Page 2 of Cole

“Just listen. Do a dying man a favor and listen.” He clamped a hand around the back of my neck and held me pinned, just above him, his eyes locked onto mine.

“Tell my boy I loved him and it was all for him…every single day was for him.”

“You tell him yourself,” I ground out.

Beatie shook his head, and his hand lost strength. He relaxed back against the ground.

“Don’t be like us, Cole. Find a way out,” he murmured, his eyes growing dimmer.

“Ain’t none of this shit worth a life.”

Then he closed his eyes, and he was gone.

It was raining hard by the time I got off my bike outside a small house at the edge of town. Errol rode flank. Making sure I got there safe or just making sure I got there… it was unclear. If it was the latter, clearly, he didn’t have much of an opinion of me. Being the reason someone’s husband wasn’t coming home deserved a face-to-face conversation, painful or not.

He stayed on his bike as I slid off. My father stood waiting for me by the door as I took my helmet off and joined him. I couldn’t feel the cold of the rain. Beatie’s blood had long since washed off my hands, but the heat of it sinking into my skin as he died in my arms would never fade. It was permanently etched inside me now. My hands would never be clean again.

It was my fault.

“Let’s keep this brief, and not impose further than we already are,” my dad muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face.

He banged on the door, and moments later it opened. Beatie’s old lady took one look at us, standing there in the rain, and broke down in tears. That was what it was like, being the wife of a patched-in man… you never knew when the night would come when your husband wouldn’t make it home.

She fell to the ground as Frank reached out to pat her on the shoulder.

“Rosie, I’m so sorry,” he said, voice like gravel.

Behind her, a little boy stood in the hall, watching us with curious eyes. Couldn’t have been more than seven years old. My father took Beatie’s cut from over his arm and passed it to his wife. His widow. Blood on the patch, half-washed by rain.

Then he turned and left, his boots heavy on the pavement.

I reluctantly followed, feeling like more should be said, something, anything, but words fell short.

The little boy hadn’t moved. He stood staring at the vest like he could make his dad come back if he could just stare hard enough.

“He was a hero. He saved my life,” I told the grieving family. The mother looked at me then with resentment, and I could feel the words she wished she could say.

It should have been you.

I didn’t know how to tell that little boy and weeping woman the last words of a dying man. It all felt too real and raw, too terrible. I’d tell them next time I saw them, when I hadn’t just given them the worst news of their lives.

Instead, I looked at that little boy, even younger than Marcus, and I made a silent vow. I’d look after that kid, no matter what. I’d make sure Beatie’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I’d take responsibility.

This I vow.

The rain kept falling, washing blood off the roads, but not off my hands.

22 years old

The visitor’s room at the state penitentiary that hosted Frank Bailey was overflowing for Father’s Day this year. Little kids clutching homemade cards in one hand, and their moms’ hands in the other, waiting with wide, nervous eyes for their dads to appear for their allotted visiting times. And as depressing as that was, those inmates were the lucky ones. At least they had someone to make them smile on Father’s Day. Someone who cared they were locked up.

I sat in a hard plastic seat and waited for my father to appear. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t belong here.

He was one of the last ones in. His hair had turned almost completely white in the few months that he’d been inside. He looked frailer somehow. He was so reduced suddenly. The big, hulking man I’d known my entire life was gone. Now, a frail old man shuffled in his footsteps.

He sank down opposite me.

“Where’s my card?” he grunted, looking around at the people trying their best to have an hour of happy family time.