his legs. He tried to stand up but couldn’t make it halfway before crumpling over. Piss dribbled out of him like boiling water, and blood flowed freely from the welts left behind by the clubs.
“You see what your violence brings?” the old man asked as he shook his head and walked to the open door. “You will see the error of your ways soon enough, for you shall have nothing else to distract you.”
As Henry was dragged the rest of the way down that hall, frantic eyes stared at him through small rectangular holes cut into the other doors. Henry’s cell was open and waiting for him. It was square just like the rest and set at the old man’s eye level.
Except for a copper pot in one corner, the room was empty. Even though Henry could see no windows, it was fairly well lit thanks to a small, oval-shape that had been cut into the ceiling, which allowed a fair amount of sunlight to trickle in. The hole was surrounded with more words that Henry couldn’t read, and so were the walls.
Looking up at the ceiling as if he was on the verge of tears, the preacher clasped his hands and smiled as if he was peeking beneath a woman’s lifted skirts. “That is the eye of our Lord,” he said.
Henry looked at the old man and then back to the ceiling. “It’s just a hole.”
“So says a sinner. The eye of our Lord is always open, always looking down upon you. It is your salvation just as it is your only light. If there is good in you, He will see it.”
Settling into a corner so his back was against the wall facing the door, Henry winced. “I suppose.”
“Cherish the words around you,” the preacher said as he ran his fingertip along some of the symbols near the door. “They will keep you from sinning again.”
Henry felt a pulse roll out of the wall and press him into his corner. A dank, musty odor drifted through the room and felt as if it was curling in on him like a fist. When the preacher finished his tracing, he nodded to the big fellows and backed out of the room. The chains were taken from Henry’s wrists and the guards left without a fuss.
Once the door was shut, Henry Bartlett had nothing in his world but a moldy piss pot to fill and the eye of the Lord to watch over him.
Three years later Henry had settled into his routines even better than he’d settled into the corner of his room.
Twice a week his pot was emptied.
When he was brought out of his room, his head was covered by a sack cinched shut by a leather strap around his neck so he couldn’t see the other residents. A few screams could be heard at night, but it was hard to tell which came from other mouths and which were simply churning within the shadows.
The words on his wall hurt when Henry touched them, so he figured they were filled with the same hellfire as the preacher’s sermons. Those lectures, filled with more words about the evil in Henry’s soul and the hard work needed to purge it, rolled off of him like the rainwater that trickled in through the hole in his ceiling.
Outside his room, Henry tried to peek through a loose stitch in the bag covering his head. If he wasn’t sneaky about it, rough hands snapped his head to one side and shoved his chin down against his chest. One time, he tried to bite the man who did it to him. There had been a crippling blow delivered to the small of his back, followed by a kindly voice that informed him, “You will see nothing but the words of salvation and the eye of our Lord.”
If he behaved himself while he was in a room that smelled like food, Henry was allowed to roll up the bottom of the bag just enough to get some oatmeal into his mouth. He saw nothing but a few shadows while he ate. Heard nothing apart from the muttering and chewing of the folks around him. Felt nothing but the lead weight of the peculiar writing on the walls and the greasy filth that stuck to the bottom of his feet.
More than anything, Henry wanted to go for one of his walks. Whenever he strayed too far from his assigned path, the big fellows would come with their sharpened sticks to force him back to his room. He got flustered during his first month at the reformatory and pulled off one of those men’s arms. The wooden clubs had rained down upon his head until he heard a loud snap inside his neck. He could barely lift his chin for a while after that.
The old preacher came to check on him, and so did Jonah. It was one of the few times Henry laid eyes on the fellow with the beard who’d kept the others from hanging him as a murderer. But Jonah didn’t have any kind words for him. He did, however, seem mighty amused by the crackle of broken bones scraping against each other as Henry’s head swung loosely at the end of his neck.
After he’d acted up again, Henry was dumped into his room and wasn’t allowed out of it again. His food was brought to him and shoved through the hole in his door. The meals tasted rotten and smelled like they had been pulled up from the bottom of a mossy lake. He ate what was fed to him and got one of the big fellows’ fingers as well. Jonah came along later to put a different bag on his head and tightened the belt until he went to sleep. When he woke up, he heard a voice that was clearer than the rest.
“You can hear me,” it said.
Henry snapped his head up and smiled beneath the burlap sack. Putrid slime dribbled from his mouth and his breath felt like a wave of flame upon his ravaged throat when he muttered, “Yes. I hear you.”
“Be quiet in there,” one of the big fellows outside demanded.
Henry couldn’t see the guard, but he’d long ago become accustomed to the fact that they were always watching. When he strained to turn toward that other voice, Henry reflexively kept his chin pressed against his chest. “Can you hear me, God?” he asked.
“Of course I can hear you,” the soothing voice replied. “You are the only one worth listening to.”
Trying not to let the Lord know how confused he was, Henry replied, “God is good.”
“And you are too…Henry.”
That last word brushed through Henry’s ear like velvety fingers stretching through his mind; warm and itchy.
He caught a hint of light through the rough material of the sack. After the door was pulled open, a thick hand clamped down upon his head, sending a painful crunch through his neck.
“Eyes and head down,” the guard said.
“But I hear God talking to me.”
Henry was knocked face-first to the floor so another familiar voice could reach the large ears flattened against his skull.
“Blasphemy!” the preacher said. “You know better than that! Be silent and reflect upon the harm you’ve inflicted.”
The belt was taken off and the bag peeled away. Henry sat in his corner with his head tucked against his chest and turned to one side. It hurt too badly to lift it, so he let it hang. The churning in his belly grew stronger, but the only other food he got after that night was damp, salty bread.
Insects skittered across his floor. They pinched his toes and chewed at the small of his back, but that didn’t bother him anymore. He had a friend other than Jonah, so he let the ants skitter among the roots of his coarse fur and waited for his next conversation with God.
Ten years later Henry still couldn’t read all those words on his wall. But the one thing he knew for certain was that the preacher had been right. The Lord looked down on him all the time. No matter how much Henry wanted to look up into that eye, his crooked neck wouldn’t allow it.
That’s when Henry Bartlett knew he was never going to be forgiven.
He would never clear the stench of his own filth from his nose.
The mites would never stop crawling through his hair.
He would never be able to eat something besides oatmeal, bread, or the occasional bit of stolen meat.
He would never be let out of that room.
It took a lot of strain, but he finally managed to look up to the unblinking eye of the Lord to feel some of the strength the preacher had always gone on about.
One day, God told him to dig.
Henry crawled to the door with his head cast down and his legs only moving below the knees so as not to agitate the lice infesting his groin. Settling next to the door, he scraped at the same spot he’d started on a few years ago, using nails that had hardened to jagged, calcified implements. His eyes narrowed to intense slits as he pulled at the wood and scraped against stone. His head wobbled and the voices rushed through his mind. Every splinter he pulled away brought him one step closer to freedom. Every bit of pain slicing through his hands spurred him on and chased away the need to sleep.
“You’re doing well, Henry,” God whispered. “I’m so proud of you.”
