Part 2 (2/2)

”Use your T-s.h.i.+rt,” Joey added.

”I don't take advice from a cho-mo,” Calloway said, but then, a moment later: ”You think a T-s.h.i.+rt will work?”

While Shay yelled for the warden, we all listened to Calloway's play-by-play: The robin was wrapped in a s.h.i.+rt. The robin was tucked inside his left tennis shoe. The robin was pinking up. The robin had opened its left eye for a half second.

We all had forgotten what it was like to care about something so much that you might not be able to stand losing it. The first year I was in here, I used to pretend that the full moon was my pet, that it came once a month just to me. And this past summer, Crash had taken to spreading jam on the louvers of his vent to cultivate a colony of bees, but that was less about husbandry than his misguided belief that he could train them to swarm Joey in his sleep.

”Cowboys comin' to lock 'em up,” Crash said, fair warning that the COs were getting ready to enter the pod again. A moment later the doors buzzed open; they stood in front of the shower cell waiting for Shay to stick his hands through the trap to be cuffed for the twenty-foot journey back to his own cell.

”They don't know what it could be,” CO Smythe said. ”They've ruled out pulmonary problems and asthma. They're saying maybe an allergy-but there's nothing in her room anymore, Rick, it's bare as a cell.”

Sometimes the COs talked to one another in front of us. They never spoke to inmates directly about their lives, and that actually was fine. We didn't want to know that the guy strip-searching us had a son who scored the winning goal in his soccer game last Thursday. Better to take the humanity out of it.

”They said,” Smythe continued, ”that her heart can't keep taking this kind of stress. And neither can I. You know what it's like to see your baby with all these bags and wires coming out of her?”

The second CO, Whitaker, was a Catholic who liked to include, on my dinner tray, handwritten scripture verses that denounced h.o.m.os.e.xuality. ”Father Walter led a prayer for Hannah on Sunday. He said he'd be happy to visit you at the hospital.”

”There's nothing a priest can say that I want to hear,” Smythe muttered. ”What kind of G.o.d would do this to a baby?”

Shay's hands slipped through the trap of the shower cell to be cuffed, and then the door was opened. ”Did the warden say he'd meet with me?”

”Yeah,” Smythe said, leading Shay toward his cell. ”He wants you to come for high friggin' tea.”

”I just need five minutes with him-”

”You're not the only one with problems,” Smythe snapped. ”Fill out a request.”

”I can't can't,” Shay replied.

I cleared my throat. ”Officer? Could I have a request form, too, please?”

He finished locking Shay up, then took one out of his pocket and stuffed it into the trap of my cell.

Just as the officers exited the tier, there was a small, feeble chirp.

”Shay?” I asked. ”Why not just fill out the request slip?”

”I can't get my words to come out right.”

”I'm sure the warden doesn't care about grammar.”

”No, it's when I write. When I start, the letters all get tangled.”

”Then tell me, and I'll write the note.”

There was a silence. ”You'd do that for me?”

”Will you two cut the soap opera?” Crash said. ”You're making me sick.”

”Tell the warden,” Shay dictated, ”that I want to donate my heart, after he kills me. I want to give it to a girl who needs it more than I do.”

I leaned the ticket up against the wall of the cell and wrote in pencil, signed Shay's name. I tied the note to the end of my own fis.h.i.+ng line and swung it beneath the narrow opening of his cell door. ”Give this to the officer who makes rounds tomorrow morning.”

”You know, Bourne,” Crash mused, ”I don't know what to make of you. I mean, on the one hand, you're a child-killing piece of s.h.i.+t. You might as well be fungus growing on Joey, for what you done to that little girl. But on the other hand, you took down a cop, and I for one am truly grateful there's one less pig in the world. So how am I supposed to feel? Do I hate you, or do I give you my respect?”

”Neither,” Shay said. ”Both.”

”You know what I think? Baby killing beats anything good you might have done.” Crash stood up at the front of his cell and began to bang a metal coffee mug against the Plexiglas. ”Throw him out. Throw him out. Throw him out! Throw him out!”

Joey-unused to being even one notch above low-man-on-the-totem-pole-was the first to join in the singing. Then Texas and Pogie started in, because they did whatever Crash told them to do.

Throw him out.

Throw him out.

Whitaker's voice bled through the loudspeaker. ”You got a problem, Vitale?”

”I don't got a problem. This punk-a.s.s child killer here's the one with the problem. I tell you what, Officer. You let me out for five minutes, and I'll save the good taxpayers of New Hamps.h.i.+re the trouble of getting rid of him-”

”Crash,” Shay said softly. ”Cool off.”

I was distracted by a whistling noise coming from my tiny sink. I had no sooner stood up to investigate than the water burst out of the spigot. This was remarkable on two counts-normally, the water pressure was no greater than a trickle, even in the showers. And the water that was splas.h.i.+ng over the sides of the metal bowl was a deep, rich red.

”f.u.c.k!” Crash yelled. ”I just got soaked!”

”Man, that looks like blood,” Pogie said, horrified. ”I'm not was.h.i.+ng up in that.”

”It's in the toilets, too,” Texas added.

We all knew our pipes were connected. The bad news about this was that you literally could not get away from the s.h.i.+t brought down by the others around you. On the bright side, you could actually flush a note down the length of the pod; it would briefly appear in the next cell's bowl before heading through the sewage system. I turned and looked into my toilet. The water was as dark as rubies.

”Holy c.r.a.p,” Crash said. ”It ain't blood. It's wine wine.” He started to crow like a madman. ”Taste it, ladies. Drinks are on the house.”

I waited. I did not drink the tap water in here. As it was, I had a feeling that my AIDS medications, which came on a punch card, might be some government experiment done on expendable inmates ... I wasn't about to imbibe from a water treatment system run by the same administration. But then I heard Joey start laughing, and Calloway slurping from the faucet, and Texas and Pogie singing drinking songs. In fact, the entire mood of the tier changed so radically that CO Whitaker's voice boomed over the intercom, confused by the visions on the monitors. ”What's going on in there?” he asked. ”Is there a water main leak?”

”You could say that,” Crash replied. ”Or you could say we got us a powerful thirst.”

”Come on in, CO,” Pogie added. ”We'll buy the next round.”

Everyone seemed to find this hilarious, but then, they'd all downed nearly a half gallon of whatever this fluid was by now. I dipped my finger into the dark stream that was still running strong from my sink. It could have been iron or manganese, but it was true-this water smelled like sugar, and dried sticky. I bent my head to the tap and drank tentatively from the flow.

Adam and I had been closet sommeliers, taking trips to the California vineyards. To that end, for my birthday that last year, Adam had gotten me a 2001 Dominus Estate cabernet sauvignon. We were going to drink it on New Year's Eve. Weeks later, when I came in and found them, twisted together like jungle vines, that bottle was there, too-tipped off the nightstand and staining the bedroom carpet, like blood that had already been spilled.

<script>