Chapter Twenty-Three
Trethan
I counted the animals in the back pasture one more time and made some notes on my clipboard. Everything looked good. We had quite a few horses boarded here at the moment, and quite a few students were out taking lessons. I had a feeling it would be a big pay-out for John at the end of the season. Not enough to fund Vanessa’s gallery, but it might give him a little extra cash to help her.
But knowing Vanessa, she wasn’t going to wait until the end of the season before opening her gallery.
I kept trying to think of ways to help her, but nothing came to me.
I fished my out of my pocket as it started to ring. It was Brent, which was a bit of a surprise. I hadn’t heard anything from him since he’d first gone into the clinic. I’d been wondering how things were, but I’d known better than to bother him. He would contact me when he was ready.
“Hey, man,” Brent said, sounding tired, but more okay than I’d heard him in a while.
Now that I knew what to look for, I realized how long it had been since he’d been okay. I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed things sooner.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Things are actually… Well, they’re not good yet, but they’re getting there, I guess,” he said, sounding like he considered his words carefully. I could hear the grimace in his voice when he spoke again. “Not going to lie, the first couple weeks after I got in here were pure hell. Don’t ever get yourself mixed up in heroin, man.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said, trying to keep things light. Or as light as possible, anyway, when one of my best friends was in rehab for drug abuse.
“You’re still feeling guilty,” he said, accurately assessing my tone.
I was silent for a long moment. Then, I sighed, running a hand through my hair as I stared out over the field. “I can’t help it,” I told him. “I should have realized sooner. I should have known that things had gotten rough for you. You shouldn’t have had to-”
“As soon as you knew about it, you got me into this place,” Brent interrupted, his voice firm. “Trethan, you need to stop beating yourself up over my mistakes.” He paused. “Anyway, I’m doing a lot better. I’m never going to be a hundred percent. It’s always going to be a struggle. My demon. But I’m making progress.”
“There’s something else that you’re not telling me,” I said suspiciously. I wasn’t sure where the hunch came from, if it was his words or his tone, but I was certain there was something more, some other reason he’d called me.
“I’ll be getting out of here soon,” he said, his voice quiet and careful. “I’m not sure that I’m going to be coming back to White Bluff.”
I whistled softly under my breath. “That would be quite the change.”
“I know,” Brent said. “But one of the best ways to keep from getting hooked again is to do away with that temptation as much as I can. I can’t let myself fall back into old patterns. You know as well as I do that that’s exactly what I’d let myself do. I’d come back to town and think, hey, I could get away with smoking a little weed. And then the next thing I knew, I’d start dealing again. And then it wouldn’t just be weed that I was doing anymore.”
“What made you start, anyway?” I asked suddenly. It was something I’d wondered about ever since I checked him into the facility.
Brent sighed. “Combination of things, really,” he said. “But to be honest? Probably it was just boredom, pure and simple.”
I could tell he was smiling, albeit in what was likely a self-deprecating way. “I grew up in this town, man. It’s not that I ever thought I was destined for something better because that’s really not my style, but maybe that’s exactly what the problem was. After a while, weed just didn’t do what it used to do to me. I needed something else.”
“Fair enough,” I sighed. I shook my head. “It’d be weird without you here, though. Who am I going to go to the Roasted Bison with?”
Brent laughed. “You won’t be going to the Roasted Bison anyway,” he said. “Come on, things are going good with Vanessa, aren’t they?”
“They’re going really good,” I said. “I can’t help thinking I might mess something up with her again, by accident. But at the moment, things are going well.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “You deserve a girl like that. Someone who will keep you honest.” He cleared his throat. “Look, about what I said about her, I’m really sorry. You had every right to punch me; I shouldn’t have said any of those things. She’s a good girl. I do think maybe she’s a little snobby sometimes, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she’s knows exactly what she’s worth and what she deserves. That’s more than you or I ever had.”
I laughed and shook my head. “You’re sounding almost philosophical,” I told him. “What the hell have you done with my best friend?”
Brent laughed, too, but there was something sad to the sound. “I’m going to miss you, but I really do think this is for the best,” he said. “Maybe for both of our sakes.”
“Do you know where you’re gonna go?” I asked him.
“Probably not too far,” Brent said. “I don’t really know just yet, but I’m a Midwestern boy at heart; I could never make it in a big city or anything like that. Maybe Helena, though. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get a job there. A real job, an honest job. I’m not going to go back into dealing.” He snorted. “Bet the sheriffs are a lot stricter in Helena than they are around White Bluff.”
I snorted. “Wouldn’t be too difficult,” I pointed out. Of course, that was how we had both gotten into our messes in the first place: there was too much leniency with regards to drugs out in the middle of nowhere where we were.
“Maybe you could come see me at some point,” Brent said, sounding hopeful. “I really mean it when I say that I’m trying not to fall back into the same old patterns, and I can’t promise that I’d really be much fun to be around at the moment, but I’d like to see you. If you were willing to still see me.”
“Of course, I’m still willing to see you,” I said matter-of-factly, rolling my eyes. “Brent, don’t be ridiculous. Sure, you said some shit about Vanessa. Said some things about me, too, I guess. You were drugged out of your mind, though. I can’t hold that against you. And hey, I’m the one who clocked you.”
“That was quite the punch,” Brent agreed. He paused again, and I waited patiently for whatever it was that he wanted to say.
“You’re still my blood brother, you know,” he told me finally. “I’m cutting away some of the deadwood from my life at the moment, getting rid of some of the things that didn’t work, but I don’t want you to think for a minute that you’re one of the things I include in any of that. You and I are going to be friends until the day we die.”
“Good,” I said firmly. I shook my head. “Honestly, Brent, I think moving to Helena sounds like a great idea. Like you mentioned, it should be easy for you to find some sort of work there. Of course, I wouldn’t put drug dealing on your résumé, but you could always put down that you, I don’t know, were a freelancer or something. Manager of a business. Sales rep. Something like that. If you need someone to put down as a reference, you can always use me.”
He laughed. “I may have to take you up on that offer,” he said. “We’ll see how things go, though.” He was quiet for a minute. “I’m really working on being honest at the moment. Lies have been so much a part of my life lately. They have to be, if you’re going to make a living doing what I was doing. And, I’m good at them. You know that.”
“I know that,” I agreed softly. “But Brent, I really do think it’s good that you’re trying to clean up your act. I always thought you were a really good guy.”
He cleared his throat, sounding suspiciously close to tears. “Anyway, it’s good to hear your voice, man,” he said, his voice chock full of emotion. “And I really am grateful for your help. Without you, I’d probably be beaten to a pulp by now.”
“Yeah, what the hell was all that?” I asked. “I mean, I can kind of guess that you weren’t getting beaten up because of your weed sales or whatever. Things can get rowdy in that business, but they don’t generally lead to people being that nasty.”
He snorted. “No,” he agreed. “Not quite that nasty.” He was silent for a moment. “Honestly, I don’t know how much of it was just in my head, and that’s probably the scariest part of it all. Drugs really made me paranoid after a while. It’s part of why I was so upset with you. So upset with Vanessa. I thought I was losing you as a best friend. I thought she was stealing you from me.”
“But there must have been some kind of backstory to it,” I pressed.
“Yeah,” Brent sighed deeply. “I was using more heroin than I was dealing. The guys I was getting it from, they weren’t getting the profit margins that they wanted. Pretty simple, really. Like I said, I don’t know how much of my anxiety was based on fact and how much was based on drugged-out imaginings of what they might do to me.”
“But they did beat you up, that one time? When you showed up to my house looking like shit.”
“Oh, they definitely beat me up,” he agreed. “More than just that one time. That was just the visible ass kicking. They were usually a bit more subtle.”
I grimaced, thinking about all the beatings my dad had given me over the years. Of course, my situation and Brent’s situations were only remotely similar, but at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the guy.
“Oh shit,” he said suddenly. “They’re kicking me off the phone now. I only get so long each week. Saved it all up so that I could talk to you.”
“Where are you, jail?” I quipped.
Brent laughed. “Nah, man, it’s good. Helps me keep moving forwards. I’m getting really good at solving a Rubik’s cube, too; that’s what I’ve been doing when I start to feel fidgety.”
I laughed in disbelief, unable to reconcile the mental image that I had of Brent with someone solving a Rubik’s cube. “Good on you,” I told him. “Keep fighting those demons.”
“You, too.”
He hung up without saying goodbye, and I couldn’t help smiling. I was glad to hear him doing so well. I whistled a little, checked over my notes one last time, and went to find John to give him the final tallies.