“I’m afraid that Mr. Deacon is not a good candidate for the valley program at this time,” said Mr. Howell. “And regardless of your involvement with the program, I am a bit concerned regarding you being in such close company with a dangerous drug dealer.”
He could tell by the tone of Mr. Howell’s voice, and the raised eyebrows of the other two, that their disapproval had to do with the reasons Bede was in jail but more importantly than that, the potentially salacious nature of the relationship between Bede and Kell. That they were fucking. That Kell was Bede’s prison bitch.
Well, they could wonder until hell froze over and Kell would never tell them.
The drug dealer in question, Obadiah “Bede” Deacon, was Kell’s one and only true friend, at least behind the walls of Wyoming Correctional, and hopefully would continue as his friend, even if they didn’t share a cell any longer. Not that the parole board ever evereverneeded to know how that particular friendship had come about, and why Kell valued it so highly. They could do anything they wanted to him and he would never tell them because Bede was his friend and they weren’t.
“Whatever,” said Kell, shrugging again. “I guess if you parole me, it won’t matter anyhow.”
“That’s true,” said Mrs. Allwood in what must be a desperate attempt for her to stay relevant and involved in the conversation and final decision about whether or not Kell was going to get hisapprovedstamp today. “Would you like to fill out the online application?” she asked. “One of us could help you. Then you’d have a Zoom meeting with the program’s founder as soon as it can be arranged. Your parole would be guaranteed if you got accepted.”
“You’d be driven there in a van,” said Mr. Howell, as if Kell gave a fuck how he got there. “I hear it’s a lot of fun and you’d have some place to be for the entire summer.”
Kell huffed a laugh, dry and full of about as much derision as he could muster in this overly cold room during a parole hearing that was going on way too long without an end result in sight.
“Sure,” he said, because that’s what they all seemed to want to hear. “Where do I sign?”
He might as well jump through some hoops, especially if it got him out of his sentence early. Once in the program, dragging his approved parole behind him, who was to say that Kell wouldn’t light out the first chance he got? Or he could stick it out for a few days to see what he could milk from unsuspecting strangers, and then find the nearest highway, stick out his thumb, and hitch to the coast.
Where had he been headed when he’d been arrested? Some place in California, where it was warm, and the sun was shining on the bluest ocean. He did love the ocean, loved being where it was warm, and kept heading back to the beach after leaving it, when he’d thought some distant horizon might treat him better.
The parole board was standing up, gathering their laptops and paper files, as if some decision had been made while Kell had been off in his own head. Or maybe they’d taken him at his word about applying.
Kell stood up too and watched as Mrs. Allwood and Mr. Howell shuffled out of the wood paneled room. Which left him looking at Mr. Webber as they faced each other across the scarred table.
Mr. Webber’s laptop was still open and running. To his surprise, Mr. Webber crooked a finger and gestured that Kell should come around and sit next to him. Kell complied, a little dumbfounded to be sitting so close to a civilian, but Mr. Webber seemed unfazed that Kell was a criminal and only typed something quickly, then pushed the laptop toward Kell.
“You know how to use a computer, right?” asked Mr. Webber, but before Kell could say so much asDuh, Mr. Webber pointed to the screen. “There’s the application. It won’t take you long to fill out and meanwhile, I’ll call the ranch and see if we can get hold of Mr. Tate for you to talk to.”
“Sure.”
Kell touched the trackpad of the computer with three fingers, feeling the coolness, remembering being in school, carrying around a brand new MacBook Air, the slender edges of it brushing against his ribs as he sat in a classroom with people he’d known since he’d been in kindergarten.
All of that was behind him now and while Mr. Webber’s computer wasn’t all that new, it was nice to type on and the questions were easy, and in under fifteen minutes, he had the whole thing completed.
“He’ll be available at two o’clock,” said Mr. Webber, smiling his surprise as he held out his cell phone to Kell like a pointer. “We’ve got about twenty minutes. I’m going to get a soda. You want one?”
“Sure,” said Kell, though soda wasn’t his favorite. He’d drunk too many warm ginger ales and cokes and root beer to ever be very enthusiastic about a soda ever again. “Coke,” he said. “Or whatever.”
Astonishingly, Mr. Webber left Kell alone in the wood paneled room, though, of course, he took his laptop with him. Nobody with an ounce of sense in their heads left a prison inmate alone with anything, let alone a pretty nice laptop like that.
All Kell had to do was wait and then fumble his way through a meeting that would very likely end with Mr. Tate deciding, as everyone else in the prison system seemed to do, that Kell wasn’t worth the trouble. Because, of course, the issue of whether to release him or not release him had more to do with how much trouble it would cause Wyoming Correctional. How much paperwork. How much reshuffling of cell mates. How much money.
As to why Mr. Webber was trying to help him, Kell had no idea. At the very least, though, the parole meeting had gotten him out of laundry duty, which was a plus. And maybe the parole meeting would help him get out of prison early, which, desperation rising inside of him, he realized he very much wanted.
Chapter2
Kell
Kell’s first three days in Wyoming Correctional had been spent in solitary while they tried to figure out what to do with him. He wasn’t a minor, but while there were other nineteen-year-olds in the prison, they fit into the jail’s general population better than Kell did. The other nineteen-year-olds in gen pop were, evidently, hard-bitten criminals, whereas Kell was a newbie, fresh fish, had committed a misdemeanor, and was only serving ninety days.
This conversation about where he should be placed had gone on without him. The day he was assigned a cell, a cellmate, was the day the harsh realm of the prison became real, too real. He was led to his cell to dump off his stuff, then out into the yard for rec time.
The guard, without any regard to how new all of this was for Kell, explained it to him in quick, brusque tones as he unlocked several metal doors and led Kell into the main part of the prison.
You’re in here, but it’s rec time now, so let’s go. Let’s go, hustle. Said harshly, as if Kell had been holding up the whole system.
The yard was longer than it was square, edged on two sides by cement walls and on the other two by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The area was filled with milling inmates, some working out with the makeshift weights and bench presses, others hanging out by the fence, and still more in the corner where the two cement walls met.
