“It would probably save the taxpayers money if you just turned around right now and stayed inside. That way, we won’t have to mess with trials and lawyers and all of that when you come back. And you will come back. Believe me, I’ve seen hundreds of convicts come through here. I know the look of one who never reflected on what he did to get in here in the first place. You’re the type who thinks the only thing you did wrong was to get caught. You’ve been in here three years and you didn’t get smarter, or learn a trade, or find the Lord while you were in here. It was your choice to remain ignorant and not to take any of the opportunities offered here to better yourself. You look harder and meaner than when you came in. Which means you’ll be back, and some poor innocent people out there will pay the price. I can tell by your face. You’ve got that look, Cates, and you sure as hell have the wrong attitude.”

When Timber didn’t react, the CO said, “There’s white trash and then there’s stupid white trash. I think we both know which category you fit into.”

Recalling what his mother had said, Timber closed his eyes and breathed in and out, in and out.

“Looks like you’re picking a perfect time to get on the outside,” the CO said. “They’re predicting a major winter event in the next couple of days. That’s what they call it now: an event. Like if they said ‘blizzard,’ we’d all throw up our hands and run around screaming like kids.

“Ten to twelve inches in town, eighteen to twenty-four in the mountains. That’s what they’re saying, Cates. You’re getting out just in time to get your skinny ass buried in snow. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Timber had heard nothing of a big storm coming. And he didn’t care.

—

HE WEAVED through the cars in the parking lot with his possessions wadded up and stuffed into a blue-black plastic garbage bag that he clutched to his chest. It was amazing even to him how everything he owned could fit into a garbage bag. Plus, most of it was truly ratty and shitty: a couple of pairs of boat shoes; his kit containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb and a brush; another change of clothing; and a box of letters he’d mostly never read from his mom about his brother Dallas. If he lost the bag there wasn’t much he would really miss. But since it was all he owned, all that was really his, he held it tight.

He tried not to think about how much he’d thrived in prison. He hated it with every fiber of his being, but he loved it at the same time. It was an easy life. Meals were rote. Clothing was provided. His job in the infirmary was easy. No one breathed down his neck. In all, it wasn’t so bad.

And he’d never tell a single soul that he thought that way. That the asshole CO was right. He just didn’t know how much he was right.

—

TIMBER WORE the same clothes—a black, extra-large Scorpions concert T-shirt, a torn denim jacket, jeans with grease spots—that he’d been arrested in three years earlier. The clothes didn’t fit anymore. He had lost weight.

He picked up his pace as he weaved through the cars in the lot. He felt like he was getting away with something, that if he didn’t leave the place soon they’d realize they had made a mistake and come after him. He banged his knee on the bumper of a Dodge pickup and cursed, but didn’t pause to look at the bruise.

—

THE BLUE 1984 CHEVY CAVALIER his parents had left for him was parked in the farthest row from the front of the prison. It had a rusted roof, mismatched tires, and a cracked windshield. It was a crappy boxy car from a crappy era.

“Thanks, Pops,” Timber said aloud to himself between epithets. “What—did you spend a whole four hundred fucking dollars on it?”

As they’d told him he would, he found the keys under the fender on top of the driver’s-side tire. The car wasn’t locked—Who would steal it, anyway?—and he threw the garbage bag on the backseat. The fabric of the seats was stained and ripped, and it smelled of old people.

Timber scooted in and put the key in the ignition. After a few seconds of a high-pitched grinding sound, the engine caught. In the cracked rearview mirror, he saw an ugly puff of black smoke blow out of the exhaust pipe.

There was less than eighty-five thousand miles on the odometer, which confirmed to Timber that the people who had previously owned it were old folks who’d probably driven it from their home to doctor’s appointments and the mailbox and not much beyond that.

But when he engaged the transmission, the Cavalier lurched forward. It was underpowered and the suspension was mushy, but it moved. He guessed that if he could find the maintenance record it would show that the old geezers had changed the oil every three thousand miles on the dot and rotated the tires every ten thousand.

And that was all he could ask for at the moment.

—

THEY’D TOLD HIM to avoid the interstate highways as much as he could. No reason, they’d said, to draw any more attention to himself than necessary. So it was north to Lamont, then Three Forks. Jeffrey City, Moneta, Big Trails, Ten Sleep, Greybull, then Winchester, the back way. He knew the little towns and highways from when he was a high school athlete and they’d take the bus from town to town, to play football games. Wyoming was all like a small town with incredibly long streets.

After Winchester, he’d have to jump on Interstate 90 into Montana. Crow Agency, then Hardin, then his destination.

He’d been there a few times. But never like this.

His infirmary scrubs were on top of the pile of clothing in the trash bag in the backseat.

—

OUTSIDE OF JEFFREY CITY, which wasn’t a city at all, he pulled over to the side of the highway after checking his mirrors. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the Asian CO was following him. But he wasn’t.

He kept the Cavalier idling and leaned over in his seat and popped open the glove compartment.

The sheet on top was a Google map of where he needed to go. He studied it and shook his head and folded it neatly in two. He’d pay more attention when he got closer. There was a printout of the face of a girl. She was a hottie. But at least he knew what she looked like.

On the bottom of the glove compartment was a bright green ceramic knife with a four-inch blade. It was a familiar knife, and he remembered his mother using it to slice onions and carrots in her kitchen. It touched him that she would give up that knife.

It looked battered, but it wouldn’t show up if he had to walk through a metal detector. He wished it was bigger, but he knew it would work.

He placed the knife next to his right thigh and put the directions and the photo back into the glove box. He’d study them when it was time to study them.

Timber eased back out onto the old highway. In front of him, above the northern horizon, was a thick black band. The storm the CO had told him about was gathering.

—

SOUTH OF MONETA, in the middle of nowhere, in a high steppe desert of sand and thigh-high sagebrush, Timber tapped his brakes because a herd of sheep was up ahead on the road. The rancher on horseback driving them waved a sort of apology, but kept his herd trotting up the bad two-lane highway.

It had been years since Timber had seen sheep in Wyoming and he’d never liked sheep in the first place. Who ate sheep? Why did they even exist? He thought: Range maggots.

The rancher in charge rode a handsome buckskin and wore a wide-brimmed straw summer cowboy hat. He had a toothbrush mustache and a squared-off jaw and wore a pink scarf around his neck. Timber hated him immediately because of his good humor and attitude. Of course there are sheep on the road, he seemed to say, but no one who takes the old highway south of Moneta would expect otherwise.

There were other cowboys on the drive, but they looked Mexican or worse, Timber thought. He resisted the urge to plow through the herd of sheep and leave dozens of them writhing on the road.