benches of an extended golf cart. Mal rode up front where he chatted nonstop with the driver, a guard wearing as much ammunition and gadgets as the Sheriff himself. Neely and Paul shared the back bench, facing the rear, as they passed more chain link and razor wire. They got an eyeful as they puttered past Camp A, a long dismal cinder-block building with prisoners lounging on the front steps. On one side, a basketball game was raging. All the players were black. On the other side, an all-white volleyball game was in progress. Camps B, C, and D were just as bleak. 'How could anyone survive in there?' Neely askedhimself .
At an intersection, they turned and were soon up at Camp E, which looked somewhat newer. At Camp F they stopped and walked fifty yards to a point where the fencing turned ninety degrees. The guard mumbled something into his radio, then pointed and said, 'Walk down that fence to the white pole. He'll be out shortly.' Neely and Paul began walking along the fence, where the grass had been recently cut. Mal and the guard held back and lost interest.
Behind the building and beside the basketball court was a slab of concrete, and scattered across it were all sorts of mismatched barbells and bench presses and stacks of dead weights. Some very large black and white men were pumping iron in the morning sun, their bare chests and backs shining with sweat. Evidently, they lifted weights for hours each day.
'There he is,' Paul said.'Just getting up from the bench press, on the left.'
'That's Jesse,' Neely said,mesmerized by a scene that few people ever witnessed.
A trustee approached and said something to Jesse Trapp, who jerked his head and searched the fence line until he saw the two men. He tossed a towel onto a bench and began a slow, purposeful, Spartanlike walk across the slab, across the empty basketball court, and onto the grass that ran to the fence around Camp F.
From forty yards away he looked huge, but as Jesse approached the enormity of his chest and neck and arms became awesome. They had played with him for one season—he was a senior when they were sophomores—and they had seen him naked in the locker room. They had seen him fling heavily loaded barbells around the weight room. They had seen him set every Spartan lifting record.
He looked twice as big now, his neck as thick as an oak stump, his shoulders as wide as a door. His biceps and triceps were many times the normal size. His stomach looked like a cobblestone street.
He wore a crew cut that made his square head even more symmetrical, and when he stopped and looked down at them he smiled. 'Hey boys,' he said, still breathing heavily from the last set of reps.
'Hello Jesse,' Paul said.
'How are you?'Neely said.
'Doingwell, can't complain. Good to see y'all. I don't get many visitors.'
'We have bad news, Jesse,' Paul said.
'I figured.'
'Rake's dead.Passed away last night.'
He lowered his chin until it touched his massive chest. From the waist up he seemed to shrink a little as the news hit him. 'My mother wrote me and told me he was sick,' he said with his eyes closed.
'It was cancer. Diagnosed about a year ago, but the end came pretty fast.'
'Man oh man. I thought Rake would live forever.'
'I think we all did,' Neely said.
Ten years in prison had taught him to control whatever emotions ventured his way. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes. 'Thanks for coming. You didn't have to.'
'We wanted to see you, Jesse,' Neely said. 'I think about you all the time.'
'The great Neely Crenshaw.'
'A long time ago.'
'Why don't you write me a letter? I got eighteen more years here.'
'I'll do that, Jesse, I promise.'
'Thanks.'
