The Four Stages of Cruelty (11 page)

My life never seemed particularly full when I was not working, but there were times when the thin cover of activities and interests got pulled back to reveal the great yawning emptiness. It was particularly depressing to go back to work when you had done nothing productive or fulfilling with a string of days off. Battered by the news report about Crowley, I felt incapable of rousing myself to any good purpose. I’d planned to go to yoga every morning once Christmas was over, but the willpower had strained out of me like water through a pressed tea bag. If it wasn’t for MacKay getting transferred out of intensive care to a regular room, nothing would have moved me.

I parked in the hospital lot and recognized Baumard’s decked-out truck. Other cars and trucks looked familiar, too. The boys were there in substantial numbers. When I got to the cardiac unit, Baumard was in the hall along with three other COs just off from the four-a.m.-to-noon shift. Their stamina amazed me. They worked, fought, complained, suffered, celebrated, ate, drank, and talked the job. I wanted to ask about the warden’s comments on the news, whether anyone had heard them, but the vibe zipping through me made that entire subject seem like fissionable material, too radioactive to touch. Instead, I asked how MacKay was doing.

Baumard shrugged. “He’s all right. All he has to do is cut out the drinking and smoking. In other words, he’s a walking coffin.” I was too upset to share the humor. So I looked around the doorway and saw Ray MacKay in his hospital gown, oxygen mask on his face, big hands resting at his sides, as cautious and immobile as a whale beached on the bed. Alton, a younger CO, stood at the foot, talking more to the TV hanging on the wall than to MacKay himself. Alton noticed me peek around and used my arrival as an excuse to say his goodbyes, thumping the mattress twice with his fingertips in a vigorous expression of best wishes. He nodded as he went by, grateful and relieved for me to take his place.

I wanted to cry. But a corner of Ray’s mouth turned up when he saw me, the eyes brightening, and he gave a breathy “How you doing.” Then he pulled the oxygen mask down to his chin. I was alarmed, but he said, “I put this on so I can watch TV in peace.” His voice was stronger than I expected.

Same old bastard. Always smarter than he looked. I made a joke. “What’d you do, shit a phone?” It felt flat to me, but MacKay grinned and held up a hand for me to stop.

What do you say to an old man in his hospital bed sucking air? I planned to ask the usual questions, why he was dogging it, whether he liked Jell-O three times a day. Then I’d tell him how good he looked and other clichés of the strained and obligatory hospital visit. Instead, MacKay said he’d heard I’d found Crowley down there.

I nodded. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted him to let it go. “Did you hear what they’re saying?” I asked. “They’re saying he killed himself in protective custody.”

But MacKay didn’t seem to hear me. “In the old days that was the spot.” He nodded slowly between breaths. “Whenever we’d beat on a prisoner, it was a social gathering. A party with snacks. The right inmate, the right occasion, felt like the fucking Super Bowl.”

I said nothing. He fiddled with the plastic bracelet on his thick left wrist, awkwardly, without much strength, pushing it away like an irritation.

“Inmates hated it down there. It terrified them. The aloneness was the worst. Drove them apeshit. You new jacks”—lifting his hand, the IV line lifting with it, to wag a finger slowly, mockingly—”don’t always get it. The need. It’s mutual, you know.”

I tried to think of something to say, a way to squeeze the dread out. “I guess someone revived the tradition.”

“Pretty sophisticated bunch, us jacks.”

The words had gotten weaker. He felt for his mask. His hand fumbled so slowly I almost reached over to help. But he fitted the mask back on, and I watched its flimsy shape flex and steam up.

Who did it, Ray? I wanted to ask, and I didn’t want to know. Were you there? Instead, I gripped the rail of the bed and watched him. His eyes looked small and far away. I didn’t know what to do, whether to leave him or sit next to him. Then I remembered the book.

“Brought this for you.” I pulled the paperback out of my purse. The copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
I’d had since high school.

I placed it on the table beside the remote. A book so heavy with injustice and moral failure, it felt wrong passing it to him now, as though I were making an accusation.

“Jesus, thanks,” he muttered, heavy on the sarcasm.

Time to leave, I figured. I resisted tapping the bed like Alton and just told MacKay to get better soon. I expected to see a glint of tears, because that’s how I was feeling, but MacKay tilted his head in my direction and offered a lopsided turn of his mouth. It could have been a twist of despair, but I recognized it as a grin.

I’d hoped the others would be gone and I could walk down the hallway unnoticed, but they’d remained, and I was forced to stand with them, robotic. They talked about work with intense devotion. I listened to them parsing out the latest. They were laughing, in that morbid way we laughed at all the snafus and the sick things that happened, about the audacity of the warden’s press conference announcement about Crowley. I felt gravity settle a little in my shoes. At least they didn’t believe it. I had that going for me. But they did not hint at the other possibilities—the certainty, really, that some of us had done the awful deed. Then Stevens brought up “that fucking memo.” I hadn’t heard about any memo, so I felt free to ask what they were talking about, and Alton filled me in. “Basically the warden telling the COs straight out, he doesn’t want to see so-called contradictory reports in the press anymore. Like the first thing we do when some shit happens inside is call our favorite reporter.”

“Hell,” Ringer said, “I don’t even read the sports page anymore, it’s so full of fucking lies.”

I looked to Baumard, and he said, “They’re plugging the leaks. It’s their standard CYA strategy for dealing with their own fuckups.” And then those fuckups got listed in familiar
abbreviated versions of longer complaints. But nothing about Crowley, no explanation of whether that had been a fuckup or a coordinated exercise.

“Kali?” A voice behind me said, and I turned to see an older woman addressing me hopefully.

The men opened their little group and allowed the woman to approach. Baumard called her Rachel Honey. Alton called her Mrs. MacKay. She introduced herself to me as Ray’s wife. I was only mildly surprised to realize that Ray had this pleasant-looking matron for a partner, a little glassy-eyed, tagged by forty years of marriage like a dead deer on a car roof. Rachel stated that she’d heard so much about me. Baumard announced it was time for him to sit with Ray. The other men dispersed to the vending machines and the restroom, leaving us gals alone.

“Do you smoke?” Rachel began. “I need a cigarette. Walk me out?”

I didn’t smoke, hadn’t even enjoyed it when I was in my twenties, but I very much wanted to leave the hospital. We said little to each other as we walked down the hallway, stood in the elevator, and then passed the check-in desk. Outside the automatic doors, near a pack of green pajama–wearing hospital workers, Rachel breathed through a Virginia Slim and scuffed at a spot on the sidewalk with her pink sneaker.

“Ray liked you,” she said. The past tense hit us both.

“It sounds like he’s going to be okay,” I suggested. I didn’t know shit. I just wanted it so.

Rachel nodded. “I hope.” She was thin in the neck, her skin waxy. Looking at her, I could smell my grandparents’ living
room, reeking of cigarettes, a stand-up ashtray between recliner chair and love seat facing the TV.

“That place is what’s killing him,” she announced. “He just wants a second chance now. Funny how life—” And she stopped. I waited. Yeah, funny how life.

“Working at Ditmarsh has eaten him up,” she continued. She shook her head and gazed at the parking lot. An ambulance arrived and did the loop. The cab doors opened and the paramedics got out. They were in no rush.

“Ray seemed all right most days,” I offered. What was I trying to do, convince Rachel of something she would know better than anyone else in the world?

I had the sense my words did not penetrate.

“Ray never talked in any detail about the things he had to see and do,” Rachel said, “but I knew when it was bad by the way he’d come home. You’re supposed to pretend the person you love doesn’t hate his own life, but I don’t care anymore. He was sick of it. He talked about you like a daughter, you know. He mentioned you lots, proud.”

I let a moment go by. “I didn’t know that.” And started to well up. A sap. A weeper at sad movies. I would have flipped down my URF visor if it happened to be handy.

“It wasn’t healthy,” Rachel said again, and she gave me an uncomfortably direct stare, blue eyes drizzled with an acidic yellow.

Then it came.

“Ray wanted me to tell you that it wasn’t him.”

I waited for more, feeling sick to my stomach, the ingestion of corrosive information.

“He didn’t put that inmate down there. But if it gets any hotter, he’s going to say he did, that it was an accident, something stupid that happened before he got sick, maybe because he was sick.” She looked disgusted and gazed at the blue sky. “If it comes to that, they’ll suspend him. Then we wait until it all dies down and they let him retire and reinstate his pension. He wanted you to know. He had nothing to do with it.”

“How can they do that?” I wanted to ask who’s they? The warden? The Keeper?

Instead of answering, Rachel drew on the last of her cigarette with a controlled anger, stubbed it out more times than necessary on the concrete edge of the ash bin, and pressed it into the sand that lay on top like a fake tropical island.

“We’ll probably move to Arizona if Ray’s up for it. I have a sister there.”

She looked up at me again.

“Ray didn’t say this part, but I’m saying it now. You should find another life.”

The lockdown ended in the infirmary, though Josh heard that gen pop was still under the the screw. Josh’s limited freedom was a relief. Whenever he saw Roy in the hospital bed,
he thought of his father. It made no rational sense. They were opposites in every way except age. Before everything changed, his father had been a composed and vigorous man who always wore a suit. He believed you could will yourself into success. He didn’t trust Josh’s interest in art, but even that seemed natural and normal, an indication of virtue rather than a parental failing.

Roy had none of his father’s solid qualities. He was lazy and sneaky and unhygienic, and the charm of it was that he knew you knew and still tried shamelessly to get his way. When he was tired, he seemed like a great physical bulk collapsed into despair. But when he was energized by a good mood, possessed by some random opinion or desire, he talked with wild gestures and enthusiasm, shooting for more sophistication than his background or brain could manage. None of it was like his father, but the hospital bed made Josh think that way just the same.

One lunch, Roy insisted that Josh feed him. “Guy fed me this morning,” Roy said, his plump, naked arms folded royally on his chest. “Do it or I’ll tell the doctor you grabbed my crank while I was sleeping.”

It was funny enough. Roy had a way of wearing you down and making you like him. He threw so much empty flattery Josh’s way that some of it couldn’t help but touch his pride.

“Oh, come on,” Roy said, softening. “Just shovel a few spoonfuls in. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

Josh wanted to talk, even if it was just to Roy. He pulled over a chair and sat down.

“There you go,” Roy said, wriggling up on the bed until he
was in a sitting position. “Don’t worry, I smell pretty as a rose today. They give you a car wash with your oil change here.”

Roy’s ears were stuffed with wadded cotton, a faint pink, as though fluid still dripped. Josh lifted the spoon, and Roy opened his mouth to receive the bite. When Josh pulled the spoon away too quickly, the mess dribbled onto Roy’s chin.

“You need a towel or something?” Josh asked, squeamish.

“Nah,” Roy answered. “Hit me again, tarbender.”

The chili smelled like wet dog. Josh slipped another spoonful past Roy’s open lips and watched him chew. Odd to feel another person’s bite on the end of a spoon.

“So you’re a college boy, huh?” Roy said in and around the food.

It was not Josh’s favorite thing to admit, a weak spot that might get him hurt.

“I was a college boy, too, a long time ago. Until my life sort of fell apart.”

Josh nodded as if it were all true, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to talk about, but he didn’t believe Roy for a second.

“Majored in psychology. They wanted me to do my Ph.D., but I was too fucking arrogant. Figured I could do what I want, go back anytime. Next thing you know, I’m selling cars, snorting coke, and fucking my boss’s wife.”

“Beats studying,” Josh said. He didn’t mean it.

“Cocaine is a bitch, man. Looks sexy enough from a distance. Makes you want her real fucking bad. Like an ache in your balls. Then it’s all about her and nothing about you. Take every dime you have and still scream at you for more.
Make you do things you can’t believe you’d do. But I shouldn’t be complaining. I wouldn’t be half the man I am now without it.”

Roy laughed at his own joke. Did he mean his missing leg? In spite of himself, Josh wanted to hear more of the life story stuff. You never asked another inmate what he’d done, what crimes or mistakes or bad luck had launched his bit. Crowley said you kept the truth to yourself and saved your bullshit stories for the counselors and lawyers, the ones who needed you to lie. Roy changed subjects, rolling onward, complaining about how dull it was in the ward, nothing but sick men dying and howlers howling. “How do you stand these fucking houseplants? No wonder you and Crowley got to be pals. He told me you were a stand-up guy.”

From the grave a word of praise. Josh braced himself to ask about Crowley, but Roy didn’t slow down.

“Tell you the truth, I was relieved to hear it,” Roy said. “Been a rumor they had a rat holed up here, keeping him safe.”

The shock hit him like a live wire.

“Oh, come on now,” Roy protested at his surprise. “Jesus Christ, are you sensitive or what? Relax a little. I’m dying for conversation here.”

Josh struggled to find the words, hurt this time and panicky, too. A mouth like Roy’s could spread stories everywhere.

“I haven’t been inside too long, but I know that isn’t a good thing to say about someone.”

Roy only stared, a bland look, as though disappointed. Josh felt there was nothing Roy didn’t see out of those calm
eyes and that Josh could be inside for a thousand years and not know a thing.

“I’ll tell you something you won’t believe, but you should,” Roy explained patiently. “All that shit about how bad it is to be a rat is only true because every fucking guy in here
is
a rat. They get all upset about rats the way some married guy who smokes pole on the side talks about beating up fags. I’m including the fucking jacks, of course. Biggest rats of all. Ratting is just lube reducing the social friction. It’s the way we all get by.”

Josh could almost see it, could almost understand the inner workings Roy was hinting at, but the vision was too smeared with cynicism. He’d mull it over. He’d turn it around in his head with three or four other things Roy had told him, and the dozen or so things from Crowley, and even the bits he’d learned from Keeper Wallace and CO Williams. It didn’t even matter if they were contradictory, he knew they were still true, because a shudder flowed up his spine when he heard them.

“Don’t worry, though. I figured out why you picked up the rep,” Roy said.

The fragment of a second stretched on, and Josh waited for the diagnosis.

“It’s your personality,” Roy announced cheerfully, and then went on to explain. “You show up here on a heavy beef, but you’re the kind of dude who smells like he’s got no priors whatsoever. So right off the bat the boys are suspicious. Strike two, despite the long bit, they’re coddling you in the howler ward. Nobody appreciates that, and they want to know
why. People start making shit up about you just because you’re all mysterious. Some guy says, hey, I don’t know about that fish. Another guy takes it a bit further and says, he’s not really a fish, he’s a hard-timer in witness protection, transferred here with soft digs and a new identity. Of course, one look at you and it’s obvious how fucking laughable that idea is, but never mind. Almost in confirmation of the aforementioned idiotic reasoning, you get seen chatting up with that slutty jack, Officer Williams, trading little bedtime stories and night-night kisses. Now, I’m a flexible give-a-little-to-get-something-back kind of guy, but there are boys in here who’d eat their own cock before they’d chat up a cop, even a woman, and Elgin’s one of them. He’s got principles, you understand. Some guys seem to have a use for them. Me, I never seen any point, so why bother.”

It was far too much to swallow at one time, a single indiscretion turned into a hundred broken laws. But the name that jumped out at him was Elgin.

“What about Elgin?” Josh asked.

“Yeah. That fucking guy has some vigorous opinions about you. I was talking to him this morning, trying to assess his attitude and condition, figured I’d find out how he felt about me while they still had him strapped down and sedated, and all he could talk about was you—”

“What about me?” Josh interrupted.

“Well, this is going to upset you a bit”—as though wanting to break the news gently—”but you’re intelligent, so I’ll lay it out there. Elgin thinks Crowley couldn’t have finished that stupid fucking comic book without some kind of help.
And he’s got it in his head that you made yourself Crowley’s right-hand man, so to speak.”

This accusation, coming as it did on top of a pile of others, felt like the knockout blow.

“Is it true?” Roy asked. “Did our friend J.C. ever ask you to do him a favor, draw a thing or two?”

It didn’t seem to matter how intently Crowley had implored him to keep the truth to himself. Crowley was dead now, and Josh could tell that Roy already knew.

“Yeah.”

“Who’s kidding who, right?” Roy asked. “Your secret’s safe with me. But if Elgin gets any better, we’re both in trouble. That cocksucker’s got a nasty, vindictive attitude.”

Josh sat in place, a little sick to his stomach and tingly in his limbs.

Roy lay back, gaze aimed at the ceiling, his hands folded on his chest. Then he said it was nap time. “Fucking shit food takes the good right out of me.” And he closed his eyes.

Josh could do nothing except stand and leave, the cart rattling on.

That evening, he lay on his cot, shaken by thoughts of Elgin, the sense that even if he was careful, he’d still get swallowed. Then a face peered around the corner of his drum, and he was startled to see Roy standing there, his peg leg strapped on, a physical strength to him that had been utterly absent in the last week.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Roy announced. It was so ridiculous Josh didn’t know if he’d heard him right.

Roy sat down on Josh’s bed, the explanation needing that kind of physical proximity, and Josh sat up and squeezed to the side to make room.

“I’m talking about a transfer to another house. Solve all your problems. It came to me like a bolt from the sky. Crowley told me a lot about you, what you did, you know, to get in here, and well, it’s pretty fucking obvious: you shouldn’t be here. You know what I mean?”

Roy ran with it hard, building up the credibility of his argument, bolstering a thought Josh secretly entertained on a daily basis. He shouldn’t be here. He was not like anyone else. It was self-evidently a mistake, a misdirection in justice, the one thing in this place that actually deserved to be corrected.

“I’m not dragging you around by the cock. I’ve got my bona fide successes in this territory. Got a bank robber named Ronny Vaughn out about three years ago. I obtained all his files, pored the fuck over them, and found a mistake they made in his sentencing hearing. Cops never turned over the bullets in his gun, which meant he didn’t have any bullets in his gun, and they acted like he was armed to the teeth when they were assigning his corrections facility. We pounded at it and pounded at it until they had to reverse. Now he’s chilling in a level two near his old lady, same duration but way smoother time, and a fuck of a lot easier on parole. It’s obvious to any idiot you shouldn’t be here—we just got to figure out a good reason why. We exert a little pressure, write a lot
of letters, find the right judge, and make a little headway. I like the challenge of that. I’m a resourceful guy who, pardon the modesty, is smart as fuck. It’s not like I want to lose you as a friend or anything, but if I can give a brother a better turn and piss off some cops and lawyers at the same time, man, that’s the best kind of fun I can have these days, let me tell you.”

It was ridiculous and pointless and a waste of time. Josh wanted it, but he couldn’t imagine writing the letters, getting the files, seeking the information, going through the trials. Then Roy made a suggestion.

“Brother Mike’s got all your files. He’s got all the files of everyone in his program. I know because I used to clerk for that fart. Get him to give you your jacket. That way you skip the lawyers and red tape.”

“What if he gets upset about it?” Josh said. “He’s always talking about dealing with what you can change, not what you can’t.”

“Fuck that passive bullshit. That’s for his benefit, not yours, keeping himself in business. You’re his long-term customer, you know what I mean? He loses you, his market shrinks, so he wants you here, planted for a very long time. I’m not saying we’ll succeed. But I am saying we should try. And he’s got
your
fucking jacket. It’s not his. And he needs to hand it over. Just insist. It’s like getting your one free phone call. He legally can’t say no.”

Josh agreed to do it. It was impossible to stop the force of the argument even though he dreaded making the request.

“You got a session with him tomorrow, right? Ask him then. Don’t tell him it’s me you’re working with, though. He’ll get all fussy about that. Professional fucking jealousy.”

“Okay,” Josh said again. Anything to lessen the barrage.

“Hey. It means a lot to me that you trust me like that.”

Roy reached over to shake his hand. The grip was firm, meaningful, and longer than comfortable.