Nicholas Evans - The Brave

THE BOY FOLLOWED the guard along the corridor, watching the sway of his wide backside and the belt with its handcuffs and baton and the big bunch of keys that jangled as he walked. The back of the man's blue shirt was stained with sweat and he kept wiping his neck with the palm of one hand. It was a part of the prison the boy hadn't been allowed into before. The walls were bare and whitewashed and there were no windows, just fluorescent boxes on the ceiling speckled inside with dead bugs. The air was still and hot and smelled of stale cabbage. He could hear distant voices, someone shouting, someone laughing, the clank and echo of metal doors. Somewhere a radio was playing the Beatles' new number one, "A Hard Day's Night."

The boy's weekly visits usually took place in the long hall next to the waiting room. He was almost always the only child there and the guards knew him by now and were friendly, chatting with him as they led him to one of the booths. Then he'd have to sit there staring through the glass divider, waiting for them to bring his mother in through the steel door in the back wall. There were always two guards with rifles. He would never forget the shock of that first time they had led her in, the sight of her in her ugly brown prison dress and handcuffs and ankle chains, her hair cut short like a boy's. He'd felt a pain in his chest, as if his heart were being prized open like a mussel shell.

When she came in she always scanned the booths for him and smiled when she saw him and the guard would bring her over and sit her down in front of him and remove the cuffs and she would kiss the palm of her hand and press it to the glass and he would do the same.

But today it was different. They were going to be allowed to meet in a private room, just the two of them, with no divider. They would be able to touch. For the first time in almost a year. And for the last time ever.

Wherever the guard was leading him seemed a long way inside the prison. It was a maze of cement corridors with a dozen or more barred and double-locked doors. But at last they reached one made of solid steel with a little wired-glass window in it. The guard pressed a button on the wall and another guard's face, a woman this time, appeared in the window. The door buzzed and clicked open. The woman had plump cheeks that glistened with sweat. She smiled down at him.

"You must be Tommy."

He nodded.

"Follow me, Tommy. It's just along here."

She walked ahead of him.

"Your mom's told us all about you. Boy, is she proud of you. You're just thirteen, right?"

"Yes."

"A teenager. Wow. I've got a thirteen-year-old too. Boy, is he a handful."

"Is this death row?"

She smiled.

"No, Tommy."

"Where is it then?"

"You don't want to be thinking about that."

There were steel doors all along one side of the corridor with red and green lights above them and the woman stopped outside the last one. She looked through the little spy hole then unlocked the door and stepped aside for him to go in.

"There you go, Tommy."

The room had white walls and a metal table with two metal chairs and there was a single barred window through which the sun was shafting down and making a crisscross square on the cement floor. His mother was standing in the middle of it, quite still, shielding her eyes from the sun and smiling at him. Instead of the prison uniform she was wearing a plain white shirt and slacks. No handcuffs or ankle chains. She looked like an angel. As if she were already in heaven.

She opened her arms and held him to her and it was a long time before either of them was able to speak. He'd promised himself he wouldn't cry. At last she held him away from her to inspect him then smiled and ruffled his hair.

"You need a haircut, young man."

"Everyone has it long now."

She laughed.

"Come on, sit down. We haven't much time."

They sat at the table and she asked him all the usual questions: what was going on at school, how had the math test gone the previous week, had the food in the cafeteria gotten any better? He tried to give more than one-word answers, tried to make it sound as if everything was fine. He never told her what it was really like. About the locker room fights, about how the bigger kids taunted him for having a convicted murderer for a mother.

When she ran out of questions she just sat there and stared at him. She reached out and took his hands in hers and stared at them for a long time. He looked around the room. It wasn't as frightening as he'd imagined. He wondered where the gas pipes and valves were.

"Is this it?"

"What, sweetheart?"

"You know, is this the actual chamber?"

She smiled and shook her head.

"No."

"Where do they do it then?"

"I don't know. Somewhere back there."

"Oh."

"Tommy, there's so much I wanted to say.... I had a whole speech prepared."

She gave a false little laugh and put her head back and for a while didn't seem able to go on. He didn't know why, but it made him feel angry.

"But... I've forgotten it all," she went on.

She rubbed the tears from her cheeks and sniffed then took hold of his hand again.

"Isn't that funny?"

"You were probably going to tell me how to behave for the rest of my life. To be good, do the right thing, always tell the truth."

He pulled his hand away.

"Tommy, please--"

"I mean, what would you know about that?"

She bit her lip and stared down at her hands.

"You should have told them the truth from the start."

She nodded, trying to compose herself.

"Maybe."

"Of course you should!"

"I know. You're right. I'm sorry."

For a long time neither of them spoke. The shaft of sunlight had angled to the edge of the room. There were golden flecks of dust floating in it.

"You're going to have a fine life."

He gave a sour laugh.

"You will, Tommy. I know you will. You'll be with people who love you and who'll look after you--"

"Stop it."

"What?"

"Stop trying to make me feel good!"

"I'm sorry."

He would always regret that he hadn't been kinder to her that day. He hoped she'd understood. That he wasn't so much angry with her as with himself. Angry at his own powerlessness. Angry that he was going to lose her and couldn't die with her. It wasn't fair.

How long they sat like that he had no idea. Long enough for the sun to move away from the window and for the room to fill with shadow. At last the door opened and the plump-faced guard stood there, with a sad, slightly nervous smile.

His mother pressed the palms of her hands together.

"Well," she said brightly. "Time's up."

They both stood and she hugged him so hard he could hardly breathe. He could feel her body quaking. Then she held his face between her hands and kissed him on the forehead. But he still couldn't look her in the eye. Then she let go of him and he walked away to the door.

"Tommy?"

He turned.

"I love you."

He nodded and turned and went.

Chapter One.

THEY FOUND the tracks at dawn in the damp sand beside the river about a mile downstream from where the wagons had circled for the night. Flint got off his horse, the odd-looking one that was black at the front and white at the back, as if someone had started spraying him with paint then had second thoughts. Flint knelt down to have a closer look at the tracks. Bill Hawks stayed on his horse watching him and every so often glancing nervously up at the scrubby slope that rose steeply behind them. He clearly thought the Indians who had kidnapped the little girl might be watching. He pulled out his gun, checked it was loaded, then holstered it again.