Vaya Con Dios, Juan Astran

On Axel Lane in East Austin, there is a place called The Travis County International Cemetery. You would be hard pressed to find it without directions. There are no manicured lawns, no glistening rows of headstones, no series of paths or drives save for the single road leading in and out. It is a lonely place in a lonely part of town and it was here that Jeff and I said our final goodbyes to our friend Shorty.

Friendships are sometimes formed from the most unlikely of situations in the most unlikely of places. I met Shorty through Jeff. Jeff met Shorty in jail.

The night Jeff arrived at Travis County Jail, downtown, it was Shorty who loaned him something warm to wear. Out of that act of kindness, a friendship developed. Shorty was locked up waiting for his case to go to trial when he met Jeff. He was charged with capital murder and had been downtown nearly two years, waiting. As the days and weeks went by, most of that time spent locked in their individual cells, Jeff and Shorty shared stories and thoughts and news across the corridor. Both men had done a lot of living and could rest comfortably in the presence of the other because they each knew where they had been.

I would hear stories about Shorty and the hijinx the two of them would get up to during the phone calls I would get from Jeff. Because Jeff never knew when he would be out of his cell, I never knew when the phone calls would come. I had signed up for a telephone service that permitted Jeff to call me. Let me tell you right now, there is a gigantic amount of money being made off of people being in jail. Yes, you can argue that if you hadn't broken the law, that wouldn't be an issue. But as someone trying to keep in touch with a loved one, the amount of money being charged for these phone calls is simply legalized robbery. There are plenty more crooks on the outside of the jail. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful the service exists but the cost is very high and I feel for folks who do not have the money to be able to afford it.

One afternoon the phone rang, and as the caller and I went through the protocol required to get connected, I was baffled by the name and voice that was on the other end. It wasn't Jeff. I hadn't heard from Jeff in a few days and was relieved when I saw the familiar number calling. But when the soft voice on the other end said, "Sharon, this is Shorty." my immediate response was "Is Jeff ok?"

He was. He had been put in solitary confinement after a run-in with another inmate. Jeff had asked Shorty to call me and let me know what was going on. Shorty was at one end of the corridor on the phone with me while Jeff was at the other, in his cell. Shorty played go-between and we three ended up having a good but short chat. Before we hung up, I told Shorty how much I appreciated his calling and that I knew what a good friend he was being to Jeff. Shorty's voice was very quiet, very sweet. He said he was happy to do it and that it was very nice to finally hear my voice as Jeff had talked a great deal about me. That surprised me. We spoke once more a few days later and then Jeff was out of solitary and we were back on track.

I found out in the days after that time, that Shorty actually knew a lot about me. Jeff would share parts of my letters and photographs with him and they would discuss my life in Maine--the gardening, the losing weight and the library. Jeff was deep in writing his poetry at that time as well. He would share his new creations with Shorty and they would talk about the things the poems brought up. We became a trio, connected by laughter, caring and circumstance.

When Jeff was released, it was a happy but sad day for him. Shorty remained inside. Jeff asked me if I would write to Shorty and I was happy to say yes. I knew what it had meant to me to keep in touch with Jeff over those four and a half months. I knew what it had meant to Jeff. And I knew what it would mean to Shorty. What I didn't know was how much I would come to care for this man on my own.

In mid-April of 2007, I looked up his inmate number at the jail, and sent out a note thanking him for everything he had done for Jeff and asking if he would like to be penpals. He wrote right back that he would like that immensely and so we began. We shared stories about places we had traveled to, beautiful sights we had seen, wonderful people we had met. He told me about his family and in his quiet moments, reflected on how his life and the way he had chosen to live it had come at the cost of a close relationship with his daughter. That was his greatest regret, that drugs and violence separated him from the people he loved most. We didn't talk about his past nor the road that had led him to Travis County Jail. There was no need to do so. We could only share the present moment of the letter in front of us. It's easy to be yourself when you don't have to worry about the past and you have no control over the future.

In mid-summer Shorty was sentenced to 16 years in prison on the capital murder charge. He would be eligible for parole in 10. His brother had been given a life sentence in the case. If Shorty had not chosen to stand by his brother, things might have been very different, but he did what he felt he needed to do.

Shorty was sent to Huntsville, near Houston, for a few months. I told him about my plans to leave Maine and he talked to me about Texas. He said to be sure and try Elgin sausage, best sausage in the whole world, made in a small town outside of Austin. He counseled me on affairs of the heart. He understood leaving. He understood starting over. He said to tell Jeff that he'd damn well better take good care of me because there would be hell to pay if he didn't. Jeff was a constant theme in our letters and Shorty loved hearing the latest adventures. He also loved hearing about the library. Despite the hard times, there was a lot of joy in our writing.

By late October, Shorty was finally moved out to Snyder in west Texas. Prison, and being moved around to different facilities, was hard on him. Trying to get into a rhythm eluded him. There was too much that was new, a constant need to be vigilant. His letters slowed down. You have to pay for our own supplies when you are incarcerated. No one hands out paper and envelopes and stamps. I put money on his books hoping he could get some art supplies. He was a wonderful artist, passionate about drawing and painting. He had put me in touch with his sister Diana when he was still in Travis County and she shared photos of his work. But he never got the chance to settle into a routine to have time to draw.

On January 8, Diana emailed me that Shorty was very ill and had been moved from the prison to University Medical Center in Lubbock. He had been diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a mysterious flesh-eating bacteria that attacks the body from the inside out. He was dying. Diana made the long trip to Lubbock several times to be with him. He was her favorite brother. His daughter, Misty, had recently moved back to Austin from NYC, and she, too, made the trip several times to be with her father. Shorty fought hard. I know that having Misty with him was what kept him trying. She will have her first child in June, his first grand child.

Though he did begin responding to treatment, in the end his heart finally stopped. Diana and I cried on the phone together. I spoke with Misty and did the same. During all this sadness, these two women were also having to come up with the money to pay for a funeral. Death is not inexpensive. Through a taco dinner fundraiser and contributions from friends, they managed to raise two thousand dollars. Misty filled out paperwork through the county and was able to access funds for public assistance to pay for the remainder of the costs.

So today, on this Monday of dark skies and drizzle, Jeff and I made the drive to Peel and Son funeral home, to meet Diana and Misty for the first time and pay our respects.

It was a small gathering of family and a few friends. It was an unusual gathering because some people who might have come were afraid to attned because of Shorty's past. I had not considered that until Diana mentioned it to Jeff later. When we arrived, the first woman Jeff spoke with, one of Shorty's sisters, thought Jeff was the priest. I think it was the black shirt under the sports jacket that made her think that might be the case. We were also the only white people in attendance. Shorty's family is Hispanic. Jeff explained that we were friends of her brother Johnny and that is when Diana came to meet us. She immediately began crying and embraced Jeff. They hugged for a long time and wept. After they spoke for a minute, she turned to me and we hugged and cried as well. Diana was Shorty's favorite sibling and he shared stories about Jeff and my letters and pictures with her while he was locked up. In many ways, we were already old friends. I brought all of Shorty's letters I had with me here in Texas and gave them to Diana for the family to have.

We met Misty soon after. Young, lovely and pregnant, she hung on Jeff's words as he told her a few stories about her dad. She was surprised at what Jeff knew about her and what Shorty had known about her life in New York over the past several years. She told us about her time in Lubbock as her father's life came to a close. Then Jeff went to the casket to see his friend and he smiled through his tears, remembering the good times they had had together in the tank. Diana came up with me and then let me alone with my thoughts and my goodbye. I had only seen one picture of Shorty, one he had sent me because it had Misty in it. He had wanted me to see how beautiful she was. It was a different man in the casket in many ways--older, paler, no vibrant eyes to look into. But I put my hand on his arm and thought of our date in the future when we were going to sit at a camp fire and roast marshmallows and look up at the stars and just be happy to be alive. That wouldn't happen now, but for some reason I had been delivered to Austin in time to be part of his leaving this life. We had not gone to Lubbock but I had emailed the hospital several times a day via the service where emails would be delivered to patients and read to them if the patient was unable to read for themselves. Though he could not respond, we were penpals right until the very end. I had asked Diana if Shorty was getting the messages. She said he had smiled a big smile to let me know that he had.

As more people arrived, Jeff and I sat in the room just outside the viewing room, watching a young father tend to his little daughter while Diana and her sisters sang hymns a capella in Spanish in between people speaking. The words, whether spoken or sung, were full of emotion--joy at things remembered, sadness at things to be missed. I did not recognize the hymns but the last piece was 'How Great Thou Art' and I sang quietly from the sofa in English as the gathering put their hearts into the closing of the ceremony.

The drive to the cemetery took about fifteen minutes. We had Wendy to distract us from the sadness for a short time. The approach to the cemetery was not pretty or grand. A chain link fence surrounds the small property. There was a big metal sign that said NO LITTERING and as we made the corner, there was trash piled along the side of the road. It seemed such a powerful message, trash for the trash of society. This is where Austin buries those who have little or nothing who seek only a final place to rest.

We were the first ones to arrive. Jeff drove slowly down the small lane to the turn around area. The open grave and supports for the casket were close by. We sat in the truck, quiet. To our right there was a stable with horses. Wendy watched them intently, her tail bristling out thick. She had never seen horses before, only ponies. There were some oak trees but mostly the cemetery was open, a small field of coarse groundcover and red soil, a large pile of which was just behind us. The excavator stood patiently, waiting to finish its job once the mourners left.

We got out of the truck when the first few cars arrived. The casket was delivered not in a hearse but in a shiny black Suburban. We watched the men from the funeral home slide it out and place it on the supports over the grave. Waiting for the bulk of the family to arrive, I took the opportunity to walk around and visit some of the graves. There were very few headstones. Most markers were small and metal, the size of a motorcycle license plate. Some graves had only laminated tags provided by the facility that had prepared the body. Some graves had no markers.

Several of the graves were outlined in brick and the area inside turned into a shrine with trinkets and tributes left. Plastic flowers. Bouquets of fresh flowers long since withered. One grave had a beautiful low-growing cactus covering the grave, an empty Budweiser can caught between the prickly leaves.

A number of the graves were children. Stuffed animals and toys were strewn about by the wind, a brown plush bear face down in the mud, a little yellow rubber duck far from bath time. Birthday candles, the big number type, peeked up at me out of the grass at the base of a small cross. It felt like such a desperate place. There was no comfort there, only a feeling of chaos and perhaps that was the message that was coming from the earth, that life is rarely orderly and comforting so why should death be.

As the final mourners arrived, Diana told Jeff that the priest had called and would not be coming. He had been called to the hospital. Jeff told her he had a bible in the truck and he could read Psalm 23, the Lord's Prayer, if she would like. She said yes, she would like him to do that. He offered to try it in Spanish if she wanted. Her smile was bright. She said if he read it in English, she would follow in Spanish.

And so the man who had been mistaken for a priest was the man who read words of comfort over the body of his friend. Jeff's voice was calm and clear and strong. After the prayers, Diana asked Jeff if he would speak about Shorty and he did, remembering his kindness and his friendship. She asked me as well and I shared that Shorty and I had shared letters and that I knew through them how kind he could be and how much he loved his family. Another sister read a poem and that was it. One of the girls had handed out white roses, and one by one people placed them on the casket. A young girl, one of Shorty's nieces, maybe 12 years old, was in front of me in the line. She did not have a rose so I touched her on the shoulder and handed her mine. She smiled shyly at me then went to the graveside as I made my way to Jeff. He had placed his rose and a handful of dirt at the head of the coffin.

The women cried, their sobs and moans carried on the wind over the sloping grade of the cemetery. The horses in their paddock watched silently. It occurred to me that they are the true caretakers of this forgotten place of throw away people. I took Jeff's hand and wondered where I will end up on this earth.

Shorty was 49 years old. I will miss him.