He vowed he would never look back at it, because he intended to never see it again for the rest of his life, and there was nothing good to remember about it anyway. Not even when the corrections officer called out after him, “We’ll keep the light on for you, Timber, my boy!” What an asshole. — WHILE HE WAS BEING processed out, the CO had kept up a one-sided monologue that seemed intended to agitate Timber, as if baiting him one last time so he’d explode and get himself turned around and sent back inside. “This seems like a whole lot of trouble when you’ll probably be back here in a few months anyway,” the CO said. He was short and stout, a fireplug, with a piglike face and a wispy goatee that looked unfinished. He had half-Asian features. Timber didn’t like it when an Asian talked to him that way. Or when Asians tried to grow beards like real men. They weren’t designed for it.
