Security Turned Away 100 Gold Stars Kids At The Park Gates

He didn’t say sorry. He didn’t say anything at all. He just walked to his truck and sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and his hands on the wheel.

Ray Holloway didn’t move either. Not right away.

He turned around and looked at his brothers. Forty men in vests. Some of them had tears running into their beards. A big one they called Tank had a little girl on his shoulders, and she was patting the top of his bald head like she was trying to comfort him.

“Okay,” Ray said. Just that. “Okay.”

And they went in.

I’d like to tell you I went back to the office and everything was fine. It wasn’t.

I stood at the gate for a long time after they’d all passed through. The kids ran ahead. The bikers walked slow behind them, spread out wide, watching. Not one of them was on a phone. Not one of them was talking. They just watched those kids like hawks watching a field.

Denise Carver came and stood beside me.

“You did good,” she said.

“I did late.”

She didn’t argue with that. I appreciated it.

“He’s not a bad man,” I said. I didn’t know why I was defending Dale. Maybe because I’d worked with him for eleven years and I didn’t want to believe I’d spent that long next to somebody cruel.

Denise looked over at the truck. Dale hadn’t moved. “Probably not,” she said. “Most people who do something like this aren’t. They’re just scared of something and they don’t know what.”

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I found out what that afternoon.

Ray Holloway found me at the pavilion around two o’clock. I was refilling the lemonade coolers because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. He waited until I was done, then asked if I’d sit with him a minute.

We sat on the tailgate of somebody’s truck. He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he pointed across the lot to where Dale’s truck was still parked.

“He’s still in there,” Ray said.

“I know.”

“You know why he did it?”

I shook my head.

“I do.” Ray rubbed his knees. “He told me. Before you came down. Before Denise pulled up. He looked at my patch and he said his brother was killed by a man wearing one just like it. Drunk. Ran a light. Hit him in a crosswalk in 1998.”

I felt the lemonade go sour in my stomach.

“So I asked him what his brother’s name was,” Ray said. “He said Kevin. Kevin Pruitt. And I told him I was sorry. And I told him that the man who did that wasn’t one of mine, and that if he had been, we’d have thrown him out and turned him in ourselves.” He was quiet a second. “He didn’t want to hear it. Not then.”

“That’s not an excuse,” I said.

“No. It’s not.” Ray looked at me. “But it’s a reason. And a reason is something you can work with. An excuse you can’t.”