Chapter Twenty-Three
The south did indeed like Aaron Lake, with his love of guns and bombs and tough talk and military readiness. He flooded Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas with ads that were even bolder than his first ones. And Teddy's people flooded the same states with more cash than had ever changed hands the night before an election.
The result was another rout, with Lake getting 260 of the 312 delegates at stake on little Super Tuesday. After the votes were counted on March 14, 1,301 of the 2,066 total delegates had been decided. Lake held a commanding lead over Governor Tarry-801 to 390.
The race was over, barring an unforeseen catastrophe.
Buster's first job at Trumble was running a Weed Eater, for which he earned a starting wage of twenty cents an hour. It was either that or mopping floors in the cafeteria. He chose the weed eating because he liked the sun and vowed that his skin would not turn as pale as some of the bleached-out inmates he'd seen. Nor would he get fat like some of them. This is prison, he kept telling himself, how can they be so fat?
He worked hard in the bright sun, kept his tan, vowed to keep his flat stomach, and tried gamely to go through the motions. But after ten days Buster knew he would not last for forty-eight years.
Forty-eight years! He couldn't begin to comprehend such time.Who could?
He'd cried for the first forty-eight hours.
Thirteen months earlier he and his father were running their dock, working on boats, fishing twice a week in the Gulf.
He worked slowly around the concrete edge of the basketball court where a rowdy game was in progress. Then to the big sandbox where they sometimes played volleyball. In the distance, a solitary figure was walking around the track, an old looking man with his long gray hair in a ponytail and with no shirt. He looked vaguely familiar. Buster worked both edges of a sidewalk, making his way to the track.
The lone walker was FinnYarber, one of the judges who was trying to help him. He moved around the oval at a steady pace, head level, back and shoulders stiff and erect, not a picture of athleticism but not bad for a sixty-year-old man. He was barefoot and barebacked, sweat rolling off his leathery skin.
Buster turned off the Weed Eater and placed it on the ground. When Yarber drew near, he saw the kid and said, "Hello, Buster. How's it goin?"
"I'm still here," the kid said. "Mind if I walk with you?"
"Not at all;" Finn said without breaking stride.
They did an eighth of a mile before Buster could find the courage to say, "So how about my appeals?"
"Judge Beech is lookin at it. The sentencing appears to be in order, which is not good news. A lot of guys get here with flaws in their sentencing, and we can usually file a couple of motions and knock off a few years. Not so with you. I'm sorry."
"That's okay. What's a few when you have fortyeight? Twenty-eight, thirty-eight, forty-eight, what does it matter?"
"You still have your appeals. There's a chance the decision can be overturned."
"A slim chance."
"You can't give up hope, Buster,"Yarber said, without the slightest trace of conviction. Keeping some measure of hope meant keeping some faith in the system.Yarber certainly had none. He'd been framed and railroaded by the same law he'd once defended.
But at leastYarber had enemies, and he could almost understand why they came after him.
This poor boy had done nothing wrong.Yarber had read enough of his file to believe Buster was completely innocent, another victim of an overzealous prosecutor.
It appeared, at least from the record, that the kid's father may have been hiding some cash, but nothing serious. Nothing to warrant a 160-page conspiracy indictment.
Hope. He felt like a hypocrite for even thinking the word. The appeals courts were now packed with rightwing law and order types, and it was a rare drug case that got reversed. They'd slam-dunk the kid's appeal with a rubber stamp, and tell themselves they were making the streets safer.
The biggest coward had been the trial judge. Prosecutors are expected to indict the world, but the judges are supposed to weed out the fringe defendants. Buster and his father should've been separated from the Colombians and their cohorts, and sent home before the trial began.
Now one was dead. The other was ruined. And nobody in the federal criminal system gave a damn. It was just another drug conspiracy.
At the first curve of the oval, Yarber slowed, then stopped. He looked off in the distance, beyond a grassy field to the edge of a treeline. Buster looked too. For ten days he'd been looking at the perimeter of Trumble, and seeing what wasn't there-fences, razor wire, guard towers.
"Last guy who left here;" Yarber said, gazing at nothing, "left through those trees. They're thick for a few miles, then you come to a country road."
" Who was he?"
"A guy named Tommy Adkins. He was a banker in North Carolina, got caught with his hand in the cookie jar."
"What happened to him?"
"He went crazy and walked away one day. He was gone six hours before anybody knew it. A month later they found him in a motel room in Cocoa Beach, not the cops but the maids. He was curled in the fetal position on the floor, naked, suckin his thumb, his mind completely gone. They put him in some mental joint."
"Six hours, huh?"
"Yeah, it happens about once a year. Somebody just walks away. They notify the cops in your hometown, put your name in the national computers, the usual drill."
"How many get caught?"
"Almost all."
"Almost"
"Yeah, but they get caught because they do dumb things. Get drunk in bars. Drive cars with no taillights. Go see their girlfriends."
"So if you had a brain you could pull it off?"
"Sure. Careful planning, a little cash, it would be easy"
They began walking again, a bit slower. "Tell me something, Mr.Yarber," Buster said. "If you were facing forty-eight years, would you take a walk?"
"Yes."
"But I don't have a dime."
"I do."
"Then you'll help me."
"We'll see. Give it some time. Settle in here. They're watchin you a bit closer because you're new, but with time they'll forget about you."
Buster actually smiled. His sentence had just been reduced dramatically.
"You know what happens if you get caught?" Yarber said.
"Yeah, they add some more years. Big deal. Maybe I'll get fifty-eight. No sir, if I get caught, I blow my brains out."
"That's what I'd do. You have to be prepared to leave the country."
"And go where?"
"Go someplace where you look like the locals, and where they don't extradite to the US."
"Anyplace in particular?"
"Argentina or Chile.You speak any Spanish?"
"No."
"Start learnin. We have Spanish lessons here, you know. Some of the Miami boys teach them."
They walked a lap in silence as Buster reconsidered his future. His feet were lighter, his shoulders straighter, and he couldn't keep a grin off his face.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked.
"Because you're twenty-three years old. Too young and too innocent.You've been screwed by the system, Buster. You have the right to fight back any way you can. Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Sort of."
"Forget about her. She'll only get you in trouble. Besides, you think she'll wait forty-eight years?"
"She said she would."
"She's lyin. She's already playin the field. Forget about her, unless you want to get caught."
Yeah, he's probably right, thought Buster. He'd yet to get a letter from her, and though she lived only four hours away she hadn't made it to Trumble. They'd talked twice on the phone, and all she seemed to care about was whether he'd been attacked.
"Any kids?" askedYarber.
"No. Not that I know of."
"What about your mother?"
"She died when I was very young. My dad raised me. It was just the two of us."
"Then you're the perfect guy to walk away"
"I'd like to leave now"
"Be patient. Let's plan it carefully"
Another lap, and Buster wanted to sprint. He couldn't think of a damned thing he'd miss in Pensacola. He'd made A's and B's in Spanish in high school, and while he couldn't remember any of it, he hadn't struggled with the material. He'd pick it up fast. He'd take the courses and hang out with the Latins.
The more he walked the more he wanted his conviction to be affirmed. And the quicker the better. If it got reversed, he'd be forced to have another trial, and he had no confidence in the next jury.
Buster wanted to run, starting over there in the grassy field, to the treeline, through the woods to the country road where he wasn't sure what to do next. But if an insane banker could walk away and make it to Cocoa Beach, so could he.
"Why haven't you walked away?" he askedYarber.
"I've thought about it. But in five years they'll let me go. I can last that long. I'll be sixty-five, in good health, with a life expectancy of sixteen years. That's what I'm livin for, Buster, the last sixteen years. I don't wanna be lookin over my shoulder."
"Where will you go?"
"Don't know yet. Maybe a little village in the Italian countryside. Maybe the mountains of Peru. I've got the whole world to choose from, and I spend hours every day just dreamin about it."
"So you have plenty of money?"
"No, but I'm gettin there."
That raised a number of questions, but Buster let them pass. He was learning that in prison you kept most of your questions to yourself.
When Buster was tired of walking, he stopped near his Weed Eater. "Thanks, Mr.Yarber;" he said.
"No problem. Just keep it between the two of us."
"Sure. I'm ready whenever you are."
Finn was off, pacing another lap, his shorts now soaked with sweat, his gray ponytail dripping with moisture. Buster watched him go, then for a second looked across the grassy field, into the trees.
At that moment, he could see all the way to South America.
***