During rec, Fenton made Josh join him in chess. The board was missing five pieces, replaced by squares of paper. Josh understood the rules and the basic strategy, but he knew Fenton was going to wax his ass. A few men stood by and watched, adding to his bad nerves. Josh picked out his early
moves, and Fenton got his own pieces rolling forward. Fenton talked to his pieces as he moved them, told his pawns to do their work. Told his horse to fly like the wind. Told his bishop to fuck Josh up. Five minutes into the game, Josh realized with a cold sweat that Fenton was an awful chess player. Moves that appeared to be puzzling sacrifices were actually blunders that made Fenton swear and slam his hand down when Josh took advantage, and caused the other men to shake their heads in amazement. “Dawg, that’s some unlucky shit.” “Oh, you really going to fuck him up now.” Yet with each move Fenton got himself deeper into trouble. He told everyone to get the fuck away from him, stop breaking his concentration, and in the space that got made, Josh started losing as quickly as he could, making his own stupid sacrifices, trying not to be surprised when Fenton missed the obvious takes or, worse, mocked Josh for a bad move when he finally spotted one. They played three heart-pounding games, and Fenton won all three in dramatic comebacks, Josh worming around in a hunt for defeat. Fenton pushed back his chair after the third game and told Josh he was good, but it would be a while before he took the master.
Then Fenton suggested a drink, and Josh rose, wondering what bar they were going to hit.
Fenton walked to his cell, and Josh followed. Fenton nodded at or knocked fists with some of the men he passed. He spotted Jacko from a ten-foot distance at the laundry cell and gave him a hand signal, a fluid gesture that impressed Josh as both gangster cool and over the top. There was loose mail on the ground at the entrance to his cell. Fenton bent over and scooped it up as he
went in. Josh hesitated. You weren’t supposed to gather in drums. But Fenton was already down on his knees beneath the sink on the far wall, working the scoop end of a broken-off spoon at the screws to the vent. When the last screw fell to the floor, Fenton pulled the metal grate from the wall and said, “Give me a hand.” Josh stepped in and crouched down. Fenton slid the grate out, wider and deeper than Josh would have expected, and hefted it over. Josh strained to keep his hands in a good grip on the sharp edges, and Fenton told Josh to put it down next to the bed. Then Fenton reached deep into the duct and pulled out a large plastic bag filled with an orange liquid. There was a long tube extending from the top. Fenton snapped off the cap, and a sickly sweet smell of orange juice and yeast filled the room.
“How’s it looking?” Roy asked, standing in the doorway with a tin cup in his hand.
“I’d say it’s well cooked,” Fenton said.
“Twenty-odd days got to be some kind of record,” Roy noted.
Fenton agreed, as if they were best buddies. “I been hanging sheets of Bounce here the last few days, shit so pungent I was getting drunk in my sleep.”
“They didn’t find this when they tossed your drum?” Josh put in.
“I guess they forgot to look or something,” Fenton said. “I better go tell them they missed a spot.”
Roy laughed. “Go rouse some men of quality,” he told Jacko, who’d appeared behind him.
Fenton sat on the bed and squirted out a mug for himself and another mugful for Roy. Josh settled on the floor and held
a paper cup out. Fenton filled it. Screen Door appeared in the door.
“You boys invite me to a party?”
Roy sneered. “Smell of brew brings them out like flies.”
Fenton was busy with the kit, but he said, “No offense, Screen Door, you can drink, but careful you don’t HIV anything.”
Screen Door got down on her knees, held her hands out to the side, and said, “Bless me father for I have sucked,” then opened her mouth and received a jet of brew from an inch away.
Roy laughed and lowered himself onto the one chair.
“Secret to running a good range,” Roy said to Josh, “keep the queens happy. You’d be surprised.”
Jacko returned. “Lewis is bringing his strings.” Lewis, Josh thought. Jacko wedged himself in front of Josh and Screen Door and planted his ample rear on the chrome toilet bowl. He held out a tobacco can for Fenton. The brew gurgled out of the tube like siphoned gasoline.
“It smells like open ass around here,” Jacko said.
“No shit,” Roy said.
Lewis entered, a wooden guitar, beat up like an old suitcase, tucked under his wing. Josh didn’t see Lewis as the musical kind, and imagined he played guitar as well as Fenton played chess. Behind Lewis stood an inmate Josh had seen recently on the range but never connected with the crew.
“This here’s Jim Lucky Bones,” Jacko told Josh as the two men settled. “Sailed with Lewis back in the world. Where’s Tyson?”
“Got a visit,” Lucky Bones said. “Old lady wanting his money.”
“I’d be having a tummy ache for sure,” Jacko said.
It hardly seemed possible they could all fit within one drum. The voices hit the walls as if there were a hundred people inside. After the mugs and cans had been refilled with brew, Roy raised his cup and a silence fell.
“You’re as nasty a bunch of devils as I’ve ever known. Here’s a taste before we blow the house down.”
After the clinks and the solemn nods and grunts, they threw their drinks back. Only Screen Door was lacking a receptacle, but she sat with a smile on her face, the mascot happy to be in the company of men. Jacko belched loud and long. Fenton accused him of having no respect.
“You see, respect,” Fenton told Josh, “is a core principle.”
A debate arose over principles, Roy arguing against Fenton and Lewis. Fenton said that without principles a man would suck pole, take it up the ass, waste himself on needles, turn animal.
“The only thing I respect is the length of my God-given penis,” Roy countered.
“It’s true,” Jacko said. “Wobbles has an enormous wang.” He picked up the tube and squirted another mouthful for Screen Door.
“Started growing again after my leg got chopped off,” Roy said. “Someday I’m hoping it will reach the floor.”
“Without principles,” Fenton went on, “you’re lost. Nothing but a beggar.”
“Now, now,” Roy said. “Let’s not be divisive. Don’t criticize what you don’t understand.”
But Fenton’s words nudged Josh. He stared hard, so Fenton began to talk to him.
“This is what Roy overlooks. This is the important stuff that makes a drum rat a man. You keep your business to yourself. And don’t tell anyone about anyone else’s business. Share your spoils. Study your surroundings. Keep your friends first and your family second. Be willing to sacrifice anything except your own honor. Don’t apologize, no matter what the bastards do to you.”
“And lie every chance you get,” Roy added.
A jack appeared at the door. Josh almost had a heart attack at the sight, but none of the others flinched. “I bet you boys are hungry,” the jack said. An inmate carrying two boxes of pizza stepped in and laid the cardboard at the foot of the bed, then backed out.
Jacko leaned over, flipped open the box, and detached a slice. “It’s cold,” he said.
“Cold night,” the jack said. “We’re hearing a lot of noise outside,” he added. “Think you could turn it down?”
“The fuck you say!” Fenton roared. The jack left, and everyone howled.
Lewis started playing the guitar. The sound was delicious and unexpected. Josh couldn’t believe how well he played. Each musical note was a distinct entity in fluid space. Fenton gestured for Josh to join him on the bed. Clumsy, off balance, Josh pulled himself away from Screen Door and sat beside Fenton. “My mother’s boyfriend beat me all the fucking time,” he started, and he told a tale of woe with a sharp, evil laugh.
Josh tuned out, nodding at the appropriate stops, grinning Fenton’s grin, but the brew had altered his sense of time and
place. Lewis bent over the guitar, stroking the strings, muttering words, no one else paying attention. Was he really in prison sitting in Fenton’s drum? He had become someone he didn’t recognize. Was there a shred of him worth saving? He thought of Brother Mike’s arms around him. Screen Door looked up, as though wondering what was wrong. “Nothing,” Josh said, answering an unasked question.
“We get it, and then what?” Fenton said, and suddenly Josh realized that Lewis’s music had stopped and everyone was looking to Roy.
“We get the comic book,” Roy agreed. “We figure out what it’s telling us. We keep the knowledge safe, between you and me, Billy. No offense, boys. We give up nice and gentle after that, pretend it was all a big misunderstanding, and we bide our time. A month from now. A year from now, we go after it and make ourselves very fucking rich. All of us.”
“You think they’ll really give it over?” Jacko asked.
“No, I don’t think they’ll really give anything over,” Roy answered. “That’s why we’ve got to have the big bang.”
“The big bang,” Lewis said. He stood up, lifted his guitar by the neck like a baseball bat, and swung it against the wall. Everyone ducked as it splintered. Lewis swung again and again, crumpling the body of the guitar into fragments.
“Holy fuck,” Jacko said. “That was spontaneous.”
Lewis grinned, but there was a sheen of sweat on his face. “Always wanted to do that. Just like the Who. The big fucking bang.”
“I got splinters in my mouth,” Screen Door said.
“You been sucking my leg by accident?” Roy asked.
“Roy’s right,” Fenton said. “We need the big bang. No other way.”
“I generally am,” Roy said. “About time you fellows figured that out.”
“When?” Lucky Bones asked, standing as though antsy, as though he could charge off at a moment’s notice.
“Soon enough,” Roy said. He tried to hold a calmness in his voice after Lewis’s outburst, but Josh could see he was barely keeping it steady. He lifted his mug.
“Drink up and be merry, for tomorrow or the next day or the tomorrow after that you may get your fucking head blown off.”
The tins were raised in toast.
Driving the next evening, I couldn’t have been tighter. The weather had turned harsh with a thick, snowy freeze, making the route to Ditmarsh nearly impossible. I willed Ruddik to make it in, too. I wanted to be there when he passed over the drugs. I didn’t want to put Fenton off again, even because of an ice storm. I had that hunched-over posture, leaning up against the steering wheel and muttering, “Fuck fuck fuck,” as I drove, like it was a prayer to Saint Christopher. I turned
off the radio because I needed every brain cell on high alert. The highway was awful, squeezed down to a single furrow grooved through the snow. I counted three cars off to the side of the road in angles of abandonment, one almost mounded by ice and snow, the others freshly deposited. The slush on my windshield kept piling on and thickening up, congealing to cut off my view. The wipers worked harder and harder with each sweep, sticking at times and then unsticking, as though exhausted by the heavy push. When I spotted Ditmarsh, I felt relief as well as the usual dread. At least the end was near.
Inside, I stomped the snow off my boots and warmth back into my legs. The tile floor was a mulch of dirty slush, but the ammonia smell was as strong as ever. Brian Chester watched me from behind the high counter. I expected the usual banter, about how few of the dumbshits had managed to make it in and how fucked the boys stuck on shift were, but instead Chester told me Wallace wanted to see me immediately. Jesus Christ, I thought, again. Had Wallace caught Ruddik? I told myself, turn around, get in your truck, and keep driving. But after a second’s pause I felt the momentum of routine pull me like gravity. I passed around the metal detector and beyond the point of no return.
When I knocked on the Keeper’s door, I braced myself to meet a man I’d been trying to bury. But instead of encountering Wallace’s dour vengeance, I found him smiling up at me from his desk as if he’d been awaiting my arrival with enthusiasm. Across from him sat a stranger, sober but languid in his chair. I knew he was a civilian, because he looked like he
was on a
GQ
safari shoot, wearing khaki pants, a multi-pocketed hunting vest that was all fashion and no hunt, and a denim shirt open at the collar, the kind of goofiness that a prison visit brought out in some. Wallace asked me to sit in the third chair, as though GQ and I were students running for class president and Wallace our proud principal.
“Kali, this is Bart Stone, a journalist with the
Press-Times
.”
If he’d introduced the man as Santa Claus, I couldn’t have been more surprised. Bart Stone himself.
He looked different from what I’d expected, less wonky, more war correspondent tough, sandy-haired, tan-skinned, a nose that bent right a little at the end as if it had been broken in a bar fight. I’d obsessed about what I’d say to the prick in response to his article, and now I was inexplicably shaking his hand. Next I heard Wallace describing me to Stone as a top performer. He wanted Stone to get the full picture of me, to understand the facts, that I was a role model for the modern-day corrections officer—college-educated, military-trained, articulate, savvy to the psychological and cultural nuances of a varied prison population, thorough and disciplined, yet flexible enough for dynamic security, physically fit, and unintimidated by hard-core inmates. It was over-the-top praise I would have melted to hear a few short months ago, but now I sat numb and unmoved. Wallace crescendoed his description with the comment that I had been recently selected for the elite URF team, only the third female corrections officer in the institution to wear the riot gear as an urgent responder. He didn’t mention that entry to the unit
had been predicated on my filing a discrimination grievance with his name on it.
Stone, with the gruff voice of a country music–loving cigarette smoker, said he was pleased to meet me. “I appreciate your help in seeing me around.”
Seeing him around? I looked at Wallace. “Sorry, I’m a little lost.” Pleasant and baffled as can be.
“I’ve been in touch with Mr. Stone for the past few weeks, ever since he wrote his first article about us. I’ve been trying to give him a more fair and balanced perspective on the work we do and the dangers and difficulties involved. To get a better feel for the institution, Mr. Stone has asked that he receive a guided tour, but one that gets off the beaten path and onto the ranges. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have lead that tour, Officer Williams, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for Mr. Stone to meet you firsthand.”
Wallace talking to Stone for weeks about me, about us, about what we do. I had the sense that he’d left me out there as bait while he figured out where Stone was willing to go with his reporting, and now he was offering me up. Maybe because he thought I was so pliant and lost.
Wallace looked to Stone to explain my confusion. “I didn’t tell Officer Williams about your visit. I wanted her to show up for a normal shift and have you accompany her on rounds without any preparation. That way you’ll see exactly how we function.” Then Wallace was back to me. “Mr. Stone is going to shadow you on your rounds, just like a probationary CO on first shift. You’re going to perform those duties like you always would, except with Mr. Stone at your side. This will
give him an opportunity to see what we really do, how we work with inmates, and what challenges we face on a regular basis.” Then Wallace gave one of his grim shrugs. “Unfortunately, it’s not a good night. The weather throws inmates off, believe it or not. But since Mr. Stone made it in, we’ll make an adjustment to our plans and begin after key-up, which takes place in forty minutes. I don’t want to expose you to any inmate traffic, Mr. Stone. It’s a safety precaution, but I think you’ll get an honest view of routine penitentiary life, one that few civilians experience. I need to warn you, however, that your presence on the ranges will likely provoke some hostility or outspoken behavior. Officer Williams is at her discretion in assessing what is or is not safe in any situation, and her word is final.”
Stone opened his mouth, some point he felt it necessary to make. “That’s the way it goes with this job. When a reporter shows up, everything changes.”
The world revolves around you, asshole. All the pleasantries were being tied up too neatly before my eyes. Naturally, I couldn’t resist blowing it up, and I asked for a moment to speak with the Keeper privately. This provoked a bit of awkward silence until Stone clapped his knees and mentioned a profound need to use the bathroom before we toured the cellblocks.
Alone, I didn’t know what to say. How do you speak to the boss you’re trying to get indicted? But my sensitivity to personal injustice provided the push I needed.
“This is a bad idea. I’m scheduled in the bubble. Not a walk-around.”
I needed to be in the bubble. I wanted to be there when Ruddik made the drop. I wanted to watch from a safe distance and know the deal had been closed.
“And you can’t ask me to play tour guide with a reporter who has written lies about me.”
Wallace nodded as though in full agreement, and I realized, to my astonishment, that I was listening to an apology. “I know, I know. This is way beyond the pale. I tried to cancel tonight because of the weather, but I couldn’t reach Stone. Frankly, I think he ignored my call because he wanted to get inside so badly. Droune was going to show him around, but he’s stuck in snow.”
“But my shift is in the bubble.”
“You’ll take Droune’s shift. Cutler can handle the bubble by himself until Droune arrives.”
I laughed. “So you never intended me to be the tour guide? I’m just second-string.”
The dour face was back. I’d provoked its return.
“I wish you could understand something, Kali. You are not second-string. You are excellent at your job in almost every aspect. If I had a CO staff that included ten Kali Williamses, I’d have a lot less to worry about.”
“I don’t believe you actually feel that way,” I said. “You’ve kept me back, and you let me dangle for a month with this Hadley bullshit when I did nothing wrong.”
The bitterness was all frothy in me now, and I could not help but spill.
Wallace spoke slowly. “When I’ve kept you back, it was with your best interests in mind. When I let you dangle, it was because we needed to.”
“Explain it to me so I get it. I mean really get it.” I had never spoken to Wallace more disrespectfully.
“You were accused of brutalizing an inmate. I was fifty feet away and saw nothing, and I knew it was unlikely. And I also know you. But what if I got this institution behind you one hundred percent and we turned out to be wrong? An old friend of mine in Arizona was a chief in a city police service. One of his officers shot and killed a fleeing suspect who had a gun. The family of the victim claimed the gun was planted. It seemed absurd. The victim was a seventeen-year-old gang member with several weapons charges and time served in juvenile facilities. So my friend got behind his officer and backed him to the hilt. Well, six months and a nasty state-run investigation later, it turns out that the gun
was
planted, that the victim was dealing for the officer, that the officer had a network of young dealers he coerced through imprisonment in the juvenile facility where his brother, also indicted, was a counselor. There will never be trust between the community and that department again. Not for generations. I think we can afford to suffer a little ambiguity and stress to avoid that kind of thing happening here, even if our community of inmates is very different from a community of citizens. In fact, I think it’s part of the job of being a corrections officer. We don’t get patted on the back all the time, and we learn to accept that.”
I chose not to speak. Somewhere, I remembered seeing and talking to this Keeper Wallace and thinking that his moral view of the world was correct and that I would like to make it mine, too.
“I also believe, and hope,” Wallace continued, “that we can turn this encounter with Stone into an opportunity. You have a career worth accelerating, Kali. Some good press for you, some admiring public words will be viewed extremely favorably by the warden’s team. You wouldn’t believe how much they scrutinize PR. I’m not sure what kind of leader you can be. I’ve seen a lot recently to make me wonder if I misjudged that capacity in you. But I also suspect that you are feeling disgruntled and stressed by the recent events here, and I’m willing to give you another chance. I’m wondering if you’re willing to give me another chance in exchange?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak
Wallace sagged a little. “Maybe I’m being selfish. At heart, I’m tired of us not getting the appreciation we deserve. There’s something fundamentally wrong when every time COs get a mention in the media, it’s because of some scandal or wrong done to an inmate rather than the hard, dangerous work we do. But I think we have a small opportunity here to put out a more positive story line on our own terms, using Stone. And when I think about that, I think about you. What have you got to lose?”
What did I have to lose? I didn’t know whether to laugh or confess.
“I’d be happy to,” I said.
We even shook hands.
I sat with Stone in the CO room, drinking coffee and killing time until key-up. We were not alone. There were other COs,
and I announced loudly and with enthusiasm that our local reporter was doing an embed, following me around for the night, hoping to see the real Ditmarsh. I felt reckless and self-destructive, a little drunk on some suicidal release. Somehow that vibe hit my fellow COs just right. They were my comrades in arms before our watchful guest, in a groove together, amped up. They wanted to impress the shit out of him with their machismo and brutal knowledge. If Stone wanted to write a tell-all, he needed only to turn on his recorder and wait. Fagan gave Stone a demonstration on how to use zip cuffs, how to wedge a baton under a chin, where to rinse your eyes after a cocktail splash. Cutler went into detail about what ingredients actually comprised the average cocktail. Baumard called us all girls, in our eagerness to win over a reporter. This seemed to inspire Stone to ask me some provocative questions in front of the men. How did the inmates treat me as a woman? What was my first priority in the event of an emergency? Why did the COs not carry any weapons other than their batons? I gave short, sarcastic answers, and my colleagues appreciated the bemused bitchiness with which I delivered them. They were proud of me for once. I was a hard jack, too.
Then Ruddik entered the room. He was still wearing his dark-hooded parka and heavy boots, and he looked more tense than I had ever seen him. Fagan, still festive with hospitality, told him heartily to stop hanging on the doorframe and join the crowd. But no one else seconded the invitation. Ruddik put his parka and boots into his locker and got his equipment on while we watched. Even me, someone who’d lain naked with him the night before.
When Ruddik left the room, I told Stone I’d be back in a minute and followed after. As innocently as I tried to play my exit, I knew it would not go over well.
It took only a moment to communicate with Ruddik in the hallway. We spoke quickly, as colleagues might. He mentioned the weather and the difficulty of getting in. I told him that I’d been assigned a visitor tour with a reporter. “The asshole who wrote about me and Shawn Hadley.” Discreetly, I touched the back of his hand, hooked my finger into his palm. He nodded, told me to have a good shift, and headed out for his own.
When I returned to the CO room, I recognized in the silence and the glances that my timing with Ruddik had spiked their suspicions of me. The festive mood was gone. Sour, I pulled Stone away from his new friends.
“Come on. Some of us do more than drink coffee. You might as well see what.”
We walked into the main hub, and I explained the way the branches worked and how the other buildings connected. I pointed out the education wing, and the blocks. I waved my hand to the tunnel that went to the infimary and the dissociation unit, as well as the exit to the yard. I put my hand on the bubble, smacked its side, and elaborated on its benefits as a control center and a defense position in the event of a catastrophic breakdown of security. Then I stopped.