Head slumped, Blaze went through the motions of showering, using the clean-smelling Ivory soap. On the underside of his arm, the skin was stinging, the bandage hanging loose. He tugged at it, ripping it off, hissing as soap flowed over the cut.
He washed himself all over, slowly, even between his toes, propping his foot up on the bottom slat of the wooden ledge. Taking his time, he washed his hair with the bright-smelling, citrus-scented shampooandconditioner. Not a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner, like you got from the prison commissary, but separate bottles.
Tom and Wayne finished their showers, dried off, got dressed. He heard them putting their tokens in the slot and they left Blaze alone once more.
When he was finished, and about as clean as he possibly could be, Blaze rinsed off and turned off the water. Then, after wrapping his upper arm with the red bandana, he dried off and got dressed, as well.
Propping each foot on the bench seat in the dressing area, Blaze put on a new pair of socks and laced up his still-new Carhartt boots. As he stood up straight and gathered his things together, his feet felt oddly solid beneath him, his body much more relaxed.
It had been a long time since he’d taken a good hot shower like that. As he stood there and used the towel to dry his hair a little more, he thought he might feel a bit better than he had before. A bit more like going on with things rather than allowing himself to quit.
He wasn’t like his brother. Wasn’t the type to give up like Alex always seemed to do when things got too hard for him. He simply couldn’t believe that the rest of the summer would turn out to be as kind-hearted and earnest as Gabe was always acting like it was.
Or maybe it was. Maybe it wouldn’t turn out to be so bad.
Was he mad at Gabe, who had so kindly wrapped up his arm? Maybe not. Maybe he was just taking out his frustration on Gabe, who, in turn, had just taken Blaze’s anger, as solid as a stone.
Things could change if he let them. And what if they did? What if the parole program was exactly what it was purported to be?
What ifGabewas exactly who he seemed to be? Just a regular guy doing his best to help some ex-cons start a new life? And what was he getting out of it? Nobody did something for nothing, not even nice guys. Maybe Blaze needed to find out what that was and capitalize on it.
Or.
Maybe he could just let it be what it was. Play it where it lay rather than skulking about coming up with a mad plan to control everything and everyone in his environment. Just let each day happen as it would.
Madness. Foolishness. But better to try doing it a different way than continuing on like he was still in prison. He was not, as Gabe had so kindly told him, his voice soft and steady, his blue eyes without a trace of a lie in them.
It’s not a prison, Blaze.
If Blaze allowed himself to retreat at the first indication of a lie, he could get through the summer. He’d know the lie when he spotted it, and he could back up all the way to the wall if he had to. Only then.
For now, he was going to move forward as if the promise of a better day was based in the world, the truth, as Gabe saw it and talked about it.
Moving out into the main area, Blaze put his two wooden tokens in the slot. Then, rolling his damp towel and washcloth under his arm, he strode purposefully back to his tent. There, he laid the towels and washcloth on the railing along the side of the tent, as Tom had done, and put his toiletries on the shelf. Then he grabbed his sherpa-lined denim jacket and made his way to the fire pit.
It wasn’t yet dark with twilight still long between the trees, but everybody was at the fire pit, including Del and Neal, looking a bit strange out of their cook’s whites. Wayne was pawing through the box that held the supplies for s’mores, and Tom was patiently handing Gabe strips of kindling wood.
Gabe knelt by the fire, one denim-clad knee in the dirt, the other thigh bent. The sleeves of his snap-button shirt were rolled up, crisp-edged, his dark hair messy over his forehead, making him look like a mountain man or a lumberjack in one of those calendars that specialized in rugged-looking men.
When Gabe looked up, his eyes found Blaze immediately. Focusing on Blaze as though Blaze had been waited for, looked for.
There was nothing in those eyes that Blaze wanted to look away from. There was no pity, no disapproval for not being manly enough to make it two years in prison, just to break down pretty much the second he’d gotten out. No. There was just that steady kindness, the same as before. Same as always.
“Blaze,” said Gabe, turning the sound of his name sound into a hearty greeting. “You’re just in time to help Wayne unpack the box of goodies the cooks brought for us.”
Blaze looked at Wayne, who had half of a chocolate bar stuffed in his mouth, like a kid who couldn’t wait to roast that marshmallow before assembling his s’more. Both Wayne and Tom were like that. Impatient, hustling through to the good stuff. Half-laughing about it all, not with good humor, it seemed, but like they wanted to dismiss it, that it wasn’t serious. That it didn’t matter.
Well, it mattered. At least to Blaze. If he was going to make it through the summer on his way to some other place, a new life, he knew it mattered.
“Sure,” he said, doffing his denim jacket, which he wouldn’t need until the sun really went down. “We can put everything on this rock over here.”
Wayne was pretty much goofing around as Blaze arranged two rows of Hershey’s chocolate bars—no generic stuff for the program, it seemed. Then Blaze laid out the four wax-wrapped packets from the box of graham crackers, then set the bag of marshmallows on the rock farthest from the fire that was being built.
He’d never roasted marshmallows before, but he knew from TV that you needed something long and slender to poke through them so you could hold it over the flames.
“Let’s get some sticks,” he said to nobody in particular.
“Oh, we’ve got skewers.” Del hauled himself up from his Adirondack chair and pointed to the little black pouch at the bottom of the box. He pulled it out and demonstrated the little rubber grommets on the end of each prong, how the handle telescoped for length. “And they’re color coded, right here.”
