Part 1 of a trilogy. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

When he was released from Huntsville Prison, officials presented Glen Roberts with twenty bucks and a bus ticket to Fort Stockton.  The suit he wore walking out the front gate was the same one he’d had on when he’d been driven in, August of 1959.  It was worn and in need of replacement in ’59.  When Roberts became a free man again in September of ’65, it was still just as worn, but in even greater need of replacement, having been stored in a box in a musty, un-air conditioned locker for the whole six years.

The train ride back to Fort Stockton was bittersweet, at best.  He wasn’t going home to anyone.  His parents were both gone and he was an only child.  There was an uncle still in town, as far as he knew.  He wouldn’t bother looking him up.  Uncle Don hadn’t bothered reaching out to Glen the whole time he was in Huntsville.

The sites out the window of the Lone Star Flyer weren’t any different than they were six years earlier, on the trip headed east.  Glen figured they probably wouldn’t look any different if he’d have served his full ten year sentence, rather than getting out early for good behavior.  In fact, if he lived long enough, he figured it wouldn’t look any different thirty years down the road.

The fact he’d been imprisoned even a single day, Glen still struggled to accept.  He’d served his country for less time than he’d served in prison.  To be sure, there were similarities between the two.  Someone else making every decision that affected his life.  Being told when, where to go and what to eat.  Wearing the same uniform every single day.  Granted, he volunteered for one and did all he could to avoid the other, but they had a lot in common.

He’d joined the Marines when he was 17, lying about his age with the help of the recruiter.  Served with distinction and was discharged honorably. He figured out it wasn’t a lifelong career, but one he was glad to have experienced.  It taught him more about life than his parents had, or anyone else for that matter.  For him to end up in Huntsville after such honorable service says more about the system and the power of wealth and influence than it said about the character of Glen Roberts.

His train ride back to Fort Stockton after his discharge from the Marines, wearing the same suit, riding the same train, and having the same puzzled thoughts about his future differed only in the final destination.  Truth be told, he considered heading off in the opposite direction and truly starting over.  It held a certain appeal.  Maybe up north, somewhere.  He’d gotten to know a couple guys in the can from up north.  They spoke highly of it, not that their word could be trusted on most topics.  He even thought about going back overseas where he’d served in the Marines.  But in the end, he’d only go someplace where he spoke the language.  That limited it to the handful of countries that spoke English.  It was easier to just back to Fort Stockton.  That’s the only place the Texas Department of Corrections would buy a ticket to, anyway.

Just as well.  There was unfinished business and little money to collect at Prairie View State Bank.  And that other matter.

From the train depot he could walk over to Prairie View.  Take out the whole $648 life savings.  He’d hoped compound interest would work a little more in his favor, but just the feeling of his own money in his pocket again was almost as good as walking out the front gate of Huntsville.  He got a second glance from a couple people inside the bank, as though they thought they might recognize him, but weren’t sure.  It’s not like Fort Stockton got a lot of strangers through town.  No one said anything.

For his part, Glen could name each person in the bank, when they graduated high school, where they lived, even what their father’s had done for a living.  At least what they did for a living a decade ago.  That’s what his training in the Marines had taught him.  How to recall and remember things.  Running re-con instilled traits and habits Glen found couldn’t be undone or forgotten.  Those skills served him well in prison.

There were three types of people in the pen.  The type who brags about their crimes, like a badge of honor.  The type who claim they’re innocent the entire time they serve. And then there is the tiny fraction who actually are.  Glen Roberts was in the last group, though he never bothered to proclaim his innocence once the doors locked behind hime.  There was no point in it by then, and his military training taught him to just move forward, regardless of the circumstances.  Nothing was going to change the judge’s sentence.  Keeping his nose clean would make the lesson learned behind bars as short as possible.  That included keeping his mouth shut.

Returning home from his four year stint with the Marines, twenty-one-year-old Roberts had quickly found favor with Lauren Martin.  Lauren was a spitfire of a girl who took one look at the young, fit, ex-Marine and saw him as her ticket out of Fort Stockton.  Roberts saw Lauren as someone full of life, more fun than anyone he’d ever been around, and the girl of his dreams.  What he didn’t know was that she was still shy of her seventeenth birthday (she claimed to be nineteen, and looked every bit of it)  and the daughter of the Chief of Police.  Taking advantage of his misunderstanding of facts, she convinced him to take her to New Mexico.  He didn’t have all the true facts until he was handcuffed and in the back of a New Mexico Highway Patrol car.

The hell of it was that he didn’t even have the memories of carnal knowledge with the young lass, as there had never been any.  His Christian upbringing and Marine code of honor kept anything from going too far, despite her best efforts.  And her best efforts were exceptional.  Much better, in fact, than her ability to tell the truth about her age, or the career her father had chosen.

Chief Martin, not one to be trifled with, nor one to allow his daughter’s reputation to be besmirched, regardless of her desire for it to be, came at Glen Roberts with the full force of the law and every political connection he had in Pecos county and far beyond.  Lauren refused to testify against him, but she didn’t need to.  Chief Martin’s connections, the fact of her actual legal age, and the detail that Roberts had taken her across state lines assured the freshly discharged Marine a maximum sentence.  The Chief would have had him strapped in Old Sparky if he’d had any more chits to call in.  Lauren wrote to him with apologies, and then more intimate matters nearly weekly while he was incarcerated.

From the bank, Roberts walked over to Eldridge Menswear and spent the ungodly sum of $48 on a new suit.  Blue.  Not a navy blue.  Not a royal blue.  Something in between.  It looked good on him, especially when he put it with the crisp white button down shirt and tie Eldridge picked out.  Mr. Eldridge suspected who his new customer was, but didn’t ask him any personal questions.  No need, he figured.  Who was he to judge?  An uncommon perspective in Fort Stockton.

From there, Roberts walked a block down Main, took a left on San Jacinto, and over to Cactus CHEV-Olds.  It hadn’t changed a bit, except for the new cars on the lot.  He hadn’t seen new cars up close since 1959 and didn’t know what to make of them.  Seems like all the style had been shaved off of them and they were just a shadow of what he remembered.  Like they’d melted in the hot sun.  But then he reckoned, he’d missed a lot of things while being behind bars.  The Beatles didn’t make any sense to him.  He completely missed the Kennedy administration.  Color TVs were everywhere now.  He walked past the new Novas and Chevelles, cars that were sizes he’d never even seen before.  Past the Cutlasses and Starfires.  Back to the OK Used Cars.  Clarence, the used car salesman, met him there.

Clarence recognized the look, if not the actual man.  The sense of concerned wonder on his face, the new suit.  The fact he was walking instead of driving.  Clarence had done a little time himself for petty theft a decade ago.  When he got out, he stayed in the same line of work but the legal kind: selling cars.  “How long you been out?”

Roberts was taken aback.  He didn’t immediately reply.

“Been there myself, Son.  We all make mistakes.  Some just have more consequences than others.  Some never even get caught.  It’s the luck of the draw,” Clarence told him.

“First day out,” Roberts said.  “Getting my sea legs.  Gonna need a car, but don’t have much cash.  Not gonna be able to finance it.  No job yet.”

Clarence recognized the Marine ring on his finger and the brown bag rolled up under his arm that he figured contained everything in the world Roberts owned.  He took pity on the boy.  For a used car salesman, that was a rare occurrence.

“Come back here,” he said.  “I think I got something you might like.  Just got it.  A trade-in.”

At the back of the lot was a 1959 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight convertible.  White over a triple tone interior.  Low miles.  Beautiful condition.  Glen Roberts thought it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.  He even recognized it.  “Jeeze Louise.  Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”  He thought a moment.  “Well, almost.”  His mind darted back to Lauren, and New Mexico, and his life before Huntsville.  Then he saw the sign on the windshield:  $750.  “What else you got?  Somethin’ I can afford?”  He started to walk over to a ’57 Ford Custom with the cards in the windshield that said ‘$400’.

“Take the Olds out for a spin,” Clarence told him.

“No point.  May as well be looking for real estate,” Roberts replied.  “Can’t afford that either.”

Clarence opened the door of the Olds, slid in, put the key in the ignition in the ACCESSORY position and hit the button for the electric top.  Then he turned the key and brought the 394 V8 to life.  It purred like a kitten, almost imperceptibly.  He turned on the radio, tuned it to KFSX, the oldies station, and Bobby Darrin was singing Dream Lover.  The combination of the top lowered, the V8 purring, and Bobby Darrin singing a song he recognized was too much for Roberts to resist.  He was drawn back over to the Olds like a moth to a flame.  “What’d ya take for it?”

“Whatcha got in your pocket?”

“All I can give you is $400 cash.  That’ll almost wipe me out.  Gotta have a little to live on.”

“You can have it for $500.  Give me the $400 cash you got now.  Come back by and give me the other $100 when you’re on your feet.  You deserve a second chance.  May as well make a go of it in style.”

Clarence was smart enough to know that the big ol’ Ninety-Eight would have sat on the lot a while, anyway.  In 1965 it looked like a dinosaur.  Someone would’ve probably come in and bought it for their high school aged daughter to drive and she’d have wrapped it around a light pole at the high school within a month.  Someone who was a vet and ex-con could appreciate it for what it was, and love it.  Take care of it.  Maybe even give him the new outlook a new life needs.  He even thought the kid was honest enough to bring him the last hundred bucks, whenever he had it.  Even if he didn’t he wouldn’t lose money.  They’d only given Mort Meyers $300 for it in trade.  The deal was quickly done.  

Funny, it was the first time Clarence had ever felt so good about discounting the price of a car.

Brown paper bag on the red, white and black seat beside him, Glen Roberts drove off the lot in his newly acquired Olds convertible  like he was king of the world, not an ex-con with few prospects.  The skirts made it look even lower than it was.  He seemed to be floating down Houston Street, in a cloud of American iron.

He made one quick stop over at Stockton Sporting Goods, then over to the Dairy Twin for the first burger and fries he’d had in six years.  The place looked just the same inside, only the cars out front were different.  Except for his Olds Ninety-Eight drop-top, that is.  He got a shake to wash down the last of the fries before he got back behind the slender, two-spoke wheel of the convertible.  The horizontal speedometer quickly hit 60 MPH once he got on highway 10.  From behind the Panoramic windshield, he felt as free as he had in a decade.

The Platters were singing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes when he turned off the highway onto Farm to Market 1621, radio on full blast, a snub nosed 38 Special in the long, horizontal glove compartment, and headed for the Martin place.