Tim Green - Exact Revenge

“Where is he?” he continued, looking at his watch and then the door.

“Isn’t he always late?” Lexis asked.

“The troopers should be here by now, though,” Frank said, looking around. “Some of his people.”

Just then, a tall, professorial-looking man with gray hair and gold-rimmed glasses walked in wearing a blue suit and yellow tie. His name was Cornell Ricks, the deputy director of the Thruway Authority and Frank’s liaison to the governor’s office. Ricks saw Frank and approached him with open arms, giving Frank an awkward hug and a stiff pat on the back.

“Frank, congratulations,” he said. “Lexis, you too. I know you’re both very proud. I’m sorry the governor can’t make it. He sends his deepest regrets, but his wife isn’t feeling well at all.”

Ricks took Frank by the arm, lowered his voice, and said, “He’s very concerned, and he was glad that a family man like you would understand.”

Frank’s mouth was clamped tight and his face began to turn color. Finally, he took a deep breath and let it out through a small space between his lips.

Lexis stepped back and said, “I’ll go tell them we can sit down.”

She turned quickly away so she didn’t have to hear. The waiters had already filled the glasses at each table with red wine. Lexis stopped at a place by the wall and looked around before she picked up a glass and emptied it.

It warmed her empty stomach and she felt it quickly run up her center and calm her brain. She felt better already, and then she saw her boy across the room. The day she had him it looked like neither of them would make it, but now the photographer was lining him up next to Joe Namath, the two of them with their hands on the same football. Allen’s face was radiant. She sighed and emptied another wineglass. Her life wasn’t so bad.

Really, it wasn’t.

WHEN I WAKE, a thin light is seeping in from the dirty window across from my cell. A new start. As soon as I don’t cooperate, they’ll cover the front of my cell with a steel partition and I’ll live again in the darkness. I listen to the sound of my own breathing. In a way, the darkness is better. Then I can’t see how small my world really is. I will wait until tonight, though, before I do anything bad. Bluebeard is on the three to eleven shift and I will save my spit, a thick wad of flaxen goo, for his face especially.

Food comes. Soggy carrots with most of the color boiled out of them. A stiff slice of bread. A cup of powdered milk and an oblong hunk of gray meat-origin unknown. I eat, then push the tray out into the walkway. My calluses don’t fit the grooves above this door. I’ll need new ones, and chin-ups leave my hands dripping with blood. Katas are next. Now I’m breathing hard, sweat mingling with the blood. Tiny scarlet dots spatter the powder blue section of the bars. My own decor.

I do sit-ups and math, talking quietly out loud to hear the sound of a human voice. Numbers turn to history lessons. I recount as much as I can about Auburn. The Seward House, home to the U.S. secretary of state who purchased Alaska. States and capitals. I know a song and I sing it low. Time passes.

“Rec time,” says a guard I can’t see.

My cell door rattles and hums open.

“Step out.”

I do, along with the old man and a brown-skinned young man with a long black ponytail and a thin mustache. We are led up a set of stairs to the roof. A square of concrete caged in by a ten-foot-high honeycomb of rusted metal bars. Recreation. The guard stands outside and locks us in.

The old man gives me a curious look with those magnified orbs, then he begins to shuffle around the perimeter. He is a small man and stooped, and his gnarled hands, like the broad bald spot on his head, are covered with the spots of age. The young punk stuffs his hands into his pants pockets and begins to kick at the walls of the cage. I can only see up. The walls of the roof block any view of the surrounding city.

The bleached sky is dry and crisp. The sun only a glow behind the flat cover of clouds. The sounds of license plates being stamped and wood cabinets being milled float up from unseen shops below. The air is free from the typical stink of human smells, corroded metal, dust, and paint. I breathe deep, then start to walk too, keeping on opposite sides from the old man, following his tracks in the dusting of snow, giving wide berth to the punk.

I am looking up at the place where a mourning dove flapped across the sky when I hear a cry.

The punk has the old man down and he is swinging a blade. I don’t think. I react. My snap kick goes up between the punk’s legs. He shrieks and groans, staggers and turns. The blade slashes for my face. I leap back, seeing two razors melted into the end of a toothbrush. He slashes again. I measure the arc of the pendulum. The next time, I block his wrist, kick him again between the legs, and greet his dropping face with the full force of my elbow. His nose pops like a lightbulb. I pivot, break his arm, and crush the blade hand under my heel; I stomp and grind. Stomp and grind until his screams hurt my ears.

The guard is talking into his radio, but he remains outside the cage. His eyes are calm. The old man is rising, fumbling with the plastic frames of his glasses. I help him. He coughs, but there appears to be no blood. He shuffles for the door, leaning against me.

“Let us out, Clarence,” the old man says.

Clarence looks back at us. He has a shock of salt-and-pepper hair. A neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. His eyes are permanently sad and he appears to think for a moment, then nods without a word and rattles his keys. Another guard arrives. He watches the punk while Clarence leads us back to our tank. The doors hum shut and it is quiet. I hear Clarence answering questions amid the rattle of keys. There is some shouting in the stairwell. Then the voices all fade away.

“Thank you,” says the old man. His voice is small.

I drop down and begin a set of push-ups.

“I heard them say you’ve been in the box for almost twenty years,” the old man says. His voice is a little louder now.

“Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!” screams one of the prisoners who has been denied the enjoyment of recreation, but the old man keeps on as if it were the wind.

“You don’t have to do that to be safe,” the old man says. “What you just did for me? You’ve got protection now.”

I snort at this news. A fragile old man, on his back, about to be sliced open unless I’m there. That’s my protection.

“You don’t know anything,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

“Everything matters,” he says.

“Not if you’re me,” I say, speaking into the empty space as if I’m talking to God. “This is my life. This is my world. I don’t want to be out there with those animals.”

“Outside the wall?”

“The wall?” I say. A short laugh escapes me. “No, I mean out there. With them. I’m not one of them.”

“That’s where freedom is,” he says.

“Freedom to be someone’s punk,” I say. “Whose punk are you, old-timer?”

The old man clears his throat. His voice takes on a different cast. It has an edge.

“I survived in here. There are three rules in here if you want to survive,” he says. “First rule: Never show fear. Second rule: Never be a rat.

“I came here in 1967,” he says. “I was thirty-four years old. The biggest buck in A block took my lunch from me on the first day. He said that night, I was going to give him more than that. At two-thirty, I walked out onto the weight court and smashed his skull in with a fifty-pound dumbbell.

“Exact revenge. That’s the third rule. The most important. If you don’t do it, you’ll be a professional victim. You exact it and it’s exact. Not just a reaction, but planned out. Precise. It needs to send a message.