The intake officers processed Jason as they would any prisoner. They photographed and fingerprinted him, then took off the chains, the county-issued clothing. The strip search was perfunctory, and Jason endured it without comment. The smells were the same, same colors and sounds. He didn’t know where in the prison they’d house him, but knew how the walk in would play. The first time, there’d been jeers and threats; no one had known him.
This time, there’d be silence.
Just like when they’d walked him out.
Jason looked at the observation window on the second floor above the intake center. A man stood behind the glass, lights dimmed, but Jason knew it was the warden. He had the same narrow shoulders, the same defeated slump. Seeing him there, some part of Jason was angry—he wouldn’t be at Lanesworth without the warden’s approval and participation—but it was hard to hold on to the emotion. The man was his own kind of prisoner.
“Are you ready?” Captain Ripley put his hand on Jason’s shoulder, but Jason didn’t move.
“Where are we going?”
“Not to X, not yet.”
Jason studied the man’s features. He had a square face, wide-set eyes, and a nose like a fist. “You’re still running his detail?”
“I am.”
“Still six of you?”
“Other than his fast-approaching execution, not much has changed.”
“How soon?” Jason asked.
“Not soon enough.”
Ripley nodded at another officer, and a steel door slid on metal tracks, a hallway stretching away beyond it. Jason took the first step, and Ripley fell in beside him. They walked in silence, down one hall, then another. “The warden wants to make you comfortable. Isolation wing. Private cell.” He stopped at the main door of the isolation wing. A second guard let them in. The first cell was empty. “This is yours.” Jason stepped inside, but Ripley seemed loath to leave. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“What do you think?”
“I think X has long arms and some reason to want you back inside. Any thoughts on reason?”
“None.”
“Either way…” Ripley shrugged with sad eyes, and Jason felt a moment’s pity. No guards on X’s detail had a wife or kids. Too dangerous. The warden’s call. But there were means of hurt beyond torn skin or broken bones.
Ripley gathered himself as if remembering that one of them was an inmate. “Anyway. He wants to see you at five o’clock. Those are for you.” He meant clothing, stacked on the bed: jeans, a linen shirt, and loafers. The guard offered Jason a pack of cigarettes. “Here, you’ll need these more than me.”
He left and locked the door, and Jason contemplated the scars on his hands. Some were from the war and other fights, but most had come from fights with X. Same with the headaches, the nightmares, the poorly healed ribs. Lighting a cigarette, Jason stared at the cold, blank walls. The men he’d fought with in Vietnam were dead or scattered. His father could barely meet his eyes, and he’d not seen his mother in years. Only Gibby seemed to care if he was in prison or not.
Only Gibby and X.
I left the recruiting office overcome by something close to religious awe. I’d never seen such respect and conviction, and tried to imagine what kind of act or action would make a stranger rise and salute with tears in his eyes. What had I done in life that even came close?
With that thought in my head, and nowhere I had to be, I decided to find Becky Collins. On her street, I passed a shattered tree and a hollow-eyed woman who watched me roll by. When I reached the right house, Becky was in the yard as if she’d known I was coming. I was afraid the unannounced visit might make her angry, but that’s not how it played. She waved broadly, and smiled as I parked.
“This is a nice surprise.”
“Chance thought you’d be upset with me if I showed up uninvited.”
“Chance is an idiot. Can you stay?” I said I could, and she took my hand to pull me from the car. “Come with me, then.”
She led me into the backyard, then into a stand of trees, and down a red-clay bank rutted out by heavy rains. At the bottom, we picked our way into deeper forest and along a footpath to a creek that gurgled among the stones.
“I found this place when I was six.”
Becky spoke over her shoulder as she led me deeper, parting a tangle of vines so I could follow her into a clearing where the creek spilled into a basin dappled with light, its loveliness so unexpected and complete it startled me.
“Isn’t it something? Sit here.” She gestured at a mossy spot near the water’s edge. “Give me a second, okay?”
I watched her gather bits of trash washed in by the creek, making a neat pile of it beside the trail.
“I have to stay on top of this, especially after it rains.” She dropped a final bit of plastic, then sat beside me with her knees up and her arms crossed to make a place for her chin. “So,” she said. “Gibby French.”
“Becky Collins.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“What?”
“Whatever it is I see down in the bottom of those pretty green eyes.”
I didn’t want to talk about Jason or Tyra, so I changed the subject. “This place is pretty amazing. How’d you find it?”
“Any kid would have.”
“Have others?” I asked. “Found it, I mean.”
“Not for a while, I guess. I don’t see people here. There are houses that way—a whole other street—but there are brambles and kudzu. The drop is steeper.”
“Do you ever swim?”
She raised one eyebrow into a perfect arch. “Do you want to?”
I did want to. It was the coolness and the depth, the vines that made a curtain, and the stillness of the deep, green shade.
“I’m not taking off my clothes,” she said.
“Me, either.”
“Underwear, then?” I looked for the joke, but there was no such thing in her eyes. “You first,” she said, and then watched as I took off my shoes, stood awkwardly, and fumbled at my belt. “Do you want me to turn around?” I nodded stupidly, surprised when she closed her eyes and covered them with her hands. “How about this instead?”
I took off my shirt and pants, realizing then that her fingers were spread and she was grinning as she watched. I said, “Cheater,” then stepped into the pool, which was deeper than I’d thought. I moved to the middle and sank to my chin.
Becky stripped as if the act were devoid of sexuality. Tossed shoes. A quick roll onto her back to pull off the jeans. She stood to remove her shirt, and I looked away because her sexuality was obvious, whether she meant it to be or not. In the water, she said, “This is nice,” then went under and rose, dripping. The pool made her eyes look something other than blue, and the water made the bra translucent. “Do you want to talk about it, now?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure if she was teasing or not, but words had never been hard for me. I spoke of my father, who thought Jason might be guilty, and of my mother, manic in the kitchen. That led to Chance and prison and the question of college versus war. When I reached the place that hurt the most, I looked away and shared my thoughts on brothers and death and the guilt I harbored for my easy life. When the words ran out, I found Becky close in the water, not touching me, but nearly so.
“What do you think?” I asked.
She stared for a handful of seconds, still silvery-eyed and lovely. “I think you have troubles, and that none of them are bigger than you.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“With your life? I can’t answer that question.”
“What about now? Today?”
“Be there for your brother. Let him know he’s not alone.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s enough,” she said; but the words, in my ears, were strange.
Be a man, I heard.
For once in your sheltered life.
Ripley returned at ten minutes before five, and Jason considered how strange it was to walk the prison halls in loafers and jeans. He’d served twenty-seven months behind these walls, a full twelve of them before he’d met X.
But those last months …
He’d fought and bled, and been brought back to fight again. Fifteen months. A blur of pain, blood, and bandages. No one had fought X so many times or come so close to beating him. For a time, the guards had wagered in secret on the conflicts, but X didn’t fight for sport—not that kind—and two days after he’d learned of the wagers, one guard lost an ear in an unprovoked bar fight, and another, his home to fire.
After that, there were no wagers.
“This way.”
Ripley led Jason down a series of halls, then outside and through the main yard. Jason watched the prisoners, and the prisoners watched him back. Blacks. Hispanics. The white prisoners paid the most attention. Nazis. Bikers. Loners with the right ink. They had a corner of the yard, and it seemed every eye was on Jason as he passed.
“Because of the Pagans,” Ripley said. “Word is out about what you did to Darius Simms.”
“Is that why I’m in solitary?”
“Let me put it this way. If guards come for you that aren’t on X’s detail, tread with serious care. X is not the only one with deep pockets and corrections officers on the payroll.”
They kept moving. So did every eyeball in every white face. After that, it was all about death row. The building was the oldest at Lanesworth, a onetime weapons depot modified in 1863 to hold Union army prisoners of war. Security inside was unpleasant, but Jason knew the guards, the protocols.
“Open one.”
A buzzer sounded, and the old hinges groaned. A second guard appeared, not one of X’s. He was midforties and florid, same buzz cut as every other guard.
Ripley said, “You got him?”
“I do.”
Ripley met Jason’s eyes for half a blink, then turned on a heel, and left without a word. A red hand settled on Jason’s arm, and put damp marks on his skin. “I’m sure you remember the rules. Stay in the center of the hall, clear of the cell doors. Don’t talk to anyone. No eye contact. Make it easy for me, I make it easy for you.”
They turned to face the row, and it was like every nightmare Jason had had since getting out: the small, hot cells, and pale faces against the metal, the long walk to the end, and then down the stairs to X.
“Walk on, prisoner.”
Jason squared up, and took that first step. If X wanted him dead, he wanted him dead. If it was something else …
He kept his eyes down as cells slid past, and one inmate hissed, Hey, slickness … hey, slick … At the end of the row, another guard stood at the top of the stairwell. He was part of X’s detail, and had been for years. Jason could not remember the name, but the face was familiar. He waved off the red-faced guard, and put a hand on Jason’s arm. “I’m sorry to see you back. You okay? You good?”
“Well enough.”
“We’ll do it like every other time.” The guard turned a key. “He’s in a good place today. You should be fine.”
Jason stepped through the door, and faced the stairs with the usual anxiety. X could speak of history and philosophy, of literature and art, the great works of mankind. In a single hour, he could show the world through fresh eyes, then just as quickly recall some far-off murder in detail so exquisite it turned your stomach. X was brilliant; he was insane.
Then there was the rest of it …
Jason flexed his oft-broken hands, and twisted once to take pressure off the poorly healed ribs. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he looked up as the guard nodded, and locked the steel door to leave Jason alone in the shadows beneath death row. There was a stone archway at the bottom of the stairs. Beyond that was the corridor and X’s cells and X.
“Hello, Jason.”
The voice was the same. So was everything else. Jason had wondered at this moment: his physical reaction, his first words. He wanted to vomit. He wished for a .45 in his hand. “You told me I was free of this place and of you. You said I was out clean.”
“I meant it at the time.” X stood center corridor, a lean man of average height, casually dressed. “Things change.”
Jason moved beneath the arch, and into the corridor. “Things like what?”
X shrugged, but seemed happy. “Let’s say that a date certain for one’s execution tends to sharpen the mind until some things become painfully acute.”
“Such as?”
“Old regrets. Final aspirations.”
“You had Tyra killed to bring me back.” It wasn’t a question. For Jason, it had never been a question.
“Sadly for the young woman, I didn’t know that you would be arrested on gun and assault charges, that I might have simply waited.”
“She was an innocent woman.”
“But was she really?” X took a few steps, eyes glinting. “She taunted the men on that bus, forgotten men with little dignity and few reasons to live. She teased and tormented them, and did it for what, exactly? A moment’s distraction? Her own venereal pride?”
“Please spare me the false indignation. You don’t care about the men on that bus. And any sins of Tyra’s pale beside your own.”
X raised his shoulders, both hands behind his back. “I’m merely deconstructing whatever narrative you’ve built in that otherwise fine mind of yours. The men on the bus are irrelevant, yes, but any positive qualities your young friend may have had, she was, at the core, selfish and unworthy.”
“Of her life?”
“Of you, Jason. For God’s sake, did you learn nothing from me in our time together?”
Jason took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. It had always been like this with X. “Why am I here?”
“Can’t two friends simply visit?”
“We are most certainly not friends.”
“Kindred spirits, then.”
Jason shook his head. It was all so familiar. “I’ve never understood these delusions of yours.”
“Delusions!” X raised his voice for the first time. “How many men have you killed, my friend? And how many of those deaths do you actually regret?”
“That was war. It’s different.”
“But is it different there?” X pointed at Jason’s heart. “Does a song not play each time? You alive, another dead…”
“I’m not doing this with you. Not again.” Jason backed away, knowing X could kill him if he wished. There’d be a blade nearby, a shard of glass, a twist of wire …
X trailed languidly behind. “I did take pains to bring you here.”
“Tyra’s pain. My pain.”
“You’re upset. I understand. We can try again tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow will be no different.”
“Yet time is not our friend.”
“The electric chair. Yeah, I heard.” Jason kept moving: the second step, the third.
“If you knew my heart, you would feel differently.”
Jason climbed higher, and X watched him go, a smile on his face. “The heart, my young friend, and all the songs that play.”