Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

William Van Poyckwas sentenced to death for his part in the 1987 botched attempt to free his best friend from a prison transport van, during which a guard was killed by Van Poyck’s accomplice. A certified paralegal for over thirty years, Van Poyck is the author of an autobiography, A Checkered Past, and two novels, Quietus and The Third Pillar of Wisdom . The State of Florida executed him on June 12, 2013, but his messages of love, hope, and redemption live on in his writings.

Marco Verdonireceived a Short Story Award for New Writers honorable mention from Glimmer Train . In 2003, as a fifteen-year-old, he was tried as an adult for assault with intent to murder and sentenced to ten years in the Michigan Department of Corrections. He was released on parole in June 2013 and currently lives and writes at home in Saginaw, Michigan.

Andre Whiteis originally from Detroit and is currently incarcerated at Central Michigan Correctional Facility. He feels that telling tales and tall tales are as distinguishable as “tell” and “tail”; he’s not known for the former, though he prefers to describe and detail the latter.

Bonus Short Story: "Run Kiss Daddy", by Joyce Carol Oates

from New Jersey Noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates

Sneak Peek: USA NOIR, edited by Johnny Temple

Kittatinny Mountains

"Tell Daddy hello! Run kiss Daddy.”

He’d been gone from the lake less than an hour but in this new family each parting and each return signaled a sort of antic improvised celebration — he didn’t want to think it was the obverse of what must have happened before he’d arrived in their lives — the Daddy departing, and the Daddy not returning.

“Sweetie, h’lo! C’mere.”

He dropped to one knee as the boy ran at him to be hugged. A rough wet kiss on Kevin’s forehead.

The little girl hesitated. Only when the mother pushed more firmly at her small shoulders did she spring forward and run — wild-blue-eyed suddenly, with a high-pitched squeal like a mouse being squeezed — into his arms. He laughed — he was startled by the heat of the little body — flattered and deeply moved, kissing the excited child on the delicate soft skin at her temple where — he’d only just noticed recently — a pale blue vein pulsed.

“What do you say to Daddy when Daddy comes back?”

The mother clapped her hands to make a game of it. This new family was so new to her too, weekends at Paraquarry Lake were best borne as a game, as play.

“Say Hi Daddy! — Kiss-kiss Daddy! ”

Obediently the children cried what sounded like Hi Daddy! Kiss-kiss Daddy!

Little fish-mouths pursed for kisses against Daddy’s cheek.

Reno had only driven into the village of Paraquarry Falls to bring back semi-emergency supplies: toilet paper, flashlight batteries, mosquito repellant, mouse traps, a gallon container of milk, a shiny new garden shovel to replace the badly rusted shovel that had come with the camp. Also, small sweet-fruit yogurts for the children though both he and the mother weren’t happy about them developing a taste for sugary foods — but there wasn’t much of a selection at the convenience store.

In this new-Daddy phase in which unexpected treats are the very coinage of love.

“Who wants to help Daddy dig?”

Both children cried Me! — thrilled at the very prospect of working with Daddy on the exciting new terrace overlooking the lake.

And so they helped Daddy excavate the old, crumbled-brick terrace a previous owner had left amid a tangle of weeds, pebbles, and broken glass, or tried to help Daddy — for a while. Clearly such work was too arduous for a seven-year-old, still more for a four-year-old, with play shovels and rakes; and the mild June air too humid for much exertion. And there were mosquitoes and gnats. Despite the repellant. For these were the Kittatinny Mountains east of the Delaware Water Gap in early June — that season of teeming buzzing fecundity — just to inhale the air is to inhale the smells of burgeoning life.

“Oh! Dad-dy!” Devra recoiled from something she’d unearthed in the soil, lost her balance, and fell back onto her bottom with a little cry. Reno saw it was just a beetle — iridescent, wriggling — and told her not to be afraid: “They just live in the ground, sweetie. They have special beetle work to do in the ground.”

Kevin said, “Like worms! They have ‘work’ in the ground.”

This simple science — earth science — the little boy had gotten from Reno. Very gratifying to hear your words repeated with child-pride.

From the mother Reno knew that their now-departed father had often behaved “unpredictably” with the children and so Reno made it a point to be soft-spoken in their presence, good-natured and unexcitable, predictable.

What pleasure in being predictable !

Still, Devra was frightened. She’d dropped her play shovel in the dirt. Reno saw that the little girl had enough of helping Daddy with the terrace for the time being. “Sweetie, go see what Mommy’s doing. You don’t need to dig anymore right now.”

Kevin remained with Daddy. Kevin snorted in derision, his baby sister was so scaredy.

Reno was a father, again. Fatherhood, returned to him. A gift he hadn’t quite deserved the first time — maybe — but this time, he would strive to deserve it.

This time, he was forty-seven years old. He — who’d had a very hard time perceiving himself other than young, a kid.

And this new marriage! — this beautiful new family small and vulnerable as a mouse cupped trembling in the hand — he was determined to protect with his life. Not ever not ever let this family slip from his grasp as he’d let slip from his grasp his previous family — two young children rapidly retreating now in Reno’s very memory like a scene glimpsed in the rearview mirror of a speeding vehicle.

“Come to Paraquarry Lake! You will all love Paraquarry Lake.”

The name itself seemed to him beautiful, seductive — like the Delaware River at the Water Gap where the river was wide, glittering and winking like shaken foil. As a boy he’d hiked the Appalachian Trail in this area of northeastern Pennsylvania and northwestern New Jersey — across the river on the high pedestrian walkway, north to Dunfield Creek and Sunfish Pond and so to Paraquarry Lake which was the most singular of the Kittitanny Ridge lakes, edged with rocks like a crude lacework and densely wooded with ash, elm, birch, and maples that flamed red in autumn.

So he courted them with tales of his boyhood hikes, canoeing on the river and on Paraquarry Lake, camping along the Kittatinny Ridge where once, thousands of years ago, a glacier lay like a massive claw over the land.

He told them of the Lenni Lenape Indians who’d inhabited this part of the country for thousands of years! — far longer than their own kind.

As a boy he’d never found arrowheads at Paraquarry Lake or elsewhere, yet he recalled that others had, and so spoke excitedly to the boy Kevin as if to enlist him in a search; he did not quite suggest they might discover Indian bones that sometimes came to the surface at Paraquarry Lake, amid shattered red shale and ordinary rock and dirt.

In this way and in others he courted the new wife Marlena, who was a decade younger than he; and the new son, Kevin; and the new daughter who’d won his heart the first glimpse he’d had of her — tiny Devra with white-blond hair fine as the silk of milkweed.