Almost Paradise by Corabel Shofner

Author:Corabel Shofner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

TWENTY-ONE

We walked along the busy downtown street and crossed at the light to the big building where they kept people waiting for trial. It was attached to the court building, Mr. Joe Brewer said. And we would have to go through security.

“You left your guns at home?” He was teasing me but I didn’t see the joke. And I wondered how he knew I had cap guns and had, in fact, left them at home. Then I realized I had on my empty holsters.

Joe Brewer got to walk right through security, everybody in the building knew him. He was famous or something.

Eleanor and I had to stop and walk through a big Xerox machine. It’d beep if you had car keys or guns. If you got beeped, the guard yelled, “Wand,” and another one pulled you to the side and ran a wand all around your body looking for weapons and bombs. If you were carrying anything suspicious, you had to run it through another machine that could see right through things. One lady had all kinds of stuff in her purse. You could see it all in reverse shadows on the little TV screen: pens, lipstick, pacifier, notepad, sandwich, pill bottle. It all looked like skeleton bones.

When it came time for me to walk through the machine, I balked. I didn’t want people seeing right through me. I didn’t want them seeing my bones. But Aunt Eleanor, who had walked through first, reached back, grabbed my arm, and dragged me through. With that, I made it just fine. They didn’t even pull me over and wand me.

Then we were allowed inside. Joe Brewer clipped on a plastic tag that said ATTORNEY. Mine and Aunt Eleanor’s said VISITOR.

The thought of seeing my mother again made me shaky all over. Walking down the hall, I braced myself. My cowboy hat hung down my back; I licked my hands and flattened my hair off my forehead, even flatter than when Aunt Eleanor had yanked at the tangles.

When we got into that visiting room Eleanor looked back and forth between the guard and the door. “Does that door really need to be locked? I mean, we are not the criminals, now are we?”

“Har, har,” the guard said.

It was horribly hot in the jail. There was a soapy smell too, like the body odor of people who work in car washes on hot summer days.

Suddenly keys jangled at the door and it opened. Mother stepped inside. I looked down at my boots and then slowly raised my face to look at her. Her eyes did that thing I love. She opened her arms and I fell into them.

“Oh, baby,” she said. “You’re safe.”

I nodded my head into her chest. She didn’t smell like Mother, she smelled like car wash.

“Are you happy?” she asked. “Eleanor says your pig is happy on the ranch.”

I nodded again. I wanted her to know that I was safe and happy, but something stopped me from telling her how much I loved Paradise Ranch, that it was the best place I had ever lived.

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