Who doesn't love a family reunion? Smoking a cigarette outside the church. Montana summer sun shining down. Some meth heads. Good times.
Nathan Wilkerson proves you can escape the walls of a prison a lot easier than you can escape...being you.
Nathan Wilkerson proves you can escape the walls of a prison a lot easier than you can escape...being you.
A Dance with Death by Nathan Wilkerson
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Uncle Alex ripped off his shirt to show me the skull on the
back of his right shoulder. I found the tattoo with a naked lady in the human
eye socket strangely fascinating and scooted in for a closer look.
“I got that in the Montana State Penitentiary for a bag of
Skittles and two bars of soap.” He flexed his muscles and the naked lady
danced.
“Alex, he’s six,” Mom said. She had never liked him.
He slipped his shirt back over his wiry black hair and tugged
my ear.
“See ya’ soon kid,” he said. Three weeks later, Uncle Alex
was back in prison.
When Dad got the call that his brother had broken out, he
made the extra bed downstairs. Dinners were tense for several days, with an
empty fourth plate set. But Alex never came, and after a month the spare
bedroom was packed away for the next visitor. Eight years later, the State of
Montana declared Alex dead.
It took Grandma another four more years to accept this fact.
Then, during my freshmen year, something clicked and she was finally ready to
allow a funeral. I hadn’t seen the man in twelve years, but I Greyhounded up to
Kalispell to pay respects anyway.
The church doors spilled the twenty-some odd people from the
service onto Main Street and into the heat. Montana summers are a brilliant
thing to soak in along with tobacco, and I was not ready to stop when the
broken woman tugged my shirt.
“Can I have a cigarette?” Her teeth were as jagged as the
Mission Mountains on the horizon, but in the spirit of family tragedy I obliged.
She lit it and finished it with a few powerful drags.
“Can I have another one?”
“Seriously?”
“It’s for my boyfriend.”
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes became desperate. “Please? I’ll show you.”
I followed the twig of a woman around the back of the church
where we found a tattered man in tattered clothing sprawled on the ground. If
his arms had been in motion, he might have been making snow angels.
“See,” she said.
“Fine,” I said. I felt like she had beat me somehow, but
didn’t know why. Meth addicts don’t usually beat you, so I pulled out two
smokes and gave them to her.
She knelt down to her hollow frame of a boyfriend and yanked
at his clothes. The man mumbled some gibberish and sagged on his feet. Thin, scraggly
black hair dangled in front of his face, and I almost hated him for his wretchedness.
They lit their cigarettes in silence.
When Grandma came around the corner looking for me, I
thought I was going to catch hell for smoking, but she was more concerned with
the couple.
“Not today. No one’s going to ruin today. Not for this
family.” Grandma, grey haired and sturdy, began to push the two of them down to
Main Street.
“Come back another time, but today you go.”
“We can crash at
Joey’s tonight.” The man’s voice was hollow and echoed when it shouldn’t have.
I lit another cigarette and watched the two of them walk up
Main Street to wherever Joey’s house was. If they made it south by November
they might be all right, but winter here would kill them. The holes in their
clothes made even my self-esteem
cringe. The man though… That shirt hole on his right shoulder blade. I’m sure I
saw it.
Death, with a naked lady dancing in his eyes.
