Sugar Run - Mesha Maren Page 0,1

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