April 23, 1995: 8:56 a.m. Ully is on his way. He’s in a bad way! Have a great first shift! This message sent via Phone-Effigy Wireless. The morning was warm. The sun was shimmering through the trees. The birds of Michigan were singing like their lives were at stake, and Ully was on his way. I was on my way to my first shift, Chester Imil, a pistol-packing mercenary with good morals bent on redressing a couple issues. And oh yeah, I was pretty stoned on pills. I wasn’t a gunman, let alone a mercenary. I was a drifter, an addict, and a bad actor. I was unstable, but I guess my redemptive quality was that I now cared about something, and I had a goal in life that didn’t have everything to do with me—it had something to do with family, and someone else. This had as much to do with Amelia, now, and her family, and her family’s art, as it did with me or with Ully or with what I wanted. As I made my way to the guard shack to check in, I was privately rehashing the prior night’s conversation with Amelia.
