My brother James had a glass eye. From fallin’ on a barbed wire fence when he was only six. He would pop it out, throw it in the air, and catch it in his mouth to scare people. Joker, eh? You woulda liked James. Everyone liked James—a big goofy smile for everyone, you know? So just like Dad, and myself, and our three sisters, James went into corrections as soon as he graduated the college corrections course. And he went in with exactly the right attitude: this is not social services, this is corrections. This is jail. These are the criminals, and we are what is keepin’ them from . . . freedom. We are the screws . . . holdin’ in the deadbolt. We are, basically, in a cold war.
But he did his job real well, highly regarded, on track for promotions. Got married to the lovely Nancy. They lived in this kinda shitty basement apartment in town, but they dreamed of a farm, outside the city. They talked about this all the time. And I mean ALL the time.
So you know that smile James always had on his face? He did not have it for the inmates, I never saw him smile at any of them once, until—this one day in winter . . . about ten years in . . . I seen him, smilin’ like an idiot at this one inmate.
And talkin’ to him, like a friend. Frequently.
I didn’t say nothin’, I figured it was none of my business. They would talk about hockey mainly. And women.
And then . . .
I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was the farm dream, maybe it was this guy had some kinda like, spidey power. He was a con, right, but James should have been onto that. Maybe it was because he was sick of seeing others doin’ it and getting rich off it—and not getting caught.
But one thing led to another, and soon—you guessed it—
James was . . . you know . . . bringin’ in . . . contraband—and Nancy, she was right in there makin’ up the condoms or whatever. I didn’t know, of course I didn’t, but in a kinda sideways way I knew. In that kinda way, everyone knew.
Soon Jamesy got in so deep he could not crawl out . . . On the one side, if my little brother didn’t say “How high?” when the biker gangs said “Jump,” he would be killed—straight up—and if he turned hisself in, well, if a CO does time, we all know what happens.
As my dad used to say, he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
There was only one solution.
They lived on the farm, now, right?
That was the dream farm: they had a pond, they had three horses, they had the goats, deer, they grew corn.
One Sunday they make themselves a picnic—chicken salad sandwiches, roast turkey, potato salad, chocolate cake, two bottles of the best wine, and they ride their horses as far out on their property as they can. They let the horses go. They spread out their red checkered picnic blanket. They eat their picnic lunch. They drink all the wine. They put their arms around each other.
And they shoot each other in the back of the head.
I wonder, you know? If what happened to my brother Jamie—might have something to do with why I could not do . . . what I knew . . . was the . . . right . . . the only right . . .