Page 14 of I Will Find You

I twist back and forth. Ross holds on. I try to buck and flail. Ross’s grip does not slacken. Pressure is building in my head. My lungs are crying out for air. The stars are back, swirling, but what I mostly see now is night. I struggle for one breath, just one, but that’s a no-go.

I can’t breathe.

My eyes start to close. My fellow inmates’ cheers are one indistinct blur. Ross Sumner lowers his head closer to me.

“That ear looks tasty.”

He is about to bite down on my ear. I barely care. I try again to buck, but there is nothing behind it. All I can think about is being able to breathe. Just one breath. That’s all. His lips are right up against my ear now. I struggle like a dying fish on the line.

Where the hell are the guards?

By now, they should be stepping in. They don’t want a dead inmate. That’s not good for anyone. But then I remember Ross Sumner’s wealth, his family’s proclivity for payoffs, and again I realize that no one is going to save me.

If I lose consciousness—and I’m about to—I die.

And if I die, where would that leave Matthew?

Seconds now from passing out, capillaries bursting in my closed eyes, I lower my chin and let myself go limp. This isn’t easy. It goes against every instinct. But I pull it off. There is only one thing left to do. Fight fire with fire.

I open my mouth and bite down on Ross Sumner’s arm.

Hard.

His cry of pain is the most satisfying sound I have heard in a long time.

The grip on my windpipe immediately eases as he tries to pull his arm away. I greedily gulp air through flaring lips. But my teeth don’t let go. He screams again. My jaw clenches down even stronger. He shakes his arm. I hang on like a bulldog. I feel the hairs of his arm against my face. I bite down even harder.

His blood trickles into my mouth. I don’t care.

Ross has managed to stand. I am on my knees. He throws a punch. I think it hits the top of my head, but I don’t feel it. He tries to gather enough leverage to pull his arm free, but I’m ready. The crowd is on my side now. I throw an elbow at his groin. Ross Sumner collapses like a folding chair. His weight tears his arm free from my teeth, but some flesh stays behind.

I spit it out.

I jump on him, straddle his chest, and start throwing punches.

I flatten his nose. I can actually feel the cartilage spread under my knuckles. I grab his collar and pull him up. Then I cock my fist again, take my time, and throw hard at his face. Splat. I do it again. Then again. Sumner’s head lolls now as though his neck is a weak spring. I’m almost giddy now. My eyes are wide. I pull back again to hit him, but this time, someone hooks my arm. Then someone tackles me from behind.

The guards are on me now, pinning me to the ground. I don’t resist. I keep my eyes on the bloody mess of a man lying on the floor in front of me.

And for a brief moment, I actually smile.

Chapter

5

Warden Philip Mackenzie’s plane touched down at Boston’s Logan Airport without incident. He had grown up a stone’s throw away from Logan in nearby Revere. Back in those days, Logan Airport’s main landing route had flown the noisiest of jets over his house. To a little boy, the sound had been deafening, earth-shattering. His two older brothers, who shared the bedroom with him, would somehow sleep through it, but Little Philip would grasp the railing of his top bunk as the planes passed, the bed shaking so hard he feared falling off. Some nights, the planes seemed to be swooping so low they’d rip the fraying roof right off the house.

Back then, Revere Beach had been a blue-collar community right outside of Boston. It still was in most respects. Philip’s father had been a house painter, his mom stayed home (no married women worked in those days—single women could be teachers, nurses, or secretaries) with the six Mackenzie kids—three boys sharing one bedroom, three girls sharing another, one bathroom for all of them.

The taxi dropped Philip off in front of a familiar four-family home on Dehon Street. The dwelling was decaying brick. The front door was shedding faded-green paint. The large stoop, the stoop where Philip had spent countless childhood hours with his buddies, especially Lenny Burroughs, was made up of chipped concrete. For thirty years, the Burroughs family had taken up all four apartments. Lenny’s family was on the first floor on the right. His cousin Selma, who had been widowed young, had the apartment above with her daughter Deborah. Aunt Sadie and Uncle Hymie were on the first floor left. Other relatives—a churning potpourri of aunts, uncles, cousins, who-knows-what—took turns in the fourth apartment above Hymie and Sadie’s. That was how this neighborhood was in those days. Immigrant families—Philip’s being Irish, Lenny’s Jewish—had poured in from across the Atlantic over a three-decade period. Those already here—they took in family. Always. They helped the newcomers find jobs. Some relatives slept on a couch or a floor for weeks, months, whatever. There was no privacy, and that was okay. These homes were breathing entities, in constant motion. Friends and family members constantly flowed through the corridors and stairwells like lifeblood through veins. No one locked their doors, not because it was super safe—it wasn’t—but because family members never knocked or were denied access. Privacy was an alien concept. Everybody minded everybody else’s business. You celebrated one another’s victories and mourned their defeats. You were one.

You were family.

That world was gone with so-called progress. Most of the Burroughses and Mackenzies had moved on. They now lived in quasi-mansions in wealthier suburbs like Brookline or Newton with shrubs and fences and fancy marble bathrooms and swimming pools and where the very idea of living with non-nuclear family was nightmarish and incomprehensible. Other family members had moved to gated communities in warmer states like Florida or Arizona, sporting leathery tans and gold chains. Newer immigrant families—Cambodians, Vietnamese, whatever—had taken over a lot of the old homes. They, too, worked hard and took in all manner of extended family members, starting the cycle anew.

Philip paid the cabdriver and stepped onto the cracked sidewalk. He could still get a faint whiff of the salty Atlantic Ocean two blocks away. Revere Beach had never been a glamour spot. Even in his youth, the threadbare mini-golf and rusty roller coaster and worn Skee-Ball machines and assorted boardwalk arcades had been on their last legs. That didn’t bother him and Lenny and their friends though. They hung out behind Sal’s Pizzeria and smoked and drank Old Milwaukee because it was the cheapest and rolled dice. The guys they hung out with—Carl, Ricky, Heshy, Mitch—all became doctors and lawyers and moved out. Lenny and Philip stayed in town as local cops. Philip debated taking a quick walk down to Shirley Avenue to see the house where he and Ruth had raised their five children. But he decided against it. The memories were pleasant enough, but he was not in the mood to be distracted.

Memories always sting, don’t they? The good ones most of all.

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