6. Diego #3
Diego nodded, relieved to hear it. “Don’t try it.
That shit will take over your life and ruin everything that’s good about it.
Anyway, from there, things escalated fast. My boss was my supplier, which cut into what I was bringing home.
I was living with my uncle because my mom had kicked me out.
During the week, I held it down, but on the weekends, I was just…
out of control. I should have been arrested for some of the shit I was doing. ”
“Like what?”
“Driving while high. Stealing, mainly from my mom, but sometimes from the job site. Todd Mevis, that was my boss, he was doing too. One time, the owner noticed, and Todd blamed one of his workers. The guy lost his work visa and got deported back to his home country. Shit was fucked up.”
“Good ol’ Todd sounds like a real asshole,” Wylie remarked.
“He was. Selfish, greedy, manipulative. And even with the decent income I was making, I was always broke, snorting it all up my nose. My uncle knew something was up, but I just denied, denied, denied. We were working at this mansion on the beach, a fancy-as-fuck floor with Brazilian cherrywood, fishtail pattern. It was a work of art, seriously, and Todd made some offhand comment about there being a safe or some shit in the guy’s closet that was probably packed with gold bars…
” Diego shook his head. He’d been so naive back then.
“I was fucking dumb and desperate to get this asshole’s approval. I don’t know why.”
“Because he was a predator,” Wylie said sharply, sounding pissed on Diego’s behalf.
“Todd told me to take his gun, just in case there was trouble. If there was anything good, he wanted a cut. The weekend after we finished up the job, I went back to the house late at night. I brought one of my cousins with me for backup. Another stupid idea. The owner wasn’t supposed to be there, but he was, and he was armed. ”
“Shit, man.”
Diego remembered his surprise at encountering the man in his bedroom, lying calmly in bed with a gun trained on them both. He must have known from the moment they broke in through a window downstairs what was up.
“I dropped the gun, but he shot at us anyway, clipped my cousin in the arm. Thank God it wasn’t worse. The cops came, and we were both arrested. I got charged with armed robbery and possession of a stolen firearm. I had some drugs on me too.”
“Stolen firearm?”
“Yeah, that’s what Todd told them, that I’d stolen it out of his truck. He’d been running this racket for a while. Stealing shit and pinning it on his workers. He was like this big Chamber of Commerce business man, so they believed him.”
“Man, that is fucked up. What happened to your cousin?”
“He was under eighteen, unarmed, and had a clean record, so he got off with probation.” That was one good outcome, that his cousin hadn’t had to suffer the same consequences.
“His parents shipped him off to military school. He’s in the Navy now, stationed on a submarine somewhere in the North Pole.
He sent my mom a picture of a polar bear, which was pretty badass, but we haven’t kept in touch, not with me being in prison and all. ”
“Did you have a lawyer?”
“Yeah, we both did. Someone my uncle hired. I plead guilty, took the lesser charge, ten-year minimum.”
“Damn.”
“I deserved it.” Diego could remember his mother crying the night he came home after his uncle posted bail, a quiet, muffled sound that he rarely heard. She was pretty good at holding it together, even though it seemed like he’d been a disappointment to her since the day he was born.
“My mom and I were never very close, and we aren’t on great terms now,” Diego admitted.
She’d visited him in prison pretty regularly, but it was always with the same list of questions–had he gone to church and was he getting enough to eat?
Was he still working toward his GED? Even her updates on the family were slightly depressing because they only served to remind him that everyone on the outside was living their lives–going to school, getting married and having children, starting their careers.
But not him. She always came with a bit of scripture to pray over with him too.
Maybe she’d meant for it to be motivational, but there was always an undercurrent of judgement and the need to repent.
It got so that Diego began to dread her visits.
“You did your time though,” Wylie said. “Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you think?”
“I was given several chances.”
“You know what I mean.”
Diego took a deep breath, trying to get to the root of it all.
It was impossible to separate who he was from what he did because it was all wrapped up together in the same shit sandwich.
“There’s this tension when I’m around my family, even now.
Like they’re just watching and waiting for me to screw up.
” Diego leaned forward and buried his head in his hands.
The weight of their expectations felt oppressive at times.
Even with his uncle, with whom he was closest, there was always a wariness to their interactions.
Everything he did, or didn’t do, felt like a test. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all in my head.”
He felt a hand on his shoulder, a gentle pressure that served to both reassure and ground him, just like that night at the pit.
“Your family probably just wants to get to know you again. Maybe they’re on edge too, not wanting to upset you. You’re kind of an intense guy.”
Diego almost smiled at Wylie’s choice of words.
Maybe that was part of it, but not all. He’d always been the outsider of the family.
An absent father who was in and out of prison.
Didn’t toe the line, didn’t like church.
Probably—almost certainly—gay. Diego was the rebellious one whom everyone prayed for; his grandmother and great aunts were always consoling his mother.
Consider his father, they’d say with pained looks. Like this shit was inevitable.
In the silence that followed, Wylie said, “It took me a long time to reinvent myself after high school, especially when my mother passed. And assholes like Brian still like to throw that shit in my face. But fuck him, you know? Not that I’m saying fuck your family or anything, just…
maybe don’t let their opinions affect you so much.
You know who you are. Just accept what you did and move on. ”
That was the struggle, though, wasn’t it? He hadn’t had much of an identity in prison, just another warden of the state. He’d had to assimilate in order to survive in there, and before that, he’d only ever known himself as a disobedient, druggie fuck-up. His father’s son. A disappointment.
“I feel so much pressure to get everything right,” Diego said. “To show them I’ve changed. I really don’t want to let them down them again.”
“You made a mistake, and you paid dearly for it. One fuckup doesn’t make you a bad person,” Wylie said.
Diego stood and went to the railing of the deck to stare out over the weedy trees that surrounded the trailer park.
In the distance, he could see the lights from the mansions that lined the beachfront.
He inhaled deeply of the salty Gulf air and the fecund muck of the Intercoastal.
He’d missed that smell while he was in prison, a hundred miles from the coast. This was his home.
And this was his one life, to try and sort out and remake into something worth living.
“But what if I am a bad person?” Diego asked quietly, voicing the fear that plagued him at night while alone in his bed, one that followed him no matter where he was or who he was with.
Wylie made some noise of derision. “Just the fact that you’re even asking it means you’re probably not. Everyone has weaknesses. Yours was drugs. Now you know better.”
The simplification was strangely comforting.
Like maybe he wasn’t a bad seed, maybe his life’s path hadn’t already been determined by his past actions or his genetics, and he could really turn things around.
Even go to college one day, like Wylie, and have a career.
He was behind, but not so far that he could never catch up.
Regardless, it felt really fucking good to have someone in his corner.
“Hey, Diego, man, come here.” Wylie reached out and pulled him into a good, solid hug.
Diego’s arms wrapped around Wylie’s strong back and he exhaled more than just the humid sea air.
How long had it been since he’d been on the receiving end of such comfort?
He couldn’t remember, and he was in no rush for it to end.
Wylie must have known it too, because he stayed and rubbed Diego’s back without letting up on the pressure.
Diego’s shoulders relaxed incrementally, and he felt the tightness in his chest loosen, just a bit.
When at last he pulled away, Diego was glad for the dark.
He didn’t need Wylie seeing the parade of emotions on his face.
“Thanks,” Diego said.
“Anytime. The thing I really love about it up here, is on clear nights, I have an excellent view of the stars.” Wylie pointed toward the sky. “It’s a little hazy right now, but you can make out a few.”
“I think those are satellites,” Diego said, ever the realist.
“Satelites, stars, airplanes, whatever. You can wish on a rock, if you’d like, but it’s good to speak your intentions into the universe. Manifest that shit.”
Diego almost teased him for that woo-woo nonsense, but he’d said it so earnestly, and it seemed to have worked for him. “What do you wish for?” Diego asked.
Wylie exhaled a long breath. “Well, there was a time when I was wishing pretty hard for my mom to get better, but we both know how that ended. I was bitter for a while, but it doesn’t help to dwell there, you know? It’s like a disease that eats you from the inside.”
Diego nodded, impressed again by the young man’s depth and wisdom.