Peter Abrahams - Bullet Point

Wyatt sat on the pavement, leaning against the Mustang. He felt his nose-crooked again. He took a deep breath, counted a silent one-two-three, and snapped his nose back into place. That hurt, but not as much as the first time.

Wyatt found a sweatshirt in the trunk of the car, changed into it. When the bleeding stopped, he picked up his books and went into the school. The hall monitor wrote him up for tardiness, two demerit points, and glanced once or twice at his nose.

Ms. Grenville passed quiz sheets down the rows.

“Quiz?” said the funny kid in back. “Can’t just give a quiz with no warning.”

“Warning’s a bit dramatic for a mere quiz, don’t you think?” said Ms. Grenville. “I made an announcement at the end of class yesterday, but perhaps not loudly enough.”

“What does it count for?” the funny kid said.

“The usual,” said Ms. Grenville. “Five percent of your final grade.”

“Two and a half,” said the funny kid. “That’s my final offer.”

Wyatt looked over the quiz. There were three questions.

1. What is the title of the play within the play? When the King asks Hamlet for the title, what does Hamlet tell him?

Ms. Grenville demanded whole sentences. Wyatt wrote:

The title of the play within the play is The Murder of Gonzago. Hamlet tells the king it’s The Mouse-trap.

2. At the end of Act Two, Hamlet says, “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil: and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.” What does he mean, and what does this have to do with the play within the play?

Wyatt wrote:

It means the ghost can’t be trusted, so Hamlet thinks up this plan to trap Claudius. The idea is about getting a-

Wyatt couldn’t think of the word he wanted, stopped right there, went to the next question.

3. What is the result of Hamlet’s plan? Do you consider it a success?

Wyatt wrote:

When the poison gets poured in the player king’s ear, Claudius, the real king, sort of loses it, so Hamlet knows to trust the ghost. Claudius is for sure the killer of Hamlet’s father. So it’s a success.

Although maybe you couldn’t really say, not until the end of the whole thing, and Wyatt hadn’t read past Act Three. Wyatt was wondering whether to add something about that when Ms. Grenville said, “Time.”

He passed in his sheet, realizing two things. First, he hadn’t gone back and erased the unfinished sentence on number two, where he’d been stuck on a word. Second, the word he’d been looking for: confession. He’d wanted to say: The idea is about getting a confession out of the king. But too late. Had he blown the quiz completely?

When Wyatt got back to Greer’s, she threw her arms around him and said, “How was school?”

“I’m going to go visit him,” Wyatt said.

“Sonny Racine?”

“Yeah.”

“Good idea,” Greer said. “What changed your mind?”

“I guess you were right.”

She took a long look at him. “Hey! What happened to your nose?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you in a fight?”

“No.”

She stroked the side of his nose, very gently.

You could walk into a prison, no problem. A sign over glass double doors read PUBLIC ENTRANCE. Wyatt entered and approached a desk where a woman in an olive green uniform was gazing at a computer screen.

“Uh,” he said. “The visitors’ room?”

The woman looked up. “You have an appointment?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Name?”

“Wyatt Lathem.”

The woman tapped at the keyboard, nodded slightly. “Visiting?” she said.

“Yeah,” said Wyatt. Like what else would he be doing here?

“Visiting who?” she said.

“Oh,” said Wyatt. “Sonny Racine.”

The woman made a mouse click. “Hours start at three today,” she said. She handed Wyatt a clipboard. “Fill this out.”

An unoccupied row of plastic seats, the kind all molded together, stood along one wall. Wyatt sat at one end, filled out the form-his name, his address (he used Greer’s), his arrest record (never), his relationship to the inmate. He thought for a long time, then wrote “family friend” and handed in the clipboard.

“Have a seat,” said the woman at the desk. “We’ll call you.”

Wyatt returned to his plastic seat and opened a magazine. A fragment of a potato chip fell out, the ruffled kind. Wyatt set the magazine aside.

At 2:45 a woman came in. She wore a jogging suit but didn’t look like a jogger. She was short and heavy, had a baby in her arms; another kid, maybe Cammy’s age, trailed behind. The woman sat down with a grunt, not at the far end of the row, what Wyatt would have done in her place, but just three or four seats away. The baby was sleeping-a girl; she already wore earrings. The other kid, a boy, kept going, headed for a fountain in the corner. The woman called out to him in Spanish, obviously telling him to come back, but he ignored her. When he got to the fountain, he found he was tall enough to push the lever that started the water flowing but too short to drink. He turned and said something to his mother. He had a very loud voice. The mother again told him to come back. The baby awoke and started fussing. The uniformed woman tapped her fingernail on the desk and said, “If you can’t keep it down, you’ll have to wait outside.”

Wyatt didn’t get to see how that played out, because a man in an olive green uniform came through a door on the other side of the room, picked up the clipboard, and said, “Wyatt Lathem?”

Wyatt rose and approached him. The man was short and muscular, had a neatly trimmed mustache and wore a badge that read SHIFT SUPERVISOR. “This way,” he said.

Wyatt followed him through the door and down a short corridor to a glassed-in booth. The uniformed man inside said, “License.”

Wyatt slid his license through the slot. The man took it, ran it through a scanner, checked a screen, tossed the license into a tray. “Wallet,” he said. “Keys, belt, anything metal.”

“Get it all back when you leave,” said the shift supervisor.

Wyatt nodded, but there was a problem already. The $200 was in his wallet, the plan being to give it back during the visit. How was he going to do that now? He had no idea, but he sensed that raising the issue wasn’t the way to go. In fact, he wanted to get out of the place already.

Wyatt handed everything over. The man in the booth dropped it all in the tray.

“This way,” said the shift supervisor, leading him to a metal detector. Wyatt walked through. Another green-uniformed man stood on the other side. “Arms up for the corrections officer, please,” said the supervisor. Wyatt raised his arms, got wanded.

He followed the supervisor down the corridor. A pool of water was spreading across the cement floor. “Plugging the toilets never gets old, for some reason,” the supervisor said. They avoided the wet section, came to a heavy steel door. The supervisor punched keys on a keypad and the door swung open. They went inside.

VISITING ROOM read a big notice on all four walls.

No physical contact of any kind. No food or drink. Appropriate clothing must be worn at all times. No miniskirts, halter tops, tank tops, short shorts. No exchange of any objects whatsoever. Violators will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This room is under constant video surveillance.

“Take a seat,” said the supervisor. Two rows of plastic seats, each backed against a wall, the seats a little different from in the first room-farther apart, three feet or so, and each row bolted to the floor. There was no one else in the room. Wyatt sat in the middle of the row opposite the door he’d come in through. The supervisor went to a second door, used the keypad, and left. As the door swing shut, Wyatt caught a snatch of someone yelling in Spanish.