I walked back the way I’d originally come, the first night I’d stumbled into the Gardens. I walked up that broad new road, clean white sidewalks to each side with all the courts and lots laid out flat and perfect and sterile.
The new construction confronted the Gardens as if besieging them. The idle heavy equipment appeared ready to move in and do a Godzilla on those rows of bungalows the instant I wasn’t looking. Dirt fire-access roads led off into the surrounding old growth forests like radiating spokes.
I suspected any Pass I’d had in the Gardens was revoked now. I wouldn’t have even been surprised if a carload of Crips or Hmong cruised up and did a drive-by on me.
I found the trail to the marsh and worked my way through the blackberry thickets and tulie grass to the swamp proper. Carnivorous plants dotted the expanse of low mud hummocks spread in front of me.
The night I passed out here after escaping the hospital, I’d flashed back to the times I’d come to this spot with Sam when he was little. Now, in the light of day and doing everything possible not to think about that little girl, I again remembered catching spiders with Sam, and messing around with tadpoles. It had been fun seeing wild things for the first time myself, and sharing the experience with my boy.
One time we even found a raccoon skull. Sam was the one who spotted it by a bush in the middle of the marsh, and he’d just had to have it. So of course I wound up wading through knee-deep swamp bottom to reach that skull, and it turned out a yellow jacket nest was right next to it on a bush.
Apparently the yellow jackets didn’t approve of me being in their space. I danced around in the mud, yelling as they swarmed all over me stinging the shit out of me, and Sam laughed his ass off at the show I put on for his amusement. We went home, Sam with a cool raccoon skull, and me covered in stinking swamp muck and yellow jacket sting holes.
I chuckled at that bitter-sweet memory, but it wasn’t much comfort in the present. I'd been vain: I'd told myself I could do instantaneously what Karl hadn't been able to in seven years. I’d been proud: I'd told myself I was playing these kids, but my ego had been stroked to bloating by their hero worship; I’d bought into being the Crips’ token white boy OG.
Moe was right: My rage had killed that little girl as surely as if I’d wielded the knife myself. I’d poked the tiger in the sphincter with a sharp stick, thinking to bully the Driver – but he’d mirrored my anger, blazed up just as hot and nasty. It was supposed to have been me he came after to chop – instead, that little girl died screaming for my mistake.
I deserved to have the Gardens turn on me.