Paul Cleave - Blood Men

There are two things separating my dad from the morgue. The first is two hospital floors of concrete and steel. The second is ten millimeters of good luck. Schroder and Landry take me down into the basement of the hospital and I don’t question it. I go along for the ride-which is a straight drop in an elevator that opens up into a corridor about a quarter of the temperature of the ones upstairs. We walk in the same order as before, with me in the middle. The corridor reminds me of the prison, concrete block with no Christmas fanfare, a painted line on the floor to follow. There’s an office door and then there’s a large set of double doors. We go through the double doors and the air gets even colder.

I’ve never been to the morgue before. Never seen for real what I’ve seen in dozens of variations of crime shows and movies over the years, the stark white tiles and dull-bladed instruments, saws with archaic designs even though they’re modern, sharp edges with only one purpose in mind. Then you have to factor in the morgue guys-people sympathetic, people who seem to take each death personally, people making jokes while munching through sandwiches and pointing out the “this and that” of anatomy.

A man in his early to mid fifties walks over, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. He sighs deeply. “Been a long day,” he says, and I can’t help but glance at my watch and note that it’s not even two o’clock yet. “You here to see our newest entry?”

“That him over there?” Schroder asks, and he nods toward a body on a gurney, naked and grey and looking nothing like I remember him looking last night.

“That’s him. Haven’t got to him yet. I’m running behind, what with all the Christmas suicides beginning earlier every year. I swear as soon as malls put up their trees and tinsel, people start jumping from bridges.”

“’Tis the season,” Landry says.

“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Schroder says.

“Take your time,” he answers, then wanders off to an office, slowly shaking his head.

We walk over to the body. For a few moments it’s hard to believe it’s the same man. The tattoos seem diluted against his skin. His eyes are closed and the wound in his hand is open. It’s ugly and raw and runs from the center of his palm right out the side. It would have hurt a hell of a lot if he’d lived. The edges of it have blackened.

“Is this the man you think I killed?” I ask.

“Nobody said we think you killed him,” Landry says.

“You can cut the bullshit,” I say. “So why are we here?”

“We were in the neighborhood,” Schroder answers. “And I thought it would be good for you.”

“In what way?”

“This could as easily have been you,” he says.

“No. It couldn’t have been. I didn’t do this to him.”

“I thought we were cutting the bullshit,” he says. “Look, Eddie, you have to know you’re messing with the wrong people here. I don’t mean the cops, I mean these people,” he says, and he points down at Kingsly. “This man is lying here today, but tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be you. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.”

“Then it’s time you were straight and tell us what happened.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I say.

“You sure of that?” Schroder asks.

They lead me back upstairs and out into the sun. We drive about two hundred meters until they turn in the opposite direction to my house. After a few more minutes it becomes pretty evident where we’re heading. I don’t complain. It’s like we’re taking a day trip, just driving around the city. The car ride to the prison is about the same as the ride to the hospital. Same amount of silent conversation, same amount of heat being thrown about by the air-conditioning. About the only thing different is the scenery. Farms with burned-off grass. Large fields full of dull animals burning in the sun, each of them with bad futures, slaughterhouses and dinner tables the only thing on their horizon. I can’t imagine driving a tractor around, plowing fields, milking cows, getting up early and going to bed early, working the land, the soil under your nails, backbreaking work-but maybe if I could have imagined it five years ago I would have lived on a farm with Jodie, away from the city, away from banks and bank robbers.

These are the same sights convicts see if they manage to run free-but people don’t really have to escape from jail when they’re getting released so soon anyway, the big revolving-door policy kicking prisoners back into the public because there’s no room for them, or no real desire to buck the system and say enough is enough.

We pull up further past the visitors’ entrance and walk across the hot asphalt to a back door. The pavement between us and the work crews and cranes shimmers-it looks like a layer of water has pooled across it.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Schroder says.

“Why? You think coming out here is good for me too?”

We’re given an escort through the maze of concrete corridors that have to be almost ten degrees cooler than the outside world. We make our way to general population where the temperature heats back up to hospital temperatures. I can smell the sweat and the hate and the blood and the evil of the inmates as we walk past their cells. The cells mostly have concrete-block fronts with heavy metal doors in the middle, all of them ovens in this heat. There are narrow gaps at head height to look through, and at the moment many of those gaps are full of eyes staring out at me.

From behind the doors prisoners yell at us, some ignore us, others ask for cigarettes; the lucky ones have probably passed out from the heat. We reach my father’s cell. It’s the same as any of the others we’ve passed. It’s kind of surreal to see what my dad has called his home for the last twenty years. A concrete bunker with a metal door, a single metal bed bolted to the floor with an old mattress on top, a couple of posters taped up on the wall to add color, some books piled on the floor, everything neat and tidy, a stainless-steel toilet in the corner. I stand outside with four prison guards as Schroder and Landry begin tossing it over, turning everything upside down and pulling it apart. They take their time about it even though there aren’t many places to search, letting me wait in the corridor, the inmates in my local proximity all talking to me. One of them calls me Eddie, then he tells the others who I am and they all start saying the same thing. They’re all telling me they’re going to be seeing me soon. One of them eventually gets around to wolf-whistling at me, and the others laugh. All I can see are their eyes staring out at me, and occasionally some fingers come out from the gaps too. This is why Schroder brought me here-to give me the other preview of my future. He’s telling me I’m either going to end up in the morgue or in prison. I imagine spending twenty minutes inside one of those cells and the idea isn’t pleasant. I wonder how my dad survived. I wonder what kept him alive, what kept him from tying his bedsheet into a noose.

The warden shows up. He’s in a suit that probably cost all of a hundred bucks, and he has a neutral sick-of-the-same-shit look about him-like my dad almost getting murdered can’t muster up a single ounce of excitement in him. He’s in his midfifties and uses the facial expressions he’s learned over all those years to look at me with complete contempt. Without saying a word to me, he heads into the cell and directs his wrath at Schroder.

“Who the hell said you could bring a civilian in here?” he asks, loud enough for most of the prisoners in the wing to hear. “Are you insane? This is an absolute breach of policy and will cost you your badge.”