1
CROW
“Logan Taylor?” The uniformed officer fists a wrinkled paper bag covered in unreadable scribbles. He peers at me through thick glasses, as if the frown lines on my face will somehow match the crap written in black Sharpie.
By now, I’m so used to being called every possible insult, I almost don’t respond to my given name. But after spending the last three hours in processing, going through identity verification, and signing on the dotted line over and over again, those two words—Logan Taylor—are starting to feel real again.
Still, hearing my name on Officer Wurst’s tobacco-stained lips makes my mouth go sour. At any moment, this bastard could take a swing at me, accuse me of something, and in the blink of an eye, my ass would be back in orange, sharing a stainless-steel toilet with my most recent cellmate, “Nightmare” Nate.
The last seven years of my life in Level 2 lockup have been a living hell, but my cellmate earned the nickname through acts viler than anything I could ever dream of. And yet, there I was, right in the bunk next to him.
But today’s the day I pay my debt shit off in full.
“You Taylor?” the officer repeats when I don’t respond, looking at me like maybe the endless forms got it wrong.
I almost laugh at the irony. For years, I haven’t been myself. Forget about who I once was. That’s a very distant memory. But that’s not what he’s getting at. He’s doing his five-figure-a-year job plus bennies making sure the right asshole is released today.
Nothing more, nothing less.
So I choke back the bile and nod. “That’s me, sir.” Tacking “sir” on to the end like it means something. I just hope I don’t sound like I’m sucking up to him—or worse, being sarcastic.
Wurst has never done anything to earn my respect, but I’ll kiss his ass and call him Mama if that means putting this place behind me even a minute faster. I can tolerate the game to reach what’s on the other side of that locked door.
Freedom.
Wide blue sky, endless groves of orange trees, and miles of green grass, unmarred by barbed wire and armed guards. It’s all so close, I can practically taste the sweet Florida citrus on my tongue.
I try not to look at Wurst’s oily hairline and wait for whatever it is that comes next so I can walk through that security door.
“Got all your personal effects? Unless you want to go back?” He cackles at his own joke.
I look him over skeptically. As if there is anything from that sickly green concrete room that I’d want to take out of here.
The truth is… There’s nothing.
While this place held me in a choke hold, I let parts of me die to survive.
My pride.
My dignity.
My sense of myself as a man.
Like a helpless baby, I ate the slop they spooned into my mouth. Swallowed nonstop bullshit they rained down on not just me, but all of us. How weak, useless, and ruined we all were. How we’re the lowest of the low, no good to anyone. Never was, never would be.
I took the abuse and the violence, the loneliness and the monotony, because taking it meant I’d make it to this moment.
And I sure as hell am not about to say or do anything to fuck that up now. The only thing between me and that endless blue outside is one more guard. One more hoop. One more question.
I nod and give him the answer I know he wants.
“Donated my books back to the library,” I say. “I’m good to go.”
I hold up my hands to show there’s nothing I’m hiding. Nothing in the pockets of the stiff thrift store jeans and scratchy, ill-fitting T-shirt provided for me by the state on my release.
“All righty, then.” Wurst waddles past me. “Follow me.”
I keep my distance walking behind him. It’s surreal not being restrained by some kind of shackles as I head down a narrow corridor. I shuffle along, keeping my eyes low and my expectations lower. If my dad and brother could see me now… I thanked God every day I was locked up that no one from my family came to see me. Not once.
A couple of calls from my dad and brother my first few weeks in. One deposit into my commissary account. That’s it. That’s all the support my family gave me over the years. They left me to rot in hell, believing I got what I deserved for what went down.
And that’s how I preferred it.
Nothing about me being here was justice. My sentence—downgraded from the minimum set by Florida law due to the circumstances—was about making somebody pay, plain and simple. If consequences were fair, if there were any such thing as real justice, well, a lot of things would have been very, very different.
I’m not saying I didn’t do the crime. I sure as fuck did. I swung a punch in a bar and shattered the face of a man who more than deserved it. He literally asked for it.
But the state of Florida had a dead man on their hands and witnesses who ID’d me as the one who threw the fatal punch. Not the first punch, mind you. But the last. Witnesses backed up my version of the story, but truth doesn’t matter when there’s a bar fight, a dead man, and a guy left standing with blood on his hands.
Facts… Fuck the facts.
Two men died that shitty summer night. The minute I threw that punch, my life was over. Not the same kind of over as that meth head from the bar, but over just the same.
I was arrested, tried, and convicted. Lucky to get seven years, reduced from the state minimum for manslaughter because of a carve-out in the law. I accepted the judge’s “mercy,” the two and a quarter years he shaved off my sentence because the victim contributed to the circumstances that led to his own harm.
The state took away my work, my freedom, years of my life on this earth because I stopped a guy hopped up on drugs from terrorizing a couple of idiot kids who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could have walked away or ordered another beer and tucked into a dark corner like so many of the witnesses there that night. But if there’s one thing my father raised me to do—aside from knowing when to call a man sir—it was to jump in and help when needed.
“Be an example, son,” he’d say. “When others run away, real men run in.”
I ran in, all right. Fists flying.
And every day since, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what a real man is. What a hero is. And whether that’s what I want to be.
I could have gotten my life back several times over, but I made no effort to get released early. Refused parole, wanted nothing to do with probation. No ties to bind me to this hell. When I walk out of here, I want to be truly free. Accountable to no one but myself and to the brotherhood. The fact that there is any brotherhood left waiting for me is a shock.
My cheap sneakers—another parting gift from the Florida Department of Corrections—squeak on the tile floor on that long, quiet walk to the exit.
I start panicking.
This is real. I’m getting the fuck out.
I take a long last breath of stale, institutional air and blink hard. Not once, not twice, but again and again to make sure the door unlocking in Wurst’s hand is really happening. Not a dream I’ll wake up from. This is it. I can believe what I’m seeing because it’s finally happening.
Wurst calls into a radio at his shoulder and nods. “All right, man.” He holds out a paper bag, and I just stare at it, eyes locked on his hand.