Re: log: easy + miles; reunion
Easy wasn't lonesome. Fact was, hadn't been alone this long in years. He wasn't used to it, not having another guy know when he took a shit, or rolled over in bed or whether he got mail in the thin envelopes slit along the top where the guards had read 'em before the inmates did. He wasn't molten neath the surface, he was solid. Like granite, flinty in the face of uncertainty, because show any sign that you weren't right exactly where you were sposed to be, right exactly when and that you didn't have the right to be there and you'd lost right out.
Fact was, Easy hadn't gotten used to not needing to explain himself yet.
He'd done a lot of going wild in the beginning. First week out of jail, he barely remembered. He remembered the first couple faces of haints who lingered and he remembered the neon light flashing at the bartender's back for the first beer he'd had legal in his life. He remembered the first girl and his hands had shaken and he'd been cotton-mouthed as a kid at fifteen. But he didn't remember a whole lot after that. He was still on probation, and after the first officer showed up when Easy was still gray with the hangover, he'd kept his goddamn nose clean.
Miles' place was far enough out of the middle of town he took the truck. Wasn't a pretty truck, gored with rust and the rattle of the engine was about as sick as the throaty cough of an old lady with emphysema but it served the purpose. Easy inside it wasn't the kid he'd been when he'd gotten locked up. Then, he'd had height, and overlong black hair, but his shoulders were about the biggest thing about him and he'd been real narrow, underfed. Didn't look like that now.
Stepped down, from the eyesore parked outside Miles's place, in work-boots, scarred and kicked in, and jeans that had a streak of oil somewhere near the knee. Shirt from some band Easy had never heard of: he'd picked it out the bargain bin because he liked the red. Saw Miles, smoking, saw the girl too. Haint plain as the nose on his face, and eager as a kid at a town carnival. Didn't look at her, deliberately, Easy a second too late let his gaze skip on over and looked at Miles instead.