Jacobsen gives me a hard shove, forcing me to trip and stumble across the threshold. "Get the fuck outta here, Olafsson. Tired of lookin' at your ugly fuckin' mug, already."
I walk backward and give him a nod. "I'm going."
He hooks his thumbs in his gear belt, watching as I cross the road to the big silver F-250 idling on the shoulder. When I round the hood, he gives me a wave, which I return, and then he strolls back to the R and R room. Another buzz announces the closing of the gate, which I watch slide closed with my hand on the truck’s door handle.
Once the gate is closed, I let out a sigh.
It’s real.
I'm a free man.
I open the door and settle into the passenger seat—the cab smells like old coffee, leather, diesel fumes, and grease. The truck is older than my prison stay: ten years, eleven months, and eighteen days. The gray leather is cracked and worn, the dash is peeling, and the analog radio is tuned to a local hard rock station, the volume low enough I can just barely make out the sounds of Nirvana. The stock manual gear shifter has been replaced with a huge wrench; the stainless steel of the handle is tarnished and worn from long use.
In the driver's seat is my boss and work-release supervisor, Riley Crowe. At six-three, he's an inch shorter than me and lighter by a good fifty pounds. His hair is neatly cut, swept back and to the right, glossy black. Clean-shaven, with eyes so pale blue they're almost white, and shocking in their intensity. He's dressed in worn, faded, dirty blue jeans, battered Wolverine work boots, and a filthy white T-shirt stretched across a muscular chest.
He grins at me. "You're a free man, Bear. How's it feel?"
I shrug a shoulder. "Not sure yet. Only been two minutes."
He laughs, backhanding my chest. "Tell you one thing—you need new clothes. Those fit like shit."
I nod. "Put on a few pounds on the inside, I guess."
"Afew?" He cackles sarcastically, shoving the shifter into first and feathering the throttle, making the big diesel engine groan.
A few miles later, Riley glances at me. "So. You know how this is gonna work?"
I shrug. "I guess."
"Might as well go over it again, now that you're officially out on parole. You've put in three years in my program, which got you a shit-load of good-time credit. That plus your overall behavior on the inside means you're out on parole ten years into your twenty-five-year sentence."
“Yes sir." None of this is news to me, obviously.
"So now that you're out, you're gonna continue to work for me as part of the conditions of your parole. You'll still have to report to your parole officer once a month, but as long as you stay good with me, you can skip the bi-weekly check-ins. Now, the official work-release program stipulates you work for me for a period of five years total, so you owe me another two. Your pay, as you're obviously aware, has gone in part to pay off your stay. The rest has been put into an escrow account for you. Now that you’re out, I'll hook you up with the bank and get you a card. You have enough to put down a deposit on an apartment, which we've already set up for you—you just gotta sign some papers and pay the deposit. You'll need a ride eventually, but until you can get one, I'll pick you up and drop you off—your apartment is on the way for me." He glances at me. "Got all that?"
I nod. "Got it." I rub my palms on my jeans. "I'm grateful, Riley. Thank you."
Riley nods. "I've been where you are. I built this program to be what I wish I'd had when I got out."
"It's the best thing that's ever happened to me," I say, watching the familiar sights slide past the window.
I've made this drive every day for three years—from Holbrook State Correctional Facility to Three Rivers, a journey of a little under an hour. Until today, however, the journey has been in a Department of Corrections bus, with an armed deputy watching my every move. Until today, at the end of the workday, I boarded the bus back to the prison, process back in, and rejoin Gen Pop for chow time and then rec time before we're put back in our cells.
Today, everything is different.
No bus. No deputy. No jumpsuit. No going back to Gen Pop. No more chow line. No more rec yard. No more long late-night talks with Matt. No more lifting in the yard with Gregg, LaShawn, and Antonio.
Sensing my need for quiet time to process the coming changes, Riley turns up the radio and cuts the chatter, left wrist dangling over the wheel, his right hand resting on the wrench shifter handle.
The hour drive passes quickly, and soon the highway angles west, the open farmland and clumps of forest giving way to roadside parks on the left and RV campgrounds on the right, and then the campgrounds and state parks give way to five and ten-acre homesteads on the right, and on the left the sky opens up and gives you occasional glimpses of Lake Michigan.
Another few minutes and the highway runs right up against the shoreline, Lake Michigan rippling blue and green and gray, stretching into the horizon. On the right, the large parcels subdivide into one- and two-acre parcels, with winding neighborhoods behind them.
Three Rivers is a small town in Northern Michigan, on the west coast of the state north of Traverse City. Perched right on the shoreline, the downtown area has seen a boom of expansion in the three years I've been coming here on work release, with an influx of young families, new businesses, and entrepreneurs quickly transforming the once-sleepy lakeside small town into a bustling, exciting up-and-coming community. It's cute and quaint—what I've seen of it, at least, as the bus winds through the downtown and into the industrial area where Crowe Demolitions and Crowe Construction have their equipment yard and headquarters.
We're nearing downtown now, passing through a short stretch of beachside resorts and hotels and inns, mom-and-pop diners, fudge shops, kayak, jet ski, and paddleboard rental shops, and the marina, with sprawling neighborhoods climbing the steep hills east of the shoreline and highway. With everymile, the buildings get closer together and the steep hills settle and smooth out. And then, abruptly, the four-lane state highway narrows to one lane in each direction and becomes Main Street, still running parallel to the shoreline. On the left is the beach, with parking lots just off the road, state park-run bathrooms, and city-owned concessions buildings dotting the lots at regular intervals; beyond the parking lot and bathrooms is a wide swath of grass sprinkled liberally with benches, grills, and picnic tables, eventually giving way to sand and then the water.
On the other side of Main Street is the town itself. Parking lots run alongside the road with businesses beyond them, cross streets running perpendicular to Main Street crammed with restaurants, shops and stores, cafes, and bars. The downtown area itself isn't especially big, containing only a square mile or two, but the rest of suburban Three Rivers is actually fairly sizeable, sprawling out along the shoreline and extending several miles to the east in suburbs, industrial complexes, and shopping centers. Cutting through the town and emptying into Lake Michigan are the three rivers that give the town its name: Crooked Trout, Red Bottom, and Michigami. Some five or so miles north of where it narrowed, Main Street widens back into a four-lane highway and continues northward, eventually reaching Mackinaw City and the Mackinac Bridge.
