“Don’t look at me that way,” William said to Donna. “I warned you.”
“I know, but… my God, he looks ten years older than when he left.”
“I warned you. So did Lucky.”
“Does he always come back looking this bad?” Carol asked.
“Always. This is my fourth one, and they don’t get any easier.”
The three were in Carol’s cabin, their latest chapter on the table in front of William. It was a practice that had started six weeks earlier, when they had run the outline and first two chapters by him. He had read it through twice, making notes as he read, then told them that they were producing a book that would be taught but not read. When Donna objected, he walked her through his notes, page by page. After that they put him in the editorial loop, handing him each chapter at its completion—or earlier, if they found themselves stuck.
But tonight’s session had been sidetracked by Josh’s return that afternoon. He had come into the L shortly before dinner, nodding to Donna and Harry as they played trucks on the living room floor, then heading into the kitchen. Harry, confused by the clean-shaven face and shuffling gait, had curled up against his mother as both of them stared over at the kitchen doorway.
A moment later Josh was back, a six-pack dangling from his hand. He paused at the door, as if about to say something, then left. He didn’t come up for dinner, which according to William was standard practice. It would be that way for the few days, maybe more, he cautioned. Donna looked over to Clark for confirmation; Clark just nodded back.
“No one knows where he goes?” Carol said into the silence.
William shook his head. “First week of June, first week of December. He doesn’t say anything to anyone. One morning he’s just gone. Always for seven days. And he always comes back like this.”
“And no one’s tried to find out where he goes? What happens to him?”
“We’ve all asked, some of us more persistently than the others. The first time you ask you get silence. The second, you’re told to mind your own business. In my case, when I pressed him, he told me to leave him the fuck alone, that he wasn’t one of my clients.”
Donna rubbed her face with her palms. “I’ve never heard him talk like that.”
William nodded out the window. “Well, if you want to hear it for yourself, go visit him. It will be a short conversation.”
She stood up. “Well, I’m going to go check on him anyway.”
Carol’s cabin was quiet in the wake of Donna’s departure, except for the steady hiss of the flames behind the glass door of the Franklin stove over in the corner. The stoves had been Donna’s gift to Moetown, Pete having a friend up in Canada who got them wholesale. He and Clark had installed them in all the cabins over Thanksgiving. Now Carol’s stove was working against the December chill, a small, steep bank of coals hissing gently.
“And you really don’t know where he goes? Or why he comes back so…battered?”
“For the last time, I really don’t know where he goes.” He looked around the cabin, his eyes coming back to her. “Looks like you’re settling in pretty nicely.”
Carol chuckled. “So let’s change the subject.”
William didn’t smile. “Let’s. How are you settling in?”
“I don’t know if ‘settle’ is the right word. That implies a level of permanence that I don’t think came with the invitation.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. Donna loves not being the only woman up here. And it’s easy to grow roots with this group.”
She cocked her head. “How about you? Is this a halfway house or am I going to come back years from now and see your headstone?”
“In your dreams.” He nodded at her cigarettes. “As they say in Texas, ‘I’ll be peeing on your grave.’ But to answer your question: I’m a lifer.”
“You don’t think the dynamic will change over time, as more parolees move in?”
“I think the great prison experiment is over. Especially with Harry and other civilians up here now. Any growth from here on in will be organic.”
She shut her notebook. “What was it like, living up here the first time around?” She motioned to her notebook. “Not for attribution. Just wondering.”
William leaned forward, hooking a leg around the chair’s top rung. He drew his knee up in front of his chest and rested his chin on the knee. “It was…meaningful. We knew that if we succeeded, it had ramifications. Not just for the guys down the hill but for those in institutions who were watching what we were up to. So it had meaning.”
Carol reached for her cigarettes, waving him off as he reached for the matches. “What was the basic operation?”
“What do you know already?”
“Josh got the state to buy this place and make it the final step in his parole program. Parolees would spend the last year of their sentence up here. He’d find you jobs down in San Tomas or Kinsella. You gave Josh your salaries. He took out for food and camp upkeep. The rest he put into a fund you received once you were released.”
“Doesn’t sound that revolutionary, does it? But these weren’t your typical white-collar cons. Josh started with the conviction that if you served your time and showed remorse—no matter your crime—you’re entitled to the opportunity to start over.” He looked out the window. “At one point we had two convicted murders, three aggravated assaults, and two mob accountants up here.”
“What was Josh’s role in all this?”
“He determined who got in, first off. Then he got us our jobs—or the opportunities to interview for them, at least. Once we were in place his job was to keep the prison from interfering with the program and keeping us on the straight and narrow.”
He leaned forward. “You had to understand how different this place was—for us and for the authorities. No walls, no bells, no locks. How liberating it was to be self-policing. It was like we were breathing new air, living in new skin. And I’d only served three years. You can imagine what it was like for someone like Stiffie, who’d been inside for thirteen.”
“I’ve got a question about the recidivism rates. Standard prison rates are what, sixty percent?”
“A little low, but you’re in the ballpark.”
“And Josh’s numbers in Alameda were twenty percent. And twelve for the programs at San Tomas, but that was the prison. I couldn’t find any numbers for the camp program.”
“Zero.”
“No records?”
“No. There was zero recidivism. Up until the day they closed us down.”
She squinted at him. “How do you go about shutting down a program with a perfect record?”
“You use the universal language of bureaucrats. Numbers. You say the camp costs too much for too few. We countered by donating all our salaries to keeping the camp open. That bought us a couple of months, but you could see the writing on the wall. We were too much of a problem.”
“With numbers like that? I’d think the officials would have jumped in front of those numbers and taken a bow.”
“They would have, except we were costing them sleep. Literally.”
“You’re going to have to explain that one.”
William didn’t say anything for almost a minute. “Josh and I talked about this a lot,” he said finally. “Prisons are built on two psychological pillars—dehumanization and desensitization. Prisoners are numbers, not people. We’re a ‘population,’ not a collection of individuals with lives and families. Everything is in the aggregate—percentages, reductions. At least for the officials.”
“And for the guards?”
“In order to live with themselves on a daily basis, guards need to numb themselves to their job—especially to how they treat us. That’s where the unspoken rules come in.”
“Such as?”
“Such as you never look a guard in the eye. You never speak articulately, you keep your head down and mumble. You’re not people—you’re sheep that need to be herded. And at times beaten back to the herd.”
He leaned forward, pulling the chair’s back legs off the floor. “So put yourself in the place of the official or guard—and there was always one of each—who had to come up here to assess and report on our operation. Instead of walking around with a clipboard marking down demerits, you’re being asked what you’d like for lunch. Or if it’s the end of the day, do you want a beer. And they’re looking you in the eye when they ask you that. With their actual voices.”
He shrugged. “After an evening like that, how do you go back to locking people in the dark for weeks at a time for petty offenses, to beating them for little or no reason? I couldn’t do it, and at base, those guards aren’t that different from me.”
“So how did it all end?”
William leaned back and locked his hands behind his neck. “It started when they repossessed the goods we’d purchased for the camp. Each of us had bought—out of our own funds—a portable TV for our cabin. They repossessed them, all our workout stuff, even our pots and pans. Said that they were needed for our ‘brothers’ down the hill, that they knew we would understand.”
“And did you?”
“Not really.” He chuckled softly. “But we still had the big TV up in the L, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Then they came and took that, saying they needed it for a new rec room they were planning.” He smiled bitterly. “That was the final straw. We decided to take our belongings back. Not from the prison—too risky. And not from strangers who’d never done anything to us. After all, that would make us criminals.”
His smile relaxed and broadened. “We took it from the warden and the other members of the Prison Review Board. Slipped into their houses in broad daylight, while their wives were out for bridge, shopping, tennis. TVs first. Then the pool table, courtesy of the warden. There’s something sweet about football on a 25-inch color set when you’re used to ten-inch black and white.”
“They had to know it was you.”
“Of course. But the warden’s secretary had a crush on Josh. So she’d notify us when a raid was in the works. Jeff Thornton,” he nodded over his shoulder, “next property over, would drive over with his trailer, we’d move everything out, store it for the day of the visit and replace it the moment the warden’s Crown Vic headed back down the hill.”
“So how did it all end?”
“Frankie Denham, one of the parolees, was caught altering the inventory at his job. Instead of calling Josh, the owner called the warden. Frankie tried to deal his way out of trouble, offering to tell the warden where to find his pool table.”
“Ouch.”
He nodded. “Each of us got two weeks in solitary and another year tacked on to our sentences. They fired Josh, but didn’t file any charges. Too embarrassed. Just thanked him for his services in the paper, said he was leaving to pursue other interests. And that was that.”
She thought for a moment. “What happened to Frankie Denham?”
“A week after we were sentenced they found him hanging in his cell. His tongue was cut off and stuck in his shirt pocket.”