Brad couldn’t help but look forward to watching that little fucker squirm.
Brad’s second last day started the way it had for every other day for last few years.
He woke up before long before Danny did. Long before the guards did their first check for the day.
He lay in the darkness, listening to everything he could… training his ears to be acutely sensitive. He did all this before opening his eyes.
A few coughs down the hall. A night noise of some sort or another here, another there. Danny’s heavy breathing from the bunk below.
When he opened his eyes, it took a few seconds for them to adjust.
The guards checked the cells right after midnight, and again around three.
It was the three o’clock check, and two of them took turns shining their little flashlights into each cell.
The rule was that they had to see skin – if you were completely covered in blankets they would call out and insist you show yourself.
Brad took this second morning count to be his wakeup call. In his head he simply thought of the guards as staff. He waited for the guards to move away. Prisoners were not allowed to move during the checks.
Once they moved away, he heard them going down the hallway, checking each cell in turn.
Then Brad slowly sat upright, his eyes now having fully adjusted to the darkness.
He heard Danny’s breathing change in the bed below. The nasty old pervert was awake but pretended to be sleeping. He knew it was time for Brad’s workout routine, and he always watched while pretending to be asleep.
In here you had no choice. You did share a room with a convicted sex offender. But in here, like out there, the likelihood was that Brad called the shots as he wanted them.
That’s the reason they caged him. His potential scared them.
Brad didn’t particularly mind the idea of gay guys looking at him. But out there, he wasn’t locked up with one. It went with the territory: forty percent of the inmates here were sex offenders.
Danny liked his men a little too young, generally, but in the confines of FMC Devens, all he could do was spend his days and nights watching Brad, lusting after Brad, or being nice to Brad.
He was useful to have around. He placed Brad on a pedestal and offered all kinds of perks, and all Brad had to do in return was give him a little bit of hope, so he could string him along.
Danny was like all fags.
And they couldn’t help themselves. They wanted Brad. They were dumb enough to think that by being nice to him and doing him favors, he would reciprocate with some action. Letting them think that it might well happen? Well, that kept them loyal, for years.
When Danny was awake, officially awake, he was friendly and pleasant and meek. And when he was pretending to be sleeping, he was at least quiet. In here, Brad couldn’t expect any better.
Brad slid from the top bunk noiselessly: with a single, graceful move.
He landed softly, as a cat might. Perfect.
Danny turned over, away from the wall, keeping his eyes shut until Brad moved further away and couldn’t see his eyes.
Fine, fag. Enjoy the show.
Brad slept only in boxers. He stood quietly for a bit, letting his mind connect with his body. Feeling each of his muscles in turn, tensing and releasing.
He stretched a little.
Then he removed his boxers kicked them to a corner.
He moved his head from side to side, stretched his neck, swung his arms and breathed deeply a few times.
A long exhale, then a long inhale.
He dropped from his standing position into a pushup. Soundlessly, he lowered himself until his nose nearly touched the floor. He kept it there for a while.
His heart was quiet. His breathing even.
He pumped out twenty pushups rapidly, keeping his body perfectly straight, his range of motion as wide and deep as possible, while maintaining perfect form.
Then he paused at the top, holding a plank position for a few seconds.
He continued with ten more pushups – but these ones were slow. Ten seconds each way, with a three second pause at each end. Up, hold for three, down, hold for three – 10, 3, 10, 3.
Then he began his variations. A range of different pushups. Feet elevated. Diamond. One armed. Bouncing ones.
When he was done with the pushups, he moved to squats and splits. Then he got to his handstands, dragonflies, pull ups, planks and stretches.
By the time the light began to enter the cell from the one small window – that had a view only of sky – Brad was done. He got back into his boxers and got his towel.
Then he waited for the morning prisoner count.
The routine kicked in. Same as ever, over three years. Brad couldn’t help but feel the excitement – because it was the last time that he would follow the routine all the way through. He wouldn’t sleep here tomorrow night. It made the whole routine fun.
Although he showed none of his excitement.
He just did the things he always did.
Start with a shower. Then go eat breakfast.
Same food.
All along, guards watched the inmates. At FMC Devens, someone was always watching.
He got to the library half an hour early.
He was a freshman in business college when he was sentenced to Devens, and so he could not finish his degree. But, in a way, he was glad that he spent his time guiding his own studies.
He expanded his area of interest.
He read every textbook he could find. Mathematics. Engineering. Marketing. Biology. Chemistry. Literature. Art History. And he also memorized large parts of the textbooks. Sometimes because he liked the information and it could come in handy. Sometimes because he was just practicing his memory.
All he had left, after three years of reading, were three chapters left in a textbook on Toxicology. He skimmed through most of it, and then read the parts he felt like. Some of the information he committed to memory.
There was some time outside allowed after lunch.
He went outside to get some winter air, but returned inside earlier than the others.
He finished the textbook and put it away. He stood up, and left the prison library for the very last time.
Then dinner. Same time. Same food. His last dinner in the place.
Then early bed. A lot of time alone with your thoughts. A lot of time to think.
He was done with college, done with the family business, done with following anyone else’s expectations, done with the prissy world of those rich sons of bitches in Rhode Island. He was done with following any kinds of restraints. He was done with being caged.
He’d get out, go home, get some stuff, and then then move to the West Coast. From there he would make up his mind.
Chill out, hang around, catch some surf.
He’d drink beer and look out at the ocean and who knows what destiny lay ahead for someone who was physically, intellectually, so perfect?
Another cell check, and Brad realized he’d been fantasizing for three hours.
Better get to sleep. He wanted to be fully present, he wanted to be wide awake. He wanted to be in full control of himself in the morning. He needed his senses sharp.
He needed to enjoy every second of Stein having to squirm his way through letting Brad Jensen out of the cage.
They all wanted to cage him. They all want to keep him in a cage.
But the next time Brad woke up, it would be the very last time he woke up in a cage.
And as soon as it was safe, as soon as they weren’t watching anymore, as soon as the world grew complacent…
He’d fuck the shit out of some bitch.
Chapter 3
The Laundry List
Paul had discovered the crime quite by accident. Thinking back, it was compl
etely a coincidence that he chose the route he did that day. Had he not, he might never have stumbled on any of it.
Sooner or later, the waste site would have been discovered. But catching people in the act at least confirmed that Sutherland Ridgefield should be the ones to answer.
He had a bad night the night before, dreaming about mud pools. He decided to take a longer than usual walk into the woods and just get as far away from bed as possible.
He could have tried getting on with the day without the walk, but thought better of it. Dreams about mud pools tended to spoil whatever kind of day lay ahead for him. It always made Paul a little edgy right from the get go. They ended up just plain sucking, and the way to get through days like that was either to bear it and wait for it to pass – or to outwalk the bastard.
On days like that his senses were affected. The world look either surreal, or too loud and too bright. Like he was hyper-stimulated. He knew it was because he was walking around with a fairly high degree of adrenalin running right alongside his blood.
The dreams were bad, and the days that followed them. But those only showed up here and there. It wasn’t a bad deal, all things considered. There was this little part of him that was trapped by a memory. The way Paul of it, was as the price of the ticket. Cost of admission.
Ideal? Probably not. Healthy? Who knew? But it worked, it worked for Paul. And he rather did what worked, than think about how unfair things were. Or how much some memories and some places could hurt.
Everybody’s got stuff in their lives that they have to live with, or live under. This was just his stuff. And taking a serious walk into unknown areas – fast as he could – worked too.
Outwalk the demons.
He started his hike really early too – a good two hours before sunrise. This time of the morning, he stuck to the footpaths that led to all the little places on his land he had built up. An obstacle course, a camping site. He also had two isolated cabins, that people who really wanted to get away from everything and everyone could go to recharge.
The footpaths led around all these. But eventually the footpath faded, as if it grew dimmer, as it became less and less manmade. Animals used highways too, and pretty soon Paul was on a natural route only. He took care to disturb the landscape as little as possible, but he was still walking as if he was being chased.
Then he turned away from the natural footpath too. He started moving through new terrain, dense growth. It revealed open areas where Paul could walk among the trees.
He was drenched with sweat, his heart pounding. And then suddenly the hard work was behind him, and he slowed his breath, and out here, surrounded by nothing but trees – he wasn’t being chased anymore.
Whenever he was spent like that… it was at that moment that the woods kicked in and did their magic. Something ancient, something primal. Paul Draker got to forget the dreams, and his worries, and his fears. Out here in the woods, Paul invariably found himself fully present. Conscious. Mindful. In the moment. Call it what you will.
His senses came alive and he could see the details. That’s how nature spoke to him, in details. Crisp leaves. Wet leaves. Soft leaves. Twigs. Moist ground.
And the traces left behind by anything that moved.
In the small signs lay the route. Paul had made of a career of that in every godforsaken hole the world had known in the past twenty years. He made a working life from it now – now that he was teaching cops and letting civilians reconnect with their humanity again.
Reuben left him an insane amount of money. And he left it to Paul not only because he loved Paul, but because in his judgment, Paul would do the best possible thing with all that money.
He knew Paul loved the woods of Southern Appalachia more than any place on earth. Paul remembered showing him the mountains for the very first time. In a hot air balloon. It was so beautiful that Reuben gasped.
A few minutes into the trip, Paul looked up and saw Reuben looking at him, while he’d been staring at the trees. Reuben had a smile on his face, but his eyes were welled up.
The best thing Paul could do was keep these mountains beautiful. Make them accessible to students and families and corporate groups and you name it. Encourage the link between nature and humanity.
This landscape provided something humanity often needed most – context.
All the big thoughts, big dreams and big ideas. Meanwhile, a view can still put your life and everything into perspective like no amount of learning or argument could. Paul knew he loved the outdoors more than most people. But part of him believed, or wanted to believe, that all people would breathe differently if they simply got out often enough.
These mountains could help people, if they cared to listen. Not just while he lived there, either. When he died, the land would continue to be wild and free. And the rest of the Cro’s Post would be the property of the City of Fairbridge and its people forever, not to be developed.
All the money in the world, and some really great new industries and businesses taking off – and all kinds of disruption in the marketplace. And Paul Draker decided instead to keep one little corner of Appalachia preserved and beautiful.
He could get hold of himself out here. Anytime he needed to, and without fail.
The dream was coming around because there was a lot going on, that was all. Tina leaving and the challenges of finding someone to run the place was going to drain time from his schedule. The whole June thing were just a few months – hell, that’s just a few weeks – ago. The party-political circus playing out currently was enough to put you in a padded cell.
And that loneliness. Again, with that.
Paul began to descend the slope of one of the last few hills inside the boundary of his land.
He could see a gravel road. That would be the boundary road.
He reached the summit and allowed himself to catch his breath up there. The ascent had been steep.
From up here he could see far. He sat there, looking out at a pristine wilderness.
So here is what he would do. Find a date. Hire a team to take over from Tina – Paul wouldn’t be able to replace her functions with a single hire. Get the Advanced SERE Course ready for the Navy boys, at their place in California, as soon as summer rolled around again. Search, Evasion, Rescue and Escape wasn’t the kind of course Paul could run casually. He’d have to be well prepared. And he wanted to get the last courses out of the way and probably do some marketing.
And what about unwelcome dreams? Well, that ticket was bought and paid for. It was gone now and if he kept level headed, it wouldn’t be back for a while. In the meantime, as his drill sergeant used to say… he could save the drama for his mamma, and push.
The cost of the ticket might seem steep. But it came with views like that.
Paul decided to hike back to his cabin. He chose to descend on the northern side. Had he chosen a different route, he wouldn’t have known anything about it.
In land this big and wild, you might run across several trespassers. There’s been instances, not on Paul’s land but in the area before, where moonshiners set up shop on some public or private land. Cannabis plantations. There was even a meth lab bust, recently, after June. If Paul came across everything, he would note the location, leave the area and go call the police.
He didn’t mind hikers straying into his land. But some guests were unwelcome. The kind who invited trouble. Like entrepreneurs on the dodgy side of life, and a Sutherland Ridgefield truck dumping something that smelled like sulphur in what used to be a natural pond.
Paul rounded some rocks and there they were, close enough for him to be able to read the complaints line number, and the numbers on their plate.
He held his breath, and then laughed quietly unexpectedly. Just the irony of that complaint line. Exactly what Paul would need to sort this out. Someone in a call center that could be anywhere on the globe, speaking t
o an intern at the inbound customer services department. Yeah. That would do it.
But he kept himself very quiet, because he could hear them talk. He learned their names.
They spoke blue collar and local.
When they drove off, Paul double-timed it home.
As soon as he reached the cabin, he called Meg.
It didn’t matter how angry or calm he was. Any action he would take would make no sense unless he knew what the hell was in that pond. Meg would be able to tell him conclusively.
He’d met her when she showed up at the office cabin one Saturday morning, and he instantly liked her. She was a very fair-skinned woman with red and silver hair, an outdoorsy type who was also quick-witted. She also happened to run Biochemistry over at the V. She was the dean of the faculty in fact. She’d come to ask him if the postgrads could have access to his land for tests, and Paul was happy to agree. Over the course of a few weeks, they became friends. And a slow stream of postgrads did visit the Cro’s Post – all of them asking for permission so respectably he knew she had put them through their paces before they showed up.
It wasn’t necessary, but it was sweet.
And if there was one thing that she understood better than anything else, it was chemicals. He called her and she was there the same day. He drove her to the pond. She took samples. And she promised to get right back to him. And she did, too. Or she was about to.
He’d been cabin bound ever since, mostly, other than going for Tina’s big announcement at the Saloon.
Meg showed up in a solid but old car. She parked, got out. The way she sounded when she greeted him was worrying. Something officious in the tone. Like someone having to deliver really bad news.
“That bad, huh?” Paul said and smiled. He didn’t want her to feel what he was, so he chose to make light of it.
“Well,” she smiled briefly, but then shook her head. “It’s not good.”
They went inside and sat down at the desk.
She took a single folded piece of paper from her purse.
Brimstone Page 4