A Life Lost
Lindsey Saya
Atop a hill, they lie in a bed of cool grass.
He watches great cloud formations sail across the sky. He imagines them cottony pirate ships, masterless and untamed. He tells her he will be a captain of his own ship one day, that he will discover the wide-eyed wonders of the world and the mysteries they hold. He tells her if she is good he’ll consider taking her with him. She crinkles her nose and shoots him a glare before she thumps his arm. He rubs his flesh, exaggerating his pain.
“You’re definitely not going now,” he says.
The breeze carries off their guffaws as if to share them with the world. He feels the weight of her head rest against his shoulder. It comforts him. They hold hands, their fingers entangled. One of her fingers stretches out and points at another sailing cloud-ship. She says it’s more of a floating city than a ship. She says she is the queen of that city, the most beautiful queen that has ever existed. She tells him that if he’s good, she’ll let him be her jester. He looks at her as she speaks. He witnesses the gentle contours of her face. Her body rests among the forest of lemony blades that seem to hold her up. She is still talking. About what, he’s not quite sure anymore. He’s too focused on her lips. He notices every detail, every thin groove, their ruddy hue—like a desert sunset. Lovely hills worthy of pilgrimage, he thinks. He reaches over and tenderly wipes away a strand of hair that lolls across her face.
“Are you listening?” she says.
“No.” He smiles.
Thump.
He rubs his arm again.
A wind breathes over them, tousling her brown hair.
The world is a kind place, he thinks, and he is fortunate to live in it.
“Watching cloud-ships and floating cities?”
“Yeah, until we’re old and gray and we hunch over, until our faces are wrinkled and spotted. Until everything on our bodies hangs awkwardly, and we begin to forget things and names and people, but never each other.” She rolls onto her side, propping her head with her hand, gazing at him, threads of brown hair brushing across her tilted grin.
He looks at her. “You’d get tired of me,” he says as he tucks his hands under his head and resumes peering at the blue infinite above him and the white ships that glide across.
“Would you?” she asks.
He turns his gaze toward her and sits up. In his hand is a yellow wildflower he’s picked. Carefully, he places it just above her ear. “Never.”
Her eyes glimmer in the sun like two chocolate hard-candies.
“You’re going to marry me one day,” he says.
“I am?” she teases, her lips curling into a grin.
“Yes, we’ll get married on this hill, even. And you’ll give me children, and we’ll live on a boat with our two boys—”
“Girls.”
“Boy and girl. And we’ll see the world and have adventures together, forever.”
The sun drifts low now, inching toward dusk’s tired light, a soft caress against their bodies. She plucks a handful of grass and tosses it at him as if it were confetti. She smirks. And in that sinking warmth, in that soft breeze, she brings her body close to him and presses her lips against his. “I love you, Alex,” she says.
The scent of orange blossoms and lilacs rises off of her, tiptoeing into his nostrils. There in that embrace, in that kiss, in that dying light, as he loses himself in those glossy, brown orbs, uncharted planets meant to be explored, he decides he will propose to her, his Elena.
That night when the moon is high, Alex sits in his car across the street from a pawn shop. It’s an old, grungy pawn shop with barred windows and a steel grate that comes down at closing time. Above the pawn shop’s doors hangs a neon sign that reads OPEN, its violet glow splashing across the street.
Alex sits there, his clammy hands wiping away beads of sweat gathering on his brow. He stares at a bulky revolver lying on the passenger seat. It’s wrapped, half-heartedly, in a blue, oil stained handkerchief. Alex borrowed the gun from Ed, a friend from work, the kind of friend that subscribes to Soldier of Fortune. Alex told Ed he needed the gun for protection. That’s all it took.
The gun lies there as if staring at Alex, making him feel uneasy, the sweat building up on his forehead. He bites his lip and feels dirty thinking of what he’s going to do. He hates what he’s going to do. He also hates buying a single rose on Valentine’s Day for Elena instead of a dozen. He hates not being able to take her to the glitzy, showy restaurants her friends go to. Even though she always kisses him on the cheek and says she doesn’t care. He hates that she is content to ride without shame in his dented-in, sputtering Oldsmobile. He works every day till his feet throb with pain, and still, he can’t afford the ring she deserves, not that she’d care. And that’s why she deserves it, he thinks. He grabs that heavy gun, and tells himself, “For her.” He takes in a deep shuddering breath and reminds himself that the gun isn’t loaded. He vows that when it’s done, he’ll make it up for what he’s going to do.
The clerk smiles wide when Alex enters the pawn shop. That smile melts away when Alex aims the revolver at him. The clerk holds his hands up high. He trembles, sweat escaping the thin strands of hair on his balding head. A finger-smudged display case separates the two men. In it are hundreds of rings: gilded rings, silver rings, diamond rings, rings with jewels of colors that span every hue, ornate and whorled.
Alex points a nervous finger at a modest bouillon circlet. The clerk places it on the countertop. It’s a simple golden band, gleaming warmly like fire. It’s perfect, Alex thinks. This thought distracts him for a moment. The clerk lunges for the gun. They fight and yank, wrestling like wild dogs scrapping over a bone, grunting and exerting every effort in their tensed-up muscles. The gun digs into Alex’s tight grasp, his fingers burning. He feels the gun slipping, the clerk gaining ground, seconds from ripping it away. With the remaining strength left in his body, Alex shoves the clerk, wresting the pistol from his grip.
Bang!
And then it’s over. It happens as fast as it began.
Alex can’t close his eyes, can’t stop looking at the clerk’s slumped body, the way he cries out, and reaches for his spine, where a thick, dark stain soaks through his shirt. Tears carve their path down Alex’s face, his chest swelling with panic.
“It wasn’t supposed to be loaded. It wasn’t supposed to be loaded,” he chants when the authorities arrive.
Alex learns from his public defender that the clerk lives, though he’ll never walk again.
When the trial begins, it takes three days for the jury to find Alex guilty. The clerk and his family ask for the maximum sentence.
Alex can’t look them in the eyes: the clerk slouched in a wheelchair, his wife and young daughter, and the clerk’s father. Alex’s lawyer tells him his judge is lenient. Alex receives a twenty-year sentence. The clerk’s family is outraged. His wife wails out in protest. The father, an older man with white whiskers standing beside the clerk’s wife, hurls threats at Alex, howls at the judge that it isn’t enough. The bailiffs walk Alex out of the courtroom. Before the door closes behind him, he sees Elena sitting alone, her mascara streaming in little wet lines down her flushed cheeks. Her eyes, red-rimmed, seem a thousand miles away.
Alex is twenty years old.
Alex stands in a large circle of men. In its center is a single guard. They are told to strip.
“Nuts and butts, gentlemen, nuts and butts,” the guard barks.
The floor is cold against his bare feet. Everyone, himself included, turns his naked backs toward the guard. They all bend forward and begin to cough. When he’s done, Alex cups his genitals and stares at the dark concrete floor.
The man next to him is bald with a scraggly white beard. A crow is tattooed across the front of his neck, the black wings stretching ear to ear. The crow-man looks at him with a sick kind of grin.
“First time, huh,” says the red, cracked lips above the crow. His voice is rough as if it’s been dragged across sandpaper. “Don’t worry. You get used to it.”
Used to it. Will he ever get used to it? Alex wonders.
A short, heavy guard carrying a large, brown box walks to the center of the circle joining the other guard. He sets the box on the floor and yanks out bundles of bright orange clothing and flings them to each naked man. Alex reaches for the pile of rags lying at his feet. He hesitates then slides on each garment. His sight lingers on the solid black DOC printed across his shirt and pants. He’s orange from head to toe: shirt, pants, and sandals. He’s given a roll of toilet paper, a piss-yellow bed sheet, and a stiff, black blanket, tattered and neatly folded.
Forty minutes later Alex is marched into a grey building where a hundred hungry eyes burn him up. Faces—with their twisted-up sneers, glowering, scowling, rigid, some hidden behind a smear of black tattoos—all pressed against the scratched plexiglass of their solid-metal cell doors. Their brutal voices flood the building with savagery. They spit out taunts and threats and curses, banging and kicking at their doors. Alex makes eye contact with no one, just keeps on moving, holding his head down until he stops in front of a metal door.
He enters his cell for the first time. His cellmate is a giant, something between a man and a bear, round. The kind of round hiding two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, the kind of round Alex doesn’t want to upset. The giant introduces himself as Smiley.
“Ever been in?” asks the giant, his words heavy and deep.
Alex looks up and shakes his head no.
“Doin’ time is easy. Just follow the rules. Don’t get into debts. And if anyone steps to you, you bust their fucking head in. Real easy. You’ll be fine,” Smiley reassures. Not once does he smile.
Alex squeezes past Smiley and crawls up the steel ladder onto the top bunk. He stares at each pock-marked cinderblock wall, runs his hand across their dimples. How many hands have dragged across these walls? How many years have they stood? How many souls—desperate and lost—have hoped for these walls to crumble into dust? He thinks of how many years he will hope for the same thing in this sterile-white painted cell, a happy white as if to disguise its true nature, as if to prevent its guests from going insane.
Alex will come to know many long nights. The first, however, is the longest. Eventually, he cries himself to sleep.
He wakes to the sound of a strident voice clamoring through the entire building.
“Chow time, chow time, prepare for chow,” the voice booms on a loudspeaker.
He pulls the cover off his head and sees Smiley. The big man’s imperious eyes have a stranglehold on him.
“Some of us ain’t going home,” Smiley says. “You got yourself a bit of time, lil’ homie, I get it, but only the strong survive in here, and I ain’t talking ‘bout muscles.” Smiley doesn’t say anything for a moment, as if to let his words dominate the room. “I don’t ever want to hear you cry again.”
The metal door cracks open with a loud pop. Smiley doesn’t wait for a response; he just turns and walks away.
Four weeks into his sentence, Alex sees a man get beaten and stabbed to death. It happens in the chow line: two men, death in their eyes, come at him, each holding shanks. His heart bounces inside his chest. Without knowing it, he holds his breath. They’re coming for him. But he’s followed all the rules, kept to himself. Why? Alex thinks he will die, he hears an awful wail that turns into a labored gasp. He’s surprised it’s not his own but the man ahead of him. He realizes it’s the man with the crow tattooed on his neck. Crow-man lies in a heap, his eyes wide open and empty, his face spattered with blood.
None of the other cons react. Alex steps over the corpse as if it were a pile of trash left on the sidewalk. He never asked the crow-man his name. In the end, he guesses, it never really mattered.
Just follow the rules.
Alex writes to Elena every day. His letters are filled with words of longing and heartache and of how much he needs her. Two months crawl by and not a single letter with her name on it arrives.
He is allowed to bathe four times a week, on rec days. He takes long showers, as long as the hot water lasts anyway. He finds a strange kind of solace in all that steam. It’s the one place he can be alone. The hot water drubs against his back, and he thinks, it isn’t supposed to be this way. He’s supposed to be with her on that big green hill, a golden circle around her finger, the wind at their backs, and the whole world ahead of them. His tears coalesce with the water. All evidence of weakness is washed away. In that wet, steamy cloud he begs God for forgiveness and makes promises he can’t keep. Then the water runs cold against his flesh.
He gets her first letter on a Friday. He’s three months in.
Dear Alex,
I’m sorry I haven’t written. I just don’t know what to say. It’s no excuse. I know. I miss you so much. I think of you during the nights, when I’m alone in bed, when the moon peeks through the window. Can you see the moon at night? Do you have a window?
Why did you have to do something so stupid?! So selfish! I get so angry with you sometimes. I guess, maybe, that’s why I haven’t written.
Are you okay? Is it ugly in there? Are you safe? Have you made friends?
You asked why I haven’t gone to visit you. I guess I just can’t bring myself to see you in a place like that. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry with me. I’ll write to you every day from now on. I promise.
Alex, I will always be here for you. I love you.
Forever Yours,
Elena
P.S. I’ve sent you a photo. So you’ll never forget me.
His eyes clutch onto the tiny image of her, the white sundress she wears, her tan shoulders poking out, a yellow wildflower tucked above her ear. His thumb gently rubs across her face. She is smiling. He catches a brief scent of orange blossoms and lilacs. It is the first and last picture she ever sends.
Alex is twenty-six and he doesn’t cry anymore.
His knuckles often hurt. They are scarred and gnarled. He lost his first fight, lost his second and third too, but he won his respect. Something he knows holds more value in the joint than anything, more than dope, even. Aching knuckles is a small price to pay. These days, though, he doesn’t lose fights.
His body is lean and muscular. He runs three miles every day. On days when he feels too tired to finish, he sees her waiting for him at the end of the finish line, where she cheers him on, beckoning him in. Just as he arrives—panting away—she disappears, a cruel mirage.
He trains his body relentlessly twice a day. Pull-ups, pushups, squats, dips. Pull-ups, pushups, squats, dips. Every day. Pull-ups. Pushups. Squats. Dips. He thinks of her when he trains. He tells himself it’s for her, tells himself that he has to look perfect, that if he looks good enough, she’ll take him back when he gets out.
He often reflects on his work at a cannery, packing tin cylinders full of green beans ten hours a day. It was long, hard work. Once he’d crushed his hand in one of the automated machines. For weeks his fat, red hand looked like a tumorous mound. He’d cursed his way home that day, vowing to quit. He hated that cannery, the smell of it, the heat of it, the way it wore away at his youth, but the money was decent, and for a high school dropout from a broken home that was all you could hope for. Now, he digs ditches on the prison grounds for twenty-five cents an hour. He barely makes enough money to buy soap and toothpaste. He often misses the cannery.
His only solace is found in a small gravel corner, at the far end of the rec yard, away from the pull-up bars and the sit-up stations and the nodded-out junkies and grouped up tough guys with their bald heads and stony glares. There, in that place, a rosebush grows just inside the chain-link fence that separates the world from the animals inside it. It is a rare sight for the cons, though no one seems to notice. But Alex does. Every spring he waits for its gravid buds to bloom yellow, like canaries freed from some enchanted slumber whose majesty cannot be contained. Some days, when the air is warm and the blossoms full, he feels the softness of those petals and relishes the taste of their scent. He makes a habit of visiting the rosebush in the evenings, when he walks the yard, if only for a few minutes. He doesn’t deserve such rapture, he tells himself.
In autumn, when the world turns yellow and rusted, as Alex watches the last buttery petal—withered and decayed—fall into the wind, he feels a murmur of sadness within himself.
Nothing beautiful ever lasts.
Her letters come every day at first, just like she said they would, always signed: Love you, Elena. And then every day becomes once a week, once a week becomes once a month, once a month becomes once a year. And one day her signature becomes Your friend, Elena. That is how he knows that she has found someone else.
His name is Gavin, a marine. He imagines Gavin tall with blond hair decimated by a crew cut, imagines him handy with tools, knowing his way around a car engine. He’s everything Alex isn’t. But is Gavin as tough? Are his knuckles as strong and tested? Can Gavin run like him? Hurt like him? Suffer like him? Love like him?
He sees her letter lying on his bunk. It’s been five hundred and fifty days, give or take, since the last one.
Dear Alex,
How are you? Good I hope. Happy belated birthday by the way! Bet you thought I forgot, huh? I’m sorry I didn’t send a card. You send me one every year … I guess I’m a bad friend.
As for me, I’m doing okay. I’m almost done with nursing school. I really do love it. Right now, mainly, I just poke dummies with needles and take temperatures from sick kids, but I think I might’ve found my calling. I figure if I keep at it I’ll be a doctor in no time. How’s that sound, huh? Sounds just fine to me. Me and the girls from the office went to the best New Year’s Eve party. There was so much glitter and champagne. We all danced like crazy women, twirling and laughing. Abbey got sick, threw-up everywhere. You used to love New Year’s Eve so much.
Can you believe it? I got to see the Pacific! We took a trip over the summer. When the sun sets over the ocean, Alex, it’s so beautiful. Everything goes red, the horizon, the water, the sky. You would have loved it. You would have been at home there. You were going to be a sea captain once, remember? And you, Alex, how do you spend your days?
Till next time.
Your friend,
Elena
He thinks on that last question. He finds that he’s no longer looking at the words in the letter but his own hands and the pallid scars twisting across his knuckles. He lets the letter go, tracing each jagged line on his fist, little white veins, coarse against his fingertips.
Sometimes Alex dreams of the ocean, of sailing across its white swells, where he listens to its crashing breath, its heartbeat. He feels the salty air sweeping across his sunburnt face. His boat is small and rickety, the wood full of moans and groans. He dreams of warm Pacific waters. He dreams of chasing the sun, at dusk, across that blue expanse. He dreams.
Alex is thirty when the riot happens.
It’s summer, and the sun boils high above, a pot of scalding water pouring over the world. The prison grounds are a sea of orange, the cons a swarm of ants ready to envelop and devour. Loudspeakers clamor away, demanding the surrender of every inmate. Sharpshooters position themselves atop the guard towers, their scopes glaring in the sun, searching for a target.
He feels the moment coming as if watching a long fuse dwindling away. Once that fuse is gone: Boom!
He’s not even sure why they’re rioting. Some con says, “It’s so those no-good-pigs know that they can’t treat us like dogs anymore.” They tell each other it’s a fight against cruelty, corruption, oppression, against shitty food, and maybe a way to get better cable channels. On the outside, he’s prepared to raze it all to the ground. On the inside, Alex is laughing; he’s laughing.
Some puny con, bald-headed, holding a lock-in-sock, says, “They’re gonna finally learn that we don’t deserve any of their bullshit. We don’t deserve it.”
Alex is still laughing on the inside when he says, “We’re all guilty, aren’t we?”
Baldy doesn’t seem to get it. “They got it coming.”
And just as all hell breaks loose, Alex thinks, we all got it coming.
The air swells with smoke, war cries, gunfire, and concussion grenades exploding. The inmates are like a wild tribe, their tattoos esoteric etchings, war paint. They wear their ragged shirts across their faces and charge through clouds of mace and tear gas, some of them gagging, choking, spitting so that the veins in their necks rise up. They tear at the fences and set fires to their own beds piled high. They murder and they ravage, setting free the hell that rages in them. It is all unleashed hate, chaos beyond any reasoning. It is a savage display. Everywhere there is flame and smoke and screams of unrepentant violence.
Somewhere in that smoky mass, Alex does his part, wondering what he has become.
There is a guard at his feet, his eyes rolled back. Alex stares at the guard through the gray wisps of smoke, his fists throbbing with pain. He wonders if he’s killed him, wonders why he cares when he’s killed before.
He had killed a man over being too loud.
That angry convict had the words fuck the world tattooed across his forehead, and he didn’t like being told he was loud. Disrespectful, he called it. And that’s why Alex killed him—over respect. That’s why Alex remembers the sticky warmth of blood on his skin, the hot stench of it. That day he hated that dead convict for not backing down, for making Alex do it.
Now Alex wants to yell, wants to wash the red streaks from his hands, wants to kill the man again.
The guard’s eyes twitch open.
Without realizing it, Alex releases the breath he’s been holding and his balled-up fists slacken. He never wanted to be a killer. No one ever does. He hears a gunshot slice through the air. It feels like a punch to the gut. By the time he looks down, a wet, warm stain spreads across his shirt.
He topples over.
The smoke clears enough for him to see a blue sky. A fleet of mountainous clouds, unfettered and wonderful, traversing an open sea. All sound dissipates. All he can hear is the sound of his own slowing, raspy breath. His eyelids feel heavy. He forces them to stay open, forces them to behold sky eternal, floating cities and sailing cloud-ships. He hears her laugh. And, finally, his eyes close.
When he wakes, there are no clouds, just a stone-grey ceiling. He feels a respirator crowding his nostrils, sees a webbing of IVs in his arm. He was almost free from it all.
The bullet tore through his stomach, stopping inches from his spine. He spends five months in the medical ward before he hits the yard again. By that time everything is back to normal. Nothing’s changed. Three officers and four inmates died, and a few buildings burned, but nothing changed. Except, maybe, him. He walks with a slight limp now. He is told he’s lucky to have survived, lucky that he can walk. He thinks of the clerk bleeding out in the pawn shop, wonders if he ever made it out of that wheelchair.
One day, on a whim, he decides to call her.
He sits at the phone bank outside. It’s cold. He can feel winter on his back. His fingers shiver as he dials. Each ring is forever. On the third she accepts.
“Hey,” he says with a softness in his voice he thought he had forgotten.
“Alex, how are you?”
“Good.”
Alex hears other people laughing. Elena is not alone.
“Elena,” a man says in the background, “it’s your turn.”
“In a sec,” she hollers back.
“You’re busy,” Alex says.
“We have friends over.”
“Oh.”
His thoughts linger on the man’s voice. It’s Gavin.
“Alex, are you okay? Is everything okay?”
He thinks of the man he killed; he thinks of his aching knuckles; he thinks of the fires and the screams of the riot; he thinks of barbed wire fences and long nights; he thinks of apathetic guards with their black combat boots; he thinks of concrete walls and the clerk and his own limp.
“Everything’s okay,” he says.
“Elena, it’s your turn!” Gavin yells again.
“You’d better go,” he says.
“Alex,” she says.
He can hear her shuffling into another room, the voices in the background fading. “Gavin and I … we’re getting married.”
“Oh, congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she says. “I think it’s best if you don’t call anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Take care of yourself.”
He waits for her to say something else, anything. All he hears is the phone’s harsh click.
He shouldn’t have called.
Alex is thirty-five years old and plays chess with Smiley in their cell. He moves a rook across the board when the cell door pops open. In steps a guard, a letter in his hand. Alex recognizes the blue scrawls on the envelope before he reaches for it. Elena. He places the letter on his bunk with care as is if it were fragile, as if it might fall apart before he has a chance to read it. Years have crumbled away since he last heard from her.
He resumes his game, his queen taken by a rook. He loses. With a simple gesture, he tips his plastic king over.
Later, he sits on his bunk, holding the letter in his hands, staring at her blue name for a moment before he rips it open.
Dear Alex,
How do you find yourself? Healthy and with high spirits, I hope, as high as they can be, I guess.
You’re wondering why I’m writing to you; I know. I guess I’ve just been thinking about you is all. I have two boys now. Gavin Jr. is four, and Eli is one, so much for girls. They keep me busy, my little monsters.
Gavin and I, we’re … well, things aren’t what I expected they would be. We argue a lot, about money, mainly. You don’t get rich being a nurse, I guess. I thought I’d be a doctor by now, but things didn’t work out. It doesn’t matter anymore. And Gavin, he’s had a tough time adjusting and finding work since coming back from overseas. Sometimes he has nightmares. He wakes the children with his screams. I try to get him to talk, but it just leads to him yelling. I had to take him to the hospital. He put his fist through a window. I wonder if his anger was something he brought back with him, or if it was always there. Sometimes, Alex, I feel so trapped, like my life is a prison.
I’m sorry. I often wonder what you look like now. I imagine you boyish still. Alex, the reason I’m writing is that I want to come to see you. Why now, after all this time? I don’t have an answer. I will be there on the 1st of next month. I will see you then.
Elena
A day after reading Elena’s letter, Alex pays a visit to the con that works in the property unit, a lanky kid. After some haggling, Alex gets his mitts and a new set of prison clothes. It costs him a bag of coffee, the good stuff. He pays another guy a box of crackers to clean his shoes. He places his outfit neatly underneath his mattress the night before. By morning it will be as flat as a sheet of paper.
He wakes up before sunrise. For the first time since he began his stormy voyage, he feels a flutter of excitement. After a hot shower, he shaves. He stares at his reflection in a mirror, wondering when so many crow’s feet took residence underneath his eyes. He examines every wrinkle. He stretches his face, trying to find some semblance of youth, pulling his skin in every direction, as if to set it in place.
He dons his new, carefully creased clothes, bright and orange, slips on his pale white sneakers, and sits on his bed and waits.
Hours float by. Eleven o’clock comes, and still, he waits. Time trundles on; hours trundle on. The hours and time, he knows them well, knows how the hours are like executioners repeating their duty over and over and over and over.
Afternoon comes and goes, and still, he waits. Visitation for the day is over.
That night in a pool of blue moonlight, he lies in bed. After fifteen years of forgetting what it is to weep, he permits a single wet bead to roll across his cheek. Through a sliver of plexiglass, he sees a swollen moon and wonders if she sees it too.
Like ash in a gust of wind, four years are swept away since the day Elena was supposed to visit him.
In the spring, when the rosebush has started to bloom its yellow bulbs and the bees are buzzing and the bugs are rising up from their caves, he meets the kid.
The kid has one of those faces one can’t help but like, jovial. He’s skinny and freckled, timid at first, but once he gets going he’s got a one-liner for everything.
He likes the kid, admires the kid, who is so full of life, who somehow has managed to deflect the misery of those walls. He almost wishes he could be the kid.
“He’s a rat,” Smiley tells him one day. “You’re close to him.”
Alex knows what that means.
He is thirty-nine years old. A few streaks of gray stain his hair. He’s not as lean anymore, and his limp has gotten worse.
Just follow the rules.
Nineteen years he’s followed the rules. Nineteen years he’s been doing this shit, nineteen years too long.
There’s something about the kid that reminds him of who he used to be, once. A hopefulness.
The kid wants to be an actor. We all want to be something, Alex thinks. But he’s a rat. Maybe the kid didn’t know any better. A mistake. We’ve all made mistakes. We all deserve a chance to make it right, don’t we?
Alex has a year to go. One year and it’s all over.
He knows what will happen if he doesn’t follow through.
That night he has a dream.
She stands on top of a towering green hill. Behind her is a massive azure sky filled with gold-rimmed clouds marching by. She calls to him.
He’s at the base of the hill. She seems so far away. Suddenly, the sky is enveloped by a great shadow. Heaven becomes a storm. The wind whips and roars its terror.
He runs up the hill. His pace quickens, faster and faster as he nears the top. The blades of grass that brush against his feet, suddenly, feel like mud. They become hands, clasping at his ankles. She’s calling … calling. He can’t wrest away. The hill seems to go on forever. He stretches out his hand to her. Grass-tentacles wrap around his wrist, his torso, his legs, his neck; squeezing until he is dragged into the earth, into the dirt, into a grave, and then darkness.
After morning chow, they wait for Alex in his cell, three of them: Smiley, and two other cons that look more like tree trunks with arms and legs.
“He’s gone,” Smiley says without so much as a blink.
“Who?” Alex says.
“You know who,” Smiley says.
“He must’ve caught wind.”
“What did you do?” Smiley’s voice drops, and his words come out sharp.
Alex waited until breakfast when he knew everyone in his cellblock would be in the chow hall. That was when he yanked the kid into the laundry room, a cramped room where the din of dirty clothes washing rumbled and tumbled.
“What do you mean I have to go?” The kid’s eyes trembled.
“They know,” Alex told him.
“Know what?” The kid played dumb, but the crack in his voice gave him away.
“They know and they’re gonna kill you,” Alex said. “Go to the guards. Tell them you don’t feel safe. They’ll put you in protective custody. But you gotta do it now.”
“I’m scared.”
He placed a hand on the kid’s shoulder, something a father might do.
“I used to be too,” he consoled. “Listen, you’re a short timer. You’ll be home soon. Make something of yourself, will ya. Be an actor or something. Just don’t come back here.”
“I won’t.”
Now, Smiley and the other cons take turns stomping and kicking Alex. It takes seconds for his face to swell. His countenance runs scarlet. They shatter femurs and crack ribs. Alex moans out but never screams. Most of the damage is done by Smiley, his old celly, his old mentor. Maybe that’s why he’s still alive. Because he knows he shouldn’t be.
For weeks his jaw is wired shut as he sips his meals with agony through a flimsy straw. He spends most of his last year in prison learning how to walk again. In the mornings, when he looks in the mirror, he barely recognizes his face anymore. It’s not just the pink scar stretching across the side of his head, or his crooked nose, or the way the years have marked him, it’s something else, something he looks for, though he’s not quite sure what, something missing.
On his last day, he visits the rosebush. Their buds have just begun to bloom. He used to think the bush tragic; to live, to die, to live only to die again. Now he knows it is a miraculous thing, to be reborn and find life once more.
Beauty never really dies.
He walks out and hears the prison gates close behind him. His feet feel as heavy as bricks, but he keeps moving. He can almost hear the prison whispering, begging him to look back. But he doesn’t. He’s a free man and there are a million things he can do now, a million things he’s dreamed of doing, of seeing. Yet, as he steps into a strange new world, there’s only a single thing he wants to do.
With the clothes on his back and two hundred dollars to his name he takes a bus to the city, propping his head against the window, feeling the slanting morning light pressing against his face. He takes it all in, the busyness of it all, the new cars honking away, the smell of their exhaust, men and women in business suits sitting in their cars, inching along with traffic, kids waiting at bus stops, teenagers socializing, talking into thin phones he’s never seen before. None of them concerned for each other, all of them oblivious of the madness, the hatred that they’re all capable of. Maybe that’s freedom, he thinks, never having to meet the ugliness inside of us. He watches the world move around him. It’s all a river, fast and churning and unyielding.
The bus drops him off in front of a strip mall, where there is a laundry mat and a liquor store advertising cheap beer. He walks two blocks, smelling the smells of the world, feeling its paved skin under his shoes until he finds himself walking down a residential street, where the houses all look the same with their whitewashed brick walls, uniform, like giant dominoes all lined in a row. The privet shrubs, for the homes that have them, are short and squared, and everywhere the grass is lush and green and freshly cut. It is a quiet place, where dysfunction and chaos are unknown. And then he stops.
Her home is modest with a small green yard and a single citrus tree. A big wheel lies on its side, thrown to the wind after some great adventure.
He hesitates and then his clenched fist knocks against a white door.
The door opens.
Standing there is a young boy, about nine-years-old, thin and round-faced, his eyes the color of almonds. His head, Alex notices, seems too big for his body, his neatly parted hair shifting with each movement as if his body were struggling to balance the weight of his head. The boy looks up and stares warily at Alex, at his pink scar and lumped-up nose.
“Yeah,” the boy says brusquely. His almond-colored eyes wait for an answer.
“Is Elena home?” Alex says, unsure of himself.
Standing there, the door half open, the boy looks over his shoulder and shrieks out, “Mom!”
It’s bright inside that home, soft as if the glow of sunrise lived there. The walls are two-toned, white with purple pastel, like a dessert too picturesque to eat. The hardwood floors are clean and glossy as if they have never been walked on. Just inside the front door, beside the boy’s feet, Alex looks down and notices a row of tennis shoes neatly lined up along the baseboard, the shoes ordered by size, like soldiers standing at attention. Alex looks over the boy into the living room. It’s a snug room with couches that are too big, cartoonish in a way, and brown, the color of coffee. Another little boy with round peach cheeks, who is half the size as the one standing next to Alex, sits cross-legged on one of the sofas, almost sinking in. In his hands is a tiny television with the steady hum of cartoons wafting away from it. A tablet, Alex thinks it’s called.
“What, Gavin?” She steps out from around the corner. She sees him and stops mid-step, her eyes, as brown as ever, go wide, lingering on Alex.
An eternity passes. She stands there, her green medical scrubs hugging her slender frame, the dark flow of her hair cascading along her shoulders. He sees it there in her hazelnut eyes, the glazed shock, something begging to be said.
“Mom?” Gavin sings out as if to wake his mother from some spell.
“Go to your room, honey. Take your brother with you.”
“Come on, ding dong,” Gavin tells the sandy-haired boy that’s watching the little tablet in the living room.
Alex watches the older boy guide the younger one down the hallway and disappear into another room.
Elena takes a few steps forward. Her thin lips move, a mere quiver, but nothing comes out, as if they have forgotten their purpose. All at once her smooth cheeks abandon their golden color, fading into emptiness. A film of moisture glosses over her eyes, her doleful gaze, unblinking.
“Do you, do you want some coffee?” she finally says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Sure.”
They sit across from each other. The sitting room is bright and warm. The morning sun floods in through the windows, filtering through white, sheer curtains. Toys and playthings are strewn about. Photos of the young boys sit on bookshelves near the back wall. There is love in this house. He can feel it. So different from what he’s used to. He wonders if this could’ve been his house in a perhaps-life.
Wisps of heat escape from their mugs until their coffee finally cools. Neither of them takes a sip.
“When did you get out?” she asks.
“Today.”
“Oh.”
“You look good,” he says and looks away. He’s unable to hold her gaze.
“Thank you. You look … you have scars.” Her eyes, with a kind of gentleness, follow along the curves and twists of each jagged marring that stretch from the edge of his left eye down the side of his head, burying themselves behind his ear.
“I do.”
A palpable silence grows between them. They can hear the boys roaring in the other room.
“So those are your boys?”
“They are,” she says with a smile.
“They’re very handsome.” He sets his coffee down and sees a silver framed wedding photo on the coffee table beside him. It’s of her and a tan, brown-haired man—Gavin. He lingers on it.
“I’ve been meaning to put it away,” she says as if it were an apology. “We’re separated.”
“I’m sorry.” He’s not sure if he means it.
“That’s life,” she says, wiping away at a tear that hasn’t fallen yet. Her eyes sink into her coffee. She’s the one that can’t hold the other’s gaze now.
He shifts in his chair. “Listen, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I should leave.”
“It’s probably best,” she says, her eyes still wavering between her coffee and his gaze.
He rises, so does she. He walks away, wondering if she can hear his heart thudding inside of him. Something within him screams, something squeezes his soul.
He doesn’t turn to look at her. He just says it. “Why didn’t you come?”
“What?”
He faces her. “Why didn’t you come? In your letter, you said you were coming, but you never did. Why did you tell me you were coming?”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t. It was complicated. It still is. I didn’t think it would matter.” She takes a step toward him, her hand lifted, as if to touch him, but she stops herself from getting too close as if his pain were a conflagration that might sweep her up in its flames.
“It did matter,” he says, almost a whisper. His heart is a graveyard where those words were buried. “Why did you tell me you were coming?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, her words filling that space between them. That space, only a foot, might as well be the length of the universe.
“I waited that day. I waited for you,” he says. “I waited for you.” His eyes dampen.
She hesitates and then moves to him, placing a warm hand against his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” her voice cracks as she says it, a wet bead gliding along her nose, her grooved flush lips inches from his.
“I waited for you.” His voice is a feather.
Her hand reaches for his, a delicate touch, her soft fingers exploring the hills and valleys of his palms and knuckles. And as he catches the scent of orange blossoms and lilacs, he kisses her, and she kisses him back. Twenty years disappears and all that’s left are two young fools that loved each other once.
“Goodbye,” he whispers.
“Goodbye?” she says, squeezing his hand.
“I came here to say goodbye,” he says. “I never said goodbye.”
“You aren’t staying?”
“No.”
“But—”
“I have to go now,” he says, his scarred-up hand holding hers.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
He lets her hand go and says:
“You were. You were there.”
But that’s not how it happens. That’s how Alex imagines it happening.
Instead, he stands across the street under a slender paloverde tree, its yellow blossoms drifting away, stolen by a morning breeze. He welcomes that breeze. It’s hot. His sweat pools at the base of his neck and the small of his back, seeping into his white t-shirt and blue jeans. The breeze, so cool and free, a part of him wishes he could drift away with it too. He watches her open the door, sending her children off to school, two skinny young boys wearing Spider-Man and Captain America t-shirts, their oversized backpacks bouncing about like luggage strapped to their young backs. The taller of the two tosses a baseball up and down, up and down. Alex watches her pull a strand of chocolate brown hair from her lips, watches her skin shine gold in the sun. He watches Gavin come up behind her, holding a mug of coffee as he kisses her on the cheek. He watches Gavin scuttle his boys into their minivan and drive off down that little suburban road.
She glances his way, like you might when you recognize someone but realize it’s no one. He watches her close the door behind her. She isn’t running to him. She isn’t crying tears of joy and happiness and longing like he’s imagined. She isn’t even standing there anymore. He wants to walk up to that door, to bang on it, wants to yell out her name.
Instead, he walks away without looking back.
Instead, he buys an old yellow clunker and drives west till he can smell the salt in the air and see the ocean’s blue skin and the sun bouncing off it, and hear its forever crashing.
Instead, he finds work on a fishing boat.
Instead, he sees red sun after red sun collapse beneath the waves.
Instead, he searches across a blue vastness for something he’s lost.
Lindsey Saya spent the past 15 years incarcerated in the Arizona Department of Corrections. It is there that he discovered the magic and transcendent power of the written word. His fiction and poetry can be found in Iron City Magazine and Poetry Spot at AZCentral.com. Now he resides in Peoria, Arizona, where he continues to work on his craft as a free man.
Lindsey IS ONE OF ORP’S EMERGING VOICES IN FICTION.