“It was the cringiest thing ever,” I say, shuddering with second-hand embarrassment. “Hell, Mav still gets flustered if one of us brings it up.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh yeah. Even better…Maverick is my cousin’s middle name. Wanna guess what his first name is?” I ask, grinning around this bit of chisme.
He shrugs. “I can’t imagine him as anything but Maverick.”
“Yeah, well…his full name is Rune Maverick Bash.”
Truett’s eyes light up. “No fucking way.”
“Two more interesting tidbits,” I say, holding up one finger, loving where this is going. “One: Hitchens has arrested Mav at least five times on super tiny infractions, like swimming in the Littlefield Fountain and jaywalking during Pride.”
“Why is adetectivearresting someone on small shit like that?”
“Great question, but that’s not the best part.” I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up as I hold up the second finger. “Everyone at camp called him Hitch, but Mav’s nickname for him wasBooney. Because his first name’s Boone and he’s from the boonies.”
Truett’s hands go to his mouth. “No fucking way,” he repeats, the words muffled. He puts his hands down. “So maybe something changed for the detective?”
“Maybe?” I rub my chin. “I mean…three to four years isn’t much of an age gap once you’re in your twenties. And Mav was down to his underwear when the good detective arrested him at the fountain.”
“From what I’ve seen on social media, your cousin’s pretty familiar with the gym…”
“Hey!”
I smack True’s arm, and he brings me in for a kiss.
After several minutes of that, I pull away. “Kinda makes you wonder if he’s doing this WhiteHat thing for more than one reason.”
“You think Hitchens is trying to get Mav’s attention through me?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
In the back of my head, I’m wondering about the detective’s endgame and whether or not I should tell Mav what I know.
Nah. I think I’ll let it play out and see where this goes.
Our conversation turns to more serious matters, and I find that I like Truett’s take on things.
“So, with everything you’ve seen in working with people who have been exploited, what do you think is the biggest barrier for them?” I ask, curious about his opinion.
His answer is swift. “Anyone who does this knows that this work is the equivalent of being tasked with shoveling out a crater full of shit with a cracked plastic fork. The biggest barrier isn’t the exploitation or even the harm. It’s the systems that allow those things to flourish in the first place. We’ve done a lot of work over the last twenty years, and that’s great, but it’s easy to pick out where the money is going by noting the things that aren’t better yet.”
My mind immediately goes to the biggest, most impossible issues in this country, and I know exactly what he means.
“I’m not trying to ignore what Brantley did,” I say carefully, “but I think in his own way, he was actually trying to help. It was hard for him to get out from under his father’s thumb, but I think he was trying.”
“I can see that,” Truett says, nailing another board.
“You can see it, but…”
He stares at the seam in front of him for a moment, then continues putting up boards. “But,” he finally says, “the vastmajority of truly wealthy people couldn’t have gotten to where they are without harming innocent people. Without paying unlivable wages. Without forcing people to work in unsafe conditions.”
“And they don’t have the impetus to make the situation better.”
“Exactly. And maybe if we had some homeostasis, if things never got worse than they are right now, maybe we could come up with good ways to get around the bullshit. But in order to sustain these practices, the systems are forced to make it worse and worse and worse. And that shit only ever rolls downhill.”
“I’ll just never understand that mentality,” I say, nailing my own board.
