Chris Whitaker: We Begin at the End

The bus stopped and he got out, he looked around as it passed. There was nothing else for miles in either direction, just long track road, the razor fence twenty feet high, and the low buildings that made up Fairmont County Correctional Facility.

He waited an hour, sat in the room alone, held his hand up and watched the tremor. He’d slipped a little, missed medication, life in the way, not his but Vincent’s. It was bad now, the pain sometimes, the fear always. He set his alarm an hour earlier, allowing time for a battle that was getting harder to win. The future was a frightening thing, but then he reasoned it always had been.

There was a half smile when Cuddy came out. “Almost didn’t recognize you without the stars. I’m finishing up if you want to walk with me.”

Walk fell into step with the big warden, stayed close behind him at the gates as they opened and locked. A life of it, order and not, keeping the bad inside and good out. He could not imagine such a toll.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make the service,” Cuddy said. “Not all that into goodbyes.”

They walked along the fence, towers like silos.

“There’s things I don’t know,” Walk said.

Cuddy breathed deep, like he’d been waiting. Walk did not know what they were doing, walking the perimeter, maybe Cuddy just liked the free air after pulling ten hours.

“Star came here,” Walk said.

“She did.”

“But her name, I checked the visitor logs. I checked everything I could.”

They passed a guard in a tower, Cuddy raised a hand.

“I like dusk,” Cuddy said. “The end of astronomical twilight. The sun, degrees below horizon. I let them out sometimes, to watch a sunset. Five hundred men, killers and rapists and pushers. They stand together and stare at the sky, it’s the only time we don’t have real trouble.”

“Why?”

“The beauty, maybe. It makes it harder to deny higher power.”

“Or easier.”

“Don’t lose your heart, Walk. That would be the real tragedy.”

“Tell me about Star.”

Cuddy stopped, the furthest point from the prison, between two towers and guards ready to end life just as quick as any jury.

“I liked her. I got to know her plenty over the years. Vincent King was as decent a man as I ever met. And I got to see it, the change. Scared kid, fearless for a while, and then he got to be okay with it.”

“What?”

“His own skin. Okay, but not good. And Star, she helped him. He caused her the pain, and he was the only one that could take it away. He had purpose again.”

Walk watched the first stars burn, heavenly from out there.

“He needed her, to feel something again, more than who he was when he wore orange and walked in chains. It played like a marriage, over twenty-odd years she’d come. Sometimes they didn’t speak, at the start, just watched each other, she was all fire, burning up, and he’d look at her like she was placed on this earth just for him.”

“What about the other prisoners?”

“Oh, I didn’t let those two in the common room. I mean, at first, of course, but I saw right off she was too young for it, the men were too cruel with their words, promises and threats. Vincent got it bad after, guards broke it up in time but once the others knew his weak spot they’d run with it. There’s another room, an apartment we had. Conjugal, it was to be earned. Just us and three states now.”

“You let them alone like that?”

“Vincent needed it … to feel human again. Shit, I needed to see him human again. And Star, the two of them. Cosmic forces and all that. Not a prison on earth could cut that kind of pull.”

Walk smiled.

“I couldn’t put it through the logs, not strictly allowed. I watched her, the shape, nine months, that glow, you know. Twice. Two miracles born from despair.” Cuddy smiled.

“But she didn’t ever bring them—”

“He wouldn’t have it. Not caged like that. And he didn’t want them to know. Can’t really blame him. He said there’s not a kid out there that wants a father from Fairmont. We talked about it, it gave him resolve. Live life for someone else. That’s not wasted, right.”

Walk closed his eyes and thought of Duchess and Robin, their blood, that unknown.

“He asked me not to tell. I said I wouldn’t volunteer it, but also that I wouldn’t lie if someone came asking. I’m a man of my word.”

“Right.”

Cuddy laughed softly. “Not many of us left.”

“I think maybe Star told Darke.”

“Why?”

“Just something he said at the end. The things people do for their own, right? They saw that in each other. Vincent and Star, they couldn’t keep it going.”

“And then it was changed, they pulled the apartment down to make way for the new Cat-5. Vincent wouldn’t have her in the common room again, not after the last time. I mean, these are men that’d make promises, that they’d go look her up when they got out. Empty, but still. Vincent didn’t want that, not for her, not for his children.”

“So he cut her off,” Walk said sadly.

“Just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Turning her away like that. He told her move on, find someone else. She still came, a year she waited, in case he changed his mind. And then nothing. I figured she’d found a way to move past.”

“She did. Not past, just a way to feel nothing.”

Cuddy said nothing but he knew. There wasn’t a tragedy of any kind he had not witnessed or seen the fallout from.

“So you didn’t know any of it?” Cuddy said.

“No. Star knew what I would’ve said. That she needed to look out for herself. That it wasn’t helping, dwelling on the past. Like I know. Like I’m one to talk. Maybe they needed something just for them. Their small family, broken, but theirs.”

When they reached the gate Walk shook his hand. “Thank you, Cuddy. You did a good thing.”

“Can I ask, why now? What brought you back?”

“Chance. Vincent wanted me to scatter his ashes in the Elkton-Trinity. I’m not even sure why.”

Cuddy smiled, then took hold of Walk’s shoulder and pointed. “That’s Vincent’s cell up there. Eleven-three. Thirty years looking out. You see what it faces.”

Walk turned.

And there, above the ranging hills, he saw the two million acres of freedom.

47

IT WAS A FINE FALL morning, bright sunlight crossed the mountain behind.

Duchess rode the gray, the two heading out together each day, before Montana woke. She knew the trails well enough now, breath billowed, the gray content to go slow, she would not run well again. Duchess stroked her as they stood atop the butte and looked out over the ranch.

The house was sawn timber and beautiful, fire burned, the chimney smoked. There were barns, a river she had followed three miles through aspens before seeing wolf tracks and quickly retreating. She had a knife, her grandfather’s, and on weekends she would explore alone, cut paths into the shrubland, stepping through shallow water tables crafted by the fall.

The months that had followed were long and difficult, but she found the new surroundings helped. She took it back to breathing, like Hal had once told her, and though it did hurt, all of it, she knew time was all powerful.

When she reached the stable she led the gray in, made sure she had water and straw and patted her nose.

She found Dolly in the kitchen, reading a newspaper, the smell of coffee rich in the air. Duchess had gone to her, turned up at midnight and made good on her promise. At first she had agreed to stay one night, the next morning Dolly had led her to the stable and showed her the gray, which she’d taken for free after they settled Hal’s estate.

One day had led to a week, which turned to a month and more. Dolly acted on the pretence of needing help with the land, though she was wealthy enough to have several men stop by each week. Duchess worked hard, stayed out from dawn till the sun fell away. They did not speak much at first, the girl so beaten Dolly knew it was only in time she could help her.