Tim Green - Exact Revenge

Lester clears his throat and says, “Kid. We have to go back.”

I hear, but it doesn’t register.

“Raymond,” he says, “we won’t make it. It’s light outside by now. We’ll have to come back.”

“We’re almost there,” I say, still clawing at the dirt and bricks. “We have to be.”

Lester grips my ankle. I feel the strength in his old hands, constricting my ligaments and the flow of blood. He shakes my leg and I stop digging.

“No, goddamn it,” he says, rupturing the quiet. “We need the night. I waited too long for this, kid. We have to go back.”

Lester lets go of my ankle. The light jiggles and begins to fade. I hear him squirming back down the pipe. I continue to dig, but soon it’s pitch black and I feel the earth squeezing in on me from all sides. A cry bursts from me and I scramble backward, slithering out.

Lester is waiting in the cistern. When I drop down into the cold water, he nods once and turns to go. When we reach the basement beneath the catwalk outside our cell, Lester shows me a spigot jutting out of a pipe that runs up the concrete wall. He turns it on and we rinse most of the stink and slime from our bodies and clothes.

Since most of the Vaseline was rubbed off, it will be harder for me to get back into the cell, so I go first. Lester is able to push me through without drawing more than a trickle of blood from my shoulder. Daylight seeps into the window outside our bars, but everything is still quiet. Lester fits the steel plate and the sewage pipe from the toilet back into the wall. He complains quietly of a pain in his arm. I help him fill the cracks with shoe polish.

We strip out of our clothes and change into our spare set. Lester rinses the dirty ones in what’s left of our hot water bucket from the day, then he stuffs them into the laundry bag and tosses them into the corner. I am climbing up into my bunk when I hear him grunt and collapse on the floor.

I take a panicked look around before I start to yell for help.

There is confusion and shouting.

Lester is taken to the prison hospital.

Later, a guard tells me that he’s had a heart attack. They don’t know how long he’ll be in the hospital. He might not make it at all. After two days of worrying, the company sergeant calls me to his desk. He says that tomorrow I will be moved into a new cell by myself. If Lester survives, we can apply for another double bunk when one opens up. If he dies, I will stay in my new single cell.

Night comes and I lie awake with these thoughts spinning through my head: If Lester dies, it could be ten or twenty years, if ever, before I have the chance to get a drill bit of my own. Even if he lives, when the new prisoners take this cell, they will be sure to find the hole. They will either use it, or report it. If they use it and find the open manhole, the route will be discovered and sealed off forever. If they report the hole in the cell, Lester and I will both spend the next three years back in the box.

Here’s what I keep coming back to:

If I wait, both of us are likely to be in Auburn for the rest of our lives.

If I go now, alone, I just might make it.

I OPEN MY EYES to The Swing. When Lester first showed it to me, it meant nothing. A pretty baroque painting with soft colors. A pink dress. A broad beam of sunlight through the blue-green trees. A dainty shoe sailing through the air. A young man in the bushes gazing up with admiration. An older refined gentleman entertaining the beautiful young woman. But as I began to study it, it wasn’t long before I knew it for what it was. A picture of betrayal.

I have used this painting over the past year to secretly fuel my hatred for the people who betrayed me. The light coming through the window is proof that at least I have not betrayed my friend, even if it costs me everything. I search within myself for even a flicker of contentment. I don’t know why, but there is nothing there. I am an empty grave.

The escape hole behind the toilet is so big it makes me ache.

I reach up and slip my finger between the edge of the paper and the metal ceiling, tearing the print free. The paper shears off at the corners where it has been taped. I spread my fingers and mash the print into a ball, then throw it onto the floor.

All the things in the cell besides my bunk and spare set of clothes belong to Lester. They said someone will take care of his things. I haven’t decided whether or not I will earn my way back into the box. I realize that I enjoy the small freedoms I’ve become accustomed to. The sun. The rain on my face. Long walks around the yard. The books. The question is this: How safe will I be without Lester?

I hop down and roll everything into my mattress. After breakfast, I sling the roll over my shoulder and a guard walks me across the yard to E block. I feel naked without Lester by my side.

When the first officer at the desk looks up, I recognize the shadowy face as Bluebeard’s. His hair is longer and slicked back with pomade, but his beady eyes still have their gleam.

“Well, well,” he says, “the big bucks were snortin’ and a-pawin’ in here this morning like they smelled a doe in heat, and I guess they did.”

His long hairy fingers slide over the change sheet, a yellow pointed nail comes to a stop halfway down the page. He turns his head and raises his voice to a group of officers standing in the doorway.

“Seventeen ready to go?” he says. “New girl’s here.”

He leers at me and says, “I know you’ll be wanting to bunk up once you decide who your new daddy’s gonna be, but for now, I hope you’ll like your new home.”

A guard marches over and says, “Uh, Marty. Seventeen still ain’t ready. Garden Hose says he ain’t goin’.”

“Well, you tell Garden Hose I’m gonna come in there and tickle his ass with my stick,” Bluebeard says, putting his hand on his baton as if to prove he means it.

“Told him that already.”

“Well, gas the motherfucker out of there,” Bluebeard says.

“You’ll have to call the lieutenant.”

“And I’ll do that,” Bluebeard says. With his chin in the air, he picks up the phone and punches in a number.

He glares at the guard who brought me and says, “Take her back to A block while I fumigate that bug.”

To me, Bluebeard says, “Don’t you worry, little lady. We’ll have your room for you real soon. Why don’t you go out and have a drink by the pool?”

I walk back across the yard to my cell and unroll my bunk. I lay down and stare at the ceiling, empty except for the four corners of the print. I have decided that my next interview with Bluebeard will send a message to the entire prison. It will be nothing for me to launch myself across his desk. I will roll his head between my hands like a melon, snapping his neck and tearing the spinal cord between the third and fourth vertebrae. If I’m going to go to the box, I might as well go in style. When I do get out-if I get out-I feel pretty confident that after something like that, no one will bother me.

I am reviewing the technique in my mind when I hear Lester’s gravelly voice at the end of the hall. I jump down and grab the bars. He shuffles slowly toward our cell, prattling to the guard.

“Clear one,” the guard says in a loud voice.

I step back.

“Open one.”

The bars vibrate and the door slides open. Lester stands there. His enormous eyes are shiny and brimming with tears.

“Later, Jim,” he says to the guard in a choked voice.

He steps inside and the bars hum shut. He opens his arms and steps toward me, hugging me. The tufts of his hair tickle under my chin.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” he says, his voice muffled by my shirt. Then he pushes me away. “You should be gone.”