Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [110]
This had actually been Warden LeRoy’s idea, allowing him to concentrate solely on running the penitentiary. Well, Thomas thought, at least someone around here looks and acts like a new man. He decided that if he himself were in a better frame of mind, he would have been inspired by Yanno’s seeming new lease on life.
Now Yanno was at the prison all the time, freshly committed to the task. Adamsville State Penitentiary was going to remain the jewel in the state’s DOC crown, financially strapped as it was, and Yanno kept asking Thomas if it didn’t make him proud to be part of it.
“You bet it does,” Thomas said, coming as close to lying as he had as an adult.
Thomas was shocked one afternoon when his daughter knocked and entered his office. He leaped to his feet.
“Rav! What brings you here?”
“You won’t believe it. Dirk and I are moving to Adamsville.”
“Seriously?”
“Dirk is working for the county, and I have just been hired as a public defender. You can guess where a lot of my caseload will come from.”
“Here?”
“I trust we won’t get into each other’s way too much.”
“You could never be in my way, sweetheart. You look fantastic, by the way.”
“Well, this suit is Penney’s, not Saks, as it would be if I were in a big firm. But I like to look the part.”
“And you certainly do. I need to coach you on dealing with men like these, Rav.”
“Wide open to input, but I suspect I’ll have to learn as I go.”
“Your mother will be thrilled to have you so close. You will come visit, won’t you?”
“Of course. I think we can all be civil.”
Addison
For a time it appeared Brady Darby might actually have turned a corner. It didn’t take long for his new employers to catch on that he might have exaggerated his history of landscaping experience, but he proved, at first, to be diligent and hardworking. As long as someone told him what to do and walked him through it a time or two, he found he could learn anything.
He planted trees, laid sod, moved trees and shrubs. He mowed, weeded, edged, fertilized, even created rock formations.
Brady found the work—the first he had really done in ages—exhausting and painful for the first few weeks. And when Peter could not drop him off or pick him up, he had to hitchhike several miles to the office, where he rode with a crew to the various job sites.
He loved his uniform and found reasons to delay removing it at the end of the day. Brady liked to be seen in it here and there, especially around the trailer park. The old Laundromat had been replaced by a filling station, where he bought his smokes and snacks and dreamed of someday again having a car he could pull into there for gas.
With his history, Brady had zero credit and could get neither a credit nor even a debit card and thus had to run his entire personal financial life on cash. His expenses consisted of only a stipend to his mother for rent—they barely spoke and when they did were rarely cordial—and the occasional five or ten to Peter for the use of his car, which was infrequent.
Poor Peter was charged with making sure Brady got up in time to get to work every morning, and that became more difficult all the time. Brady was proud of his job and his steady, if not generous, income, but he had come to reward himself every evening by going to the movies, smoking some dope, trying to find a one-night—or more likely a few-hour—stand, then lounging in front of the TV until the wee hours.
He knew if his parole officer knew he was even associating with people who sold grass, he’d be right back in the joint. But at least he didn’t drink or do the harder stuff anymore. Life was boring, no question, and Hollywood was a forgotten