Chapter 19

There are moments in time when things come together, for good or ill, that we have no control over. Or if we have control, we don’t employ it; we just go with the flow.

Seeing Anna had been a good such moment; well, I thought that it was. But, as the fates and the gods on high Olympus would have it, that meet up with her would bring on one of the worst moments in my life. And, as I would one day learn, a bad day for some others as well.

It’d been mid-August when I’d seen and talked with Anna. Now it was a Thursday, in mid-September and some guy down the bar from me was staring at me. I didn’t know him. And I was minding my own business. I tried to ignore him.

The man was wearing a 49ers t-shirt. I hated the 49ers. I was a Patriots’ fan if I was a fan of any of them, the football teams. It was getting late and I was thinking about heading out in my new old, very old, 1977 Nissan pickup, well it was cheap. I’d gotten it for a thousand bucks total, but it got me to work each day, can’t ask for much more than that. I decided I needed one more yellow Pepsi.

Lily was tending bar. I raised my empty bottle begging her for one more fill up. I’d gotten a small raise the week before and I was celebrating drinking Heineken, how high tone is that!

“Ready for one more?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. She smiled

“That guy down the bar says it’s on him,” she said. I turned to see who she was talking about; it was the guy in the t-shirt; the only guy in a t-shirt anywhere to be seen. Well, it was almost midnight. I gave him a look and smiled. Lily returned with the beer, and the man decided to come on down and confab with me.

“Heineken, good choice,” he said. I nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Do I know you?”

“No, not yet, but maybe in a few more minutes,” he said. “My name is Carlton, Carlton Hanson.”

“Andrew, Brown,” I said.

“I know,” he said. I gave him a questioning look.

“Huh?” I said.

“I’m married to Lea,” he said. The smile faded from my face. The beer was halfway to my lips I set it down.

“Leave,” I said. “I don’t know you and I don’t want to.”

“Look, please, we need to talk...”

I picked up the bottle and hit him with it hard, and then I hit him again and again and again. And then a couple of guys were pulling me away from him.

I was trying my damnedest to kill him. The judge, as it turned out, believed me. I was being sent back to serve out my entire sentence and no parole possible this time. Twelve more years. Fuck!

Well, I got the treatment of a true veteran upon my return. Instead of a week’s orientation, it took just one day. And then I was back in the exact same cell I’d enjoyed so long my first time around. Of, and as an added benefit, I had the same cell mate, Walt Combs. He was actually glad to see me, but he was about the only one.

The yard was a place for exercise now. I ran. I ran every day, fast. It really did help me keep my mind clear of the motherfucker that had caused all of my problems. Oh, I knew I was at least in part responsible for this part of my interminable life of misery; but, bottom line, it was him and his whore that done me in! I thought my hatred of the two of them had been pretty high end before; I’d been wrong about that. It had reached celestial levels this time around.

If I survived this little vacation at state expense, I’d be fifty-three when I got out, and no future. I did have to smile though. I was damn sure that the assholes had gotten the message this time. The message? Why to leave my convict ass alone!

The man was wired to a couple of different drips. Lea Hanson sat beside him as she had every day since that bad day three months gone when her husband, the man on the bed, had been savaged by her ex-lover and the father of their child. He would live, but it had been a close thing. And, she kept repeating to herself, it was all her fault. The man in prison—again—was there because of her. The man on the bed was there because of her. Their child was terrified that maybe she had done something wrong by insisting on being adopted. But hell, she’d only been eleven and needed a daddy, and well...