Damnable

by Hank Schwaeble

  “Put your goddamn jumper on,” Gillis said. “Now.”

  Hatcher glanced at Tyler and smiled as he pulled the dark blue coveralls from the end of his bunk, took his time stepping into them and buttoning up. He could feel Gillis’s eyes burning into him, so he took even longer putting on his socks and shoes.

  “Shackle him.”

  Both guards stepped forward. Hatcher knew the drill. He turned and raised his hands to his head while one of them looped the waist chain and the other fettered his ankles. When they were done with those, they spun him around and he lowered his hands to be cuffed, one at a time.

  They pulled him forward a few steps until he was face-to-face with Gillis. “Don’t I get one of those hockey masks, too?”

  “Shut up.”

  Gillis looked at one of the guards and jerked his head. He started back up the corridor as the guards led Hatcher out of the cell.

  Behind him, Hatcher heard the bunk creak. Tyler’s voice tried to recapture some its bravado, but failed.

  “I’ll be here when you get back, punk.”

  Hatcher slowed and looked over his shoulder, the MPs pulling on his arms. “For chrissakes, open your eyes,” he said. He resumed his shuffle, sensing the looks peering out from the cells on either side, watching Gillis open the fortified metal door to the block. Under his breath he added, “They’ve already gone to Plan B.”

  GILLIS LED THEM THROUGH THE INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR checkpoints of the confinement unit, past the glass cubicle housing the gatekeepers, and into the adjacent administrative building. They paused in a small reception area as Gillis keyed a coded lock to open a heavy door, then filed in behind him.

  Hatcher hadn’t been in this building before, but in a sense he had. Virtually all army offices looked the same. Government-issue furniture, plain black safes and beige filing cabinets, drab, tan, utilitarian paint jobs over cracking, sagging wood. Three admins sat behind desks in a bullpen just inside the entrance, two men and a woman, staring at computer screens and pecking on keyboards. The two that bothered to look up as Hatcher passed didn’t register any interest.

  Gillis cleared the bullpen and entered a corridor lined with doors. One of the doors was marked as a restroom, and Hatcher suddenly wished he’d had a few more seconds to break Tyler’s finger and then take a leak before Gillis had come for him. The hall cornered and Gillis stopped near the back of the building. Gillis tugged on the key ring attached to his belt and stretched it out on a reel, unlocking a door to the interior side of the corridor. That meant no windows, Hatcher thought.

  They entered a large room with a holding cell in the corner, sturdy round bars bolted to the walls and forming the other half of a large square. At the opposite end was an empty desk with a computer on it. Stacks of plastic chairs with chrome legs stood along the wall opposite the cell. The middle of the room was empty. There were no windows.

  There was a man in the holding cell. Early twenties, medium-sized, and lean. He was beefy in the arms and shoulders, sporting the crooked nose of a pug and wearing the same standard prison jumper as Hatcher. He sat on a narrow metal bench affixed to the back wall, leaning forward on his elbows, his hands hidden between his knees. Hatcher spotted the chain around the man’s waist, thinking it was probably the only half-comfortable way to sit in these things.

  Gillis retrieved another key from his ring and unlocked the door to the cell. He held the door open and gestured for the MPs to put Hatcher inside. The door closed behind Hatcher with a clang and the loud clunk of a solid latch catching snugly.

  Hatcher turned, almost losing his balance in the leg shackles, and looked through the bars at Gillis.

  “No talking. No lying down. If you need to go to the bathroom, it will have to wait. You’ll be escorted to the colonel’s office when he’s ready for you.”

  Hatcher said nothing. Gillis was staring at him, but there was an edginess to it, a desire to break eye contact the man was trying to hide. Hatcher made a point of holding his gaze, waiting for Gillis to be the one. Gillis finally gave up, turned to leave after a few seconds, but before he did, Hatcher caught it. A snapped glance over to the prisoner on the bench. No swivel of the head. Just a shift of the eyes. Guarded. Self-conscious.

  “A guard will be standing right outside this room until the man who occupies that desk gets in. He’s running a little late this morning. We have eyes on you. So don’t try anything funny.”

  The MPs followed Gillis out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

  Hatcher looked over to the empty desk, then back to the door. Not much noise was going to make it through there. He glanced over to the far corner where a security camera was aimed at the holding cell. He waited for a blink of red above the lens. Nothing. He suspected the feed had not been activated. He heard the man behind him shift on the bench. He angled his body against the wall. The prisoner was eyeballing him.

  “So.” Hatcher looked at the name stenciled on the man’s jumper. “Cromartie. What did Gillis promise you?”

  Cromartie’s eyebrows jumped and he pulled the ends of his mouth into a confused moue. Hatcher held his gaze, bored his eyes into the man’s pupils. After a few seconds Cromartie smiled and dropped his head low, almost between his legs, nodding.

  “Conjugal,” Cromartie said. “Need one bad, man. I was only married a couple of months before I got sent here. Got six months left.”

  So Gillis suddenly had grown a set of balls, after all. Of sorts. “How rough is this supposed to get?”

  Cromartie pressed his lips together, someone about to confess some bad news. “Rough.”

  Hatcher dipped his chin, looked over to the camera, and pictured Gillis feigning outrage, demanding to get to the bottom of things.

  “Nothing to send you to the infirmary,” Cromartie added, his voice more upbeat. “And not too much blood. But, yeah. Rough. Couple of teeth on the floor, some gut shots that’ll stay with you a while. Oh, and your shoulder. He wants you to feel it in your shoulder, he said.”

  Hatcher nodded. “Why you?”

  “Took a silver at the Armed Forces Boxing Championship two years ago,” Cromartie said, shrugging. “Guess he figured I knew how to cause some damage.”

  “And the cuffs?”

  The man raised his arms, twisted his hands back and forth to show his unfettered wrists. With Cromartie’s hands up, Hatcher could see the cuffs dangling between his legs, hanging from the waist chain.

  “You a boxer, me like this,” Hatcher said. “Not exactly a fair fight now, is it?”

  “Sorry, bro. Nothing personal.”

  Cromartie stood. He was a couple of inches shorter than Hatcher, but with a boxer’s compact ranginess. He stepped forward, and Hatcher noticed only one leg was shackled, the chain and manacle for the other dragging behind it.

  “Afterward, you cuff yourself up and Gillis takes care of the story, is that the idea?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  Cromartie looked like a boxer, carried himself like one. Balanced, light on his feet. Good boxers knew how to punch, and punch hard. Hatcher assumed Cromartie would be no exception.

  “If you close your eyes and just stand there, I’ll try to make it go quick. Can’t promise it won’t hurt like a fucker, but you might save yourself some punishment.”

  Punishment, Hatcher thought, repeating it silently to himself. He liked the word. Made the whole thing sound so orderly, so corrective. He tilted his head forward a bit and hooded his eyes, not quite closing them. Through the narrow slit of his lids he could see Cromartie’s shoes. He took a breath and exhaled as he watched the man set his feet.

  Punching was all about timing and leverage, getting the most power out of the strike. Hatcher could detect the weight shift to Cromartie’s right foot, saw it roll and turn ever so slightly as he drew back. He visualized the rest of the man in a relaxed pugilist’s stance, twisting his hips, winding up. The hips were everything. You throw a punch with your ass, not your arm. He watched for the forward shi
ft, tried to sense it happen, sense the timing, that fraction of a second where the body would uncoil, the commitment to the motion.

  Now.

  Hatcher jerked his head to his right, felt the fist brush by his ear, the bump of the thumb knuckle grazing the back of his skull. Just as he’d hoped, the man hadn’t considered the possibility of missing, didn’t snap his punch back as he would in the ring but let his weight follow it. Cromartie lost his balance for an instant, bounced forward on the balls of his feet to regain it. Less than a foot closer, but close enough. Hatcher reached out with both hands as far as his cuffs would allow and grabbed hold of the chain around Cromartie’s waist. Without any wasted motion, he arched his spine, drew his shoulders back, then snapped forward, slamming his forehead into the bridge of Cromartie’s nose.

  Hatcher knew the blow dazed him. He saw the man’s eyes unfocus and flutter, his hands shoot to cover his face, felt the sudden jerk as Cromartie tried to stumble back. But Hatcher held on, waited the necessary second for the boxer’s instinct to take over, for him to ball his fists and move his hands out, keeping them high to block any punches to the sides of the head. Hatcher cocked his head back and butted him again, smashing the hard bone of his forehead one more time against the softer bones of the man’s face.

  He could tell from the tug against his arms, the sudden droop of weight, that Cromartie was out on his feet. Using the waist chain, Hatcher guided him to fall back onto the wall bench, twisting around to veer him against the corner bars so he’d be propped into a sitting position.

  Cromartie’s nose was pulpy and bent to one side. A triangle of red draped downward from it over his mouth and chin.

  Hatcher sat next to him on the bench, used his weight to slide the man even closer to the bars. He watched for signs of him regaining consciousness, saw none.

  “Boxing has rules,” he said, shaking his head. “I told you it wasn’t a fair fight.”

  WHEN HE HEARD THE BOLT TO THE DOOR BEING THROWN, Hatcher was standing in a forward corner of the cell, holding on to a light sleep. He opened his eyes to see Gillis entering the room with two MPs. Not the same ones, he noted. One of them was a stocky black guy, the other was tall and wiry.

  Gillis paused after a few steps. The surprise registered in his eyes and face. It quickly dissolved to make way for anger as he marched to the front of the cell.

  “What the hell?”

  The two MPs looked at each other behind him, uncertain what to do.

  “He had an accident,” Hatcher said.

  “You!’ Gillis stabbed a finger between the bars. “You did this!”

  Hatcher pulled his hands up as high as they would go, about even with his belly, and showed his palms. “How could I do anything?”

  Gillis glared, frowning, his lips tight and thin. His hands were shaking. He jumbled the keys attached to his belt until he found the right one and opened the door to the cell.

  “Stand against the bars over there and don’t you move.” He glanced back at his men and gestured toward Cromartie. The two MPs dashed into the cell and inspected the unconscious prisoner. Cromartie groaned as they moved his head and checked his eyes.

  “Uh, sir,” the wiry one said. “You need to look at this.”

  “Damnedest thing, too,” Hatcher said as Gillis moved along the outside of the cell to get a better look. “The guy managed to get his cuffs all tangled in the bars when he fell.”

  Gillis watched as the other MP shifted Cromartie’s body to show that each of his handcuffs were locked around one of the bars instead of his wrists. Both ankles were cuffed normally, but the chain to his leg shackles was looped around one of the bars near the floor.

  Hatcher tried to suppress the smile he felt spreading across his lips. Gillis had no choice but to bury this now. He’d outsmarted himself, spreading it out over two sets of guards to make sure no one had the whole picture. As a bonus, it was supposed to give him four credible witnesses to swear he’d done everything by the book. Credible witnesses were now his problem.

  He wondered what Gillis was thinking as thirty seconds stretched into a minute and the man did nothing but stare at the floor, then at Cromartie, then at Hatcher, then at the floor again.

  The stocky black guard broke the silence. “Sir?”

  Gillis straightened his back and puffed out his chest. “Undo his cuffs, clean his face, and get him to the infirmary. Get some rubber gloves and damp towels first. And see if some smelling salts will wake him up so you can walk him over there quietly and not give him the attention he wants. It’s obvious what happened. Someone violated procedure and unfastened his cuffs when they put him in here, and he saw an opportunity to do this to himself.”

  A sigh, a shake of the head, the hint of a clucking tongue.

  “I actually spoke to this man earlier,” Gillis continued. “He was upset about his wife. This was a protest, against his incarceration. Probably wanted to stage a beating, knocked himself out by mistake.”

  He’s good, Hatcher thought. Must have lots of practice. He could practically see the machinations as Gillis crafted the spin on the spot, thinking out loud. Gillis put just enough phony sincerity into it, countered it with just enough apathy. The worldly, jaded leader who’d seen it all before. The two MPs were buying it. By the time they related the story at the NCO club, it would be just as Gillis had described it.

  The tall MP nodded, looking at the stocky one. “I’ll go.”

  “I’ll take this one,” Gillis said. He pointed his finger at Hatcher. “You. Come with me.”

  Hatcher exited the cell, taking six-inch steps. Gillis started to grab at his waist chain, then seemed to think better of it, opting to walk an arm’s length ahead of him as he led him out of the room. He motioned to the first MP he saw in the hall, snapping his fingers and ordering him to accompany them.

  They walked back to the bathroom and Gillis opened the door. He gestured for the MP to wait and told Hatcher to sit on one of the toilets. He wet a paper towel in the sink and tossed it at Hatcher’s lap with a contemptuous look.

  “Clean your face off. It’s got blood on it.”

  Hatcher picked up the dripping paper towel and bent over low to allow his hands to reach his face. He wiped at his forehead and his nose. The brown paper showed spots of pink.

  “I need to piss.”

  Gillis looked at his watch. “Pissing is all guys like you ever do, other than moaning. You’ll live.”

  “When I leave a yellow trail from here to wherever you’re taking me, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Sneering, Gillis jerked his head in disgust and turned away. Hatcher stood, fumbled for several seconds with the button fly of his jumper, and urinated into the toilet. When he was done, Gillis growled at him to get moving and stood behind him until they were out in the hallway.

  “Where are we going?” Hatcher asked.

  Gillis ignored him. He headed up the hall, back the way they had come, tossing his chin in the same direction. The MP grabbed Hatcher by the back of the arm and they followed.

  Hatcher’s abbreviated steps caused Gillis to pull ahead as he walked.

  “What’s up this way?” Hatcher asked in low voice after they passed the room with the holding cell.

  “CO’s office,” the MP said.

  Gillis shot a look over his shoulder, then stopped a few steps later and waited for Hatcher to reach him.

  “I’ll take him from here,” Gillis said.

  The MP stepped aside obediently as Gillis took Hatcher by the arm. He walked him a few more feet to where the wall opened, revealing a reception area for a corner office. A woman in her fifties sat at a desk behind a computer. Gillis greeted her perfunctorily and led Hatcher past her workstation. The door to the office was open. The nameplate on the wall indicated a Lt. Col. Richard Owens, Commanding Officer. Gillis knocked once on the door frame, then led Hatcher inside.

  “I’ve brought Hatcher, Colonel.”

  The office was spacious and spartan. A la
rge desk dominated the center of it, a deep brown wood with ornate engraving. Along the wall next to the desk, an oversized set of flags, the Stars and Stripes and a green one bearing the insignia of the army, leaned against each other like crossed swords. The opposite wall was a love-me space, crowded with framed diplomas and certificates.

  Owens sat behind the desk in a high-tech-looking black mesh chair with a wide back. He had a gray buzz cut and leathery skin that looked creased and ravaged by the sun. He signed a document with one of his large-knuckled hands and slipped it into an out-box, then leaned back and placed his elbows on the armrests of his chair. There was a large window behind him. Hatcher saw a breeze shaking its way through a tree. Spring would be starting any day.

  “Was this really necessary?” Owens asked, holding out his hand, palm up, looking at Gillis. Hatcher realized he was talking about the restraints.

  “Procedure, sir. He’s got a history. In fact, we just had an incident with him.”

  “Unlock him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gillis glared at Hatcher as he applied a key to the cuffs. Hatcher held his hands out, rubbing his wrists and flexing them.

  “Leg irons, too,” Owens said.

  Gillis bent down and uncuffed Hatcher’s ankles, staring up, spilling as much venom out of his eyes as he could.

  “I’d like to speak to the prisoner alone, Captain.”

  “Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea. As I’ve told you before, the prisoner is unstable. Prone to violence.”

  “Thank you for your concern. I’ll call for you if I need you.”

  Gillis hesitated briefly, then strode out of the room. Hatcher heard the door close. Owens waited a few seconds before speaking.

  The colonel swept a hand toward one of the chairs. “Please, take a seat.”

  Hatcher took the chair closest to Owens’s desk. The give of the soft cushion as it received his weight reminded him it had been a long time since he’d sat on a real piece of furniture.