I was all jitters throughout the remainder of that day and the beginning of the next. Pete Goodrich may have been in federal prison for bank robbery, but Tommy Jump’s most serious offenses were limited to parking violations.
And now I knew why: I didn’t have the stomach for lawbreaking.
Masri probably didn’t help matters much, because while he had solved one of our problems—he had managed to secure a key to the maintenance warehouse and told me where to store our cans temporarily—he pointed out another that we hadn’t really addressed yet: Once the unicorn was ours, we needed to find a place to hide it.
Obviously, it wasn’t impossible. Skrobis had been stashing it successfully for years. Still, we needed to come up with something more secure than wherever Masri planned to scatter the cans. Those were expendable to a certain extent, and if a CO came across them, it wouldn’t raise much concern. The same could not be said of the unicorn.
Masri said he’d work on it. My first job after lunch was to let Skrobis know I’d be able to deliver on our deal.
I practically burst out of the dining hall, walking as fast as I could toward the pavilion without looking like a man in a hurry. Skrobis wasn’t there yet. It was possible his unit was still at lunch.
Rather than sit there and be nervous, I took a lap around the jogging track. Then another. When I returned from the second lap, with a light sweat popping on my brow, Skrobis was there, having already assumed his meditative pose.
I walked up to him silently.
“Greetings, my friend,” he said, opening his eyes. “Any news?”
“Yes. We’re on.”
“I figured as much.”
“How did you know?”
“Your aura is very yellow,” he said, as if that made perfect sense.
“I’m sure it is. So how are you going to get this to me?”
“Pull up your shirt,” he said.
“Huh?”
He was already yanking up the hem of his own shirt.
“Be quick about it,” he urged.
Then I understood: He had the unicorn on him. He was off-loading it like it was the One Ring from Lord of the Rings, having already possessed it long past the point where its mere presence was driving him mad.
And now it was about to be mine. Its power. And its curse.
He reached under his shirt and pulled out a bulky, roughly rectangular package. It had been wrapped in a white plastic garbage bag that had telltale dirt stains on it, which was suggestive of where Skrobis had been hiding it.
I fumbled with my own outfit, my nervous hands moving more thickly than I would have liked. When he judged me ready, he slipped the unicorn out of his shirt and passed it to me. I tucked it under my T-shirt, then retucked my shirt.
“Excellent,” Skrobis said. “And you’ll have my payment ready at this time tomorrow?”
“Sure hope so,” I said. “If I don’t, it’s because I got caught and the COs are busy fitting me for a noose.”
“If that’s the case, you don’t know me.”
“Of course not,” I said.
I gave him a solemn nod, then retreated. It was maybe 150 yards between Randolph and the pavilion. Five steps into the journey, I could already tell the return trip was going to feel twice as long. My T-shirt flattened out the package a little, but otherwise the bulge in my midsection made me look more pregnant than Amanda probably did at the moment. The lump for the radio was particularly unwieldy, like a tumor growing out of my large intestine.
There were other inmates coming my way in ones and twos from their dorms, ready to take advantage of a fine fall afternoon in the rec yard. It may have been my imagination, but I swore they were staring at me like my stomach was a glowing neon sign pointing the way to beer and naked ladies.
Then, to my increasing horror, a small, brown-haired woman emerged from around the corner. It was Karen Lembo, one of the prison social workers, and the moment she saw me, she made a direct line toward me.
I had met her during my orientation, and she was what you’d expect from someone in that role: high-energy, perpetually up in people’s business, convinced she could save every lost little soul in her care. She had gone out of her way to assure us that just because we were incarcerated didn’t mean we weren’t still one of God’s special creatures in her eyes.
Which was the last thing I needed right now. Forget my precious snowflake individuality. I yearned to be indistinct.
She was wearing black pants and sensible flats, and I was trying to keep my attention trained on the area near her shoes so we could just pass by without an exchange of any sort. Except even in my peripheral vision, I was aware she was making very direct, very intentional eye contact.
I was already sweating from the jog. And the tension. But now there was an extra burst of perspiration coming from my too-hot face and my belly, which was smothered by that plastic bag.
If I could just slip by her, this would be—
“Hello, Peter,” she said.
She had stopped in front of me, blocking my path. She wore a knowing smile, like she could tell I was up to something.
“Hi, Mrs. Lembo,” I said.
It immediately sounded wrong. Too high-pitched. No, wait: I had let my accent slip.
Quickly, I added a twangy, “How’re you today, ma’am?”
“I’m doing fine, thank you,” she said. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Great, thanks.”
“You look hot.”
“Jogging,” I said. “They serve us all those carbs at lunch. If I don’t get the blood moving a bit soon as I get out, I’ll fall right asleep.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, I had a conversation about you with Mr. Munn yesterday.”
“Oh yeah?”
I shifted my weight and subtly—God, I hoped it was subtle—crossed my arms over my stomach. It was an entirely unnatural thing for a man in a full lather to do. And it only made me hotter.
“He says you haven’t signed up for any vocational classes yet. Is that true?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is.”
“I know things can feel pretty bleak at first, when you think your sentence will never end,” she said gently. “But this really is the best time to get on the right path, when you’re still new and still forming your habits here. It’s like we said at orientation: You need to start preparing for the day you get out on the day you get in. Remind me, what kind of job did you have before you came here?”
“I was a teacher.”
“That’s right. History?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You know you’re not going to be able to teach again when you get out, right? School systems do background checks.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But that’s no reason to give up on life. You’ll still be a young man when you get out of here. This is a great opportunity to try something new.”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get on that.”
“We’ve found educated inmates like yourself often really enjoy working with their hands. Carpentry, perhaps. There’s always going to be a need for carpenters, and the industry tends to be forgiving to those with criminal records. We’ve placed a number of inmates directly with jobs as soon as they’re released. Our instructor in the woodshop is excellent. I bet he’d take you under his wing.”
“I’d like that.”
“You should go see him right now. I’ll walk you there if you like.”
I’d like nothing less.
“That’s real, real kind of you,” I said, desperately trying to deflect her. “But I wouldn’t want to meet him like this. I’m pretty sweaty.”
She appraised me with suspicion. “Well. Okay. But I’m going to check with the woodshop later. I hope I hear you went there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Right after I change my shirt.”
She studied me again, her smile remaining unconvinced. I swear, the moment lasted longer than “City on Fire/Final Sequence” from Sweeney Todd—and that’s a thirteen-minute song.
“Thanks, Mrs. Lembo, appreciate the talk,” I said, then sidestepped her and continued toward Randolph.
I didn’t dare turn around to see if she was still watching me. I just walked straight back to my room and—not knowing what else to do with it—stashed the unicorn under the plastic sheet that covered my mattress, closing up the hole I created in the seam with the safety pins that had cinched my pants that first day. I don’t think I breathed the entire time.
One Ring to rule them all.
One Ring to send them directly to maximum-security hell.
Time moved slowly after that, taking an hour or two to pass each five- or fifteen-minute increment. I went to the library, where I studied some topographical maps of Dorsey’s Knob. Then I established contact with the prison woodshop so I could keep Karen Lembo off my case.
Before dinner, Masri and I huddled one more time to review plans. He also gave me the maintenance warehouse key—another item I really wasn’t supposed to have.
Dinner was tasteless. I ate it strictly because I knew I’d need the energy later.
My conversation with Amanda after dinner was even flatter than usual. “Kelly” told me my cousin Amanda had gone to the obstetrician. She was describing some routine test they had performed, but I was having a hard time concentrating. At one point she even asked me if I was distracted by something. Yeah, honey, it just so happens I’m breaking the law tonight. . . .
The final thing I did before entering Randolph for the nine o’clock standing count was rustle up a stick so I could use it later as a prop for the front door.
By ten o’clock, I was settled into bed when the lights cut out. Under my feet was the small rise in the mattress from where I had hidden the unicorn. I was exhausted from the anxiety but couldn’t have slept without the aid of a tranquilizer gun.
Other than underwear and socks, the only thing I wore was my Timex, whose tiny LED light allowed me to check the time under the covers. I had decided that twenty minutes was sufficient time to get up, get dressed, and climb the hill. A lifetime in the theater had made me proficient at both speedy costume changes and hasty exits.
In the bunk underneath me, big Frank Thacker’s breathing became slow and steady. Outside our room, the noises of Randolph settling in for the evening—latecomers shuffling in from the television room, guys using the bathroom one last time—slowly dissipated. The heavy snorers, guys who could rattle the walls with their soft-palate vibrations, didn’t usually get going until later. This was the quietest time of day at FCI Morgantown.
I swore the loudest sound in the whole dorm was the thunderous beating of my own heart as I waited to make my move.