8. Bede

Chapter 8

Bede

S itting around a campfire on a warm summer's evening was just about the last thing that Bede expected to be doing. At least not on the very day he'd been released from prison.

During those five years behind cement walls and razor-wire topped fencing, he'd kept himself distracted by imagining this very day, the day he'd be paroled. It would be a Monday. Midsummer. He'd be putting on a new suit. Taking one last look in the polished metal prison mirror in his cell.

Then he'd be stepping outside the gate. Returning to Denver. Registering his address. Showing proof of employment that did not involve drugs in any way.

One of his employment options was to have been taking over running a liquor store that his cousin owned on Colfax in Denver. It was a fairly grotty liquor store, but it had high foot traffic, and a high probability of him having to carry a gun on his person on account of the high likelihood of the store getting robbed on a regular basis. His parole team would never allow the gun.

What was the name of the place again? Blackjacks or something.

His plan had been to take a Greyhound to Denver and pick up work like nothing had happened. Swear to his parole officer that, of course, he was not carrying a gun, because that was prohibited in his conditions of release.

Well, he wouldn't have to worry about that now, would he. All he was going to have to worry about was not getting lost as he made his way through the woods sans flashlight and without a very good map in his head as to where his tent was.

Which wasn't like him. He usually had a very good memory for keeping track of his position in the world, but then, most of his life had been lived on the same streets, in the same neighborhoods, since the day of his birth.

Here, in Wyoming, everything was strange and new, and the darkness seemed to ooze through the trees like something was pressing on it from the other side.

It wasn't like him to be itchy and fidgety, ever, sitting at the campfire with nothing to do. He could feel his body attempting to digest all the sugar he'd eaten, and it had just about driven him crazy. Even Kell's bright presence, and the flickering fire, hadn't been enough. And certainly Galen's covert, slightly intense glances his way didn't help.

He needed to get up and move. So that's what he did, catching Galen's startled glance at him as he strode into the woods.

Like he knew where he was going. Like he had any idea what would happen next.

In the past, he knew what any moment was likely to bring. Cut some cocaine and hire a guy to deliver it. Show up at a glitzy gala event wearing a freshly pressed tuxedo, one of several that he owned, and while the wives and girlfriends downed champagne, make several handshake deals for the coming year. Arrange for more cocaine to be delivered. Check out the meth trade and back away slowly.

Money had rolled across his palms. He'd stashed most of it into several bank accounts. Some, he'd tucked away, filling old coffee cans with gold and silver coins. Those, along with a black plastic bag of unmarked tens and twenties, he'd tucked in the shed in the back yard of his Aunt Lorraine's house out in Aurora.

He'd even leased a lovely blue BMW convertible, getting a new one each year.

All that was gone, now. Seized. Impounded. Except for the coffee cans and black plastic bags of money, which he hadn't told anyone about.

After he'd been arrested, he'd never had the chance to retrieve that money. Now that he was released, he could have gotten a quick bus to Denver and dug them up, but that would have drawn attention to Aunt Lorraine, which she would not appreciate, and probably get handcuffs slapped on him again for holding back from the cops.

As for now, his pockets empty, he shuffled through the woods, finally finding his tent, undoing the zipper, thinking it wouldn't keep anyone out, bear or man, and fumbled for the overhead light.

A pair of moths danced crazily around the bulb like they were waiting for him to join them. But he had no energy now and sat on his cot and looked down at the new work boots on his feet and thought about what he might have told Winston, had he been there.

Winston Ludlow had danced into Bede's life right after high school, danced out again, and then danced in again, like a tan, bright-eyed will-o'-the-wisp with a sharp toothed smile and a penchant for romance.

The last time Winston had danced in, he'd stayed, always at Bede's side, loyal, funny. Sweet.

He was a crack shot, and didn't mind getting his hands dirty, though he always made sure his hands were groomed and clean afterwards.

In bed, Winston was confident and slow, never rushing pleasure, naked on top of the bedclothes. Afterwards, they'd smoke a clove cigarette, or maybe a little weed, the breeze drifting across them both as the sweat dried on their skin.

Sometimes Bede missed Winston so much, it blunted everything else, all feeling, all sensation, all joy.

He lost Winston in that shootout in that alley in Denver. He'd never been able to find out where the bullet that killed Winston had come from. He'd never wanted to ask, either, so as not to draw attention to himself, or give away his very earnest desire to stab the one whose hand had been on the trigger.

Winston had died alone, beneath the hands of some dumb fucking cop fucking up CPR, making Winston choke on his own blood. Bede, in handcuffs, couldn't get close enough to help. He remembered screaming, throat raw with rage, as they'd shoved him in a cop car and trundled him away.

The circle of blood around Winston's head as he lay in that alley had been a near perfect halo. Winston had been no saint in life, and in death, he surely hadn't been good enough to end up in heaven. But Bede had loved him, heart and soul, and missed him with every other breath, even when it was hard to breathe.

His heart had turned off, and with nowhere for his anger to go, mostly he just sucked it down and absorbed it. Ate it, jagged bites that cut into his soul.

And now, he was all alone, for the first time in his entire life.

Before prison, back home, there'd always been something going on, mostly drug-related. Everyone in the neighborhood knowing everyone's business.

In prison, the guards were always at you. Yelling. Shoving. Making you do stupid shit like jumping jacks in the hallway outside the cafeteria, just to show you that they were the boss of you.

But here? The tent was a small cocoon in a vast forest of darkness, and not a single soul was there to witness if he cried over Winston. He never had. And now, maybe his body had forgotten how, because he could only slump on the cot and grow more aware of the sounds beyond the canvas tent.

There was a weird scree-scree sound that he imagined might be the branches of trees, high up where the wind tossed them, brushing against each other. The sound of water from somewhere. A high, thin wailing sound that he had no idea what it was.

Then there was the smell of warm canvas cooling, oddly comforting and calming.

Slowly, he undid the laces on his boots, and then, on impulse, pulled off the new socks he'd been given.

Then, in a daze, he went out of the tent, and down the wooden steps, till his bare feet touched the earth.

The solid feel of the earth, the tickle of grass, the scrape of a leaf along the side of his foot, all of these sensations compiled together, completely different from how he'd imagined it might be while in prison.

Behind bars, in the yard, in the dining hall, you never went barefoot. He'd even had special flip-flops to wear in the shower, though it was anybody's guess where those were now.

He'd left everything behind when he'd gotten paroled. Just before he'd been escorted to the release door, he'd handed out books and socks and cigarettes and packets of Ramen with princely largess. Like it mattered at all that he should continue keeping up appearances, maintaining connections.

He'd not had very many of those connections while in prison. One of his strongest connections had been with an erstwhile cellie named Ellis. He'd gone and got himself thrown into solitary, and Bede had never seen him after that.

Bede had heard that Ellis had gone to a guest ranch to do his parole. Which, now that he thought about it, could be the guest ranch on the other side of the hill from where Bede was. But did Bede really want to open up that particular door?

His other connection had been Kell who, though still so young, had managed to pull strings in Bede's heart. He'd probably smiled his sweet smile at the parole board, flashing it around like silver, and had not only gotten Bede out of prison, but had also landed him in such a place, doing his parole. Standing barefooted in the darkness, staring up at the sky, the coolness of stars bathing him from head to toe.

What would Galen think if he saw Bede now?

Galen seemed a little uptight, maybe high strung.

He was the kind of guy who would stop at a four-way intersection at midnight, even if there was no one around. He was the kind of guy that Bede would normally have looked down his nose at, just the way Galen had looked down his nose at Bede.

And yet.

And yet they'd had a moment around the campfire when Bede had said out loud what he'd been thinking. That eating a s'more made him feel like a ten-year-old boy when the world was new and the drug world was just a flicker on the periphery of his vision.

In turn, Galen's eyes had brightened, sweetening his expression. Something shifted across his face, like he understood exactly what Bede meant beneath the words he'd actually said. And that Galen, too, had the same feeling of being a ten-year-old boy.

He'd seemed on the verge of saying something about it, but had stopped himself.

And Bede, who had been leaning in to hear what Galen had to say, had to snap himself to attention. A moment shared over a sticky summertime treat for kids did not a friendship make. Did not a connection make, even.

Except for the fact that Galen had been very brave to step between Bede and Marston and stop a fight, there was nothing between himself and a guy who walked around with an invisible stick up his ass.

Bede needed to pull himself together and keep his eyes on the prize, which was a certificate of completion at the end of summer. And however flimsy that might seem, the promise of that certificate felt like the only thing keeping him from returning to Denver and the drug trade.

Out of the woods stepped two figures. One was Kell. Bede could tell that by the chatter.

The other, by the looming height, was Marston walking Kell home, like the utterly hopelessly in love romantic that he was.

"What are you doing, Bede?" Kell called out, hurrying up to Bede, his face lit from the single bulb inside the tent. "Are you barefoot?"

Marston stopped just a half foot behind Kell, his eyes appraising Bede, though he didn't say anything.

"You can't be barefoot in prison, you know," said Bede, giving the most obvious answer, to hide everything else that he'd been feeling. "It's just something I wanted to do." If he made light of it, they would never know how much it mattered.

"Galen was asking after you," said Kell, handing Bede his jacket. "He said to bring a flashlight next time. It can get awfully dark in these woods."

"So I've learned," said Bede. His world tilted a little at the thought of Galen being worried about him, though probably he was only doing it because it was his job as team lead.

Even if there had been more to it, Bede wasn't about to go down that road. Making any kind of connection to someone who could make a single phone call and have Bede back behind bars inside of a heartbeat seemed dangerous, even if Galen did have a nice smile. Even when his cheeks flushed when he got all riled up.

With all that, there was no point in acting like he cared, and his impulse to make Galen laugh needed to be curtailed. But before he could pull on a mask to demonstrate how little he cared, Marston leaned in to kiss Kell on the cheek.

"See you in the morning," he said. And then strode off into the woods.

"Let me get a flashlight," said Kell. "Then we can take a shower."

This said as if nothing remarkable had just happened. And maybe to him, it hadn't been remarkable. Just his very tall and imposing lover kissing him goodnight, as if he was the brightest jewel in a sea of darkness. Which he was.

Taking Bede's jacket, Kell bounded up the stairs and into the tent, and came out with a flashlight and Bede's boots.

"Yeah, going barefoot's cool, but not in the dark," said Kell, sensibly. "You might slice your foot open."

Bede stifled the impulse to ruffle Kell's hair. He might be young, but he wasn't a kid.

"Lead the way," said Bede. He gathered stuff for a shower and, stepping into his boots, sockless, he pulled up the laces and tucked them inside the boots without tying them.

He followed Kell through the woods to the facilities, keeping an eye on the darkness beyond the bright beam of Kell's flashlight. Then he showered in the stall next to Kell's, then got dried off and dressed. While he waited for Kell to finish, he watched as the evening breeze took the mist over the transom and into the dark.

Back in their tent, the overhead light was still blazing and now about five moths were doing a nighttime dance.

"Oops," said Kell, as he put his flashlight away and started scooping up the moths in the palms of his hands, tossing them outside. "They'll drive us crazy, else," he said to Bede by way of explanation. "More will always come in, but it's good to keep it to a dull roar."

Bede stripped to his new white briefs, and Kell did the same, and as Kell reached for the overhead light, he smiled.

"Just like old times," Kell said.

"Yeah, except for no books," said Bede, thinking back to prison, when Kell had stood in front of him, offering up blow jobs like he did them every day, even though he was a virgin.

"There are books in the mess tent," said Kell, clicking off the light.

Fighting a lingering sense of strangeness, Bede crawled into his cot, laying his head back on the comfortable pillow with a sigh.

"I looked. I've read all those." He'd seen the small shelf of books in the mess tent, scanned the titles. Found nothing new.

"All of them?" Kell asked, his voice clear in the darkness that settled all around.

"Most of ‘em," said Bede. "I'm really not interested in how to learn chess or reading about wild birds of America."

"Ask Galen, your team lead," said Kell. "That's always a first step if there's something you need."

Bede nodded, though Kell couldn't see, and laid his hands on his chest on top of the soft sheet and blanket.

He supposed in Kell's mind that going to Marston for something he needed made sense. Bede would have to go to Galen.

He couldn't imagine asking Galen for anything, let alone for a book to read. I think John Grisham has a new one out. Can I get a copy ? Or how about something by Pat Conroy ?

Galen might say no. Or maybe he'd say yes, and would inquire about Bede's reading tastes. Or maybe he'd just order the books Bede wanted, only he'd tell Bede to put them on the bookshelf in the mess tent to share with others.

So which would be worse? Having Galen say no and turn his back? Or having Galen say yes, and then Bede would be in Galen's debt?

If prison had taught him anything, it was never to be in anyone's debt.

And then came the question: What expression would that pretty face make when Bede asked for books?

"G'night, Bede," said Kell, his voice sleepy as he turned on his side, it sounded like.

"G'night, kid," said Bede.

He lay flat on his back, the sheet kicked off, the light blanket a bundle at his feet. He breathed slowly in and out. None of this was a dream, but it felt rather dreamlike at that moment with the night settling in around him. The scree-scree of the branches. Thin wails that Bede couldn't identify.

"Coyotes," said Kell over a yawn.

Coyotes? A shiver went over Bede's skin. He was a city boy and had no experience with any of this. But Kell, who had been fearful in prison before Bede had become his bodyguard, was falling asleep. A small snore rose up from the other side of the tent.

There was nothing to fear then. Bede made himself focus on the sounds. The pattern they made. The way the coyotes wails rose and fell.

Were they singing to the moon? No, because there was no moon. Only a carpet of stars beyond the branches of the tall trees that were standing sentinel around the green canvas tent.