Angela didn’t call or write – but Karl explained that, during his one and only visit to me while I awaited transfer to the penitentiary.
I was proud of Karl for mustering the nerve to see me in the hell hole they called the County SHU: Stagger Bay’s Secure Housing Unit. I knew that to visit me he had to run a gauntlet of searches and scanners and warrants checks, wending ever deeper into the constipated bowels of the beast with the only payoff at the end getting to stand in front of my handsome mug with a smeared scratched sheet of unbreakable plexiglas between us, both of us clutching our phones as cold substitute for a brotherly embrace.
Karl’s voice came tinny and inhuman from my ear piece; I wouldn’t even have recognized it if I hadn’t watched his lips synching to the words on the other side of the plexi. His words grating and hissing over the cheap phone line, he told me how Angela started using again as soon as I was popped, then ODed and checked out right after I got sentenced to natural life. Karl figured the OD probably wasn’t an accident.
I told him to shut the fuck up about that one. Neither of us had slugged the other in more than a few moons but Karl was fortunate the barrier was between us that day; he would have taken a cheap shot from me and I knew by heart all the spots that hurt him the most.
“And Sam?” I asked.
“They’re making noise like they’re gonna stick him in CPS, but I’ve got him covered, Markus. As long as I’m breathing and perpendicular, he’s with familia.”
I shut my eyes. “You’ll have to go all the way straight now.”
“If you did it, it’s got to be easy – he’s my blood too, baby brother. I’ll have my stuff sent up here from San Fran, find me and Sam a place. You know I can always glom the folding cash if it comes to that.”
A screw rolled up to lurk, meaning our visit was over. Quickly, knowing they’d just turn the phones off on us in mid-sentence if we dawdled, I said, “Don’t put money on my books. I’ll hustle up my own end. I’ll write to Sam, care of general delivery. And Karl…”
My brother waited, brows raised as the screw made an imperious beckoning gesture at him.
“You don’t have to come visit me again. I’ll do my own time.”
His face crawled with mingled relief and shame, and his eyes dropped. Then his shoulders squared and he gave up with a wink and a grin, just like he wasn’t saying goodbye forever.
I hold tight to that memory of my big brother Karl, walking tall away from me until he was out of my sight at least. It was the last time I ever saw him.