Joe’s jaw clenched, but all he said was, “You make your luck, Dad.”
“Sometimes,” his father said. “But other times it makes you.”
They sat in silence for a bit. Joe’s heart had never beat so hard. It punched at his chest, a frantic fist. He felt for it the way he’d feel for something outside himself, a stray dog on a wet night, perhaps.
His father looked at his watch, put it back in his vest. “Someone will probably threaten you your first week behind the walls. No later than the second. You’ll see what he wants in his eyes, whether he says it or not.”
Joe’s mouth felt very dry.
“Someone else—a real good egg of a fella—will stand up for you in the yard or in the mess hall. And after he backs the other man down, he’ll offer you his protection for the length of your sentence. Joe? Listen to me. That’s the man you hurt. You hurt him so he can’t get strong enough again to hurt you. You take his elbow or his kneecap. Or both.”
Joe’s heartbeat found an artery in his throat. “And then they’ll leave me alone?”
His father gave him a tight smile and started to nod, but the smile went away and the nod went with it. “No, they won’t.”
“So what will make them stop?”
His father looked away for a moment, his jaw working. When he looked back his eyes were dry. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Mouth of It
The distance from Suffolk County Jail to the Charlestown Penitentiary was a little more than a mile. They could have walked it in the time it took to load them into the bus and bolt their ankle manacles to the floor. Four of them went over that morning—a thin Negro and a fat Russian whose names Joe never learned, Norman, a soft and shaky white kid, and Joe. Norman and Joe had chatted a few times in jail because Norman’s cell was across from Joe’s. Norman had had the misfortune to fall under the spell of the daughter of the man whose livery stable he tended on Pinckney Street in the flat of Beacon Hill. The girl, fifteen, got pregnant, and Norman, seventeen and orphaned since he was twelve, got three years in a maximum security prison for rape.
He told Joe he’d been reading his Bible and was ready to atone for his transgressions. Told Joe the Lord would be with him and that there was good in every man, not the least of which could be found in the lowest of men, and that he suspected he might even find more good behind those walls than he’d found on this side of them.
Joe had never met a more terrified creature.
As the bus bounced along the Charles River Road, a guard rechecked their manacles and introduced himself as Mr. Hammond. He informed them that they would be housed in East Wing, except, of course, for the nigger, who would be housed in South Wing with his own kind.
“But the rules apply to all of you, no matter what your color or creed. Never look a guard in the eyes. Never question a guard’s order. Never cross over the dirt track that runs along the wall. Never touch yourselves or one another in an unwholesome manner. Just do your time like good fish, without complaint or ill will, and we’ll find harmonious accord along the pathway to your restitution.”
The prison was more than a hundred years old; its original dark granite buildings had been joined by redbrick structures of more recent vintage. Designed in cruciform style, the heart of it was comprised of four wings branching off a central tower. Atop the tower was a cupola, manned at all times by four guards with rifles, one for each direction a prisoner could run. It was surrounded by train tracks and factories, foundries, and mills that stretched from the North End down the river to Somerville. The factories made stoves and the mills made textiles and the foundries reeked of magnesium and copper and cast-iron gases. When the bus dropped down the hill and into the flats, the sky took cover behind a ceiling of smoke. An Eastern Freight train blew its whistle, and they had to wait for it to rattle past them before they could cross the tracks and travel the final three hundred yards onto the prison grounds.
The bus pulled to a stop and Mr. Hammond and another guard unlocked their manacles and Norman started to shiver and then he blubbered, the tears dripping off his jaw like sweat.
Joe said, “Norman.”
Norman looked across at him.
“Don’t do that.”
But Norman couldn’t stop.
His cell was on the top tier of East Wing. It baked in the sun all day long and held the heat through the night. There was no electricity in the cells themselves. They reserved that for the corridors, the mess hall, and the killing chair in the Death House. Cells were lit by candlelight. Indoor plumbing had yet to come to Charlestown Penitentiary, so cell mates pissed and shat in wooden buckets. His cell was built for a single prisoner, but they’d stacked four beds in it. His three cell mates were named Oliver, Eugene, and Tooms. Oliver and Eugene were garden-variety stickup guys from Revere and Quincy, respectively. They’d both done business with the Hickey Mob. They’d never had a chance to work with Joe or even hear about him, but after they all passed a few names back and forth, they knew he was legit enough not to turn him out just to make a point.
Tooms was older and quieter. He had stringy hair and stringy limbs, and something foul lived behind his eyes that you didn’t want to look at. As the sun set on their first night, he sat on his top bunk, legs dangling over the edge, and every now and then Joe found Tooms’s blank stare turned in his direction, and it was all he could do to meet it and then casually move off it.
Joe slept on one of the low bunks, across from Oliver. He had the worst mattress and the bunk sagged, and his sheet was coarse and moth-eaten and smelled like wet fur. He dozed fitfully but he never slept.
In the morning, Norman approached him in the yard. Both of his eyes were black and his nose looked to be broken and Joe was about to ask him about it when Norman scowled, bit down on his lower lip, and punched Joe in the neck. Joe two-stepped to his right and ignored the sting and thought of asking why, but he didn’t have enough time. Norman came for him, both arms awkwardly raised. If Norman avoided his head and started punching his body, Joe was done. His ribs weren’t healed; sitting up in the morning still hurt so much he saw stars. He shuffled, his heels scrabbling the dirt. High above them, the guards in their watchtowers watched the river to the west or the ocean to the east. Norman drilled a punch into the other side of his neck and Joe raised his foot and brought it down on Norman’s kneecap.
Norman fell onto his back, his right leg at an awkward angle. He rolled in the dirt, then used his elbow to try to stand. When Joe stomped the knee a second time, half the yard heard Norman’s leg break. The sound that left his mouth wasn’t quite a scream. It was something softer and deeper, a huffing noise, something a dog would make after it crawled under a house to die.
Norman lay in the dirt and his arms fell to his sides, and the tears leaked from his eyes into his ears. Joe knew he could help Norman up, now that he was no danger, but that would be seen as weakness. He walked away. He walked across the yard, already sweltering at 9 A.M., and felt the eyes on him, more than he could count, everyone looking, deciding what the next test would be, how long they’d toy with the mouse before they took a real swipe with their claws.
Norman was nothing. Norman was a warm-up. And if anyone here got a sense of how badly Joe’s ribs were damaged—it hurt to fucking breathe at the moment; it hurt to walk—there’d be nothing but bones left by morning.