Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

It was going to be a long day.

Florida State Prison (Raiford, Florida)

The five men in the cage should have felt crowded, but familiarity of circumstance had long ago erased any such sensation, leaving each instead with a certain economy of emotion. The old man in the wheelchair sat still as a heron, bearing the weight of one who has made peace with the narrow dimensions of his life. A brown rubber surgical tube snaked out from his pant cuff, draining cloudy urine into the clear plastic bag hanging from the chair. With some effort he braced himself and carefully shifted his weight, his handcuffs forcing him to awkwardly use his elbows.

“I ain’t even going to talk to him,” the tall, thin, black-haired man said, showing his bad teeth. “He can’t make me talk, ya know? Ain’t no rule says I gotta talk to him.”

“You’ll talk to him,” the old man grunted, shifting his weight again. The metal frame of the chair creaked in protest.

Cotton stood in one corner, mildly irritated with the cloying, caustic odor of institutional disinfectant that permeated the entire hallway. He idly watched the black Cuban sitting silently on the bench, intent on his chore of hand-rolling cigarettes with his even blacker tobacco-stained fingers. Occasionally, Cotton glanced up the hallway at the closed door behind which, he knew, sat the prison investigator. To Cotton’s right was a smooth young man with straight blond hair cut in perfect bangs, his delicate fingers absently picking at the worn, knotty pine bench running around the inside of the cage.

“I’ve been through this shit before,” the tall man said, waving his cuffed hands for emphasis, momentarily ceasing to be self-conscious about the shiny scar tissue covering both arms.

“It was horrible,” the blond boy whispered to nobody in particular.

The old man snorted. “Get used to it. I’ve been here at Florida State Prison over thirty years, and this one wasn’t no more horrible than any other.” The man paused, looking around before adding, “More or less.”

“It was still horrible.”

“That’s a cliché.”

“Huh?”

“A cliché, horrible. Hell, life is horrible. Why should death be any different?”

“Well, I don’t ever want to see anything like that again. All that blood. And the moaning. It was horrible. Just horrible. And I hope to God I don’t spend thirty years in a place like this. I would kill myself first.”

The boy stared at the floor as though he was unable to conceal from himself his own unimportance. He had a refined, gentle voice, pleasing to the ear, its delicate tenderness incongruous in this cold, steel-reinforced kingdom. Cotton secretly enjoyed the sound, much as he once delighted in the lusciously perfumed letter a guard had mistakenly passed out to him. Cotton recalled how he rubbed the scented pages across his pillow before returning the letter, and how that night in bed the feminine fragrance stirred long-suppressed memories, flooding him with powerful emotions. Cotton wept that night, so many years ago — that is why he recalled it so clearly. It was the only time in his adult life he had cried. Or perhaps the fourth.

“You don’t set out to do thirty years, son. That’s how they get you. You start out with hope — that you’ll be out in a few, see your girlfriend, your wife.” The old man paused, glancing at the boy. “Or maybe just see your mom and dad. You know: get out, go straight, start all over. But they don’t let you out. So it just grows on you, one day at a time, little here, little there, until one day you wake up and the hope is all gone, and all that’s left behind is you.”

“I heard you were once on the row. Two times, in fact. Is that true?” Even the clinking of the boy’s shackles somehow sounded delicate.

“Yup. That’s a fact. But they keep letting me off. Hell, I only killed convicts.” The old man laughed hoarsely, then began to cough and sputter.

“You should put your faith in God,” the Cuban interjected as he licked another cigarette paper. “If you really and truly believe — if you have the faith — God will see you through.”

“Yeah, right,” the thin man said, jerking his hand up. “Where was God this morning when Cisco cut Bobby’s guts out and left them smeared all over the dayroom floor? Huh? Bobby was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Who does?” the boy wondered aloud.

“Do you believe it matters how you die?” the Cuban asked.

“Well, all I’m saying is, God don’t seem to be too concerned about shit like this, about convicts like us. Shit happens all the time,” said the thin man.

“ My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, sayeth the Lord. God was there. He saw it all,” the Cuban intoned.

“Seeing it and doing something about it, that’s two different things. That’s all I’m saying. God could have stopped it. Why didn’t God stop it?”

“ You could have stopped it. Why didn’t you stop it?” The Cuban cocked his head.

“Bobby wasn’t really my friend. I didn’t even know him all that well.”

“Are we not our brother’s keeper?” The Cuban stared at the thin man. “We are all instruments of God’s will,” he added softly, turning his face.

Cotton’s fingers absently brushed at the halo of thin gray hair that crowned his head. It seemed as if his thick mane had fallen out almost overnight, though in truth it had taken years. Cotton stared at the thin man’s arms, which he knew had been burned when another convict threw lighter fluid on him some years ago. Cotton saw it happen. The convict thought the thin man had stolen something from his cell, but later it came out that the thin man was not the thief. The skin on the arms was parchment-thin, shiny as wax, with purplish white gnarls streaking from shoulders to wrists like some hideous octopus trying to skulk away. Cotton knew it could have been fixed up a lot better, with skin grafts or something, but that did not happen. It was like when Cotton fell off the kitchen roof fourteen years earlier while carrying shingles up a broken ladder. The convict orderly set his shattered ankle badly, and when he finally saw a real doctor five weeks later, it was too late — or too much trouble — to do it right. Now the joint was fused and he walked with a painful limp, his ankle making a clicking sound with each step.

“Cisco killed him over a ten-dollar pocket debt. Man, you don’t kill nobody over ten lousy dollars,” the thin man said.

The boy raised his questioning eyes.

“How much do you kill someone for, then?” the old man asked, cocking his head.

“I’m just saying.”

“All this talk of killing. It’s so negative,” the boy said softly, mostly to himself. “Please stop.”

“It wasn’t about no ten dollars, any more than Jackson got killed over a piece of fried chicken, or that guy who got killed in the gym for stepping on some other guy’s shirt. It was about respect. He disrespected Cisco in some kind of way. Must have. Or at least Cisco thought he did. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. It happens.” The old man shifted his weight again and the wheelchair groaned, its spokes popping loudly.

“Respect God. Only God is worthy of true respect.” The Cuban stared ahead.

“Yeah, great advice. That will get you killed in here,” the thin man said. “I say respect the big knife and big balls.”

The Cuban glanced around the cage.

Thus sayeth the high and exalted one who

inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I

dwell in a high and holy place, but I also