Claire, for the first time in a week, found herself with pretty much nothing to do.
Brian was over with his parents, and had been all day. He'd sent her a text to let her know that everything was fine, and that he would call her later to tell her how things went.
Allison needed to make some decisions, and had borrowed Claire's car to head into the city. They had discussed the need to get stuff sorted – things like legal ownership of the farm, getting some long-term help in running the place and caring for the livestock. But also, there was the business of her and Mike. Claire had offered to call a lawyer friend who could give at least initial advice about all these things – an offer Allison had gratefully accepted. She had struck lucky – an appointment had opened up for that very afternoon, and so there was little or no time to think about the speed of the steps she was taking.
Claire wandered through the empty afternoon streets on auto-pilot, with the thoughts of the past few days batting around inside her head. The sun shone weakly through a low level of cloud, and the wind began to stir the leaves, hinting at the harsher weather that would sweep in from the lakes in a month or so.
She found herself walking along the path behind their old school, and curiosity led her to the break in the fence, where late-comers had often snuck onto the campus rather than face the ordeal of the main gate, policed as it always was by teachers, janitors or students of a certain type. To her surprise, the gap in the wire was still there, and she squeezed herself through, and walked slowly across the sports field. Ahead of her, she saw a few kids running off the football field, mainly the stragglers for whom a final lap of the field after a practice game was a task too far for their scrawny frames.
The field was empty when she reached the goalposts, and she stood for a minute, glancing around at a landscape that had changed very little since her days at the school. She'd not been back since leaving to head out to college, and had missed out on the whole 'school mom' scene.
Suddenly, she became aware that she wasn't entirely alone. A figure sat high up on the bleachers, way over in the far corner, head hunched down against the cold wind. And Claire's breath caught in her throat as she recalled just whose seat that used to be…
Slowly, she walked over to the steps and started to climb. The figure didn't look up, and Claire couldn't tell whether her footsteps on the wooden boards had been heard or felt.
She reached the end of the top-most bench, and knew for certain.
"John?" she softly asked.
John Bender raised his head slowly, and turned to look towards her. He hadn't heard her approach, and until she spoke his name, he had been lost in his own thoughts.
Life had dealt more than its fair share of bad cards to John Bender. Growing up with an abusive father and a scared mother, he'd learned early on to be completely self-reliant, and rarely let his guard down. As soon as he was able, he had dropped out of school, and found employment in a local garage where the owner was less interested in his past than his ability to change tires and make coffee.
He'd never quite made it, though. Age and experience had led him to admit (if only to himself) that at least a half of all the trouble he'd ever got into was down to his own bad choices. He'd decided that the way to protect himself was to put up a wall around himself, one that could clearly only be breached at some cost and plenty of pain. He'd kept his old friends, even when his new friends had offered a way to break the cycle. He'd known that the crimes they were committing were wrong, but went along anyway. And when the cops finally caught up with him, his 'code' hadn't allowed him to plea bargain his sentence down in return for naming names.
In the correctional facility, he'd…. well, he'd survived. He'd learned that there were far meaner, far badder people around than himself, and he was now forced to eat, work, and live with some of them. For the first time in his life, he had been viciously confronted with the reality of his lifestyle, and he survived by learning fast. He'd managed to walk that fine line between not drawing attention to himself and not becoming a target, and somehow good behavior, or a lack of incidents, had led the governor to shorten his sentence by six months.
The first thing he did after his release was to buy a bus ticket. Anywhere, it didn't matter, just so long as they hadn't heard of John Bender. He ended up in Texas, working for a haulage company on trips between Houston, Dallas and Austin. Things were good for a while, and he managed to keep out of trouble. But he'd begun to get restless after a year of driving along the same roads day after day, and so started a life of travelling, never staying in one place for more than six months or so. Just as John managed to avoid getting into trouble, his employers never found out about his past. It was lonely, and sometimes John wondered what it would be like to settle down someplace, but he'd never had a stable home life to reference, and loneliness? Well, there were cures for that too.
Then one day, up in the snow-covered wasteland he'd always imagined Canada to be, he'd walked into a diner, and come face to face with Brian Johnson.
"John?" Claire repeated.
John wasn't really sure how to react – in truth he'd come back to Shermer to find out what could have been. His life, his friends, his reputation, his home – all had seemed a million miles away from the path he took. He knew he couldn't change anything, but since meeting Brian, and hearing his story, there was a nagging question that he simply couldn't let go. For now, John shrugged weakly, and gestured to the bench alongside him.
Claire walked over and sat down. She was stuck for the right words to say almost as much as John appeared to be, and for a while they sat in silence, listening to the wind as it gusted through the steel and wooden structure, and the occasional train siren from the tracks over towards the east.
"How long have you been back?" Claire asked eventually.
"Got in this morning…" John replied, his head still bowed so that his gaze need not meet Claire's. Why her, he asked himself. Why did it have to be Claire that found him? He'd sent a message to Brian earlier, and he'd said that he would meet John here. But no – he had to deal with this completely unprepared.
"Brian told me he'd seen you" said Claire.
What she wanted to say was "John, where the fuck have you been? Why didn't you write, or call, or anything? What's been happening to you?" But she knew from John's demeanor that this wasn't the time. Maybe there would never be a time, but she knew to hold all the questions back, at least for now.
"Yeah. I'm waiting for him."
John raised his head again, and Claire took her first real look at the man she had loved all those years before, the man who had been her first true lover.
Claire was shocked at the gauntness in John's face. He's always been strong, determined, and sure of himself. All she saw now was doubt, fear, fatigue, and most surprisingly, weakness.
She put her arm around his shoulders and drew him closer to her, and they sat, each in their own silent world of questions and confusion.
In her pocket, Claire felt her cellphone vibrate, and carefully lifting it, she saw a message from Brian. "Stay with him. I'll see u later. B"
She glanced up, and saw him over by the goalposts. He waved in acknowledgement, and turned away.
Claire looked back at John. He'd not noticed Brian at all.
Together, they sat atop the bleachers, and quietly waited for the sun to set….