American Rust

1. Poe

On his third day in the hole, the same short pudgy guard came back again and rapped on the bars and told him to cuff up.

“I ain’t gonna talk to him,” said Poe. “Today or ever.”

“You got to sign your papers. Until you sign your papers, you don’t even got a fuckin lawyer.”

“I ain’t signing nothing.”

“Christ,” said the guard. “And I wondered why you were in here.”

The guard stood waiting, just in case. Poe decided he would ask the question. He would let himself ask it. Finally he said, “Can he come down here?”

“Fuck no your lawyer can’t come down to no fuckin SHU. They got a fuckin room upstairs all laid out for it.”

“Well I ain’t moving. He can come and see me.”

“You are one stupid- ass convict, you know that.”

“I ain’t convicted yet.”

“Well something tells me you will be.”

“Tell him to mail me those papers.”

“Suit yourself,” said the guard. “But anyway, it’s a woman, you should probably know that about your own goddamn lawyer. She’s not bad-looking, either.”

“How long am I gonna be down here, anyway?”

“Not too long,” said the guard. “Not too long.”

He listened to the man’s shuffling footsteps disappear. The other inmates on the block called out to him but the guard passed them by as if both deaf and blind. Poe decided he had not done badly. He had not caved in, his second chance he had not taken it. But he didn’t know the third time, he was not sure he could say no again. He sat back in his bunk. He could hear one of the J-8s, the loonytoons, shouting for help that would never come, he had been shouting for two days straight.

There was no good answer. It was him or Isaac. There was no way they could both come out of it. The day they took him out of isolation was the day Clovis and the others would be waiting for him. One way or the other he was spilling his guts—shank or lawyer it was his decision. As soon as the lawyer knew who really killed old Otto, from there it would go to the DA and then it would be Isaac in these shoes and not him. But maybe Isaac would have some way of coping with it better than he himself did. It was a distinct possibility. Though smaller, he might be better equipped. Mentally stronger. You’re just scared, he thought. If you stay scared you know what you’ll pick.

He closed his eyes and ate the last section of orange he’d saved from breakfast, the eating would distract him. He lay and chewed and waited for the empty feeling to be interrupted, he was either empty or full, overfull, there was no in- between. The truth was people died every minute. Were dying. The only real miracle was the human perception that it would not be him. But it would be. It was the only certainty. It was back to the darkness, a cycle. It was back to the darkness, a cycle, a comfort. There was no point to the putting off. It was a spiral of shame, shame of being wrong, of being wrong that you were the source of all existence, when really, when you were born, you were the same as a name on a gravestone. A gravestone of the future. A born destiny. Only now his name would be put upon the list of men. There was a list kept somewhere and his name would be recorded it was an honor.

Except it wasn’t. It was only dying. It was dying and being afraid. No matter how many sums in your favor, hero or coward it did not matter, it would not change the truth of your own death.

He was a good person. His choices had done some good. If he had gone away to Colgate, if he had not been living in Buell, he would not have been home the day Isaac decided to walk out on the thin ice over the Mon. That was the one brave thing he had done. Isaac had gone maybe ten feet, it was obvious the ice wouldn’t hold him, then he just dropped through and Poe had run out after him and dropped through as well, felt the ice give way and had his moment of panic and stayed on course. He had saved Isaac English. It was the best thing he had done. Isaac had not had it easy but he was a good man—rarity, that combination—you were not supposed to say it, it was not the American Way to admit it, but generally the harder you had it the more of a piece of shit you were. Except the rich were even worse, they didn’t understand life, the stories Lee told her rich friends looked at the world the same as a retarded person, as a person with actual brain damage, that was how they understood life, it was no wonder that the world was such a fucked- up place. It was nearly all of them, it was all people, really, that were pieces of shit. He himself was lucky that way, not rich and not poor. And Isaac, when he’d changed his mind about taking his own life, he had come to Poe. Poe had gotten him warmed up and then given him an ear and listened to him, they had sat there talking all night. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know. It showed you there was a reason for all of it, despite nearly killing that boy from Donora, he had saved Isaac English. It was a sign and fuck all the rest of them, Harris, the DA, and all the rest who were coming after him that he hadn’t even met yet, he wouldn’t tell them a fucking thing, this was the one thing in his life he was not going to fuck up.

He was at the end of his rope it had not been a long one. He didn’t know what he expected. More warning, like a cancer, only there had been warning, there had been many warnings, it was only that he had not been capable of seeing them. And so here he was, it was inevitable, it could not have gone another way.

There was nothing in the hole he could use for a weapon and besides they would search him anyway. He would figure something out when he got back to the general population, find a piece of metal, sharpen his toothbrush handle, make a razor out of a Coke can, it was better than nothing. He would take as many of them with him as he could.

2. Lee

Sunday night and she was going slightly crazy she’d already talked to Simon, she didn’t think she could read a single word of another book, she needed to get out of the house. She searched her planner for phone numbers, found Joelle Caruso and Christy Hanam. She called them both and they agreed to meet at Joelle’s uncle’s bar.

The bar was busy for a Sunday, nearly all faces she knew from high school, or at least the older and younger siblings of people she’d known. She was struck by how big all the men were, more than weight- room big, it was steroid big, sitting in overlarge T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, their arms crossed, muscles on display. But what else was there to do? Many of the women, it seemed, were starting to soften, barely into their twenties, maybe they weren’t welcome at the gym. Lee was glad she’d worn a sweatshirt and no makeup.

“Good to see you again, hon. I can’t believe you’re back so soon. That was Christmas, right?”

Lee looked at her. “I think it might have been last Christmas.”

“God,” Joelle said, “you serious?”

“I think,” said Lee. She pretended to consider it. “Yeah, it was last Christmas, a year and a half ago.”

“Well, I guess that tells you all you really need to know then, doesn’t it.” Joelle shook her head.

“You got married,” said Christy, touching her ring.

Lee held it out. She was glad she hadn’t worn the engagement ring.

“Congratulations, girl. A guy from school?”

“His name’s Simon.”

“Church wedding or one of those modern ones?”

“We didn’t really have one,” said Lee. “We went to the JP.”

“Holy shit, she’s having a kid.”

“No. It was just a spur- of- the- moment thing.”

“Listen to us,” said Christy. “What a bunch of bitches.”

“How are you guys, anyway?”

“Oh, fat, everyone’s fat. The men lift weights, shoot steroids in their butts, we just get fat.”

“They get fat too,” said Christy.

There must have been some agreement in Lee’s face, because Christy said:

“No, we’re all doing pretty good. I got my own house now, I pay my own mortgage. We’re not all doing bad.”

“Christy wrangles retards for a living.”

“Special ed,” said Christy. “I teach speds.” She shoved Joelle playfully. “You are such a little bitch.”

“What do you do?”

Lee wondered why she hadn’t come up with an answer to this question. “Well,” she stammered, “I guess I’ve been applying to schools again, and I dunno, helping my mother- in- law with her business.”

“So did he at least give you an engagement ring or anything? I don’t see one.”

“No, it didn’t fit right.” The truth being she’d been embarrassed to wear it.

“They’re all the same, aren’t they? You want another drink?”

Joelle could have gone behind the bar herself, but instead they all waited for her uncle to come over.

“This is a weird question,” Lee said, “but you guys haven’t seen or heard anything about my brother, have you?”

“I thought he was off in school.”

“No,” said Christy, “he’s still here. You see him around sometimes.”

“What’s he doing, then?”

“Looking after our father,” said Lee.

“That’s weird. Even between the two of you, he always seemed to be the one who would get out of here.”

Lee felt her ears getting warm.

“All I mean is, you always knew how to get along with people. He just seemed like the type that was so smart he didn’t know how to talk. You could tell he probably belonged somewhere else.”

“I dunno. There was my dad to look after, I guess.”

“Your dad?” Joelle shook her head. “It ain’t like there’s a shortage of places for your dad around here, not with a steelworker’s pension. I mean right now, just put your head out the door and look. They’re building towers for old people all up and down this valley. Home health is about the only kind of job you can get now, teaching’s out, home health is in. If Christy hadn’t gotten that job with the kids, she’d be swapping out bedpans.”

Christy nodded. “She’s right, unfortunately.”

“It was probably your mother,” said Joelle. “A kid like that is going to be tight with his mother. Something like that happens, it’s gonna hurt him pretty bad.”

There was silence as they all looked into their drinks.

“On worse news that might cheer you up,” said Christy, “you remember Billy Poe? From the football team, freshman when we were seniors?”

“Sure.”

“Killed a bum in one of the old factories. Beat him to death.”

“Why the hell would you even be in one of those places,” said Joelle. “Nothing good could come of it.”

“Everyone’s got secrets.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe he was gay or something. They meet up in strange places, it’s not exactly like they could come in here and have a date or something.”

“I can tell you for sure that he wasn’t gay,” said Joelle.

“You cannot.”

“As a matter of fact, I can.” She held her two fingers a good distance apart. “Course the asshole never called me once he got it.”

Lee felt her face getting hot.

“Well, I’m sure now he’d be happy to have any of us. He isn’t gonna see a woman for a long time.”

“I feel sorry for him,” said Joelle.

“Do you think he did it?” said Lee. She felt guilty for asking and had to look away but neither of the two caught it.

“Who knows?”

“He did beat the absolute shit out of Rich Welker once, who entirely deserved it, but everyone noticed that it went on longer than it could have.”

“And that kid he got arrested for last year.”

“That one too,” said Joelle.

Lee nodded and sipped her white wine, it was very sweet.

“So you ever think you’d move back here or anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Lee said. “Or not anytime soon.”

“Thank God,” said Joelle. “I’d never get laid if you did.”

“You really are a whore,” said Christy.

Lee smiled and raised her eyebrows.

“Nah, it’s just a joke, it’s nothing around here but the same old faces since the third grade. Do a boy once in school, know it’s a mistake but five years later there’s no one else and the bar is closing so you do it again. Ten years later you’re married to him. Look at our mothers and it’s even worse today. All the smart ones leave.”

“You guys think you’d ever do that?” Lee immediately regretted asking it but both Joelle and Christy shrugged it off.

“Doubt it. I’ll probably work here until I die.” Joelle waved her hand around, encompassing the bar. “And she’ll take care of the retards.”

“From the fetal alcohol.”

“We’re practically a team.”

They both laughed.

“But really, it’s not bad. Your car breaks down along the road, you know you only gotta wait two minutes before someone you know comes by. There just isn’t that far you can fall.”

“You two ought to come visit me,” said Lee. “We could go to New York.”

“I’d like to do that,” said Joelle.

“Please,” said Christy.

“No,” Joelle said. “I’m serious. Me and Jon- Jon went on that cruise to Jamaica, I’m not like you. I’m practically an adventurer.”

3. Harris

He left Grace’s house and made his way directly to the police station, thinking maybe this is what she wanted from you the whole time. Only if this went bad it would be both him and Billy Poe hanging around in that prison. He wondered if it was better for everyone to just let Billy stand trial—Murray Clark was a drunk, he was not going to come off well in front of a jury. Not to mention if anything happens to old Murray the DA will tear up the earth trying to figure it out.

Murray Clark had given two addresses in Brownsville—Harris had glanced at the papers in the Uniontown police station, then gone into the bathroom to write them down. At the time he didn’t know why he’d done it, collecting information, the old instinct. I’m bored, he thought. His head felt numb, he tried to focus on his driving. He was justifying.

This will be the worst thing you have ever done, he thought. I am just going to talk to him, he repeated to himself. Back in ancient history, his marine days, there was the man he’d shot in Da Nang. If this was a sin, so was that. At least this would mean something. He had a feeling he had generally done right but there was a way in which that was not true at all. He had lied to put people in prison, he had lied many times in court. Never about what the person had done, he had never said the person had committed a crime they had not actually committed. He had lied only to justify his instincts, why he’d stopped a certain car, why he’d searched the car or decided to frisk someone. He’d lied to explain things he knew, but could not explain why he knew.

As for the man in Da Nang, there had been no point. Another rocket barrage and not quite sunup and Harris was eating Dexedrine, bored and high. He was a year out of high school, it was insane they’d even brought him over there. He was posted in one of the outer bunkers near the helipad. The man was carrying a package, possibly a satchel charge—Harris never found out, he watched him walk a small dyke that edged the perimeter, no one was supposed to be out there, the flat-baked clay no- man’s- land on Harris’s side and the fertile green rice paddy beyond. He waited to see if the man would go another direction but he didn’t and at two hundred meters Harris had led his target slightly and pressed the trigger of the M60, held it down for a long second. Every fifth round was a tracer and Harris watched them meet the body and then continue across the brilliant green paddy. The sapper didn’t fall, he stood still for a long time as if not willing to accept what was happening and Harris, confused, offended for some reason, he pulled the trigger and held it long after the man went down, he played the tracers above the area where the man had fallen, arcing them back and forth as if trying to erase the evidence. He used up a belt of ammunition and the floor of the bunker was covered with sooty brass cases.

Later they found the man next to the dyke, human only by the shredded remnants of clothing. It could have been the result of a farming accident. The package was gone. No one else thought about it twice—a dead Vietnamese was a dead VC—but Harris had the feeling that he was owed punishment, killing someone, it seemed he should not get off so easily. He was debriefed, explained what he’d done to a bored lieutenant who made a notation in the file. One confirmed kill. Five months later, May 1971, they handed over their post to the South Vietnamese and Harris was on his way home. All the dead men of the world—they had once been alive. That was what people forgot.

He pulled into the station and thought about Grace again. She had been sleeping when he left the house and he’d kissed her and she hadn’t woken up and he knew then, knew because she was sleeping deeply, he knew that she didn’t really understand what she wanted him to do.

It would not be hard, it would not take long to find Murray, Carzano wanted to keep his witness around so he was giving him a hundred dollars a week in state funds, calling it witness protection though there was no protection. It was just money that Murray Clark needed and he would stick around the area to keep collecting it unless someone, Harris, made it clear it wasn’t safe for him. But he would have to really make an impression.

Murray Clark wasn’t a bad type. It might not be hard to get him to run off. Or it might be. You’re trading yourself for Billy Poe, thought Harris. I know that.

He parked his truck, nearly forgot to turn it off, he went inside the station then downstairs to the evidence room, he felt like he was running on autopilot, there were all the old boxes of crap stacked up from their move from the old station, there were boxes that dated back to the 1950s and no one would ever go through it, at the time he’d thought about destroying it all but now he knew why he hadn’t. It took him several minutes of rummaging but he found a five- shot revolver someone had turned in years ago, the date on the tag was 1974. He looked at it. He thought about Grace. Then he thought: if you’re just going to talk to him, why bring it…

He checked the timing and cylinder lockup and squeezed the trigger to make sure the firing pin fell all the way. Then he went back upstairs to his office. There was a box of .38 plus-P hollowpoints and he used a tissue to pick up the rounds and load them in the gun. Looking around the office he could feel his inertia starting to build, looking at the old paintings, it was only a year and a half to retirement. You aren’t going to use this thing anyway. Just give him the Talk.

His jacket pocket was sagging with the weight of the small revolver but he knew he ought to bring backup. His duty Sig didn’t seem right. He went back to the safe in his office and got his .45, a Gold Cup he’d bought himself when he got back from the marines, he tucked a spare magazine in his pocket and the gun in a rear waistband holster. A final thought occurred to him and he stripped down to his undershirt, put his ballistic vest on, and then got dressed again. You’re scared, he thought. When was the last time you were this scared, you’re dressing up for combat. Haven’t worn this thing in years. Where’s your light. He took the small xenon flashlight from his duty belt and put that into his pocket as well. He could tell he was not thinking clearly. He was going to forget something. Usually the mistake that killed people—soldiers, pilots, racecar drivers—was the second one. You lived through the first one and then realized it had happened and you were so distracted by it that you made another one. The second one got you. His father had been a Corsair pilot and told Harris that if you were in a dogfight and you screwed up you were supposed to peel off immediately and put some space around you, get your head clear before you got back into the fight. Which was this? He wasn’t sure. Walking out he called to Ho:

“I might be taking the next day off. Call up Miller or Borkowski or whoever else you need if you don’t hear from me by seven.”

“Where you going?” said Ho.

“Fishing. You just hold the fort. Better call those two now, actually. Just tell one of them to be here when you get off.”

He got into his old Silverado and drove home. While Fur was out running, Harris put a change of clothes and a pair of running shoes into a backpack, then refilled the dog’s food and water, setting the entire bag of food on the floor where the dog could get to it, then a second large pot of cold water on the floor next to it. The dog came back in and immediately sensed something was wrong and Harris had to knee him firmly out of the way to get out of the house. He made his way down the rutted road, eyes focused straight ahead, he thought you better get food and coffee, might be out there all night and all day tomorrow maybe.

In Brownsville he parked at the top of the hill near the old stone houses and sat looking at his map book. He found the addresses and memorized them without making a note on the map and got breakfast and filled up both of the truck’s fuel tanks in case he had to drive a long way. There were two houses Murray Clark had given as addresses, and Harris began driving toward the first one.

4. Isaac

After staring out over the rushing traffic for a long time, he finally left the overpass and made his way toward the on- ramp for southbound Interstate 75. He took off his coat and brushed the dirt off as best as possible and retucked and smoothed his collared shirt and ran his fingers through his hair to get the burrs and tangles out. Student on a nine- day bender, that’s all you are. Pure coincidence he looks like a bum. What about the knife? Put the coat on over it.

A purple semi pulling a tanker was pulling out of the gas station and Isaac put out his thumb and stood waiting and the truck stopped. Isaac jogged over and climbed up onto the truck, pulling the heavy door open.

“Where you headed?”

“Pennsylvania, I think.”

“You think?”

The truck driver was a short thin man in his late forties, clean- shaven. He winked at Isaac. “I can drop you at Interstate 70 if you pay for gas. There’s probably shorter ways to get there, though.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I’m just kidding you,” said the man. “The company pays gas and I’m going that way anyway.”

The truck was big inside, dark and comfortable. Wizard of Oz, he thought, looks like a huge beast but inside it, perched way up high, this tiny man. They were high off the ground and moving fast. About eighty.

It took a minute before he could focus on the objects they passed, just watching them made his vertigo even worse. Someone made this, he thought. He looked over at the driver, sitting behind the wheel, listening to AM radio. Noises came occasionally from the CB. Mind can adjust to anything—voices coming out of a metal box. Two different metal boxes. Meanwhile you look over the road and the body knows it’s going too fast. But it adjusts as well. He watched things appear and disappear, trucks, metal signs, houses, roads, and overpasses. Made all of it. Even the air, radio waves and satellites. Feels like that should all mean something. Doesn’t—it’s just what we do. What has it gotten us, our difference from animals. Better rifles and antibiotics—they come together. Smart bombs and cancer surgery. Don’t get one without the other, even our own nature keeps itself in balance. Colonize Mars, it won’t matter— babies and cheatin’ hearts. Democracy and hemorrhoids. Preachers with syphilis. A kid jerking off in his moonsuit, thinking about his older sister. He began to giggle. The kid’s on fire, he thought.

“You mind sharing,” said the driver.

“Been by myself for a while,” said Isaac. “Plus it’s the first time I’ve been in a truck.”

“Playin hooky or something? Or you in college—I can’t tell, no offense.”

“Neither. I ought to be in college, probably.”

“You’re kind of a sight. At first I thought you were one of those Christ lovers, going around converting people in truck stops and whatnot, and then I saw you closer and thought maybe you were one of those people, only you’d gone off the rails. Then I wasn’t sure. That’s probably why I stopped.”

“Mystery of the day.”

“Basically.”

“Well, I appreciate it.”

“Never know,” said the man. “You might have been Christ himself and I would have been well rewarded.”

“Might still be.”

“Now you sound like a proper crazy hitchhiker.”

“Busted,” said Isaac.

The driver chuckled. “I’m just joking you. Actually you mind listening to the radio at all? They’re saying those nuts in Korea just built a rocket big enough to tie a nuke on.”

“You mean North Korea?”

“But I can tell already you’re not into that sort of thing.”

“A little.”

“Myself personally I think we ought to hit them right now, just flatten them. Next thing you know they’ll have a nuke in Toledo.”

“They probably think the same thing about us.”

“Well,” said the driver. He was quiet for a few seconds. “You give yourself twenty years and see if you don’t start appreciating everything just a little bit more, you follow me? Maybe that’s what I’m trying to describe here.” He looked at Isaac. “You don’t follow me.”

“No, I do.”

“Wait twenty years, you’ll know then. Course you’re young so I’m sure there’s plenty I’m missing out on as well. I wasn’t old enough in the sixties and now I’m missing all this. Sometimes you get it coming and going.”

“I doubt you’re missing much,” said Isaac.

“Nah, I watch all the shows, I know. Only thing I feel bad for you is all the girls you can fantasize about, you’ve already seen them all naked. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, all the rest, there’s penetration shots of all of them. For me, Bambi Woods was big news. That was all you could hope for. But it was probably better like that.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, we sure got to the heavy stuff quick, didn’t we.” The driver winked at him again. “You mind holding on a second? You ought to listen to this guy who’s coming on.”

“Alright.”

“You know him?”

Isaac could hear the voice chattering away. “I think my dad likes this guy.”

“G. Gordon Liddy” He shrugged. “I don’t always agree with him but he’s interesting.”

Isaac settled himself while the driver turned the radio up. Then suddenly he turned it down again.

“I realized my point,” he said. “There’s no mystery for your generation. But back to our programming.” He turned up the radio again.

Isaac started to disagree but it was okay. The kid will be fine, he thought. Plenty of mysteries. The universe is fourteen billion years old but a hundred fifty billion light- years across. There’s quantum mechanics versus relativity. The kid will have to make new rules—immune to the laws of man beast and fruit, he’ll live the fourth way. His mind occupied by higher systems, he’ll discover flight. The stratosphere. Cold up here, he’ll think. Cold and blue. Nitrogen—makes skies blue and plants green. Building block. Who dreams of flying most—men in wheelchairs. The old men of the world, trapped in their humidity. As for the kid, he returns like Odysseus. A long exile. His only allegiance to the king of the cannibals.

“You alright over there?”

“Doing good,” said Isaac.

“You know how to keep yourself amused, don’t you?”

“Hope I’m not annoying you.”

“No, I’m glad I stopped. I promised my little girl I’d be home so I’ve only slept about an hour since yesterday morning, and then when I pulled over to refuel I realized I better find someone to talk to or I’d end up asleep in a ditch. Anyway, there you were. So in a way, if you think about it, you’re saving my life.”

“That’s the Jesus in me.”

The driver nodded solemnly. “Yup,” he said. “That’s exactly what it is.”

A few hours later he dropped Isaac off at an on- ramp in Dayton. As he got out the driver said, “You wouldn’t spend it on drugs or anything would you, buddy?”

“I never have.”

“Well, at least get yourself some dinner first.” He gave Isaac five dollars.

Isaac walked a mile or so to a truck stop on I-70 and ordered a meatball sandwich. He sat at a table inside but it didn’t feel right yet so he went back out again and ate on the curb. There was the hammering of diesel engines and the smell of it and trucks coming and going like a train station. He thought he might have to wait awhile but ten minutes later he was picked up by an eastbound rig with a load of tractor parts. This one asked where he had been and Isaac said Michigan and the driver said you gotta make it a little more interesting than that if you wanna ride free, so Isaac told him he’d been riding the trains and was now going home to his family. The driver was happy to be a part of it and they rode the rest of the way without speaking much.

After dark, the driver turned south on I-79, leaving Isaac a few miles past Little Washington. After walking east for a while, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat looking out over the dark highway, toward the Mon River. How far? Twenty miles, maybe. Probably hitch if you can make it to a gas station. He sat and thought about it. Nah. Go in the same way you came out.

What is Lee doing right now? Used to be you could know it. Still might be able to. The three months between when she got into Yale and Mom dying—think about that. Everything made complete sense. All of us going to the Carnegie Museum, dinosaur bones, looking up at the tyrannosaurus. Old man saying I don’t want to look at anything that can bite me in half. I’m happy they went extinct. But even he couldn’t help staring at it for a long time. Imagine being the guy who found that thing, he said. I mean imagine being him before he’d told anyone else he’d found it. Think about that, Watson. That was the old man.

He looked out over the hills. He couldn’t see the river but of course it was there. If he walked it would probably take two days to get home. No, day and a half. That’s okay, he thought. Familiar ground.

5. Poe

The next day instead of sliding his dinner under the cell door, they told him to cuff up.

“My lawyer here again?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the guard. “Put your hands through.”

“I ain’t going.”

“If I don’t see your hands outside these bars in ten seconds, I’m calling the SORT guys. I don’t give a fuck what your problems are.”

He was a different guard from the previous day. He was tall and thin with neat gray hair and thick glasses.

“Anyway” he said. “They’re letting you back in GP.”

“But what I did, it should be a few months.”

“Given the victim, if you’d killed the little bastard the warden probably would have commuted your sentence.”

Poe looked at him.

“Just kidding,” said the guard. “There’s no such thing.”

“What if I stay here?”

“You can’t. They’ve got mental cases stacked to the ceiling.”

“Christ,” said Poe.

“Get up now.”

“I’m applying for protective custody.”

“I hear you,” said the guard, “but you need to talk to the people upstairs, I can’t do it from down here.”

They led him upstairs and back through the cellblock to a different cell on the tier. One of the younger members of the Brotherhood spotted him and took off walking in the other direction.

When the guard left him alone in the cell, Poe drew the privacy curtain and found his toothbrush and rubbed the plastic handle on the cement until it was a sharp point. He tested the bars and windows for any metal he could pry off, make a real weapon with, but there was nothing. He lay on his bunk with his head to the toilet and his feet to the bars. It was a solution, was what it was. It was the way out. Free ticket. He could get up now and make a run for the guard station, demand protective custody. But he would be right back where he was yesterday.

It was him or Isaac there was not a middle ground. He was breathing very quickly and sweating, his clothes were soaked, it felt like he’d taken a shower. Then there were loud footsteps down the tier, he could hear people walking everywhere. He had told the guard he wanted protective custody. That would be his compromise, he had told the guard, if the guard told someone else they would come for him and take him back to the hole, but if the guard didn’t tell anyone they would not come. It was a fair chance either way.

He was still breathing but it was temporary, it always had been. Your life was on a fuse, it was set when you were born it was all people and all lives. It was inevitable, he had never thought about it that way, it was inevitable, that was the one thing you could be sure of there was no reason to be afraid of it, it was coming, a sure thing, it was cold in winter. Except he was still afraid. It was just fear. He would make it mean something, that was all he could do. He would save Isaac English. He hoped he would hold out. He would stop thinking about it.

He was hungry again, there was nothing to eat in his new cell, the third in four days. He wondered if they had really needed the space in the SHU or if the Brotherhood had worked something out, got him stuck back in the general population.

What would it have mattered, doing landfills or playing football. Just another guy doing those things. There was no one else who would do this, there was no one else who would give Isaac a helping hand in any way not even his own family. Even Lee, in the end, she lived only for herself. It would need to happen soon, though. He would not keep a clear mind very long, he knew that about himself. He’d always been fucked he was born that way, it was time to give in to that reality. He would give all he had like the heroes of the past. The higher calling. He was saving Isaac English, that was why he had been put here, there was a design to it, his whole life had led to this moment, he would prove himself the equal. He would be the protector.

He was hungry, he should eat something. Then he heard keys jingling and footsteps, it was definitely a guard coming up the stairs and then onto the tier, they were coming to take him to protective custody, he would be saved. He listened to the jingling keys get closer and there was a feeling of relief. I will be saved. Then he had another feeling, a feeling of being sick, a feeling of change coming over him, a feeling of the rest of his life stretched long in front of him it was despair. He was going to lose—his own legs would betray him, they would not let him die so soon, whatever he thought it didn’t matter, his own body would overpower him. He lay there.

But the guard didn’t stop at his cell. He kept walking. Poe sat up. The guard walked right past, heading to some other cell, he dropped something off and then turned and went back down the tier and down the stairs, his footsteps disappearing. I am a coward, he thought.

Before he could think about it more he stood up and unlocked the door, he was going to get a quick dinner, that was all, get a quick dinner and save his strength, he was walking quickly down the tier and onto the main floor of the cellblock and then out into the main corridor, he could smell the messhall, he saw the door and walked right through it.

Everyone sitting at the AB tables looked up. Clovis was there with all the younger lieutenants, Dwayne was there, he looked down and he pretended he hadn’t seen Poe but Clovis was already standing up, grinning like he’d been expecting him all along and Poe’s legs started shaking, he hesitated, then turned around and walked out of the cafeteria. There were only the squares of the hallway tiles in front of him, he made his legs move, the wide empty corridor, he didn’t know where he was going. His body felt very light, he thought he passed another inmate but he was no longer sure, he seemed to be moving in slow motion. He turned into his cellblock but then changed his mind, they would trap him there, he went back into the corridor, then turned down the hall toward the rec yard. It was very quiet. There were no other voices behind him. He reached the metal detectors and then the doors. There was no one at the guard station. He tried the doors and they were locked. He shook the doors but they didn’t open, then he kicked them as hard as he could. There was no chance.

When he turned behind him it was Clovis and several of the younger men. Clovis was not wearing his hat, and Poe saw for the first time that he had thin red hair that he combed forward, Clovis was very bald.

One of the lieutenants had a knife with a long blade and a handle made of blue tape. Poe tried the doors to the yard again, hit them hard but they wouldn’t open. Then he feinted and tried to break past the five men but one of them was too fast, he tackled Poe only Poe wouldn’t go down, he was running and dragging the man holding on to him when the others caught up. They were punching him only it hurt much more and then everything was blurry, when he finally went over he saw that his own blood was already all over the floor.