by Brad Parks
“I’m no snitch,” he choked out. “What’s wrong with you?”
I wished he’d shut his face. If Frank—in whatever state of mind he now found himself—decided he was going to finish this job and crush Mitch’s windpipe once and for all, there was nothing I could do to stop him.
Yet somehow I was able to use the momentum I had gathered to keep herding him out of the room. It took all my might, because Frank was battling against me. But my lower center of gravity kept him off-balance.
Then, once we were out of sight of the poker table, Frank grabbed both my shoulders and set me upright, like he was playing with a particularly animated doll.
I was still so wound up I thought this was just the next round. Then I looked at his face. He was smiling at me. Gentle Frank had returned. Maybe he had never really left. I bent over and put my hands on my knees.
“Good God, Frank. I was worried about you there for a second,” I said, still breathing heavily from the effort I had just expended.
He wasn’t even winded. “Just wanted to make sure you got your money’s worth, sir.”
* * *
• • •
When I returned to the game, the guys were already in the midst of convincing Mitch the incident wasn’t worth reporting. Fights were rare at Morgantown, and unless there was physical evidence—a bruise, a cut, something like that—the administration wasn’t likely to pursue discipline.
Bobby also proposed, and I seconded, the notion that telling a CO would only reinforce Frank’s strange assumption that Mitch had been the snitch. Better to de-escalate the situation, leave it be, and hope Big Frank forgot about his suspicions.
“He’s my roommate,” I said. “I’ll talk to him later. I think I can get this whole thing to blow over. He trusts me.”
“All right, all right,” Jerry said. “Can we play cards now?”
At that point everyone else folded. Only a guy sitting on trip jacks was that eager to get back to the game.
The incident wasn’t mentioned the rest of the evening. And I thought it had been only a moderate success—worth the twenty cans, but ultimately just another small step in my journey—until the next morning on the way to breakfast.
It was one of those misty mountain mornings, with a late-fall chill in the air. I had my hands shoved in my pockets and was hurrying toward the dining hall when I heard Mitch’s voice from behind me.
“Hey, Pete,” he said. “Wait up a second.”
I turned to see Mitch double-timing. I stopped on the side of the path and resumed walking only when he had caught up to me.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “I was so shaken up last night, I realized later I never thanked you for saving my ass.”
“Oh, no big deal, really.”
“Hell it wasn’t. That guy—Frank is his name? That’s one big son of a bitch right there. It was pretty brave of you to throw yourself at him. No way I’d have the stones to do something like that.”
I just gave him a modest little shrug. “Big guys never expect a little guy is going to go after them. And when you do, they think you must be nuts, so they back off pretty fast. How you feeling this morning?”
“I’m okay,” he said, rubbing his neck. “A little sore, but it could have been worse. I got the sense from the way he was squeezing that he wasn’t even trying that hard. Don’t want to know what he could do if he really put his mind to it.”
He looked appropriately haunted.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” I said. “I talked to him last night and convinced him you had nothing to do with the inspection. Then I told him if he wanted to get to Mr. Dupree, he was going to have to go through me first. That scared him off good.”
I smiled. Mitch laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. Just like good buddies do.
“Well, I thought about it, and I wanted to give you a little thank-you,” he said. “Can you meet me in the card room at one o’clock?”
“Let me consult my calendar. Oh, I happen to have an opening then, yes.”
“Good,” he said, then added, “Come hungry.”
* * *
• • •
Three minutes before the appointed hour, I walked into the empty Randolph card room and took a seat at our regular table.
Mitch wasn’t there, nor did he show up at one o’clock, nor at five after. I hung out anyway. It wasn’t like I had pressing engagements elsewhere.
Finally, at about ten after one, he came hurrying around the corner.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “A damn CO came into the kitchen and wouldn’t leave, so I had to wait before I could sneak out with this.”
He unzipped his jacket and pulled out a rectangular silver-colored tin, then slid the lid off and set it in front of me. There was parchment paper on top. But my nose told me what was inside before my eyes did.
Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
I lifted the paper to reveal the bounty. There were six of them, baked to a perfect golden brown. The chocolate glistened, still gooey from the oven. My mouth flooded with saliva.
It wasn’t that the food at Morgantown was bad. It was edible enough. But this? I breathed in the delectable odor again and may have moaned a little.
“We cooked up a batch for that VIP who’s coming in,” Mitch said. “Wouldn’t you know a few just wouldn’t fit on the platter they asked for? One of the guys in the kitchen worked in a bakery as a kid. He won’t share the recipe, but it’s pretty dynamite.”
I was about to dive in. And then I remembered I wasn’t Tommy Jump.
I was Pete Goodrich, who was torn up from being away from his family, just like Mitch; Pete Goodrich, a husband and father whose greatest ambition in life had been to make a happy home for his wife and children; Pete Goodrich, who missed the simple pleasures of life on the outside, pleasures he wouldn’t get to experience for another eight long years.
Pleasures like chocolate chip cookies.
I can cry on command. Most experienced actors can. In a perfect world, when you cry onstage you’re doing so because you’ve become enmeshed in the character you’re playing and alive in the world being created. Depending on how good the writing is, I can sometimes summon that kind of emotion for a part.
And maybe Meryl Streep can do that all the time. As for the rest of us? Summoning tears eight times a week can require a little method acting.
So call me a hack, but I had a pet hamster, Mudpie, who was my best little buddy for four years before he went off to that big running wheel in the sky. I was nine, and it was my first experience of death. I cried for an entire day.
And even now, when I think about poor little Mudpie . . .
“Sorry,” I said, the tears already starting to roll down my cheeks.
“You okay?” Mitch said, alarmed. “You’re not allergic to chocolate, are you?”
“No, no. I just . . . my wife, Kelly, she used to make me chocolate chip cookies for my birthday. She’d serve them to me all warm like this. And I . . . You know, you try to just hunker down and forget everything and get into the routine around here, and most of the time I can do it. But then . . . Sometimes, it’s the little things, you know?”
I dabbed my sleeves against my face.
“I’m so sorry,” Mitch said. “We’ve all been there, friend. I keep hearing about how much better this place is than real prison. But it’s still prison.”
“Damn right,” I said, making a show of trying to compose myself.
Then, like I was embarrassed about having wept and was trying to deflect attention from myself, I said, “So what about you? What’s the thing you miss the most?”
“You mean besides the obvious?” he said with a grin.
“Yeah, besides that.”
He got a faraway look. “This is going to sound strange, but I miss, just, driving so
mewhere with my family.”
“Driving.”
“Yeah. Having the four of us together in the car. Maybe we’re planning to stop somewhere along the way and grab a meal. Maybe we’re traveling late at night, trying to get somewhere for the holidays. It didn’t really matter. There was just something about it. You know everyone’s okay, because they’re right there. You could reach out and touch them if you wanted to. You have kids?”
“Three of them,” I said reflexively.
“Yeah, so you know. You spend so much of your time as a family being pulled in this direction or that. One person’s over there and another person’s over there and you’re always worried about what might be happening to them, or worried they might be worried about you, or I don’t know. When you’re not with each other, a part of you is in the wrong place. But then finally you’re in the car, and you’re all going somewhere together so you know you’re where you’re supposed to be. It’s like you’re this perfect little unit and nothing in the whole world can stop you.”
I took in a deep breath and let it go. I was thinking about Amanda and the family she was growing, projecting to the life we would soon have.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “Mine are little, five, three, and one, so—”
“So even getting them in the car is a triumph. I remember those years.”
“Well, right,” I said. “But once they’re all in? And you get them all buckled? And then you get on the way, and you turn the heat up a little, and you get some soft music playing, and they all fall asleep?”
“Ohhh. Best feeling ever.”
“You know it.”
And there we were, two dads sharing the small joys of fatherhood. Mitch touched the corners of his eyes with his palms, stopping tears I couldn’t yet see, then gave his head a shake.
“Speaking of the best feeling ever,” he said, “warm chocolate chip cookies have to rank in there somewhere, so let’s dig in before they get cold, what do you say?”
“Great idea.”
“Good man. Show me how it’s done.”
I reached into the tin and lifted out the one closest to me. It was heavy for its size, always a promising sign for a cookie—weight being a proxy for butter saturation. Then I slid it into my mouth and felt a minor explosion as the bitterness of the chocolate collided with the sweetness of the sugar.
“Oh my God,” I gushed, my eyes closed.
“Not bad, huh?”
“Amazing.”
He grabbed one. We chewed in silence, each of us savoring this small escape from the dreariness of incarceration. I might have been imagining it, but I swear Mitch was enjoying my delight as much as he was his own.
It was a rare trait to find in any man, much less one you had met in prison. And it was difficult to square the man contentedly munching cookies, talking about how much he loved family road trips, with a guy who could do the bidding of one of the most barbaric criminal syndicates on earth. I knew it was possible for both to coexist. Human beings are nothing if not complex monkeys.
Still, I had to admit—for whoever he was before he arrived here—I actually liked the Mitch Dupree who was now at FCI Morgantown. Which was nice.
One less thing I had to pretend.
CHAPTER 31
Brock texted two days later, on a Saturday morning. There was a new Korean fusion restaurant in Fort Lee that was supposedly out-of-this-world dynamite. Was Amanda free?
And, well, of course she was.
They didn’t finish it off with dancing this time. He took her down to a park in Edgewater, where they enjoyed a walk along the Hudson River, gabbing as they took in the New York skyline.
On Sunday, he proposed they go to El Museo del Barrio in Harlem. Amanda was so happy to have something to do—and so enjoying Brock’s company—she pretended like she hadn’t already seen the new exhibit there.
Before long, they were spending all kinds of time with each other. It was one of those friendships that went from zero to besties in five seconds flat, as sometimes happened when two people just clicked.
If it was a weekend, they’d plan a full day—breakfast at a bakery in Wayne, followed by a stop at a gallery in the city, followed by a drive up to an out-of-the-way restaurant in Connecticut that was reported to be a foodie paradise. Other times it was more spontaneous. He had heard about a local band that was playing somewhere that night. Or they’d go dancing. Or do karaoke. He couldn’t make a whole room swoon like Tommy, but he could hit enough high notes that most pop songs were in his range.
They celebrated their birthdays together, turning it into a three-day extravaganza: November 9 was his birthday; November 11 was her birthday; and November 10 was what they called interbirthday, a day of joint merrymaking.
When they didn’t go out, they’d stay in. She’d drive to his loft apartment and cook dinner with him. Or he’d come over to Barb’s place and they’d watch a movie.
Or—and this was quickly becoming one of Amanda’s favorite things to do—they’d go to his family’s jewelry studio, which was seldom used after hours. It had all the equipment needed to create new pieces. Once Amanda mastered a few basic techniques, her artistic talents quickly took over. She worked exclusively with silver and cheap gems, even as Brock pushed her to toy around with more expensive materials. He even made noises about having DeAngelis Jewelers commission her to create custom pieces, perhaps even a line of them.
The Amanda Porter Collection. It had a nice sound to it.
And, sure, Brock’s family thought they were together. So did Amanda’s art friends, on the rare occasions when she and Brock would hang out with them in the city. They’d wait until Brock was out of the room, shoot her sly grins, and ask what was really going on with her and this tall, totally gorgeous guy.
Whatever. Amanda didn’t let it bother her. She knew the truth: They were just friends.
Brock never acted like he was interested in anything else. He didn’t make veiled passes at her or get handsy when he had been drinking. Sure, he’d sometimes kiss her on the cheek when they greeted each other. But only in the same way you’d kiss your favorite aunt. And he’d hug her when they said good-bye. But only in the same way you’d hug your sister.
Because not only were Brock and Amanda friends, Brock and Tommy were friends. Brock would never two-time his buddy like that.
Also, Brock knew she was pregnant. She had to explain why she never drank with him. And, the first trimester being what it was, she’d sometimes fall asleep fifteen minutes after they started watching television. She’d wake up three hours later to find Brock had draped a blanket over her.
Barb didn’t seem to care when Amanda came home late from her time with Brock. Nor did she comment that Amanda was sleeping until eleven almost every day to make up for the late nights. Nor did she remark on the dearth of painting that was happening. Barb was giving Amanda space for a change.
And Tommy? When she—or, rather, “Kelly”—explained that she and Brock had started hanging out a lot, he said he was happy she was making a new friend, like it was no big deal at all.
Because it wasn’t.
CHAPTER 32
For the next few weeks, in this place governed by routines, all I did was slip into a new, comfortable one—with Mitch Dupree at the center of it.
It was like some kind of weird buddy flick where everyone wore khaki. We played cards at night. During the afternoon, we’d wander out to the bocce court, or head to the gym, or find a movie on TV. We ate our meals together more often than we didn’t.
Mitch seemed to enjoy mentoring me, so I allowed him to. If nothing else, it was improving my financial literacy. He also liked to tell stories, which worked for me, because I liked to listen to them. You never knew when he might spill some useful detail about, say, the best place to hide valuables. I even feigned interest when he talked about golf—and, b
elieve me, there are few things less interesting than listening to a man talk about his struggles to conquer his putting yips.
Whatever he felt like discussing, I was there to listen. I was just good ol’ Pete, the best pal any guy could want, having slid seamlessly into the void that Doc’s departure had created. Mitch and Rob Masri were starting to become friends as well, which was convenient. We were one contented little prison family.
Meanwhile, my family outside prison was struggling. Amanda had proposed that we give up trying to talk every day, because that was leading to nothing but a string of short, futile conversations. Our new thing was that we have a weekly call every Friday afternoon, so we could have a longer, more meaningful dialogue.
Except that wasn’t working either. We’d run through the usual topics—how my cousin Amanda was doing with the baby (fine), how her painting was going (poorly), what she was reading or what movie she and my high school buddy Brock DeAngelis had watched most recently (whatever)—and then we’d run out of steam. I could tell myself it was because we were worried about who was listening, now that I had both the Bureau of Prisons and the Federal Bureau of Investigation potentially eavesdropping on us. But the truth was, neither of us had much to say. There were these long pauses where I could practically feel us becoming more estranged.
I didn’t share my concerns with Masri or anyone else, because I knew they would just tell me to get used to it—and that it would likely get worse. Morgantown was rife with stories of guys who had gone in with what they thought were solid relationships, only to become disabused of that notion.
Jerry Strother was one of them. He made a nasty, offhanded comment one night at poker about his wife. Only later did Mitch provide context. About three months after Jerry arrived, his wife rather unapologetically began cheating on him with his best friend. She told Jerry she had needs, and if she had to go elsewhere to meet them, it was his fault for getting locked up.
Amanda would never do that me. Still, there was no question that if being long-distance was our first true test, we were struggling along with a D-minus.
