On The Run: Part Two

Chapter Eighteen - "My Clanging Rhythm"

Fitch

 

Jail.

The darkness.

The smells.

The constant sound of clanging metal.

The loneliness despite the growing crowd.

The crawling feeling on your skin.

The loss of mind, personality and hope.

All that stuff is far from a cliché. It is all pure truth.

My cellmate was a guy who had sent ten bullets through his girlfriend’s chest because she had slept with some other guy. Yet, even though there had been four eyewitnesses, he claimed he was innocent.

I was starting to wonder if there was any good in the world after all.

And then, at six p.m., I got called to the visitation room, and I had to admit to myself, that there was good in the world. In that room full of no less than twenty people, I spotted her right away. The guard led me to the table and I sat on the rather small stool.

Maybe it was where I was coming from, but she looked more beautiful than I’d ever seen her.

“Hi,” she said smiling more brightly than I expected.

“Hey,” I replied grinning.

“Sarah’s outside waiting for the other lawyer.”

“You look so good. I am so happy to see you right now. You can’t even imagine,” I said, putting my hands on the table, and trying very hard not to touch her; the guard was standing in the distance, to the left.

“I miss you,” she murmured, twiddling her thumbs.

Instinctively, I grabbed her hands, “I miss you too. I’m so sorry about all of this.”

“NO TOUCHING!” the guard yelled.

I let go as she replied, “Don’t be.”

“How are you doing? How’s it going with Sarah?” I asked.

She smiled, “It’s good. She’s . . . interesting.”

“So, you’re getting along fine?”

She shrugged, “Yeah. She’s nice. But it’s not like it’s going to last.”

“Why not?”

She gave me a look that said ‘isn’t it obvious?’ “You’ll be out soon, and we’ll go back to how it was before. She’s great, but my mom died ten years ago, and she’s not coming back. I’ve come to terms with that,” she said.

I sighed, “You don’t know that.”

“That you’ll be out soon?”

“Yeah. You don’t know what’ll happen.”

“Fitch, I think we’ve established the fact that neither of us know what’s going to happen. I mean, here we are right? But you’re innocent, and the court’s going to see that.”

I frowned, “I shot my father, Chloe. What’s your definition of innocence?”

“I know you didn’t do it. If you were going to shoot a man for your brother’s sake, he’d die instantly; he wouldn’t go into a six-month coma.”

I stared at her dumbfounded and swallowed, “Do me a favor and don’t say that to anyone. I don’t want Ricky to have to go through this.”

“I know that. I’m just saying, you’re going to get out. With that, I can be optimistic. I need to be. I mean, what the hell am I going to do, live with Sarah for the rest of my life? Or until I’m twenty-one?”