Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“Though I travel through the valley of death,” mumbles the priest between tearful gasps, “I shall fear no evil.”

The rebel inmate carries a steel pipe in his hand like a war club. He chants woo-woo-woo and dances that Indian dance all around the crying, praying chaplain. The rest of the inmates break out in laughter.

“Fear this!” they scream. “Save yourself, Mister Righteous Man!” they shout.

The rebel inmate dances and chants. He brings one foot up slowly and lets it down, then brings the opposite foot up and lets it down. His movements are slow, deliberate, and smooth.

He stops dancing suddenly. Just like that.

He coughs up a rubbery hawker from deep inside his nasal passages. He rolls the hawker around his mouth for a while until I want to gag on just the thought of it. Then he positions his mouth over the priest’s head and lets loose with the wad of yellow-green spit. When the mission is accomplished, the inmate stands up straight, takes a step or two back, and brings that metal pipe down hard on the priest’s head. It’s then that the priest stops crying, stops praying. He takes on a wide-eyed look of surprise, as if something inside his body and soul has just snapped. And it has, along with his entire cranial cap.

The priest smiles a peaceful smile. He releases a slight breath. A puddle of blood oozes up from the opening in his skull like oil from a well, and for a split second even the rebel inmates are perfectly silent, as though a church service is about to be performed in their honor. A moment or two later, the priest lets loose with a gentle sigh and falls flat on his face.

IN THE DREAM MIKE Norman sits behind his desk in a darkened office with only a red-and-white neon light flickering outside the Venetian blinds. He is pouring brandy into his I LOVE MY JOB! coffee mug. I see the word NOT! on the bottom of the mug when he lifts it high and drinks, allowing the booze to spill over the rim and run down the sides of his narrow face onto his white button-down, soaking it like a layer of sweat.

Laid out on Mike’s desk is a plastic baggie, the word EVIDENCE printed in white letters against a background of baby blue just below the seal. The baggie is filled with Logan’s.38, six loose rounds, and the key to his cuffs. Suddenly Norman has the phone to his ear. His hands tremble. “I’ve got what you need, Wash,” he says. “But it’s gonna cost you.”

Mike sits back in his chair, reaches down between his legs, grabs a brown paper shopping bag. He puts the bag on his lap. His eyes grow wide and wet. Tears start pouring down his face, off his chin.

“I’m sorry, Keeper,” he says, reaching into the paper bag with his right hand, pulling out Fran’s head.

Now it’s me who’s crying, only there are no more tears…

The dream shifts to my second-floor office in Green Haven.

Val sits in my chair, her stocking feet up on the desk. She smiles, holds her open arms out for me. Then she is gone and now it’s Robert Logan who sits behind my desk, laughing. On one side of me stands Schillinger, his big hands planted firmly in the loose pockets of his Burberry trench coat. On the other side stands A. J. Roy ale, the butcher of Newburgh. He wears a white surgical mask over his mouth. He holds out a fisted hand. The hand is covered with a rubber glove. He opens his fingers slowly to reveal an extracted molar, the long roots stained with blood…

And then they are all gone, just like that.

Now I stand only a few feet away from the banks of a gravel pit. Positioned on the very edge of the pit is a woman I do not recognize. The woman is naked with dark teardrop eyes, shoulder-length hair, and chiseled cheekbones. My insides feel like melting. I want her, bad. I try to reach out for her, but I can’t quite touch her. It’s then that the gravel pit fills with water. The pit seems to become as wide and as deep as an ocean. The woman looks at me with an expressionless face. She smiles, whispers “Keeper. “

Using her left hand, she gently brushes back her brown hair to expose a heart-shaped tattoo. She turns and dives into the water, begins swimming away. I jump in after her, but instead of floating, I feel tentacles that rise up from the bottom of the pit, wrap themselves around my legs, and pull me down, deeper and deeper, until the surface is beyond reach and all my air is gone…

The cement-walled holding cell measured twelve feet by ten feet. I’d walked it out at least thirty times since I’d woken up after having been tossed in it early that morning. Side wall to side wall, and back wall to bars. In the center of the battleship-gray concrete floor were two benches positioned side to side, their full length facing the front of the cage. The bench tops were made of heavy oak worn down smooth from age and use. Tubular steel supports served as legs. The steel supports had been bolted into the concrete floor with heavy-duty lugs.

I wasn’t alone.

The man in the holding cell was still asleep when the guard slipped me inside and unlocked my cuffs. He was an older man, somewhere between sixty and seventy. He lay on his side on one of the benches, his knees tucked up into his chest. His cupped hands were stuffed into his crotch. He had a wrinkled, chalky-white face and looked like the living dead. He snored, and when he exhaled, his breaths rattled against the concrete walls. Once, he mumbled something I could not understand, and it wasn’t until I came close to him that I could smell the whiskey on his breath.

Because of the hour of my arrest, SOP dictated that I’d have to stay in the holding cell until my arraignment, which was scheduled for nine that morning. In the meantime I sat on the cell floor with my back pressed up against the wall and listened to the echo of the old man’s rattling breaths. I waited for my lawyer, Tony Angelino, to show up, along with Val, who would bail me out if the judge demanded it. I lit the first one of the morning and fingered the welt on my forehead and the scratches on my wrists.

Eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning.

I’d been up for nearly six hours, despite the hour nap I’d caught when they first tossed me in here after tagging, printing, and photographing me.

I listened to the workings of the jail as if they were familiar, and they were. The closing and opening of iron gates; the slap of footsteps on the concrete; the sound of muffled, nearly indiscernible voices coming from loudspeakers that echoed in the concrete corridors; the smell of urine and sweat; other invisible prisoners locked in steel cells, shouting to one another, their voices mixing together like blood and poison.

Guard: You there, stand up against them bars.

Prisoner: Eat me, screw.

Guard: I hear you, boy.

I should have been at home in an iron house, with the disgruntled sounds and the greasy, worm smells. Prison was my home away from home. I’d spent more time surrounded by cement, steel, and razor wire than I’d spent with my wife.

Listen, the outside of a prison cell was familiar ground.

Inside was not.

The drunk tossed and turned on the narrow bench. How he managed to make complete turns on a bench that could not have been more than twelve inches wide was a testimony to either his sense of balance or his experience.

When he woke up suddenly, he opened his eyes wide and took a deep breath. He sat up straight, removed his hands from out of his crotch, brought them up to his face. He rubbed his eyes, ran his hands over his cheeks, and massaged his entire face as if jump-starting the circulation in his congested veins and capillaries. He hacked, coughed up some loose phlegm, and spit it out onto the concrete floor. It was then, just after he spit that wad, that he realized he wasn’t alone.