Who: Babs Greening and Con Wilder.
Where: LBJ Presidential Library.
What: New intake.
When: Early morning. 1 Nov.
The day was squeaky-clean. Sky that blue, a man could believe in heaven. Hung up there, beyond the reach of clouds. Sun gleaming like a new penny flipped over the back of a hand. Knuckles. Con remembered how. Distant, like a dream on waking. He remembered sunshine but he remembered the wall in front of him better. Crack ran through it. He'd watched it. Hours. Hands wrapped around his knees and unblinking. The guards didn't know what to do with a man who didn't talk. Didn't say nothing, didn't howl. Just sat. Waiting out his time, like a jail sentence he didn't remember asking to be handed down.
They'd picked him up somewhere between the last place he accounted for finding water and the camp. It was hot, no matter what the month. Dust blowing in great realms out from underfoot and his tongue had swelled in his mouth, pressed against his lower teeth. There was a cut on his lip, split. Inside of his mouth tasted like blood and dust the day the trucks hissed out of the dust and beyond the rise of the sunshine and picked him up.
Tossed him in a cell right off. But if it mattered to him, it mattering was blunted. Even when they turned him out. Pointed him toward a shelter. He felt cool air seep past the heated thickness of cotton on his back. He wore exhaustion like an old coat, tattered but comfortable and he looked down instead of up at the approach. Watchful. Wary. Con didn't say a word, hands slack at his sides. The crown of her head glimmered gold in new-washed sunshine. He remembered that. His fingers curled carefully up in the crevasses of his palms: not his. Don't touch.
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