Black River (30 page)

They walked the rest of the way in silence. The hearing room was at the end of a long corridor of administrative offices. “You'll be the only one making a statement,” Lowell said.

“Williams ain't got anyone speaking for him?”

“Williams ain't had one single visitor,” Lowell told him. “Not ever.” He unlocked the door, pushed it open. “You want me to stay?”

Wes shook his head.

“I'll meet you after, then. Good luck.”

Wes was alone in the room. It smelled like new carpet, an unpleasant, industrial chemical odor. There was a long table at the front of the room, the kind found in schools, folding legs and a Formica top. A computer set up on one end. Four chairs pushed neatly beneath the table, a single chair a few yards away, facing the others. Another door behind it. And here, where Wes stood, twelve chairs perpendicular to the rest, two rows of six. Wes stood in the narrow center aisle for a moment. Made sense to sit on the same side of the room as the parole board, but in the end he took a seat in the front row nearest the single chair. Even that closest seat would put more space between him and Williams than there'd been during the whole of the riot.

Wasn't too late to leave. Might lose a little face, yeah, but folks would only talk behind his back, and even then they'd probably claim to understand. Maybe he shouldn't be so damn stubborn; maybe he ought to listen to the folks telling him this was a bad idea. But he sat. He waited.

Wes knew better than to expect the hearing to start on time, and he wasn't disappointed. There was a clock on the opposite wall, ensconced behind a metal cage; the red second hand moved in a single fluid motion, no ticking. Ten minutes past the scheduled start, the door he'd come through opened again and two men and a woman entered. They'd been speaking, but fell silent when they saw Wes. He watched them settle themselves behind the long table. He knew their names. He'd gone online at Dennis's house and looked up all seven parole board members. Wasn't hard to find out almost everything about them, photos included. He wondered if that ever worried them. The man nearest him, the balding one, was named Simon Frank and was a lawyer from Helena. The woman, who wore glasses on a beaded chain, was named Diane Copeland and was a businesswoman, also from Helena. The second man, who knelt in front of the table and fussed with the computer screen, was named Ernest Pike and was a retired police chief from Great Falls. There would be two other board members participating in the hearing via the Internet.

The computer gave the police chief some trouble, but soon he had it running, and Wes heard tinny voices through the speakers, saw blurred images on the screen. Another lawyer, a retired game warden. Twenty-three minutes past the scheduled start. He needed to piss again. The board members had thick binders in front of them. The woman leafed absently through hers; the two men sat and looked at the wall. Thirty minutes past, and the retired cop looked up and asked, “Wesley J. Carver?” and Wes said, “Yeah.”

Thirty-eight minutes past the scheduled start, the door behind the single chair opened and Bobby Williams walked in. The two COs that followed him were strangers to Wes—he was grateful for it—and Williams waited with one officer's hand on his elbow while the other closed the door behind them. At the officer's prompting, he shuffled toward the single chair, each step slow and careful because he wore leg irons. His cuffed hands were fixed to the wide belt around his waist, and he held them in loose fists. One of the COs put his hand on Williams's shoulder and Williams sat, the chain between his legs sliding with a metallic jingle against the edge of the chair.

He looked first at the parole board, a scanning glance that didn't settle on any one face, and only then did he look at Wes. It wasn't a straight stare—more a sidelong look—but it lingered. Wes held Williams's gaze, steady, steady, steady, but even this felt like a risk, a real chance he'd bring his false confidence on too strong, reveal his fear in striving too stridently to hide it. The man Wes saw looked almost nothing like the one who haunted his memory. Williams wore the beige scrubs that served as the inmate uniform now, and they matched almost exactly the sallow shade of his skin. His hair was a bland brown shot through with gray; he wore it slightly longer than he had years ago. He seemed sturdier than Wes remembered, taller and wider both, and his face had become fleshier, though the new weight hung oddly over his bones. His eyes were the palest blue, and this troubled Wes. He had been so certain they were dark.

“Parole hearing for inmate Robert F. Williams commences at . . . eleven-ten a.m.,” the lawyer announced. Williams turned his attention to the board, and Wes felt himself exhale for the first time since the man had come into the room. Despite his years as a CO, he didn't know that much about parole hearings, but he wasn't surprised by the tedium. A recitation of Williams's crimes. The first litany, the one Wes had nothing to do with, the old farmer and his doomed wife. And then the second, his own.
Participation in a riot. Possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner in a facility. Aggravated assault. Assault against a peace officer. Unlawful restraint. Aggravated kidnapping.
Wes listened to the convictions. Marveled that the state would even consider letting a man who'd done these things—and done most of them not once, but twice—back into the world. He thought, too, of the things Williams hadn't been charged with, because no such charges existed.
Harboring vile thoughts toward my wife. Finding amusement in my suffering. Mocking my terror. Destroying my talent.
Williams listened mutely, offering no indication that he felt any involvement in the proceedings. Looked like he was listening to the goddamned weather report.

The board members mentioned the many statements and letters they apparently held tucked away in those binders, the testimonials and assurances that Williams was a changed man, had turned over a new leaf, et cetera.

“You converted to Christianity in 2001?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You participate in the prison ministry?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“If released, do you intend to continue to participate in church activities?”

“Yes, sir, I surely do.”

“It says here you've had no citations for misconduct since your conversion.”

“That's right, sir.”

It went on this way. An unchallenging catechism to which Williams offered nothing more than the barest answers. Wes tried to read truth or falsehood in Williams's voice, but there was nothing there for him to hold to one way or another. He realized he'd never heard Williams speak in a normal tone; during the riot it had always been that insidious whisper, occasionally a half-crazed bark or yell.

Finally the businesswoman turned a couple of pages in her binder and said, “These are horrific crimes.” Wes didn't take his eyes off Williams, but in his peripheral vision he saw the woman glance at him over her glasses. “How do you explain them?”

Yes,
Wes thought, barely keeping the words behind his teeth,
how do you fucking explain what you did to me?
Williams dropped his head to stare at his shackled hands; after a long moment he raised his eyes to the board members. “I can't explain them,” he said, in that same unfamiliar straightforward tone. “The things I did were inexcusable.”
The things.
Didn't so much as glance at Wes. Didn't even acknowledge he was in the room. “I wish I could undo them. Every day I wish it. But I can't. All I can do is choose to be someone different. Someone who would never do those things.” The board waited, silent, but Williams offered nothing more.

The woman took another stab. “And you say you have, in fact, become someone different.”

“Yes, ma'am. Through the merciful grace of the Lord and with His help.”

Wes couldn't make heads or tails of what Williams was saying. It was the same bland bullshit any inmate might spout. Nothing there to say he'd really changed. (Nothing to say he hadn't.) The board members weren't asking the right questions. Nothing that might prompt an illuminating answer, nothing that might let Wes know whether this professed faith was real or a hoax. God, he wished he could say for certain, even if that meant knowing Williams was still an evil, lying bastard, or even if it meant knowing that his only real enemy had found the grace he himself had never been granted. All Wes wanted was to
know.

The former police chief ended it. “Is there anything else you'd like to say?”

Here, maybe. Here Williams might reveal more than he intended, might go off-script. Williams looked down again. He clasped his hands together, and the links of the short chain between the cuffs sounded against themselves, a brief series of fine notes. And then he looked at Wes again, sidelong, still not straight on. He looked at him for a long moment, and seemed ready to speak—Wes could almost see Williams tasting the words on his tongue—but then he straightened and turned back to the board. “No, sir.”

Wes's turn. The board acknowledged him, and he stood, though he wasn't required to. Had to get out of that chair. Too much to sit in a chair inside a room inside a prison with Bobby Williams not ten feet away. He opened and closed his fists several times—he'd been clenching them tightly these last minutes, and every poorly healed joint was making itself known. He wished he could pace. Had to find the words, the right words, the exact words that would make these people understand. Williams had held his own words to a minimum, mitigated the horror of what he'd done with silence and omissions. Wes had to bring that horror out of the past and into this room. And he had no idea how to do that.

“I got so much running through my head right now I don't hardly know where to start,” he said, looking at the board members. He forced himself to meet each of their eyes, though he'd rather have let his gaze linger in the space between or above their heads. “I know you've all read reports about the riot. You have a pretty good idea of what happened in that control room, in a nuts-and-bolts kind of way. Ain't no need for me to go into all that. What I don't imagine those reports can tell you is how it feels to be that much at the mercy of someone who don't got a lot of mercy to offer.” The words were coming hard. It was like they weren't quite familiar, like he'd learned them either too recently or too long ago. “Robert Williams and I didn't have no conflict before that riot. I hadn't hardly laid eyes on him before that day. Wasn't on my tier. I hadn't ever written him up, or canceled his yard time, or done anything else that might've begun to validate what he did, not even in his own head. I didn't even know his name till he carved it into my flesh.” He was careful not to look at Williams. Let his vision go a little soft until that figure in the single chair blurred.

“I don't know if you know this,” Wes said, then stopped. He looked at Williams—the other man met his eyes—and dropped his voice, real soft. “I don't even know if
you
know this.” Wes forced himself to turn his attention back to the board. “I was a fiddler. I was good, real good. Better than you're probably thinking,” he said, “and I don't say that out of arrogance; I say it so maybe you can better appreciate the fact that I ain't played my fiddle one single time since that riot. Can't. My hands don't work good enough anymore.” He held them up, palms out. Beyond the crooked lines of his fingers, he saw the lawyer work his jaw, saw the businesswoman pass one of her own hands over the other.

“My wife,” Wes said, and he hated to mention her here, to let even the barest idea of her enter Williams's mind, “passed on recently. She was real sick at the end. Not entirely herself.” The grief turned sharp, suddenly, and he stopped, let a silence unfurl while he collected himself. “The day she died, she wanted me to play my fiddle for her. Last thing she ever asked of me. She'd forgotten, see, what'd happened. Thought we were still living in Black River, that we were younger, I guess. Or somehow her mind just erased the riot.” Wes heard his own voice turning husky, and the more he tried to drive the rasp out of it, the more pronounced it became. His throat was tight, and he felt a flush forcing its way up his neck. He was angry—of all the moments for his voice to betray him!—but even as he cursed himself, even as he fought it, a smaller thought insistently pressed its way into his head. Hadn't he made the decision to lay it all bare? Didn't he believe it would take no less to keep Williams inside these walls?

“I can't stop thinking about the fact that I couldn't play for her. That my wife died waiting for me to play my music for her, and I didn't.” He was shaking now, not hard, a tremor so slight he doubted anyone else could see it. Might even have been contained entirely within his body, starting right at the center with his grieving, trembling heart, carrying forth from his chest and mixing with rage and fear and hate and love and a lot of other things Wes neither could nor desired to name. “I suppose I ought to be grateful we had the last twenty years together, that Robert Williams stopped short of killing me and held himself to”—Wes steeled himself, said it—“to torture. But I couldn't save my wife. I couldn't make her treatments work, couldn't slow the disease, couldn't even do much to ease her pain.” His voice was all but broken now, each word sparse and stripped. “And she knew that. She didn't ask me to do none of those things. But the one thing I could've done for her, the one thing she did ask—Robert Williams took that away from us in that control room. Now he says he's chosen to become someone different. Someone new. I have a hard time believing it's as simple as that, just a choice. But whatever you make of that, what he did to me has consequences. I know it seems like a long way in the past, but twenty years on, it still has consequences. It ain't over. Ain't over,” Wes repeated, and then he was out of words. He looked at each member of the board once more and sat down.