Andrew Gross: 15 Seconds

Still, it could work. I mean, we weren’t exactly talking the Supermax at Florence, Colorado, here… This was a medium-security women’s prison in backwoods Georgia. Probably a work-farm facility.

And it had to be the last place on earth anyone would be looking for me.

Vance Hofer stood above the circular saw in the remote woodshed. He eased a two-by-four along the line, splitting it seamlessly down the grain line. He liked how it felt, like he was back at the mill before everything fell apart. He used to come out here back then, and his wife, Joyce, would make something cool to drink and Amanda would bring it out, asking, “What are you making out here, Daddy?” and he would just go, “Nothing. Just thinking.” The bright sparks and whine of the serrated blade were like a hymn in church to him, making his thoughts clear.

He raised his goggles and wiped a thick mixture of sweat and sawdust off the back of his neck.

Vance accepted that his time had come, but he had one final act to see through. They may build but I will tear asunder, the Good Book read. They may repent, but all judgment is still mine. He knew he had done things to warrant judgment. Some had seemed to rise up from someplace deep inside him, like steam from somewhere deep in the earth. And some just felt justified. But this last thing…

He had decided that Henry Steadman was the root of all that had gone bad in his ruined life. The man had no true sense of what he had done, no deep contrition. Only selfish regret at having lost his easy life. And so he had to pay, like the rest had paid. And Vance had devised something good, something that would make him beg and cry before he died. That was a vow, Vance reflected as he eased another plank through the blade. One he’d take to the grave.

He gathered the remnants into a pile, the smell of raw, split pine like incense to him. He brought them over to the chipper. Not a big, fine machine, like what they had had at the plant, which could reduce a full-grown tree to pulp as fast as you could feed it. But it would do what he asked of it. Vance felt there was a beautiful magic to the job it did-the way it transformed something palpable and real one minute into the smallest of inalterable parts the next. It hummed as it chewed up the disparate pieces, raising a foul-smelling dust like vapor.

Purification in its truest, most elemental form.

A shout came from the locker in the back room. He almost didn’t hear it over the chipper’s noise. “Please… Please…” the girl called out. “Let me talk to my father!”

“Keep quiet, child, if you know what’s good for you,” he called back, feeding the split pieces of wood into the chipper’s mouth. “You hear I’m busy.”

His own daughter was no better than a whore and deserved all that fate had levied on her. Still, life didn’t degrade its victims in a vacuum, Vance thought. Evil had to be drawn out of you, by an agent, a snake. And then let loose in the world. And then the only way to remedy it was for it to be purified. As well as all who had touched it. That was the only way to make it go away…

He fed the split wood into the machine, rendering it into its natural, purified state.

Pulp.

He had never fully appreciated the wonderful magic of it until now.

From the shed, the girl cried out again, only a muffled noise above the chipper’s grating whir. Truth was, he could hear it all night and it wouldn’t sway him now.

“Let me out. I’m begging you. Please. Let me call my father. He’ll give you whatever you want. Can’t you hear me in here? Please! ”

Go at it all you want, Vance said to himself. That’s about all you have left in this world. And don’t worry, you’ll see him soon enough. That I promise.

She yelled and yelled again as he continued feeding the wood, returning it to its natural state. Eventually her voice became like daggers in his ears. Reminding him of things he didn’t want to hear. Things he had put away forever.

He paused the chipper with the foot pedal, got up, and went over to the locked shed door, and slammed on it with all his might.

“Shut the hell on up, Amanda!” he yelled.

Pulaski was a three-hour drive.

I’d called and left my name with the visitors’ center, identifying myself as Rick Holmes, an attorney from Jacksonville, and saying that I wanted to meet with Amanda Hofer. I stopped at a men’s haberdashery store and picked out a sport jacket straight off the rack along with a white dress shirt. I wore them out of the shop.

The prison came up out of nowhere, about twenty minutes south of Macon, a town I recalled from my Allman Brothers stage, and was ringed by a barbed-wire fence and a handful of guard towers. The only times I’d ever even been inside one was during med school, at Vandy, where I did some procedures on inmates, but not like this.

Of course, this wasn’t exactly San Quentin and we were in the middle of nowhere, and Amanda Hofer wasn’t exactly the Unabomber-not to mention that I was relying on the fact that no one ever assumes someone is trying to break into prison.

At just before 1 P.M. I left the car and headed toward the main entrance. Inside, on the left, was a sign marked VISITORS. My heart started to pound. At the counter, I waited behind an African-American family; the mother, in jeans and a tight halter top, seemed to know her way around, and her two talkative boys in NFL jerseys. I told myself to calm down. When they were done, I stepped up to the heavyset woman in a khaki guard’s uniform behind the counter.

“Richard Holmes. I’m here to see Amanda Hofer.”

The guard checked over the log. “Are you carrying any firearms or any other weapons? If so, you’ll have to check them here.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Any food, paraphernalia, or materials you’re planning to leave with the inmate?”

Again, I shook my head. “No. None.”

She began to fill out a visitor’s form. “May I see your ID?”

I pulled Carrie’s husband’s license from my wallet and passed it across the counter, along with his card, identifying me as an attorney, and waited, sure that the guard was able to hear the bass drum that was booming in my chest. If there’d been some kind of meter measuring heart rate or agitation aimed at me, the needle would be off the chart!

Instead, she just looked them over, glancing at me once, and slid them back. No request to see anything else. No alarms sounding-or guards rushing out with their guns drawn.

Just: “Up from Florida, huh? Warm down there as it is up here?”

“You got off easy,” I said with a grin, sure it was a trick question, and realizing I hadn’t checked the weather back there in days.

The guard laughed. “Wait till July and you won’t be sayin’ that…” Then she got on a mike. “Can you bring up 334596 to Booth Three?” she asked, then pushed across an admittance form for me to sign.

I was in!

“Go through the door on the right and down to Booth Three,” she instructed. “Remove anything metal from your pockets inside. Enjoy your visit.” She looked beyond me. “Next in line…”

I went through the door and then through a security station, with a metal detector and a long metal table, like I’d seen in courthouses. I emptied my pockets: just my three cell phones and my wallet. Another guard checked my paperwork and then pointed me through. “Down the hall. Booth Three is on the left.”

I took my things and proceeded down the hallway. I came upon a row of ten or twelve visiting booths-four-foot-wide compartments with microphones and a Plexiglas wall separating the inmate from the visitor.