Three tries as he pumped the clutch and gas to get the rust bucket to turn over. He’d wanted to see his mom and show her that he was fine, just fine, better than ever. He wanted to move home, eat real food, sleep in a real bed, and never again see another cockroach.
He’d called his mom from the prison last week, the night before he was released.
“Ma, it’s me. Brian.”
She didn’t say anything for nearly a minute, and Brian thought for sure he’d been disconnected, some lame-ass prank of the prison guards.
“Brian,” she finally said, her voice old and flat. Unhappy.
Anger and a funny sort of pain clogged his throat. He swallowed with difficulty, then said, “Ma, I’m getting out. I didn’t do it.”
Another long pause. “I don’t understand. Where are you?”
“I’m still in Folsom, but they’re letting me come home tomorrow. They have new evidence, and it says I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Home? You’re coming home?”
She sounded scared. Hadn’t she heard what he’d said? That he was innocent? That the stupid fucking cops had made a mistake?
“Yeah. I’m inn-o-cent,” he stressed. “I told you that before.”
It hurt that his mother hadn’t visited him. He squirmed. He really didn’t know what his mother thought, what she even looked like as an old woman, or how she was coming along with his dad being dead.
He was surprised at how much it bothered him.
“I-Brian, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say I can come home.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
His hand clutched the receiver so tight his knuckles whitened. Stupid bitch! I told you I didn’t do it!
A familiar guilt spread through him and he hated himself for thinking so poorly of his mother. Shit, this was no good. He had to show her.
“Ma, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath. “The court got me an apartment and is giving me a little money, and because I was wrongfully imprisoned they’re going to give me over a million dollars. So I’ll call you next week, give you some time.”
“Thank you. Brian, I never stopped praying for you. Not one day. I hope you’ll do something good with your life now that you’re being released from prison.”
“Yes, Ma.” He hung up, afraid he’d start yelling at her. Something good with his life? What’d she think he’d do, murder someone? He didn’t murder that little girl, never would kill a kid. And the guy on the yard, hell, that had been an accident. And the Vietcong had been the enemy. He hadn’t murdered anyone, like in cold blood. It wasn’t fair, it fucking wasn’t fair, that he’d been sent to prison for thirty-four years because the stupid cops screwed up their investigation.
Fucking not fair.
Brian wiped his brow, sweating, hot wind blowing through the open windows of his pitiful truck. It wasn’t just the weather. It was this odd feeling he’d had ever since he’d walked out of Folsom Prison a free man. He didn’t feel free. He didn’t feel like he was in his body. He was disoriented. He’d been watching television nonstop since he’d been out. He’d taken nearly half the piddling stipend the prison handed him-like $1500 and a free apartment was supposed to last for three months until his million bucks came-and bought a fine 36-inch tube. It wasn’t like he’d been living in a vacuum in prison-he’d watched the news and a few stupid shows and movies and whatnot, but he didn’t realize how much he’d missed.
His mother lived in Menlo Park, in an older, middle-class neighborhood on the San Francisco peninsula. It was only ten minutes from his shit-ass apartment on the bad side of the tracks in Redwood City, where he was the only white boy in his building. But until he got the money from the government, he couldn’t go anywhere.
Life sucked.
By the time he’d turned into his mom’s neighborhood, he was a basket case. First, he hadn’t realized how much the area had grown in the last thirty years. He almost had a heart attack on the freeway surrounded by a gazillion cars and big rigs. Shit, where did all these people live? The peninsula connecting San Francisco to San Jose wasn’t that big.
A lot of the houses in his mom’s neighborhood were big and opulent, well kept. Classy, he thought. Some were add-ons, little houses turned into big homes. This was not the middle-class neighborhood he’d left when he went to Vietnam. These people had money.
The trees were bigger-a lot taller. But the streets had a hint of familiarity, and there was the park where he’d played as a boy.
Tears stung his eyes and he pinched the bridge of his nose. How’d it all get so fucked? He used to walk on this exact road with the guys, Pete and Barry and Tom. Kicking rocks and jabbering. Whittling wood like his daddy had shown him. Where were the guys now? Pete had gone to Vietnam, like him, but Barry and Tom didn’t go, at least not that he knew. Barry had the brains; he’d gone off to some big college. Probably made good money and married and had kids and did all the stuff they hadn’t thought about as kids, but figured they’d get around to sooner or later.
Tom? Hell, he could have landed himself in prison for all Brian knew. He was always walking that line, like the time he ripped off Old Man Duncan’s soda shop on El Camino Real, or when he nabbed Debbie Palmer’s purse and found out she had birth control pills in her wallet. Debbie Palmer wasn’t a virgin? Tom had returned the purse without her knowing, minus five bucks, and hit on her. Got her in the back of his dad’s pickup one night after a ball game and they went at it like rabbits.
Brian stopped the truck in front of his mom’s house and it sputtered before it died. He stared at the neat little bungalow. The same, but different.
Same red-shingled one-story, but freshly painted. The porch still had a swing, but it wasn’t the one Brian remembered. This one was wooden with a red-and-white flowered cushion. Flowers lined the walk. Petunias, his mother’s favorite.
“They grow like weeds but they’re so colorful I can’t help but love them,” she’d told him many times when she planted at the first sign of spring.
What was she doing planting petunias now? She was eighty. She shouldn’t be on her knees in the dirt.
As with many of the homes in the neighborhood, the garage was set back from the house. Still, a new Honda rested in the driveway. He couldn’t remember a time his mother didn’t garage the car. He hoped she was well.
He missed her.
He got out of the truck and walked slowly up the brick path, straightening his new Dockers. Twenty-four bucks. He couldn’t believe a pair of stupid pants cost that much-and the shirt was half-price, but still fifteen dollars! But he wanted to look nice for his ma.
The door opened before he even knocked. It wasn’t his ma.
Uncle Glen? Looked just like him. Full head of light gray hair, watery blue eyes, and fat nose, much too big to be on the little guy’s skinny face.
Brian blinked. Couldn’t be Uncle Glen, his mom’s brother. He’d be ancient by now. And didn’t Ma write saying that he’d croaked years ago?
“Toby?” Brian blinked again, his mouth falling open. His cousin Toby looked so old. But he was six years younger than Brian, and…
… And he was old. He was fifty-four. In his fucking fifties.
His life was gone. Over. Stolen.
“Brian.” Toby made no move to open the security screen. When had Ma installed it?
“What are you doing here?” He didn’t mean to sound so defensive. He used to like his little cousin. But that was three decades ago, before shit happened.
“Aunt Vi called and said you’d been released. I came down to help.”