The Journey Back Read online

  It was my one and only chance and my heart beat double time because I knew that if I went ahead with the plan, there was no turning back and plenty of risk along the way. But I was ready. And the way my life was going, I figured I had nothing to lose, so there was no stopping me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  OUT WITH THE TRASH

  A harsh metal screech tore through the air. I knew the sound well: bad brakes. And those particular brakes belonged to the garbage truck making its way down the steep gravel driveway from the main road to the prison.

  From the sounds of it, the truck hadn’t made its first pickup behind the gym, so I knew I had at least a couple minutes. But I panicked anyway. In my rush, I tripped over a curb and fell, scraping my hands. Pushing myself back up, I sprinted downhill behind the dining hall to the Dumpster and dropped to my knees, reaching underneath for the shovel I’d hidden there under some leaves. Pulling the shovel out, I quickly knocked the leaves and junk off of it, then tossed it into the Dumpster where it landed on the garbage with a soft knocking sound. Nothing very loud, thank goodness.

  I whirled around once to see if anyone was watching, then reached for the handle of that side door of the Dumpster, the one you open to throw in trash. But the door didn’t open. I tried it again, both hands tugging with all my might, but it was locked up tight. With no time to lose, I took the only other choice I had, which was to jump and grab onto the edge of the Dumpster. I was lucky the container didn’t have a cover. Using all my strength, I hoisted myself up. After I got one leg over the top, it was easy. I simply rolled over the edge and plopped down onto the trash.

  The fall inside wasn’t bad. The Dumpster was half full, so there were plenty of big, black plastic bags full of junk as well as a bunch of cardboard that made for a soft landing. I saw the shovel and reached over to grab it, then sat there, keeping my fingers crossed that I’d survive getting dumped into the garbage truck. If anything went wrong, I could be compacted to death, no question. My dad drove a front-end loader for a while, so I knew how they operated. A set of arms on the garbage truck would pick up the Dumpster, lift it up over the cab, and dump everything into an opening over the cargo bay of the truck. Next, this big compacting panel with a blade at the bottom would start pushing the trash— squeezing and compacting it—toward the back. That’s what I needed the shovel for—to jam the compacting blade so I didn’t get crushed to death. When the garbage truck got to the landfill, or the dump, or wherever it went, the back would open up and I could slip out and make a run for it. I’d hide out for a while, then try to find that highway that brung me out here and follow it back east. That was my plan anyway.

  Two minutes seemed like an eternity. I could hear—and feel—the vibrations of the truck rumbling down the steep gravel driveway.

  “Come on, come on!” I whispered urgently. “Let’s go!” I needed things to click along fast. Pretty soon, Mr. R. would be wondering why I wasn’t showing up for class. Couldn’t take that long to throw a bag of garbage into the Dumpster, he’d be thinking.

  Funny how I could picture so clearly everyone in the class where I should have been at that moment. A sea of blue sweatshirts and blue pants, our boring uniform. Half of them boys would be sprawled over their desks with their heads buried in their arms ’cause class hadn’t quite started and no one was wide awake. Me, I was always in a half-awake state on account of the fact that I never really slept, but I never put my head down like that. Someone could take advantage if you had your head down.

  So I’d be sitting there in class watching Dontaye doodle. Dontaye, who slept in the bed beside mine in the dorm, also sat beside me in most of my classes, and every day I’d watch him illustrate the sides of his paper. Always the same thing: pointed stars and weird letters that were code for his gang back in Baltimore. Seemed like most of those guys—black, white, Hispanic, all of them—had some kind of gang they were connected to back home. Dontaye talked to me about his gang a couple times, like maybe he even wanted me to join it. Wouldn’t that be something? If a white guy showed up with Dontaye? Heck, maybe they wouldn’t care. I have to say that deep down, parts of that gang stuff appealed to me. Like the reason Dontaye joined his gang is because he didn’t have any family taking care of him, which is kind of like me.

  Suddenly, the garbage truck was pulling up to the Dumpster, interrupting my thoughts. The metal arms, which screeched like a giant’s fingernail scraping down a big chalkboard, knocked and locked onto the Dumpster, like a monster hug. A jolt sent me forward, then back. Grabbing a bag of trash, I dug myself down deeper as the Dumpster got lifted. I tried to brace myself for what was next, but there was no way to prepare for it because all at once everything got flipped over. Bags of garbage, cardboard, pieces of wood, a broken milk crate—and me. I got knocked around pretty good in the process, lost track of the shovel, and landed facedown with my feet up, squeezed between a bunch of garbage bags like a piece of baloney in a stinking sandwich. And boy, did it stink. If I didn’t die from the compactor, I was thinking, I might die from the putrid smell.

  Plus it was dark in there. When the cover over the top of the truck slid shut with a bang, I couldn’t see a thing. Pitch black. But mostly, I couldn’t get over how bad it stunk. It made me want to gag. I struggled to right myself and blindly started rooting around for that shovel. I couldn’t find it right off, but what I did run into was a ripped-open bag of garbage, ’cause next thing I knew globs of something slimy and granular spilled out over my hands. I swore and cussed out loud. I knew those guys in the cab couldn’t hear over the truck noise, so I cussed even louder a second time.

  A different motor started whirring and an ear-piercing, scraping sound began. The compactor was moving! It was pushing all that garbage—and me—toward the back. I had to find the shovel fast or I was going to end up like a lousy pancake. Ignoring the crap on my hands, I groped around for the shovel but could not find it. And man, I needed it—fast.

  I felt the gears shift and grind as the truck made its way back out of the prison yard, up the hill. The whirring of the compactor grew faster and louder as everything got slowly pushed toward the back. I kept digging myself in between bags, trying to find the handle of that shovel, but I wasn’t having any luck.

  The truck moved on, faster, smoother. I figured we were outside the prison grounds at that point, maybe on the road down the mountain. I wondered where the truck would stop next and whether Mr. R. would put two and two together back in the classroom and guess that I’d gone out with the trash. I could just see him, taking a big sip of coffee out of that thermos cup of his, maybe peeling back the cupcake wrapper on one of those nice muffins his wife made, and then setting it down quick when it suddenly dawned on him. He’d step outside the classroom to make a call down to the office, and instantly all the boys would be on to it. Even Dontaye would stop doodling and crack a smile.

  The boys would be guessing how I did it, like did I hide out in the back of someone’s pickup the way this kid did a year ago? He hid there at the end of the day and rode all the way to Cumberland to a staffer’s house where he slipped out and hijacked a car. Amazing, but he got about a half hour down the interstate before they caught him. Hopefully, they’d be checking all the vehicles in the parking lot first, but Mr. R. might be insisting on the garbage truck theory. Which meant there could be police cars waiting at the landfill. Or maybe the cops would stop the truck on the highway and poke around, looking for me. Anything could happen.

  Like a big bug, I crawled over the bags of garbage and kept searching for that shovel. At the same time I had a flash vision of what would happen to me if I couldn’t find it. Maybe it would be justice after all. For what I did to be in prison, maybe I deserved to get squished to death like a dumb insect and buried under a bunch of trash. Maybe I was nothing but trash myself. Heck, my father had been telling me that for years!

  But my poor mom. She’d cry
her eyes out when she heard how I died. It’s true that sometimes I got mad at her for not stopping things. But other times, my throat got tight thinking about her, like how she had driven all those hours in that piece of junk truck just to see me on Visiting Day a week ago. She brought that plastic bag of broken-up chocolate chip cookies from the kids and kept trying to tell me about Hank’s new third-grade teacher and the front tooth LeeAnn lost, but all I could see was that cheap makeup caked on her face. It wasn’t even the same color as her skin and I knew she was covering up another bruise, which meant it was still going on.

  If I got snuffed out, then I wouldn’t be there to help her. Or protect Hank and LeeAnn! And that made me think about my father. . . . He’d be laughing his head off when he heard I got crushed to death in a garbage truck. Yup. Laugh his fat, bald head off ’cause he’d get a real kick out of it. I always said that kid was no good. A knucklehead with no brains. I could just hear him, slurring his words and slapping the table. It made me mad, thinking of my father getting the last laugh. And that got me fired up all over again. I shook all those distracting thoughts out of my head and scrambled like a cockroach when the lights got turned on looking for that shovel.

  Finally, my hand touched metal. Was it the shovel? Yes! I grabbed the handle and started wiggling something fierce so I could get down to the bottom of the truck and jam that thing under the blade. I had to move a couple bags around and wouldn’t you know it? Another one broke and a bunch of disgusting stuff spewed out like puke. Rotten oranges, eggshells, coffee grounds, soggy paper towels. I just plowed through it, tossing handfuls of gunk aside, until I felt the floor of the truck under my feet. I pulled the shovel down beside me and managed to get it on the floor where I could push it with my feet.

  The truck stopped again, so I did, too. I waited and was quiet, listening. Couldn’t hear anything though. Then all of a sudden the top pulled back and sunlight poured in. They were making another pickup, and I had to brace myself for the onslaught of more trash that came pouring down on top of me. I put my hands up to stop stuff from hitting my head. Lucky for me, there wasn’t a ton of it that time.

  The top slid shut. Bang! Darkness again. The truck jerked forward and the compactor whirred. I had to force myself to breathe it smelled so bad, and it seemed like there was less and less oxygen or something. I couldn’t get a full breath. I kept breathing and pushing the shovel with my feet until I heard a loud ker-chunk and the whirring stopped. I couldn’t move the shovel anymore. Had it jammed the blade?

  All I could do then was breathe. Shallow breaths because of the smell. Breathe and wait. Wait and breathe.

  A few minutes later, the truck came to another stop. I heard voices and the banging sounds of someone climbing up the side. I had a pretty good idea what was happening. The compactor had jammed all right, just like I wanted it to. But a light in the cab was flashing—orange light if I remembered—so the guys up in the cab would be coming out to take a look.

  The top slid open and light seeped through the bags of garbage and trash.

  “I don’t know!” a guy hollered. “I don’t see nothin’. Not from here!”

  A long moment passed. No conversation. No movement. If they started rooting through the trash, it was over.

  Suddenly, the top slammed shut again and total darkness surrounded me as the whirring, grinding compactor started up again. I closed my eyes tight, hoping the shovel would hold, but almost immediately, I heard a loud crack! and felt the handle of that shovel snap in two under my feet.

  Everything—including me—was slowly shoved toward the rear of the truck. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. My whole body got squeezed so hard I couldn’t move my legs or my arms, and my face got smashed into a slime-covered garbage bag. Some of that crap actually got in my mouth and made me want to throw up. Then my arm got caught and was pushed up behind my back. I struggled to take more shallow breaths and could feel my face and hands sweat. I never cry—never—I stopped cryin’ years ago. But I think there were tears in my eyes. I figured this was the end for me.

  In that moment, I realized I wasn’t ready to die. Maybe I had thought there was nothing to lose, but suddenly I knew how much I wanted to live. I wanted to be with my mom and LeeAnn and Hank again. I wanted to see my grandfather before he died. I wanted a chance for a good life—like maybe I could go back to school and graduate and make something of myself. I once dreamed of joining the Marines.

  All these thoughts kind of flashed through my mind. Then, like somebody blew a fuse, everything stopped. No light. No sound. No putrid smell. No vibrations under my feet. Nothing . . . ’cause I must’ve blacked out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  RUNNING

  Did you ever wake up in the morning and not know what day it was? That’s what it was like for me, except I had a lot more to figure out than just the day. I didn’t know where I was, or, at first, even who I was! All I knew is that it was dark, I was running out of oxygen, it smelled bad, and something smooshed against my face. Did I fall down a black hole to Hell? Was I buried alive? What?

  Slowly, it dawned on me. Then, like the faucet suddenly got turned on, my whole life gushed out. I was Michael Griswald, only everyone called me Digger. I had a mom, and a little brother and sister back home who I loved a lot. I also had a father who drank and got mean. We lived in the country in a small yellow house with a toilet that didn’t work and a lot of junk in the front yard—old tires and parts of the trucks that my father drove. I was thirteen—no, fourteen—years old and I was in prison because I played a practical joke on the rich neighbor who bought my grampa’s farm. My grampa is in a nursing home now, but it used to be, when things were bad at home, I could escape to Grampa’s. That’s why I hated Mr. DiAngelo so much. He was the snooty guy who bought Grampa’s farm, tore the house down, then built a mansion there so he could show off how much money he had. One day, he even kicked me and my friends off his property. So I played a joke on the a-hole, only the joke went sour and his little boy died. . . .

  For a minute there, the memories stopped. It was like hitting a wall. Everything stopped for me when I thought back on what I done. Which is why I tried not to think back on it. What good did it do? I couldn’t undo the past.

  I went to prison for my crime, but now I needed to get home, so I escaped in a garbage truck, which is how I came to be squashed beneath a ton of garbage.

  The sound of a distant siren pierced the air. I knew if I didn’t crawl out of that garbage and disappear, I’d be right back where I came from with even more time ahead of me. I made a huge push with everything I had and created a tiny space with enough room to wiggle my toes—that was good. Next, I moved my feet up and down, then I started clawing at those slimy bags with my bare hands and slowly inched my way upward. I was like a lowlife worm crawling out of that garbage.

  Pushing, wriggling, clawing, and kicking, I kept at it until my head popped through into the air and sunlight hit my face. I groaned from the force of one more all-out effort and, breathless, tumbled out and down a huge slide chute of slick garbage bags. When I landed at the bottom of that trash mountain, I took a minute to suck in big gulps of air, so much that I thought I’d crack my ribs. It wasn’t exactly fresh air, but let me tell you, it was better than anything at the bottom of that pile.

  The siren sound grew louder. Definitely time to get going. The sun was bright and directly overhead, so I figured it must’ve been around noon. Surely they were on to me now ’cause I had split just after breakfast.

  Looking around, I didn’t see anyone else at the landfill. Dense woods surrounded the place, but I spotted a gravel road that led in and out. The best thing, I decided, was stick to the woods, but parallel the road so I didn’t get totally lost. My legs were cramped up from being crushed by all that garbage, but I hobbled away and as soon as I got the kinks worked out of my muscles, I started running.
My boots weren’t exactly great for cross-country, but I ignored the heaviness and ran like a jackrabbit until I was deep in the forest.

  I stopped once to take off my sweatshirt ’cause I was sweating buckets. Tied the sweatshirt around my waist and kept going. I jumped over logs, plunged full force through briars, sprinted uphill, and sidestepped quickly down a rocky hillside like a mountain goat. I could feel a stone in my left boot, but I didn’t stop to get it out. I trotted on through a patch of pine trees where the needles made a soft carpet, slogged through a muddy swamp that tried to suck my boots right off, then jogged through a high-grass meadow until I came upon a shallow stream.

  The water looked clean, so I lay down on the ground and took a long cold drink. While I had my face in the water it dawned on me that the police might try to track me on land and that I might do better by walking up the stream. It was right then—before I plunged my foot in the stream—that I heard the helicopter overhead.

  Thumpathumpathumpathumpathump.

  That would be the state police looking for me!

  Glancing around, I spotted a bunch of juniper bushes nearby, then dashed up the hillside and threw myself beneath the prickly branches.

  I knew a little bit about those helicopters ’cause my old friend Brady had a cousin Carl, who was a paramedic. Carl took us with him one day to the state police barracks in Centreville to see a state chopper that was parked there. It was a twin engine Dauphine Europcopter and we actually got to sit inside. This guy, this pilot who actually flew choppers in Vietnam, explained all the controls and showed us that special camera underneath the helicopter nose. It was called FLIR, which stands for Forward Looking Infrared. I never forgot that because that camera was so cool. What it did, it could tell temperature differences on the ground and things would show up black and white on this little screen in the cockpit. Like a human body? It’s warm, right? So the camera would pick up that a warm body was on the ground and flash an image to the pilot. Even if it was dark out, the camera could do this.