Then Gabe said they were good for now, but maybe they needed a bigger place to hold team lead meetings starting the following Saturday. Even if Royce pouted at this, he had to agree, since they were all pretty much sitting in each other’s laps.
As they filed out, Galen rushed to catch up with Gabe.
“Yeah, what’s up?” asked Gabe, in his equable way.
“Got a question for you.”
“Sure,” said Gabe. He jerked his thumb in the direction of his tent, and said, “I’m headed to my tent, so if you don’t mind watching me roll my socks, I’ve got some time.”
Galen followed Gabe to his tent, which was as neat as Royce’s tent, only less busy with decorations and extra appliances. There were also no dust bunnies beneath the cot, no stray toothbrush, no haphazardly made bed.
“Have a seat,” said Gabe, gesturing to the other cot as he pulled a laundry bag from the shelf between the cots and dumped the contents on top of the cot.
Galen questioned himself as to whether he should share his personal confusion about Bede. Except those feelings, whatever he wanted to call them—affection, the strong pull of unnameable urges—were currently in his own head, in his own chest, and needed to stay there until he could sift through them.
Instead, Galen explained the struggles he’d been going through, then finished up by saying, “I thought they were getting a free ride, which made me irritated. I thought they weren’t working hard enough. Then the day we took the knapweed to the dump, everything seemed to click into place. Sure, it’s good now, and they work hard. Only I’m worried about losingcontrol because I don’t understand why anyone would become a criminal in the first place.”
“Think about it this way,” said Gabe as he carefully folded folding a mountain of identical white socks. “I have read the folders of all the men in the valley, but let’s just focus on your guys, since that is your main task. Right?”
Galen nodded.
“Why are they here?” asked Gabe, but it was a rhetorical question, so Galen kept his mouth shut. “They committed a crime. Smart or foolish, they got caught. They also paid their time. Spent their days and nights trapped in a very small space with other men, some of them violent, most of whom they did not know. And then they came here. Why? Surely they could have gone home, back to their old ways. With the rate of recidivism in this country, over forty and sometimes as high as fifty percent, it would have been the easier, most expected option. But they did not go home. Again, why?”
Thinking that this wasn’t rhetorical, Galen took a breath. “I honestly don’t know, and maybe that’s part of my problem. Why are they here if not to do easy work, get free food, and have a comfortable place to sleep?”
The issue felt old and worn, as if he’d been tearing at it a while and just needed to let it go.
“Very good point,” said Gabe, stacking his rolled-up socks in neat piles. “You’ve got to look at this on a case-by-case basis. Take Toby. You think he’d sign up for a summer like this on his own?”
Slowly, Galen shook his head. It was easy to see, when Gabe pointed it out like he had, that Toby wouldn’t make a move without Owen.
“Owen led him here,” Galen said.
“Exactly right. Which begs the next question.”
“Why did Owen come here?” Galen suggested.
“Right. And whydidOwen come here?”
“Because he thought it would be easier than going back to breaking into houses or picking locks,” said Galen, the realization of it flickering into focus. “He’s a low-level criminal. Always takes the easy path. The valley seemed easier, and now that he’s here, it’s easier to stay than to leave.”
“Right again,” said Gabe. “The benefit of this program will come to them in spite of themselves.” Gabe looked at Galen exactly like a teacher might at a prize pupil. “And what about Bede? Why did he sign up?”
Galen shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“Sometimes,” said Gabe slowly, his gaze drifting to the opening of the tent where the heat shimmered in the trees. “We know the answer. We just don’t think that we do. What’s the first thing you thought when I asked you why Bede was here?”
“Kell,” said Galen, promptly. “He came because of Kell.”
“Why?”
“Why?” asked Galen, but he realized he knew the answer to that, too. “He once said Kell was like a brother to him, so of course he’d follow Kell to the valley.”
“Just because someone has committed a crime, many crimes,” said Gabe. “Doesn’t mean every part of their life is a crime. Bede’s got feelings. He cares for Kell. I reckon he came just to shut Kell up—” Gabe paused to laugh under his breath. “In the mess tent, I overheard Kell on the phone almost every other day, just begging Bede to fill out the form. Could you have resisted that sunshiny kid? I don’t think I could have and obviously Bede couldn’t. Even if he meant to leave the second he got here, and I could see it in his eyes that’s what he was thinking he was going to do, he stayed.”
The idea of Bede’s presence in the valley became awash with a kind of warmth. First Galen had seen Bede as a hard worker, and then a vulnerable one, when he’d witnessed his tears in thedark of the woods. Then had come the help with Galen’s bills. And now this. Bede staying because he’d changed his mind, something Galen would have bet money would never happen. And if that change could happen, what else was possible?
Kell was smarter about people than his young years might suggest, having seen beneath the granite surface of Marston’s unsmiling face to find a wealth of affection and devotion. He obviously held Bede in high regard, in spite of, again, superficial indicators that would suggest Kell stay far, far away from him. Instead, he was overjoyed to have Bede as a tent mate.
