Part 3 (1/2)

”I don't know,” he said, but more drily than before. ”To talk to a lawyer?”

Cooper Lewis was a small-timer. If he'd achieved any status at all inside Ditmarsh, it was as a runner, someone who did favors or took falls. MacKay would know about that.

”Who's Lewis bringing the phone in for, do you think?”

MacKay's smile was cold, as if he were saying, look at you, gazing into the abyss.

”Sweetie, you don't want to take this job so seriously as all that,” he said.

I pulled the rubber gloves out of my pocket.

”Well, I'll leave you these, then.” And snapped them with all the indifference I could muster.

I had a suspicion that Ray MacKay wouldn't be needing them, and that inmate Cooper Lewis would be keeping his cell phone.

6.

My s.h.i.+ft ended at four, but instead of signing out, squealing from the parking lot at a resolute fifty miles per hour, and putting the walls of Ditmarsh into the rectangular frame of my rearview mirror, I did something well beyond the purview of my narrow responsibilities: I visited Brother Mike. On my way, I concocted the remotely plausible tale that I was following up to check on him. I'd been the one to extract him from the yard, so it made a certain amount of sense, though a CO under any ordinary circ.u.mstances would never have given a moment of concern to the fate of a civilian who'd thrown himself into a corrections matter. My real motive, pressing like a heavy weight on my chest, was a desire to atone for having ignored Josh's warnings in the Keeper's car. I wanted to a.s.sess my responsibility for the consequences I'd seen in the yard during that brutal fight. I wanted a better understanding of an event that was, in all likelihood, ultimately incomprehensible.

The studio that housed the art cla.s.s was in the education or east wing, and that location enhanced all my misgivings and the sense that I was betraying my tribe. The east wing had been a two-floored unit until 1979, when the inmates housed within had risen up and taken control, killing four of our brothers in the initial siege. A full-scale riot resulted, during which only two inmates died, leaving the account books spectacularly unbalanced. To wreak as much destruction as possible, the walls between the isolation cells had been knocked down by the inmates involved, creating long, ragged pa.s.sageways through the length of the wing. Afterward it was decided to go with the flow of that refurbishment work, knock down all the walls, plaster and paint over the unfortunate grim memories, and build cla.s.srooms and offices where cells had once stood. They housed the weak sisters within that new s.p.a.ce, ceding them occupied territory for their anger management programs and therapy sessions, while turning the wing into an edifice for tolerance and a permanent monument to defeat.

The doors of Brother Mike's studio were open. I had never been inside, and I was surprised by the expansiveness of the s.p.a.ce within, a workshop filled with broad tables and tall stools, lit by giant caged windows overlooking the yard. I called out but got no answer and so, finding myself alone, wandered around to look at the so-called art. The drawings and paintings on the walls were calmer than I would have expected. Bowls of fruit, the faces of loved ones. I stopped before an abstract piece and couldn't decide whether it was ludicrous or interesting. It was a large canvas divided into a dozen grids, with a single identical portrait of Elvis painted into each square. Fat Elvis, with the sideburn muttonchops. When I looked closely, I saw that each Elvis was different in the most trivial way-a shortened sideburn, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a pirate's earring. I was drawn in by the irregularities and had begun to note each variation in turn when I was startled by a voice.

”I'm over here, I'm over here.”

It sounded, to my ears, like a snarl of complaint. I turned around expecting accusation but got an impatient wave instead. Brother Mike appeared in the doorway of an office I hadn't noticed at the far end of the studio. He seemed a mixture of anger and energy as he moved toward me, pausing once to adjust a precarious arrangement of tools on one of the workbenches. Yet there was ease to him, too. He was at home in this room and in his own skin. In comparison, I felt as though I were masquerading as someone important.

I introduced myself by name, and we shook hands, his grip about as firm and commanding as I'd ever felt. He called me Officer Williams. I hesitated to call him Brother Mike. Using the term made it sound as though we were at a lodge meeting.

And then a smile came to his face. ”If I'm in trouble, at least they sent you.” A little flirtatious, the way old men can pour on the charm before much younger women.

I decided to go with the flirt. It's a cheap instinct, but too easy to pa.s.s up.

”I'm not sure why you should get in trouble for doing something the boys ought to have done themselves. I thought that was a decent takedown for a counselor.”

”I used to box,” he explained.

I smiled. ”I'd say you used to wrestle.”

”Only with sin.”

It was a joke, I think.

”You look fine,” I announced, as though my work here were done. ”I just wanted to see if you were physically okay.” The word physically sounded stupid to my ears.

He grimaced, but it wasn't pain. ”I'm so sick about that,” he said. ”I know such things happen from time to time, but I'm still broadsided by it all. I think that's why I ran across the yard and got in the way. I couldn't quite believe the whole thing turned violent. I just wanted it to stop.”

I saw my opening and put the question forward hesitantly. ”Did it start because of something that happened in your cla.s.s?”

I antic.i.p.ated a gruff reply, a return to the bad temper, but he looked relieved. ”I'm glad someone's finally asking me about it.”

”You mean no one has been here to talk to you?”

I'd have expected the Pen Squad, Keeper Wallace, or some irate CO to have jumped all over Brother Mike by this point, a full day later.

”No one until now,” he said, offering me the job. ”Shall we sit down in my office?”

I nodded, reluctant now that my plan was actually working so well.

The office had a desk and a couch and another living-room chair with a coffee table between, and two walls lined with bookshelves and upright file cabinets, like a staggered canyon of skysc.r.a.pers. Papers and books seemed to have exploded from every drawer and shelf. He directed me to the couch, and I sank into its deep cus.h.i.+on. He took the chair opposite, and suddenly we were patient and therapist, or so it felt to me. This is where his ease comes from, I thought. He sees all the world through the prism of a.n.a.lysis.

”The cla.s.s. Well, there was nothing really. Nothing unusual about the session. I wish I could understand it all better.”

”It doesn't always make sense,” I told him. ”You had group?” The word session was therapeutic code. I pictured a circle of men explaining their inner rages, cheering one another's progress on, like addicts with a murdering problem.

”It was our monthly crit session, not counseling related. Anyone who's finished artwork that month can show it to the rest of the cla.s.s for comment and feedback. Those discussions can grow heated sometimes.”

”Inmates can get heated about anything.”

He smiled. ”You should see grad students.”

I pushed further. ”Did Jon Crowley show something?”

”He didn't. He was going to, but then he decided his piece wasn't ready, and we couldn't convince him to change his mind. He's a perfectionist. So a few others went instead. I have eight in that cla.s.s, one of three groups I meet with every week. Horace Sunfish, Timothy Connors, Bradwyn Delinano, Roy Duckett, Josh Riff, and, of course, Jonathan Crowley and Lawrence Elgin. That afternoon, Timothy showed a very unfinished two-D collage, Bradwyn read a rather unfortunate love poem he'd also ill.u.s.trated, and Josh showed some of his new drawings.”

I knew everyone in that crew by sight, and I was surprised at how unlikely they were as a mix. Horace was an Indian. Timothy was an incomplete transs.e.xual they called Screen Door, supposedly because he got banged so often. Bradwyn was half Chinese, half Puerto Rican. Roy was the old-timer with one leg who worked in the kitchen, Elgin a raging Viking, Josh an utter newbie, Crowley your average mid-thirties lifer.

”Did Crowley and Elgin have some animosity between them?”

Brother Mike sighed. ”A general dislike. But nothing overwhelmingly hostile, or I wouldn't have had them in the same group. Lawrence can be unpredictable in his opinions-sometimes he's surprisingly thoughtful, in fact-but Jon can also be moody. If anything, the animosity that day was between Roy Duckett and Jon. Do you know Roy? Roy teased Jon quite hard about not wanting to show his work. But I didn't think much of it at the time. They're close friends, almost inseparable, and I find there's often less patience and everyday politeness in such relations.h.i.+ps. But really, Jon's work was ready to show. I had glanced through it before cla.s.s when Jon and I had our counseling session. He'd made a lot of progress over the last year on what was an ambitious project, but when the stakes are high for an artist, it can be difficult to open up.”

”What was the project?” I asked.

He looked at me with amus.e.m.e.nt. ”Are you interested in art?”

The sudden condescension made me bristle, and I responded badly.

”I just find it funny hearing the word 'art' thrown around when we're talking about hard-core inmates.”

He'd found me out, and he smiled now with a polite reserve. ”You probably don't think much of what we do here.”

”What is it that you do here?” I was relieved, at some level, to be talking honestly.