I'd wait as long as it took. I would save it all.
For him.
5
Manning
I woke up to the slide and slam of metal on metal. Concrete box. Ceiling crack that ran from one corner to the middle and forked. Mold in the toilet. Sweatshirt over my mouth and stuffed into my ears to block out the screamed obscenities and the assaulting smell of urine and feces.
Like every morning at three o'clock, a hand slid a tray of shriveled eggs through a slot in the metal door. "You're out today," a guard said and shut the hole.
That was it. Three words and the only ones besides inmate, strip, or let's go that'd been directed at me in a while. I was out? Of solitary? I looked at the wall where I'd chipped off paint each day. Seventy-four. Did I give a fuck about what day of the week it was or how long I'd been in here? No, but I didn't have much more to do than track time, and I wasn't even sure I'd counted right since I hardly knew night from day and slept in shifts. I couldn't even keep track by breakfast, because some days, the staff never brought it.
Under the metal slab and thin mattress they called a bed was a shelf with three books, paper, and a golf pencil. I hadn't seen grass or the sun since I'd stuck my shovel in the dirt and gone inside for dinner the day of the fight. I hadn't smoked since then, either, and I'd paid the price for that with withdrawals. The only human contact I'd had in two and half months was a CO cuffing me to and from the showers or for an hour of rec alone in a bigger concrete box with a two-inch sliver of window.
I needed to shake a hand or be touched by someone other than the fuck-face CO who kept "forgetting" my meals when I was already underfed. Or the guard who'd stand in my cell and chuckle while reading my letters to Tiffany. If one had ever made it to her, I'd be shocked. It was punishment for what I'd done to Ludwig, even though I was pretty sure he disgusted the other guards, too. I hated them and this hellhole and the inmates on both sides of me who banged on the walls all hours of the day. They could scream endlessly and must've painted the walls in shit for how bad the smell got sometimes.
I took the prison-made sweatshirt off my face and sat up, blinking against the fluorescent light overhead. My knees ached from bending them to keep my feet from hanging off the bed. I shoveled the food fast, partly out of hunger, partly so I wouldn't have to taste it. The juice carton was expired but I drank it anyway, and then it was back to pacing the six-by-nine-foot cell or looking at a wall. More thinking. Every thought there was to have, I'd had it.
No two ways about it-I'd snapped. No warning, no build up, no attempt to talk myself down. One second I'd been playing cards, the next, my hands were around a man's throat. I'd sat in here watching the scene play out in my head like I'd been an observer rather than a participant. I could see it clearly, because I'd seen the same thing happen with my dad. He never made a decision to hit one of us. He just did it, no discernable reason, pattern, or threat. He'd hit me over dirty dishes as a kid and my mom while she was just watching TV.
The only break in my routine since entering the hole had been a trial in front of a judge. If they'd charged me with assault, it would've meant a lot more time in prison. CO Jameson had come to my rescue, testifying that I'd been provoked, physically and verbally, by Ludwig.
It wouldn't matter if CO Jameson had personally delivered me an ice cream sundae each day in here-the truth was, guards were pigs and I regretted the fact I'd ever wanted to be a member of law enforcement. I had no shot at ever becoming a cop now, and that was a blessing. Charles Kaplan had been right. Only people at the top had power, and I'd never go to the top. Not with my record or background. I'd been so fucking green, asking Dexter what my past or family history had to do with me getting convicted of a crime I didn't commit.
Being in here had given me lots of time to replay that night in my head. Look at it from different angles. Could it have been some kind of set up? Who'd been around the fire the night I'd taken Vern's truck? Who'd had beef with me? Everyone at camp was a suspect. Had I trusted the wrong people? Vern the janitor was a local. The officer who'd pulled me over had been friendly, but who the fuck was he anyway? Bucky, the camp cook, had had a problem with me from the start-was it because I had a girl he'd never dream of scoring? Then there was the chick I'd bought the mood ring off of. I didn't know any of them from a stranger.
The smells, the noise, the guards and meal times meant I couldn't sleep more than a few hours a night. My thoughts had warped and changed and wandered but they never, ever went the fuck away. Sometimes, they were reduced to simple things.