Allocution

When they found me slumped over the curb outside the old Ranger Inn, I had been drinking all night. I did so, not because of some sad yearning for the past or to cope with some insufferable reality, but to celebrate. I drank because hammering down copious shots of bourbon is the degenerative and destabilizing way I chose to celebrate the relief of knowing that I was finally done with this life.

The small rural town of Rawlins, Wyoming was not an easy place to grow up. A desolate, arid place, it offered very little for the few who chose to stay or were unable to leave. The decaying brown-stone buildings in the main strip emitted a haunted, ghost town aspect. Almost all were shuttered.

Out in the barren wastes, on the fringes of town, Mother and I lived alone in a trailer any outsider would think was abandoned. The teacher in my elementary class would ask me what Mother did for a living. In a twist of irony, the teacher already knew full well, but would not tell. I soon learned. At age 11, the cops took Mother away from me after finding several scales and bags of white powder in her bedroom. In the aftermath, she made occasional phone calls while I stayed with various foster families. Then one day the calls stopped, and I never heard from her again.

In midst of my emotional turbulence, Beau was always there—a familiar face. He was one of the handful of children in town my age, a lanky, tanned-skinned kid with dark hair whose expression appeared as if he had never experienced a day or sorrow. Even though I was regularly moved between houses and families, we always saw each other at the schoolhouse and had a fondness for getting into trouble together. For years, we were the dynamic duo, we were brothers. Beau also had a car, a beat up 1995 Buick LeSabre. I would ditch out from wherever I had been staying and he would drive me around the decrepit ruins of the town, the surrounding high plains desert, and even deep into the foothills of the nearby Snowy Mountains.

Overtime, Beau got tired of driving and forced me to learn. I was reluctant to take someone else’s vehicle and nervous to be the one in control. I drove nowhere but the winding, infinite dirt roads and two-tracks that carved up the land around us, which the car barely handled. In the hours and days of driving, I learned how different life could be just an hour out of town. The desert receded, the trees grew dense, and the sight of rivers and expanses of green prairie shocked my senses. Beau seemed indifferent but I knew he enjoyed it too. Once a couple years passed, I drove as good as anyone in Wyoming, for whatever that is worth.

On one of our excursions deep into the back country, Beau revealed a large bottle of what turned out to be vodka. Standing in the fresh air at early dusk, with the sun setting behind the pine forest off in the distance, we choked back several drinks until we were on top of the world. Beau exclaimed proudly that we are going to get out of this place, this town, Rawlins, and finally live. He proclaimed that we will go to where all the action is, where people can live free, where there are places to skateboard or surf, where there is more than one girl our own age, and where we can finally experience cultures other than the fake cowboy western aesthetic tirelessly imprinted onto our psyche. During his speech, I recalled the tales Mother once told me of faraway places like California and New York, and I agreed with him wholeheartedly. For whatever reason, I never imagined being able to one day get myself out of bed and leave this place. l reveled at the idea for some time before crawling over to a soft patch of dirt in the middle of the field to sleep.

The next day, we awoke to the burning sun overhead, exhausted and hopelessly hungover. That is when, for the first time, Beau drove me to his house. I had known him for years but never was able to visit, and he never invited me over. He lived fifteen miles down the highway in the nearby village of Hellens, a place somehow smaller than Rawlins and consisted merely of a well-aged oil refinery surrounded by housing units for workers. I was nervous to go. Even though we often drove far out from Rawlins, we only spent time in the empty fields and forests. I had never actually been to another town.

His house sat immediately off the highway. It was a small white colored one-story building, only marginally nicer than Mother’s trailer. Beau parked the car behind a weathered and battered wood fence that partially surrounded the house. In what seemed an instant, I saw a large man burst through the front door. He wore a stained white cut-off shirt with torn blue jeans; he also had many of the same features as Beau except his expression. The man’s face was cracked and mangled with rage. By the time I turned to look at Beau, the man had closed the gap. He grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into the unyielding gravel yard, threatening to kill Beau if he ever stole booze from him again. I quickly helped Beau get to his feet. He shook badly, and hardly could stand, yet his face seemed calm with the same gentle gaze he always exhibited.

We crept into the house after the man stormed off and found Beau’s mom sitting at the kitchen table with his baby sister. She knew what had happened but also knew the sullen truth. She could do nothing about it.

His mom offered us breakfast, which I dreaded to accept but the previous night left me starving. I was in awe at the food she prepared. A spread of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and toast. What had I done to earn this? Even the rotating foster families I habitated amongst did not prepare me such fulsome meals. She also offered me a room to sleep in if I ever needed it and explained that if I was willing to help perform house chores, she would continue to feed me. It would have been a dream to accept either offer. There was no way they were real. I ate my food slow and carefully as if it were my last. Beau sat quietly, waiting for me. Afterward, he made clear it was time to leave. I expressed my gratitude to everyone. Beau’s mom thanked me for befriending her son.

As Beau drove me back to Rawlins, I wanted time to move slower. I needed time to move slower. But, in the blink of an eye, he pulled up outside the schoolhouse where I could walk back to where I was staying. Before I left, he sat there gazing out his window into some unknown realm and uttered, with a steady conviction, “Jason, when school ends tomorrow, it is time we leave for good.” I had no response, and he drove off.

That school day felt like the end of everything. I spent the whole day waiting on Beau to arrive. Our class was small but so confined to its cliques no one else noticed his absence. The teacher chastised me for not paying attention and threatened I would be held back and stuck in this school, in this town, forever. The time now seemed to halt, frozen in ice, encased in concrete, sunk into the mud. I never experienced such an anxiety.

The day inevitably ended. No change. No presence of Beau. In a moment of desperation, I approached the teacher to inquire about him. With a vindictive tone, the teacher said the school principal caught him with a knife and had him expelled. Beau apparently arrived early that morning. Early enough to scare one of the uppity cliques with his appearance, which resulted in a search of his person from a nearby cop. I later discovered from the same teacher that after the incident, Beau’s mom left Wyoming entirely, with Beau and his sister in hand. I was left with no one.

It was not long before I dropped out of school and severed the ties with the strangers who called themselves my foster parents. In a frantic need for money, I took up a job at the first place willing to hire me. The only truck stop in town, Earl’s Spot. It was essentially just a convenience store—a run down, filthy hole at best. The owner, a man whose name was not Earl, went by the name Morris, if that was even his actual name. He had me doing odd jobs far beyond the confines of the drabby store, jobs I did not sign up for but suffered through with my end goal of leaving town in mind at all times. Morris had me pulling weeds on undeveloped plots of land, picking up garbage scattered across the sunbaked terrain surrounding the store, painting the houses of the friends who he owed favors, and eventually selling a mix of drugs to desperate travelers in the parking lot. Occasionally, I would sit behind the counter of the store and take money from customers, which felt like a luxury. Because I never obtained a driver’s license, Morris carted me to each location in his truck to labor over tasks he frequently thought of on the fly as he surveyed his many properties. I was nothing more than an underpaid servant.

On one such trip, Morris drove me out to his three-story mansion of a house for random tasks. Trust had been built over the previous years, and now I got to a least see how monied people lived. The home was lavish with high ceilings, a mix of wood floors and lush carpeting, and a large kitchen with an island and separate bar area. In passing, I noticed a discrete safe placed under the bar, as if to keep it hidden in plain sight. I dared not ask about it. I spent the day dusting, moping, cleaning the gutters, and doing whatever else he said. Around this time, I experienced an overdose from taking pain killers. I mixed too many with shots of vodka and lost control, ending up on the street near the schoolhouse. Even though I almost died, by the time I awoke in the hospital, I had been arrested for holding other drugs I forgot I even possessed. Even worse, all the money I had saved to leave town was gone.

Despair finally gripped my mind. In the midst of my malaise, I found myself conversing with Soren, who resided in the same cell block. What started as grumbles of coerced small talk turned into lurid conversations about how we ended up in our position, often cursing the vagaries of life in Rawlins. During our talks, it wasn’t long until I accidently let slip Beau’s name. Saying that name in such a context felt vile and wrong. However, the very second Beau’s name echoed against the unforgiving concrete walls, a spark lit in Soren’s pale grey eyes. He asked, “You mean the Beau from Hellens?”

A bolt of lightning surged through my body. I was flooded with a manic, obsessive energy. My heart raced, my mind went blank to anything else. Is there any other Beau from Hellens? Of course not. Soren explained that he spoke with Beau over many months while they killed their number in jail. He told me a couple years back Beau was arrested driving into town piss drunk. I was in disbelief. How could I not have known? Soren was the first person who mentioned Beau since school. I wanted to ask so many questions, but I could only muster one, “Where did he go?”

Filled with uncontrollable anticipation, it did not cross my mind that Soren may not actually know. My gazed fixated on his round unsettled face. He remembered. Beau skipped out of town to go back to Dumas, Texas. There was no question about it. I had to go.

After I served my time, I entered back into society more determined than anyone alive. I planned each step meticulously in the preceding weeks. Though my thoughts were predominantly of Beau, my mind always meandered back to the safe at Morris’s house and the truck he kept parked outside. I kept a low profile and swiftly moved through the streets I once casually walked with Mother. Morris’s house was on the backside of a large hill, facing away from town. The approach was easy during the day. Morris was out doing his shady business. He hid his spare house keys on top of the wood frame of his backdoor. I crept silently into the house up to the bar by the kitchen. The safe was still there, and to my infinite surprise, it was unlocked. My arms trembled as I opened it, unaware of the contents. Tens of thousands of dollars in nice neat stacks.

I grabbed a large suitcase from the nearby closet, and desperately began filling it until I heard the front door slam shut, the most haunting sound I remember to this day. The sound caused my heart to skip several beats. I looked up like a deer in head lights to discover Morris standing at the threshold. What was I to do? I was in a panic, I had nothing to lose, and there stood Morris. He quickly scrambled to a cupboard at the far end of the kitchen. I was certain he was moving towards his stash of handguns. In a reflexive act of survival, I sprinted at him across the kitchen, grabbed the knife sitting on the middle island, and plunged it deep into his chest. Before I found time to think, I had already acquired the truck keys from his pocket and took off.

Even with the adrenaline pumping, and my whole body numb, I drove as carefully as I could manage onto the highway out of town. My heart beat so rapidly, I was one head rush away from blacking out. By the time I regained my composure, I had crossed the state line into Colorado for the first time. My thoughts spiraled in many directions until I realized, I did it. I finally left Rawlins behind. I was far away. A strange sense of relief washed over me.

The long journey ended in Dumas—an isolated farm town just as vacuous and dry as Rawlins. I did not understand why Beau would settle in such place. The outskirts were even more barren and desolate than the areas we used to explore. I drove laps around the town, vigilantly zig zagging the neighborhoods. In the process, it dawned on me that I had long ago lost my sanity. But right when my hope faded, I saw through my rear-view mirror a woman outside standing on a rickety wooden porch smoking a cigarette. It was Beau’s mom.

My racing heart calmed and I smiled, feeling pride for having reached this point. Reunification. I left the truck and approached the house. Beau’s mom recognized me immediately, but her face was still and unflinching. Uncontrollably eager, I asked bluntly, “Where is Beau?” Her stoic posture rapidly shifted, her face contorted. She moved her hands over her mouth and violently turned away towards the entrance of the house before she paused silently. I waited patiently for a response, but the uninterrupted, protracted sounds of the foreign town gradually began to awaken in me the cold reality. Before I knew it, she sat down next to me and answered. Beau was dead.

She explained that he died from a fentanyl overdose only a few weeks ago. He did not know his cigarette was laced and it was too late. He went fast. Tears streamed down my face. It was my turn to stay silent.

I watched the street lamps trickle on, one at a time down the road, my consciousness drifting out of body, out of space and time, in total numbness. Beau’s mom described the struggles they faced. Beau and his sister lived for several years running in fear of his father, always on the run. They were transient, bouncing from one friend’s house to another, moving from one town to another, frequently going without food. Yet, they found solace in Dumas. The town finally offered some permanency to build a life when a distant relative let them reside at the very house I found her.

Beau’s mom and I talked deep into the brisk night. Perhaps it was therapeutic. I filled her in on my trainwreck of a life, including my journey to leave Rawlins to find Beau, with some notable omissions. Eventually, she offered to make me dinner for the effort and time I took to travel. I laughed at the gesture and remembered the suitcase in Morris’s truck. I promptly retrieved it and handed it to her. Confused, she knew I could never have legitimately acquired the money. I insisted she keep it, spend it, and never look back. The news about Beau was devastating, yet being in Dumas and giving her the money gave the peace I did not deserve.

With my newfound closure, I knew I had to return to Rawlins and accept responsibility for everything. As I entered back into the town off the crumbling highway, full of fond memories, I pulled up to the only bar in one hundred miles, the old Ranger Inn. It was just a matter of time before the cops discovered me.