Sugar Run: A Novel Read online

  SUGAR RUN

  A NOVEL

  MESHA MAREN

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  For M.R.O.,

  my sugar forever and always

  I was raised up from tiny

  childhood in those purple hills,

  right slam on the brink of language

  —DENIS JOHNSON

  Contents

  One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Three

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  July 2007

  In the yellow corridor they marched the women single file. Jodi, feeling the worry of the eight at her back, wondered what significance to attach to her position as first behind the sergeant. Not much at Jaxton was left to chance. Oldest, she thought, but that may not have been true; thirty-five was perhaps more of an average age. The rest of the women, all from other units, all nameless and unknown to her, did look more youthful, though. She glanced at the one behind her, reddish bangs combed high and a rose-print blouse tucked into blue jeans. Younger or cleaner or something.

  “Stop,” the sergeant said, spreading out his arms as if the women might all run on past and taste freedom too soon. Beyond him, at the end of the hall, was a bolted door with a single fogged window in the center.

  Perhaps, Jodi thought, release was like diving, or rising rather. You could die from that, she’d heard, coming up from the ocean floor altogether too fast. Something got in your blood.

  “Six months,” a voice mumbled.

  “Quiet” Sergeant called, nodding at the curly-haired guard stationed beside the bolted door.

  An arc of warm light cut across the misted window and Jodi leaned toward it; the eight behind her were silent now.

  The sergeant looked to the camera in the ceiling, gave a thumbs-up, and the door popped, then swung open to the crash of rain on concrete and the idling engine of a white van. The curly-haired guard lifted a black umbrella and he and the sergeant ran, splashing to the driver’s side, leaving Jodi with nothing but the open doorway.

  That ground out there—that pen of fenced wet cement—had to have been the same place where she’d arrived at seventeen, shaking, spitting, fucked-up scared. All she could remember of her arrival, though, was walking those endless yellow halls and, before that, the hot chaos of a hotel room in Atlanta—the air heavy with iron-thick blood—the paramedics wheeling Paula’s body away, and Jodi stumbling, arms pinned back in silver cuffs, puking all across the parking lot.

  The sergeant stepped away from the van. He signaled to Jodi and she felt the distance reel out between them. He looked so small, nothing but a white hand beckoning. Jodi took one step and stopped. She could feel the treacherous edges stretched across that open door. Eighteen years. She’d tried to stop counting but could not. More of her life had been lived inside than out.

  “Go on,” the redhead behind her said.

  Rain streamed down through the double bands of the van’s headlights, hitting the parking lot and mixing into the hiss and fog. And above the razor wire, barely visible, the soft swells of green mountains rose. Jodi stiffened. Noises bounced around the doorframe: pulses of words at her back, great waves of sound and under it, a laughter beginning. A rasping laughter—not quite her father’s but not her own.

  “Go.”

  A hand slapped her shoulder and Jodi broke free. She ran, soaked wet in two seconds flat. She ran and all she saw were those mountains. Eighteen years at Jaxton and she never knew she was living in the mountains. From the exercise yard she had seen only what was straight above, a sometimes gray, sometimes blue rectangular lid of sky. Mountains were a dream that had ended when the judge said life in prison. Mountains were far off, West Virginia, home.

  In the van, she bent low and headed for the far-back seat. Her wet clothes steamed and her black braid dripped down her neck, forming a tributary that ran over the edge of the vinyl seat. The other women squeezed in, their voices climbing one on top of the other, as if freedom had expanded their lung capacity.

  The van lurched, motor rising steadily as the wheels began to turn. Jodi held her plastic sack tightly in one hand, the other gripping the edge of her seat. She closed her eyes and felt the dizzy, sick-sway motion of the wheels, the heat of close bodies and their faint oniony smell of fresh sweat. Eighteen years since she’d moved this way, moved in any way other than on her own clumsy feet. She leaned her forehead against the window and an arm reached around her, red fingernails grasping the latch, and then the glass tilted open.

  She breathed in the cool wind, then turned to face a woman with strawberry lipstick and a tight blue blouse.

  Jodi too had changed out of her own numbered jumpsuit but the clothes she wore held the same stink of institutional anonymity and came from the exact same place as that clown suit she’d worn for eighteen years. An XL gray sweatshirt and a pair of stiff unisex jeans held precariously around her hips with a red plastic belt. Her mother—that distant voice that reached out across the telephone wires once a year, curdled with rage and pity and touched over with a strained Christian sympathy—had promised to send clothes. What all do you need? Jodi’s mind had flooded with a wash of white noise and she’d been unable to pinpoint her pant size, much less a preferred style. The package didn’t arrive anyhow. Never sent, most likely, or perhaps not mailed in time. The decision for her release had come so abruptly, there’d been no real time to prepare.

  “Hot in here,” the strawberry-lipped lady said, fanning her fingers in front of her face.

  Jodi mopped the windowpane with her shirtsleeve, and golden spots of light bloomed in the wet air. At the front gates the van paused, the voices inside hushing. A rustle of rearranging feet. A muffled voice called out go ahead from the guard booth. And then they were moving. Jodi craned her neck to see the arch of the stone gate, stained black by rain, and the carved words, barely visible: whoso loveth discipline loveth knowledge.

  Proverbs 12:1, she thought, surprised at her ability to recognize it. She had not studied the Bible at Jaxton, as some women had, but as a child her grandmother Effie had taken her to the Nazarene church most Sundays and she had coveted the sprawling, intangible poetry of Proverbs and Revelation. Whosoever brings ruin on their family shall inherit only wind.

  The van coursed down through low hills of hickory and chinquapin, past sleepy trailers and whiteboard shacks, bald yards bright with discarded ornaments—a yellow tricycle, blue ball, tattered flag, and a Chevy Nova settling in to rust. Out of the rain-haze a cherry-colored car shot free and, behind it, a log truck piled with slabs of orange-hearted wood.

  At a crossroads they turned left and the houses grew scarce, nothing out either side but a mountain creek, rain gorged and mud red, and groves of pitch pine, their gray trunks slick as silver against the dark ravines beyond.

  “You going to Drina or Simpsonville?�
�

  Jodi looked to the strawberry-lipped lady and shook her head.

  “No, I’m done.”

  “They ain’t putting you in a halfway house?”

  “Lawyer said I did my time.” Jodi rubbed the slippery handle of her plastic sack between her thumb and forefinger. “Eighteen years.”

  Eighteen years—those words had become an incantation that answered all questions, a measuring stick to hold up against any new or old experience. She herself had wondered at the lack of supervision but the lawyer had smiled and lifted his hands like the whole thing were some kind of a magic trick. Supervised release, he’d said, all excited, Hawaiian-print tie fluttering as he paced the room. He’d been disappointed, it seemed, in Jodi’s lack of emotion and tried to make up for it by bellowing on about how the organization that he worked for, something about justice for juveniles tried as adults, had come across her case and realized she could qualify for supervised early release. It seemed so unreal; Jodi didn’t truly believe it until they marched her down that exit hall. She had filed an appeal, citing her single incidence of violence and the fact that she was only seventeen when she went to prison, but that paperwork had been sent off years back and she’d stopped hoping a long time ago. Life in prison, she kept thinking, minimum sentencing in the state of Georgia. But the lawyer had a million words regarding her case: good-behavior time, nearly two decades of her sentence served, no previous record, and enough of the taxpayers’ money spent.

  Bus ticket’s about all you’ll receive, he said. That and an order to report to your home district parole officer. And on the phone her mother had choked. Free? And then after a too-long pause, a jumble of syrupy Oh . . . wow . . . well, honey, that’s great. Are you coming home? Yes, Jodi had told her, soon, she just had to go down to southern Georgia to help a friend first. Friend? her mother said, her voice reaching too high. Free—home—friend, like those words belonged to some other language and had no place in conversation with Jodi. She’d wired the money, though, a loan of four hundred dollars borrowed from Jodi’s two younger brothers and her father’s disability check.

  At the Greyhound station in Dahlonega the van driver shooed Jodi and the redhead out into the parking lot. The rain had slowed to a thin, sifting mist.

  Jodi tilted her head back and pivoted left, then right, trying to find east, but the yellow-gray dawn seemed to come from every direction. The redhead started toward the station where a flannel-shirted man hunched under the tin overhang, smoking a cigar. Jodi followed. She couldn’t think past this moment or else her mind washed all white again but the redhead seemed to have her feet set resolutely on a path pointed forward.

  The station was warm, filled with the calls of departure times and TV chatter. Shelves of colored bottles lined the wall of the newsstand: the ribboned neck of Grand Marnier, stout-brown Jack, filigreed Wild Irish Rose, and below them, a spinning rack of sunglasses where, in the mirror, Jodi saw her own cavernous cheeks and pit-dark eyes. Got the worst of both sides, her grandmother Effie had loved to say. British teeth and Injun eyes.

  “Can I get you something?” the newsstand man asked.

  “Marlboros,” Jodi said. Cigarettes, at least, were something solid and not new. When her eyes went back to the bottle of Jack, the cashier set it down on the counter beside the cigarettes.

  Out front the wind smelled green. Jodi lit a cigarette, nodded at the flannel-shirted man, and stared through the window to where the redhead stood at the ticket counter.

  “Cold for July,” the flannel man said.

  Jodi glanced back at him. He was small with age, bent deep in every joint.

  “Where you headed?” he asked, his breath smelling of cherry Swisher Sweets.

  “South,” Jodi said. “Chaunceloraine, Georgia.”

  The man shook his head. “We weren’t meant to live in the low places. He tries to show us. Hurriken, flood, malarial fever.” The man pursed his lips and turned the corners down. “The Lord resides in the mountains,” he said, exhaling a funnel of pale smoke.

  The Greyhound wound out of Dahlonega and down toward the piedmont, until the hills and ridges were nothing but bruise-blue humps beyond the yellow fields. Jodi had settled herself into the farthest-back seat. The bus was more than half-empty, just a mustached man with a pencil stuck behind his ear, a woman in striped pajama pants, a mother with four kids and a few other sleeping passengers. At Jaxton private space had come only by the inch, if at all. Silence came only in the middle of the night, and even that was often punctured by whispers or screams.

  Jodi set her bag on the seat beside her and leaned back but even there, in the quiet of the Greyhound, the voices trailed after her, the roiling noise of the cafeteria. Last supper? Tressa had shouted the night before, tucking her hair behind one ear as she leaned across the table. Jodi had looked away and pressed the back of her spoon into her instant potatoes, flattening them out so that the watery gravy spilled into the creamed corn.

  They weren’t supposed to know one another’s release dates but everybody always found out. And once you knew, you could see it, that palpable energy ringing out from a girl in her last week. Some of the women couldn’t bear it and they’d steal a girl’s date, slip something into her pocket or pay a cellmate to plant it, and next thing you knew she was being kept for another six to nine. The ones who played at husband and wife, they were all the time stealing one another’s dates.

  “Where you headed to tomorrowx?” Tressa had asked, and Jodi had glanced up at her. Neither of them said the word aloud but it had floated around them, that slippery s of release.

  “I’ve got a little something I’ve got to move out of here.” Tressa leaned in, lover close, lips on Jodi’s ear. Jodi had fucked her only once, and that two years before, but they both knew Jodi had wanted more.

  “You’ll help me right?” Tressa said, and Jodi had smiled, shaking her head.

  “No,” she said, and it had really hit her then, she was leaving. In twelve more hours it wouldn’t matter what shit favor Tressa needed or what retaliation she’d dream up later. Another world existed out there, another world that had kept on jumping and skipping and spinning for the past eighteen years.

  The rain quit but the trees still glistened through the bus window and the clouds sat low enough to hold on to. Just past Dawsonville the bus skirted a lake, the water dark and high to the brim, and from there they raced on toward the shadowed spikes of a city.

  The highway ducked straight into the downtown and Jodi watched the buildings emerge, rocket ships of glass and chrome stretching so tall she couldn’t see the tops. Streams of people rolled across the sidewalks, clutching newspapers, cardboard cups of coffee, and cell phones. Jodi had seen the new phones on TV over the years but out here they looked even more odd: oversize metallic insects gripped tight in every hand.

  “Atlanta,” the driver hollered. “Fifteen minutes.”

  Jodi stayed in her seat, knowing for certain if she got off she’d somehow manage to get left behind. She craved a cigarette but opened the bottle of Jack instead and let the scent burn up all her thoughts.

  Three sips in, the door to the bathroom opened, letting loose the smell of cigarettes and a chemical reek. She could have sworn the bus had emptied out but there, right in front of her, was the mustached man. He smiled a false-sweet smile and ducked his head down under the luggage rack.

  “Hey, honey.”

  Jodi pulled the paper bag up around her bottle.

  “Hey, now, hey.” The man hunkered beside her. “Hey, I ain’t like that. I ain’t gonna tell nobody.”

  Jodi shrugged and held out the bottle to him. Men like this were always popping up right in that moment of pleasant silence. Always jumping at you, like the groundhogs Effie taught her to shoot back down into their holes.

  “You’re going to Jacksonville?”

  Jodi swallowed her sip of whiskey slowly. “Chaunceloraine.”

  Every time she said the name it sounded stranger and she’d have figure
d she made the place up if the ticket man hadn’t nodded and printed it on her slip. The word itself was like something she’d bitten off, too big and complicated to chew. And her plan was nothing but a thin line connected by fuzzy memory dots, an invented constellation that only she could see. Paula’s parents’ address was gone, stoved up somewhere in her brain with the other memories she’d worked so hard to pack away. All that remained was the name of the town and Paula’s little brother, Ricky Dulett.

  Past Atlanta the rain-choked rivers gave way to flooded fields. Raw clay banks, limp tobacco plants, and peach trees. The water was a skin pulled tight between long rows, dimpled now and then by a gust of wind. Through the tangled branches the orange fruit glimmered, and around the edges of the groves, men huddled under tarps and stared at the gray belly of clouds.

  They stopped in Montrose and Soperton, Cobbtown and Canoochee, and each time the bus rolled onto an exit ramp Jodi’s gut pinched and she turned toward the window, searching for road signs, relieved only when she saw it was not her stop. She did not want the ride to end. Once the bus stopped there would be the street and all the new decisions that would come with it. She got the bottle back from the mustached man, took a long swallow, and quite suddenly those eyes—Ricky’s blue, blue eyes—hovered in the near distant space.

  She knew he must have grown into a man’s body by now; still, the only thing she could picture was little Ricky in that wooden chair—hands and legs tied behind him with violet-colored rags. Been acting the devil again, Paula’s father, Dylan, hollers from the porch, his eyes blue too but sunk deeply into his liver-spotted face. I had to tie him up. You ain’t here, Paula, you don’t see how he blows. Paula cuts Ricky loose and peels his dirt-stained jeans away from the wounds. The lash marks swell red all up and down his legs and while Paula inspects him Ricky sings her a song—They told us the illusion, the illusion was life. Paula smiles. I’ve got my very own personal jukebox, she says, and Ricky blushes and ducks his head.