Chapter Twenty-Two
Blaze
By Saturday all I wanted was to soak in a bath. I’d have sold a kidney for the chance. Why not? It couldn’t possibly make the pain any worse. My side was bruised in an ugly oval pattern that was darker around one of the lower ribs. I was convinced I’d broken it, but nobody really gave a shit to hear it on the other side of the bars, and I knew better than to advertise weaknesses to those on the same side as me.
I was sprawled in a corner, making the most of the wall and the bench while reflecting over my Illinois trip.
What was there for me here, besides Marchella? I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a place. I didn’t even have a plan. And yet, what the fuck was back in Georgia? A bedroom at my mom’s house? No job. No vehicle. Stress and fear mongering would be showered over me if I made any attempt to break the indecisiveness and choose a direction.
I rubbed my face and groaned into the temple of my hands.
“Aviston, you got a visitor,” the guard announced, while flipping through his keys.
Once he decided on one, he shoved it into the door and nodded to the guards at the end of the hallway. They ambled toward us, taking a pair of cuffs off their belt. I went through the motions I’d seen a few inmates do before me, giving them my back and wrists so that I could be cuffed and escorted.
We took a short hallway off the cellblock, and they opened a door that might as well have been a closet.
“I ain’t going in there,” I blurted out.
“You will if you want that visit. Shit is done over the….” The guard flipped his finger toward a device on the wall and I realized it was some kind of video set up. “You know.”
“...oh,” I lamely agreed, and stepped inside.
“Give me your hands and I’ll front cuff ya so you can grab the phone,” he suggested.
I gave him my back and held still, turning when instructed, and soon found myself alone in the dimly lit closet.
“Fuck,” I whispered, certain everyone on the cellblock was about to hear my mother in a grand performance.
The last thing I needed was those assholes back there learning that my mother had a badge. When the screen flipped on however, I was confronted with a very solemn-looking Donovan Winehopper.
He cleared his throat and grabbed the phone when he noticed the screen was on. I sat down and did the same.
“Mr. Winehopper.” I didn’t really know what to say.
“Blaze, how are you holding up inside there, young man?” The man effortlessly sounded like a preacher.
I couldn’t help but smile.
“As well as can be expected, I suppose, sir.”
“Marchella isn’t doing so good,” he quietly admitted, “She has a great care for you, Blaze. I think– I think the girl might be in love with you.”
My chest tightened and I stared at the screen.
“She’s a girl that doesn't go around giving her heart so easily, you know.” He quietly went on.
“Yes, sir,” I pressed past the lump in my throat.
I knew she felt for me, I knew it terrified her, and just look at the mess I’d made of it.
“I wish I could go back in time–”
“Lord, don’t we all…” Donovan quietly mused.
“This is the third arrest for me in one week.”
“Have you ever been arrested before?”
“No, sir!” I blurted out, laughter clinging to my words. “I’ve had one speeding ticket in my life. I was seventeen and I didn’t think Oak and my mom would ever let me drive the family car again.”
He gave a quiet chuckle and nodded.
“Oakland O’Brian is good people.” He mumbled, before adding. “His mother was a good, God-fearing southern woman.”
“I don’t really remember her, but I’m sure you’re right.”
“Blaze, you know in Illinois we have a thing called a habitual criminal.” Donovan spoke up a bit.
I gave a slow shake of my head, having never heard of such a thing before.
“A habitual criminal is someone who breaks the law repeatedly, without regard for society's rules. When they present in the criminal courts, the judge has the option of doubling their sentence.”
“Wh–?” I rubbed my face and swallowed a few curses. “Who decides if a person is a habitual criminal?”
“The courts, the prosecutor…” Donovan shrugged.
I made a strangled sound, unable to form anything near intelligent conversation as I processed this.
“Blaze, what were your plans? If none of these arrests had happened, what was your business and plan here in Illinois?” Donovan asked.
I raised my shoulder and flopped back in the chair, “I just came to pick up my dad’s bike. I was here an hour or few and all hell broke loose.”
Donovan nodded.
“So, you meant to pick up your father’s motorcycle and return to Georgia with your family? That was the plan when you left your Georgia home?”
I bobbed my head, “Yeah–”
“You come down here by yourself?”
“No. My mom and Oak are– Somewhere. I don’t know. She doesn’t do well with Illinois or– The Disciples. She has anxiety attacks just speaking about that time in our lives. She didn’t want to come, and she had– I don’t know– A nervous breakdown or something when we arrived at my uncle’s house. I haven’t seen them since. Everything just happened so fast, and it keeps happening.”
He gave a knowing nod.
“That's the way they live, son.” Donovan quietly acknowledged, “I tried to tell my daughter for years. She should have left. If she had, she’d still be here, but she thought her kids needed a father in their home with them. They could have had both of them here to raise them, now they got— Well none. Michael Miller doesn’t look out for anything but himself. He’s a stain on my grandchildren’s birth certificate. A menace to the community, and a danger to anyone who lets him linger too close. He wasn’t a parent. My grandkids raised themselves after my daughter died. Me and their grandmother did what we could by them, but—”
He sniffed and shook his head.
I clung to his every word, soaking up the history like a sponge. The monster he spoke of, the one I had met, was my father’s best friend. Makaveli and my father were inseparable, it was obvious in the pictures Mom kept hidden away. If he wasn’t with me or her in them, he was arm and arm with Mak.
“You didn’t do too bad, Sir. She’s a survivor, a beautiful soul, with a tender heart and a pretty face. Don’t discount or ever doubt that you helped forge whatever armor she has in this life.” I reminded him.
The preacher sat up a bit, and his eyes softened.
“I’m sorry about your daughter. I went to the cemetery with my uncle. He showed me my father’s grave, Marchella’s mother’s grave, all of them.” I shook my head, unable to grasp losing that many people at one time. It was such a small community. They must have been terrified.
I was so stunned by the loss of my father that I really don’t remember much of the other loss, beyond the occasional blips of information I’d picked up over the years. That wasn’t really remembering, though, it was recounting the tales of others. Sometimes, it happened well enough I could conjure images, and it made it hard to determine what was memory and what wasn’t.
Like Aunt Joplin.
“Do you love her?” he quietly asked, without taking his gaze off me.
“Sir?” I almost didn’t hear myself say it.
Donovan blinked, tearing up despite his visible efforts not to.
“I need to know if your interest in my granddaughter extends beyond the twitch of her backside.”
I winced, and he relaxed the minute he noticed I’d taken insult to his wording.
“I shouldn’t say such things.” I finally managed. “I don’t know if it is possible to love someone when you’ve only known them for a handful of days. Then again, I’ve known her my whole life, I just– lost her for eighteen years. I mean— I didn’t have her then. We were children. We were friends. We shared the same nightmare, we hid from the same demons, we both lost a parent to the same fucking–”
My eyes widened when I realized I’d lost myself to my thoughts and forgotten I was addressing a preacher. Donovan didn’t seem to mind; he was nodding sagely to every word.
“It is crazy. What we have is something that was twisted together by violence, and death, and a level of grief that most people are fortunate enough to never know. We were stripped of our childhoods and taught to survive when most people our age were still under the illusion that their life was safe, that Mommy and Daddy could protect them from everything, and that people are ultimately good by nature. We share so many understandings about life, and each other. Things we don’t have to talk about. I don’t have to explain myself to her. She gets it. And I get her.”
He sighed like I’d lifted a weight off his shoulder.
“Yes, I love her. I told her father she was mine, and I meant it.”
He snapped up in his seat and stared at the monitor, “You say that like it was something he didn’t care for?”
“He didn’t. He tried to come at me over it. My uncle got between us.”
“Yeah?” The preacher sounded too pleased by what he was hearing.
I shrugged, “Doesn’t matter. Me and him are both headed to prison now. Habitual criminal style. Your granddaughter is too good to be sitting around waiting on some dumbass to get out of a cage.”
I rubbed my face, realizing I’d gone to cussing again. I didn’t look up until Donovan cleared his throat.
“I’m an old-fashioned man, Blaze,” he announced, leaving me raising one brow and trying to decipher what the fuck he was on about.
When he realized he had my attention, he continued, “There was a time when men came to agreements over things like this.”
“Things like what?” I laughed, not following a bit.
“Unions.”
“Unions? Sir, with all due respect, I don’t think they got unions where I’m going.”
Donovan grinned, “I mean marriages, son.”
Something between a grunt and laugh caught in my throat. Was this old man senile? Had March forgotten to tell me about some condition Grandpappy suffered from?
I just told this man I was going to prison. He told me, it was going to be double the time! Now he wanted to talk about marriage?
“I– I won’t be getting married for some time. I don’t even know how much time I’m going to be locked up for. I don’t want Marchella waiting on me, seriously. This isn’t her mistake– Mistakes .” I emphasized how steep shit had gotten.
I flubbed my lips, letting out stress that I hadn’t even realized I was carrying and gripped the telephone, “Listen, Mr. Winehopper. I appreciate you coming down here. Marchella is an angel. She helped me find a part of myself I forgot existed, but–”
“No, Blaze. You hush and listen for a second,” he insisted.
My eyes bugged, not having expected him to talk to me so. I had enough respect not to curse at him, and the shock of his words made me pause long enough for him to press onward.
“Your mother can’t make these charges go away. It would flush her career down the toilet to even hint at it to the judge. I’m an honest man, I would never tamper in a court case, by asking someone to make charges disappear. However, I am a preacher. It would not be too forward of me to suggest a solution for the judge to consider. A plea agreement that would make sense to the situation, allow him to say you suffered the consequences, and not leave you wasting your potential and future in a prison cell.”
The prickly feeling that he’d stirred by scolding me instantly died down. I wasn’t sure he had such power, but it sounded reasonable. I’d heard small towns did things differently sometimes.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “Are you sure this is a thing that will– work?”
“Are you going to marry my granddaughter or not?”
I laughed and wiped at the stubble along either side of my jaw while slowly nodding, “I mean– Yeah, I’ll marry her, but not if she has to wait on me.”
He grunted and slapped his knee, a broad smile forming that took years off his face.