Love Her Madly by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Read Free Book Online

and cut a quarter-mile drive from Main Street to a big old farm they’d gone and bought. When we found out they were buildin’ medium-security jailhouses, it was too late to do anything about it. So we named the road State School Road out of spite.”
    â€œThe Mountain View Unit can’t be medium security.”
    â€œThat’s right. It’s got its own designation. Death row is considered something beyond maximum security, since the only prisoners inside are sentenced to lethal injection.”
    She said lethal injection in the same timbre I’d use for community service.
    â€œYou’ll know it when you see it because it’s the only unit with razor ribbon goin’ round.”
    â€œSeven women are housed there, is what I’ve been told.”
    â€œI don’t know the exact number. I know it’s small, but then I hear it keeps growin’ all the time. If you want my advice, ma’am, you’ll stay at the Best Western. It’s newest and it’s the closest to the prison, right by the entrance to the bypass. Think you’ll do better there than at the Holiday Inn.”
    â€œThanks. Is the bypass a road?”
    â€œYes, ma’am. The department decided they wanted a bypass to the Waco highway.”
    â€œWhat does it bypass?”
    â€œThe town. Which is good. We don’t get the prison traffic anymore.”
    â€œI guess you’re expecting a lot of traffic pretty soon.”
    â€œThat’s right. Anything else?”
    I didn’t want to leave her on a down note. Keep your librarians happy. “What’s the reason the bypass doesn’t have a name?”
    â€œTown couldn’t decide who to name it after. Every town meeting forever after has been a fight over what to call it.”
    â€œWho would you like it named after?”
    â€œEmily Morgan.”
    â€œWho was…?”
    â€œShe was a whore who kept Santa Anna so busy that the Texas Rangers were able to turn around and defeat his army after he took the Alamo. Never would have been a Republic without her.”
    Texans have such a sense of humor. As opposed to couth. I decided to get a rise out of her.
    â€œCould I walk from the Best Western to the prison?”
    â€œWalk?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNo, ma’am, you can’t. No sidewalks.”
    â€œI don’t mind walking along the side of the road.”
    â€œYou mind getting picked up by the Highway Patrol? They’ll figure you just strolled off the fields. But if you don’t like drivin’ you could ride.”
    â€œThere’s a bus?”
    â€œI meant a horse.” She was having fun with me too.
    â€œI don’t have one.”
    â€œWant to hire one?”
    â€œI’ll drive.”
    We shook hands and I thanked her for the map. I took a look through it. Holiday Inn should reconsider their decision not to advertise there like Best Western did.
    I drove two blocks and took a left onto State School Road. There in back of Main Street was a little cluster of houses, the first Gatesville housing development. The closer I got to the prisons, the newer the developments, small houses neatly tended. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division, employs more personnel than any other business in the state. Learned that in my guidebook.
    I drove up over a hill where I could see a collection of buildings not unlike the Texas Instruments headquarters, except the surrounding area had been cleared of any trees and foliage. To my right was a sign that directed visitors to a boxlike reception building. I bypassed it.
    Tilled fields spread out to a far distance, and women in loose white gauzy tops and white pants—thin fabric blowing in the wind—were hoeing. A few were on horseback. The prisoners appeared to be supervised by their own. There must have been several hundred women farming. I think only one of them wasn’t black or Hispanic. She could have been,