Page 2 of My Cowboy Freedom
She stared at it for a long time. “You’re not the first man I’ve picked up in this place, and you won’t be the last.” The implication being she was ’Nando’s old lady, and I was old news.
“I know.”
I’d said my good-byes to ’Nando inside, before they moved me to Huntsville to get me ready for release.
Between me and ’Nando, everything was pretty straightforward. He liked getting his dick sucked, and I liked staying alive. It was pretty basic, even if we’d learned to love and respect each other over the years. ’Nando never forced me either. Not once. I’d seen my options, and I’d taken the best one.
That last contact between us, that single brutal clench, with Nando’s hand over my mouth while he made me come so hard I bit the meat of his hand bloody to keep from screaming, will live in my memory forever.
The fist bump later, for show. The handshake, him dragging his pinky along mine, the last connection between us as solid as our blood and our bones.
A surprisingly painful good-bye.
“Now you fly,” he’d said. His eyes were the color of old, black coffee—and just as bitter, except sometimes, when he thought I couldn’t see him watching me. “Never come back here,pajarillo.”
Then he’d lifted his hand, pointed his finger at the center of my forehead, and mimicked pulling a trigger.Bang.
I was dead to him now. There would be no protection if I ever came back. His way of sayingvaya con Dios.
Good-bye forever.
I couldn’t begin to untangle my emotions as ’Nando’s wife, two of his grandchildren, and I made our way through mid-afternoon traffic.
Happiness so powerful I felt stoned.
Fear I thought would crush me.
Anxiety, anger, gratitude, loneliness, despair, isolation, trepidation.
Regret.
I’d used ’Nando—let him use me—but he wasn’t free, and I’d known that.
It wasn’t my worst offense by far. Maybe I regretted that it didn’t bother me more.
My reluctant chauffeur drove me to my parole office. She waited in the car while I filled out paperwork and made assurances I was on the straight and narrow. Then we drove out to the Hill Country, where I had work and a place to stay waiting for me. We stopped once at a filling station. I waited in the van with the baby while she took the little girl to the bathroom. We stopped again on the highway, when the baby couldn’t be consoled, and I waited in the van with the girl, while her grandmother changed her in the back. When we got to the Rocking C, she let me out. I figured she’d just drive off, but she got out and came around to open the hatch in the back.
“Here,” she handed me a paper bag, which held clothes similar to the ones she’d given me to wear earlier. She wasn’t gracious about it. She didn’t even look at me.
“He had boys like you before he went to prison, and he’s already got another one inside. You know he does.”
“Probably.” I had no illusions, but I didn’t need any. I thought she probably did need them. I couldn’t give them back to her.
Her dark gaze slid over me. She dug a fat envelope from under her shirt and held it up for me to see. My name was written on it in ’Nando’s careful, loopy hand. “You ain’t shit. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” When I reached out for it, she snatched it back.
Instead of saying anything, I held my hand out. After some more taunting, she gave me the envelope. It was real thick, and I knew what was in it. Cash. Probably more than she wanted to part with, but not more than she could afford to give up.
I didn’t open it in front of her.
She spat at my feet. Then she got into her minivan and peeled out, leaving me beneath the ranch’s old-fashioned wrought-iron arch:Welcome to the Rocking C.
