The window was tall and narrow like a letterbox flipped on its side.
Around the width of a human head, it mirrored a striplight to the ceiling so that from his bunk Patch would sometimes imagine the roof was open to the heavens.
His view of the world rose across a thousand acres of prison land, and beyond that a water tower standing on six spindles, the same white as winter cloud, its belly darkened, bulging with rainfall. Telephone cables crossed, and sometimes he heard them crackle with a thousand voices racing to be heard. He imagined mothers and daughters dissecting Monica Lewinsky, the plight of Hillary and her Today Show conspiracy, following Bill standing strong and noble, adding layers to his card house, the foundations unimpeachable. Maybe a couple of guys talking Dale Earnhardt and the nature of a hard win. A line to big cities where traders talked their books, the Dow scorching new highs as unemployment plumbed new lows. A Thurston school shooting, another in Arkansas. A tornado in Minnesota, another in Birmingham.
The prison was the third oldest in the country, and its years could be counted in the fractures of bare stone walls and intermittent electrics, in dust that coughed through vents and the run of slave trade blood spilled a hundred and fifty years before.
From that window he watched the new prison take shape; cement foundations lay in blocks as yellow backhoes drove rutted roads and scooped soil loosened by jackhammers so loud the walls of his cell shook. At the end of hard days, the men sat on their machinery and smoked and looked back at the housing. Patch would raise his hand, knowing they could not see him at all. And when they were done, they passed onerous checks before hitting the eight-mile road that led back to civilization, where they could stand in scalding showers and wash the drag from their skin and memory.
Though the prison was different, the sentence and route in, Patch mostly picked up where he had left off, his time outside a temporary reprieve from a judgment that began so long ago.
He left his cell at seven, ate a little, then headed to the prison library in the sternum of the central block, down whitewashed corridors that might have fit into a tired hospital had bars and heavy locks not accompanied each door. A year of sedulous care and he was granted a single key that he would collect from a utility station manned by an unsmiling lifer.
Inside the prison library he switched on the godly lights, so bright he gave his eye a moment to adjust as he went through the shift pattern, emptied the drop box and began to shelve the returns. Four thousand books. He worked with eleven others on rotation, overseen by two librarians who bused in from neighboring towns and fielded questions mostly on law and enterprise. Patch worked the reference section, building the art collection as an aside to pointing the new in the direction of self-help, meditation, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
At nine the librarian Cooper showed, newspaper tucked beneath his arm, bitching about the construction work, eight miles breathing dust as he followed a concrete truck in.
He wore glasses, his hair a little long for current fashions. Six feet tall, broad and lean, he kept order with the tone of his voice, followed protocol because it was ingrained. He’d started work a month after Patch arrived, the two feeling their way together. Patch offered just enough, towed the straightest line, added smiles when he had to. And then, after five hundred and thirteen days, he wrote his letter to Warden Riley.
Two months after that Patch was hauled out of his cell an hour after lunch, cuffed, and led from the main floor through two sets of doors and out into the yard. The guard’s name was Blackjack, and he did not speak a word till they were clear of the reception center.
“Warden’s office, what the hell did you do, Patch?” Blackjack said.
Patch threw a glance at the man. Six feet five, maybe two hundred twenty pounds. Most of the inmates called him The Wall and said the state of Missouri could’ve saved a couple of million dollars on security simply by placing Blackjack in front of the main gate.
“I know you weren’t fighting. I would’ve seen the sheet.”
“How’s your girl?” Patch said, and the big man smiled.
“Aced it.”
The girl was Blackjack’s daughter. Eleven years old, she had been tasked with a school project on precious metals. Patch had pointed Blackjack in the direction of Gustav Klimt.
They walked slow because Blackjack knew that feel of sun on skin was something.
“I always thought I knew you, always thought your heart was in the right place, but why the hell did you go kill that zookeeper?” Blackjack said, same each time.