Chapter 12: After

IN THE END I guess it didn’t really matter. The jury found me guilty, the judge sentenced me, and that was that.

“Keep cool,” I told myself. “Take it one day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time.” It didn’t come very quickly but, in a few weeks, or perhaps even a couple of months, I began to get the hand of the place. It’s boring. Let’s be clear about that.

Find out who did it. That’s what I thought about most. I knew who did it, I was positive. Dale saw a chance and took it. I’d bet money on it. Means. Motive. Opportunity. The holy trinity. Those beers I offered to Ellie and me? They were spiked, I was sure. Neither of us had had that much to drink, and neither Ellie nor I had ever lost consciousness after playing around, even if we’d dozed a few times, sated by repeated orgasms, her, and one or perhaps two, if I was especially energetic, for me.

Mom and Dad and Nicole came to pick me up when I was released. There’s protocol for releasing a prisoner. It’s a little less demeaning for those of us in minimum-security, but there’s nothing terribly friendly about it, either. You get up earlier than usual, you’re escorted by a couple of guards to the out-processing unit. A surly clerk checks the inventory list and hands you your stuff, whatever you had on you at the time you arrived that you couldn’t keep.

To my surprise, I admit, everything I could remember was there, including the bit of cash I’d had on me. My watch, a ring my grandmother had given me, and a few other odds and ends.

I cannot describe the feeling of relief, first, as we drove away from the prison. Even as I walked through the gate my heart jumped a little and I felt the tension lift. The tension I felt every second I was inside. Almost as though there was someone behind me with a knife. For all I know there might have been someone like that, I don’t know.

When I walked into my house I burst into tears again. Nicole was beside me in a flash for a hug. She’s smaller than I am, but I clung to her as though I would be swept away, swept somewhere I really didn’t want to go, if I released her. I kissed her cheek and she kissed mine.

Mateo made his move the next morning when I was out for a run. It was early enough that the heat hadn’t started. Late summer where we live can be as hot as midsummer, depends on what’s going on.

I started down my usual route, along our street which rarely had too much traffic, for a couple of blocks. There I crossed the county road onto fields maintained by the university. That year they were fallow, but along the edges of the field runners had pounded the earth fairly flat. Farm vehicles also used that. I lapped the field once, it was probably a quarter- or half-mile circuit. Coming back, I reached the line of shrubs that separated the field from the highway.

He sandbagged me. I admit it. I wasn’t looking for him, although in hindsight I probably should have realized Mateo might turn his glare into action. His jump knocked me off the path into the furrowed field itself. That probably kept me from getting several bones broken.

“Asshole.” That’s the only thing he said as he piled onto me. I thought I’d had it until I realized he hadn’t counted on the irregular surface, the clods of dirt that the tractors had left. When he tried to brace himself to hit me straight on, a hit that probably would have knocked me out and broken my nose to boot, he slipped enough for me to deflect that punch.

“Mateo, for god’s sake!” He didn’t answer. He came at me again and this time I felt my nose go crunch and start to bleed. That made me really mad, and I fought back. Funny thing, we’d wrestled against each other all last year in our weight class. We were in the same one but I was taller and at the top of the class while Mateo was at the bottom. I knew his moves and he knew mine. The difference is he was attacking me presumably to avenge the dishonor done to his sister. I was fighting for my life, or something close to it.

I don’t know how I managed it, but I got him pinned. Another slip or two and I’d been luckier than he was. Prison isn’t a health spa or a gym, but there’s gym equipment and plenty of opportunity to lift weights. I couldn’t run while I’d been inside, but I sure as hell could lift weights and do pushups and work on boxing, and that’s exactly what I’d done. Maybe I wasn’t buff but I wasn’t in too bad a shape, either.