Part 3 (1/2)

If you've been in prison as long as I have, you've experienced a good many innovative highs. I've drunk hooch distilled from fruit juice and bread and Jolly Rancher candies; I've huffed spray deodorant; I've smoked dried banana peels rolled up in a page of the Bible. But this was like none of those. This was honest-to-G.o.d wine.

I laughed. But before long I began to sob, tears running down my face for what I had lost, for what was now literally coursing through my fingers. You can only miss something you remember having, and it had been so long since creature comforts had been part of my ordinary life. I filled a plastic mug with wine and drank it down; I did this over and over again until it became easier to forget the fact that all extraordinary things must come to an end-a lesson I could have lectured on, given my history.

By now, the COs realized that there had been some snafu with the plumbing. Two of them came onto the tier, fuming, and paused in front of my cell. ”You,” Whitaker commanded. ”Cuffs.”

I went through the rigmarole of having my wrists bound through the open trap so that when Whitaker had my door buzzed open I could be secured by Smythe while he investigated. I watched over my shoulder as Whitaker touched a pinky to the stream of wine and held it up to his tongue. ”Lucius,” he said, ”what is this?”

”At first I thought it was a cabernet, Officer,” I said. ”But now I'm leaning toward a cheap merlot.”

”The water comes from the town reservoir,” Smythe said. ”Inmates can't mess with that.”

”Maybe it's a miracle,” Crash sang. ”You know all about miracles, don't you, Officer Bible-thumper?”

My cell door was closed and my hands freed. Whitaker stood on the catwalk in front of our cells. ”Who did this?” he asked, but n.o.body was listening. ”Who's responsible?”

”Who cares?” Crash replied.

”So help me, if one of you doesn't fess up, I'll have maintenance turn off your water for the next week,” Whitaker threatened.

Crash laughed. ”The ACLU needs a poster child, Whit.”

As the COs stormed off the tier, we were all laughing. Things that weren't humorous became funny; I didn't even mind listening to Crash. At some point, the wine trickled and dried up, but by then, Pogie had already pa.s.sed out cold, Texas and Joey were singing ”Danny Boy” in harmony, and I was fading fast. In fact, the last thing I remember is Shay asking Calloway what he was going to name his bird, and Calloway's answer: Batman the Robin. And Calloway challenging Shay to a chugging contest, but Shay saying he would sit that one out. That actually, he didn't drink.

For two days after the water on I-tier had turned into wine, a steady stream of plumbers, scientists, and prison administrators visited our cells. Apparently, we were the only unit within the prison where this had happened, and the only reason anyone in power even believed it was because when our cells were tossed, the COs confiscated the shampoo bottles and milk containers and even plastic bags that we had all innovatively used to store some extra wine before it had run dry; and because swabs taken in the pipes revealed a matching substance. Although n.o.body would officially give us the results of the lab testing, rumor had it that the liquid in question was definitely not tap water.

Our exercise and shower privileges were revoked for a week, as if this had been our fault in the first place, and forty-three hours pa.s.sed before I was allowed a visit from the prison nurse, Alma, who smelled of lemons and linen; and who had a ma.s.sive coiled tower of braided hair that, I imagined, required architectural intervention in order for her to sleep. Normally, she came twice a day to bring me a card full of pills as bright and big as dragonflies. She also spread cream on inmates' fungal foot infections, checked teeth that had been rotted out by crystal meth, and did anything else that didn't require a visit to the infirmary. I admit to faking illness several times so that Alma would take my temperature or blood pressure. Sometimes, she was the only person who touched me for weeks.

”So,” she said, as she was let into my cell by CO Smythe. ”I hear things have been pretty exciting on I-tier. You gonna tell me what happened?”

”Would if I could,” I said, and then glanced at the officer accompanying her. ”Or maybe I wouldn't.”

”I can only think of one person who ever turned water into wine,” she said, ”and my pastor will tell you it didn't happen in the state prison this Monday.”

”Maybe your pastor can suggest that next time, Jesus try a nice full-bodied Syrah.”

Alma laughed and stuck a thermometer into my mouth. Over her back, I stared at CO Smythe. His eyes were red, and instead of watching me to make sure I didn't do anything stupid, like take Alma hostage, he was staring at the wall behind my head, lost in thought.

The thermometer beeped. ”You're still running a fever.”

”Tell me something I don't know,” I replied. I felt blood pool under my tongue, courtesy of the sores that were part and parcel of this horrific disease.

”You taking those meds?”

I shrugged. ”You see me put them in my mouth every day, don't you?”

Alma knew there were as many different ways for a prisoner to kill himself as there were prisoners. ”Don't you check out on me, Jupiter,” she said, rubbing something viscous on the red spot on my forehead that had led to this nickname. ”Who else would tell me what I miss on General Hospital General Hospital?”

”That's a pretty paltry reason to stick around.”

”I've heard worse.” Alma turned to CO Smythe. ”I'm all set here.”

She left, and the control booth slid the door home again, the sound of metallic teeth gnas.h.i.+ng shut. ”Shay,” I called out. ”You awake?”

”I am now.”

”Might want to cover your ears,” I offered.

Before Shay could ask me why, Calloway let out the same explosive run of curses he always did when Alma tried to get within five feet of him. ”Get the f.u.c.k out, n.i.g.g.e.r,” he yelled. ”Swear to G.o.d, I'll f.u.c.k you up if you put your hand on me-”

CO Smythe pinned him against the side of his cell. ”For Christ's sake, Reece,” he said. ”Do we have to go through this every single day for a G.o.dd.a.m.n Band-Aid?”

”We do if that black b.i.t.c.h is the one putting it on.”

Calloway had been convicted of burning a synagogue to the ground seven years ago. He sustained head injuries and needed ma.s.sive skin grafts on his arms, but he considered the mission a success because the terrified rabbi had fled town. The grafts still needed checking; he'd had three surgeries alone in the past year.

”You know what,” Alma said, ”I don't really care if his arms rot off.”

She didn't, that much was true. But she did did care about being called a n.i.g.g.e.r. Every time Calloway hurled that word at her, she'd stiffen. And after she visited Calloway, she moved a little more slowly down the pod. care about being called a n.i.g.g.e.r. Every time Calloway hurled that word at her, she'd stiffen. And after she visited Calloway, she moved a little more slowly down the pod.

I knew exactly how she felt. When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the one person who doesn't.

”I got hep C because of you,” Calloway said, although he'd probably gotten it from the blade of the barber's razor, like the other inmates who'd contracted it in prison. ”You and your filthy n.i.g.g.e.r hands.”

Calloway was being particularly awful today, even for Calloway. At first I thought he was cranky like the rest of us, because our meager privileges had been taken away. But then it hit me-Calloway couldn't let Alma into his house, because she might find the bird. And if she found the bird, CO Smythe would confiscate it.

”What do you want to do?” Smythe asked Alma.

She sighed. ”I'm not going to fight him.”

”That's right,” Calloway crowed. ”You know who's boss. Rahowa Rahowa!”

At his call, short for Racial Holy War, inmates from all over the Secure Housing Unit began to holler. In a state as white as New Hamps.h.i.+re, the Aryan Brotherhood ran the prison population. They controlled drug deals done behind bars; they tattooed one another with shamrocks and lightning bolts and swastikas. To be jumped into the gang, you had to kill someone sanctioned by the Brotherhood-a black man, a Jew, a h.o.m.os.e.xual, or anyone else whose existence was considered an affront to your own.

The sound became deafening. Alma walked past my cell, Smythe following. As they pa.s.sed Shay, he called out to the officer, ”Look inside.”

”I know what's inside Reece,” Smythe said. ”Two hundred and twenty pounds of c.r.a.p.”

As Alma and the CO left, Calloway was still yelling his head off. ”For G.o.d's sake,” I hissed at Shay. ”If they find Calloway's stupid bird they'll toss all all our cells again! You want to lose the shower for our cells again! You want to lose the shower for two two weeks?” weeks?”

”That's not what I meant,” Shay said.

I didn't answer. Instead I lay down on my bunk and stuffed more wadded-up toilet paper into my ears. And still, I could hear Calloway singing his white-pride anthems. Still, I could hear Shay when he told me a second time that he hadn't been talking about the bird.

That night when I woke up with the sweats, my heart drilling through the spongy base of my throat, Shay was talking to himself again. ”They pull up the sheet,” he said.

”Shay?”

I took a piece of metal I'd sawed off from the lip of the counter in the cell-it had taken months, carved with a string of elastic from my underwear and a dab of toothpaste with baking soda, my own diamond band saw. Ingeniously, the triangular result doubled as both a mirror and a shank. I slipped my hand beneath my door, angling the mirror so I could see into Shay's cell.