Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

Rios hesitated. “Uh. . the warden’s real busy.” The man’s head drooped and he scratched the day-old stubble along his jawline.

“Then you handle it,” Al ordered.

Rios’s head drooped further. He began to speak in a low tone, but stopped. Clearing his throat, he raised his voice. “I can’t handle it. Listen, I’ll put in another request with the warden.”

“Thanks, L.T.”

The lieutenant closed the chuck-hole and turned the key. Al sensed that Rios had wanted to tell him something, something he wasn’t supposed to be sharing. A fearful creeping started up in his belly.

Al lay on his bunk, eyes closed. He allowed himself to drift back in time, long before his life in FCI Oxford. It was something he didn’t indulge in often — he had trouble discerning which memories were real and which were manufactured.

In the shade of a tall tree a small child plays with a dog whose name is long forgotten. The boy’s father stands unsteadily in the doorway of a nearby shed, bottle in one hand and cigarette in the other. He silently beckons the boy (there’s never any sound here).

Al watches as a miniature version of himself enters the darkened shed.

A teenager with a buzz-cut sits at a scarred desk in reform school. He’s not sure why he’s there. He remembers a bottle and the magic oblivion it contained.

The boy is no longer at his desk, but instead stands near a window in the chaplain’s office. He’s told his mother is dead. His eyes are dry; the boy becomes a man.

Al feels tears prick the corners of his eyes.

A young husband dressed in workingman’s clothes argues with his beautiful young wife about their future — about children. She wants them, he doesn’t. The scene shifts to the young husband clutching a precious bundle to his chest, terrified at the prospect of having to protect his son.

Fear fills Al’s chest with water. He’s drowning.

In a flash, the baby is no longer in his arms. Now divorced, the no-longer-young husband sits at a small table in a shabby apartment and waits for his ex-wife to drop off his boy for the weekend. Gazing out the window he sees an old rusted Ford LTD — his father’s car — roll to a stop. Unease sprouts in his gut. The unease turns to horror as the passenger door opens and his son dashes toward the apartment building, his tiny face a mask of shame and fear.

Al feels himself stumbling toward a blackened pit — a pit of despair and darkness. He tries to wake himself, to end the nightmare, but he continues to free-fall into what seems to be a hole with no bottom.

Thirty-five years old. In a rundown state prison for an assault he doesn’t remember committing. Aggravated, they tell him, with a broken bottle. Magic oblivion. He’ll be almost forty by the time he gets out.

Al’s hands clench and unclench rapidly. His shoulders twitch and cords stand out in his neck. He watches as his father’s bedroom materializes out of the darkness and he sees his former self standing at the foot of the bed.

This version of Al is covered in sweat and something else that tastes like copper. The room smells of rust and shit. His shoulders tremble and in one hand he grasps the splintered remains of an axe handle. Hair, blood, and bits of flesh are embedded in the tattered end that once held a blade. He drops the wood and reaches into his pocket. Removing a folded piece of paper, he rubs it between his bloody fingers. A suicide note .

It’s the note Al had found next to his son’s lifeless body.

“Hey, you awake?” Martin asked, his voice snapping Al back to the present. “You were thrashing around a lot, calling out.” He gave Al a knowing look.

Al, breathless and covered in sweat, could see that Martin was lighting a joint with a battery from Al’s radio and a small strip of foil. After inhaling he held the joint out to Al.

Al inhaled, welcoming the erasure, and passed it back.

After a few trips the joint was done and both men lay on their bunks enjoying the pleasant lift from the marijuana.

“You’ve been down here eleven years,” Martin said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah, eleven years.”

“Man, that’s pretty hard.”

Al shrugged. “You get used to it. You adapt. A man can get used to almost anything.”

“You’re here permanently.” Another statement.

“Yeah, I got a life sentence.”

“No, I mean the SHU.”

“I got in a fight and used a knife — one year, disciplinary seg. That was eleven years ago. The last ten I’ve been here cause I wanna be.”

“You don’t want to go back to the compound?”

Al was silent for a moment. “I think about it sometimes, but I’ve got everything I need here. Books, radio, an hour of rec if I want it, meals delivered, a shower every couple days.”

Martin looked at him. “You don’t miss kickin’ it with the fellas once in a while?”

Al was a long time in answering. “Yeah, sometimes I do, but I don’t run into too many people I get along with,” he lied, knowing his standard party line was nothing more than a cop-out, an excuse for his purposeful lack of interaction with others. Too often surface relationships led to close relationships and close relationships led to self-examination. He was better off just coasting along and not having to think or feel too much. Better to play the game, even if it was only with himself; to ask no questions and have none asked of him. Better to wait out the end alone.

He’d used the party line for so many years, he’d begun to believe it. Tonight, though, with the added mellowness of the reefer, he was having difficulty holding on to the con he was playing on himself. Drifting, Al’s mind latched onto an idea that carried with it the benefit of a one-night stand — namely, that the second party would be gone the next day.

“Hey, you play cribbage?”

“I play everything.”

Al reached beneath the mattress for a deck of cards.

“Got anything to gamble?” Martin asked.

The question cut through his mental fog like a razor and Al sobered instantly. “That’s not funny.”

Martin smiled and took the deck from Al’s slack hand. “You’re right, it’s not.” The cards flashed and flew as he rifled them back and forth between his hands. “Besides, you can’t gamble what you’ve already lost, right?”

Al felt an avalanche of misery and despair fall upon his shoulders. Was there no end to this? He was tired — so drained that he said nothing.

“How about this?” Martin made a show of pretending to think. An expression that could almost pass for mercy settled on his face. “If you win, I go. If I win, I stay.”

Al reached for the cards.

The lights in cell 301 did not go out until well after three a.m.

The next morning, shortly after breakfast trays were returned, three sets of footsteps were heard moving down the range — two pairs of boots and one pair of dress shoes.

“Warden,” said Al. He looked at Martin and their eyes held an unspoken message.

From the hall came the warden’s voice: “Open it. Not the chuck-hole, the door.”

“But we have to cuff him up.”

“Never mind that, just open the door.”

“Yes sir.” A key turned in the lock and the door slid open.

“Webber!” called the warden. “What’s the problem here?” He was unusually short and made up for it by always speaking in a commanding voice.

Al looked at Martin again and then walked to the door. The two flanking guards stepped forward, inflated and aggressive, but the warden lifted a hand to stay them.

“Well?”

Sheepishly, head bowed and shoulders lowered, Al spoke in a voice barely audible. “Well, I was—”