Джо Горес: Come Morning

It was raining in Portland. It was always raining in Portland, thought Big Art Elliott, unless Mt. St. Helens was dumping her crap in the streets. And sometimes even then. He jumped out of the Caddy Seville with its tucked-under tail — he always thought of a hound dog getting its butt kicked — and dodged through the rain into the branch post office. He was built like a bear, with features too juvenile for his jowly face. Only pale watchful eyes suggested his 41 years.

A local newspaper headline in the lobby coin box caught his eye: UNION OFFICIAL SUBPOENAED IN PENSION FUND PROBE. Yeah, tell us about it, he thought sourly. He had pushed a big rig for 14 years, he could give the fucking newspapers a few scoops himself.

He’d moved to an inside job four years before, and his clothes showed it: roll-collar ivory shirt open three buttons, gold medallion glinting on his hairy chest, stacked-heel over-the-ankle boots to add three inches to his six-one.

There was a letter from Runyan in his box. Christ, Runyan! He stood at one of the tables reading it, water glinting in his thick curly brown hair and spotting the shoulders of his pinch-waist powder-blue sports jacket.

Dear Art,

I figured that if none of you ever heard from me again, it would be too soon. But here I am, right where Dolly and Ma and Sissy — maybe even you-always thought I’d end up. Prison.

State? Federal? Runyan, though his younger brother, had raised all sorts of hell after Pops had died, and had gone to Nam just to stay out of the Oregon state pen.

I’ll be getting out in six weeks, and I’d like to see all of you again. If you don’t want me to, just write and say so...

Say if anyone wanted to see him again was what he meant, though he didn’t say it. Ma. Sissy. Dolly.

Dolly, Art’s busted marriage. Come home from a week on the road, ready for a good steak, a good screw, and 12 hours of sacktime, what’d he get? This is broke, that is broke, we need this, we need that... So he got off the road, and when she found out he’d gotten a little something on the side — hell, what man wouldn’t, given the chance? — she’d just walked off. With damn near everything he owned.

Art looked out into the rain, remembering, considering.

Of course during his seven years at San Quentin, Runyan had considered what it would be like to have visitors, everyone in the joint did. The call on the loudspeaker, the trek across the yard, the familiar face, the welcome smile. But his first had been only three months ago, with a call to the prison library where he made three dollars a day as a clerk.

He had barely entered the unfamiliar visitors’ room when a voice had called his name.

“Runyan. In here.”

In one of the meshed cages, usually used by attorneys for conferences with their clients during visitors’ hours, had been an unremarkable mid-forties man, with a smart jaded face for which the world no longer held surprises. His voice had been half-drowned in the multilingual, multiracial babble, edged with hysteria, of people trying to squeeze years into minutes.

“David Moyers, investigator for Homelife General Insurance. We carried the insurance on those stones you lifted, Runyan. I’m going to bat with the parole board and I’m going to get you out. A simple thank you will do.”

“Which stones are those?” Runyan had asked.

“Yeah, they told me you were a hardnose. Never admitted taking them, though they had you cold. Okay. I know you have them stashed, Runyan. Everyone else thinks you do, but I know. I also know you’re going to deal. You might not think it now, but you will. I’m your ticket out of here.”

That had been three months ago. Since then, Moyers playing him, him playing Moyers. If he dealt the stones away before he got out, he never would. But until he was out, he couldn’t know for sure whether he could deal with Moyers. So he led him on, fended him off, kept him interested, and it had worked: His parole had come through and here he was, five days and a get-up before release.

But who was it today? Couldn’t be Moyers; they’d talked just two days ago. Unless he was getting as edgy as Runyan was at the days marching inexorably to release date. Could that woman journalist have come back? The one who’d gotten a pass to come interview him for some book she was writing about ex-cons? He hadn’t gone to meet her on the day she had shown up.

At the visitors’ room he showed his I.D. and went through into the cold narrow room where prisoners were strip-searched before and after their visits.

“Okay Runyan, bend and spread ’em.”

Dressed again, he was let through into the long crowded visitors’ room. Instant bedlam, a terrific assault on prison-blanded senses.

Runyan checked out the attorneys’ cages; no Moyers. He went all the way down the room through the throng, past the thick glass partitions where attorneys or friends could drop their ducats in the chute to talk with hard-timers from max security behind the glass. Still no Moyers.

He suddenly realized he hated visiting days: They showed you just how much you had deteriorated in the joint. A child crying in the playpen area was enough to prevent you from holding a train of thought. In the joint, things came at you one at a time. When the lights went out, the lights were out. You got beef on Wednesday, chicken on Sunday, a movie on Friday night.

But if he couldn’t handle even this much change, how could he make it on the outside?

Suddenly up in front of him popped a big man in clothes a North Oakland pimp would have found gaudy. The man grabbed Runyan’s hand and started shaking it while Runyan just gaped.

“For Chrissake, Art! I didn’t expect... You didn’t have to...”

He’d almost forgotten he’d written Art, it had been right after he’d heard he was going to be paroled, he’d had to touch someone, anyone on the outside to make it real inside himself. But here was Art, grinning like a fool. The 30 pounds he’d picked up since Runyan had seen him last had given him a sleek seal look, softening his features and eroding the cut granite edges of his hard, blocky body. But by God, he still looked like a truck driver. Probably was.

“I was going to write,” said Art, “but then I thought that after eight, nine years... all the changes...”

Runyan dragged him over to a table being vacated in front of the vending machines lining one wall. A tall, sad-looking black prisoner with three kids fed in coins for candy bars.

Art went on, “See, Sissy got herself married after... got herself married and moved to Idaho... Isn’t easy for her to get back...”

“After what?”

Art ignored this. “And then Dolly, she found out I had a little something going on the side, and—”

“That wouldn’t be the first time,” said Runyan.

Art grinned his big sheepish grin. “But it was the last. She just fucking up and divorced me, Runyan, took everything except the house.”

Runyan laughed and clapped his hands, once.

“No way Ma’d let her take that.”

Art cleared his throat and looked down at his big truck driver’s paws. And Runyan, even though there’d been no voice calling, My son, My son, wind-blown through his sleep, knew exactly what Art was going to say.

“Shit, there ain’t any easy way. Ma died three years ago.”

Runyan drew a deep shuddering breath and made a vague gesture. “I should have known, when she didn’t write or anything after I sent that letter to you...”