Primal - By D.A. Serra Page 0,3
good friends even though Alison holds the minutes of her life closely, spending most of her time with Hank, Jimmy, and a good book. Still, they enjoy each other when thrown together by their daily lives or by school events. Denise has a nontoxic envy for Alison and Hank’s relationship, the only two married people she knows who visibly, demonstratively love each other. She sees them exchange secretive smiles and she always has the feeling when around them that they are sharing a fun and private view of the outside world. While she can’t help but envy them, she’s happy to know a connection like that is achievable. She studies them. She judges all of her dates against them.
“Jimmy’s birthday tonight?” Denise asks.
“Yes. Legions of in-laws eating like locusts and using my bathroom guest towels.”
“Oh, you love it.” Denise teases her.
“True. Hank’s family is endlessly entertaining.”
“And then you’re out of town for the rest of the week?” Gary asks.
“Four days.” They hear a wisp of reluctance.
“What?” he nudges her good-naturedly, “You’d rather be here scraping gum off the bottom of your shoes?”
“It’s a close call.”
Denise asks, “Where are you going?’
“Nowhere you would go in a million years.” Alison gives them both a warm smile and turns left toward the parking lot. “See you next week.” But she won’t see them next week. And when she does see them again - they won’t know her.
* * *
Chapter Three
Warden Tummelson knows what it’s like to be God. He controls these men’s lives - he controls their deaths. This penitentiary houses the worst the human race has to offer: the baby eaters, the dismemberment junkies. He’s the gatekeeper on death row. After eleven years here, Tummelson does feel as though he’s the one imprisoned. He does the best job he can, but long ago he stopped being able to get clean. No one knows he has begun to wash compulsively and last week in the shower, he scrubbed the skin off his left elbow. When his sister Amy gave birth, three weeks ago, to his first niece, he stood next to her white fluffy crib in the hospital, but refused to pick her up. He would not. He has been permanently and irrevocably sullied. He walks slowly over to his office window as Wilkins and Doctor Kim stand on the other side of his desk and wait. Tummelson wonders how he wound up here in this room making these kinds of decisions. How he wound up a prison warden at all. It wasn’t something he planned for or worked toward. He thinks most people wind up capriciously in their life’s work - it is a surprise instead of a thoughtful journey to a specific choice. It requires so much focus, and even more importantly, the suspension of derailing events to successfully follow a path all the way. He would love to know how many people, if asked, would say ‘oh, yeah, I’m doing exactly what I planned,’ or for that matter, ‘exactly what I wanted.’ Kids, when asked in grade school what they want to be when they grow up, answer something interesting, something important. All children think they’re important. It will be years before they realize they are a tiny component in a big ugly human machine, and they are easily replaced. Some folks, he believes, never realize that, maybe those are the lucky ones. He would be willing to bet that no child, when asked to speculate on their future, says ‘I want to be a middle manager at a packaging plant,’ or ‘a salesman in a discount clothing store,’ or ‘a prison warden? Tummelson believes most people cannot trace the path that got them where they are. It is circuitous and rife with intervening events, a sick parent, a pregnancy, an application denied, a broken heart, a lack of funds. The immediate necessity of making a living surely led him from one stopgap job (where he never planned to stay) to another, and then another, and so here he is today, standing in this stifling office with a desk drawer full of Purell antiseptic gel. He turns to Wilkins and the frustration shakes in his tone.
“Come on, Wilkins, every damn inmate on death row finds God at the end. Ben Burne? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’ve been watching him for a long time. He saved my life. I’m telling you it’s genuine.”
“During the First National Bank robbery, which he pulled with his brothers, he shot a twenty-year-old teller in