Sanctuary

“Bananas.”

“Bananas.”

But all I wanted to do at that point was find Sicko and shove a gun down his throat.

15

SATURDAY

TWO DAYS COULD be a lifetime: this is what Danny already knew but learned once more as he hung from the wall in the bowels of Basal. The human body was an incredibly durable vessel: this is what he had learned too many times in Bosnia and never wanted to learn again.

When the body was subjected to an overload of pain, it tended to spare the mind prolonged duress by shutting down. Unconscious, it does not shiver uncontrollably or feel pain or scream. Danny was comforted only by the thought that he’d likely spent at least half of his time in that oblivious state before his body rebooted in darkness and flared with agony.

Conscious, he also had to live with his thoughts and his emotions, which flogged him just as relentlessly. Strapped to the wall, he was acutely aware that his thoughts and emotions, though only temporal things, could affect as much pain in him as harm to the body could. Through the years he had willed himself to live in simple consciousness, stripped of the thoughts and emotions that dragged him into suffering. The brief periods of time in which he succeeded filled him with peace and clarity.

He’d often wondered if such a place of clarity was the closest thing to heaven to be found on earth. Finding it this time proved more difficult than before because of his incessant fear for Renee’s safety and his empathy for Peter’s circumstance.

Some advocated surrender as the path to peace, but Danny had always known that his mind was too strong to surrender to anything. Instead he controlled it with raw determination and willpower, a process that sometimes worked better than others.

He’d once been taken captive by the Serbian Christians in Bosnia and, because he was suspected of numerous infiltrations into their strongholds, was questioned over a two-week period before he managed to escape. Their interrogation methods had become increasingly forceful. It was the first time he’d been forced to endure tremendous amounts of carefully directed pain.

Marshall Pape’s version of hell did not match that torture, but the pain of deep meditation was severe enough that a boy like Peter would likely never survive a second encounter.

And wasn’t that the purpose of the warden’s sanctuary? To scare the wayward straight by subjecting them to the threat of extreme punishment?

Doing his best to ignore the pain in his nerves, his thoughts, and the torment inflicted by his emotion, Danny sought the stillness beyond, peering into the darkness, searching for awareness of God’s love and beauty in his own spirit. It wasn’t easy to find.

Bostich did not come with water as promised. No one did. No one came at all. The promise of water was only a hope deferred to make the heart sick, one little twist of the knife to increase his suffering. Without any food or water, his body might have shut down completely had they not come for him after forty-eight hours.

When Bostich and Mitchell did come, they came with a hose, which they used to wash him down while he still hung on the wall. He sucked in as much of the water as he could.

They finally released him from his restraints, a process that heaped pain upon pain, then stood back as he collapsed in a heap.

“Get yourself together. We’ll be back.”

Bostich left a neat pile of folded clothes on the table and left Danny to recover, this time with the light on. It took him an hour to get to his feet, work out enough of the aches in his joints to dress, and compose himself.

“I’d like to see the warden,” he said when they returned.

“Well, you’re in luck, ’cause he wants to see you too.”

Several minutes later, Danny sat in the same chair he’d first used outside the warden’s office, waiting for an audience. The clock on the wall read 7:26. Saturday evening, if he guessed correctly. He’d been at Basal for a mere six days that overshadowed his entire three years at Ironwood.

And yet he wasn’t disheartened. His resolve had not been compromised. He was only glad that he and not Peter had endured deep meditation.

As for his own reward, he expected to be presented with an opportunity to determine what the warden might or might not know about Renee. If his suspicions were confirmed, Danny would set his mind on discovering a way to warn her. Confined as he was by both prison and his resolution never to resort to violence, his options would be limited, but there were always options.

There had to be; Renee was all that mattered to him now. Renee and, to a lesser extent, Peter, the boy who was as innocent as she herself once had been—Renee and Peter and those trampled underfoot by society’s failures.

And yet his determination to defend the weak had proven pointless once before. No man had the right to exercise ultimate judgment over another man, certainly not the way Danny had.

He could not save Peter by killing Pape.

Nor could he sit by while Peter suffered.

Two compulsions in conflict. The disparity threatened to fracture his mind. Something was askew in his worldview.

The warden’s door swung open and Pape’s familiar form emerged, smiling. “There you are. All cleaned up and ready to join a more reasonable world, I trust.”

Danny got to his feet slowly. The pain in his joints had already begun to fade, but he knew it would return with a vengeance after a night’s sleep.

“Need some help?”

“No thank you. I’ll manage.”

The notion that he was more pathetic than noble whispered through his mind. What kind of weakness would prompt a man to say “No, thank you” to a man like Pape in a moment like this?

“Please come in.”

Danny entered the office and sat. The warden picked up a black pen and tapped it on a form before him. For a few long moments he watched Danny, expressionless.

“You’re a strong man, I’ll give you that. Unfortunately, it only means I have to work harder to get through to you. It’s only my job, you must realize that.”

Danny was here for Renee’s sake, not his own, so he kept his mouth shut.

“I’m sure you feel that my methods are extreme. That’s understandable. But as I pointed out in the dining hall, they are no more extreme than other methods condoned by your God.”

After another moment of silence the warden continued.

“Although I admire your mental strength, I need you to respond so that I can determine your progress. Is that fair?”

The man seemed more gentle somehow. Amenable even.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. Then you do understand that harsher methods than mine were at one time condoned, even embraced, by good people.”

“I can see how you draw that conclusion, yes.”

“But you disagree with them…”

“It’s not my place to judge your treatment of me. I accept that I’m your prisoner.”

“I’m not referring to my treatment of you. I was thinking more of the others.”

“Meaning whom?”

“Meaning Peter, for example.”

“We both know that Peter’s innocent.”

“Must we really go through this again? Innocent of what? Rape? And is rape more or less deviant than other expressions of deviant behavior? Everyone is guilty of some infraction of the law, Danny. Everyone breaks the law.