“Mother?”
Why was it so many of the dying asked that question? She knew why. Return to the source.
“I’m helping a man named Mitchell Brown. Do you remember him?”
Wes’s lips were lifeless. His cheeks were so thin she could see his tongue moving inside his mouth. The cancer had started in his brain. Or maybe in his lungs. They didn’t exactly bother with diagnostics in prison. He was dying. That’s all there was to it.
“I remembereveryone,” he breathed.
In his moment of extremis, maybe he did.
“He was in the bar the night a woman disappeared. The police may have tried to talk to you later. Did you talk to them?”
“Grass talk,” he said.
“That’s right. The grass talks to you, doesn’t it?”
“Peaches.”
Along with peaches, the prisons specialized in raising the other dangerous crops of the new South: blueberries and watermelons. They were dangerous because they had the highest pesticide count of any crop.
“You’re dying of the peach tree disease.”
He was silent, looking over her shoulder at the rectangles of light.
“Glad,” he said, and she knew what he meant, even though she couldn’t explain it.
She reached for his hand, thinking he would be able to offer nothing, and that was okay. It was just another moment in her life.
His hand was small and dark, with scars raised along the inside, from grabbing the fruit, trimming the bark. His nails were coming loose from their beds, and she felt the tremor inside his hand. She closed her own eyes and felt those nerves trace all the way back to his heart—and hers.
“I remember,” he whispered. “He was at the bar that night.”
She opened her eyes. His were steady on hers. She could see deep down into them, into a well of memory. This little crumb had floated to the surface like a wet leaf.
“He was sitting next to a man.”
“I imagine he was,” she said, and stopped.
None of the witnesses who’d testified at the trial had talked about Mitchell sitting next to a man.
Wes was struggling now, his tongue too big for his mouth. The trustee nurse appeared at Ruby’s side, large and comforting.
“He doin’ all right, miss?”
“I don’t think so.”
The large man leaned over. She smelled bleach and hope.
“It’s them seizures. They take them.”
She looked over the trustee. “Were you a nurse on the outside?”
“Yes, miss. That’s why they keep arresting me. One reason after another. Men like me—they need us here.”
He stroked the man’s head, then wandered away, and Ruby sat for a bit with Wes, waiting to see if he would come back. But from the twitching, he fell into a deep sleep—one she thought he might not awaken from.
Ruby stood outside the prison. It was so hot, it was making the world tremble.
