Walk (Gentry Boys) (2 page)

A hand touched my shoulder.  “You okay?”  Chase asked gently. 

“Yeah.”  I buckled up. 

And I was.  The years of misery and isolation were over. I was getting another chance.  Not everyone did. 

As Deck piloted the van out of the parking lot I watched the prison recede in the side view mirror.   Deck was saying something about getting me a real meal before we headed up to the valley.  It seemed like he was leaving it up to me whether to stick around and eat in Emblem or move on immediately.  Every natural instinct urged me to tell him to keep driving until we were miles away and as we approached the familiar stretch of Main Street I even shut my eyes for a second as terrible memories attacked.

Crash.  Twisted metal.  Blood. Agony. Death.  

I opened my eyes.  We were right in front of the Main Street Diner.  When Con and I were kids our family would always go eat there on birthdays, holidays, special occasions.  That was before our father died, before we ever heard the whispers that Elijah probably wasn’t our real father anyway, before our mother lost interest in being a mother.  There were a lot of family memories attached to that ordinary place.  And yet I wouldn’t be willing to set foot in there again unless bound and dragged.   

“Let’s eat somewhere outside of town,” I suggested, feeling sick about being on Main Street at all. 

“Done,” Deck said, braking at the only stoplight on the Emblem main drag. 

I didn’t want to stay here a minute longer than I had to, but I couldn’t quite leave yet either.  Haltingly, I asked Deck if he minded making one stop first.  He raised an eyebrow but nodded sadly as if he understood my reasons. 

I had to go visit her first.  I had to go visit the girl who had been my friend, my brother’s true love, and the reason why he wouldn’t have anything to do with me. 

I had to go see Erin. 

STONE

The Emblem Memorial Cemetery wasn’t a place I’d ever spent much time in.  There were some distant Gentry relatives buried here but my father, Elijah, had been cremated, his ashes scattered in the desert.  The cemetery itself had been around for well over a hundred years.  Ghosts of old west gunslingers were rumored to haunt the grounds at night.  It was just one of those stories that people pretended to believe. 

Chase seemed to know exactly where the gravesite was and admitted he’d stopped by here a few times to leave flowers for his mother.  It was only as he said it that I remembered his mother had died the day before the deadly accident.  I never knew details, other than the fact that she was a longtime drug addict, a fact which was somehow tied to her death. 

Erin’s grave was the last one in a neat row of headstones.  Some of the graves had flowers.  Most didn’t.  I wished I’d thought to stop somewhere and bring some. 

On impulse I detoured over to a raised garden bed spilling with lantana and plucked a few of the flower stems.  It wasn’t an elegant offering but at least it was something. 

Chase and Deck waited at a respectful distance as I made my way over to where Erin Rielo was buried.  Her headstone was both simple and cruel.  Simple, as it included only her name with the dates of her birth and death.  Cruel, because the years they spanned weren’t enough, not nearly enough.  She was seventeen when she died. 

Gently I laid the flowers down and kneeled. There were no other flowers but a small wooden cross had been stuck in the damp grass beside the headstone.  From it hung a short chain with a crystal at the end.  The crystal caught a ray of light and reflected on the glossy black surface of Erin’s final monument.  I didn’t know who had put the crystal and cross there or why.  A local friend most likely.  Erin’s father and two sisters had left town several years ago, to try to process their grief somewhere else and put their lives back together.  And Chase was pretty sure that Conway had not set foot in Emblem in over four years.

“Hey, pretty girl,” I whispered.  My throat felt suddenly raw.  “I don’t know what the rules are or if you can hear me wherever you might be now.  I just wanted to come by and say that I miss you.”  A single tear rolled down my cheek.  I didn’t bother to wipe it away.  “So here I am, to say hello and to make you a promise.  A promise about Conway.” 

It was Con we’d been searching for that evening as we drove around Emblem in a car we had no right to be in.  He’d stumbled away from us in pain and grief, believing we had betrayed him.  Even though I’d thought of Erin every day I’d always kept the details of the rest of that night at arm’s length. I couldn’t avoid them any longer.

My brother and I had fought that morning.  He’d been a little off center lately but at the time I just chalked it up to our mother’s increasing hostility, especially towards him.  We only had one more year left of high school and then I would do whatever I had to do to get him out of that toxic place.  The fight wasn’t our usual kind of brotherly tussle though.  I almost fell right the fuck over when he accused me of messing around with his girl.  Erin.  The girl next door.  The girl he’d been in love with for years.  The one girl I would never ever touch for any reason beyond friendship. 

As stunned as I was, I still figured he would cool off in a few hours.  Then and now, there was nothing on earth I wouldn’t do for Conway.  He had to know that.  He had to.  That’s what I told myself.  That’s why I didn’t follow him. 

Then Erin came to me, reeling and distraught because she’d also had a terrible fight with Con.  I was still trying to calm her down when I committed a fatal kindness.  I kissed her on the forehead.  There was nothing to it; just a gentle reassurance from a friend.  But in a tragedy that’s been played millions of times the world over, my brother saw.  And he thought he was seeing something else. 

“Damn you both to hell,” Conway had sobbed and indeed to hell we had been damned.  Even as we set off to find him and make him understand I didn’t believe we were at a critical point.  I thought everything would be okay. I knew it would.  After all, we were Stone and Con.  We were the Gentry brothers.

As it turned out I didn’t know a fucking thing.   

I was driving.  The car, technically stolen because we had taken it without permission, belonged to Erin’s father. Witnesses said I’d been drag racing with crazy Benny Cortez. 

That hell raising punk Stone Gentry raced around in a stolen car with a depraved indifference that cost a young girl her life.
 

So simple, and so awful. 

But sometimes what seems to be true isn’t really.  The kid, Benny Cortez, had pulled up alongside us, teasing, goading, when we were stopped on Main Street, trying to figure out where to search for Conway next.  As I accelerated and tried to steer the car away from him, Benny cut me off and somehow I lost control.  I remembered spinning, and rolling, and the gruesome jolt of a crash so powerful that for a few seconds I thought my soul must have shaken loose from my body. 

When I looked across to the passenger seat I realized immediately it wasn’t
my
soul that had been lost.  Even now, four years later, I couldn’t stand to flash back to what I’d seen in that terrible second.  I didn’t want to remember her that way.  She’d died on impact.  That never made it any easier to bear. 

“I promise you,” I whispered passionately to her grave, “that I’m going to find him, Erin.  Whatever it takes, whatever I have to do, I’m going to help our boy heal. Conway won’t be lost.  I swear.” 

Chase had always been the one I’d handed my letters to.  He had always been the one to answer my questions about what was going on in my brother’s life.  After a while though Chase became more hesitant about answering.  Deck had taken Con into his home and forced him to finish high school but by that time Con was already on a downward spiral.  Always the smart one in the family, he should have been college bound.  Instead, he descended into a world of street racing, gang affiliations, and drug dealing, all in the company of a constant stream of women he used and then discarded.  He’d done several sixty-day bits at the jail in Maricopa County for minor offenses and so far he’d been lucky not to pull down a serious sentence.  At this point it seemed a likely bet he’d wind up either dead or incarcerated for a long time. 

For four years my brother hadn’t answered a single letter or initiated any contact. Even as it stung I couldn’t totally fault him for withdrawing, even for self-destructing. Erin was his world.  Losing her so brutally had destroyed him.  Maybe if I’d been around all this time I could have done something.  At least I could have made him understand that the people he loved and trusted had never betrayed him.  I could have helped him, somehow.  

But I hadn’t been around. 

Not my choice, but that didn’t make a fucking difference and there was nothing I could do about it now but try to pick up the pieces of what was left.  Con was a man these days, not a boy.  He’d been making his own way, shitty as it was, for quite some time and probably didn’t welcome input from someone he’d long since rejected as a brother.  But I owed it to him to try, no matter the cost.  I owed it to Erin. 

I kissed two fingers and touched them to her gravestone.  As a gentle wind stirred I thought I heard the soft sigh of a young girl inside of it. 

Goodbye my friend. 

When I rejoined Deck and Chase I had nothing to say.  I walked between them as we left the cemetery.  Neither of them commented on the tears that weren’t quite gone from my eyes. 

What I wouldn’t have given to unravel the spool of time and restore Erin to the world she belonged in.  The universe doesn’t offer such deals though.  It just looks on with cold indifference at the mess me make for ourselves. 

Once we were on the road and out from the specter of Emblem the mood lightened.  I found myself looking out the window with a child’s wonder at the things I would never have noticed if they hadn’t been kept from me all this time. 

Here, an errant pocket of wildflowers growing beside the road.  There, a gas station crowded with people going about their mundane routines.  It was all ordinary.  It was all beautiful. 

Deck yawned a few times and Chase teased him about being a tired old timer. 

“I’m not fucking old,” Deck growled, glaring at our cousin in the rearview mirror. “I was trying to give Jen a break so I took the whole night shift with Isabella.  You try being all sunny and cheerful after endless hours of pacing up and down the hallway with a colicky infant clutched to your chest.” 

“Been there, done that,” Chase scoffed.  “Derek didn’t sleep more than two hours at a time his whole first year and Kellan’s only peaceful place on earth was located on my right shoulder.  So yeah, I know everything about bottles of pumped breast milk, sleepless nights and the ever-present stain of spit up on every shirt I own.”

Deck snorted.  “You want a trophy, Chase?”

“If you’ve got one lying around, sure.” 

Deck produced a quarter and tossed it to the backseat.  “There.  You’ll get another one after the new baby gets here.” 

I swiveled around to look at Chase.  “You’re having another kid?”

He beamed.  “Yeah, Steph’s almost five months along.  Due in January.”

“That’s great, man,” I said and meant it. 

I knew from the way he talked about his family that Chase was utterly devoted to his wife and sons.  He was also a high school teacher who felt passionately about going the extra mile for his students. 

Deck had managed to pull some strings so that I didn’t have to live in a halfway house like most newly released inmates.  There was a room waiting for me at an apartment belonging to one of Chase’s former students, along with a temporary job.  I’d be setting up rented chairs and tables for parties around the Phoenix area. Although I couldn’t be sure, I could guess that not all convicts were so lucky. 

Deck finally stopped when we were in Queen Creek, far outside the limits of Emblem.  He pulled into the parking lot beside a modest diner that advertised ‘Best Chili Fries in the Valley’. 

While the guys found a table I visited the men’s room to change into some of the clothes Creed’s wife had sent.  Someone must have been able to give her a good idea about sizes because the jeans and black polo shirt fit perfectly.  When I passed the mirror I was a little startled to find the guy staring back was not wearing a prison-issued jumpsuit.  A small thing, just one of the many changes I would get need to get used to. 

I rejoined my cousins and ordered a hamburger from a tired waitress in a turquoise uniform.  Chase and Deck bantered back and forth as I looked around and noticed them, all of them. 

People.  People just going about an unremarkable day.  A family with three kids chowing down on their meals and laughing.  A pair of elderly men with coffee cups and a deck of cards.  A young woman sitting alone, staring wistfully out the window. 

She got my attention.  To most men she probably wasn’t beautiful, more petite and cute than flat out sexy.  However, I hadn’t seen too many good-looking women over the past four years so this one was definitely worth looking at.  She balled up her napkin with a sigh and then stared at an untouched slice of chocolate cake sitting on the opposite side of the table.  She frowned.  Maybe she’d been waiting on someone who never showed.  Maybe she was just getting off work.  Her crisp white blouse, gray skirt and heels weren’t casual. 

The girl fidgeted, perhaps sensing my eyes on her.  I looked away before she could notice my stare.  Even after all this time I still had a sense about women and this one was obviously the type who came from clean living.  If she knew she was being checked out by a guy who was sleeping in a prison cell last night she probably wouldn’t be too excited. 

Then the waitress brought our food so I had something else to do besides stare hungrily at strange women. Prison food wasn’t quite as terrible as the movies made it seem but it was nothing compared to the first bite of a freshly grilled hamburger. 

“Good?” Chase asked with a grin.  

I nodded and finished that sucker in three more swallows while Deck talked about practical things like the apartment I’d be staying in, rent prepaid for three months by Deck himself, and the job I’d be reporting to tomorrow. 

“I would have really preferred if you stayed with us,” he said, looking troubled, “but Jen and I figured you wouldn’t want to be kept up all hours by a crying baby.  Sorry about that, man.” 

I stared at him with some surprise.  Deck had already done so much for me.  I didn’t know why he would ever think it hadn’t been enough.  When I told him so his dark eyes fastened on me intently and he seemed on the verge of saying something but then changed his mind and started eating his food. 

“You know,” announced Chase, “our ladies are really keen on throwing you some kind of ‘Get Out of Prison’ party but we asked them to give you a few days to regroup.” 

“I’d like that,” I said earnestly and I meant it. 

The girl I’d been staring at left some money on her table and stood up to leave.  I saw her glance casually around the restaurant but her gaze didn’t linger on anyone in particular.  As I watched her walk briskly to the exit, heels clacking the whole way, I felt the stirring of a deep hunger that hadn’t been satisfied in a hell of a long time.  From what I’d heard, most convicts spent their first hours of freedom searching for a soft piece of flesh to exercise with.  It was a tempting idea.  But there were no women eagerly waiting around to hear from me.  Even if I found one willing to lie down for while it wouldn’t mean more than a sweaty workout, ironically something I had no problem with before I was locked up.  Maybe that was why I didn’t seriously consider it. There was something distasteful about the idea of moving backwards.