Page 26 of Into The Light
I consider the idea briefly and then nod. "Sure. Probably get more done that way."
Riley claps his hands. "Great. Guys, we're here. Bear, you tackle the one across the street. I've marked the walls that are coming out. You're going down to studs and subfloor. Power and plumbing are both off, but watch your clearances around outlets and shit. You know the drill."
"Sure do." I grab a wheelbarrow, wrecking bar, sledgehammer, tile scraper, and a red plastic coal shovel, tossthe tools into the wheelbarrow, and then head across the street. “Panzer, komm.” When we reach the property where I’ll be working, I pause in the center of the patchy, overgrown front yard. "Platz. Bleib."
Panzer circles a few times clockwise, a few times counterclockwise, once more clockwise, and then lays down, tongue lolling and gaze alert and curious as he watches me head inside and assess the job at hand.
It's a doozy. Piss- and who-knows-what-stained carpet, graffiti-tagged walls, water-stained ceilings, old mattresses, discarded needles, empty booze bottles, piles of shredded newspaper, fiberglass insulation, and bits of cloth—rat and mouse nests. I wander the house, locating the walls marked for removal, identifying the load-bearing structures, testing the floors for sagging, and poking at water stains on the ceiling with my wrecking bar.
The first step is to get rid of the trash. I put on my work gloves, fit an N95 over my face, and get to work hauling shit out to the 30-yard roll-off in the driveway. Panzer watches me come and go, chin on his paws as he dozes. Riley pops in to check on me around eleven, after three hours of work. "Damn, dude, you're really cranking in here."
I've cleared the trash and removed the marked walls, and I'm now working on pulling down the drywall to expose the studs and insulation.
"Honestly, boss, this is better for me," I say. "No one in my way slowing me down."
He claps me on the shoulder. "Lunch in an hour. Good work, bud."
As I work, I let my mind wander. It's why I like demolition so much: my body does the work, and my mind has the freedom to process things.
Mostly, it's Noelle occupying my thoughts. It's tempting to think she's interested in me. She sought me out at the shelter and invited me to hang out with her friends, and whenever we're together, she’s always touching me.
I just don't know what to make of it.
I don't know how to trust it. I mean, shit, she's so far out of my league it ain't even funny. She's hot as fuck, for one thing. That thick, wavy red hair, those freckles. Her lips. Her body, Jesus. Takes everything I've got to not stare at her like a goddamned pervert. Big, round, plump tits that strain against her shirt. That glorious, tight, heart-shaped ass that sways with every step, hypnotizing me.
Her eyes. God, her eyes. The way she looks at me like she sees something worthwhile in me.
Something I have trouble seeing in myself.
My wrecking bar bites into drywall near a seam, and I lever it sideways and then yank hard, ripping a huge section away to topple to the floor. I smack the hooked end of the bar into the wall, burying it in place, and haul the section out to the dumpster, heaving it in. I’m sweaty and filthy, but I feel good, my muscles loose and warm. Now that I can work at my own pace, I get a lot more done. I was held back by the sheer amount of people coming and going; Riley likes to use his whole crew at once on a single property, working faster that way rather than splitting us up into separate crews. Each property gets done faster that way. The problem for me is I can work twice as fast as the next guy. Now that I have a whole house to myself, I can set my own pace and not worry about anyone getting my way.
I take a quick break, sipping coffee from my thermos as I lounge in the grass beside Panzer, who rests his chin on my thigh.
My mind goes back to Noelle. To the possibilities. Wondering what she wants from me. Friendship? More? What would more look like?
She has married parents and siblings. A good job. Friends. A whole life. A good, stable, clean, well-adjusted life.
Where does a giant, hairy, tattooed ex-con with blood on his hands and a closetful of skeletons fit into that life?
I don't.
Best case scenario, I’m just an interesting new thing—a project. An anomaly in her vanilla, well-ordered life.
Best not to let my imagination run away from me. Hope is a dangerous thing. One thing you learn on the inside is acceptance. Each day is exactly the last one. No one is going to suddenly show up at your cell door and let you go. I worked my ass off to get here—avoided fights, made friends with everyone I could, and stayed away from the troublemakers. Volunteered wherever I could. Kept quiet. Obeyed the guards. Took my lumps from the guards with a quick club without complaint—god knows I can take a hell of a beating. When rumors of the opportunity for a work-release program made its way around the population, I was first in line to get evaluated for it. I was passed over the first few times—my security level was too high. But after another year and a half of doing good time, I finally got selected for the program, mainly because of Jacobsen’s recommendation.
I worked like a mule during the supervised work-release period—an armed deputy accompanied me and Eddie, the other inmate from the program. The deputy monitored us, accompanied us everywhere we went, and watched everything we did. Strip searched us when we got back to the prison, making sure we hadn’t smuggled in any contraband. Eddie got released on parole six months ahead of me, and now it's my turn.
The point is, it's not luck and it's not random that I'm out. I worked for it. Learned how to keep my temper in check. Learned how to defuse a violent situation rather than resorting to breaking faces the way I used to.
Now that I'm out, though, hope is a different thing. On the inside, hope is a liability.
You hope for an early release, but if you don’t get it, you’ll go bananas. Hope for a good cellmate but get stuck with a chatty asshole. Hope no one fucks up free time in the yard with a bullshit fight, necessitating another fucking lockdown. You hope, and hope gets crushed. So you stop hoping and just do your time. Find your rhythm. Pick the shit that gets you from one day to the next—for me, it was the meditative intensity of lifting, and talking to Matt.
On the outside, hope is a tender little seed in my gut. Tempting to water it. Watch it grow. But old habits die hard.
I have a roof over my head. I can walk out the door whenever I want. I can eat what I want when I want. No guards to give me a liver shot with a billy club just because he’s having a shit day. No buzzer announcing nightly lockdown. No chow lines. No communal showers with cold water, and having to watch my back in case some jackass decides he wants to shiv me to make a point.
That's enough.It has to be. What else is there?
