Sleepers

'It's not bad enough that the guards are gonna hand us our ass,' I said, walking with Michael. 'We've got these losers thinking they're the Green Bay Packers.'

'What's the point of even having a practice?' John said, coming up behind us.

'For them.' I nodded toward a group of guards at mid-field, arms folded, laughing and nudging one another.

'We're like a coming attraction,' Tommy said, walking slowly, trying not to put weight on his damaged ankle.

'Maybe,' Michael said, looking at the inmates on the other side of the field. 'Shakes, who's the toughest guy out here?'

'How do you mean tough?' I said.

'Who can talk and have everybody listen?' Michael said.

'Rizzo,' I told him. 'Tall black guy with the shaved head. The one holding the ball.'

'A black Italian?' John said.

'I don't know what he is. I just know his name's Rizzo. He's the main guy down in B block.'

'What's he here for?' Tommy asked.

'Manslaughter,' I told him. 'Involuntary.'

'What's that mean?'

'There was a fight,' I explained. 'He walked away and the other guy was carried away.'

'There's gonna be another one if we don't get back and play,' Tommy said. 'Let's not get Rizzo angry before the game.'

'They say he's got his own crew on the outside,' I said. 'He's up from Harlem or Bed-Stuy. I forget which. And the guy he killed?'

'What about him?' Michael said.

'His mother's boyfriend. Got a little too friendly with Rizzo's kid sister.'

'That's our guy then,' Michael said.

'Our guy for what?' I said.

'I'll tell you after practice,' Michael said.

Rizzo sat by himself in the library, at a wooden table in the center of the room, turning the pages of a football magazine, the top of his shaved head enveloped in a halo from the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. I stood to his left, browsing through the library's collection of adventure books, most of them paperback, many missing pages and covers, a few littered with pornographic sketches.

Michael, a copy of Tom Sawyer under his arm, walked to the table, pulled back a chair and sat across from Rizzo.

'Okay with you if I use this chair?' he asked.

'Okay with me if you set yourself on fire,' Rizzo said, his voice and body more man than boy. 'Okay with me if you die. I don't give a fuck.'

'Thanks,' Michael said, and sat down.

They read in silence for a few minutes, Michael turning his head once to look back in my direction, his face a blend of concern and confidence.

'Rizzo,' Michael said in a whisper. 'I need to talk to you. It won't take long.'

'How the fuck you know my name?' Rizzo snarled.

'I'd have to be stupid not to know,' Michael said. 'You the guy everybody points to and stays away from.'

'That was true,' Rizzo said. 'Till today.'

'We're wasting time,' Michael said. 'You interested or not?'

Rizzo took a deep breath and stared at Michael, his jaw set, his hands flat on the surface of the table, his eyes the color of lit cigars.

'Tell your friend over there to pull a chair next to you,' Rizzo said. 'He ain't smart enough to look cool.'

Michael smiled at Rizzo and without turning his head called for me to join them.

I walked down the aisle and eased my way toward the table, looking around the library, empty except for a guard standing by the entrance. I nodded at Rizzo as I sat down, a copy of Scammoucbe in my hand.

'You been in here longer than a year?' Michael asked him.

'Closer to three,' Rizzo said. 'Should be out come the spring.'

'How many of these football games you play in?' Michael asked.

'This one be my second,' Rizzo said. 'Why?'

'The guards win the first?'

'The guards ain't ever lost one,' Rizzo said.

'What if they did?'

'Look, white boy,' Rizzo said, sitting straight up in his chair, a tint of anger seeping through the icy veneer. 'Don't know what your play was on the street. Don't care. But, in here, the guards call the play and the play calls for them to win the game.'

'Why?'

'You think they fuck with you now,' Rizzo said. 'Beat them Saturday and see what happens. Won't be just you. Be all, in every cell block. Now, you tell me, white boy, we all supposed to get our ass split open just so you can look good in a football game?'

'They don't fuck with you,' I said, inching closer to the conversation.

'No,' Rizzo said. 'They don't. But they'll find them a nigger that ain't me and make him eat it double.'

'I'm not saving we gotta win,' Michael said. 'I just don't want to take a beating.'

'You do every day,' Rizzo said. 'Why's Saturday special?'

'On Saturday, we can hit back,' Michael said.

'You don't need me to hit them back,' Rizzo said.

'It won't work unless we're all in it,' Michael said. 'The only one who can make that happen is you.'

'Guards steer clear of me,' Rizzo said. 'They stay back and let me do my time. I play the game, put a hurt on one of them, it might change my cushion.'

'You're still nothin' but a nigger to them,' Michael said.

'Easy, white boy,' Rizzo told him. 'Just 'cause we talkin' don't mean we on the same side.'

'They don't hit you or fuck with you like they do us,' Michael said, excited now. 'They fuck with you another way. They treat you like an animal. A street animal. One they talk about when his back's turned.'

'I don't give a fuck what they say about me,' Rizzo said.

'Yeah, you do,' Michael said. 'You give a fuck. Else you wouldn't be the man back where you are.'

'And puttin' a hurt on the guards is gonna change that?' Rizzo sneered. 'That what you think?'

'It won't change a thing,' Michael said.

That stopped Rizzo cold. Now he was interested. 'Then why, white boy?' he asked. He bolted up and shoved his chair behind him. 'If it ain't gonna change nothin'?'

Michael stood up and looked briefly past Rizzo's shoulders at the guard to his right. He then leaned across the table, his eyes tilted up toward Rizzo.

'To make them feel what we feel,' Michael said. 'Just for a couple of hours.'

Rizzo said nothing for the longest time. Then his lips curled up in what I can only assume was a smile.

'Hope you play as good as you talk,' Rizzo said, turning to leave.

'I hope so too,' Michael said.

It was the first Saturday in December.

The afternoon sun did little to contain the cold winds whipping around the grounds. The stands were filled with bodies buried under the weight of wool coats, flap-down hats, furry hoods, leather gloves, wrap-around scarves and thick quilts. The crowd's collective breath broke through the protective barriers of their clothing, sending waves of warm air snaking toward the slate gray sky.

Vendors sold peanuts, hot chocolate and coffee from their stations at the base of the stands. Armed guards circled the perimeters of the field, eyeing the crowd. Another group of guards stood in a straight-line formation behind our bench, watching with smirks as, shivering in our thin pants and sweatshirts, we laced our sneakers tight.

I turned to stare at the crowd, wondering who they would root for and how far they had come just to see a touch football game between a group of guards and a collection of teenage inmates. I also stared at them with a fair amount of envy, knowing that once the game was over, they were free to leave, to return to their safe homes, dinner waiting, our game reduced to nothing more than table conversation.

The guards came out wearing shoulder and elbow pads, the spikes on their cleats shiny and new. A handful were dressed in jeans and the rest wore sweat pants. All of them had on thick cotton sweaters, a few of them with hoods. We were left to play in our prison issues, from sweats to sneakers.

The two captains, Nokes for the guards and Rizzo for the inmates, met in the center of the field for the coin toss, a guard posing as a referee standing between them. Rizzo had insisted on being named captain, feeling it would send the guards an early signal that this was not going to be just another football game. Neither one attempted a handshake, but Nokes offered to skip the toss and let us have the ball first.