You have no items in your cart. Want to get some nice things?
Go shoppingThe slender branches of the box elder shaded the thatchy grass outside the prison yard, but didn’t stretch as far as the fence. It was the only tree visible from the prison, and Derrick Edwards, five years into his sentence for murder, could see it from his window only if he twisted his head at an awkward angle and squeezed his face up tight between the bars. Despite the discomfort, Derrick looked at the tree every day for as long as he could, thinking of Willamette Johnson. Derrick spent a lot of time in jail missing Willamette. A thin ache was always there, below the rest of his feelings. He heard her voice like a constant radio announcement in the back of his head. [private]At night, under his single dirty sheet, he closed his eyes and imagined her looking at him, her lips on his, her eyelashes brushing his cheeks, her skin under his fingertips. She was the prettiest girl in the county, the smartest, the best shot. And she had promised to wait for him, as long as it took.
In five years, Willamette had not visited or written, even once. But at Derrick’s trial, on the day he was convicted, she had been so shocked that she fainted over the rail of the viewing gallery and broke her leg falling; this was enough proof of her love. Derrick’s only snapshot of her was propped on the tiny shelf above his bed. Her image winked from beneath the ancient Johnson oak. Derrick had taken the picture the day they swore their eternal love for each other, the day she married John Dewitt. Though John D.’s death was the reason he was in jail in the first place, Derrick found it hard to get too angry at him. Willamette had been promised to John D. from a young age, but when he was called up she began making eyes at Derrick; by the time John returned, Willamette was two months gone. John D. had his soldier’s pay, and Derrick had no money to speak of, so Willamette married John, looking behind to the pews as she took her vows. Her husband was shot before the baby’s baptism. Derrick told the story at the tables in the canteen until he was shouted down. John D.’s death always got a laugh, though Derrick never intended one.
Derrick liked to sit on a bench in the yard and make as though it was the tree branch over the stream at the bottom of the Johnson field. You could stare up from underneath the Johnson oak and make out tiny chinks of sunlight through the thick bright foliage. The leaves looked soft enough to sleep on. It was a tree to disappear in. Derrick thought he wouldn’t mind being in jail, if jail was like that. He found he couldn’t even remember what the tree was like in the cold seasons, when the leaves fell. The bench in the yard was a poor substitute.
That year spring came on hard, and the warmth slowed his brain down. Though it was still some way off the peak of the season, the air hazed in the yard, and at night the men pushed themselves against the cold stone wall to shake off the heat. The mosquitoes returned. One day he stared at the box elder and realised that it was in full bloom. He scoured his fingers in his palm, urged to touch the rough bark of a tree, the softness of Willamette’s skin. Ragged scratchy grass was not enough for his hands and feet. Every day, he began to stare at the box elder, and say aloud, ‘When will she come?’
It was the warden who handed him the means to freedom. Although the sun made the men fractious, the warden liked to keep them out in it. He had certain ideas about what was good for men and prisoners, and the open air played a large part. To that end, he petitioned the county for the introduction of a chain gang. A chain gang would, he thought, put the boys in the outdoors and also give them some physical exercise, to properly tire them out.
Derrick volunteered for the gang; the other places had to be assigned after few others came forward. The men grumbled and shifted as the guards shackled them together and loaded them into a truck. The inside of the truck was too small to hold them all, and the men were squashed up next to each other. In the heat, it was almost airless, and when they arrived at the appointed stretch of roadside, the men pitched onto the ground in a rush, as if they had been belched out. Derrick was chained next to a man named Symon. When they were set to breaking rocks, Symon seemed to do it effortlessly. Though sweat ran off his well-muscled arms, his facial expression never changed. Derrick found it harder going, but the monotony of the work at least gave him time to think, though his mind wasn’t running as smoothly as it could, under the sweat and the sun.
Along the roadside ranged barren shrubs and, further back, a lone tree, leafless despite the season. There was nothing to afford any cover. The whole place was flat and empty, a stretch of near-desert with the clutch of men in the centre. As he drove his hammer into the boulders, Derrick turned his head from side to side, trying to figure the best way to go. Once he wasn’t paying attention, and his hammer came down too close to Symon’s foot. The other man, his expression constant, said under his breath, ‘Stop looking. There’s no way off this line.’
Derrick stared at the pebbly ground. He looked at the shackle cutting into Symon’s thick ankle, and then at the way he could move his own smaller ankle relatively freely. Putting his weight on one leg, he pointed the toe of the other, like a dancer, and gently pulled his foot up. His leg stuck in the cuff, but there was wriggling room. Symon glanced at him again, and slowly shook his head. Derrick put his foot back flat on the ground.
By noon the humid smell of sweat infused the air, with a tang of blood from the scratching of mosquito bites. The clank of hammers on rocks rang in the men’s ears, the sound seeming to continue even when the guards gave them permission to lay down their tools for lunch. Derrick’s eyes stung with drips of sweat, and his face was streaked where the moisture had cut the dust on his skin. His arms were so stiff it was difficult to lift his bread to his mouth, and his hands shook. Symon sat impassive on the ground next to him. Derrick watched the scrubby tree on the other side of the road, measuring the distance with his eyes.
The fourth day on the chain gang, Derrick pulled his legs free from the restraints and ran, trailing drops of blood from his raw ankles. Two guards gave chase, while the others fired shots above his head. The remaining prisoners yelled and whooped. Derrick pumped his arms and legs, running as fast as he could. Dust scuffed up from the ground, smarting his chafed skin. His feet on the dry earth sent hard thuds through him. Behind, the guard dogs strained at their leashes. The gunshots were aimed nearer to him now. He could hear the running of the guards, and then vicious howls as the dogs were released. There was nowhere to go. The only thing he could see was the one huge twisted tree ahead of him, a dead black winding trunk split down the middle by lightning. Derrick snatched a glance over his shoulder. The guards were gaining. There was nowhere to go, so he made straight for the tree, arms out to stop himself crashing into it. The blasted trunk was smooth under his fingers. The guards were nearly on him. He began to climb.
The guards arrived below as Derrick reached a perch halfway up, in the uncomfortable seat made by the split. They looked up at him. One of them rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully, and spat on the ground.
‘Now, boy, are you gonna come down or are we gonna have to come up there after you?’
Several days after his attempted escape, and after his return from solitary confinement, a letter arrived, addressed in the elaborately careful script Willamette had learned in Sunday school.
Dear Derrick, it began. My ma lately told me that you tried to escape from the penitentiary. She said you been caught and returned to the jail, and that you been put in solitary confinement because of it. She heard you was running so you could come see me. You don’t have to come see me, I know you love me. Ain’t it best for everyone if you sit good and quiet and wait for parole? If you try and escape they’ll never give you parole, and then we’ll never be together. I know it’s hard for you. I think of what you did for me often. Here’s a picture of baby Johanna, so you can see how much she looks like her ma. Just sit quiet, and one day you’ll be home.
Derrick read the letter over and over, and then placed it reverently on the shelf next to Willamette’s photograph. He wasn’t done looking at the child’s picture, so he kept it under his pillow. Johanna did indeed look like her mother, even though she was only coming up to six years old. Her eyes were a little more open than Willamette’s, but she was smiling just like her. She was named for John D.
Derrick wrote back. I’d do anything for you.
At the beginning of July, as the heat became punishing, Derrick tried again. He slipped a guard and managed to sneak into the back of a delivery truck, but he was discovered at the gate, and put in solitary for a month this time.
The walls of his solitary cell were covered in scratch marks from years of wrong-doers. Scratches layered over scratches, so hardly any words could be made out. Derrick lay against the middle of the south wall and stared at the tiny window, seven feet up. The window cast more shadow than it let in light. Derrick felt the wall above his shoulder, his fingers searching out familiar lines. Under his fingertips, he thought he could feel the words he himself had scratched a few months before: when will she come.
When he got out of solitary, Derrick received a visitor. He recognised Willamette immediately, though now she seemed to have crossed over from girlhood into womanhood. Her breasts were rounder, her waist more slender. The pencil skirt she wore gave her hips a sway. Her hair was lighter than it had been before, and it curled attractively over one eye, in the outside fashion. When she stepped onto the threshold of the visiting room and looked around for him, she appeared like a model on a magazine cover: real, but only just. She pulled her chair out without scraping it, and sat gracefully down, folding her hands in her lap. Derrick leaned forward eagerly, reaching his hands out to her, as far as was allowed. She remained straight and still.
‘Willa, I’ve missed you.’
‘Derrick, honey.’ Her voice was feathery. ‘Why’d you have to go keep escapin’?’
‘Willa, I miss you.’
‘I miss you too, honey,’ she said sharply. ‘But you just can’t go on tryin’ to get out. You gotta stay here, sit tight here. Don’t you see? The more you try’n get out, the more they’re gonna keep you in here, and the meaner and angrier they’re gonna get, and the meaner and angrier you’re gonna get.’
‘I’d never be mean and angry with you.’
Willamette took a breath and looked away. Then, squeezing her lips together, she turned back.
‘I know you wouldn’t, honey.’ Her face brightened. ‘You wanna see another picture of Jo? She’s getting real big now.’ She reached into her shiny leather purse, and took out a small photograph. ‘First day of school,’ she said proudly. She slid the photograph along the table, and Derrick picked it up. The little girl looked slightly older than in the picture Willamette had sent – her eyes were even darker, her expression more serious. She was still plenty pretty though, like a soft black pansy. He stared at the picture for a long time, and before he knew it, the bell rang for the end of visiting hours. Willamette sat still opposite him the whole time, barely moving. She started at the bell. One of the guards on duty shouted, ‘Time’s up!’ Willamette reached for the picture, and Derrick let her pull it from his fingers.
‘Derrick, don’t forget what I said. It’s best for everyone, it really is.’
By October, two months since Willamette’s visit, the sky had returned to a stony blue overhead. Derrick sat on the bench staring at the box elder and its reddening leaves. When he wasn’t looking at the tree, his eyes were downcast. He kept his eyes fixed on the tree enough to go nearly cross-eyed.
The warden had recently instigated a new physical fitness regime of jogging around the yard. Usually when the starting whistle went, Derrick wouldn’t notice, and would have to be hauled up and into the line, but that day when the whistle shrilled, his back immediately stiffened and he jumped to his feet. He marched to where the line of men was assembling on the far side of the yard. When the second whistle sounded, Derrick began jogging, keeping a good pace, running on and on, past the point when some of the tired men had to be coerced back into the line by a guard’s stick.
At the corner of their twentieth turn, with a matter of yards to the fence, Derrick sprang out of the line. He pushed his legs as fast as they could go, his senses narrowing to almost nothing. All he could hear was his own painful breathing and the drift of muffled shouts behind him. All he could see was the patch of fence dead ahead, the box elder beyond. As he made a desperate leap for the fence, a gunshot cracked the air.
Derrick lay sprawled on the blood-wet grass, wanting to huddle his legs up against his body but unable to move. His ears were ringing. The guard stood over him, casting a cold shadow, chkking his tongue against his teeth.
‘Well, now,’ the guard said. ‘Now, now, now.’ He bobbed his stick against his thigh in a soft regular beat. ‘Now, boy, now. What y’all have to go and do that for?’
Derrick’s eyes fluttered. The guard sniffed. His face was a black circle silhouetted against the sun. Derrick couldn’t make out his expression.
‘Guessin’ you can’t get up.’ The guard turned over his shoulder and hollered, ‘Sam, come on over here and help drag this boy back in.’ He looked down at Derrick. ‘Can’t have you rottin’ out here in front of the warden’s window.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Derrick saw orange leaves fall to the ground outside the fence.[/private]
Tessa North has been writing fiction since she was very young and still can’t find anything else she’d rather do. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from UEA, and is currently working on a western novel.
[1] The title of this story is the last words of Stonewall Jackson, killed by friendly fire in Virginia, 1863: ‘Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.’
