Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Old Dog. New Tricks.
CLIFF
The crunch of gravel under his feet was his first sound of freedom.
Cliff Weston exited the barbed wire fencing as armed sharpshooters gazed down at him from their perches.
He passed through the last barrier exiting the prison.
He was dressed in his original clothes: a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved black sweater, black Converse.
He carried a small prison-issue plastic bag that carried all his earthly belongings.
An Italian leather wallet that held eleven bucks, an expired ID, an old broken watch that had belonged to his father.
A smartphone that hadn’t been charged in seven years.
A check for $2,000, his compensation as a prison cook to “reduce recidivism,” the business card of his parole officer, and the key to a rental unit above a garage in Manhattan Beach.
The two guards escorting him to the exit didn’t say a word until he was on the gravel, officially out of prison.
“Thanks, boys. Been nice knowing you.”
The older guard, Frank Dodge, chubby in the middle, thick mustache, the last of his wispy blond hair slathered down and feistily holding on, said gruffly, “Weston. Do not do me the displeasure of returning. Find a woman or a purpose. Or better yet, both.”
“I’ll miss your jailhouse wisdom, Frank.
Keep up the chess. Game of kings, you know.
” With this small acknowledgment of their shared mutual respect, the older guard nodded but before he turned back toward the gate, he handed Cliff a business card and said, “I know you’re headed to Manhattan Beach, my old stomping grounds.
This place has the best burger in town for a free man. ”
Cliff flipped the card over. It read OB’s Pub and Grill, with a cartoon of a buxom waitress hoisting a mug of beer in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other.
He smiled at the kindness of it. First nights out of the joint were notoriously difficult for parolees, as if a man could forget how to behave without being ordered by a guard or a guided by a set of prison rules.
Frank was trying to give him a soft landing.
“Will do.” Frank turned on his heel and walked back to the confines of the prison gate.
The younger guard, wiry and amped up on an unclear contraband, who had a reputation for jabbing prisoners with his club just because he could, said, “See ya, lowlife. I’ve got a crisp hundred-dollar bill that says you’ll be back here within ninety days.
” He produced a folded-up bill between his fingers and waved it at him, then added with a sneer, “Once a scumbag, always a scumbag.”
If this were any normal circumstance, say on the civilized streets of Los Angeles and a young punk like him pulled this move, Weston would have delivered a swift pop to the guard’s throat and a clean kick to the balls.
But, knowing bored snipers with itchy trigger fingers were a scant fifty yards away, he opted for pulling the guard in for what looked like a rough handshake wherein he liberated him from his hundred-dollar bill in one quick move.
Weston whispered, “Careful, Freddie. I know things about you that could do you harm.” He let the guard’s hand go and smiled.
The guard turned pale and scurried back toward the gate into the safety of the prison.
Cliff turned back toward the parking lot; the morning sun was rising over the rolling hills of Central California. He checked his watch, which wasn’t working, glanced in both directions of the long and empty road toward San Luis Obispo, and took one deep breath, raising his face to the sky.
No one was picking him up. So, Cliff started walking.
He had been nameless until he reached that gravel.
Up until that moment, he was Prisoner CA10607.
He had been unwilling to step inside his old self until he was out from behind bars.
He wanted to separate himself from the convict who had been incarcerated and spent seven years locked up to the free, principled man he wanted to be.
This was his chance, and in some ways, it felt like his last. The crackling sound of gravel was the sound of a new beginning, one in which he would strive to be more.
More than the sum of his youth. More than what his father had turned out to be.
More than what prison told him he was: a thief, a filthy yegg, a criminal.
Yet, the word rang in his ears from the punk guard again and again: scumbag.
As he walked toward a town in the distance where he could catch a bus going south, it started to rain.
Cliff turned up his collar to the wind and hoped the rain might wash away the residual filth of prison, the stench of his cell, the stain of rage that scars the heart of the incarcerated man.
He hoped the ugliness hadn’t seeped too deep inside him.
He hoped the rain might be the baptism he needed to start again on this, his brand-new day of his last chance. He hoped.
But rain can only wash away so much before you start to drown.
Ten hours later, Cliff was standing naked at the open bedroom window of a small apartment in El Porto, the northernmost neighborhood of Manhattan Beach, watching a spectacular mid-September sunset.
Smoke from the fires burning in Malibu had been blown out to sea.
Brilliant red and orange streaks were emblazoned across the evening sky.
Fire season and the Santa Ana winds were a nasty power couple, but they made a pretty horizon.
A radio was playing low in the background.
A half-naked woman emerged from the bathroom with a sheen of sweat on her skin. A tattoo of a serpent snaked across her right shoulder blade and ran all the way down to the small of her back. She looked for her bra in the rumpled sheets on the bed.
“Jesus, is it too much to ask for a cool breeze?” She fanned herself with a Thai takeout menu.
“Santa Anas,” Cliff replied, still staring at the bright orange glow in the distance. He moved away from the window so she could get a clear view. She glimpsed outside, unimpressed, and went back to searching out the rest of her garments, which formed a loose trail to the bed.
Cliff had arrived in Manhattan Beach after seven long hours on a Greyhound bus where he’d sat next to a lifetime alcoholic who kept weeping over his broken marriage.
By the time he got off, Cliff was hungry and strung out from the endless miles down the center of the state, nothing to look at but farmland.
He lugged his small bag of belongings up the street until he finally saw the burger joint Frank gave him the card for, a surfboard as its sign, OB’s Pub dangerous, out of control, and at its very nature, destructive.
If there was one thing Cliff was sure about, it was that you can’t change your nature.