by Deeanne Gist
Conroy knows exactly how the guard will react. The guard will sweat and ask, “What do you want?”
After they negotiate, Conroy will pull the keistered inmate. He will take him down for a search and retrieve the bundles himself with his own probing hand. The Norteño gang member will say it was all his idea. He will refuse to name his leader. This is what Conroy wants. He will tell the inmate to tell the leader of the Norteños what it will cost to preserve that silence.
The inmate will go down for a short sentence, though he knows he will do easy time, cherished by his gang for his loyalty, and then advance up the chain. The teeth-picking guard will feel so much gratitude—and fear—toward Conroy that he’ll give him a cut from now on for every drug deal he supervises. The addicted inmates will be happy as the flow of heroin inside our enchanted place continues, and everyone knows there are few other buffers to the raw edges of boredom inside. Every week the leader of the Norteños will leave an envelope filled with cash in Conroy’s locker—another envelope to join the others, which is why Conroy has a fancy motorboat and a vacation home in the mountains while the warden goes home to a modest ranch and an old sailboat he never gets around to fixing.
The best part? Conroy will get written up with an official commendation for busting the inmate. It is one more rung on his way to the top. He wants the warden’s job.
The bosses love him. There is no corruption on his watch.
In return for sharing this information, Risk gets his reward.
The next day the white-haired boy is rolled, with no warning, from his cell.
He was going to classes and making a few careful friends, even laughing at his work assignment in the clothing factory. His cellmate was an ancient fart who snored too much but other than that was harmless. Life was not that bad; he could begin to imagine making it two years. After so much confusion and fear, hope was beginning to well up inside him. Maybe he could finish school. Go to college, even.
The guard at his cell door tells him brusquely to gather his kit. Bewildered, the white-haired boy quickly bundles his meager belongings—fresh shirt, socks, and paperwork. The cell door slams shut behind him while the old cellmate blinks his rheumy eyes.
The guard walks him down the row. The cellblock grows quiet.
The white-haired boy has no idea where he is going. Everyone else does. The whole prison knows about the Norteño bust and Risk and Conroy’s clever hands. Everyone knows how this will end.
When the men see the white-haired boy walk past, they turn away from the bars. Some go sit on their bunks and don’t say anything. Others smile a little to themselves.
The white-haired boy is led across the dry, empty yard to another building. The walls here are older, the stone crumbling. He realizes this is Cellblock A—what the inmates call the Hall of the Lifers. No one does time here unless he’s in for a long time.
Deep underneath this building, the boy knows, is the dungeon of death row. The boy has never seen the death row inmates. No one in the prison ever sees them. They are trapped underground and never allowed up except for their brief trips to the Dugdemona cage, and even then they are led in chains down secret halls. The boy has heard their names—names like York and Striker and Arden—but he has no idea what they look like. They are the invisibles of the prison.
The men in the Hall of the Lifers stand up when they hear the hall doors slam. They come to their doors to watch the white-haired boy pass. The boy notices how big the men on this floor are, like caged gorillas. Their faces are masks. No one smiles at him or even nods. Their faces are blank.
The guard has stopped in front of a cell. The guard looks angry. The boy doesn’t understand that the guard has been sent on this terrible mission and hates it.
The boy looks in the cell door and sees a man with a seamed face and long tangled hair. The man is lying on his back on his cot, his long hair flowing over his flat pillow. He stares at the ceiling as if he doesn’t know the white-haired boy is there.
The door clangs open, and the white-haired boy is pushed inside.
Risk doesn’t rise from his cot—not at first.
The cell coagulates with an acrid smell that the boy doesn’t know but instantly recognizes. It is the smell of terror, and it is coming from him. Something like barbed wire constricts around his heart, and it is impossible to breathe. He knows now why he is here.
The kites float like origami birds, like paper snowflakes, floating and then raining from the cell door. They rain like passing thoughts on the floor, drift down into snow piles at the end of the corridor. Please move me, please, they say. Please.
There are prisons inside prisons, walls inside walls, and in this place you learn that your worst dungeon might be the room with the most windows. You can step behind one wall and then another here, like a child lost in a maze—and be lost forever.
There is no one like the lady for someone like the white-haired boy. That is the irony of prison. People like the lady are reserved for those sentenced to death. It is only when a man is sentenced to die that the faucets turn on and people start to care. The rest, like the white-haired boy, are erased.
So many complaint kites rain out of Risk’s cell that they clog the walkway drains like rotting paper leaves. The men have to climb over the huge sodden piles on the way to mess, and they track pieces of paper that say help into the mess hall, where the wet papers roll into tubes that say please and are smeared into gray pulp on the floor on the men’s boots that say me. This is the way it is, in this enchanted place.
In times like these, my cell seems dark for days. The air grows thick and I have trouble breathing. I follow the walls with my fingers, searching for the place in the stones that will let me out. I want out of the darkness, out of the pain and confusion.
Not even the books can save me in a time like this. I hold their pages to my face, and I howl inside that I cannot decipher their signals. It is all gibberish. And without this avenue out, my entire world comes crashing down.
Once in such a time, I slit my wrists with my teeth and rubbed my wrists on the walls like some crazy Manson killer. That didn’t end well. The guards cursed and busted in my door and dragged me out by the hair to the infirmary. The infirmary is a place where they pipe in poisoned air, hoping you will die. No one wants to waste money on psychiatric medicine here, or cancer treatments, or any treatments. The taxpayers don’t want to waste their money saving the lives of killers, and I don’t blame them. The infirmary wards are filled with men yipping with the late-stage pain of cancer or bleeding through their bowels or raging in diabetic deliriums. They kept me strapped to a table for days until I got sores from the rubbing of my shoulders drumming the cot. I still have the scars on my shoulder blades, like angel wings that never exploded.
Now when these dark times happen, I curl into a ball on my cot and make a cape with my blanket. I remind myself I am not dust, but I should be. I tell myself I am made of the same cells as life itself even if I am a mistake.
I pretend it is rain I hear, crying down the gutters, and not the wet slap of flesh or the dark laughter in the cells of the Hall of Lifers far above me, or the crying of a boy in pain.
The white-haired boy has been in the infirmary twice, getting sewn up like a torn doll. When he appears to eat in the mess, he looks like someone broke his limbs from the inside.
He never sits with Risk and his cronies. That would be unthinkable. He sits with the other punks at the worst table in the mess. The men at that table are broken, and even the kindest among us treat them like refuse. The white-haired boy sits with the others as if he is not there. He stops talking. He eats his mush and gray sponge meat in silence.
Days and weeks pass. And then one day a guard appears at the cell door. Without ceremony, he opens the door and gestures to the white-haired boy. When the boy looks at Risk as if to see if it is true, Risk doesn’t look up from where he lies on his bunk.
Risk had his payment, and now the treat is over. Well, mostly over. The op
en playtime is over. Risk needs to make another call to the yes telephone if he wants another fresh cellie.
The white-haired boy cannot believe his luck. He bolts from the cell, too nervous even to gather his kit. With each step down the hall, the slick sweat of relief breaks out more on him. He can feel the rough stones again beneath his feet.
The same old ancient fart is in the cell, wheezing like nothing ever happened. The boy sits on his bunk in a sweaty daze. His whole body, his entire soul, hurts. It’s over, he thinks. Thank God it is over.
But the next day he finds out it is never over.
He goes to mess like any other inmate. Only he isn’t any other inmate, not anymore and never again. He could be transferred to another prison, and somehow they, too, would find out. It is amazing how the prison grapevine travels. He tries to carry his tray to a table where one of his shop classmates sits, and he is met with killer eyes. He turns to another table where everyone gives him the cold eye. Rebuffed, he backpedals. There is a moment of icy uncertainty as he stands in the middle of mess, the tray held in sweating hands. Finally, he walks forward to the only table he has known. The men there clear a place for him silently. Behind them, Risk and his crew laugh and turn away.
After lunch, the white-haired boy walks out on the yard. He doesn’t know where to go. He goes to the baseball diamond and stands there for a while, watching a few guys enjoy the honor of playing with the only ball. They don’t invite him to join. He walks around the track, stopping to look at the tiny corner of the yard where the old men are allowed to plant flowers. Even the old men ignore him.
The flowers are nice. The sun is out and it feels good. He begins to relax. He sits down at one of the picnic tables in the shade.
At that moment one of Risk’s cronies strides over. He has a sunburned neck and huge shoulders straining his shirt. The sight of those shoulders makes the white-haired boy feel sick.
The big beef just looks at him like he doesn’t deserve a smile. “Four o’ clock,” he says.
The white-haired boy looks back, dazed and uncomprehending. In the distance, Risk and his other cronies are bench-pressing at the weight pile, and the boy can hear the crash of metal plates across the yard. The men on the baseball field are peppering the ball. The old men are watering their flowers. The guards in the tower are looking to the sky.
The big beef points to a shed at the far end of the yard. The other inmates call this the rape shed. “Four o’ clock,” he says.
For Conroy, the matter ends well.
He likes the calls on the yes phone. He likes to pick up the cool handle, likes to hear the needy voice at the other end. He likes to say that first word. “Yes” is the most beautiful word in the world to him, a world of open doors and new adventures.
Chapter 5
I hide under my cover when the trusty comes by. I can hear the creaking of his cart from down the hall, and the rustle of men excited. They call out for him, eager for contact, for voice, for the books and towels stacked on the old metal cafeteria cart used for everything around here. The men with money on their accounts get candy, soap, toothpaste, and if they are being good, razors. The rest of us get regulation toothbrushes, their handles snubbed, made by companies expressly for prisons, because the normal kind with long handles get sharpened into shanks.
When the trusty finally gets to my cell, he sighs. “Towel,” he calls, and drops one through the slot. I peek and see him pick up my stiff used towel gingerly, as if it is poisoned.
I left my last book—a book about hiking the Cascades—out days ago, and I haven’t had one since. I cross my scaly fingers under the cover that I will get a new book for this week. I hope it will be my favorite, The White Dawn.
“Book for you,” he says, and my heart jumps. He talks almost unwillingly. “Warden says to tell you the library got a new donation.”
The book drops with a soft thud. I can hear the trusty wait, like a boy at the circus, for the freak to show his face. He knows I want to rescue the book but cannot until he leaves. At last I hear the cart creak off and his ridiculing laugh. On the other side of me, he strikes up a conversation with York. Someone has put money on York’s books—probably the lady, they say she does that sometimes—and he buys a candy bar. “It’s my Payday!” York shouts, and men laugh on down the row. I can hear the rustle of wrapper and smell the peanuts from my cell.
I peek from under my cover. The coast is clear. I dive for the book. Only when back on my cot do I look to see what it is. Oh, joy. The trusty wasn’t lying. It is a new book for me.
The cover is thick and made of red cloth worn thin. Crazy Weather it says. I stroke the cover and feel the vibration of the words inside. An old library sticker adorns the spine. AMITY SCHOOL LIBRARY in faded green print.
I open it to find an ancient checkout card tucked in a stained sleeve, and lift it reverentially. A boy named Charlie McBee last checked out this book. I smile at his childish scrawl.
And then I am inside the book, so much that I am only vaguely aware I have pulled back the cover for more light, and the trusty has wheeled his cart where he might see me, and I don’t care. The world recedes. The little men with hammers in the walls curl into warm silent balls, and the golden horses far below lower their necks to listen. From very far away, I hear Striker whispering something to the trusty on his way down the row, and it seems odd enough to notice—why is Striker whispering? what is he asking for?—but then I am off.
I am off on a trip, in a different place than this, with a boy called South Boy and his Mojave friend Havek, and South Boy decides one morning to do a Great Thing. I can taste the sodden flapjacks the surly cook makes as I arise late in the desert heat, feel the warm slip of ditch water on my body.
If there are ever times when I would regret the choice York is making, it is times like these, when life feels like another page waiting to get turned.
The lady stands at a gate. It is a heavy metal gate with a thick padlock, the kind used to block logging roads. The gate has a large sign on it painted in crude black letters: NO TRESPASSING OR YOU WILL BE SHOT.
She is exhausted. She hasn’t been home in days. It is now mid-June, and while she spends every working moment on this case, the days seem to be racing past faster and faster. She spent two days in the county seat, dredging up all the men she could find named Troy from the old microfiche census listings of Sawmill Falls. She narrowed her search to the key years of York’s childhood, but there were more men named Troy—or TJ or JT—than she had expected. She spent another day in a motel room, living on greasy take-out food and working on her laptop to locate the men. Though some of the Troys are dead, a few are alive, spread out all over the county.
Now, after driving for hours through increasingly arid and empty country, she has found this gate. Behind it is one of the men named Troy, according to the last address she found.
The hills here are rugged, the forest dry with summer. Holly grows in the scrub. A faint thick, sweet smell comes wafting down the road. She takes a sniff. Yes, there is a sweet smell in these backwoods.
She hollers over the metal gate, her voice calling through the woods. “Hello? Hello?”
There is no answer besides an angry scrub jay. She tries to lean over the gate to see where the road goes, but it forks around a brushy turn and is gone. His home could be around that corner. It could be miles farther up the road. He could be waiting with a sawed-off shotgun around that turn—she was warned, after all. She looks at the sign again and weighs the chance that she will be shot.
She has a choice to make, like always. She could turn back around on the dirt road and bounce her car for hours back to the city. Or she can climb over the gate and take her chances.
You knew there wasn’t a choice, she thinks as she hikes her skirt and starts climbing.
Whenever the lady imagines what a person will be like, she is usually wrong. The doctor she might picture as a good man turns out to be a besotted worm. A priest she imagines would be rigid turn
s out lovably weak. A warden should be the enemy, but he is not.
And this Troy Harney, this man with a record of at least fifteen convictions for drug possession, disturbing the peace, and drunken brawling—this man she likes.
He answers the door with a quizzical smile on his grizzled face. He has been cooking a late lunch, and the small house smells like bacon and eggs. From the side yard comes the pungent smell of fresh wood shavings—he has been chopping wood for the winter and already has a large stack. The house has a warm, falling-down appearance, from the moss on the roof to a collection of abandoned boots near the front step.
“See you made it past the gate. You ain’t selling Avon, are you?”
She smiles. “Gonna shoot me?”
He laughs, showing nicotine teeth. “Naw. That’s for the police. Damn bastards. Come on in.”
She explains who she is as she walks inside, but he doesn’t appear concerned.
“How do you know I’m not the police?” she asks, curious.
He turns around and gives her a my goodness look. “Look at your shoes.”
She looks down and smiles. She is wearing a pair of scuffed black boots with her skirt. “All right.”
“You here for what again? Not often I get a pretty girl visiting me.”
“I’m an investigator. I’m working a case involving a man on death row. I thought maybe you knew him. Or his mom.”
Troy turns slowly from his little kitchen. Faded flowered curtains are pulled open around dusty-coated windows. Typical man, she thinks, not knowing how to clean.
“You mean Sawmill Falls.” His face is sober.
“Yes.”
He is quiet as he takes down two solid black plates from a cabinet. He spoons out limp bacon and scrambled eggs from a black cast-iron pan, then adds two slices of buttered white toast to each plate. “I always make extra,” he mumbles. He pours a cup of coffee, adds sugar for himself, and pushes the bowl to her as he pours her a cup. “Sit.”
