Sleepers

He ran the other hand across my face and chest.

'You're right,' Ferguson said in a whisper. 'You don't have to take off your clothes, if you don't want to. And you don't have to get back in your bed.'

'Please, Ferguson,' I said, my voice barely audible. 'Don't do this.'

'Don't do what, sweet thing?' Ferguson asked, his eyes glassy, rubbing my chest harder, bringing his hand lower.

'Don't do what you're doin',' I said.

'But I thought you liked it,' Ferguson said, 'I thought all you boys liked it.'

'We don't,' I said. 'We don't.'

'That's too bad,' Ferguson said, his face close to mine, his breath a foul mix of beer and smoke. 'Cause I like it. I like it a lot.'

Ferguson ran his hand past my chest and up to my face and along my neck, resting it against the back of my head. He moved even closer to me, placing his face on my shoulder.

'Take my dick out,' Ferguson said.

I didn't move, my eyes closed, my feet still, Ferguson's weight heavy against my body, his breath warm on the sides of my face.

'C'mon sweet thing,' Ferguson whispered. 'Take it out. I'll do the rest.'

I opened my eyes and saw John standing in the doorway.

He had a makeshift knife in his hand.

John moved out of the light and into the darkness of the cell. He was naked expect for a pair of briefs, stained red with blood, and one sock drooping down the sides of his ankle. He was breathing through his mouth and kept the knife, held to his hand by a rubber guard, flat by his leg-

'Don't be afraid, sweet thing,' Ferguson whispered in my ear. 'Take it out. It's ready for you.'

'I'm not afraid,' I said.

'Then do it,' Ferguson said.

'Move out of the light,' I said. 'It hurts my eyes.'

Ferguson lifted his head and grabbed both of my cheeks in his hand, a wild, maniacal smile on his face.

'You supposed to keep your eyes closed? he said, moving backwards, closer to John, dragging me with him. 'Didn't you know that?'

We were inches from my cot, my hand close enough to reach the empty beer bottle and the baton. John was by the side of the bed, the knife still against his leg. Ferguson let go of my face, undid his pants and took two more steps back.

'All right,' he said. 'Let's stop fuckin' around, sweet thing. It's time for fun.'

I eased down to my knees, my head up, looking into Ferguson's eyes, my hand reaching for the baton to my right.

'That's it, sweet thing,' Ferguson said. 'And remember, I like it slow. Nice and slow.'

Ferguson felt the edge of the knife before he heard John's voice.

'That's how I'm gonna let you die, dip shit,' John said. 'Nice and slow.'

'You little punk,' Ferguson said, more with surprise than fright. 'What the hell you tryin' to do?'

'It's time for me to have a little fun,' John said.

'I can have you killed for this,' Ferguson said.

'Then I've got nothin' to lose.'

I grabbed the baton, jumped to my feet and held it with both hands. I looked past Ferguson at John, saw something in his eyes that had never been there before.

'You can't cut him, Johnny,' I said.

'Watch me, Shakes,' John said. 'Sit down on your cot and watch me.'

'Go back to your cell,' I said. 'Leave him to me.'

'He's not gonna get away with it,' John said. 'He's not gonna walk away from what he did to me. What he's been doin' to all of us.'

'He has to get away with it,' I said.

'Who says?' John asked. 'Who the fuck says?'

'We're gonna get out of here in a few months,' I whispered slowly. 'If you stick him, we aren't going anywhere.'

'Listen to your friend, Irish,' Ferguson said. 'He's talkin' sense here.'

I braced my legs and shoved the fat end of the baton into the center of Ferguson's stomach. I watched him flinch from the blow, his lungs hurting for air.

'Stay outta this, scumbag,' I said. 'Or I'll kill you myself.'

John moved the knife away from Ferguson's neck, stepping back, holding the sharp edge of the blade in the palm of his hand. His face was a portrait of hard hate, emptied of its sweet-eyed charm, a resting place for all the torment and abuse he had endured.

In so many ways, he was no longer the John I had known, the John I had grown up with. Wilkinson had done more than beat and abuse him. It had taken him beyond mere humiliation. It had broken him down and pulled him apart. It had ripped into the most gentle heart I had known and emptied it of all feeling. The John Reilly who would turn our clubhouse into a safe haven for lost kittens was gone. The John Reilly who stole fruits and vegetables off supermarket trucks and left them at the apartment door of Mrs. Angela DeSalvo, an elderly invalid with no money and no family, was dead and buried. Replaced by the John Reilly who stood before me now, ready to kill a man and not give it another thought.

'Let it go, John,' I said. 'He's a piece of shit and he's not worth it.'

'Glad to see you got smart,' Ferguson said, getting his wind back, looking up at me. 'I'll go easy on you in my report.'

'There won't be a report,' I said.

'Fuck you mean, there won't be a report?' Ferguson said, the drunken slur of his words replaced by a steadfast anger. 'You two assaulted a guard. There's gotta be a report.'

'Just go, Ferguson,' I said, handing him back his baton. 'Fix your pants and get the fuck outta here.'

'I ain't leavin' before Irish over there hands me the knife,' Ferguson said.

'There isn't any knife,' I said.

I walked over to where John was standing, the steel look still on his face, his eyes honed in on Ferguson. I rested my hand against the one holding the knife, knuckles tight around the edge of the blade.

'It's okay, Johnny,' I said. 'You can let go now. It's okay.'

'He's not gonna touch me again,' John said, the voice no longer that of the boy who cried at the end of sad movies. 'You hear me, Shakes? He's not gonna touch me again.'

'I hear you,' I said, taking the knife from my friend's hand.

I nudged past Ferguson and walked over to my cot. I lifted the thin mattress and put the knife on top of the springs.

'Like I said Ferguson,' I said, turning to face him. 'There's no knife.'

'I ain't gonna forget you did this,' Ferguson said, pointing a shaking finger at both me and John. 'You two hear me? I ain't gonna forget this.'

'It's a devil's deal, then,' I said.

'What the fuck's that mean?' Ferguson said.

John explained it to him. 'First one to forget dies,' he said.

NINE

The English teacher, Fred Carlson, stood before the class, his tie open at the collar, his glasses resting on top of his head, a thick piece of gum lodged in the corner of his mouth. He had his back to the blackboard, hands resting on its edge. He was young, not much past thirty, in his first semester at Wilkinson, paid to pass on the finer points of reading and writing to a class of disinterested inmates.

'I was expecting to read thirty book reports over the weekend,' Carlson said in a voice that echoed his country home. 'There were only six for me to read. Which means I'm missing how many?'

'This here's English class,' a kid in the back shouted. 'Math's down the hall.'

A few inmates laughed out loud, the rest just smirked or continued to stare out the classroom windows at the snow-filled fields below.

'I'm doing my best,' Carlson said, his manner controlled, his frustration apparent. 'I want to help you. You may not believe that or you may not care, but it's the truth. But I can't force you to read and I can't make you write the reports. That's something only you can do.'

'Must be easy to read where you live,' an inmate in a thin-cropped Afro said. 'Easy to write. It ain't that easy to do in here.'

'I'm sure it's not,' Carlson said. 'But you have to find a way. If you expect to get anywhere once you get out of here, you have to find a way.'

'I gotta try stayin' alive,' the inmate said. 'You got a book that's gonna teach me that?'