We Begin at the End(107)

“There’s a million reasons why people turn back, or choose a different path. Even if I could tell you, it’s been so long. And I only saw her the one time.”

Walk frowned. “I’m sorry, it is Star Radley we’re talking about.”

“Yes. I remember you now. It’s not often a patient gets brought in by a police officer.”

“But, I drove her every week.”

“Not to me. I did see her though, often. The view, I’m always at the window.”

Walk leaned forward. “Where exactly did you see her?”

Sheen stood. Walk followed him to the glass.

“Right there.” Sheen pointed.



Outside the cloud swept in as Walk stood on the sidewalk. There was only one bus that ran through Blair Peak and Walk got on, same as Star had, once a month for a dozen years, the bus stop facing Colten Sheen’s picture window.

He sat at the back, the bus half empty as it climbed the steep hillside and dipped into the valley. Trees rose and shadowed the road.

A while till they cleared the woodland, California opening up, the plains vast. He got up and walked to the front, stood beside the driver and looked out.

He didn’t see it till they made the last turn, and then, suddenly and without warning, he realized where he was, and what he stood in front of.

The bus stopped and he got out, he looked around as it passed. There was nothing else for miles in either direction, just long track road, the razor fence twenty feet high, and the low buildings that made up Fairmont County Correctional Facility.

He waited an hour, sat in the room alone, held his hand up and watched the tremor. He’d slipped a little, missed medication, life in the way, not his but Vincent’s. It was bad now, the pain sometimes, the fear always. He set his alarm an hour earlier, allowing time for a battle that was getting harder to win. The future was a frightening thing, but then he reasoned it always had been.

There was a half smile when Cuddy came out. “Almost didn’t recognize you without the stars. I’m finishing up if you want to walk with me.”

Walk fell into step with the big warden, stayed close behind him at the gates as they opened and locked. A life of it, order and not, keeping the bad inside and good out. He could not imagine such a toll.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make the service,” Cuddy said. “Not all that into goodbyes.”

They walked along the fence, towers like silos.

“There’s things I don’t know,” Walk said.

Cuddy breathed deep, like he’d been waiting. Walk did not know what they were doing, walking the perimeter, maybe Cuddy just liked the free air after pulling ten hours.

“Star came here,” Walk said.

“She did.”

“But her name, I checked the visitor logs. I checked everything I could.”

They passed a guard in a tower, Cuddy raised a hand.

“I like dusk,” Cuddy said. “The end of astronomical twilight. The sun, degrees below horizon. I let them out sometimes, to watch a sunset. Five hundred men, killers and rapists and pushers. They stand together and stare at the sky, it’s the only time we don’t have real trouble.”

“Why?”

“The beauty, maybe. It makes it harder to deny higher power.”

“Or easier.”

“Don’t lose your heart, Walk. That would be the real tragedy.”

“Tell me about Star.”

Cuddy stopped, the furthest point from the prison, between two towers and guards ready to end life just as quick as any jury.

“I liked her. I got to know her plenty over the years. Vincent King was as decent a man as I ever met. And I got to see it, the change. Scared kid, fearless for a while, and then he got to be okay with it.”

“What?”

“His own skin. Okay, but not good. And Star, she helped him. He caused her the pain, and he was the only one that could take it away. He had purpose again.”

Walk watched the first stars burn, heavenly from out there.

“He needed her, to feel something again, more than who he was when he wore orange and walked in chains. It played like a marriage, over twenty-odd years she’d come. Sometimes they didn’t speak, at the start, just watched each other, she was all fire, burning up, and he’d look at her like she was placed on this earth just for him.”

“What about the other prisoners?”

“Oh, I didn’t let those two in the common room. I mean, at first, of course, but I saw right off she was too young for it, the men were too cruel with their words, promises and threats. Vincent got it bad after, guards broke it up in time but once the others knew his weak spot they’d run with it. There’s another room, an apartment we had. Conjugal, it was to be earned. Just us and three states now.”

“You let them alone like that?”

“Vincent needed it … to feel human again. Shit, I needed to see him human again. And Star, the two of them. Cosmic forces and all that. Not a prison on earth could cut that kind of pull.”

Walk smiled.

“I couldn’t put it through the logs, not strictly allowed. I watched her, the shape, nine months, that glow, you know. Twice. Two miracles born from despair.” Cuddy smiled.

“But she didn’t ever bring them—”

“He wouldn’t have it. Not caged like that. And he didn’t want them to know. Can’t really blame him. He said there’s not a kid out there that wants a father from Fairmont. We talked about it, it gave him resolve. Live life for someone else. That’s not wasted, right.”