There comes a time of the year when the cold gets more intense. Dawns are dramatic for the inmates in Cómbita, but they have to steel themselves for everything, otherwise confinement will eat them alive. That’s how Popeye, who by the time had spent over eleven long years in prison, managed to keep moving forward, keeping his eye on the prize: freedom. He never let the weather or his enemies get to him. He met each day with verve, quickly taking his shower and fighting shoulder to shoulder with his tough companions. Some, wrapped in their blankets, walked quickly to the end of the yard and back again in an effort to both get warm and kill time. Bad weather tended to drag the prisoners’ spirits down even more. Others wore socks on their hands to stay warm. Cloaked in the fog, they looked like the spectral figures of somber, pensive homeless men, wandering endless paths, waiting for 10:00 a.m. to arrive, hoping to feel even a fleeting caress of the sun’s warmth.
Each prisoner carries the burden of a history and a conviction ranging anywhere from six to forty years. There are all sorts of convicts. Some have several back-to-back convictions of at least thirty years each and will never be free men again; they’ve got nothing to lose. Other inmates keep a watchful eye on them, because they’re the types who have killed other prisoners and even guards in prison, which is why they’ve accumulated a longer sentence. Oddly enough, they’re also the most serious.
Each ward in the prison has a life of its own. The murmur never ceases. The cells are closed after bath time and all the prisoners have to stay in the yard until 5:00 p.m. Various activities take place in this lapse. After walking up and down the yard comes to an end, the football games start. The remaining prisoners go to the tables or the hallways outside the cells to continue their conversations. Others go to make phone calls or to watch TV. The guard in charge of the authorized prison shop, mostly featuring food, opens at 8:00 a.m. A line forms there early. Every day is practically the same. The monotony is broken only by the human dramas in the convicts’ lives.
One day Popeye, after finishing his daily exercises, was approached by Cara ’e Crimen (Crime Face), a humble young inmate Popeye didn’t know very well.
“Uh, señor Popeye, do you have a minute?”
“Of course, my friend!” Pope answered respectfully.
The man led him to a place on the second floor. Pope thought it must have been a delicate matter and followed him without asking any questions. Since everything seemed so mysterious he kept an eye out for his friend Cala and saw that he already had him on his radar. He remained calm, knowing that if they were thinking of killing him, Cala would jump at them right away.
But it wasn’t what it seemed. Cara ’e Crimen looked both ways to make sure they could talk without being overheard.
“Don Popeye, I want to ask you a big favor … ”
“Tell me, my friend, what is it?,” Pope replied with curiosity.
“Uh, it’s, uh, it’s that today’s my birthday and … I don’t have any way to celebrate it!”
Popeye laughed at the revelation. He shook the man’s hand and congratulated him, asking him how he could be of help. He thought he was going to ask him for telephone cards, or maybe he wanted to buy some marijuana or a gallon of prison liquor.
“Señor … I want to ask you for a favor, to see if you would give me a Gala-brand cupcake, a chocolate bar, and a Bon Yurt yogurt for my birthday! … ”
Pope felt a pang of tenderness. He was honestly moved by the request. Coming from a fellow murderer to a killer like him, in the place where they were both locked up … it was a life lesson that shook the floor beneath him, showing him he was capable of feeling mercy.
“Of course my friend, with pleasure!”
He asked him to wait, ran over to the prison store, and bought what the man asked for, and even more. He handed everything to the man in a bag and left him alone. This experience struck him. It made him realize that life on the other side of the law is hard for men, just as it must be hard for the people they had harmed through their actions.
Cara ’e Crimen went to the third floor looking for privacy. From afar Popeye watched him. He plunked down on the gray cement floor of the shower area, placing his gifts one by one in front of him, slowly and methodically eating them all, enjoying them with a cold relish reflected on his face. There he stayed for a while celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday. The kid had to serve a forty-year sentence for murder and kidnapping. He had killed a hostage as well as a police captain attempting a rescue operation. His youth led him to make many mistakes and now he was paying for his crazy actions. He had a face right out of a police sketch. No one had ever heard of him having family and he never called anyone.
Sometimes Popeye would tell Cala to keep a look out since he was going to take a nap and, from a distance, he could see Cara ’e Crimen on alert, making sure that nothing happened to his benefactor. His loyalty to him was obvious.
As time passed Pope got used to the paramilitary ward and began to get involved in the events and normal prison dramas that break the colorless tedium of a sentence.