Band-Aid?'
'We do if that black bitch is the one putting it on.'
Calloway had been convicted of burning a synagogue to the ground seven years ago. He sustained head injuries and needed massive skin grafts on his arms, but he considered the mission a success because the terrified rabbi had fled town. The grafts still needed checking; he'd had three surgeries alone in the past year.
'You know what,' Alma said, 'I don't really care if his arms rot off.'
She didn't, that much was true. But she did care about being called a nigger. Every time Calloway hurled that word at her, she'd stiffen. And after she visited Calloway, she moved a little more slowly down the pod.
I knew exactly how she felt. When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the one person who doesn't.
'I got hep C because of you,' Calloway said, although he'd probably gotten it from the blade of the barber's razor, like the other inmates who'd contracted it in prison. 'You and your filthy nigger hands.'
Calloway was being particularly awful today, even for Calloway. At first
I thought he was cranky like the rest of us, because our meager privileges had been taken away. But then it hit me-Calloway couldn't let Alma into his house, because she might find the bird. And if she found the bird, CO
Smythe would confiscate it.
'What do you want to do?' Smythe asked Alma.
She sighed. 'I'm not going to fight him.'
'That's right,' Calloway crowed. 'You know who's boss. Rahowal'
At his call, short for Racial Holy War, inmates from all over the Secure
Housing Unit began to holler. In a state as white as New Hampshire, the
Aryan Brotherhood ran the prison population. They controlled drug deals done behind bars; they tattooed one another with shamrocks and lightning bolts and swastikas. To be jumped into the gang, you had to kill someone sanctioned by the Brotherhood-a black man, a Jew, a homosexual, or anyone else whose existence was considered an affront to your own.
The sound became deafening. Alma walked past my cell, Smythe following.
As they passed Shay, he called out to the officer, 'Look inside.'
'I know what's inside Reece,' Smythe said. 'Two hundred and twenty pounds of crap.'
As Alma and the CO left, Calloway was still yelling his head off. 'For
God's sake,' I hissed at Shay. 'If they find Calloway's stupid bird they'll toss all our cells again! You want to lose the shower for two weeks?'
'That's not what I meant,' Shay said.
I didn't answer. Instead I lay down on my bunk and stuffed more wadded-up toilet paper into my ears. And still, I could hear Calloway singing his white-pride anthems. Still, I could hear Shay when he told me a second time that he hadn't been talking about the bird.
That night when I woke up with the sweats, my heart drilling through the spongy base of my throat, Shay was talking to himself again. 'They pull up the sheet,' he said.
'Shay?'
I took a piece of metal I'd sawed off from the lip of the counter in the cell-it had taken months, carved with a string of elastic from my underwear and a dab of toothpaste with baking soda, my own diamond band saw. Ingeniously, the triangular result doubled as both a mirror and a shank. I slipped my hand beneath my door, angling the mirror so I could see into Shay's cell.
He was lying on his bunk with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his heart. His breathing had gone so shallow that his chest barely rose and fell. I could have sworn I smelled the worms in freshly turned soil. I heard the ping of stones as they struck a grave digger's shovel.
Shay was practicing.
I had done that myself. Maybe not quite in the same way, but I'd pictured my funeral. Who would come. Who would be well dressed, and who would be wearing something outrageously hideous. Who would cry. Who wouldn't.
God bless those COs; they'd moved Shay Bourne right next door to someone else serving a death sentence.
Two weeks after Shay arrived on I-tier, six officers came to his cell early one morning and told him to strip. 'Bend over,' I heard Whitaker say.
'Spread 'em. Lift 'em. Cough.'
'Where are we going?'
'Infirmary. Routine checkup.'
I knew the drill: they would shake out his clothes to make sure there was no contraband hidden, then tell him to get dressed again. They'd march him out of I-tier and into the great beyond of the Secure Housing
Unit.
An hour later, I woke up to the sound of Shay's cell door being opened again as he returned to his cell. 'I'll pray for your soul,' CO Whitaker said soberly before leaving the tier.
'So,' I said, my voice too light and false to fool even myself. 'Are you the picture of health?'
'They didn't take me to the infirmary. We went to the warden's office.'
I sat on my bunk, looking up at the vent through which Shay's voice carried. 'He finally agreed to meet with-'
'You know why they lie?' Shay interrupted. 'Because they're afraid you'll go ballistic if they tell you the truth.'
'About what?'
'It's all mind control. And we have no choice but to be obedient because what if this is the one time that really-'
'Shay,' I said, 'did you talk to the warden or not?'
'He talked to me. He told me my last appeal was denied by the Supreme
Court,' Shay said. 'My execution date is May twenty-third.'
I knew that before he was moved to this tier, Shay had been on death row for eleven years; it wasn't like he hadn't seen this coming. And yet, that date was only two and a half months away.
'I guess they don't want to come in and say hey, we're taking you to get your death warrant read out loud. I mean, it's easier to just pretend you're going to the infirmary, so that I wouldn't freak out. I bet they talked about how they'd come and get me. I bet they had a meeting.'
I wondered what I would prefer, if it were my death that was being announced like a future train departing from a platform. Would I want the truth from an officer? Or would I consider it a kindness to be spared knowing the inevitable, even for those four minutes of transit?
I knew what the answer was for me.
I wondered why, considering that I'd only known Shay Bourne for two weeks, there was a lump in my throat at the thought of his execution. 'I'm really sorry.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'Yeah.'
'Po-lice,' Joey called out, and a moment later, CO Smythe walked in, followed by CO Whitaker. He helped Whitaker transport Crash to the shower cell-the investigation into our bacchanal tap water had yielded nothing conclusive, apparently, except some mold in the pipes, and we were now allowed personal hygiene hours again. But afterward, instead of leaving I-tier, Smythe doubled back down the catwalk to stand in front of
Shay's cell.
'Listen,' Smythe said. 'Last week, you said something to me.'
'Did I?'
'You told me to look inside.' He hesitated. 'My daughter's been sick.
Really sick. Yesterday, the doctors told my wife and me to say good-bye. It made me want to explode. So I grabbed this stuffed bear in her crib, one we'd brought from home to make going to the hospital easier for her- and
I ripped it wide open. It was filled with peanut shells, and we never thought to look there.' Smythe shook his head. 'My baby's not dying; she was never even sick. She's just allergic,' he said. 'How did you know?'
'I didn't-'
