he’d push the book to his father and say it was his turn. And it just kind of struck me all at once—was Luke trying to memorize the story? Like maybe he couldn’t read! Maybe memorizing the story was how he faked it!

  I sat up when that thought hit me. It sure would explain why every time I helped him read, we did the same sentence over and over before moving forward. Huh. So what was up with that?

  Lots of times I thought about Nora and how much I liked her. I knew it was one reason I wasn’t rushing off. And sometimes, I got to thinking about all those things Nora asked me. Like what gave me the right to take off from Cliffside and steal that truck? I kept coming to the conclusion that she didn’t understand my mission. Sometimes, I thought, I should forget Nora and everyone else, just drop everything and get on home to help Mom. If things were bad, if I got desperate for protection, I could steal this rifle my neighbor kept behind the vacuum cleaner inside his broom closet. My neighbor didn’t know I watched him put his gun away one evening while I was returning a casserole dish to his wife. He’d been trying to kill the fox that cruised our neighborhood ’cause they had a Chihuahua or something like that, one of those little dogs that would make a nice snack for a hungry red fox.

  But those neighbors with the rifle? They brought my mom a bag of groceries once. They made us dinner when my mom got sick. Another time they paid our electric when it got turned off. The white card flashed in my mind: Think of the other person. How could I break into their house after all they done for us?

  Besides, wasn’t I kidding myself to think I could get away with a prank like that? Stealing a rifle? Then actually using it? The white card again: If I stole a rifle, then I’d probably get caught and spend even more time in prison! I’d never get to be a Marine. I wouldn’t be able to see Hank and LeeAnn grow up. I wouldn’t have a life, period. And would it really make things better? Or was I doomed to making everything worse?