Part 3 (2/2)

”Paint, draw, throw clay. Sometimes we expand into collage and poetry.”

”I went to camp for that once. When I was in grade school.”

”Exactly. You think it's camp.”

We were grinning at each other. I don't know why I'd edged into mild hostility-perhaps an instinct to reestablish my bona fides as a CO. At some level I was bothered by the coddling that went on in this room, by the caring and nurturing of such unworthy beings. You had whole school systems out in the world where no one gave a s.h.i.+t.

”I thought it was supposed to be therapy. Art therapy,” I said.

”The art isn't therapy,” he said, and got engaged again. ”Not the way you think of therapy. I don't believe art is therapeutic or even moral just because it's art. I don't believe it necessarily makes you a better person, whether you're the viewer or the creator. Art is too elusive for that. Work that's didactic or deliberately uplifting is usually c.r.a.p.”

”So why bother with it?” I didn't mean the dismissal to be voiced so harshly, but Brother Mike was undeterred.

”The art gives them confidence, a means of expressing themselves, sometimes for the first time. Most of the men here have low self-esteem, and what little they do have, the system grinds out of them through the daily humiliations and restrictions.” He raised a hand. ”I'm not criticizing. It is what it is. But as we refine punishment, we whittle away the human psyche. In my experience, that does nothing to encourage rehabilitation, let alone actual penance, the soul-saving stuff I'm supposed to be engaged in. Artistic creativity is a bit of salvation from that inst.i.tutional degradation. It gives a sense of purpose, a sense of accomplishment, a platform to discuss moral and spiritual issues, occasionally personal insights.” He laughed. ”Maybe that's just ego speaking, but I swear, at conferences, my presentations go over very well.”

I nodded. ”Sounds challenging.” Like I'd crashed some c.o.c.ktail party and was agreeing with opinions I didn't quite understand.

”I build some trust, foster some self-expression, and channel the art making into the restorative justice work we do. Are you familiar with that concept?”

Restorative justice. I knew the term, and it had always seemed ridiculous to me. ”A little. You let perpetrators and victims talk things through.”

”It's my way of saving souls, Officer Williams. It takes years to prepare an inmate, and years for an inmate to successfully reach out to the people they've wronged. But when it happens, when those sides start to correspond or when they actually meet face-to-face, you'd be amazed at the emotions that surface and the humanity that gets revealed. And that's when people make a connection and move forward, sometimes with great positive impact on each other's lives.”

”Why would any victim want to connect with a perp?”

”They're connected already. They'll never not be connected. This is just a way to handle the awesome psychic reality of that. Otherwise”-he shrugged-”the hate and the anger is like cancer killing us a little more every day.”

His eyes were locked on mine, and I knew then he was a true believer. I, on the other hand, had never believed in anything deeply in my entire life-except for the importance of contingency plans, the likelihood of the most certain things f.u.c.king up, and, perhaps, on my worst days, the utter elusiveness of the human connection Brother Mike insisted on pus.h.i.+ng.

”Well,” I said, ”I admire what you're doing.” I didn't mean it, but I admired something about him, the true believer aspect, I suppose.

”We both have difficult jobs.” It sounded like simple honesty, and a little chip of ice melted from my heart.

”Jon Crowley was working on a visual narrative,” he said, ”a story in pictures and words that delved into the themes of restorative justice quite heavily.”

I was disoriented by his description of Crowley's comic book. Restorative justice was not the vibe I'd picked up glancing through the pages.

”The Four Stages of Cruelty,” I said, the words slipping out.

”You've seen it?”

”No,” I said. ”Heard someone mention it.” He knew I was lying.

”Since you're interested, perhaps you'd like to look at his source material. You can borrow this if you like.”

He reached up to the shelf above him and retrieved a heavy, water-warped book and pa.s.sed it to me.

”An eighteenth-century British artist named Hogarth developed a series of prints called, of course, The Four Stages of Cruelty. Hogarth believed art could change people. He was a reformer. Social injustice and the root causes of criminality were among his themes. You should look through. We can have a vigorous discussion afterward. And I make the most wonderful cookies.”

I didn't know whether he was teasing me or getting rid of me, but I stood and prepared myself to leave, weary from my masquerade.

”One more thing,” he said, as if it had been he who'd called us together. ”I have something unfortunate to give you.”

”What do you mean?”

I was slightly alarmed by the announcement. Brother Mike walked back to his desk and found a manila folder and brought it to me. I took it, cautiously, and looked inside.

A piece of white paper with an ink drawing on it. A woman holding a bejeweled sword, and that woman was me. An accurate likeness of my own face. My naked profile with long hair, an arched back, and pert, upturned b.r.e.a.s.t.s that could have been imagined only by someone who'd never seen a thirty-nine-year-old without a bra.

”I'm sorry to heave that on you,” he said. ”I removed it from a notebook. In this environment, there's obviously some taboo subjects. Gang symbols. Violent fantasies. p.o.r.nography. This crosses a couple of those lines. I have an arrangement, fully known to my students, whereby I forward anything I confiscate to Keeper Wallace. But I thought you might rather destroy it yourself.”

”Did Josh do this?” I could not help but feel the flush of shame.

”You know him?” he asked.

”Somewhat.” My day with the girlfriend killer had inspired a few fantasies. There was nothing surprising about that, but the thought disgusted me, and it was embarra.s.sing to be sitting before Brother Mike with the drawing in my hand. I closed the folder. ”I'll take care of it.”

”Thanks,” he said. ”I'd rather you did.”

I stood, the folder under my arm, and shook Brother Mike's hand like an insurance adjuster. Then I tossed out one last question.

”How did Jon Crowley finish his project with a broken arm?”

Brother Mike looked surprised, and there was something gratifying in the way I threw him off balance, however unintentionally.

”A good point, isn't it?” he said. ”Lawrence Elgin asked Jon that in cla.s.s. 'How did you do it?'” Brother Mike let out a ragged sigh. ”I wonder, would you look in on them for me? I'd like to know their condition, and n.o.body has been willing to tell me a thing.”

I promised I would do that, and felt the entanglements grow.

7.

But I did not get the time to check in on Elgin or Crowley. Four hours after I got home that evening, I was summoned back for URF duty. Disturbances on one of the blocks, they told me, and the news felt like a delayed tremor following the fight in the yard. Sometimes it happened that way, a little thing leading to greater confusion, and you wondered if it was all connected or just random reactions or even the full moon.

I felt amped up driving back to the prison, a little overtired and adrenaline pushed, but excited to put on the battle rattle and do some actual emergency work. The gate camera was hooded over with snow when I got there, but they buzzed me in anyway. I stomped my boots off on the mat, adding to the dirty slush.

Tony Pinckney-Nosepicker to his closest friends-sat at the receiving counter in the cage behind the metal detector. Though five years my junior, we'd joined at the same time, so our work lives had often overlapped. We'd done rounds together many times, spent two weekends shooting guns, squirting chemical agent, and tasering each other at training courses. He'd once invited me to a minor-league baseball game-whether as a date or a guys' night out I never learned, because I turned him down. Now he was all business.

”I need a p.i.s.s break and a coffee,” he announced, as though my arrival were long overdue. He asked me to man the station for five while he relieved himself. That meant a further delay in my URF response time, but what could I do? I took off my parka but remained standing in the booth, all the video monitors in the world for my entertainment. I could see the blurry commotion on a stretch of D block, some inmates in their cells like good doggies, some sitting quietly on the floor grinning and chatting to show they were tough, a few s.h.i.+t disturbers pacing drunken angles and occasionally throwing up their arms at the camera to shout unheard rebukes about terrible injustices. I felt my heart tick up a notch, seeing the brutal undercurrent come to the surface, the rage that some felt was their G.o.d-given right to express. It was just for show, a make-believe fantasy of revolt, but it could easily go too far. I'd seen men commit violence and look bewildered about it later, as though they'd been forced to go through with something just to live up to the expectations of the situation at hand. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped inside some sick f.u.c.k's private delusion.

<script>