Noble Warrior (12 page)

None could be trusted. This was the first and last rule of survival for anyone who entered the Department of Corrections, and McCutcheon knew it well. To trust meant risking death.

“This is you,” the guard said to M.D.

Beyond the iron bars lay his new home, a six-foot by eight-foot cell with a steel sink, a steel toilet, two metal shelves, two metal bunks—one on top of the other—and one fellow
prisoner, already inside lying on the bottom bed.

The guard opened the cell's door and M.D. stepped forward, unsure of what to expect. He imagined a snarl or some profanity. Maybe a whole bunch of rules about how and when he could use the
toilet.

Rules he might have to renegotiate with his fists.

“Welcome. Been expectin' you.”

The cell door slammed behind McCutcheon and an involuntary shudder wormed up his spine. The sound of iron bars locking him into a cage felt more haunting than he ever expected.

“Come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Plenty of space. Wanna cuppa coffee? Name's Fixer.”

He had hair the color of snow, a slender frame, and arms that flabbed even though he wasn't overweight. Guy seemed seventy, at least.

An old man? M.D. thought.

Fixer held up two pieces of exposed wire from a snipped brown extension cord that had been plugged into an electrical socket at the back wall, and McCutcheon watched as his new cell mate dipped
both ends of the shiny coil into a plastic bowl filled with water. By the time M.D. tossed his gear onto the top bunk, eyed the chipped paint on the ceiling, and spied the dismal spot where
he'd now be brushing his teeth, tiny bubbles started to rise from the bottom of Fixer's container.

“They sell them hot pots in the commissary, but they don't get hot enough for the water to boil,” Fixer said. “In a way, they're kinda like my penis, supposed to do
one thing but they don't.” The old man reached for two packets of instant coffee and two cups. “Guy like me supposed to be able to get a stiff one, you know, raise the ol'
flagpole, but not anymore. Can you believe I ain't been laid in forty-seven years? Hell, if I saw me a vagina right now, I'd have to trade that sucker in for something more practical,
like a good pillow. You gotta a girl?”

McCutcheon didn't reply. Instead he stood in the middle of the cell, stretched out both of his arms, and extended his fingetips. Each brushed the opposing wall and M.D. realized that yes,
he could indeed touch both sides of his new home at the same time.

“Thing about them hot pots is, if you boil up some liquid that there could be used as a weapon. Throw it at a guard or an enemy or something. That's why they sell hot pots that
don't get hot. Also why we gotta make ourselves these here stingers.” With the water furiously bubbling, Fixer reached for a paper cup. “You want sugar with your
coffee?”

“I don't want coffee at all.”

Fixer, about to pour a fresh cup of prison java for his new cell mate, froze, stung by McCutcheon's ungrateful, blunt reply. To M.D. it seemed fairly obvious that a worn-out old timer who
lacked muscles, speed, or strength did not own the skills to be any kind of threat to him.

Then a second thought crossed McCutcheon's mind as he watched the old guy remove the stinger's wires from the boiling water.

Or maybe he did?

“F
ine, you don't want coffee, no problem. But I'm sure you wanna eat. You gotta be starved by now.”

Fixer crossed to his shelf and pulled down a package of instant ramen noodles.

“I'll cook us somethin' dandy.”

“They gave me something to eat right here,” M.D. said, referring to the brown bag he brought with him.

“Oh, you don't want to eat S.O.S.”

“S.O.S.?”

“Same ol' shit,” Fixer said. “They been serving that rubber turkey since 1952. Don't even know why they call it turkey. At best, there's kitten meat in
there.”

Fixer tore open the package of dry food and searched his shelf for another bowl.

Ramen noodles? How many nights had I been forced to eat those with my sister, M.D. thought
.

After putting the noodles in a plastic bowl and pouring the unused hot water from the coffee over the top of them, Fixer crossed back to his shelf and sifted through some personal items. Though
hungry, the smell of bland ramen noodles boiling in prison water that had been heated by the tips of exposed metal wires, didn't exactly rev M.D.'s taste bud engines.

BAM!
With the heel of his shoe Fixer stamped down on a package of peanuts and twisted his foot side-to-side grounding the contents of the packet into smithereens. Once satisfied with
his efforts, Fixer took another plastic bowl and two spoons down from his shelf and began moving around his small space like an actual chef: nimble, fluid, and in total command of his kitchen.

Fixer mixed the seasoning packet from the ramen noodles together with a squeeze of mayonnaise and then dropped a few fat plops of Furnell's Furiously Flamin' Hot Sauce into his
evolving concoction. After a dash of something M.D. couldn't quite make out, Fixer added the package of smashed peanuts to the bottom of the bowl and began blending all the ingredients
together with a ladle that he'd obviously stolen at some point from the penitentiary's commissary.

“This one of my specialties right here. I call it Prison Pussy Pad Thai.” Fixer smiled wide.

M.D., unimpressed, didn't return the grin.

“And now, for the highlight.” McCutcheon's new cell mate crossed back to his supply shelf and pulled down a small silver tin. “White chicken meat. On a special occasion
like this, nothing but the best.”

M.D. wrinkled his brow. “Why a special occasion?”

“A new cellie of your stature? This is practically a holiday for me.”

“What do you mean, ‘my stature'? How do you know about me?”

Fixer gazed at the ceiling as if it were a blue sky in a sunny meadow. “Little hummingbirds. They flutter everywhere in here. You just need to know where to listen.”

Fixer waved his hands magically across the sky and then shuffled to the sink. After draining some water from the ramen noodles into the toilet he opened the can of white chicken meat and
combined everything from the two bowls into one.

A surge of steam, spiced and flavorful, exploded from the hard plastic dish as the hot water and noodles hit the mashup of Fixer's ingredients.

“
Mmm-mmm
, you gonna love this.”

An involuntary swallow of saliva swelled in McCutcheon's throat. “Why would I love what I'm not going to eat?”

“And why ain't you eating?”

“I don't want to owe anyone for anything.”

“How can you owe for what's already been paid for?”

M.D. squinched his eyes. “Paid for by who?”

Fixer shook his head, turned, and reached into a basket under his bed. “So many questions. I guess for young people”—Fixer held up a shiny red apple—“a piece of
fruit like this is so much more than just a piece of fruit. But for a geezer like me, with a penis that doesn't know how to sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner'
anymore”—Fixer bit into the luscious red fruit and a spritz of juice sprayed from his mouth—“an apple is just a fuckin' apple.”

Fixer extended his hand. “Wanna bite?”

McCutcheon stared at the offering. The apple looked crisp and sweet, but M.D. didn't reach out to accept the gift. In prison,
free
did not exist, and owing debts was a sure recipe
for problems down the road. Convicts had been shanked over as little as the nonrepayment of a candy bar. Best to keep to his own, M.D. thought. Stay focused on the mission.

“I'm good.”

“Toss me your mustard.”

“What?”

“Your mustard? From the S.O.S. It's the only thing worth a shit in there, anyway.”

M.D. reached into his bag and handed over his two mustard packets. Fixer grabbed them, went back to his shelf, took down a metal plate, and then set a flat silver dish on top of the
stinger's wires.

“Fried mustard'll make my penis play the electric guitar.”

“Is everything about your penis?”

“Pretty much. Ever since it died, that is. Then again, don't all of us want what we can't have? Have I mentioned I haven't been laid in over forty-seven years?”

“You did.”

“Well, that'll tell you all you need to know about the cruelty of incarceration.”

Fixer turned his attention to the mustard and meticulously squeezed every last drop from each of the packets onto the hot plate. Following proper jailhouse protocol, he then reached out his arm
and offered the empty packets back to M.D.

“Suck?”

M.D. waved the old man off .

“Suit yourself.” Fixer put the mustard in his mouth and extracted every last bit of flavor he could from each of the already empty packets. “In due time, everyone starts to
suck. Ooh...” Fixer turned his attention back to the mustard crackling on the makeshift cooking pan. “Here we go.”

Like a sous-chef in a five-star restaurant, Fixer mixed the sizzling mustard into the ramen noodle dish, twirled the contents in the bowl, holding two spoons in one hand like a man who'd
graduated from a high-end culinary institute, and then blended everything together with musical smoothness, as if keeping a regular rhythm to his twirls enhanced the flavor of the food somehow.
Once satisfied with his creation, Fixer unplugged the stinger and served up two evenly divided, heaping portions of sizzling hot grub.

The old man plunged a spoon into the bowl of the simmering jailhouse cuisine and then offered a nice, big serving to M.D.

“Dig in.”

McCutcheon didn't reply. Instead he stared at the wafts of spiced scents rising from the dish that hit him in the nostrils and caused him to salivate against his will.

“No owe. You contributed the mustard,” Fixer said. “So if it makes you happy, you can just eat the parts touched by that.”

McCutcheon understood the logic behind Fixer's words. Since the mustard touched everything, M.D. could eat the entire bowl without feeling indebted. His new cellie hadn't just
identified M.D.'s problem; he'd offered a solution, too.

But why, M.D. wondered. No, an apple was never just an apple.

On one hand, Fixer might have just been friendly, an old man with too much time on his hands, hungry for conversation and a sense of camaraderie. On the other hand, perhaps this was all a
scheme, a way of manipulating M.D. into letting his guard down.

For what, an attack? M.D. considered the age of his new bunk mate.

Not likely, he deduced.

“What'd you do?” M.D. asked as he accepted the bowl of food, grabbed a seat on the edge of the bed, and loaded up his spoon. “You know, to get locked up.”

“Murder one. Two counts. Gonna be fifty years next May,” Fixer said. “And I know you're next question: how'd I do them?”

“Yeah, sure,” McCutcheon answered.

Fixer's eyes narrowed as he watched McCutcheon take his first bite of food.

“I did it the old-fashioned way,” Fixer replied. “With poison.”

Suddenly, a surge of heat blazed in McCutcheon's mouth. Liquid fire.

M.D. spun his head around and immediately realized his new cell mate had not yet taken a bite of his meal.

“There, there, relax into it,” Fixer said. “The pain won't last that long at all.”

A
guard's voice bellowed down the corridor. “Lights-out, Tier Three!”

Like a warehouse factory being closed for the evening, a switch flipped from on to off, and the overhead fluorescent lights in every cell on the block shut down for the night with a staticky
buzz.

Darkness in the cages, however, did not mean there'd be silence.

“You fill his tank, old man?”

The thin and angled face of Krewls appeared between the weathered and worn bars of McCutcheon's cell.

“I believe he is satisfied.”