Дэвид Балдаччи: One Good Deed

“Long enough. Hey, you don’t happen to have a smoke I can bum?”

“You can’t really borrow a smoke, now can you? And you can’t smoke on here anyways.”

“The hell you say.”

The man pointed to a handwritten sign on cardboard hanging overhead that said this very thing.

More rules.

Archer shook his head. “I’ve smoked on a train, on a Navy ship. And in a damn church. My old man smoked in the waiting room when I was being born, so they told me. And he said my mom had a Pall Mall in her mouth when I came out. What’s the deal here, friend?”

“They’ve had trouble before, see?”

“Like what?”

“Like some knucklehead fell asleep smoking and caught a whole dang bus on fire.”

“Right, ruin it for everybody else.”

“Ain’t good for you anyway, I believe,” said the man.

“Most things not good for me I enjoy every now and again.”

“What’d you do to get locked up? Kill a man?”

Archer shook his head. “Never killed anybody.”

“Guess they all say that.”

“Guess they do.”

“Guess you were innocent.”

“No, I did it,” admitted Archer.

“Did what?”

“Killed a man.”

“Why?”

“He was asking too many questions of me.”

But Archer smiled, so the man didn’t appear too alarmed at the veiled threat.

“Where you headed?”

“Somewhere that’s not here,” said Archer. He took off his jacket, carefully folded it, and laid it on his lap with his hat on top.

“Is all you got the clothes on your back?”

“All I got.”

“What’s your ticket say?”

Archer dug into his pocket and pulled it out.

It was eighty and dry outside and about a hundred inside the bus, even with the windows half-down. The created breeze was like oven heat and the mingled odors were... peculiar. And yet Archer didn’t really sweat, not anymore. Prison had been far hotter, far more... peculiar. His pores and sense of smell had apparently recalibrated.

“Poca City,” he read off the flimsy ticket.

“Never been there, but I hear it’s growing like gangbusters. Used to be the boondocks. But then it went from cattle pasture to a real town. People coming out this way after the war, you see.”

“And what do they do once they get there?”

“Anything they can, brother, to make ends meet.”

“Sounds like a plan good as another.”

The older man studied him. “Were you in the war? You look like you were.”

“I was.”

“Seen a lot of the world, I bet?”

“I have. Not always places I wanted to be.”

“I been outta this state exactly one time. Went to Texas to buy some cattle.”

“Never been to Texas.”

“Hey, you been to New York City?”

“Yes, I have.”

The man sat up straighter. “You have?”

Archer casually nodded his head. “Passed through there on account of the war. Seen the Statue of Liberty. Been to the top of the Empire State Building. Rode the rides over at Coney Island. Even seen some Rockettes walking down the street in their getups and all.”

The man licked his lips. “Tell me something. Are their legs like they say, friend?”

“Better. Gams like Betty Grable and faces like Lana Turner.”

“Damn, what else?” he asked eagerly.

“Had a box lunch in the middle of Central Park. Sat on a blanket with a honey worked at Macy’s department store. We drank sodas and then she slipped out a flask from the top of her stocking. What was in there? Well, it was better’n grape soda, I can tell you that. We had a nice day. And a better night.”

The man scratched his cheek. “So, what are you doing all the way out here then?”

“Life has a crazy path sometimes. And like you said, folks heading this way after the war.”

The man, evidently intrigued now by his companion, sat up straighter, allowing Archer more purchase on his seat.

“And the war was a long time ago, or seems it anyway,” said Archer, stretching out. “But you got one life, right? Less somebody’s been lying to me.”

“Hold on now, Church says we get two lives. One now, one after we’re dead. Eternal.”

“Don’t think that’s in the cards for me.”

“Man never knows.”

“Oh, I think I know.”

Archer tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and grabbed his first bit of shut-eye as a free man in a long time.

Archer got off at Poca City seven hours later and too many stops in between to remember. People had gotten on and people had gotten off. They’d had a dinner and bathroom break at a roadside diner with an outhouse in the back, both of which looked only a stiff breeze away from falling over. It was nearly eight in the evening now. He stood there as the bus and the rube with too many queries and the remaining nervous folks clutching all they owned sped off into the night chasing pots of gold along dusty roads with nary a helpful leprechaun in sight.

Good riddance to them all, thought Archer. And then, a second later, his more charitable consideration was, Well, good luck to them.

We all needed luck now and then, was his firm belief. And maybe right now he needed it more than most. The point was, would he get it?

Or will I have to make my own damn luck? And hope for no bad luck as a chaser?

He put on his hat and then his jacket and looked around. He was in Poca City because the DOP said it was here he had to serve his parole. He dragged out the pages he’d been given. In fat, bold typeface at the top of the page was “Department of Prisons,” or the DOP. Below that was a long list of “don’ts” and a far shorter list of “dos.” These rules would govern his life for the next three years. Though he was free, it was a liberty with lassoes attached, with so-called legal conditions that he mostly could make neither head nor tail of. Who knew prison could stick to you, like running into a spider’s web in the morning, flailing about, just wanting to be free of the tendrils, while alarmed that a poisonous thing was coming for you.

Archer had been released from prison well before he served his full sentence due to time off for good behavior and also for passing muster at his first parole board meeting. He had ventured into the little stuffy room that held a flimsy table with three chairs behind and one chair in front and him not knowing what to expect. Two burly prison guards had accompanied him to this meeting. He had been dressed in his prison duds, which seemed to shriek “guilt” and “continued danger” from each pore of the sweat-stained fabric.

Behind the table were three people, two men and one woman. The men were short and stout and freely perspiring in the closeness of the room. They looked self-important and bored as they greedily puffed on their fat cigars. The woman, who sat in the middle of this little band of freedom givers or takers, was tall and matronly with an elaborate hat on which a fabric bird clung to one side, and with a dead fox around her blocky shoulders.

Archer had instantly seized on her as the real power, and thus had focused all of his attention there. His contriteness was genuine, his remorse complete. He stared into her large, brown eyes and said his piece with heartfelt emphasis contained in each word, until he saw quivering at the corners of those eyes, the false bird and fox start to shake. When he’d finished and then answered all her questions, the consultation among the board was swift and in his favor as the men quickly capitulated to the woman’s magisterial decree.

And that had been the price of freedom, which he had gladly paid.

The Derby Hotel was where the DOP said it would be. Point for those folks, grudgingly. Its architecture reminded him of places he’d seen in Germany. That did not sit particularly well with him. Archer hadn’t fought all those years to come home and see any elements of the vanquished settled here. He trudged across the macadam, the collected heat of the day wicking up into his long feet. Though the sky was now dark, it was still cloudless and clear. The air was so dry he felt his skin try to pull back into itself. Archer also thought he saw dust exhaled along with breath. A pair of old, withered men were bent over a checkerboard table incongruously perched in the shadow of a large fountain. The thing was built principally of gray-and-white marble with naked, fat cherubs suspended in the middle holding harps and flutes, and not a drop of water coming out of the myriad spouts.