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Catch's Release
Last update 5/18/05
by Lorenzo Wang
In 1955, Catch Durall was the first 20 year-old to be thrown in the freshly renovated Westin County jail. And proud of it. In 1958, he was taken back, and less so, but every bit as headstrong, with felonious dignity. From 1959 to 1999, the judge declared life sentence for narcotics trafficking. At a convalescence home.
The approval ink was still wet with red when Catch stepped out of the parole office, escorted by guards he knew by name, and past the suddenly tremendously near gate, the valve through which men passed in the barter of life. He stepped slowly, uncertain what freedoms in body language he had in this limbo between the cells and the outside.
“Well boys, Lance, Bret, Greg, Johnny, you guys take care, I guess. I guess I’m off. You take care of the gang, eh?” Catch managed a smile.
They nodded in turn, one by one, and tall, solemn Bret pulled back the rusty gate bar. It squeaked, reluctant to be moved.
“I’m going, well, think ah that, eh?”
They stood behind him as he stepped out. The view he thought he’d never forget, the fields he saw on that day on the way in, was alien. It was a grayer day, he thought, and the grass was green then. Instead, Catch stood at the edge of the dry, salted road and waited for his bus to crawl out of the dusty horizon, the world around him cataracted with the yellow of tardy autumn.
In 1959, the rain clouds of spring had cast down all the hope decried by the lush grasses. And as the convict transport rumbled up to the prison fortress, Catch remembered grabbing the wire screen at his seat window with all his strength. At the time, he convinced himself it was just to flex his arm, biceps engorged, and let his tattoos speak of bravado and danger. Today, he knew it was because he already feared the wire screen was to be the thinnest wall between him and the free life. For ever.
But apparently, ever came. As far as it seemed, a vanishing point no more, he had reached this end of the rainbow, and it turned out to be a very real thing. When he came to prison as the feisty 20 year-old, excited by his own felonies, ever was only three years. When he was hooking the elderly on cocktails of hard drugs, ever was so distant it was barely in the back of his mind. And when Catch spent that first sleepless night in the Warkoff State Prison, contemplating what a life sentence was, ever began its perilous descent into never, and soon disappeared altogether.
But ever did come. As Catch got off the bus, he felt, briefly, like the 23 year-old that had served time and was tugging new whiskers. Then, it was strength to have done time. He earned the name Catch when rival convict Stark Malone, baddest Elvis-worshipping motherfucker undamaged by drugs and motorcycle accidents Wisconsin could produce, tried to smash his head in with a billiards ball. Catch caught it, smashed him back, and the two were never allowed rec-room time again. At least Catch wasn’t the one who went for an infirmary vacation.
That’s how Catch survived before his ever came. One of the fogeys at the home had also been a convict, and Catch sold him heaps of heroin, fanning his old fires. The man was prison hardened, stout, strong, but Catch knew that he was weak and soft, broken by age and care. So he sold him his dope at ten percent mark-up.
The streets were shiny. It wasn’t the world promised by the Amazing Tales comics he loved as a kid, but it was foreign nevertheless. Perhaps even more foreign that the components of fantasy were missing from this reality.
Catch didn’t like the cars. He didn’t like the anger in the engines, the exhaust, and most of all, the drivers. Things moved so fast on the outside world. He didn’t feel like he was part of it all, or that he could be. These were busy people, too busy to fear his past, too busy to help him now.
Granger, Old Tom, Keener, and the rest of the gang needed him. They kept their days alive with dirty jokes and fantasies, contraband smokes, and sweets from Keener’s wife. Jake Nugent needed him, the young guard he consoled when the inmates got too bored and wanted to torment the kid. And even Granger’s kids needed him, sorta. He was their uncle, daddy’s protective buddy. When their mother forbade them to visit in 1995, it was he who regaled Granger with his own tales about their madcap adventures as children.
Granger’s kids… Catch fingered the alabaster carvings in his pocket, so smooth and cool to the touch even in the city. Granger survived in his cell those lonely nights by carving these for them, the lonelier he got the more single-mindedly he carved. The sound of chalky stone rubbing against the brick edge at night... They were rather exquisite, ponies and soldiers and other toys. They’ll be overjoyed to seem them, thought Catch, a gift from their pop. If they only knew how bad Granger needed them.
It was strange, they stripped us of all our needs, and now that’s become a need as well. Standing here in a hot 3 p.m. sun, free, and I still got needs. How did the fogeys feel? In a home of comfort, no responsibilities, nurses and pills, smell of kidneys and nutmeg, it must have been a shy and silent hell. The fumes from the street smelled like the death the nurses constantly buoyed with drug cups and catheters.
But he doled out the dope anyways. It’ll ease the pain, he had tol' them. They don’t treat you right, here. And those wizened heads stopped lolling to nod in slow, deliberate anguish. He didn’t care. Just like he didn’t care about a second helping of jail, 1958, angry as ever. They didn’t treat these fogeys right, so he was on their level at worst.
Yet in 1959, he did care. He had done his time. He had earned a nickname, a touch one. What should have been done and over with came a third time and this time it was serious.
1999. It was mercy, wasn’t it? Forgiveness? The roaring of the street hushed as he entered the boarding house. The state had seen to it that he’d have a job, a place to stay, a direction. It was forgiveness. It had nothing to do with the state being too thrifty to keep his toothless gang in.
It was funny. Catch went into prison as a thug, survived it like it was his gang’s clubhouse, and he was out now like a angel bearing gifts. Was this reformation? It would be good to see Granger’s kids without the scrutinizing eye of the fortress. He would put them on his lap, tell them about the exploits of the gang, how his dad was the artist and the joker. How he and Catch slipped Old Tom a heap of toothpaste, and how Old Tom slurped it cackling until he realized his vanilla ice cream was minty fresh. He pictured them laughing, and he planned to mimic Old Tom’s tantrums with his own gnarled hands. Then they’d go out for real ice cream, chase dogs in the park, and maybe even do a game of catch.
He checked in, painfully climbed the stairs, and found his room. He was impressed by how much space it had. But it was more empty than he had imagined it. The carpet was probably the most interesting part about it. It kept the room quiet, without the echoes of footsteps and taunts and whispers and hoots. There was no post up high to watch him sleep but the ceiling beams.
He stood basking in the disinterest that the room bore him. It didn’t care what he put on the shelves, or under his bed. Catch hung his jacket on the shelves, felt like he had poured his life’s possessions out, and still the room was unmoved. Catch had nothing else to put down, so he stepped back out and headed to Granger’s house.
If only Granger was out now. But alas, he had at least 15 more years. So it was up to Catch now. Stupid, stupid Granger. He had described in detail how to find the house from the boarding house. But he didn’t mention the overflow of signs and traffic and stores that obscured the landmarks that Catch had so carefully memorized. Goddamn rights and lefts everywhere.
When the fogeys needed him, things had been simple. Drugstore, alley, the dealer, the home. They took anything he fed them, and it made them happy. Tylenol cut with Dramamine cut with coke. Uppers, downers and cough syrup. Tums or Rolaids, cherry and green flavored. What mattered was that mom and dad found grampa and gramma awake, lucid, talkative. It was Catch’s forgiveness gift to them.
It’s what you did to survive. Countless nights, Catch, Granger, Old Tom, and the rest were part of a collective sanity. The music of their capers covered the digs for endurance and perseverance in that marathon of stillness calculated to destroy the hardest of men. Correction: especially the hardest men. And not all could survive that run; some could not ignore the mental scream telling them that this race was not going to end. Their lot in life, their one chance, one journey, was stolen and stopped. It was a lot for a man with only one life to make that run into darkness, without any goal but death or obscurity.
But Catch ran on. Even when his ever was a never, he ran on. Some mortal part of him convinced himself that it wasn’t just fantasy. It was tolerable. Perhaps even worth something in spite. That didn’t make it any less shocking when they let him out, though. He had been running so long and hard that it jolted his world to have suddenly stopped, pace broken, standing still outside Granger’s house.
He rang the doorbell. He waited, terrified. But the house refused to abate. The lawn, the shrubbery, the faux stone steps, the berry-stained oak door, all spoke to Catch of difference, change, and worst of all, rejection. Running thumps from the other side of the door made his heart clutch his chest, and the click of the lock, the sliding of the brass bolt, and it all came open.
“J-Jessie?”
A stunned look. “Um, yes? I mean yes, that’s me. And you’re…?”
(To Be Continued...) |
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