Chapter3
Damien
Two years later
“Damien Carson. Please follow me.”
Damien followed the burly man who he had come to know as Baldy over the past years. Baldy was, as predicted, completely without hair – even his eyebrows were so faint they were barely visible. It had been rather strange the first time that Damien had caught sight of him but soon it just looked normal, just as the rest of his days had suddenly become normal. Damien often reflected just how quickly the mind and body adapted to its surroundings.
“Okay, Carson. This is it. You’ve done your time and you’ve paid for your crime.”
Damien grimaced. “Is that the line you use on everyone who leaves?”
“Oh yeah, every single time.”
“Well, it’s corny but I have to admit, it’s good to hear.”
“It’s been real, Carson. Now bugger off and don’t you dare come back here again. You’re actually one of the guys I liked in there. And trust me, I don’t come across many of those.”
“Seriously? But you gave me so much hell inside.”
“As a guard, I learned a very long time ago not to show preference for one inmate over another. It’s no harm for me but for the prisoner that’s getting the preference – it becomes torture. So really, me being horrible to you was actually a way of me being nice to you.”
Damien got it. He’d only – which was nothing compared to some people – been in jail for two years but he’d already figured out the ins and outs of the place. There were just certain rules and regulations that you had to abide by.
“Well, I’d like to say that I’m going to miss you, Baldy, but I’m not.”
“Yeah, you will. You just won’t miss this place. Now get out of here and for God sake stop calling me, Baldy. It’s Peter, and you know it.”
Damien grinned, gave him a hug and walked over to gather his things. It was a small bag, he hadn’t had much on him when he had arrived, but it contained his clothes, his wallet and his phone. It felt strange to have personal items on him again. And when he put on his clothes, it felt even stranger. It was as if he suddenly had an identity – as if he wasn’t just a number in a sea of other numbers.
Damien walked out of Ashmount Prison and took a deep breath. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been outside in two years – they got plenty of ‘outside’ time each day – but there was something very different about being outside without the containment of four walls, knowing that you could just keep going. He had been waiting for this moment for a very long time and he had often wondered how he would feel when he stepped out for the first time. He had expected to just feel happiness. What he hadn’t anticipated was the influx of emotions that would hit him all at once. Happiness was one of them. So were excitement, nervousness and trepidation. He knew that he had a lot of explaining to do and a lot of damage to fix.
One day he had been out in the real world with real connections and the next he had vanished into thin air. His boss must’ve wondered why he never came home, his landlord must’ve noticed when he never paid the rent, and of course his girlfriend must’ve thought that he was just another guy that had let her down. Hazel. Hazel. Hazel. Damien had done nothing but think of her the entire time he was there. And now that he was out he knew he would have to find her. A new emotion caused through him: fear.
Just then a car pulled up and startled him out of his thoughts. Wesley.
It had been the only number that he had known by heart and the only person that he had thought to call. He hadn’t spoken to his brother in years and yet the minute they asked him who they should call upon his release, the name ‘Wesley’ was the first that came out of his mouth. He wasn’t even sure if his brother would come. After all, it wasn’t as if Damien had ever been a good brother to him.
Wesley got out of his car and walked towards him. Damien noted how well he looked. He was clean shaven, his hair cut short against his head and he looked as if he spent a lot of time in a gym. He looked neat and tidy but for once he wasn’t wearing a suit. Just a simple pair of jeans, a well-pressed shirt and sneakers. He looked younger than Damien even though he was a few years older. Damien put out his hand and braced himself for an awkward hand shake followed by an even more awkward car ride. But Wesley just grinned at him and shook his head and then came forward and enveloped him in a bear hug. It took all of Damien’s resolve not to cry.
“I’ve missed you, bro,” Wesley said.
“I’ve missed you, too. Thanks for coming.”
“Hey, like I always told you – I knew you’d end up here one day.” Wesley punched him in the arm as if to tell him that he wasn’t being completely serious (even though they both knew that he was).
“Yeah, and as the older brother, I should’ve known you were always right.”
“Ah, finally, the man understands. Now come on, hop in, we have a long ride ahead of us.”
Damien got in the car and then whistled. “Nice set of wheels man.”
“I’m glad you approve. Hey, do you remember those bikes we used to have as kids?”
Damien groaned. “How could I forget, man! One blue and one pink. And guess who got the pink?”
“Well, you were the youngest.”
“I was so embarrassed by that thing. I tried to peel off all the paint and it ended up looking like a complete disaster. Plus I didn’t want to upset Dad because it was the only two that he could afford. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful but, man, I really hated that thing so much. And I hated you for getting the cool blue one.”
Damien went silent before speaking again. “We were friends then. You and I. Just before Mom and Dad died. We were friends.”
Wesley looked at him strangely then. Damien never wanted to speak about their parents. “We were. Hey listen, I don’t know about you but I’m starving and we still have another two hours or so until we get home. How about some lunch? I came across some place on the way here. It’s about ten minutes away. Their sign says they do the best burgers in town.”
“From the looks of this place I think they do the ONLY burgers in town.”
“Well then, they’re not lying.”
“That would be great, Wesley. I’m starving. In fact, I’ve been starving for two years. Prison food ain't exactly home cooking.”
They pulled into the pub a short while later and even though it was run down and slightly garish, it was still the most beautiful sight that Damien had seen in a long time.
“What will it be, boys?” a plump woman with rosy cheeks and a wide smile said to them as soon as they found a table.
“Well, it says you’re known for your burgers. Any recommendations?”
“There’s really only one that you should go for. It’s the triple bacon and triple cheese combo. It comes with a side order of fries and a chocolate milkshake. And while you’ll look at it and think that there is no way you’ll be able to finish it – well, you will. Because it’s really that good.”
“I’m sold. I’ll take one,” Damien said.
Wesley on the other hand looked conflicted. Then he shook his head and grinned, “Ah hell, I’ll take one too. Screw the diet.”
“You’re on a diet?” Damien asked the moment the waitress had left. “The guy who could eat whatever he wanted and still stay skinny?”
“Not a diet. A way of life. Ah, sounds a bit silly right now. But it’s worked. And I still eat as much as I used to, if not more, but now I just eat the right things.”
“You are disturbingly muscular,” Damien noted and pointed to his arms.
“And you are disturbingly skinny.”
“Prison will do that to you.”
Wesley shifted uncomfortably in his seat and then looked at Damien. “So, are we going to skirt around the issue all day or are we just going to get right to it? I mean, we’re acting like we’ve been friends for years and we both know that’s not true. We’re brothers, sure. But friends, no, we’re not friends. You called and I came and I suspect and hope that you would do the same had the roles been reversed. But you owe me a lot of explanations. I actually have no idea why you are even in jail, how long you have been there and how you got out. We’ve got this whole lunch to get through and a long journey home. I think that’s enough time to catch me up.”
Damien sighed. He knew this was coming. He’d thought over and over again about what he was going to tell Wesley and he now suddenly couldn’t remember a thing.
“Just start at the beginning,” Wesley suggested.
And so that was exactly what Damien had done. He’d started off by telling him all about Tom and the guys that had first gotten him into it all. Back then, him and Wesley had actually been friends but it was around that time that a drift had started to come between them.
“I remember that,” Wesley said, “I’d told you to get out of it early before you got into it too bad and you had told me to mind my own business and that it was just a bit of fun. Then you told me that I was incredibly boring and that I had never known fun in my life.”
Damien chuckled. “I remember that, too. I hated how together you always seemed. I was far more jealous than I let on. The only retaliation I knew was to just be mean to you.”
Damien then told him about the Poison Ivy gang and how, after twelve years, he had finally decided that he wanted out. He’d never let it get too bad but he’d been close and he had still done many things he was not proud of.
“And then, two years after I was on the straight and narrow, I met Hazel.”
“Hazel?”
“Yeah. Hazel Josephine Rose. The prettiest girl I’ve ever met – inside and out. I’d never known a girl to be like her. Just such a good person. Her biggest crime was stealing a book from the school that she worked at so that she could read it before reading it to her kids. A book she would still take back once she was done with it. Those were the types of things that made her feel guilty in life. She made me see how life should be.”
“So, you guys were a couple?”
“Not at first. At first, we were friends. Her dumb ass boyfriend had left her for another woman and she’d never fully recovered from it. He’d been her childhood sweetheart and he had broken her heart into pieces. So, naturally, she’d been wary of taking things too far with me. So… we stayed friends, even though it was obvious we wanted more.”
“And then?”
Just then, the food arrived and Damien literally felt the drool come out of his mouth. The burger was huge. The plate of fries was huge. The milkshake was huge. But he knew that he would finish every single bit of it.
“Enjoy, you two.” The waitress grinned and walked away.
“Oh dear. I’m going to have to work so hard at the gym this week. But you know what, Damien old friend… this looks like it’s going to be worth it.”
Damien took a huge bite, closed his eyes and smiled. “Oh, it is.”
It took several more bites for them to carry on with their conversation.
“Anyway, so you were saying. You guys started dating?”
“Yeah, and she even introduced me to her family. A proper family. Like the mother and father are still together and still happy. The brother is a nice guy with a cool wife and two cute kids. That type of thing.”
“How did you feel being there?”
“Actually, I felt good. I felt like I belonged. Actually – I thought about you a lot that night. I thought about contacting you.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, Tom happened.”
“The guy that saved you.”
Damien told Wesley all about the phone call that changed his life.
“I don’t understand. You were out of it. Why didn’t you just say no?”
“It’s hard to explain if you haven’t been involved with people like Tom before. I owed him one. And if I had said no, I promise you my life would’ve become a living hell. I don’t owe him anymore at least. But unfortunately, I had to pay for it. Two damn years of paying for it. Looking back, I should’ve at least done some research on the whole thing myself instead of just believing that he knew what he was talking about. I took a chance and I lost.”
“What happened with Hazel?”
“I never got a chance to tell anybody where I was. I know she found out though. And, Wesley… well… there’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know that Hazel came to see me because I heard the guards talking about it. People talk in prison. There’s nothing else do. But we weren’t allowed visitors no matter how hard they tried. The guards said that Hazel was adamant that she had to see me because she wanted to tell me something. They refused and then asked her what it was that she wanted to tell me. She said she was pregnant. And that I was the father.”
“What? Is it true?”
“As far as I know. I mean, she could’ve been lying but I don’t know man… I’ve thought about it over and over again… and I think she was telling the truth.”
“And they still wouldn’t let her in to see you?”
“Nah, there’s no way of visitors in that place.”
“So you had to sit for two years there knowing that you had a child?”
“Yeah. In a way, man, it became a blessing. I was originally given four years. It wouldn’t have been so long if we’d tried to rob a store or something. But a bank is a different thing altogether. But I was let out after two for good behavior. And there are only two things that kept me on the straight and narrow Wesley – and that was Hazel and our child.”
Wesley sat back, trying to absorb it all. “So what’s the plan now?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to try find her.”
“Listen, Damien, it’s not going to be easy, but you have to find her. You have to. I’ve never seen you talk about anyone the way that you talk about her.”
“I know. I messed up badly. She was the one.”
“She IS the one,” Wesley said.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, what about Tom?” Wesley asked him after they had paid and were headed to the car. “What ever happened to him?”
“That’s the crazy thing… he never got caught. Damn bastard.”
***
Wesley dropped Damien off at a motel in the area where he used to stay. He still had a bit of money in the bank and planned to stay there for a few days while trying to figure out what to do. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his old place and all his things so he had a lot of figuring out still to do. But he had a suspicion he’d be starting all over. Wesley offered for him to come and stay with him but he didn’t want to. Wesley had a family and a life of his own and it felt too soon to impose on them like that. Wesley pressed a few notes in his hand, which would give him a few extra nights at the motel if he needed and made Damien promise to stay in touch.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I missed you,” Wesley said.
“Yeah… I didn’t realize how much I needed this. Today was good. Thank you.”
Damien then showered and fell into a deep sleep. A tiny, springy motel bed had never felt so good before. The next day, he popped out to get some breakfast and then headed out to his first destination; the one place that he thought he might actually find Hazel and the one place in which she couldn’t run away easily from – her school.
He’d never been to her school but he had heard a lot about it and he knew exactly where it was. He didn’t particularly want the kids to see him but he knew that he might not be able to avoid it. He walked down the tree lined pathway up to the school. There were no kids on the field so he figured they must all be inside, but the moment he stepped in, he heard a bell go off and suddenly saw kids coming out from all directions and running out. He asked the secretary where he could find Hazel and she pointed down the corridor and told him two doors to the left. He walked slowly.
When he arrived, he stood back and waited for the last of the kids to come rushing out. Then he walked in with tentative steps. There she was. Hazel Rose. Hazel Josephine Rose. She hadn’t changed much in two years – other than her hair, which was now cut short to her shoulders. It suited her. He knocked slightly on the door and watched as her face turned ashen the moment she locked eyes with him. She held onto the desk as if she were going to faint.
“Hey, Panda,” he said.