What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  “No hole.”

  I could see Kade studying me, thinking, but I ignored it.

  We all went to a local restaurant and had a blast. A band played in the corner, and we got some meat on our bones and drank some beer. The deal done, we all relaxed, laughed, and chatted, Kade beside me. I tried not to think about how natural it felt to be sitting by Kade, in a restaurant, with people who were surprisingly fun and funny.

  Bettina said, “I do business quick as a lick. We shake on this, and I know you’ll hold up your end.” She had her accountant give us a check. “I right like you two. I look forward to more business and beer in the future. Y’all get started now, ya hear?”

  There were a lot of zeros on the check.

  We left about midnight, and Kade winked at me.

  “Cheers, Grenady.” We clinked our glasses together on the deck of the bed and breakfast. We were both having wine. “It’s a huge sale. Excellent for the company. We have work for months.”

  I grinned. I was delighted. That would be the word for it. It wasn’t even my company, but I was delighted.

  I would miss Kade and Hendricks’ when I was in jail. I thought of those bars closing in on me, tighter and tighter. So tight. They reminded me of another time.

  Not a happy time.

  That night in my dreams I saw a red, crocheted shawl. It was on the clouds, floating, then it formed into a heart and disappeared.

  “Let’s go walking in the park.”

  “What?” My eyes flew to Kade’s over breakfast the next morning. It was ten o’clock Tuesday. I figured we would head back to Pineridge.

  “You told me once that you like to hike and walk. We have the afternoon open, so let’s go.”

  “I’d love that.” I missed walking. I missed nature.

  “You need a break, and so do I.”

  “My boss has a whip and a chain,” I quipped.

  “Then we’ll exchange the whip and chain for a trail. It’s cold, but not that cold. Grab a jacket.”

  We stopped at a sandwich shop for lunch, then went to a grocery store for snacks. Kade, I learned, has a thing for barbeque potato chips, and I like licorice. We bought both.

  “I spent six years in prison starting when I was nineteen.”

  “I’m sorry, Kade.” I knew he wasn’t surprised that I knew. Pineridge is a small town.

  I took another bite of a chocolate chip cookie and handed the other half to Kade. He ate it.

  The hike we were on started in the city park. It followed a river. There was a rose garden that would be beautiful in the summer, a pond, an outdoor amphitheatre, and towering trees. There was a light dusting of snow, the silence complete except for the river, as we wound past a Japanese garden. It felt like we were walking through a snow collage.

  “I did not enjoy it at all.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. What was the worst part?”

  “Being trapped and angry. I was behind bars, like an animal. It was dangerous. I got into fights, some with homemade weapons. At first I lost a couple of fights, which is how I got one of these scars.” He pointed to his cheek. “I had the one next to it coming into jail. Anyhow, I got tougher, I worked out all I could, even in my jail cell, and I started winning. And I kept winning. I was not going to lose.”

  We crossed a bridge, the stream rushing below. He had been nineteen. A kid. In jail with killers and pedophiles. “What did you do?” I had a vague idea, but I wanted to hear it from him.

  “I was running around with a gang in L.A. Tough neighborhood. Join or be beat to shit. I was an angry, messed-up kid from a messed-up background. We got into fights with other gangs all the time. Knives and other weapons. That’s how I came to a few of the scars on my back. We were a bunch of angry young men, few with fathers, living poor. Petty crimes. I was tough and getting tougher, which meant I had an attitude problem. During one fight, the fight that sent all of us to jail, both sides, guns were shot off. I shot mine off, too, once, after I was down on the ground, with a bullet through my shoulder blade from one of the opposing gang members. Luckily I didn’t hit anyone. To this day I am grateful for that.”

  I handed him another cookie. I pictured shredded muscles, chipped bones, and ripped skin, and closed my eyes. I do not like to think of people, especially not Kade, getting hurt. “What was your home life like?”

  “Home life would probably not be the word for it.” He stared up at the snow-crusted branches forming an intricate arc above us. “My father was more out of my life than in. He and my mother never married. He was a successful businessman. It’s unfortunate that his product was drugs. More unfortunate that I ended up in jail, too, like my old man.” He laughed; it was bitter. “Can’t call him my old man, though. He and my mother had me when they were eighteen. She was pregnant in high school.”

  “What is your mother like?”

  “Was. She’s dead. She struggled. She tried.” He smiled, soft, gentle. “And she loved me. I did know that.”

  “So you had her in your corner.” I sniffled. A mom in your corner.

  “I did. But I also had a lot of rage, too. My father did not live with us. Once when I was seven he went to jail for three years. Another time he was jailed when I was thirteen. Everyone knew my father. I was the son of a drug dealer. He was the leader of one of the largest drug rings in Los Angeles. Nothing to be proud of, in a normal life, but in my life, in that neighborhood, with the poverty and drugs all around me, in a twisted way I was proud of it. I didn’t know anything else.”

  “And then you joined a gang.”

  He nodded. “I joined a gang, then ran it. Apparently leadership skills for criminal conduct runs in the family. Perhaps it’s hereditary. In my genes.”

  “Outstanding. You showed leadership skills as a teen.” I was flip because I was feeling emotional. “You just needed a different place to lead ’em.”

  “That’s true. Sometimes I led guys into fights. But the guys in my gang were like family, too. We offered each other protection and friendship. There were about fifteen of us. Three are in jail today. Three are dead. Two you met at The Spirited Owl, Ricki Lopez and Danny Vetti.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” They had seemed tough under the friendly smiles.

  “Ricki ended up working in private practice for another man who contracts with the government, and Danny owns five auto shops in Los Angeles. We’re still friends with five other ex–gang bangers. We’re older, wiser. No one wants to go to jail again.” He winked at me. “The food is terrible.”

  Yes, it was. “Tell me about your mother.”

  “My mother worked full time as a nurse’s aide and another twenty hours a week at a 7-Eleven if my dad was in jail. If he wasn’t in jail, she only had to work as a nurse’s aide, as he would give her money. I was alone a lot.”

  “I bet she missed being with you.”

  “I hope so.” He smiled wryly. “I was not an easy kid, but we got along well when she was sober. Laughed all the time. We spoke Spanish only. She wanted me to be fluent and not to forget where my ancestors came from.”

  “Sober?”

  “She had problems with alcohol. Every three or four days she’d drink until she passed out. I grew up watching her conked out on a couch hoping she would breathe. She would retch over the toilet. She would stumble and fall, she would cry and cry, I’d have to put her to bed. She entered rehab, straightened out, fell back in to addiction, went back to rehab, and got cleaned up again.”

  “I’m sorry, Kade.” I pictured that scene. I knew what it was like to live with an alcoholic. Unpredictable. Often abusive. Neglectful. People tiptoeing around, managing the situation, hating what the alcoholic was doing.

  “I am, too. She’d had a horrible home life herself. She came from Mexico. Her family had been poor, way poorer than we were in L.A. She lived in a hut, no running water or electricity. Her father used to beat her and her sister. Her mother died when she was five. She was shot in the middle of a drug fight. My mother and her sister ca
me to America when they were children, and by the time she was fifteen, they were out on their own. Better to be out on their own than living with their father, that’s what she told me.

  “I’m sure she was an alcoholic by the time she was twenty, based on the stories she told me. I used to be furious with her for drinking, but now, as an adult, and understanding where she came from, I don’t judge her as harshly. My dad was gone a lot, she worked all the time, and she could never shed her past. Her system was shot. She’d been beat down too hard by life and had a tough time getting back up. She died of liver cancer years ago.”

  “Were you out of prison then?” We stopped and stood in the middle of a bridge and watched the stream bubbling and churning.

  “Yes. I took care of her the last six months up here in Oregon. I flew her up.” I saw a film of tears in his eyes. “She was a different person by then. Hadn’t had a drink in five years. She could not apologize enough to me. Every day she told me she was sorry. Sorry for not being a better mother. Sorry for not being there for me. Sorry for the addiction, and the men she drunkenly ran in and out of our house when my dad was in jail until I bashed one of them up at fourteen because he hit her. That was it for the men. She didn’t bring any more home.”

  “I’m glad you had that time, Kade.” My throat tightened. I felt for his mother. Who knows? Maybe I would have been an alcoholic with her life, too. Always easy to judge someone else.

  “Me too. It helped a lot.” He ran a hand over his eyes.

  I wanted to hug him tight, but I didn’t. “What was your father like?”

  “He was running drugs. No one who is a good person does that. He was dealing death to a whole bunch of people. Destroying them, their lives, their families. Teenagers, mothers, fathers, friends. I dabbled in drugs myself when I was in my teens. Nothing serious, and for some odd, inexplicable reason, I didn’t become hooked. But he was the person out there dealing the drugs. I was probably taking the drugs that my dad was bringing up from Mexico.”

  “Straight up the highway,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he not get that? That he was possibly dealing death to his own son?”

  “He always told me not to get into drugs, never to try them.”

  “How do you think he justified that to himself?” I tried not to be pissed, but I had known kids on drugs when I was younger, two who overdosed. It was tragic. A waste. It never needed to happen.

  “I don’t think he even tried. A drug dealer tells his own kid to stay away from drugs but actively deals them to other fathers’ sons, other fathers’ daughters. It burns me up whenever I think about it. I hate that part of him. Hate that greed and selfishness.”

  He started walking, his pace quick, and I walked beside him. A branch heavy with snow cracked and fell to the ground in the distance.

  “Was he Mexican like your mom?” It started to snow, light flakes. They landed on Kade’s black hair.

  “No. American. Blond hair, blue eyed. My height, my build. He came from a solid family, too. His father was in the aerospace industry, and his mother was a teacher. He had an older brother who ended up owning a successful technology business. Who knows why my father turned out as he did. I think he liked the danger of being in the drug trade, the excitement, breaking the law, being a rebel . . .”

  “And the money.” Money for the lives of children. What a sick deal.

  “Without a doubt. He would come and see us when he wasn’t in prison. I remember he read me stories, I rode on his back, he taught me how to ride a bike, he talked to me the whole time, and when he left he always gave my mother an envelope full of money.”

  “He was kind to you when he was around?”

  “Yes, he was. And to my mother. She hugged him when he came in, hugged him when he left. He often spent the night. She cried when he left. I think they loved each other. They were soul mates, but my father was a lousy husband because of the drug running. I remember a few times I ended up in the emergency room. Needed an appendectomy once, football concussion, my first knife fight where I had some cuts on my chest, and he came in, hugged me, hugged my mom. Stayed around for a few days, then took off again, that pile of cash in the envelope in her purse.”

  “Sounds like he had two sides to him.” I was crushed. Sad for Kade. A father who was more out than in. A father who would rather sell drugs than be a dad. How hurtful to Kade.

  “Without a doubt. I’d heard he would off people who challenged him or threatened his business. But then he would come to our house and beg my mom to bake him her chocolate cake. She’d smile and laugh, he’d kiss her, hug her, and she’d make the cake. Then we’d all sit down and eat chocolate cake together.” He laughed, but it was filled with pain.

  “I remember eating dinner with him, too. He would tell my mom he loved the burritos or the enchiladas, tell her that no one cooked like her, then he’d get up and use the phone, swear like you wouldn’t believe, in both Spanish and English, threaten to put someone in the ocean. He’d tell someone else to get the delivery in or start running, something like that, then he’d slam down the phone, sit down with us, reach for my mother’s hand and say, ‘Yours is the best steak I’ve ever had, Consuelo. The best. What’d you put on it? I tell everyone, you are the best cook in the world.’

  “And he and my mother would then launch into a discussion about steak, spices, burritos, enchiladas, her Chinese food—she made outstanding Chinese food—and that would be that. My father also liked talking to my mother about her garden. In spring she would show him her plans for the garden. He always made sure that she planted string beans, zucchini, three types of lettuce, three types of tomatoes, carrots and corn. When that garden grew in, he would come over, at night, and she’d send him back out with his bag full of vegetables.

  “I laugh now when I think about it. Mighty drug kingpin leaving his girlfriend’s house with a basket full of vegetables, but that’s what he did.”

  “Who did he live with?” I asked, but what I was thinking was, “How dare you hurt Kade, hurt your son, by not being a dad to him.”

  “He lived on his own. He told me a couple of times that he would never live with us because people were trying to kill him and he didn’t want us in the crossfire. From anyone else, that would have sounded like pure bull, but from him, it was the truth. My father had enemies, no question.”

  “And he’s still in jail?”

  “Yes. This last sentence was his longest. Almost out.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes. I fly down twice a year. He’s a changed man. Humble. Broken. His whole life, wasted. He could have done something, built something, helped others. He had the American dream in terms of opportunity—a well-off and caring family, a college education, and he blew it. This last stint did him in. His mother died of cancer when he was there and he couldn’t be with her, take care of her.”

  I didn’t say, but thought, what an irresponsible and selfish person.

  “I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about my dad. He hurt people. He hurt his family, he hurt us, he hurt others. I used to go and visit him when I was a kid in Los Angeles before I went to prison, too. We weren’t at the same prison. We joked, rather blackly, that the jail mixed up our hotel reservations.

  “He wrote me a letter and told me to leave L.A. when I was released from jail, to stay out of gangs and not become him. I wrote him back and said I had already decided to go. Later I realized he was also probably afraid that I would be the victim of a crime, a deliberate hit on him. Jail changed me. Who I was when I went in and who I was when I came out were different people.”

  I wondered how different I would be when I walked away from those bars. Would my hatred for Covey and what he did to me turn me into some bitter woman I didn’t want to be? Would I have a mental breakdown in there? Would I be bashed up by Neanderthal Woman, or would I turn into a basher? I have been hit enough in my life, and I would not put up with that again.

  “Who were you when yo
u went in and who were you when you came out?”

  “I was an angry, rebellious kid, run by my emotions, when I went in, and I was a more reflective, calmer, grown man when I left. I learned how to make furniture in prison. I took a whole bunch of college classes, earned two degrees, actually, in accounting and business, and I studied how to run a business. I worked out, stayed tough, did not take any shit, and planned a life for myself that did not involve gangs, knives, fighting or, most especially, jail.”

  “And your life turned out so well.” What a story. Drug dealer for a father. Alcoholic mother. Running in a gang. Arrested. Jail time. I pictured him in the degrading, dangerous pit of jail, with its barbed wires, strip searches, confinement . . . as a teenager. I was all choked up but tried to hide it.

  “Grenady, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I turned my face away and watched an osprey. Two tears fell. “Damn,” I muttered.

  He stopped me on the trail and made me face him. “What is it?”

  I made a gaspy noise and put my hands over my face when more tears spouted out without my permission.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying.” My heart hurt.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Not much.”

  “Why? Did I say something that upset you?”

  I wiped my cheeks, then another round fell. “I was thinking of you as a kid with your mom, and dad, and being in that neighborhood, being in a gang, getting stabbed and shot, going to prison, and it made me sad.”

  He was stunned, I could tell. “You’re crying because of my childhood?”

  “Well, yeah. It wasn’t like you were at Disneyland the whole time.” My tone was snappy. I impatiently brushed away a snowflake that landed on my eyelashes. “You have a problem with that?”

  He was silent for a minute. “No, Grenady, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “So quit asking if I’m crying.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I don’t like being pestered when I cry.”