by J. L. Abramo
Dana fell back from the bars. Stupid, he thought. Not once, in twelve years, had he called through the bars. Now everyone was shouting and threatening and most were looking for a piece of Dana’s innocent tomorrow.
Damn near none of them were innocent, no matter what they said. He was but it didn’t matter that a prosecutor had hidden evidence for re-election, it didn’t matter that the police hadn’t investigated beyond the first name they found. None of that mattered because when the doors close, they close forever. And if they open again, it’s one of two things: freedom or death. And sometimes there was no difference.
The calls and jokes, threats, the songs and whispers piled atop each other until only one voice was discernible. It crept from the dark and slithered along the walkway until it stood outside Dana’s cell.
“I need it pretty bad, Dana.” There was a long, empty sigh. “Why you think they moved me outta your cell? Maybe somebody snitched.”
Dana ground his teeth. “It was me, Trexler. You smell bad.”
Trexler laughed. “Educated man’s always got a smart answer. I know what’s in your head, Dana, you can’t hide it from me. You scared. You been scared since the first night. ’S why you came to me. Because I could protect you. Mmmmm, now you say you done got me tossed. Guess you don’t need my protection anymore.”
“Trexler, I’m tired of your mouth. Find somebody else to stuff it with.”
“Zebra’s getting some guts.” A random voice from far down the mainline.
“I am not a zebra,” Dana shouted.
“Sure as shit are, boy. You black and you white. Eighteen-inch dick and no rhythm.”
Laughter rang down the corridor.
“No, he’s more the cracker than the darkie. He got a four-inch dick and all kinds’a rhythm.”
More laughter.
“You ain’t never talked that way to me before, Dana. But you can make it up to me. Yes, sir.” Trexler chuckled. “Stop by tomorrow. We’ll fix it. Understand?”
Dana squeezed the bars. Squeeze hard enough, he thought, and they’ll snap.
“Better get your ass in bed, Zebra, you gotta day tomorrow. Getting out and leaving us behind.”
Trexler went quiet then, but the rest of the wing continued to drown beneath its own noise. Eventually, Dana heard the weak laugh hidden in the middle of it all.
“See what you started?” The voice’s owner chuckled. “Christ, you got ’em all worked up. It’ll be hours ’fore they go to sleep.”
“Yeah. I don’t know what came over me,” Dana said.
“Yeah, you do.”
Dana held his tiny mirror outside his cell until an old face slid into it. “Ennis. You have a good day?”
“Any day I ain’t six feet under is a good day.”
A voice exploded from somewhere in the darkness. “I need some pussy and I need it now.”
“Shut up, brother,” someone called. “You ain’t never had no pussy you didn’t pay for, just be glad you got Lilly in that cell. Tell him to put his pretty little ass up against them bars, I’ll slide on over.”
In the mirror, Ennis’ head moved slowly side to side. “Animals.”
“Yeah, they let the good prisoners go over to Block B.”
An old joke, worn down by years but it was comfortable, like an old pair of shoes.
“Ennis? You don’t sound so good.”
“Good? Hell, I been in here thirty years. How good you think I could be?”
“Hey.” Another random voice. “Dana, you listening, boy? I got some friends wanna make sure they find you. How’s that sound? Get some friends over, have a little party. I mean, you ain’t been too friendly with them, they’re feeling a little neglected.”
Across the way, men stood with arms draped out of cells, cigarettes or mirrors clutched tightly, bottles of illicit booze held easily, as though there weren’t a care in the world. How many had laid down the bets, Dana wondered. “Five to one against?”
“’Bout what I hear,” Ennis said. “But I got my dimes on you.”
Dana chuckled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you lost every bet you’ve ever made in this place?”
“Yeah, I keep betting on the good guys.”
Dana saw it at the last second. A small black thing, flying through the shadows. When he jumped, his hand caught between the bars and pinned his wrist backward. He yipped as the flying thing exploded.
“Dana? Dana? You okay?”
His wrist thrummed. Wetness, maybe blood, soaked him. A few cons cheered.
“Dana? Damnit, boy, answer me. You dead?”
Beyond his wrist, there was no pain. “I don’t think so, Ennis.” His wet shirt stuck coldly to his ribs like a second skin. “Idiots.”
Ennis snickered. “Water balloon?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe surviving that makes those odds a little better.”
It was crazed, men betting on death. It was the chaos of money changing hands over the possibility of a man getting shanked in the breakfast line or beaten in the shower.
Dana stuck his hand through his cell toward Ennis’. When Ennis’ hand came out, Dana held it desperately. “I’m real scared right now.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to make it.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“They’re going to kill me.”
Ennis was silent after that. The man had bet his dimes on Dana but did he really think he would collect? Did he really think Dana would make it through the day?
Because Dana sure as hell didn’t.
3
Morning came with a chill.
The lights burst to life, flooding his tiny cell with the blue-white of industrial florescent bulbs. Immediately, cons banged their cups against the bars. To Dana it was a metallic version of the 19th century Zulu warriors pounding their shields just before annihilating British soldiers. The cons’ voices called for cells to be opened, for breakfast, for friends and business partners.
“Heeeeeey, Zeeeebra, I got three dimes says you ain’t gonna maaaaake it!”
Calling for Dana.
“Shut up and get dressed,” a guard said. “I don’t have time for this freak show.”
“I had your mama in a freak show,” someone answered.
Laughter filled the block and dissolved into catcalls and taunts, flushed toilets, and the static of radios and badly tuned TVs. News, music, all-talk radio, a female morning news anchor and the ritual wishes about her naked body and bullwhips and a second woman.
Dana didn’t want to get up. The thin mattress—his fourth since arriving—had never been comfortable. But this morning, he could imagine that laying here would be just like a languid Sunday morning in the World. Somehow, the scratchy gray mattress that always reeked of dank sweat regardless of the washings, seemed almost friendly.
Except there was no such thing inside. Every man, con or corrections officer, thought of one thing: survival. Inside these concrete walls, with video cameras and intercom systems, surviving and being friendly were damn near mutually exclusive. Even Ennis, who’d been nothing but pleasant to Dana since the first day, would make the hard decision if he had to. No one ever got out of prison; every sentence was lifelong because this place flooded your blood like a transfusion from one type to another. From A to B. From free to locked-up. For the rest of your life, locked-up blood pulsed through your veins and heart, through your lungs and muscles.
Even for Dana, it would be the same. He was getting out because the district attorney had been campaigning for re-election and had hidden and destroyed evidence. Even for Dana Oldham, actually innocent rather than simply protesting innocence, the sentence would be lifelong.
At least he’d serve the sentence with family. Eating barbeque with his brother Del and his niece Marcille and his cousin Rufus—assuming that restless fucker still lived in Denver—and the memory of the mothers.
In the picture on his shelf, the Mamas and Del and Dana and Rufus, all five b
ent over a gold trough, dented gold pans tilted toward the camera. Water, frozen in mid-slosh, glistened in the sunlight. Dana had never been able to find the gold in those pans. They’d spent two hours panning at some low-end tourist trap in Cripple Creek, Colorado, during a long weekend. Laughing the entire time while tourists around them gorged on ice cream or nachos.
With a chuckle, Dana flipped the worn picture over and read again Del’s spiky handwriting: “It was beautiful. Father Mitchell’s eulogy was beautiful. The flowers were beautiful.” Then a yellowed spot that was probably where a tear had spilled. “You should have been here. Marcille and I miss you.”
The warden had said no. The warden had said Dana was a cold-blooded murderer, a man who gunned down a gas station owner. Dana was, the warden said, a man who could not be allowed out even under guard.
“Moving out, ten minutes.” The corrections officer’s voice boomed.
“Hey, CO,” someone said. “You got my eggs benediction?”
“Shut up, moron,” someone else answered.
Breakfast. A chance for the general population to get close and gut him. “Excuse me, sir, would you like a shank with your eggs? How ’bout a shiv with your Malt-O-Meal?”
“You talking to yourself again, Dana?” Ennis said.
“Christ, my head’s moving a hundred miles an hour.”
“So long as it’s a step ahead of those boys. When you going?”
Dana sighed. “They haven’t said squat to me.”
Ennis snickered. “Yeah, Cap Woburn ain’t all that happy about the whole thing.”
“He ever happy about anything?”
“Saw him swindle a brother outta some cigarettes once. Seemed pretty happy about that.”
Ennis talked about his sister’s new granddaughter while Dana finished dressing. Usually it was his prison jumper. Bright orange with black block letters smearing “Department of Corrections” across the front and back. On the breast, his prisoner’s number. But this morning, it was jeans, a green knit shirt, new boxers, a belt.
“Dana,” JR said softly.
Out of habit, Dana snapped to. When he saw JR, he relaxed. “How’s it going?”
“Well, I have to work for a living, so I could be better.”
Dana grinned. “You’re getting soft, CO. Checking on prisoners now?”
“Piss off, Dana. I’ve been working in prisons and jails long enough to pretty much do what I want.”
“You’re a good man, CO...JR.” The man had his edges, sharpened simply by working in the prison, but he was fair and honest. “Betting five to one against last night.”
“Eleven to one against this morning.”
Dana’s gut tightened. “How’d you bet?”
JR shook his head. “Betting is illegal in this institution, as you are well aware.”
“Right. Like rape.”
“Dana—”
“You bet both ways?” Dana said quickly, turning the subject.
“I have done that before but not today. If I had the money, it would go on you. But with two ex-wives and a current girlfriend, the money’s a little tight sometimes.”
“Ain’t all that’s tight, CO.” Another anonymous voice.
A bell clanged and a few cell doors opened. Trusties, their jumpers yellow, came out with their eyes still full of sleep.
“Dana? I’m here to walk you.”
“Now?” Dana’s gut dropped. “But—”
“Is there anyone you want to see? What about this stuff? Do you need a box?”
A few books, a few cheap knick-knacks, but mostly the cell was empty. Twelve years and nothing to show except gray hair and exactly one person to say goodbye to.
And the key. He grabbed it from the window sill before jamming the orange jumper into the toilet.
JR ground his teeth together. “Damnit, Dana, you shouldn’t have done that. It’s gonna screw up my plumbing.” He signaled to the guard at the end of the block and the cell door rattled open, its pulleys and chains banging and clanking. The entire block went silent.
“Hold on.” Dana stopped at Ennis’ cell. The old man stood near the bars, holding a book tightly against his chest.
“Ennis.”
“Dana.”
Their eyes found the other man’s. Ennis slid a book through the bars. “A thinking man’s book. Gramps gave it’a me long time ago. He wanted me to finish school. Learn how’ta read, all that.”
“Never quite get it done?” Dana asked.
Ennis tapped his bars. “Something else came up.”
“Come on, old man, you damn well know how to read.”
Ennis shook his head. “Only if it’s got pictures of titties.” Holding the book out for Dana, he glanced at it. “This ain’t really my thing.”
“What is it?” JR asked.
“Voltaire,” Dana said.
“He’s a dead guy,” Ennis offered.
“Candide. It’s about keeping good in the face of bad.” Dana held the book tightly. “Thank you, Ennis.”
“Keep good, Dana.”
“You, too, old man.”
Between Ennis’ cell and the end of the block was everyone else. Calling and whistling and threatening. Their faces were flushed with excited sadism. It was coming and they all wanted to see it. Someone would reach out and sink a homemade knife into Dana’s chest. Or they would throw acid from the laundry or bash in his brains with a club smuggled out of the woodshop. And whoever did it, whoever made certain other men won money, would be given the run of the prison.
Dana kept his eyes on the worn concrete walkway. The two hundred and fourteen steps to the end of the block had always been a thousand mile journey. But today it was worse.
Near the end, he heard Trexler. “Didn’t I ask you to come by this morning, Dana? You disrespecting me?” Trexler stood close, a foot or so back from the bars.
Dana sneered. “I couldn’t come see you this morning, Trexler, I had something more important to do.”
“Yeah?” Trexler grinned.
“Had to wash my ass hair.”
Trexler’s teeth bared and a laugh began deep in his throat.
“Are you laughing at me?” Dana jammed his arm through the bar to his elbow, pointed a shaking finger at Trexler. “No more, you stupid fuck, you can’t say anything to me anymore—”
Trexler moved quickly, pulling Dana’s arm until Dana’s chest slammed against the bars. Other inmates hooted. Trexler grabbed Dana’s head and banged it against the bars. When Dana’s skull thudded, Trexler pressed his face into Dana’s. His free hand slipped from between the bars and Dana saw the flash of light, the glint of blade. It swooshed and whistled.
Dana jerked sideways and the blade sliced the sleeve of his new green shirt. “Son of a bitch.”
“Goddamnit, Trexler.” JR reached through the bars and grabbed the back of Trexler’s neck. “Now I’ve got to do paperwork. You dumbshit.”
The blade clattered to the floor as two more guards made their way toward Trexler’s cell, their faces full of adrenaline. Dana scrabbled against the bars, trying to push himself away. He expected another blow or a second knife.
Instead, Dana got Trexler’s lips. His tongue was cold and wet, thin and excited. It darted into Dana’s mouth, running over his teeth and tongue, sliding along his gums. Inmates roared and cheered.
“Goddamnit,” Ennis hollered. “Leave my boy alone.”
“It’s already a week in seg for the knife,” JR said. He nodded toward the coming guards. “They get here and it’ll be worse if you don’t let him go, Trexler.”
In spite of the threat and of JR’s big hands smashing his neck and shoulders, Trexler held tight. He kept that hold until JR smashed the back of Trexler’s wrists with his fist.
Dana staggered backward, his breath heavy. His heart pounded and his body shook. A thin line of blood striped his upper arm. “Son of a bitch. Fuck you. You’re here forever and I’m walking out.” Dana spit, laughed hysterically when the wad caught Trexle
r just below his eye and dripped toward Trexler’s lips.
Trexler licked it away.
“Week in seg,” JR said to the other guards. “Possession of a blade.”
One of the guards smiled, staring at Trexler. “No problem. Maybe he’ll fight us.”
Dragging Dana closer toward the end of the cellblock, JR said, “Don’t worry about him. We’ll lock him down, search his cell. You know we’ll find something besides the knife. He’ll get his.”
Around them, inmates hooted and hollered. The sound continued to grow, in direct proportion to the distance left between Dana and the end of the line. It was as though they were trying to drive him insane during these last few seconds.
“They’re just jealous,” JR said. “You should be happy, Dana. You know how few people actually get out of here.”
“Yeah, twelve years and I’m a free man.”
“Not only that, you’re not an ex-con. People get out of here, they have to deal with that. You don’t.”
“Yep. I get all my rights back. I can buy a gun, I can vote. Like it never happened. Except the twelve years, but we’ll just forget about that.”
JR sighed. “I’m sorry about that, really I am. Do know I’ll be wishing you all my best.”
“Yeah...well...thanks, I guess. I appreciate that.”
“I’m comin’, Dana. Gonna stick ya, win some money.”
Dana turned toward the voice. A tiny man he’d never talked to, never seen beyond roll call and meals. The man was a trustee, the kind of asshole who played guards’ snitch and cons’ informant and crowed when people died because of his information.
“Get your ass out here, then. We’ll do it right now.”
The man’s face came to life. “Them balls? Shit, I didn’t realize Red sold balls. Booze and skin mags, yeah, but balls?”
A voice called from across the cellblock. “He went hands and knees, took it up his ass, that’s how he found ’em, they was hanging right there, jamming him.”
Dana’s hands clenched against his sides but a tiny smile slipped across his face. They were tired and angry men, ready to explode simply to change the routine. Yeah, he was angry at them for what they’d forced on him while he was here, but he was getting out. These bitches were staying. Tonight, when they were finding someone to help them sweat the night, he’d be inside that night. Tomorrow, when they were taking showers and men were getting through as quickly as they could to avoid sex before breakfast, Dana would be languidly taking a solo shower.
