She said, “Do you want that, Ray? Do you want that for us?”

“I don’t know.”

He watched a man in a blue jumpsuit serving tuna salad to his family from a foil pan, his brow thick with scar tissue. A heavy woman with blond hair like a suspended wave watched him, her eyes wary, and when the plastic spoon snapped in his hands she winced and grabbed involuntarily at the frail, pink- eyed girl in her lap.

Michelle waited, and he finally said, “I just don’t.” He made a movement with his free hand that took in the room. “Trust that things will be okay. That they’ll be good.”

“They won’t, always.” She smiled. Lifted one hand and touched the baby’s white hair. “But we’ll do the best we can, and we’ll have a good life.”

“Do I deserve that?”

She pressed against him, and Ray could feel pain in his arm from where he’d had his tattoo burned, the laser turning the heavy black letters into an oblique scar so that he’d shaken his head, laughed at himself for wasting the money. He’d marked himself; he’d always be marked.

He said, “Who am I now?” but there was a change in the room, a collective sighing and pauses in conversation, and it was time to go, and Michelle hadn’t heard what he’d said.

They packed up, Andy clinging for a long moment to Lynch, their eyes closed, swaying in the heat as if at one of the high school dances they’d all missed, though it was Stevie who teared up and had to go stand in front of a vending machine and pretend to pick out orange soda, working quarters in his red fist.

Ray walked Lynch back to the door and handed him two car tons of cigarettes. Hugged him hard, feeling the knot of scar tissue at his side through the jumpsuit, then stood while the boy went through the gate to stand patiently with his arms out to be wanded by a short woman with wide hips who laughed at some-thing the boy said.

While Ray was watching, an older man came down the hall from the tiers in the brown jumpsuit of a lifer, his shoulders riding in a lopsided wave and one long hand pushing at a mass of graying hair. When the man got to Lynch the younger man turned, smiled, and said something lost to Ray behind the glass. He patted the older man’s mountainous shoulder and pointed through at Ray, shaking his head, mouthed a word that might have been “bad- ass.” When the door nearest him was buzzed open, Ray could hear the distant shouting and banging of the tiers.

Ray lifted a hand and waved at Harlan and Lynch as they turned to go back. Harlan went into Lynch’s pockets while they walked, pulled a cigarette out, and stuck it behind his ear. He turned and nodded at Ray, made a scooting motion to send him on his way.

Ray knew he couldn’t fix everything, couldn’t stop every bad thing just by his love for Michelle or these broken kids. He’d failed with Adrienne Gray, and he’d let Manny slide away into the dark. The rest of the money had all gone to legal bills for Lynch and medical bills for Andy and rehab for Sherry, and he saw they’d always struggle to stay ahead. But there were good, clear days, too, and sometimes he came home tired and slept without dreams.

Ray knew Lynch would come out with tattoos and scars, but Michelle had said it would be a map only of where he had been, not where he was headed. Ray hoped it was true, though he sometimes saw her staring into the middle distance and knew she saw her mother’s untended grave in the flat Ohio earth, a boy she had loved in high school walking down a tree- lined street with his children.

Ray turned to the rest of his pickup family, clutching bags and blankets as they clustered by the door, and looked out into the daylight with the hooded and set- upon eyes of refugees. In the parking lot he had to keep himself from running, and Michelle laced her fingers through his and kissed his cheek.

In Phoenixville they stopped at a Dairy Queen, and he bought sodas for the kids and soft serve for the baby. The clouds had piled up overhead into a hard ceiling threaded with black and softening the light to a muted blue. He stood at the eroded curb and watched them all, Stevie draped over the seats and flipping through the CDs, Andy furiously texting one of her girlfriends from work, Michelle cradling the baby and smiling at him with her crooked smile.

They looked okay, and he let himself believe they would be. They looked hungry and tired. They looked like any family by the side of the road, and he had the thought that if they locked him up again this would be the image he’d remember. At night on his bunk, when the lights would go out, this moment, these few quiet seconds, would be the thing he’d hold on to to keep himself sane.

There was a low, drumming rumble behind him, and he turned as a motorcycle appeared on the street and drifted to a stop at the light. The noise grew louder, bouncing and echoing off the buildings around him, and then there were a dozen more bikes strung out along the road. Ray stood silent, watching them come. Men in leather jackets, some wearing chromed helmets, most with noth-ing on their heads but bandannas or long hair in matted plaits.

At the back of the line, a young guy with black hair and a goatee turned and looked at Ray, his face shadowed and unreadable. Ray felt naked, exposed, blinking away the sweat from his eyes. His heart worked faster, but he stood up straight, put his chin out. Thought to himself, take what comes. The bike coasted; the man leaned forward, reached a hand behind him. Touched a small form there. A boy, pressed against his back, wearing goggles and an oversized helmet the blue of a robin’s egg. White- blond hair framing a heart- shaped face. The boy held a hand up and gave Ray a quick, shy wave. Then the light changed, and they were gone.

Dennis Tafoya