Ex-Cons at the Train Station

The two old men were standing outside Union Station in Los Angeles and staring bewilderedly at the smartphone in the skinny one’s right hand. He looked from the screen to his heavy-set friend and back to the screen, desperate for something.

“I don’t know what to say – I’ve been in prison 42 years,” said the heavy one, who was white, balding, and had a bushy salt-and-pepper beard.

He sounded giddy and scared, probably because his movements had been heavily regulated for a long time but now no one cared where he was going. The authorities maybe handed the two of them vouchers for coach on an Amtrak train of their choosing. Go wherever, just be sure to check in with your parole officer once a week.

His friend, who was brown, clean-shaven, and had thick black hair with a couple of white streaks, shook the phone a little to refocus him.

“Just tell her –”

“I don’t know her,” he said, squinting and ducking his head down so that he was eye to eye with his friend.

“She’s my daughter.”

“But I don’t know her.”

But he changed his mind in a flash, resolving to help his friend. He snatched the phone and spun away so that he was facing the cream-colored stucco wall next to the train station’s entrance.

“Miss, I got to know your dad over the last six or seven months, and I can tell you – he’s a good man.” He then looked from the screen to his friend, shot him a grave look, shook his head a bit, and returned to the screen. He took a deep, showy breath and said, “But he’s got a lot of issues.”

In the second or two that followed, their faces switched off, like they were snapping out of a spell.

The skinny man took the phone back.

“Hello?” he said to the screen. “You there, sweetie?”