George Pelecanos - The Way Home

Ali Carter and Chris Flynn were seated on the couch, and Ben Braswell was in the fake-leather chair with the rivets in the arms. Luther Moore and Lonnie Wilson were playing Ping-Pong. Lattimer, the old graybeard guard they called Shawshank, was in a hard-back chair too small for him. The boys liked him well enough for what he was, but they would not defer to him and give up a seat more suited to his age, size, and authority.

They could hear Lawrence Newhouse in the media room, arguing with a boy, trying to get time on the computer, an old, slow machine with a blinking cursor that sat next to a dot matrix printer. Lawrence’s tone was becoming more threatening by the sentence, but Lattimer was not moving from his chair.

“You better get in there, Shawshank,” said Luther. “Lawrence sound like he ready to blow.”

“Scott’s in there,” said Lattimer. Scott Stewart, a fellow guard, was built like a Minotaur. “He can handle it.”

“Scott’s swole,” said Ben.

“They need to get Bughouse out this unit,” said Ali. “Put him in Unit Twelve.”

“He ain’t that kind of bad,” said Lattimer. “Lawrence just be talkin, mostly.”

“Either get him out or put me somewhere else,” said Ali. “ ’Cause I cannot stand to be around that fool anymore.”

“Won’t be long till you’re gone anyway, young man,” said Lattimer, trying to make eye contact with Ali. “Stay focused on those books and walk that straight line. You keep doing what you been doing, you’ll be all right.”

“They can put me somewhere else,” said Lonnie Wilson, laying down his paddle, signaling to Luther that their game of table tennis was done. Both of them came to join the group but remained standing, as no one was about to move over and make room for them to sit.

“Where you want to go?” said Ben.

“Unit Six,” said Lonnie, running a hand across the crotch of his khakis. “What you think?”

Lattimer rolled his eyes. Unit 6 was the girls’ building, out in the woods somewhere, out of sight from the boys’ camp. It was on Pine Ridge acreage, surrounded by its own razor wire-topped fence. The conversation was about to go where it usually went this time of night.

“Boy,” said Lonnie, “I would punish the shit out them girls in Unit Six. I would be like a bull in one of them Chinese shops.”

“Don’t be runnin your fingers through their hair, though,” said Luther.

“I know it,” said Lonnie.

“They put razor blades in their braids!” said Luther.

“You don’t know nothin, Luther,” said Ali.

“I know enough not to touch their braids.”

“It’s a lot of gray girls they got out there, too,” said Lonnie.

“White Boy would like it out in Unit Six,” said Luther, and Chris felt warmth in his face.

“Them pale skins are runaways and hos, mostly,” said Lonnie. “But I got love for all the girls. I don’t care what they did to get locked up or what color their skin is. Shoot, I’ll even get with a Mexican. They pink to me, too.”

“What about, like, Asia girls?” said Luther.

“ ’Specially them. I’m all about equal opportunity.”

“If they got to squat to pee, you gonna take the opportunity,” said Luther, and he and Lonnie Wilson smiled and dapped each other up.

“Do they let those girls have dogs out there, Shawshank?” said Ben.

“Hell, no,” said Lattimer.

“Warden Colvin said we might get puppies,” said Ben.

“For real?” said Chris. He missed Darby.

“I saw Colvin today and he said we might. Every unit could have their own.”

“We could have us a pit,” said Luther. “Or a rot with a head big as a horse. Five would have a fierce-ass dog.”

“Nah,” said Ben. “It wouldn’t be a dog we’d use to fight. It would be like a pet.”

“Ya’ll ain’t getting no kind of dog,” said Lattimer. “Some of these boys in here, they’d torture those poor animals. And a lot of you are allergic to dogs and don’t even know it. You’d be surprised how many.”

“ ’Nother words, your people gonna try to stop it,” said Ali, looking hard at Lattimer.

“They’d be right to stop it. It’s not in my contract to pick up dog shit.”

“It’s not about dog shit,” said Ali. “It’s about keeping us low. Any time the superintendent try to do somethin nice for us, the guard union blocks him.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. You know it, too.”

“You’re a smart young man,” said Lattimer. “So I’m gonna tell you something, because I believe you can understand it. This ain’t no country club out here. Y’all are here for a reason. You’ve done wrong and now you here to learn and be reformed. You know what re-formed means? It means you were one thing, and then you get formed into something new. What the superintendent don’t seem to understand is, you boys need to learn consequences, not get rewarded for what you done. And that means you don’t get served ice cream sundaes after dinner or get to talk to fine young women during your reading class. And you sure don’t get the right to have no pets. You see your way out of here? You can eat all the ice cream and have all the women and dogs you want. That’s what law-abiding citizens get to do. But you ain’t that. Not yet. You got to earn that.”

A crashing sound came from the media room, and all turned their heads. Lawrence Newhouse was cursing, and struggling from the sound of it, and though they did not say it, the boys assumed his conflict was with the big guard, Scott. And then Lawrence came airborne out of the media room, with Scott moving strong toward him, and Lawrence was falling, and before he hit the ground Scott had grabbed his shirt and lifted him back up to give him more of what he’d already had. Scott threw him against a wall of shellacked cinder block. His face hit it pretty hard. Scott put Lawrence’s right arm behind his back and twisted it up, getting control of the young man.

“Boy, you just had to get on my last nerve,” said Scott, and he began to push Lawrence out toward the cells.

Most of the boys had lowered their eyes. None of them liked Lawrence, but when the guards won, it was like they had been robbed of a piece of their manhood, too.

As Lawrence passed he looked at Ali, who had not looked away, and said, “What the fuck you staring at, Holly?”

Ali said nothing. Lawrence spit a mouthful of blood in the direction of Ali and Chris. Scott hustled him down the hall.

“Bughouse always be tweakin,” said Luther Moore.

“That boy just angry,” said Lattimer.

Ben Braswell looked at Chris. “You think we might get a puppy, man?”

“We might,” said Chris, though he knew Ali was correct. The guards’ arm of the FOP union, which tended to fight any reforms the superintendent proposed, would find a way to stop the boys from having pets.

“You got a dog at home, right?” said Ben.

“Yeah,” said Chris.

“You’re lucky, ” said Ben. Chris could feel Ali’s knowing stare but did not look his way.

“Time for y’all to get to your bedrooms,” said Lattimer.

The boys got up from their seats without objection and headed to their cells.

As they walked, they could hear the old man still speaking to them, giving them his parting words of inspiration. “Another good day for you fellas. Another day closer to your goal. You get right with God, you gonna get right with yourselves.”

The boys went down the narrow hall, where Lattimer would wait until they entered their six-by-nine spaces, then use his Joliet key to lock the steel doors behind them. From his own cell, Lawrence Newhouse was alternately screaming and laughing. His anguished wail echoed in the hall.

“Ain’t no God in here,” said Ali.