Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

45

BY NOW, I HAD BECOME resigned to the fact that whenever the warden sent for me it was going to be another of those damn notes, and all I hoped as 1 followed Stoon across the yard and through the administration building to Warden Gadmore’s office was that this time I would have a good solid in-prison alibi. This thing hanging over my head was the only serpent left in my paradise, and I wanted to be rid of it.

But when we walked in the Catholic chaplain was also present in the office, standing to one side, hands folded together in front of his chalk-stained black robe, and I got confused. What did he have to do with anything? Father Michael J. P. Flynn his name was, and though I’d never had any direct dealings with him, I had seen him around the prison and I knew who he was. But I wasn’t Catholic, so why was he here? And why was he glowering at me in that disapproving way?

The warden was also glowering, giving me his had- enough look, his no-more-Mister-Nice-Guy-look. He was also giving me something small and white and crumpled. “Here,” he said. “Take this and read.”

“Read?” So I’d been right. “Another prisoner message,” I said.

Warden Gadmore turned and nodded at Father Flynn, saying to him, “You see what I mean? Isn’t he convincing?”

“Not particularly,” Father Flynn said. A heavyset middle-aged man with a round white face and black hair emerging wildly from his head, eyebrows, ears and nostrils, Father Flynn was known to be short-tempered, and at the moment he seemed more than moderately angry at me. Glaring in my direction he said, “Be careful how you treat that. It’s the Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

“The what?” I bowed my head to look more closely at the thing the warden had handed me. It was like an underdone Ritz cracker, round and white, slightly soft, folded in the middle. “It looks like an uncooked fortune cookie,” I said.

“Very funny,” the warden said. “Open it, and read your fortune.”

“Open it,” I echoed, and I didn’t like this at all.

“Be careful with it,” Father Flynn warned me. “I consecrated the entire batch before I noticed anything wrong, so that is now a Holy Wafer. It is the Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

This time I understood him. What I was holding was a small round of unleavened bread, the wafer used by Catholics in Holy Communion. Once I’d unfolded it to its normal flat circle I could see exactly what it was.

I could also see the note in it; a narrow strip of paper, just like those in fortune cookies. I didn’t have to open it to read what it said, but I did anyway.

Printed. Tiny letters, black ballpoint ink. I refuse to repeat the words.

“The thing that gets me, Kiint,” the warden said, when at last I looked up from the sacrilege in my hands, “is the timing.”

“Timing, sir?”

He pointed at the wafer and note in my hand. “That was done,” he said, “three days after the episode of the bottle in the vegetable beef soup.”

“What?”

“The note in the bottle,” he said, “occurred on March seventh, just one month ago tomorrow. The Communion hosts used by Father Flynn are dated when they arrive here, to assure freshness, and the carton containing that particular host was dated March tenth. On that date, the carton arrived at the chapel, and spent the first night in a side room. The following morning Father Flynn locked the carton in his storage area in the chapel, and never took it out again until this morning. The only time those twelve hosts could have-”

“Twelve?”

“Yes, twelve,” the warden said.

Father Flynn said, “Don’t deny it, man. Guilt is written all over your face.”

“Father- Warden-” But what was there to say?

So the warden went on without further interruption: “The only time the hosts could have been tampered with,” he said, “was the day and night of March tenth. Just three days after you gave me your solemn word this sort of thing would never happen again.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I never promised you it wouldn’t happen again. I couldn't make a promise like that, because I'm not the one doing these things”

“Kiint,” the warden said, and his manner was more grieved than angry, “do you remember what I told you back in March, three days before these hosts were treated this way?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“I told you at that time,” the warden said, “that if such a thing ever happened again, and you failed to have a solid alibi or a provable alternate explanation, that I would take you off all privileges, and I would keep you off all privileges until such a thing happened yet again. Because that’s the only way to prove your innocence.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and I could practically feel myself grow shorter as I stood there, slumping down into myself.

Off privileges. I'd always known it was a possibility, but I’d done my best to ignore the knowledge. I’d made no real effort to find out who was actually leaving these notes around, and now it was too late. Off privileges. Indefinitely.

That was the worst of it, of course. The gym, the tunnel, Marian-the whole outside world-were being taken away from me, and there was no way to tell for how long. Would it be a week before another message, or a month, or a year? There was no pattern in the damn man’s actions, no real guarantee that he’d ever strike again at all.

Oh, no; he had to do it again. He couldn’t stop now.

A year and a half before I was eligible for parole: eternity. A year and a half without Marian, without going through the tunnel even once?

I was going to be a prisoner.

Help, I thought.

“I’m sorry, Kiint,” the warden said, possibly because my despair was showing in my face, “but I see no alternative.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“That’s all,” he said. “You may go.”

Father Flynn said, “That’s all?” He, I’m sure, would have preferred to see me burned at the stake.

But the warden told him, “Until we have proof one way or the other, there’s nothing else to do.” He nodded to me to leave.

“Yes, sir,” I said. But as I started out Father Flynn called me, saying, “You. Whatever your name is.”

“Kiint, Father,” I said. “With an umlaut.”

“I’m not going to forget you, Kiint,” he said. “Nor I should think will several of the good God-fearing Catholic boys in this institution.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, but he’d turned his back on me.

And so I left the warden’s office to go spend my season in Hell.