Sleepers (28 page)

I looked over at Michael and he stared back at me and I knew we both had the same thoughts raging through our brains. I turned away and laid my head against the pillow, staring at the white ceiling with my one good eye, listening to a voice on the radio talk about holiday sales and threats of snow. I looked down at my hands, the tips of my fingers wrapped in gauze, scratches like veins marking their way across my flesh. My eye felt heavy and tired, the antibiotics and painkillers making me as foggy as a street junkie.

I shut my eye and gave in to sleep.

I
T WAS TWO
days later when I heard the footsteps, familiar in their weight.

“Hello, boys,” Nokes said, standing between our two beds, a smile on his face. “How we feelin’ today?”

Michael and I just stared back, watching him swagger up and down, checking our charts, eyeballing our bandages and wounds.

“You should be outta here in no time,” Nokes snarled. “It’s gonna be good havin’ you back. We missed you and your friends. Especially at night.”

Michael turned his head, looking down the corridor, checking the faces of the other sick inmates. Juanito was two beds down, his face a mask of cuts, welts, and stitches.

“It’s been nice visitin’ with you,” Nokes said, standing close enough for us to touch. “But I gotta go. I’m on shift. I’ll see you soon, though. You can count on that.”

Michael motioned for Nokes to stop. “Kill me now,” Michael whispered.

“What?” Nokes moved to Michael’s side of the bed. “What did you say?”

“Kill me now.” It wasn’t a whisper this time. It was in a normal tone of voice, calm and clear. “Kill us all now.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” Nokes said.

“You
have
to kill us,” Michael said. “You
can’t
let us out alive.”

Nokes was still startled, but he shook it off and replaced his uneasiness with his usual smirk. “Yeah?” he said. “And why’s that, tough guy?”

“You can’t run the risk,” Michael told him.

“What risk you talkin’ about?”

“The risk of meeting up,” Michael said. “In a place that ain’t here.”

“That supposed to scare me? That street shit of yours supposed to scare me?” Nokes laughed. “Your friend Rizzo was tough too. Now he’s buried tough.”

“Kill us all,” Michael said. “Or sign yourself up for life in here. That’s the choice.”

“I’ve been right all along,” Nokes said. “You
are
crazy. You Hell’s Kitchen motherfuckers are really crazy.”

“Think about it,” Michael said to our tormentor. “Think about it hard. It’s the only way out for you. Don’t take a chance. You can’t afford it. You kill us and you kill us now.”

Winter 1968

9

I
SQUEEZED THE
mop through a wooden wringer, dirty brown water filtering back into the wash pail. I was on the third tier of C block, washing the floors outside the cells. It was my first week out of the infirmary, and my wounds, bound by tight strips of gauze bandages against my ribs and thighs, still ached. After a few
strokes with the mop, I rested against the iron railings, my legs weak from days in the hole. It was early morning and the cell block was quiet, inmates either attending classes or exercising in the gym.

I looked around the block, gray, shiny, and still, winter light from outside merging with the glare of overhead fluorescents that were kept on twenty-four hours a day. In its silence, Wilkinson looked serene, cell doors open, floors glistening, steam from large central radiators keeping out the cold winds of winter.

The peace was not meant to hold. Wilkinson was a prison on the brim of a riot. Rizzo had been right. The guards did not take kindly to our playing them even. The day after the game, all inmate privileges were canceled. The late-night beatings and abuse accelerated to the point where no inmate felt safe. The most minor infraction, ignored in the past, was now cause for the most severe punishment.

For their part, the inmates were stirred by Rizzo’s death and the conditions in which the rest of the team were released from the isolation ward. Makeshift weapons—zip guns, sharpened spoons stuck into wooden bases, mattress coils twisted into brass knuckles—now appeared in every cell block. The inmates still obeyed every order, but their faces were now masked by defiance.

I
WAS HALFWAY
down the corridor when I saw Wilson on the circular staircase, making his way to the third tier. Wilson was the only black guard in our cell block and the only guard who shunned the physical attacks enjoyed by his coworkers. He was a big man, a onetime semi-pro football player with a scarred knee and a waistline that stretched the limits of his uniform. He smoked nonstop, and always had an open pack of Smith Brothers cherry cough drops in his back pocket. He had a wide smile stained yellow by the smoke, and big
hands topped by thick, almost-blue fingers. The inmates called him Marlboro.

Marlboro was older than the other guards by a good ten years and had two younger brothers who held similar jobs at other state homes. In summer months he was known to smuggle in an occasional six-pack to some of the older inmates.

He was also Rizzo’s connection to the outside.

“Seem to be doin’ a good job,” he said when he reached my end of the hall, his breath coming in short spurts, a long stream of smoke flowing out his nose. “You take to the mop real good.”

“Some people do,” I said. “Some people teach.”

“Got that right,” he said, laughing, a rumble of a cough starting in his chest.

“How many of those you go through a day?” I said, pointing to the lit cigarette in his hand.

“Three,” he said. “Maybe four.”

“Packs?”

“We all got habits, son,” Marlboro said. “Some that are good. Some that are bad.”

I went back to mopping the floor, moving the wet strands from side to side, careful not to let water droplets slip over the edge of the tier.

“How much more time you got?” Marlboro said from behind me. “Before they let you out.”

“Seven months if they keep me to term,” I said. “Less if they don’t.”

“You be out by spring,” Marlboro said. “Only the baddest apples do full runs.”

“Or end up dead,” I said.

Marlboro lit a fresh cigarette with the back end of a smolder between his fingers, tossed the old one over the side, and swallowed a mouth of smoke.

“Rizzo was my friend,” Marlboro said. “I didn’t have a piece of what went down.”

“Didn’t break your ass to stop it,” I said.

“Look around, son,” Marlboro said, cigarette
clenched between his teeth, veins thick on his bulky arms. “You see a lot of other nigger guards around here?”

“Guards
is all I see around here,” I said.

“I got me a good job,” Marlboro said. “Work is steady. Pension, if I make it, a good one. Vacation and holidays are paid, and every other weekend belongs to me and my lady.”

“And it keeps you in cigarettes,” I said.

“I
hate
what they do to you and the other boys,” Marlboro said, cigarette out of his mouth, sadness etched across the stark contours of his face.
“Hate
what they did to Rizzo. That boy was blood to me. But there ain’t nothin’ I can do. Nothin’ I can say gonna change this place.”

I put the mop back into the pail and ran it through the wringer, hands on the top end of the handle, eyes on Marlboro.

“You ever hit a kid?” I asked.

“Never,” Marlboro said. “Never will. Don’t get me wrong. There’s some mean sons of bitches in here could take a beatin.’ But it ain’t what I do. Ain’t part of the job. Least not the job I took.”

“How do the other guards feel about you?”

“I’m a nigger to them,” Marlboro said. “They probably think I’m no better than any of you. Maybe worse.”

“They always been like this?”

“Since I been here,” Marlboro said. “Goin’ on three years come this June.”

“How about you and Nokes?” I asked.

“I do my work and keep my distance,” Marlboro said. “He does the same.”

“What’s his deal?” I said.

“Same as the others,” Marlboro said. “They don’t like who they are. They don’t like where they are.”

“There’s lots of people like that,” I said. “Where I
live, every man I know feels that way. But they don’t go around doing the shit Nokes and his crew pull.”

“Maybe they different kind of men,” Marlboro said. “Nokes and his boys, they ain’t seen much of life and what they seen they don’t like. You grow up like that, most times, you grow up feelin’ empty. And that’s what they are. Empty. Nothin’ inside. Nothin’ out.”

“What about the warden?” I asked, leaning the mop handle against the rail. “The people on his staff. They’ve
got
to know what goes on.”

“But they
act
like they don’t,” Marlboro said, taking still another drag. “Same as the town folk.
Nobody
wants to know. What happens to you don’t touch them.”

“So they dummy up,” I said.

“That’s the jump,” Marlboro said. “And don’t forget, from where these folks stand,
you
the bad guys. Nokes and his boys, they ain’t gonna break into people’s homes. Ain’t gonna hold ’em up at gunpoint. You the guys pull that shit. That’s why you here to begin with. So don’t expect no tears. To them that’s free, you
belong
inside.”

“You’ve got all the answers,” I said to Marlboro, pushing the water pail farther down the center of the floor.

“If I did, I wouldn’t need a state check every two weeks,” he said. “I just know what I know.”

“I’ve got to finish up,” I said, pointing down to the rest of the corridor.

“And I gotta get me some more cigarettes,” Marlboro said. “That give us both somethin’ to do.”

He moved away with a wave, a snap to his walk, his baton slapping against the railing bars. A small pattern of crushed cigarette butts lay in the spot where he had stood.

“You know there’s no smoking on the tiers?” I shouted after him.

“What they gonna do?” Marlboro turned to face me, a grin soread across his face. “Arrest me?”

10

M
Y HANDS WERE
folded behind my head, resting against my pillow, a thin sheet raised to my chin. It was late on a Saturday night, one week after Valentine’s Day. Outside, heavy snow fell, white flakes pounding the thick glass. I was fighting a cold, my nose stuffed, my eyes watery, a wad of toilet paper bunched in my right hand. My throat was raw and it hurt to swallow.

I thought about my mother, wishing I had a cup of her
ricota
to take away the aches and chills. She would fill a large pot with water and set it to boil, throw in three sliced apples and lemons, two tea bags, two spoonfuls of honey, and a half-glass of Italian whiskey. She boiled everything down until the contents were just enough to fill a large coffee cup.

“Put this on,” she would say, handing me the heaviest sweater we owned. “And drink this down. Now. While it’s hot.”

“Sweat everything right outta you,” my father would say, standing behind her. “Better than penicillin. Cheaper too.”

I tried to sleep, closing my eyes to the noises coming from outside my cell. I willed myself back to my Hell’s Kitchen apartment, sipping my mother’s witches’ brew, watching her smile when I handed her back an empty cup. But I was too tense and too sick to find rest.

A number of the inmates, as tough as they acted during the day, would often cry themselves to sleep at
night, their wails creeping through the cell walls like ghostly pleas.

There were other cries too.

These differed from those filled with fear and loneliness. They were lower and muffled, the sounds of pained anguish, raw cries that begged for escape, for a freedom that never came.

Those cries can be heard through the thickest walls. They can cut through concrete and skin and reach deep into the dark parts of a lost boy’s soul. They are cries that change the course of a life, that trample innocence and snuff out goodness.

They are cries that once heard can never be erased from memory.

On this winter night, those cries belonged to my friend John.