Sue Arnold

Too Many Miles

     Two hundred miles, that’s all there is left... 199 miles, almost there.  On either side, only desert.  An eternal feeling of emptiness. 
     “Hands on the table!!  One embrace at the beginning and end!  You have one hour!”   Dad... wait! 
     “It will be okay son, we’ll talk again.”  One hundred miles, why so far?  My hands are tired, the road has almost put me into a trance.  As the miles click down, I can only wonder what’s going through her mind.  It’s been four months and seven days since we’ve seen him.  Communication only by letters; fighting a war to even obtain a visiting form.  We hardly know what to do!  His nearly paralyzed right hand can only tell us so much.  Can we wear jeans or does that say khaki?  No one knows!  Ten miles. 
     “Wait, I can see...”  Everyone is quiet.  Why the guns?  He never hurt anyone.  Who knew an AK47 was standard issue?  It wasn’t him, but his bunkmate killed five people one day, maybe on accident, but we’ll never know. 
     “Mom, it’s okay.  I’m sure they’ll let us see him next week.”
     Two and a half years... that’s how long it has been.  Two and a half years since I noticed one day something was terribly amiss.  Perhaps that first day I would have known something was wrong, and maybe I could have prepared for it better, but I was too young and naive to sense the fear and worry in my parent’s eyes.  In retrospect, I should have demanded to know what was wrong rather than accept their generic ploy so I wouldn’t know anything.  But my father isn’t like that.  Never in my life can I remember him telling a lie.  I never saw him so quiet, sitting there while my mother gave me an extremely skewed view of what had happened.  Fourteen years and she still couldn’t get a fib past without me noticing, but now I realize that she was only trying to protect me.  I guess what tipped me off was the fact that she was home from work.  My parents were always so busy running in and out of the office that being home during the day had become rare at best.
     I cannot remember when my father told me or where, but the news left me speechless.  Right now one might expect news that would be something that only a teenager would not appreciate, but the reality was far worse.  Never could I describe what I heard or how I took it initially, but all that remains in my mind today of that moment is the shear terror and fear or how our lives would change.  I had arrived home from Madrigal Dinner practice when I saw my father sitting in the living room with an empty stare.  When he saw me, he got up and was crying.  The truth is that he was met by two police officers at our home and taken to the jail that afternoon and my family spent the whole day trying to get him released on bail.  The worst of it never came until two years later, but at that moment, I would have said it had.
     My father had been there for me my whole life.  I took every problem and every question I ever had to him.  The reality that one day he would be gone had never crossed my mind.  I remember about a month after that day we were sitting in the living room of our home again, staring quiet and blankly at the walls.  The remains of water that once were tears stuck to our faces.  It was a school night and we all were tired from trying to drag this day on as long as we could.  For what seemed like hours, we simply sat very quietly, knowing what horror the next day would bring for all of us.
     Needless to say, none of us got any rest that night.  I was finally faced with the reality that I may not see him again for a very long time.  But the one thing I always remember knowing and believing was that he was not guilty.  Never during the whole time did I ever question that.  As the morning rolled around, we began the day as usual.  However, no one spoke a word until ten minutes before a bell sounded from the direction of our entry hall.  My father said his goodbyes; we were all in tears because there was nothing we could do to help him.  I realized how peculiar the sound of hand cuffs is.  The three clicks encasing and closing until freedom is finally denied.  But what made things even more worse was the local newspaper parked rather conveniently outside our home.  A series of flashes I saw hitting the back wall of our entry way as the large door swung open and my father was escorted out to a police car.  I had never seen my mother so angry as she stormed outside screaming at the reporters.  I was almost ready to go out there with her, but what better way to make someone look bad than to victimize their own son.  Though I was never the victim, it was my father.  He sat there helpless as the media turned him from a respectable local businessman into a common criminal with the flash of a camera.
     What followed was my realization that I was alone.  Understand that my mother was there to help and take care of me as well as my family.  My father was not only my father, he was my best friend.  I found that day that I had to grow up.  My childhood which found my father helping me with my problems was over.  I had to solve my own issues, and most of the time, I found my family confiding in me rather than I confiding in them.
     Life went on as it usually does.  A series of losses in court after that last day sealed his fate for the next twelve years with parole in six.  We left the house I grew up in and were forced to move into my grandparent’s old house.  I’ve been able to see him since everything has happened; only a few were contact visits.  When he was finally moved to a state prison, I didn’t seem him for months.  Five hundred miles away in the middle of the desert.  Only five hundred miles to go until we get another chance to see him.  Maybe next week his pod won’t be in lock down, or maybe we’ll just make that trip from everything into nothing all over again.  All we can do is wait for the clicking to stop before we see him again.