Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard
Destination Unknown
It was only natural that someone such as myself, from the wrong side of the tracks, with little education coupled with little hope for the future, would find themselves in my current situation. After all my trip to death row was foretold on the night of my birth when my father managed to drag himself to the hospital long enough to see what his seed had produced.
Like father like son they always say, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree was another homily that pretty much sealed my fate. From what I was able to piece together my dad had been a drug dealing, pill popping, thrill seeker living along the shadowy edge of our ordered society. A biker with little hope for the future who lived for the moment as that was the only one that mattered. In his world there was little need for 401k’s, bank accounts, or even jobs.
He and his kind lived day by day, feast or famine, constantly on the move, never pausing for a moment except when they were too drunk, or too high to function, and even then they pushed on. Always wandering, moving from one end of the country to the other, living by their wits, accumulating only what wealth they needed for the moment through wheeling and dealing, and in rare cases by sticking a gun in some poor saps face.
They didn’t take from the man, they kept their distance from the more ordered members of society, the nine to fivers who went about their daily lives unaware of the danger lurking just beyond view. They dealt strictly within the family, that loose coalition living in the shadowy realm between good and bad. The pimps, hookers, and dealers who fed on the darker needs of an ordered society that at times became too stifling for some.
They were modern nomads roaming the land in search of a freedom that no longer existed, and they welcomed me with open arms. After being held back for the ninth grade for the third time I decided that school was not for me. There were no scholarships in my future, no invitations to visit the campus of this college or that, and even if by some miracle a college did approach me, our financial situation pretty much ruled that out.
We were nomads in our own right, the woman who gave birth to me and I, living at the very edge of society as she wheeled and dealed her way through one government program after another, her hand always extended, never once offering more than a token effort and just long enough to get what she needed. In that time we moved from one crappy apartment or trailer to the next, each worse than the one before, as we spiraled down the drain to homelessness.
I’ve often wondered as the night grows long and the others on death row with me sleep as best they can knowing at the end of the hall their destination waited. How would my life have turned out if the woman who gave birth to me had been different. Would I be sitting in this lonely cell, counting down the days to my own unknown destination, or would I have built a family of my own.
A loving wife, a couple of kids, a boy and a girl, maybe more. A family pet a dog, or cat, and some fish of course, I’d always been fascinated by fish swimming in their ordered little world. One of my childhood friends had an aquarium when I was growing up and I could sit for hours and watch as they swam back and forth from one end of the tank to the other. Staying in their groups, some holding to the center of the tank while others traveled along the outer edges.
Never aware that there was a wide open world on the other side of the glass that imprisoned them.
Like father like son they always say, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree was another homily that pretty much sealed my fate. From what I was able to piece together my dad had been a drug dealing, pill popping, thrill seeker living along the shadowy edge of our ordered society. A biker with little hope for the future who lived for the moment as that was the only one that mattered. In his world there was little need for 401k’s, bank accounts, or even jobs.
He and his kind lived day by day, feast or famine, constantly on the move, never pausing for a moment except when they were too drunk, or too high to function, and even then they pushed on. Always wandering, moving from one end of the country to the other, living by their wits, accumulating only what wealth they needed for the moment through wheeling and dealing, and in rare cases by sticking a gun in some poor saps face.
They didn’t take from the man, they kept their distance from the more ordered members of society, the nine to fivers who went about their daily lives unaware of the danger lurking just beyond view. They dealt strictly within the family, that loose coalition living in the shadowy realm between good and bad. The pimps, hookers, and dealers who fed on the darker needs of an ordered society that at times became too stifling for some.
They were modern nomads roaming the land in search of a freedom that no longer existed, and they welcomed me with open arms. After being held back for the ninth grade for the third time I decided that school was not for me. There were no scholarships in my future, no invitations to visit the campus of this college or that, and even if by some miracle a college did approach me, our financial situation pretty much ruled that out.
We were nomads in our own right, the woman who gave birth to me and I, living at the very edge of society as she wheeled and dealed her way through one government program after another, her hand always extended, never once offering more than a token effort and just long enough to get what she needed. In that time we moved from one crappy apartment or trailer to the next, each worse than the one before, as we spiraled down the drain to homelessness.
I’ve often wondered as the night grows long and the others on death row with me sleep as best they can knowing at the end of the hall their destination waited. How would my life have turned out if the woman who gave birth to me had been different. Would I be sitting in this lonely cell, counting down the days to my own unknown destination, or would I have built a family of my own.
A loving wife, a couple of kids, a boy and a girl, maybe more. A family pet a dog, or cat, and some fish of course, I’d always been fascinated by fish swimming in their ordered little world. One of my childhood friends had an aquarium when I was growing up and I could sit for hours and watch as they swam back and forth from one end of the tank to the other. Staying in their groups, some holding to the center of the tank while others traveled along the outer edges.
Never aware that there was a wide open world on the other side of the glass that imprisoned them.
To be continued!
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