There was a weird scree-scree sound that he imagined might be the branches of trees, high up where the wind tossed them, brushing against each other. The sound of water from somewhere. A high, thin wailing sound that he had no idea what it was.
Then there was the smell of warm canvas cooling, oddly comforting and calming.
Slowly, he undid the laces on his boots, and then, on impulse, pulled off the new socks he’d been given.
Then, in a daze, he went out of the tent, and down the wooden steps, till his bare feet touched the earth.
The solid feel of the earth, the tickle of grass, the scrape of a leaf along the side of his foot, all of these sensations compiled together, completely different from how he’d imagined it might be while in prison.
Behind bars, in the yard, in the dining hall, you never went barefoot. He’d even had special flip-flops to wear in the shower, though it was anybody’s guess where those were now.
He’d left everything behind when he’d gotten paroled. Just before he’d been escorted to the release door, he’d handed out books and socks and cigarettes and packets of Ramen with princely largess. Like it mattered at all that he should continue keeping up appearances, maintaining connections.
He’d not had very many of those connections while in prison. One of his strongest connections had been with an erstwhilecellie named Ellis. He’d gone and got himself thrown into solitary, and Bede had never seen him after that.
Bede had heard that Ellis had gone to a guest ranch to do his parole. Which, now that he thought about it, could be the guest ranch on the other side of the hill from where Bede was. But did Bede really want to open up that particular door?
His other connection had been Kell who, though still so young, had managed to pull strings in Bede’s heart. He’d probably smiled his sweet smile at the parole board, flashing it around like silver, and had not only gotten Bede out of prison, but had also landed him in such a place, doing his parole. Standing barefooted in the darkness, staring up at the sky, the coolness of stars bathing him from head to toe.
What would Galen think if he saw Bede now?
Galen seemed a little uptight, maybe high strung.
He was the kind of guy who would stop at a four-way intersection at midnight, even if there was no one around. He was the kind of guy that Bede would normally have looked down his nose at, just the way Galen had looked down his nose at Bede.
And yet.
And yet they’d had a moment around the campfire when Bede had said out loud what he’d been thinking. That eating a s’more made him feel like a ten-year-old boy when the world was new and the drug world was just a flicker on the periphery of his vision.
In turn, Galen’s eyes had brightened, sweetening his expression. Something shifted across his face, like he understood exactly what Bede meant beneath the words he’d actually said. And that Galen, too, had the same feeling of being a ten-year-old boy.
He’d seemed on the verge of saying something about it, but had stopped himself.
And Bede, who had been leaning in to hear what Galen had to say, had to snap himself to attention. A moment shared over a sticky summertime treat for kids did not a friendship make. Did not a connection make, even.
Except for the fact that Galen had been very brave to step between Bede and Marston and stop a fight, there was nothing between himself and a guy who walked around with an invisible stick up his ass.
Bede needed to pull himself together and keep his eyes on the prize, which was a certificate of completion at the end of summer. And however flimsy that might seem, the promise of that certificate felt like the only thing keeping him from returning to Denver and the drug trade.
Out of the woods stepped two figures. One was Kell. Bede could tell that by the chatter.
The other, by the looming height, was Marston walking Kell home, like the utterly hopelessly in love romantic that he was.
“What are you doing, Bede?” Kell called out, hurrying up to Bede, his face lit from the single bulb inside the tent. “Are you barefoot?”
Marston stopped just a half foot behind Kell, his eyes appraising Bede, though he didn’t say anything.
“You can’t be barefoot in prison, you know,” said Bede, giving the most obvious answer, to hide everything else that he’d been feeling. “It’s just something I wanted to do.” If he made light of it, they would never know how much it mattered.
“Galen was asking after you,” said Kell, handing Bede his jacket. “He said to bring a flashlight next time. It can get awfully dark in these woods.”
“So I’ve learned,” said Bede. His world tilted a little at the thought of Galen being worried about him, though probably he was only doing it because it was his job as team lead.
Even if there had been more to it, Bede wasn’t about to go down that road. Making any kind of connection to someone who could make a single phone call and have Bede back behind bars inside of a heartbeat seemed dangerous, even if Galen did have a nice smile. Even when his cheeks flushed when he got all riled up.
With all that, there was no point in acting like he cared, and his impulse to make Galen laugh needed to be curtailed. But before he could pull on a mask to demonstrate how little he cared, Marston leaned in to kiss Kell on the cheek.
“See you in the morning,” he said. And then strode off into the woods.
