RE: Trailer Trash 52 pt 1

/// Lot of different fragments for this chap are in the works, this one came along a little further than the rest.

It was high time for him to get to the bottom of all this nonsense.

Mr. Moore’s truck rumbled down a long, desolate stretch of Fairfield road. This wasn’t the close areas of nearby Fairfield that were on the periphery of his own service area—no sir, this was way out past the other side of the interstate and then some. Easily a forty minute drive, and one he felt a little guilty for not having taken before. He’d visited his brother when he was still at the local lockup, but after that first week Daniel had been transferred to ‘county,’ which had existed to Mr. Moore only as a hastily scribbled address beside the note ‘Danny jail.’

Well, I’ve talked to him on the phone, at least, Mr. Moore scowled as he finally saw the sign he was looking for. Know for sure I’m on his visitations list or what have you.

The sign for the county corrections facility teased the end of his trip across Fairfield, but after making the turnoff there was another five minutes of empty road. There wasn’t much of anything out here this way, which of course was the point. The corrections place was isolated, and when he finally arrived at the proper location tall fences appeared and the pavement gave way to a freshly graded gravel road, forcing him to lower his speed for the final stretch.

He hadn’t been sure quite what to expect at seeing the place, because his only impressions of prisons or the like were from movies. Rather than historical brick architecture like he remembered from Shawshank Redemption or some Hollywood style of brutalism that made an imposing statement for cameras, this correctional facility was—well, it looked pretty bland and boring. Boxy two-story concrete structures painted white, simple as could be, and with no adorning features or decorations to speak of. There were no hedges, no shrubs, nothing at all that could impede visibility; nowhere to hide or sneak about, obviously.

It looked like the unloved offspring of a down-on-its luck community college and a military base.

Further slowing his vehicle as he approached a gatehouse, Alan rolled down his window. A black woman in a coat was waiting there with the window slid open for him.

“Hey there,” Alan greeted. “Alan Moore, here ‘bout seein’ my brother. Daniel Moore?”

“Visitation?” The woman asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Have you visited before?”

“Nope, first time,” Alan admitted with a pang of guilt.

“Do you know if you’ve been put on your inmate’s visitor list?”

“Well yeah, I sure should be, he said I was,” Alan nodded. “From what he was sayin’, I didn’t need to call in an appointment or nothin’, I could just show up?”

“Within hours here you can, we will still need you to fill out a visitor’s application,” the woman informed him.

She paused to grab a clipboard from atop a filing cabinet and then leaned out to pass it to him through the window. It was a simple affair, asking for his name, address, phone number, whether or not he was a convicted felon or had been incarcerated before, whether or not he had outstanding warrants, had protective orders, or was on probation or parole. It only took him a few moments jotting down all the answers as he braced the clipboard against his steering wheel, and then he passed it back over.

“Alright sir, thank you,” The woman glanced it over. “If you have some form of I.D. then, this should only take a minute or two.”

“Sure, yeah,” Alan rose up in his seat so he could fish his wallet out of his back pocket.

After providing his license, the woman took it and closed the window, sitting back down and clicking away at a computer on her desk. It was interesting seeing computers popping up everywhere nowadays, but he supposed that was just the direction the century was heading. He’d heard library card indexes were already going the way of the dodo-bird, and before too long just about everybody would be using computerized databases and learning programs and systems and all the jargon and technical-nonsense that went with it.

Computers—bet Tabitha already knows all that stuff by now, Mr. Moore thought to himself. She for sure had that typing class in—what was it, sixth grade? Sure as heck remember her bitchin’ and moanin’ ‘bout it, we were all laughin’ up a storm. They had her her typin’ out ‘A SAD DAD AS A LAD…somethin’ somethin’ ALFALFA FALLS AS A FLASK.’ Hah! All those silly ones they had ‘em when they’re first learnin’ the right finger keys. And, they were all using computers instead of typewriters, already! Shannon took that kinda course as an elective—back in my day, I don’t even remember if it was offered at all. Nowadays, I think they have computer labs for all of the kids.

“Alrighty sir, here you go,” the woman slid the window open and passed him back his ID. “Visitor parking is right down there and on your left. You’ll want to go straight in through the doors there, and they’ll check you in. Alright?”

“Sounds good to me,” Alan slid his license back into his wallet. “Thank you.”

“Yep yep,” The woman said.

She reached up and hit a button or a switch of some kind, and then the tall chainlink fence gate started to roll away. It didn’t have a loud accompanying loud buzz or anything like it should have from movies, but all the same Alan rolled up his window and started the truck forward again. There wasn’t a yard full of hardened inmates in jumpsuits he could gawk at, nor were there stern guard officers patrolling about with shotguns out—his first look at a correctional facility was a pretty boring one. Routines and procedures and common-sense security stuff just didn’t make for entertaining television, Mr. Moore surmised.

He parked in the nearly empty lot, shut off his engine, and stepped down out of the truck. He made his way over through the double-doors of the clearly labeled visitor’s center, and the counters and waiting room there might as well have been borrowed over directly from a dentist’s office, because he couldn’t rightly see any differences.

“Hi there, here about seein’ Danny Moore?”

“Sure thing,” an overweight balding man at the counter said. “Have you been here before?”

“First time visiting,” Alan said with a frown.

Well, it turned out they asked that for a reason, and now Alan discovered there was a whole big spiel to go through about what was and wasn’t allowed. There was a dress code policy, he couldn’t bring in his car keys or any jewelry save for his wedding band, he had to consent to a brief pat down, and et cetera. He nodded along as the man covered all the relevant points, realizing what he was wearing seemed fine—he could turn out his pockets and just find his keys and wallet. The rest of the measures seemed to be just to ensure sensible attire that wasn’t inappropriate, or the likes of which that would be easy to smuggle contraband inside. Nothing he had to worry about, he was a simple man and here with a clean conscience.

A younger officer came out for the search, which was just a brief check as the guy tapped his hands across Alan’s pants and shirt and felt around what must have been likely places to conceal things. No rubber gloves came out, no one asked him to drop his pants or turn his head and cough, so after a brief awkward moment he was declared fit to visit, and then—well, then the wheels of bureaucracy within the county department of corrections here lurched into motion and it was time to wait.

Ten minutes passed, and then twenty, and Mr. Moore passed the time away between disinterested perusal of a Health and Lifestyle magazine he found on the corner table, and bored glances at the wall-mounted clock. An older woman came in, probably some inmate’s mother, and Mr. Moore was in for a treat and got to overhear the same exact speech about visitation policy recited, all over again. He was contemplating crossing his arms, leaning back some in the chair, and attempting a quick nap, when an officer finally came out and called his name.

The officer led him down a hallway and into a large room full of tables that might have served as a canteen or cafeteria, save for the fact there was no attached kitchen, no vending machines, just a row of tables with an office overlooking them through a glass window. An inmate and a woman were chatting on the far side, and then right here before him on this side his brother Danny was waiting for him.

Rather than the iconic orange prison jumpsuit Mr. Moore had imagined, or even something stereotypical like black and white stripes, the attire here seemed a lot more like the navy-blue scrubs a nurse or doctor would wear. Danny was much more pale than he remembered, his hair was cut short but not styled, and his incarceration so far had perhaps made his familiar figure a bit more lean.

“Hey Al,” Danny remarked, gesturing for him to take a seat. “Damn, this sure is a surprise. Thought you’d all forgotten all about me.”

“Yeah,” Alan chuckled, still looking around. “Thought there’d be some, I dunno. Some kinda glass partition ‘tween us, to where we havta talk to each other through a phone, and all that jazz.”

“That’s uh, yeah, that’s no-contact visitation,” Danny gave him a sober nod. “Think that’s just for the real fuckups. It’s usually just like this—or, so I hear. Nobody’s exactly lining up to come visit your poor l’il brother.”

“Good to see you, Danny,” Alan stepped in and leaned over the table to give his brother a handshake and clap his shoulder. “How you holdin’ up?”

“Same shit, different day,” Danny shrugged. “This here’ll be the most exciting thing that’s happened all month. So—what’s up? What’s goin’ on?”

“Well,” Alan eased himself down into the seat across from his brother. “Actually, came to talk to you about Lisa.”

“Aw, fuck,” Danny swore. “The fuck’s she done now?”

“Have you heard any—” Mr. Moore paused. “How much of what all’s goin’ on outside have you heard about?”

“Absolutely zip,” Danny shook his head. “She hasn’t visited me not even once, yet. Figures.”

“Christ,” Mr. Moore swore. “So—so, you haven’t heard anything about her at all?”

“That’s what I just said, yes,” Danny gave him that familiar look of irritation. “So?”

“So… Lisa’s gotten herself into some trouble,” Alan finally admitted. “They think she was gettin’ herself into heroin.”

“Yeah, no shit she’s into heroin,” Danny rolled his eyes. “Everybody knew that, damn.”

“She—” Mr. Moore froze. “Danny, what the hell are you talking about?”

“God damn,” Danny laughed, leaning back in his seat and putting a hand over his head. “Brother of mine—you are such a dumbfuck. It—to this day, it continues to just blow my mind. Jesus Christ.”

“So, so—you knew about this?” Mr. Moore demanded, incredulous. “Danny—you guys have kids, what in the hell were you thinking?”

“Hah, the kids,” Danny shook his head. “How are they, by the way? Good? Okay?”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“We were thinking—we were thinking it’s nobody’s business but ours what we do,” Danny gave him an expressive shrug. “The fuck do you want me to say? We weren’t shooting up right there in front of them. S’private time shit, and all that. They go outside and play, they go and play their video games, they didn’t never see a thing. They’re fuckin’ kids, what do they care?”

“But, but—” Alan didn’t even know what to say to that. “Danny—”

“So, what’s the problem?” Danny cut him off. “What kind of trouble’d she get herself into? Warrant out for her arrest, she run off? She locked up? What’s goin’ on?”

( 51, Opening presents and open confrontation. | RE: Trailer Trash | 52 pt 2 )