Part 6 (2/2)

Same old b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Always smarter than he looked. I made a joke. ”What'd you do, s.h.i.+t a phone?” It felt flat to me, but MacKay grinned and held up a hand for me to stop.

What do you say to an old man in his hospital bed sucking air? I planned to ask the usual questions, why he was d.o.g.g.i.ng it, whether he liked Jell-O three times a day. Then I'd tell him how good he looked and other cliches of the strained and obligatory hospital visit. Instead, MacKay said he'd heard I'd found Crowley down there.

I nodded. I didn't want to talk about it. I wanted him to let it go. ”Did you hear what they're saying?” I asked. ”They're saying he killed himself in protective custody.”

But MacKay didn't seem to hear me. ”In the old days that was the spot.” He nodded slowly between breaths. ”Whenever we'd beat on a prisoner, it was a social gathering. A party with snacks. The right inmate, the right occasion, felt like the f.u.c.king Super Bowl.”

I said nothing. He fiddled with the plastic bracelet on his thick left wrist, awkwardly, without much strength, pus.h.i.+ng it away like an irritation.

”Inmates hated it down there. It terrified them. The aloneness was the worst. Drove them apes.h.i.+t. You new jacks”-lifting his hand, the IV line lifting with it, to wag a finger slowly, mockingly-”don't always get it. The need. It's mutual, you know.”

I tried to think of something to say, a way to squeeze the dread out. ”I guess someone revived the tradition.”

”Pretty sophisticated bunch, us jacks.”

The words had gotten weaker. He felt for his mask. His hand fumbled so slowly I almost reached over to help. But he fitted the mask back on, and I watched its flimsy shape flex and steam up.

Who did it, Ray? I wanted to ask, and I didn't want to know. Were you there? Instead, I gripped the rail of the bed and watched him. His eyes looked small and far away. I didn't know what to do, whether to leave him or sit next to him. Then I remembered the book.

”Brought this for you.” I pulled the paperback out of my purse. The copy of To Kill a Mockingbird I'd had since high school.

I placed it on the table beside the remote. A book so heavy with injustice and moral failure, it felt wrong pa.s.sing it to him now, as though I were making an accusation.

”Jesus, thanks,” he muttered, heavy on the sarcasm.

Time to leave, I figured. I resisted tapping the bed like Alton and just told MacKay to get better soon. I expected to see a glint of tears, because that's how I was feeling, but MacKay tilted his head in my direction and offered a lopsided turn of his mouth. It could have been a twist of despair, but I recognized it as a grin.

I'd hoped the others would be gone and I could walk down the hallway unnoticed, but they'd remained, and I was forced to stand with them, robotic. They talked about work with intense devotion. I listened to them parsing out the latest. They were laughing, in that morbid way we laughed at all the snafus and the sick things that happened, about the audacity of the warden's press conference announcement about Crowley. I felt gravity settle a little in my shoes. At least they didn't believe it. I had that going for me. But they did not hint at the other possibilities-the certainty, really, that some of us had done the awful deed. Then Stevens brought up ”that f.u.c.king memo.” I hadn't heard about any memo, so I felt free to ask what they were talking about, and Alton filled me in. ”Basically the warden telling the COs straight out, he doesn't want to see so-called contradictory reports in the press anymore. Like the first thing we do when some s.h.i.+t happens inside is call our favorite reporter.”

”h.e.l.l,” Ringer said, ”I don't even read the sports page anymore, it's so full of f.u.c.king lies.”

I looked to Baumard, and he said, ”They're plugging the leaks. It's their standard CYA strategy for dealing with their own f.u.c.kups.” And then those f.u.c.kups got listed in familiar abbreviated versions of longer complaints. But nothing about Crowley, no explanation of whether that had been a f.u.c.kup or a coordinated exercise.

”Kali?” A voice behind me said, and I turned to see an older woman addressing me hopefully.

The men opened their little group and allowed the woman to approach. Baumard called her Rachel Honey. Alton called her Mrs. MacKay. She introduced herself to me as Ray's wife. I was only mildly surprised to realize that Ray had this pleasant-looking matron for a partner, a little gla.s.sy-eyed, tagged by forty years of marriage like a dead deer on a car roof. Rachel stated that she'd heard so much about me. Baumard announced it was time for him to sit with Ray. The other men dispersed to the vending machines and the restroom, leaving us gals alone.

”Do you smoke?” Rachel began. ”I need a cigarette. Walk me out?”

I didn't smoke, hadn't even enjoyed it when I was in my twenties, but I very much wanted to leave the hospital. We said little to each other as we walked down the hallway, stood in the elevator, and then pa.s.sed the check-in desk. Outside the automatic doors, near a pack of green pajamawearing hospital workers, Rachel breathed through a Virginia Slim and scuffed at a spot on the sidewalk with her pink sneaker.

”Ray liked you,” she said. The past tense hit us both.

”It sounds like he's going to be okay,” I suggested. I didn't know s.h.i.+t. I just wanted it so.

Rachel nodded. ”I hope.” She was thin in the neck, her skin waxy. Looking at her, I could smell my grandparents' living room, reeking of cigarettes, a stand-up ashtray between recliner chair and love seat facing the TV.

”That place is what's killing him,” she announced. ”He just wants a second chance now. Funny how life-” And she stopped. I waited. Yeah, funny how life.

”Working at Ditmarsh has eaten him up,” she continued. She shook her head and gazed at the parking lot. An ambulance arrived and did the loop. The cab doors opened and the paramedics got out. They were in no rush.

”Ray seemed all right most days,” I offered. What was I trying to do, convince Rachel of something she would know better than anyone else in the world?

I had the sense my words did not penetrate.

”Ray never talked in any detail about the things he had to see and do,” Rachel said, ”but I knew when it was bad by the way he'd come home. You're supposed to pretend the person you love doesn't hate his own life, but I don't care anymore. He was sick of it. He talked about you like a daughter, you know. He mentioned you lots, proud.”

I let a moment go by. ”I didn't know that.” And started to well up. A sap. A weeper at sad movies. I would have flipped down my URF visor if it happened to be handy.

”It wasn't healthy,” Rachel said again, and she gave me an uncomfortably direct stare, blue eyes drizzled with an acidic yellow.

Then it came.

”Ray wanted me to tell you that it wasn't him.”

I waited for more, feeling sick to my stomach, the ingestion of corrosive information.

”He didn't put that inmate down there. But if it gets any hotter, he's going to say he did, that it was an accident, something stupid that happened before he got sick, maybe because he was sick.” She looked disgusted and gazed at the blue sky. ”If it comes to that, they'll suspend him. Then we wait until it all dies down and they let him retire and reinstate his pension. He wanted you to know. He had nothing to do with it.”

”How can they do that?” I wanted to ask who's they? The warden? The Keeper?

Instead of answering, Rachel drew on the last of her cigarette with a controlled anger, stubbed it out more times than necessary on the concrete edge of the ash bin, and pressed it into the sand that lay on top like a fake tropical island.

”We'll probably move to Arizona if Ray's up for it. I have a sister there.”

She looked up at me again.

”Ray didn't say this part, but I'm saying it now. You should find another life.”

13.

The lockdown ended in the infirmary, though Josh heard that gen pop was still under the the screw. Josh's limited freedom was a relief. Whenever he saw Roy in the hospital bed, he thought of his father. It made no rational sense. They were opposites in every way except age. Before everything changed, his father had been a composed and vigorous man who always wore a suit. He believed you could will yourself into success. He didn't trust Josh's interest in art, but even that seemed natural and normal, an indication of virtue rather than a parental failing.

Roy had none of his father's solid qualities. He was lazy and sneaky and unhygienic, and the charm of it was that he knew you knew and still tried shamelessly to get his way. When he was tired, he seemed like a great physical bulk collapsed into despair. But when he was energized by a good mood, possessed by some random opinion or desire, he talked with wild gestures and enthusiasm, shooting for more sophistication than his background or brain could manage. None of it was like his father, but the hospital bed made Josh think that way just the same.

One lunch, Roy insisted that Josh feed him. ”Guy fed me this morning,” Roy said, his plump, naked arms folded royally on his chest. ”Do it or I'll tell the doctor you grabbed my crank while I was sleeping.”

It was funny enough. Roy had a way of wearing you down and making you like him. He threw so much empty flattery Josh's way that some of it couldn't help but touch his pride.

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