Sleepers

I turned my head to the right and saw Michael in the bed next to mine. His left arm and right leg were in soft casts, his face was puffy and bruised, the rest of his body bandaged as heavily as mine.

'I thought you'd never wake up,' Michael said, looking over.

'I never thought I'd want to,' I croaked.

'John and Butter are at the other end of the hall,' Michael said.

'How are they?'

'Alive.'

'Who isn't?'

'Rizzo,' Michael said.

'They killed him?'

Michael nodded. 'They took turns beating him until there wasn't anything left to beat.'

Rizzo was dead because of us. We made him think that going up against the guards in a meaningless football game had some value, would somehow make us better than them. That it would give us a reason to go on. And, once again, we were wrong. We had made another mistake. While it is normal in the course of growing up to have lapses in judgments, our errors always seemed to carry a deadly price. We were wrong to take the hot dog cart and that mistake nearly ruined a man and landed us in a juvenile home. We were wrong to go to Rizzo and talk him into taking part in our silly plan. That conversation cost him his life.

The mistakes we were making could never be repaired. I could never give James Caldwell back the feeling in his arm or take away his pain. I could never give the hot dog vendor back his business or his dreams. I could never bring smiles back to John and Tommy, return the sweetness that was at the core of their personalities. I could never take the hardness out of Michael and the hurt out of me. And I could never bring Rizzo back to life. A young man was dead because he went deep against the guards and reached for a ball he shouldn't have caught. Who went deep because we asked him to.

I looked over at Michael and he stared back at me and I knew we both had the same thoughts raging through our brains. I turned away and laid my head against the pillow, staring at the white ceiling with my one good eye, listening to a voice on the radio talk about threats of snow and holiday sales. I looked down at my hands, the tips of my fingers wrapped in gauze, scratches like veins marking their way across my flesh. My eye felt heavy and tired, the antibiotics and painkillers making me as foggy as a street junkie.

I shut my eye and gave in to sleep.

It was two days later when I heard the footsteps, familiar in their weight.

'Hello, boys,' Nokes said, standing between our two beds, a smile on his face. 'How we feelin' today?'

Michael and I just stared back, watching him swagger up and down, checking our charts, eyeballing our bandages and wounds.

'You should be outta here in no time,' Nokes snarled. 'It's gonna be good havin' you back. We missed you and your friends. Especially at night.'

Michael turned his head, looking down the corridor, checking the faces of the other sick inmates. Juanito was two beds down, his face a mask of cuts, welts and stitches.

'It's been nice visitin' with you,' Nokes said, standing close enough for us to touch. 'But I gotta go. I'm on shift. I'll see you soon, though. You can count on that.'

Michael motioned for Nokes to stop. 'Kill me now,' Michael whispered.

'What?' Nokes moved to Michael's side of the bed. 'What did you say?'

'Kill me now.' It wasn't a whisper this time. It was in a normal tone of voice, calm and clear. 'Kill us all now.'

'You're fuckin' crazy,' Nokes said.

'You have to kill us,' Michael said. 'You can't let us out alive.'

Nokes was still startled, but he shook it off and replaced his uneasiness with his usual smirk. 'Yeah?' he said. 'And why's that, tough guy?'

'You can't run the risk,' Michael told him.

'What risk you talkin' about?'

'The risk of meeting up,' Michael said. 'In a place that ain't here.'

'That supposed to scare me? That street shit of yours supposed to scare me?' Nokes laughed. 'Your friend Rizzo was tough too. Now he's buried tough.'

'Kill us all,' Michael said. 'Or sign yourself up for life in here. That's the choice.'

'I've been right all along,' Nokes said. 'You are crazy. You Hell's Kitchen motherfuckers are really crazy.'

'Think about it,' Michael said to our tormentor. 'Think about it hard. It's the only way out for you. Don't take a chance. You can't afford it. You kill us and you kill us now.'

Winter 1968

I squeezed the mop through a wooden ringer, dirty brown water filtering back into the wash pail. I was on the third tier of C block, washing the floors outside the cells. It was my first week out of the infirmary and my wounds, bound by tight strips of gauze bandages against my ribs and thighs, still ached. After a few strokes with the mop, I rested against the iron railings, my legs weak from days in the hole. It was early morning and the cell block was quiet, inmates either attending classes or exercising in the gym.

I looked around the block, gray, shiny and still, winter light from outside merging with the glare of overhead fluorescents that were kept on twenty-four hours a day. In its silence, Wilkinson looked serene, cell doors open, floors glistening, steam from large central radiators keeping out the cold winds of winter.

The peace was not meant to hold. Wilkinson was a prison on the brim of a riot. Rizzo had been right. The guards did not take kindly to our playing them even. The day after the game, all inmate privileges were canceled. The late-night beatings and abuse accelerated to the point where no inmate felt safe. The most minor infraction, ignored in the past, was now cause for the most severe punishment.

For their part, the inmates were stirred by Rizzo's death and the conditions in which the rest of the team were released from the isolation ward. Makeshift weapons – zip guns, sharpened spoons stuck into wooden bases, mattress coils twisted into brass knuckles – now appeared in every cell block. The inmates still obeyed every order, but their faces were now masked by defiance.

I was half-way down the corridor when I saw Wilson on the circular staircase, making his way to the third tier. Wilson was the only black guard in our cell block and the only guard who shunned the physical attacks enjoyed by his coworkers. He was a big man, a one-time semi-pro football player with a scarred knee and a waistline that stretched the limits of his uniform. He smoked non-stop, and always had an open pack of Smith Brothers cherry cough drops in his back pocket. He had a wide smile, stained yellow by the smoke, and big hands, topped by thick, almost-blue fingers. The inmates called him Marlboro.

Marlboro was older than the other guards by a good ten years and had two younger brothers who held similar jobs at other state homes. In summer months, he was known to smuggle in an occasional six-pack to some of the older inmates.

He was also Rizzo's connection to the outside.

'Seem to be doin' a good job,' he said when he reached my end of the hall, his breath coming in short spurts, a long stream of smoke flowing out his nose. 'You take to the mop real good.'

'Some people do,' I said. 'Some people teach.'

'Got that right,' he said, laughing, a rumble of a cough starting in his chest.

'How many of those you go through a day?' I said, pointing to the lit cigarette in his hand.

'Three,' he said. 'Maybe four.'

'Tacks?'

'We all got habits, son,' Marlboro said. 'Some that are good. Some that are bad.'

I went back to mopping the floor, moving the wet strands from side to side, careful not to let water droplets slip over the edge of the tier.

'How much more time you got?' Marlboro said from behind me. 'Before they let you out.'

'Seven months if they keep me to term,' I said. 'Less if they don't.'

'You be out by spring,' Marlboro said. 'Only the baddest apples do full runs.'

'Or end up dead,' I said.