Wallowa

by Jane Snyder

What kind of world was it, Dave wondered, where a woman could put herself above a man? He was ready for this one. “Whoa there, Sis,” he said when he felt her hand cup his genitals under the jumpsuit. “You play, you pay.”

She knelt, rolled his pants’ legs up, examining for contraband. “What does the chicken on your left calf symbolize?” she asked.

“Oh, that. It’s the cock below the knees,” he said.

She went behind the desk, sat at the computer, didn’t look at him. He wished she’d ask why he couldn’t get on the chain bus to the penitentiary with the rest of them.

Because I kill women. He’d spit that into her thick face.

He studied his feet in the stiff plastic sandals. Hammer toes. If he knew of someone famous with hammer toes he could talk to her about that.

He opened the sack lunch he’d been given for the trip, bit into an apple. The skin was flat red like a crayon. The flesh was mealy.

“The apples you buy at the store are shit,” he said. “They grow them to last a year. That’s why they’re no good.”

She didn’t look up. “You eat it now, you won’t have anything to eat when you get hungry.”

Did she think this was a daycare? On the way to the penitentiary, the officers always got fast food. The food was never as good as he remembered, but the window at the drive through, the food under the lamps, smelling the hot grease, would hold him a long time.

He wondered who’d be coming from the Pen to get him. “What time is the transport team coming?”

“When they get here,” she said.

Dave imagined slamming her head face down on the desk hard enough to break her nose. Leave her puffed up for a month.

He was glad when the officers came. Two of them, big guys, slack where the girl was taut. Shirts tucked in, more or less. That was the Pen for you, he thought with satisfaction. They do things their way.

Dave didn’t know the younger officer; saw he’d left the top two buttons of his shirt open revealing a sliver of purple T‑shirt. Dave could have told him he was in violation of the dress code, which stipulated navy, black, or white T‑shirts, and that only the top button of the uniform shirt could be unbuttoned. He thought of mentioning it to him. If the officer were to ask him how he knew, he’d say: You think that’s strange? I’ve been doing time since before you were born, forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.

He knew the sergeant who greeted him. “Easy Money! Ready for a road trip?”

“With you, Steve?” Dave looked at the girl to make sure she heard his use of the officer’s first name. “We’ll tear it up.”

His status as an established character, old school convict restored, Dave thought to rub it in. “How’s your dad doing?” He turned to the girl. “His dad was also a Sergeant Gustafson.”

“He was Lieutenant Gustafson,” the younger man said, “before he retired.”

Dave saw the girl’s smirk.

“You must have known my dad from the old IMU, when he was the day-shift sergeant,” Steve said pleasantly. He bent over to check the shackles on Dave’s legs. “These aren’t too tight, are they?”

The line was meant to remind the offender of who was in charge but there was no snubbing Dave, who turned to the two younger officers. “I knew this illustrious sergeant before he knew me. Your dad told us all about you when you were playing for Wa-Hi. Quarterback, right? Man, he was proud of you.”

“Let’s get you settled,” Steve said.

After Dave was secured in the car’s back seat, Steve stayed out in the rain for a minute talking to the jail officer—wanting to build her up a little. “You’re good with him. I let him get under my skin,” he said.

She smiled. “You can have him.”

“Here I thought he was irresistible to women. But listen, when you’re a fat boy everyone thinks you played football. I never did, wasn’t fast enough. They called me the assistant manager. Water boy is what I was. For four years. He must have me mixed up with somebody else.”

She looked startled and Steve guessed he’d said too much. He’d meant to say something nice to her, not talk about himself.

After home games, his dad took him and the others who hadn’t made the team for pizza, asked them serious questions about the team’s chances, praised their contributions. Steve believed his father respected him for accepting a lesser part.

“Probably hasn’t heard a word anybody’s said since the judge gave him life without,” Steve said. His laughter was in excess of what the joke warranted. “Well, till next time. Always a pleasure.” He was stupid, he told himself, thinking she needed anything from him.

He drove, knowing Josh didn’t like driving on the Pass at night. He said he felt better when Josh had the gun. The driver didn’t carry a weapon.

Steve had been on this side of the mountains when it wasn’t raining on trips with his wife and daughter to the zoo or the Space Needle, everything shimmering in wet, wavy sunlight. Tonight, the rain was so heavy you couldn’t see more than a few feet of road ahead. Like the peripheral vision test at the eye doctor’s, the spot of light darting at you from anywhere and all you can do is wait.

“Amateur night,” Dave said. He’d been talking about King County Jail where he’d been for the last three months, waiting to go to court on a motion for a reduction in sentence. The motion had been denied last week. “If you don’t expect anything you won’t be disappointed,” he’d said. “Sugar Tits wouldn’t last a week at the penitentiary. Not a day. Not an hour.”

“Officer Field is an excellent corrections officer,” Steve said.

Josh, Steve saw with amusement, straightened up in his seat. He knew when his boss was ready to lay down the lumber. Dave couldn’t catch a clue. “I just don’t understand why a woman would want to do this kind of work, Steve,” he said.

“For the same reason anybody does, to earn a living,” Steve said. He’d never understand, Dave thought sadly, how quickly they’ll turn on you. He thought of the heady days after his arrest, the detectives falling over themselves to bring him coffee, light his cigarettes. You could smoke anywhere then. “It wasn’t rape,” he’d say, all of them gathered around him as if there was no place they’d rather be. “It was theft of services.” They’d laugh when there were still bodies for him to lead them to.

They didn’t usually stop till Ellensburg but Steve, hoping it would shut Dave up, turned into North Bend. Get the bathroom trip, and the coy business Dave would make of it, done as well.

“This is great,” Dave said, staring out the window. “I haven’t been here in thirty, forty years.” Steve wondered what there was to see. Not the wet woods that came up to the edge of the road. Or Mount Si behind the QFC. This time of night, you wouldn’t know you were in the mountains if your ears didn’t pop.

The brightly lit stores and restaurants fascinated Dave. “I can’t believe how much it’s grown. Look at that. Sushi!”

“Can we get you some?” Steve asked.

Dave giggled, glad to be teased. “Raw fish? No thank you, Sergeant.” McDonald’s, as he’d hoped. “You order for me,” he said primly, folding his hands in his lap when Josh removed the cuffs.

Josh offered but Steve paid, saying, as he always did, “Save your money for the girls.”

Dave had never seen a Shamrock shake. “God, it’s beautiful.”

“You been reading Harlequin Romance books again?” Josh asked. Dave beamed. Doesn’t take much to make him happy, Steve thought.

“Seriously,” Dave said. “Look how they put the chocolate layer over the mint.” He ate it all, his double Quarter Pounder with cheese, Steve’s French fries, the bun Josh didn’t want. “I thank you,” he said.

Dave fell asleep as soon as they were back on the road, the upper half of his body slumping forward, straining against the seatbelt. Josh turned off the speaker between the front and back seat. “They look so sweet when they’re sleeping.”

Steve appreciated his tone. He liked his officers to have fun so long as it wasn’t dirty. “Aw, his little tummy’s full. Keep an eye on him. With his head forward like that he likely won’t choke but you never know.”

“It made me sick, the way he talks,” Josh said.

“Some people just need killing,” Dave had told them, with modest pride. Crack whores, he’d called his victims.

“I was getting tired of him too. But I wanted to ask you about the young lady at the Christmas party. Casey. How’s that going? Past due for the first wife, aren’t you?” Steve asked. He didn’t think Casey was a good idea. Pretty enough, lots of glossy hair, but her mouth was already inclined to discontent. She wouldn’t have the sense to appreciate what she had.

“I don’t know what she’d say, is the thing. I mean, what have I got to offer?” Josh asked.

“Plenty. You apply for sergeant this time, you’ll get it,” Steve said.

“She’s out of my league,” Josh said.

“What matters is if you care about her,” Steve said. Jody, his wife, had been excited and flattered when she was a new hire and he started paying attention to her. A sure thing.

“Maybe. I took her to the opera last week in Spokane. It went pretty well, I thought,” Josh said.

“Opera? Hoo boy. You’re in deep,” Steve said.

Steve had fought with Jody that morning. He blamed Gwennie, their daughter, thirteen years old and already taller than her mother. Gwennie couldn’t get along with anyone lately, even her friends, exercising her newfound ability to say exactly the wrong thing. Jody got the worst of it. She’d been making waffles that morning when Gwennie came into the kitchen, rolled her eyes and took a carton of yogurt from the refrigerator. Steve, knowing he was being a prick, told her to eat the nice breakfast her mother had made, but Jody, who wanted everything pleasant, said not to worry about it. “If you don’t like waffles, I won’t make them anymore.”

“Waffles are fine if I wanted to look like you, Mother,” Gwennie said.

“Will you be wanting a ride to school this morning, Kitten? Your friends don’t like sitting on the bus with you anymore?” Steve had asked.

He would have apologized even before Jody let him know what she thought of his giving his daughter a taste of her own medicine, but Gwennie ran into the bathroom and locked the door when he tried. Jody held bags of frozen peas to Gwennie’s eyes to reduce the evidence of crying, told her how cute she looked. Gwennie wouldn’t get in the car with him. Jody took her to school and then came back to get Steve to drive him to work.

“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” he said before apologizing again. “Can I come see you at lunch?” The other women in her office smiled at him whenever he went there, seeing a man so crazy about his own wife.

She shrugged. “You look at her like she’s something you just picked out of your teeth.”

“That was a pretty cheap thing she said to you, Jody.” How could she stand it, he wondered, Gwennie tearing into her then acting like nothing had happened. She was still a little girl. Hold me, Mommy. I want on your lap.

“What you said was cheaper. You’re older and should know better,” Jody said.

“I’d ever talked to my mom like that and my dad would have pinned my ears back.” A lie. He knew it when he said it.

She got out of the car before he could open the door for her.

The only people Gwennie was decent to were her grandparents. Kept a civil tongue, volunteered for chores, refused money from them. She took it fast enough from Steve afterwards, though.

The look on his daughter’s face, before she’d said that thing about not wanting to look like Jody, could have been fear.

“Don’t bother with lunch,” Jody said, but she’d let him walk in with her, thanked him. She wished him a good trip when he called to tell her he wouldn’t be home till late because of the trip and told her to take the car. Josh would give him a ride home. Of course she wouldn’t say much to contradict him, not with people around.

The rain stopped as they approached Ellensburg. Steve was glad to be on dry, flat roads again. He thought of six-year-old Gwennie, telling him a new joke from school. Proud because she’d mastered the elaborate punchline. She practiced on Steve when he came home. He was on night shift then and he’d stay up to eat breakfast with her, hang out with her while Jody got ready for work. Gwennie, looking sweet and important in one of the dresses bought special for first grade, sprawled against him on the couch cracking herself up. When she could tell it straight through, she asked him to call his father for her. “Grandpa will love this.”

His dad was on day shift then and would be getting ready for work. Steve pictured him reaching for the lieutenant’s bar he kept in a little tin plate on his dresser and then crossing the room to put it on in front of the mirror.

No hurry in his dad’s voice. Steve heard their mingled laughter when she’d pulled the joke off. “Isn’t that something,” his father said over the line. Gwennie smiled up at Steve, inviting him to share in the success of her joke.

“It was better than I thought it would be,” Josh said, interrupting Steve’s thoughts. “They had police corruption and torture. I’d go again.”

Steve remembered Josh was talking about opera. “No fat ladies?”

“She was a big girl, Tosca, Floria Tosca, but I wouldn’t call her fat. In good shape, actually. She’d have to be, running and singing at the same time,” Josh said.

“I’d never have thought of an opera. You young guys are good at that relationship building stuff. But Jody’s got no complaints. I take her to pie night at Shari’s anytime she wants,” Steve said.

“It was cool. They had a completed suicide. Floria went up the stairs to the second floor and jumped out the window. I think they used a trampoline,” Josh said.

“What would have been cool is if she’d bounced back up,” Steve said.

“She went down pretty hard, so I was hoping. She must have grabbed on to something to hold. I didn’t want to ask Casey,” Josh said.

“No,” Steve said. You had to hand it to Josh, swinging for the fences in loving that girl.

“I hope it works out for you. With Casey.”

“I got us the shirts they were selling at intermission. I hope she didn’t think that was too much. I’m wearing mine now,” Josh said.

Jesus, what a chump Steve thought.

Josh had bought a recording of the opera too. They’d played it on the drive back from Spokane, Casey warbling along in her thin, high-pitched voice, not knowing she was off tune. He smiled, thinking of that. Asked Steve how his dad was doing. “I always liked him.”

Well, I like him too, Steve thought, telling himself Josh meant well. “Mom thinks the new medicine is helping. He never says much.”

If his dad had claimed Steve played football, the inmates would know he was lying. Some of them got the newspaper sent in, liked knowing when an officer got divorced or arrested for a DWI, and they’d have noticed his name wasn’t in the sports pages.

His father never said he was disappointed.

You get to Ellensburg, in no time you’re in Yakima, a longer haul to the Tri-Cities, then Walla Walla. On the trip over, they’d seen pelicans on the shallow ponds along the Columbia. You didn’t see them on the river much, easier fishing in still waters, Steve guessed. Nothing to see now.

He glanced back again at Dave. Small, limp in sleep. His victims had been small too, none older than fifteen, and he’d had the advantage of surprise. Prostitutes, sex workers you’d say now. What else? No one with a choice would get into a car with Dave. He’d put the body in a garbage bag before he dumped it, called the bags his signature. He was famous enough, a fourteen-year-old from L.A., spotting the box of garbage bags on the backseat, jumped out of his car at a traffic light.

The police praised her quick thinking and her accurate descriptions of Dave and the car. One of the detectives said he wished she was his daughter. Steve thought that would be a satisfying ending, the detective adopting her. He was ten then, watching the news with his brother, Dougie, and his mother and father, waiting for the meatloaf to be done. He imagined the detective asking the girl for permission. “I’ll be good to you,” he’d tell her solemnly.

Steve was disappointed when the camera showed the girl’s mother getting off the plane at SeaTac, crying. “Thank you, God, for bringing my baby home to me.”

“Probably sold her in the first place,” his dad said sharply, making them look up. “Her baby didn’t get to Seattle from Los Angeles on her own.”

He didn’t understand his mother’s distress. “Oh, honey. How can you say that?”

His dad tousled Dougie’s hair. “I’m taking you gentlemen to the barber shop tomorrow,” the gesture at odds with the reproachful tone.

“We don’t need to watch this,” his father said, getting up to turn the set off. He asked Steve’s mother what kind of potatoes she’d made. Whatever she said, mashed, baked, scalloped, fried, he’d say it was his favorite.

Sometimes Steve wondered what the girl had made of her second chance. Like his father, he mistrusted the mother, remembering the way she’d looked into the cameras as if she’d been waiting all her life for them to show up. Maybe the girl believed she’d outwitted death because she was intended for something special. Or, as seemed likely to Steve, she carried the other girls with her, imagined the moment when they’d known they were going to die. She’d be fifty now.

When the rain stopped, the road seemed safer. Steve remembered the trip his family took every summer to Wallowa Lake when he was a boy. They’d leave early, drop the dog off at his grandparents. His grandma had a cooler of food for them. Fried chicken, three-bean salad, stuff they liked. “Finally, some real food,” his dad would say. “She’s starving me, mom.” They’d laugh, knowing he was teasing; laugh again when she’d say his dad should be ashamed of himself. “I was glad to do it,” his grandma said, when his mom thanked her for the food. “You just go and have a good time.” His mom had begun working part time at the credit union when Dougie started kindergarten, and his grandma thought she was working too hard. It couldn’t have been much of a day off for his mom, he thought, not the way women have spa days now, but she looked forward to the trip all summer. They all did.

Their grandpa would walk out to the car to see them off. “Watch out for them Jackalopes,” he’d say and act surprised when Dougie told him there was no such thing.

His grandma’s food was for supper. They’d go up to the summit in the gondola and have lunch at the restaurant. It was always exciting, getting out at the top from the still swinging car and walking on the trails. They’d feed the chipmunks, give them nicknames, tell them they’d see them next year.

They’d sit on the restaurant terrace and look across at where they’d been. Al fresco, his mother said every year. “Like something in Europe,” and Steve would think yes, this is what Europe must be like.

They did everything. Rode horses through the dry, fragrant woods—the only thing his dad didn’t do with them. “It isn’t fair to the animal,” he’d say, checking to make sure they were cinched in. “Having to carry my weight.” His mom rode, laughed when his dad told her she looked like a cowgirl, like Dale Evans. His father would be waiting for them when they got back, would lift Dougie and their mom down, let Steve dismount on his own, say how well he did it, and go with them when they went to the stables to say goodbye to the horses. Steve loved the ride, felt sorry for his dad for missing it. Ashamed of his bulk. Not much of it left now.

Afterwards they took a paddle boat out on the lake. When they were hot from the sun, their dad took them swimming, Steve’s favorite part. His mom said it was too cold and his dad would tell her to go to the gift shop. “Foufou store” his father would call it, making them laugh. “Treat yourself, honey.”

His father sent them soaring out over the water, again and again. When they paddled back to him, they’d dart under water, clamping onto one of his legs. “Lake’s full of bloodsuckers,” he’d say, and pull them into his arms.

When his mom called them for supper, she’d scold his dad for letting them get so cold and excited. “You’re as bad as they are.”

They’d stay at their picnic table to watch the sun set over the lake. When he and Dougie got restless, his dad gave them money for ice cream. They’d eaten coconut cake and watermelon already, but that was the kind of day it was. “Make sure you and your brother stay away from the deer, Stevie,” he’d tell him. Tame deer were a feature of the park. They liked seeing them up close, wanted to pet them. “They’re cute but see how high they jump? They kick you, it’s going to hurt.”

Steve, holding Dougie’s hand, listened solemnly, imagining he was a Jedi warrior receiving instructions from Obi Wan Kenobi. When they came back his parents, close together on the bench, made room for them. His mom took Dougie on her lap. Steve leaned into his dad.

The sun set then, a red ball dropping into the lake. Day to night.

Dougie turned into a baby, crying, begging to stay. “It’s all right, Big Guy,” his dad said, picking him up. “Didn’t we have fun?” Steve, knowing he was the real big guy, carried the cooler.

Dougie was asleep before the car started, but Steve, wanting to hold onto the warm dark and the murmur of his parents’ contented voices, tried to stay awake.

He noted the individual quality of the stars as they emerged, how some were bright and others blurred and pretty. Thought suddenly, just when he couldn’t stay awake any longer, that it was all right to let go because they were there, his mom and dad. More days with them, laid out ahead of him, always.

Steve wasn’t working tomorrow. He could sleep in, then see his dad, watch TV with him, whatever he wanted. He could give his mom a chance to get out for a little while. “I don’t need a babysitter, you know,” his dad would say when she left. He was irritable now, sometimes.

“I know, Dad. I just like to be with you.”

“We’ve got that in common, then. I like being with you too.” His dad never had much interest in discipline or instruction, he got enough of that at work, Steve guessed. His gift as a father was his enthusiasm for his family’s company.

“God, I was a dumb little kid,” Steve said into the night. “Obi Wan Kenobi never called anybody Stevie.” He’d ask Gwennie to come with him to his parents’ house tomorrow.

“I’m not quite understanding the context, but Obi Wan Kenobi isn’t real,” Josh said. “I thought you knew that, Stevie.”

Their laughter was loud enough to wake Dave who was glad to leave his dreams, be with the younger men, see the white lights from the penitentiary.

This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.

Photo by Shashank B.