He talked about his daughter like they were on opposite sides. With him, it was Nate vs Tori, and it was too late into the conversation, and into the afternoon, that he realized Nate had started doing the same with Albert.
“She’s a piece of work, huh?” He laughed bitterly after telling Albert about her latest tattoo. Albert liked the infinity symbol regardless of where she’d decided to get it inked, her dad had a different opinion.
“She’s something like I’ve never seen,” Albert answered honestly.
“She’s a crazy bitch is what she is.” Nate spat suddenly. The man took a long, thoughtful pull of his cigarette. The silence stretched between them as he thought carefully about what he was going to say next. Albert pursed his lips at the insult. He didn’t know if that’s what the man honestly thought, and Albert had no children, but he at least thought that… if there was one person in the world she shouldn’t have to worry about calling her something like that, about thinking something like that, it should’ve been her dad. When he finally took another breath to speak, he didn’t look at Albert but rather at the ground. “And you…you’re an honest guy. You should look for something better.” Nate finally admitted.
Albert stalled at this. He didn’t know how he felt about the animosity between Tori and her dad, but he didn’t pretend to know the situation or have a strong opinion after one conversation. He stalled because he’d heard that sentiment before. Once before. From a kind friend and good person who’d tried her best to tell him something she wanted him to hear. Something he thought he might’ve needed to hear but was still unsure if he’d actually heard it.
Sam had told him to look for better in whoever he found next.
He still wasn’t sure why she’d chosen to tell him that then, and he wasn’t sure why Nate told him that now. He saw nothing wrong with the life he’d had with the Locust he knew from that night at the skatepark where he ran from the police and learned how to feel useful. He saw nothing unjust about his life now in the orbit of a girl who made the night feel as bright as the sun but wouldn’t just let him burn. He thought about it as he put out the butt of his cigarette in the porch ashtray. He thought about how he’d even qualify what ‘looking for better’ was. He thought about his Locust, but he always thought about her when he was lost. He felt the piece of bone resting on the woven string and laying against his chest like the expanding feeling he hadn’t known in so long. He thought of what ‘better’ was, and he knew he’d been convinced by Tori that it wasn’t waiting for him anymore. Not after everything.
“I never had better,” Albert said slowly, feeling the bone through his shirt with his fingers, so much smaller than it was then. “And I’ll never be so lucky.”
He’d gotten in trouble. For lots of things with lots of people. He’d gotten in trouble with Tori about the conversation he had with her dad. It was either her or him between those two, and her rage wasn’t satisfied by his explanations of wanting to keep his place to sleep. She took it from him, banishing him from the shed and telling him to figure it out. He wasn’t mad, he already knew how she felt about her dad when he chose to talk to the man. She encouraged the worst in Albert, but if he wasn’t already bad there wouldn’t be anything to encourage. It wasn’t really her fault, in that way. She took everything from him and laid him out to bake in the horrible sun that engulfed the world whenever she was there.
Distant see the blinding light
He’d gotten in trouble with those he did business with. They would ask him for explanations for his prolonged absences and holes in his stories. They would ask him for reasons behind the inconsistencies in his returns. They wanted to know where it was all going if it wasn’t being sold, and he could only use the excuse of getting robbed so many times. Sometimes the excuse was even true, but most of the time he just wasn’t willing to sell her out. She knew these people, and they knew her. She didn’t have the grace to deal with angry people as Albert did, he was older, and he’d been doing this longer. He let her take what she wanted most of the time anyway since for some reason it made sense when she said he would share. It wasn’t really her fault, in that way. They took things of his when he ran out of excuses. They took his money, his belongings…but that never stopped him. It wasn’t enough. They decided on a more drastic measure when they took a knife to him, arm stretched out away from his torso with forceful hands, and took his pinky finger.
It hurt, but it was over so quickly.
Mostly, and currently, Albert got into trouble with the law.
He wasn’t as rested or healthy as he was when he was running from beat cops to impress girls at sixteen. He had a noticeable limp, a noticeable backpack, and a noticeable shiftiness that made even the best at minding their business look at him twice. He got into trouble with the law but could mostly get away unsearched and unscathed. He was easy to like since he knew better than to ask questions. He knew better than to challenge people. It was one of these times he’d been held up, he was speaking to an officer who he’d spoken to often enough to know his name was ‘Mike’. They were on mostly friendly terms and Mike sympathized more than other police might sympathize with Albert's living situation. Mike pulled over onto the side of the road with his car and he seemed different, looked apologetic.
“Can I take a look at the backpack?” He asked, but he already knew Albert's answer.
“I do not consent to be searched.”
It was a valid response, a fourth amendment right, but it didn’t yield the result it usually did.
He was arrested.
Too many things were reported, too many coincidences, and too many people just wanted to see the local shifty homeless drug dealer get brought to justice. Albert was arrested and held in custody for twelve hours until they got legal clearance to search his belongings.
It was bad, not the things he wasn’t supposed to have, but the things he was. Albert had lived out of his backpack alone for almost two years. It had the entire sad story of his continued existence. His personal belongings of meager clothing items, food, toiletries, playing cards… All laid out and cataloged in front of the entire station. It had never been more obvious to everyone how pathetically Albert was doing in life, and they pitied him. Albert himself had never felt such shame, didn’t even know he was ashamed until it was all laid out on tables. He had no idea it would make him so sad, or so angry.
What was most interesting to everyone, however, was what they didn’t find. Albert had definitely had some felony-level possession in his backpack. It was risky, but where else was he going to keep it? More importantly, where had it gone? They found enough of his personal things to convict him of a misdemeanor, but that was it. He couldn't have possibly let so much go to Tori, especially after they’d had that big fight.
Unless…
He got little time as a free man, he was in and out of public court while they debated what to do with him. Staying in holding was nice, it was a place to sleep after losing the shed and they provided food. He did eventually find out what happened to what he’d been selling, and its mysterious disappearance.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t expected her to steal from him. It wasn’t like she’d never taken any of his things without asking, it was just so much. Too much as it turned out. She was hospitalized from the dosage after a day and she was declared brain dead after three. He didn’t get to know what had done it specifically, and he didn’t get to see her before she was buried. He was in holding.
It happened so fast, she was so much younger… The sun had shined in the middle of the night when she was there and she’d never let him burn out.
Persistently the flame invites.
He wondered how Nate was holding up, but he knew he’d never get to ask.
After taking his license and finding his record, it was found that this was not his first or second, or third offense in the possession of a controlled substance, just his first offense in Ohio. His actual charge fluctuated for about three weeks between the priors and the suspected homicide before they finally settled on a felony in the fifth degree. It wasn’t the worst, as far as felonies go, but the fines weren’t something Albert could pay.
He was sentenced to eight months in jail and mandatory rehab.
At least it wasn’t a year.
Albert was 24 years old, and 14 months sober.
It wasn’t much, but he’d done it.
He did his time, since he had little choice in the matter, and he participated in his rehabilitation. He’d known for a while that he needed help, just the kind he didn’t know how to ask for. He still wasn’t sure if he’d received it or not, but it was something. He didn’t think of dying as much anymore.
He made his way through Ohio, finally reaching the state that had haunted him for years and years. It took a few friendly directions from strangers and a few more weeks on foot, but he eventually even found the town he was looking for.
The town of Elsewhere, Pennsylvania…It wasn’t much, but he’d done it.
It was this accomplishment that was his last. He didn’t know what he expected to find as he traced the same old roads. The ones that looked like they hadn’t been paved since he’d been there last, over a decade prior. He hesitated at the mouth of the forest on the private land that once housed the commune, but it was brief. He’d come too far to be stopped by something as silly as a ‘no trespassing’ sign. Still, he didn’t know what he expected when he walked those dirt trails that were familiar and yet impossibly alien to his dim memory of the place. The trail felt shorter, the forest was smaller. He didn’t know what he expected to find; the remains of the commune? Some sign that he’d once been there? That anyone had been there?
He found nothing.
All those agonizing nights. All those roads he walked on for too long. The fantasy of a place he left too soon…It led nowhere. He found the commune, or where it used to be, and it was gone. The tents were picked up and packed away as if they’d never been there. The more substantial structures of lean-to’s and the shower building sat closed off by old, yellow, rubber-coated chains. No entry, and no trespassing. He found the old log benches surrounding the big pile of ash and brick that had once been the bonfire pit. The very heart and center of their lives that was ablaze every night sat gray, lifeless as if it hadn’t seen a smile or a spark in a decade. It probably hadn’t.
He sat on the log bench, arms resting on his knees. Everything he owned in the world was in his backpack, balanced on his tense shoulders. He couldn’t have kept track of how long he sat there, couldn’t have guessed either. He sat there and stared at the empty gray pit and he didn’t move, where would he go?
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