Part 2 (2/2)
”I've been bird-watching lots,” he said.
I couldn't have been more surprised if inmate Cooper Lewis had s.h.i.+t a microwave. Bird-watching. Sometimes life hits you like that, the little astonishments that lead to major recalibrations.
”You're kidding?” I said. ”I wouldn't have guessed.”
MacKay looked at me as though I were making fun. ”Yeah, bird-watching. You asked, so I told you. I'm treasurer of the Mourning Warbler Society.”
A bit sour because of my surprise, but what did he expect? I'd pictured him in a camouflage jacket waiting for deer, or liquored up in an ice-fis.h.i.+ng hut, or doubling down in some Indian casino. Not bird-watching.
The mood was wrong, and I wished I could rescue it.
”I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird right now,” I said. It wasn't about bird-watching, but there was a bird quality to it, one I figured a man of Ray MacKay's sensibilities could appreciate.
But MacKay looked at me in horror until I asked what was wrong.
”What the h.e.l.l kind of a book is that?” he demanded.
Then I realized the t.i.tle might alarm a bird lover in complete ignorance of it. So I began an embarra.s.sed and awkward attempt to explain that To Kill a Mockingbird wasn't actually about killing mockingbirds. In fact, one of the best lines in the book even stated that to kill a mockingbird was a sin.
But MacKay said, ”I'm just f.u.c.king with you, Kali. I like Gregory Peck, too.”
I called him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and sat back, relieved yet embarra.s.sed. I often felt superior to the men I worked with, and it was at a moment like this that I realized some of them knew it.
More minutes went by. Lewis had stopped listening and was starting to squirm on the slab, bringing his knees up to his chest. Nature taking its course, if ever there had been a more unnatural course taken.
”You don't have to sit this one out with me, Ray,” I said as kindly as I could, trying not to sound patronizing again. ”I'm all right. I know it's my job.”
But MacKay said, ”You kidding me? Wouldn't miss this for the world. Why don't you go powder your nose or beat up an inmate.”
”You got this one?” I asked.
MacKay nodded. ”Yeah, I'm serious.”
”Well, that's a deal as far as I'm concerned.”
Except I didn't move. I was paralyzed by suspicion and doubt. I couldn't help but wonder why MacKay wanted me out of the room. Most of the COs had something going on. The inmates wore you down that way, their pa.s.sive and sometimes not so pa.s.sive forms of resistance requiring a little give-and-take, a mutual back-scratching to pa.s.s a s.h.i.+ft without incident. You started out doing something small for them in order to get a favor in return-a quickened response time at lockdown, a heads-up when something was going down-but then the favors kept getting traded, and you stopped knowing the difference, and you became colleagues in a way, and sometimes you even worked for them. MacKay despised inmates, but that didn't mean he didn't despise himself a little bit, too. So I took the opportunity to stall by asking MacKay about the other thing on my mind.
”You ever hear of an inmate referred to as the Beggar?”
I said it low, still conscious of Lewis. MacKay didn't flinch or redirect his gaze, but it was one of those moments when you realize a bell has been rung.
”Sure I know him,” he answered. ”He was here for ten years, wasn't he?”
Him? I knew of no Beggar. I had never heard the name before, and I wondered vaguely if it was a forgotten term in the ever-evolving and endlessly variant jailhouse jargon. I was not expecting such a routine answer. Another reminder: what I didn't know about corrections could fill a Chicago phone book.
”Are you kidding me? Who is he?”
MacKay leaned back, eyes on Lewis, and gave a reasonable shrug. ”Name we had for a son of a b.i.t.c.h called Earl Hammond.”
He stopped, and I figured that was it, but MacKay was just winding up, some pent-up bitterness working its way to the surface like slow lava.
”This was mid-eighties. He was in a gang, naturally. No big deal. Then he stabbed a fifteen-year veteran CO named Tony Bucker about fifty times. We buried Hammond same day we buried Bucker, put him in the City, cleared the other a.s.sholes out, and let him rot by himself in total f.u.c.king isolation for the next three years. Let's just say Hammond became a favorite object of frustration from that point forward. If you had a bad day, got a cup of urine splashed on you, got your a.s.s chewed out by a keeper, no worries, you just headed downtown into the City and whooped some cop-killer a.s.s for a while. We'd say he was begging for it. 'How was Hammond?' 'Begging for it!' Then some weak f.u.c.king sister took up his cause, and they transferred him in the middle of the night so none of us would make a fuss. But that was almost twenty years ago, so I have to ask, where in the h.e.l.l did you hear mention of him?”
I was embarra.s.sed to admit it.
”In a comic book.”
MacKay looked at me as if I had confessed my love for Cooper Lewis.
”Something an inmate drew,” I said. I saw it more clearly now. A piece of propaganda. The Four Stages of Cruelty. An account of the injustices incurred for the mere killing of a CO.
”Which f.u.c.king s.h.i.+tbird did that?”
And that's when I felt my first misgiving. Did I really know how someone like MacKay might react? I saw no way out.
”Jon Crowley.”
MacKay nodded. ”Mister Shank Fight in the Yard, huh? Well, it figures.” And he went back to watching Cooper Lewis.
I let a moment go by, until the insistence of doubt nudged me on.
”Why does it figure?”
MacKay looked at me without understanding.
”Why does it figure the guy who made the comic book about Hammond would get shanked in the yard?”
”Jesus, Kali, how should I f.u.c.king know?”
His incredulity put me in my place. I'd heard MacKay's comment as acknowledgment of some logical connection when it was just the usual indifference.
Minutes later he was still amped up and p.i.s.sed off.
”I'm sick of waiting for this f.u.c.ker.” But I felt like the anger was aimed in multiple directions at once-at Lewis, at Ditmarsh, at me.
”I'll wait,” I said, ever the peacekeeper among violent men.
”No, you get going. I'm going to expedite this a little. There's more than one way to take a s.h.i.+t.”
Pus.h.i.+ng me around, taking advantage of our friends.h.i.+p to handle some personal business. Part of me felt sad for him. I had the awareness that it happens to all of us in time. We get permanently angry.
I couldn't stop myself. ”Why does Lewis have a phone up his a.s.s, Ray?”
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