The Pact (22 page)

Chris turned bright red. Steve rolled away and opened his magazine again. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered. “How the hell did you get in here?”

As SOON AS CHRIS ENTERED the room with its long, scarred tables and collection of inmates and relatives, he saw his mother. She threw her arms around him as he reached her. “Chris,” she sighed, smoothing his hair the way she had when he was a little boy. “You're okay?” The officer gently tapped his mother on the shoulder. “Ma'am,” he said, “you'll have to let go now.” Startled, Gus released her son and sat down. Chris settled across from her. There was no Plexiglas window between them, but that did not mean there wasn't a barrier.

He could have told his mother that in the superintendent's rule book-a binder big as a dictionary-it was decreed that a visit could begin with a brief embrace or kiss (not open-mouthed) and end the same way. In this same binder were the rules against possession of cigarettes, against use of profanity, against pushing another inmate. Such slight infractions in the real world were, in jail, a felony. The punishment was time added to one's sentence.

Gus reached across the table and took Chris's hand. For the first time, he noticed that his father was there too. James sat with his chair back a bit, as if he was afraid to come in contact with the table. It brought him nearly up against an inmate with a tattoo of a spiderweb on his left cheek.

“It is so good to see you,” his mother said.

Chris nodded, ducked his head. If he said what he wanted to-that he needed to go home, that he'd never seen anything more beautiful than her, right now, all his life-he would burst into tears and he could not afford to do that. God only knew who was listening, how it would be held against him.

“We brought you some money,” Gus said, holding out an envelope stuffed with bills. “If you need more you can call us.” She handed the envelope to Chris, who immediately signaled an officer, and asked him to put it in his prison account.

“So,” his mother said.

“So.”

She looked into her lap, and he almost felt pity. There was nothing to talk about, really. He had spent all week sitting in a maximum security pod at the county jail, and his parents would not consider that sanctioned conversation.

“You'll get a chance next week to be moved to the medium level, no?” James's voice startled him. “Yeah,” Chris said. “I have to petition the classification board.” A silence fell. “The swim team won its meet against Littleton yesterday,” Gus said.

“Oh?” Chris tried to sound like he gave a damn. “Who swam my race?”

“I'm not sure. Robert Ric-Rich-something.”

“Richardson.” Chris scuffed his sneaker against the floor. “Probably had a crappy time.” He listened to his mother tell him about the history assignment Kate had received, for which she'd be dressing up as a colonial woman. He listened to her talk of the movies that were playing at the local theater and

The officer looked from Chris to Steve. “Save it for the DR,” he said. As the guard left, Chris righted his bed and crawled back into the bunk. “Hey,” Steve said, shaking his shoulder. “I didn't plant it.”

“Go away.”

“I'm just telling you.”

Chris buried his head beneath his pillow, but not before seeing the flash of Hector's grin as he passed by the cell.

In THE EIGHTEEN HOURS that passed between the finding of the cigarette and Chris's official disciplinary review, he fit together all the pieces of the puzzle. Hector had parted with one of his precious bootleg prizes because he could kill two birds with one stone: test Chris, the newcomer, for his loyalties; and fuck over Steve, the baby killer. If Chris ratted out Hector, he'd regret it for some time. If he pinned the blame instead on Steve-who, as his cellmate, would have the best opportunity to plant a cigarette in Chris's sneaker-Chris would align himself with Hector's crowd. An officer led Chris to the small room where the assistant superintendent worked. Inside was the officer who'd wrecked the cell, and the assistant superintendent himself, a beefy man more suited to coaching football than pushing paper at a jail. Chris stood very straight while the assistant superintendent read a formal charge and advised him of his rights. “So, Mr. Harte,” the man said.

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“Yes. Ask me to smoke it.”

The assistant superintendent raised his brows. “I can't imagine you'd like anything better.”

“I don't smoke,” Chris said. “This'll prove it.”

“It will prove that you can fake a cough,” the man said. “I don't think so. Now: Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

Chris thought of Hector, and his razor-bladed pen. He thought of Steve, with whom he'd reached a tentative truce. And he remembered what he had been told about minor transgressions in jail-this cigarette could add three to seven years to his sentence, if he was convicted. Then again, that was a big if. “No,” Chris said quietly.

“No?”

He looked the assistant superintendent in the eye. “No,” Chris repeated. The officers looked at each other and shrugged. “You're aware,” the assistant superintendent said,

“that if you feel we're missing part of the story, you can suggest we speak to another inmate.”

“I know,” Chris said. “But you don't have to.”

The man pursed his lips. “All right, Mr. Harte. Based on the evidence, you've been found guilty of possession of an illegal substance in your cell, and you're sentenced to a five-day lockdown. You'll remain in a cell for twenty-three hours of the day, with one hour free to shower.” The superintendent nodded at the officers, who escorted Chris from the room. He walked silently through the maximum security pod, collecting his things without speaking a word to anyone. It was not until he was being led to his new cell that Chris realized he would sit there until Thursday, two days too late for his mother to visit; two days too late for the Classification Board to transfer him to medium security.

CHRIS SLEPT DURING those days. He dreamed often. Of Emily, the touch and taste of her. Of kissing her, tongue deep, and having her push something into his mouth, something small and hard like a peppermint candy. But when he spit it into his hand, he saw it for what it really was: the truth. He did sit-ups, endless numbers of them, because it was the only exercise he had room for in the narrow cell. During showers, he scrubbed until his skin went pink and raw, just so that he'd get his full hour out. He relived swim races, nights with Em, class lectures, until his cell became uncomfortably full of memories and he started to understand why inmates did not bother thinking of what they had left behind.

He did not call his mother, of course, and on Tuesday he wondered whether she had come all the way to Woodsville just to be told her son was in a disciplinary lockdown. He also wondered who had been moved to medium security. Steve would have petitioned the Classification Board that day. On Thursday morning he banged on the bars as soon as breakfast was finished and told an officer he wanted to be moved. “You will be,” the officer said. “Soon as we get a chance.” They didn't get a chance until four o'clock that afternoon. An officer swung open the door of the cell and led the way to the other maximum security pod, the one he'd been in the previous week.

“Welcome home, Harte,” he said.

Chris dumped his few belongings on the lower bunk. To his surprise, a figure curled out of the upper one. “Hey,” Steve said.

“What are you doing here?”

Steve laughed. “I was going to head out to a bar, but I couldn't find my car keys.”

“I meant that I thought you'd be upstairs by now.”

They both looked at the ceiling of the cell, as if it was possible to see medium security, with its yellow cinder-block walls, its horseshoe day room, its spacious showers. Steve shrugged, not saying what Chris knew he was thinking: that following the discovery of the cigarette, anyone in the jail would have pointed a finger at Steve, although Chris had chosen not to. “Changed my mind,” he said. “You get more room upstairs, but three more guys in your cell.”

“Three more?”

Steve nodded. “I figured I'd wait until I knew someone else up there.” Chris lay back on his bunk and closed his eyes. After all this time, he liked hearing the sound of another person's voice, another person's thoughts. “Tuesday's coming around soon again,” he said. He heard Steve's sigh. “That it is,” he answered. “Maybe we'll go.” THE FUNNY THING WAS, Chris had become a hero. By not ragging on Hector about the cigarette, when he perfectly well could have, he'd been elevated to the level of a worthy inmate, one who was willing to take the punches for someone else. No matter how undeserving that someone else was.

“My man,” Hector now called him. Chris was allowed to decide, from four P.M. to five P.M., what channel the TV stayed on. In the exercise room, he was given time on the weight bench. It was on the way back from the exercise room one day that Hector cornered him in the dark curve of the stairwell, the place that the cameras couldn't see. “Shower,” he hissed, “ten-fifteen.” And what the hell was that supposed to mean? Chris spent the rest of the day wondering if he had been issued an appointment to get the shit kicked out of himself, or if Hector had some other agenda for needing to meet him in private. He waited until ten, then grabbed his towel and walked down the small cubicle at the end of the pod.

There was no one else there. Shrugging, Chris stripped and turned on the water. He stepped into the stall and had just begun to lather up with the soap when Hector peered over the edge. “What the fuck is up with you?”

Chris blinked water from his eyes. “You told me to be here,” he said.

“I didn't tell you to shower,” he said.

Actually, he had. But Chris wasn't about to point that out. He shut off the water, only to have Hector snake an arm inside the stall and turn it on again. “Leave it,” he said. “It hides the smoke.” Then he drew from his jumpsuit a Bic pen that had been burned down into a curve and stretched at one end to make a small tobacco bowl. He unfolded a small square of paper and shook something precious into the makeshift pipe, then quickly flared a forbidden lighter. “Here,” he said, drawing deeply. Chris wasn't stupid enough to turn down hospitality from Hector. He bent his head away from the thin trickle of water and inhaled, exploding in a fit of coughing. It was not a cigarette, that much was true, but it didn't have the sweet taste of pot, either. “What is this?” he asked.

“Banana peels,” Hector said. “Damon and me burn them down.” He took the pipe and tamped it down. “For a jar of coffee I'll make you a packet.”

Chris felt the water run cold down the back of his neck. “We'll see,” he said, taking the pipe again when Hector offered it.

“You know, college boy,” Hector said, “I had you figured all wrong.” Chris didn't respond. He fit his lips over the edge of the pipe, inhaled, and was not altogether surprised to find that this time, it came naturally.

On SATURDAY MORNING CHRIS was one of the first inmates taken down to meet their visitors. Unlike the last time his mother had come to the jail, she was standing painfully erect, fury and fear crackling around her like electric currents that Chris could see even this far off. She folded Chris into her arms and for the briefest moment he had the sense that years had fallen away; that he was once again smaller and weaker than she was.

“What happened?” she said tightly. “I come here on Tuesday to find out that I can't see you because you're serving some kind of disciplinary sentence, and when I ask what that is they tell me it means you're locked inside some ... some cage for twenty-four hours a day.”

“Twenty-three,” Chris said. “You get an hour to shower.” Gus leaned closer, her lips white. “What did you do?” she whispered.

“I was set up,” Chris murmured. “One of the other prisoners was trying to get me in trouble.”

“He was-he was what?” Shocked, Gus sat back heavily. “And you just . .. went along with it?” Chris felt two flags of color rise in his cheeks. “He planted a cigarette in my sneaker; one that the officers found when they tossed the cell. And yeah, I went along with it, because sitting by myself for five days was better than having this guy come at me with the knife he made out of razor blades.”

Gus pressed her fist against her mouth, and Chris wondered what words she was trying to hold inside. “There has to be someone I can talk to,” she said finally. “I'll go to the superintendent when I leave here today. This isn't the way a jail is supposed to be run and-”

“How would you know?” Chris shook his head. “Don't go fighting my battles for me,” he said wearily.

“You're not like all these criminals,” Gus said. “You're just a child.” At that, Chris's head snapped up. “No, Mom. I'm not a child. I'm old enough to be tried as an adult; old enough to serve time in an adult jail.” He looked past her. “Don't make me into someone I'm not,” he said, his words laid like a frank hand of cards on the table between them. On Saturday night there was a terrible windstorm, and even the solid cement walls of the jail seemed to creak and threaten. Lockdown was late on weekends-two A.M.-with most of the inmates rowdier than usual. Chris had not yet cultivated the art of sleeping like a log when the rest of the pod was animated and noisy, but he lay in his bunk with a pillow over his head, wondering if it was truly possible to hear the sound of the rain soaking into the bricks and whipping the ceiling. There had been a fight earlier-an argument about whether to watch Saturday Night Live or Mad TV, which had resulted in two cells being locked down for an hour, the inmates screaming at each other through the bars. Steve had watched TV for a while, then come into the cell and crawled into the upper bunk. Chris had been feigning sleep, but he listened to Steve rip open the wrapper of the NutRageous bar he'd purchased from the commissary that week.

He'd gotten Chris some stuff, too. M&M's, and coffee, and Twinkies. Because of the disciplinary sentence, Chris had missed the commissary order day, and he supposed this was Steve's way of thanking him for not being a snitch.

After a while there was no more rustling in the upper bunk, and Chris realized Steve had fallen asleep. He waited until the officers called for lock-down, and then listened to the slap of rubber thongs on the floor; the soft sound of someone pissing in a urinal; the gradual slouch toward quiet. Lights out.