AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What happened after that?”
“While Smoke was passed out, I bathed him and washed his clothes but they were so flimsy they fell apart in the wash, so I mended some of Barney’s things, altering them on the fly so they’d fit him. I placed some food by the bedside. When he came to, he disappeared again. The food was gone off the nightstand, but the clothes were still on the foot of the bed.
“Where did you find him?” I ask. On some level, I’m beginning to identify with the kid she’s describing, and it’s sitting like a rock in my gut.
Zelda sighs, knitting her brows together, still disturbed with whatever it was she was recalling. “He was under the porch in
the crawlspace. Naked. Eating the beef stew and biscuits with his hand like a wild animal. He was shoving it into his mouth so quickly he was choking.”
“How did you get him to come out?” I ask, my heart squeezing for a young Smoke.
“He came out on his own, after a while. He let me dress him, but he didn’t speak, just watched me like I was an alien. We tried to get him to tell us who his parents were. When we couldn’t get it out of him, we decided to call the police, but he must have heard us talking about it because he was gone before they arrived.”
The Warden leapt up when a bird landed in the yard. He barked and chased it back into the weeds.
“Over the next few years, he’d come around time and again. Sometimes, he was crazed like we’d found him the first time. Sometimes, he’d just leave wild flowers on the front porch for me. He never stayed the night no matter how many times we’d ask. He never took anything from us more than a meal. I started putting clothes and food in the porch box so he could come and take them whenever he wanted. After a while, I left other things in there. Sometimes he took them. Sometimes he didn’t. Years passed this way until my Barney died. Smoke was a teenager by then. Then, it was Smoke who started leaving stuff for me. Flowers. Cash. Gifts.” Zelda takes a sip of tea. “It’s because of him I was able to keep this house after my Barney passed.”
I know how it feels to grow up neglected. Not on that kind of scale but on some level. My heart breaks for the kid version of Smoke. Out there alone in the world. Having to find his own way. I realize the pain in my chest isn’t just for him.
It’s for me, too.
I reach over and grab Zelda’s hand in mine which she covers with her own. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them, a single tear drips down her cheek, getting trapped in the many lines of her face.
“He still takes care of me, sometimes from afar,” Zelda says looking at the screen door falling from the hinge and to the porch railing which was rotting and crumbling before our very eyes. “Which is why I take care of the main house for him so when he’s around, he has a place to stay.”
“And you still make him food,” I say, remembering the biscuits and gravy from my first morning at the prison.
“That I do,” she smiles.
“Wait, the main house? You mean The Warden’s cottage?”
Zelda nods. “Yes. This house, the warden’s cottage, and the prison have all been combined onto one parcel of land.”
“Who owns it?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Smoke, dear. Smoke owns it all.”
“Why?” I look around from the weeds to the main prison building, crumbling and littered with graffiti. “I mean, if he could afford all this surely he could afford to buy a house somewhere that isn’t so…prisoney?”
“Sometimes you don’t get to choose where home is. Sometimes home chooses you,” Zelda says, wiping her hand on her apron.
“Zelda, why do you think he tried to push you away all those years ago? What happened to him?”
“He wasn’t pushing us away,” Zelda argues. “Quite the opposite. He was staying away because he didn’t want to bring his troubles into our lives. Don’t you see? He was loving us, the only way he knew how.”
“By staying away from you,” I say with some semblance of understanding beginning to sink in.
“Yes, and I’m afraid he still thinks that way no matter how many times I try to tell him otherwise.” Zelda smiles and shakes her head. “I wish things were simple, but Smoke…he’s not a simple man.”
“But you two are close now? I mean, you seem close,” I say.
“In some ways, yes. In others…well, some things never change.” Zelda stands up. “I’m going to go freshen my tea.”
She leaves me alone on the porch. I hear barking in the distance and look up to see The Warden with another snake in his mouth. He’s tossing it around in the air like it’s a Frisbee. My eyes fall on the porch box in the corner, and I can’t help my curiosity.
I kneel and lift the rusted metal lid. It’s empty…except for a bouquet of fresh wildflowers.
Zelda comes back out to the deck just as Smoke comes into view carrying a huge bundle of wood over his shoulder. He’s shirtless, wearing only his jeans, boots, and a pair of work gloves. His tattooed body is glistening with sweat. His long dark hair is tied into a knot on the top of his head. He sets the wood down with ease in front of the dilapidated fence and using his hands, he grips an old crumbling post and lifts it from the ground, tossing it to the side with ease before replacing it with a new one.
Zelda sees me watching him.
“You know, just because a relationship doesn’t conform to the standard shapes you were taught in preschool doesn’t mean they don’t fit together. We may not all be triangles or squares, but we’re still shapes. That boy over there,” she says, pointing her teacup at Smoke.
It sounds odd her calling him a boy especially when he yanks another post from the ground with one hand.
“He’s my child in every way. Not every child requires three squares a day and a story at bed time. Some just need a box on the porch and the freedom to run free.”
She gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Just give him time.”
Time for what?
“Time isn’t something I have much of,” I say, looking down to my hands.
Zelda doesn’t ask why, and I suspect she knows a lot of what I’m not telling her already. She squeezes my shoulder again and sighs. “Time isn’t something any of us really have.”
It isn’t. I look down at my lap.
“Rage was right, you do feel something for him.” Zelda says, watching my expression. “I can’t blame you. I was always attracted to the complicated ones myself. My Barney being the most complicated of them all.”
My eyes snap to hers.
“I know everything, dear,” she says with a sweet smile. “Let me tell you this one thing.” She leans in close and gently tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, cupping my cheek. “Never ever underestimate a woman, especially yourself. We are in charge despite what anyone might say or think. You have more control over your life than you give yourself credit or blame for. Also, Smoke seems to think he don’t feel things like a normal person. That he was born without a conscience or a heart but he’s wrong.”
“He is?”
She nods. “He is. It’s not that he doesn’t feel anything, it’s that he feels everything. And for a man capable of such atrocities it’s hard for him to justify it any other way.”
It hits me. I’ve been blaming Smoke for ripping me away and holding me hostage, but really, none of this is his fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who stole the money from Griff and set the wheels in motion. I’m the one who embarked on some sort of deep web crusade to save the world without fully appreciating the consequences of my actions.
Zelda and The Warden make me think of all I had in the world before I was brought here, and it wasn’t much. A sort-of friendship with Duke. A one-sided love-hate thing with neighbor’s meddling cat.
Smoke isn’t the problem at all, I realize.
He’s the consequence.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
