Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

The mood that my thoughts led me into was in sync with the music that was playing. Dan’s album of lost love and deep wounds, Exiles , played softly in the background. I was usually thoroughly depressed when I finished listening to it, but it was a comfortable, soothing depression that never lasted too long-or long enough. I couldn’t listen to it without thinking of Susan.

I thought of Laura, too. At times she tired me out, making me feel as if I were swimming upstream. At times she refreshed me like floating down that same stream on a soft inner tube. My thoughts turned to Anna, the woman by whom all women in my life were judged. It was not fair to compare other women to Anna, but, then, who said life was fair? Besides, Laura didn’t do too badly against her.

Dan was depressing the hell out of me when I saw Captain Skipper near the front of the institution.

I could see Skipper walking an inmate into the sally port and getting into a van. Totally contrary to DOC policy, the inmate was not cuffed or shackled, and there was no armed officer accompanying them. The van pulled out of the institution heading down the two-mile county road to the main highway into town.

I followed.

Following someone was always very tricky for me, even if they didn’t expect it. If they expected it, it was impossible. This was true anywhere, but especially in Pottersville, where there was very little traffic most of the time, and virtually no traffic at one in the morning. However, I had the advantage of being in my dad’s vehicle, which would be unknown to the captain.

Nevertheless, I kept a safe distance.

The night, several degrees cooler than the day, was pleasant. The moon was nearly full, the sky clear, and the stars out. Dan continued to sing to me as I followed a full mile behind the van with my lights off. When the van reached the main highway, it turned toward town. About a quarter mile before I reached it, I turned my headlights on. As I came to a stop at the intersection, a car passed me. I followed closely behind the car that had fallen in right behind the van.

At the next intersection, which was two miles from Pottersville, the van turned left and the car between us continued straight.

When the van had a sufficient lead again, I turned and followed. The highway was desolate, with only the occasional house or trailer, most of which sat a good distance off the road under the cover of pine trees.

Unlike most places, there were no zoning laws in Pottersville, which meant that houses and trailers and even businesses were often side by side. On some streets, you would pass a hundred-and-fiftythousand-dollar brick home with a fifteen-thousand-dollar single-wide house trailer next door. This road was such a place.

I gave the van as much of a lead as I possibly could, which forced me to use the binoculars. Maybe a mile and a half up on the right, the van signaled and then turned. It was a residence, and from the road only the mailbox and the first thirty feet of the driveway could be seen. However, this was Pottersville, and I knew who lived there, and it didn’t make me happy.

The mailbox had small, neat letters reflecting in my headlights the name R. Maddox. The home belonged to Russ Maddox, the president of Potter State Bank and the wealthiest man in Potter County. He was also Laura’s uncle.

Russ Maddox, as far as I knew, was a finicky, middle-aged bachelor. He had lived alone for as long as I had lived in Pottersville. He had more dollars than sense and a slightly feminine way about him, which certainly gave rise to more than one small-town rumor. He was rich, though, and from what I remembered, a pretty fair banker, as bankers go.

By the time I reached the driveway, the van had disappeared into the woods that served as Russ’s front yard. I pulled the Explorer off the road about a half mile down from the driveway and moved through the woods towards the Maddox mansion, as it was known.

The light from the moon and the stars shown down so brightly that the pines almost cast shadows. There was no breeze, no visible movement of any kind. Moss hung still from the few tall cypress trees standing in the midst of the pines. The wire grass and weed undergrowth was thick and green in its summer prime. It came to just below my knees and made a swooshing sound as I trudged through it.

The undergrowth was so thick, in fact, that it camouflaged a fallen scrub oak tree. My right shin struck the tree full on, and I fell over it, suppressing a yelp of pain as I did. The ground was damp and the grass moist and much cooler than I had expected it to be.

When I reached the edge of the yard and the end of the woods, I could plainly see the front of the house. The interior of the house was dark, and the only illumination of the exterior was provided by a security light near the garage. The garage doors were closed. In front of them, I recognized Maddox’s dusty-rose Lincoln. Parked beside it was a car I didn’t recognize: a gray Toyota Tercel.

From where the yard began to the porch where Captain Skipper and the inmate stood was a hundred feet. Skipper looked frustrated and angry as he continued banging on the imposing solid oak door with no response. From the distance that separated us, it took the sound of the knock about a second to travel to my ears. The inmate, who was in his prison uniform, looked from the back like nearly every other average-height, average-weight white inmate. Something, possibly the Holy Spirit-she speaks to me on the odd occasion- told me it was Anthony Thomas.

After about five minutes of banging on the door of the dark house, Skipper and the inmate turned to leave. When they did, I saw that it was indeed Anthony Thomas, which meant that it must have indeed been the Holy Spirit. Thomas walked like a drunk man.

Skipper helped him into the van and then jumped in himself. In another few seconds, the ignition started, the lights came on, and the van began to turn around in the massive driveway. I glanced at my watch. It was one forty-six.

I ran toward the Explorer, though not as quickly as I could have, remembering the tree my shin had kissed on the way to the house. I was running for two reasons: one, I wanted to follow the van; and two, if the captain turned left out of the driveway, he would pass the Explorer, which might make him suspicious.

And, if he was doing all of the things I thought he was doing, then he had good reason to be suspicious. It took me three minutes to reach the Explorer-far longer than Skipper needed to reach the end of the driveway. I paused at the edge of the woods to see if Skipper was passing by. I saw no sign of him. I heard nothing. I jumped in the Explorer, turned it around and drove back the way he had come.

He was gone.

Rarely is witnessing an event, even an event that was supposed to be secret, as revelatory as it seems at the time it is witnessed. People who have witnessed plane crashes, automobile accidents, even assassinations, often know little more than those who were not there at all. I had seen Skipper take Thomas to Maddox’s house last night and I had no idea what it meant. I had seen one isolated incident out of context. Of the several things it could mean, I had no way of knowing what it actually meant.

Under the clear blue skies that had appeared again when the sun rose Sunday morning, I was returning Dad’s Explorer. He lived about fifteen minutes from me on a secluded five-acre farm. I tried to enjoy and appreciate the beautiful creations all around me as well as interact with the creator, but I could think of little else besides the events of the preceding night. I thought maybe I should tell Dad what was going on, but then again, I thought I probably should find out what was going on first. It seemed reasonable.